Project 365

Tomorrow is my first day of fasting! I hope it’s going to be smooth. I’m planning to stay at home the whole day tomorrow so that I won’t be wasting my energy too much. I need to get used to the whole 17 hours fasting. I used to fast days before Ramadhan, so that by the time I had to start the “real” fasting, I wouldn’t be struggling so hard. But for some reasons, I didn’t do it this time and I really hope I could handle it :). I’m sure I will. Insya Allah.

I spent almost the whole day today being a proofreader for my friend, who’s currently doing his thesis. Just wanted to help, nothing else. I then went to see my friend Yaqing and her boyfriend, Chris in the Centrum. We had dinner together and had such a nice conversation. We hadn’t seen each other for 2 months already! The last time I saw Yaqing was before I went back to Indonesia. I was so glad that she had found someone to be with :). Kinda envy her a little bit haha. But anyway we talked about so many things: politics, our life, and not to forget… our traveling plans! It turned out Chris really wanted to go to Iran! What a coincidence! I’d loooove to join in 😉

I’m quite full with the dinner today. I still have some left overs in the fridge and that’s what I’m going to eat for my sahur. One of the hardest thing about fasting during summer (besides the long duration) is that we only have about 7 hours before Fajr! So, you break the fast at around 9pm, eat some heavy meals and by the time you want to eat for sahur your stomach is still full! Most of the time I eat heavy meals once during sahur, otherwise my stomach won’t take it anymore. I’m still thinking how I’m going to do this, should I just eat heavy meals in the middle, say at 12am… and eat some cookies, deserts, or light foods for iftar and sahur? Yeah, maybe I should try that first.

Ok, time for Qur’an reading 🙂

So I stayed in Helmond today with Jessie. We planned on a trip to Berlin, but it didn’t turn out very well. We had a very low budget and we had no friends who wanted to come with us! I didn’t know if we eventually would go there.

We both did nothing so extra ordinary today. Just stayed on bed, chatting, eating, and so on. Having a good company was enough to make me contented. I wonder why I’m becoming more dependent on other people?!

I’m going to stay another night, eventually :D.

Phew! What a day!

I was busy cleaning up my room today. Well, I vacuumed the floor and the ceiling (yes! the spiders needed to be gone!) four days ago. So now I “only” had to throw away all the junks and unused things out of my room. I collected all the papers that could be used for scrap papers and I threw some of them which could not be used anymore (but could be recycled). There were piles of them! I hadn’t been removing them since last semester! Wow, talk about major clean up!

I also hung another string which I used for hanging the postcards. I had many postcards (which I got from friends, family, or myself) that I hadn’t had the time to hang them. Because I had to put the nails on the wall so that I could hang the rope/string. But you know, I was bad in this kind of men job thing (although, yes, it was only the matter of driving the nails into the wall using a hammer). So I kept on procrastinating until today. Now I have 2 ropes hanging on my wall for my postcards! 🙂

So far, I got postcards from the States (Yale, Philadelphia, and New York — thanks to my dear Fau and San Fransisco — from my Couchsurfing friend), Japan (from my former housemates, Jenn & Mayu), Australia (Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, and Hobart — from lovely Wiza), China (from my brother), and other postcards that I purchased them myself from 7 different countries :).

The result of this major clean up was quite satisfactory. Too bad I didn’t take a picture of my room before the clean up. It was messy as hell! Now I’m loving and enjoying my room with a cup of hot chocolate… Lovely.

Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own.

— Henry Rollins

Yes, it is painful. It’s killing me everyday but I gotta move on. I gotta find the light. I cannot be stuck in this tunnel forever.

The truth is that, since I arrived from Jakarta 2 weeks ago, I never cooked. I always ate breads — except if I was invited to a friend’s house, of course. I ate only once a day. I could feel my stomach shrinking! I could feel the lightness of my body. I guess, my eating habit was affected. If I was stressed, I didn’t want to eat.

So today, I decided to cook ayam kecap (chicken with sweet soy sauce). I’ve made it several times and it’s quite easy. It didn’t require a lot of ingredients. It just require me to get up and start cooking.

It wasn’t so bad, indeed 🙂 . I’m quite satisfied. Alhamdulillah.

Ya Allah, please help me to move on. Please don’t leave me alone. I’m desperate.

My day started with meeting with a friend to do our assignment for 3 hours. Not fun, but it was combined with good talks and laughter. So it was not as bad as I thought 🙂

Then I decided to go to centrum to find a birthday gift for my friend Ian. I seriously had NO CLUE what to give to him. I wanted to give him something special and unusual but my budget obviously didn’t support it. So I went to Mediamarkt (an electronic shop) to find something that I could buy. As I was searching for something, surprisingly I met my former Macedonian teammate Goran! It was such an unplanned encounter! He was nice and friendly as usual; even invited me for a coffee or something to catch up! Probably we’re going to meet up this week; gonna wait for his email or call. We’ll see.

Anyway, as expected, I left Mediamarkt with empty handed. I found something that I liked, but apparently they didn’t have it anymore — the stock was finished. I went to other electronic stores in the centrum and was very disappointed that the price was waaaaayyyyyyyy out of my budget. It was already 4pm and I still had to go for grocery shopping. So I thought I’d continue this gift hunting thing tomorrow.

I went to Kruisstraat to do grocery shopping and I suddenly remembered that there was indeed another electronic shop in that area. So I went there to check out the stuff that I wanted to buy. Turned out that it was on discount!!! 40% discount! Wohooo… and this was a good and well known brand. So I was so happy about it! This was probably my best gift ever hahaha… I really hoped he would like it 🙂

My day didn’t stop until there. There were too many things happening and I was surprised myself too. I couldn’t reveal it now though. Haha. Well, I’m just still shocked that I decided to do it.

A friend of mine, Ikram called me over the YM and we talked for more than 1.5 hours! It was the longest ever! hahaha. It was fun, I really enjoyed it.

Alhamdulillah for everything 🙂

So the shops were closed. None was opened. So I stayed at home all day. Read stuff. Did assignments. Played games. Talked with friends. And cooked two indomie for dinner.

Not bad 😀

I have to say that today is my most unproductive day EVER. I was supposed to do assignments from the time I woke up; but I ended up playing Bejeweled for hours. Well, I did do my assignments — I started doing them at 11pm. YEAH.

Monday is public holiday in the Netherlands. And I just realized today that the shops will not be opened until Tuesday! I should have gone grocery shopping today!!! I don’t have anything to eat for dinner tomorrow. Hfff, indomie to the rescue, I guess.

I worked for the whole day today in Belgium (I don’t even know the name of the city! Hahaha). I was asked to help at the Indonesian food stall there. It wasn’t so busy coz there weren’t many people. Unlike Dutch people, Belgians were not really open to new things. They didn’t really want to try new foods and were definitely not familiar with Indonesian foods. Most of the people who actually bought our foods were Dutch who lived in Belgium. Many of them were even Indo (people who have some portions of Indonesian blood :P). Yes, we did talk to them and they were extremely friendly. The friendly behavior that they got from their Indonesian blood would never disappear 😀 hehehe. It was a tiring yet fun day! I got an extra pocket money too and had delicious lunch so I couldn’t be more thankful!

It was yet another hectic Saturday. I was picked up by a family friend early in the morning. We planned to go to Het Goed, a huge store selling second hand goods: from furniture, electronic and kitchen appliances, books, to clothing. I didn’t plan to look for anything in particular, but I just wanted to have a look. The store was huuuuge! There were many good and CHEAP stuff, especially the furniture. I bought a 0.5 cent box for my jewelry. I also found an original Dutch football t-shirt for the previous World Cup for only 4.5 Euros!!! What a great bargain! I wasn’t sure at first whether I would buy it because the size was too big (XL), but yeah… I decided to buy it in the end. It was original for heaven sake! (The original t-shirt usually costs about 60-80 Euros! So this was a really good value!) I hope my brother would like it. I also bought a really nice skirt (me? skirt? haha. yeah, rare!) for a cheap price. I was very satisfied!

I went home afterwards before leaving again to attend the pengajian at the Mosque until around 7pm. Then I went to a family friend’s place for a while to kill time and then to Yasmin’s house for dinner. I was invited to her dinner party and her parents cooked the food. They were kind enough to provide me with vegetarian foods 🙂 I met my university friends whom I hadn’t seen for ages! It was a total blast day!

I’ve been having a healthier breakfast or brunch everyday since I was sick 2 weeks ago. I usually opt for fresh milk and cereal in the morning, but because I’m still coughing I try to avoid cold milk for now. So I’ve been drinking delicious Chocomel everyday. I’m also a big fan of any kind of cheese, butter, or margarine and I can’t miss it on my breakfast! To add a little bit of “energy”, I add tuna salad spread which is really delicious 😀 Not to forget a fruit, of course.

I miss banana milk, the white milk, and the cereal. I can’t wait til the day I’m totally free from cough 😉

But for now, I enjoy this kind of breakfast/brunch!