Project 365

One day, my friend Nabilah asked me if I would like to join the aqiqah of her niece. This would be a great opportunity to meet locals and it would definitely be my first exposure to a Malay culture. So with no hesitations, I immediately said yes.

We drove to the nearby state, Selangor. Her sister’s house is located near the city of Klang. The house was in the middle of nowhere. It was in a village (or a kampung, as Malaysians say it). This was my first time going into a traditional Malay house. It was interesting. The house is two-storey. The living  room and bedrooms are located in the upper part of the house. There is another living room in the bottom part of the house, with a slightly lower ceiling. At the back of the house, there’s a big kitchen and a bathroom. Just like in Iran, the toilet is located outside of the house.

When we arrived there, we were welcomed with lots of foods, as usual. It was a buffet. They put a tent outside where guests can sit and eat. Apparently, we missed out the actual aqiqah, so we were only there to eat and mingle with Nabilah’s extended families. Interestingly, Nabilah’s brother-in-law is a Malaysian of Javanese origin. Long time ago, many Javanese people came to Malaysia. Since I can’t speak Javanese, I can’t really figure out whether their Javanese language is the same as ours — but they can speak Javanese. Nabilah also said that their Malay accent is a bit different, perhaps more medok than the standard one :P.

I really enjoyed being in a kampung. It was very quiet, peaceful, and green. It was a nice escape from the noisy KL. I also forced myself to speak more Malay with Nabilah’s family. I really want to master it hahaha. It’s easier to mingle with the locals if you can speak their language — even though, yes, Malaysians generally understand Indonesian language just because they watch a lot of our sinetrons.

The next cultural experience for me would be the traditional Malay wedding. I was already invited to Nabilah’s friend’s wedding in September. I’m looking forward to it 🙂

Alhamdulillah for everything 🙂

I have no mood to write anything these days. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I decided to post some pictures that I took for the past one month ;).

Leaves have started to fall in Eindhoven, after few weeks of sunny and warm weather. Usually, we’d take our gloves out by the month of October. But the weather has been very warm lately. Does that mean winter would be worst and colder than last year? 😐

I was invited to a Korean lunch at a friend’s house. I forgot what this dish was called but I always loved it! This was the second time I ate it.

Baby Nolan and baby Mentari are two of my favorite kids 🙂 I’ve watched them grow ever since they were born and it’s always impressive and exciting to see them growing and doing their things for the first time :).

 

Last weekend, Jessie and I went to the McDonald’s near Best. This particular McD got a Rock & Roll theme. There was a huge statue of Michael Jackson on its parking lot. I saw lots of pictures, flowers, and messages from his fans near the statue. We were checking out these memorabilia, when we saw a teenage boy crying with his family trying to console him. That was my first time to actually see with my own eyes someone crying because of the death of a celebrity. How stupid does that sound?! Isn’t it ironic that people don’t believe in God but they believe in these fake looking celebrities that they have no relations to and have no idea whether these celebrities are honestly a good person or not…! A strange world we live in…

This picture is not actually mine, but this one was taken at the Welcoming Party organized by PPI/e (Indonesian Student Association). I had a great time there, meeting new Indonesian students. I gave a short presentation about Dutch culture. It was OK, I think I should have done it much better than that. I prepared it in less than 8 hours before the event itself haha. But it was a relief to know that people found it useful.

Oh, what an awesome (and tiring) day! The annual cultural event that we had all been waiting for finally took place! The highlight of the event was of course: Angklung Eindhoven! 🙂

Before the start of the event, we had the chance to do a last-minute practice at the parking lot of the St Petrus Church located across the event’s venue. We couldn’t practice at the venue because the organizing committee was busy doing check sound. It was on Saturday afternoon. Many people passed by from the market nearby and of course, they watched us practicing :). We told them to come to the event and some of them said they wanted to come. Last minute promotion, I guess? 😉

 

At the start of the event, I was busy welcoming some people from Eindhoven University of Technology (my university!) and Gemeente Eindhoven (Eindhoven city council). They were very warm and friendly! They even told me to do whatever the things I supposed to be doing. Too bad the Alderman couldn’t come (he was supposed to come, but due to the changing of event’s time, he couldn’t attend). I had the opportunity to welcome the people from the embassy on another occasion and I hate to say that they’re very very formal. Some of them were not friendly and they even distanced themselves from us just because we’re ordinary citizens (that’s what I felt). Talking to the Dutch “important personalities” were much more relaxed!

The angklungers performed twice at Made in Indonesia, with different songs. We played Medley Maluku (Nona Manis — Ayo Mama — Rasa Sayange) and Bungong Jeumpa for our first performance. For the second one, we played six songs: Yue Liang (a Chinese song), Yamko Rambe Yamko, Burung Kakatua, Si Patokaan, Tulpen Uit Amsterdam (a Dutch song), and finally Medley Indonesia (Tanah Airku — Indonesia Pusaka).

 

The climax of our performance was of course the last part! The newlyweds, mas Dody and teh Ida (teh Ida is also one of our conductors and founders of Angklung Eindhoven), sang Tanah Airku and Indonesia Pusaka accompanied by angklung. Their voice was amaaahhhhzing. I was told that some people even cried when they heard them singing and they stood applauding us when the song finished. I didn’t pay attention to anything like that hahaha. I was just glad that we could play it nicely. The two songs are Indonesian national and patriotic songs. The first song is about our love for the country even though we live abroad. I think this one touched people the most 🙂 I can’t wait to see the videos 🙂 Meanwhile, here’s the lyric of the song Tanah Airku:

Tanah airku tidak kulupakan
Kan terkenang selama hidupku
Biarpun saya pergi jauh
Tidak kan hilang dari kalbu
Tanahku yang kucintai
Engkau kuhargai

Walaupun banyak negri kujalani
Yang masyur permai dikata orang
Tetapi kampung dan rumahku
Di sanalah kurasa senang
Tanahku tak kulupakan
Engkau kubanggakan

 

Coming soon: the videos 🙂

I promised myself to completely take a break from all organization and angklung activities, but I CAN’T HELP IT!!! This event is our last big annual event before the end of our organizational term — before the new president is chosen. Of course I wouldn’t want to miss this chance! I want it to be a successful event tooo! 🙂 Can’t wait for Saturday!

Eid mubarak! Eid saeed! Kullu sanah wa antum bekhair…

It was a great Eid with Indonesian friends and delicious foods! Lontong, gulai kambing, rendang, and so many other foods that I can’t remember LOL. I was too busy eating that I forgot to take some pictures of the food itself! 😛 Well, I didn’t take that many pictures to begin with. There were many photographers with DLSR cameras so all I needed to do was to pose *kidding*. But these are the only pictures that I took.

I noticed two things about these pictures. One was that I looked soooo thin *panic* and second was that I was the only unmarried single woman there! Hahahaha. These women are my close-knit Indonesian Muslim family :). They make me feel "home" and keep me in check every time. Whether I am in Australia or in the Netherlands, I always make sure that I’m close to at least one family. I love spending with families and playing with their kids. I also like the fact that they keep me grounded and always remind me about certain things. Some of them automatically act as my guardian without being asked and I think that’s important — at least for me — to have someone much older than you to rely on, especially when you’re confused on two choices or need an elderly or wise advice :).

Anyway, after spending the Eid with them, I spent the rest of the afternoon with my Dutch friends that I met at the mosque. It was an Eid brunch/lunch a la Dutch :). Breads, cookies, cheese, and different kinds of spreads. It was really nice to see them again! I really enjoyed it! Alhamdulillah.

Glad it’s over! Phew. Finally I can take a rest a little bit. Our performance at the Festival Muziek op de Dommel was the biggest one so far, targeting the Dutch public audience, instead of Indonesians or students. We didn’t get to perform at the main stage, but hopefully next year we would be able to perform there!!

On that day, we all gathered in the chapel nearby the festival to do our last rehearsal before our performance. Then we walked from the chapel to the venue.

It was so hot on that day! We were all grumpy waiting for the performance at the main stage to finish. We were behind the schedule.

The cutest loyal angklung supporters who never failed to attend the rehearsals right from the beginning 🙂

Conclusion: it was a great performance! I really enjoyed it. The audience seemed to enjoy it too coz we got 2 offers to perform again. Yay!

Photos courtesy of Angga and Xuchen.

Here’s the video of one of our performances, playing Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky.

Visit https://www.facebook.com/AngklungEindhoven for more videos!

Yay! Finally it’s here! The festival that we’ve all been waiting for is coming up very soon. I’m thrilled and super excited. I can’t wait to perform and promote our culture 🙂 I also can’t wait to watch the orchestra. It’s going to be awesome! I’ll post the videos when they’re available.

Since the theme of this year’s festival is Russian music, so we decided to play the following songs (I include the links of the past performances too): Kalinka, Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini v2, Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty.

Wish us luck!!!

Great job, everyone 🙂 And yes, that’s the trophy!

This would be the last event I organized and involved in. I still have a web design work to do with an Islamic School here, then I’m done and I will focus on my thesis entirely… Oh boring life awaits…

Super busy with this event in which I’m involved in the committee for the whole weekend! I wasn’t supposed to be busy as my core job has finished, but in the end, I became involved in the information desk. I feel so tired, but I’m so happy that today’s event went successfully! 🙂 It’s time to sleep and gain more energy for tomorrow.

Today, I got a phone call from a contact person at TU/e and he said that they’ve decided to sponsor our event, Eindhoven League!!! I’ve been stressing out that we may not be able to get enough sponsors for this event so this is quite significant!!! They’ve chosen the platinum sponsor which amounts 2,500 euro!!! OMG! I can’t be happier! Alhamdulillah! 🙂 A great achievement!