Project 365

Welcome! This is my own 365 project of creating at least one post per day about the stuff that I learnt, achieved, and found, the stuff that made me happy, or the new thing I did every single day.

The project was started on 21 February 2010. It has stopped for few times but I am determined to continue!

This project is dedicated to myself. I want to feel grateful for every single thing I have. I want to be thankful for my own life. I just want to feel that I have enough.

Tag: event

At Indonesian Night, Delft

This was our performance in Delft, a small city near Den Haag. With only FOUR days of practice (two hour each), we played it really well, I must say. In this video, we performed a Sundanese traditional song called Pileuleuyan.

We’ve got a number of performances lining up for March and April! Excited šŸ™‚

Glow Eindhoven

Eindhoven is the city of light, just because Philips was founded here. Although the headquarter of Philips is no longer in Eindhoven, the city keeps on promoting itself as the city of light. The ‘title’ doesn’t make this small city ‘brighter’ than other Dutch cities in terms of numbers of light scattering throughout the city center. It’s just something that Eindhoveners are proud of.

From 6 to 13 November, the city hosts the annual event, Glow Eindhoven, which showcases art and architecture by means of light. I haven’t really explore it yet as the weather hasn’t been a friend this week. It’s been raining cats and dogs. It’s really cold too! I only went to the centrum (city center) this evening to see some of the shows and they were quite beautiful.

IMG_6651 IMG_6653

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I’ll probably be going to explore it tomorrow. Or this weekend. Can’t wait.

Eid: 1st day

Alhamdulillah, I arrived in Jeddah at around 4am. The flight from Amman, Jordan, took around 2 hours and it was quite tiring. There were only 2 passengers (including me)! Hahaha. The whole plane was for us. The other passenger was a Saudi girl, who studied in London for many years. She seemed really nice and didnā€™t dressed up like most Saudis: simple and almost no make-up (whilst Saudis put too much make-up on daily basis). She had been studying in the UK since 4 years ago. Her family must had been so open-minded and modern, I thought.

When I reached the passport control, there werenā€™t any queues. So I didnā€™t have to wait for so long; I only had to wait for my luggage. I was so happy that by the time I reached a luggage carousel, it was 4.30am. But unfortunately, I had to wait for 30 minutes for my luggage to arrive. It seemed like our bags were abandoned, as there were only 2 bags in total. I got out of the airport just after the call for Fajr prayer.

I reached home, took a quick shower, and went to the mosque straight away. I saw many Indonesians (as itā€™s located near our consulate) and Saudis with their super duper thick make-up. Everyone was so shining. So happy. So delighted. And I felt so blessed to be around with my family for this yearā€™s Eid.

In the afternoon, my family and I went to the residence of the consul general. His house is always used for many Indonesian events. During Eid, the house is opened to the public where many foods will be served. It was my first time to go there during Eid so I was pretty excited. There were plenty of delicious Indonesian foods! I was stuffed with foods and regretted that I ate too much, because we were planning to visit other peopleā€™s houses too! šŸ˜€

At the residence of Indonesian Consul General At the residence of Indonesian Consul General With my brother With my sister

Well, thankfully my stomach managed to eat more foods. The next three or four days of Eid will be spent with visiting peopleā€™s houses, eating, eating, and eating. I will gain more weight for sure. But I donā€™t care (itā€™s not like I ever cared about my weight anyway!). I just wanted to enjoy it.

Hope you all have a great Eid celebration!

Eid

Saudi_Arabia_map

I have spent the last 6 years straight of Eid ul-Fitr without my family. And I donā€™t want to spend yet another Eid ā€œaloneā€Ā anymore! So today, insya Allah Iā€™ll be flying to Saudi Arabia to join my mom, dad, sis, and bro for the Eid celebration!

Iā€™ll arrive in Jeddah early Friday morning and I really hope I could perform Eid prayer over there! Or, worst case scenario Iā€™ll be praying at the airport hahaha. Then hopefully Iā€™ll meet some of my friends and former teachers at the residence of the consul-general of Indonesia. My family and I will also be visiting friendsā€™ houses, so itā€™s going to be exciting! I canā€™t wait to eat the foods hahaha.

In the Netherlands, some people will celebrate the Eid on Friday. And some, including the Turkish people celebrate it today :).

So I want to wish you all, Eid Mubarak. I hope we have improved our faith and may Allah SWT accept our fasts and prayers, Ameen. Kullu 3am wa antum be7air! šŸ™‚ Have a great celebration!

UQ Centenary Reception in London

UQ Centenary Reception

I was sent an invitation to attend the UQ Centenary Reception in London both via post and email. The event will be held to celebrate the 100 years of UQ. Too bad I canā€™t attend the event. The idea of applying a UK visa is already too complicated for me. And I wonā€™t be in Europe during that time.

Itā€™s just crazy how much money UQ has spent for these centenary events since the beginning of this year! The reception itself has been held in 12 cities in 9 different countries! It was even held in Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Bangkok all together. Sadly, I missed all of them and Iā€™ll miss another event again.

Things I miss about UQ:

  • The multicultural friends I had
  • Pizza Cafe, which served the most DELICIOUS Italian pizza I had ever tested! I couldnā€™t find the replacement of it, yet!
  • The cozy, quiet, and homey libraries scattered around the campus. My favorite was the Biological Sciences Library.
  • The ITEE (IT & Electrical Engineering) building! This was the place where I spent my sleepless nights with my project mates, tweaking codes and starring at the computer. My longest record staying in the building was 13 hours straight.
  • The lake. The parks. The green spaces. The scary birds that attacked my head :D. And definitely, The Great Court!!!
  • The weekly market which used to sell high quality & sweet strawberries!
  • Jenn and Mayu, two of my closest friends and housemates during the time when I was in Brisbane šŸ™‚

Happy 100 birthday, UQ!

Pesta Rakyat 2010

I went to Pesta Rakyat (literally: Peopleā€™s Party), organized by the Indonesian embassy in Den Haag to celebrate our beloved countryā€™s independence day from the Netherlands 65 years ago. The event was held in Sekolah Indonesia Nederland (SIN) in Wassenaar (near Den Haag) ā€” closed to the house of the Indonesian ambassador. It was my first time going to the school. I went there with my lovely friend Jessie and her family.

Sekolah Indonesia Nederland

There were a loooot of Indonesians! There were music performances and food stalls which sold many types of Indonesian foods. I spent quite a lot that day! I just wanted to treat myself nice Indonesian foods, although yes, I was in Indonesia less than a month ago! The foods were of course very expensive compared to the ones in Indonesia, but oh wellā€¦ If you compared everything in Euro then you would end up not buying anything! I bought some sate for 5 Euro and I was surprised that I only got 3 sticks (tusuk) for that many lontong! Talk about suicide, eh?! Then I also had a cup of delicious cendol and nasi rames for dinner. We were there almost the whole day! When we were too bored, Jessie and I went to Scheveningen beach, but we found ourselves not doing anything over there because it was raining!

Pesta Rakyat The stage at Pesta Rakyat

The weather was indeed terrible. It was raining the whole freakin day! It was an unusual Dutch weather, to be honest. Usually the rain was quite light and there were some pauses in between the rain. But it just didnā€™t stop until late in the afternoon. As a result, many people went back home really early. There were not many people dancing too in front of the stage. They were dancing and holding the umbrella, so you could imagine how ribet it was. The poco-poco seemed fun, but I didnā€™t want to join in because of the rain :(.

with Putri and her friends with Jessie, Putri, and her friends

But I met my friend Putri today! I was surprised myself but it was a spontaneous meet up! I havenā€™t seen her for months already and it was great to meet her although yes, we needed another meet up to catch up! I also saw an Indonesian singer Delon, whom I had no idea who he was until Jessieā€™s mom told me that he was the winner of Indonesian Idol or something LOL. I took a picture with him, as a proof that I met somebody famous :P. Hehehe. To be honest, heā€™s just okay. Nothing special about him. Not handsome or anything like that. No offence hahaha.

Me and Delon  The RMS people demonstrating...

Oh! One thing I forgot to mention is that, there were some people from the RMS (Republik Maluku Selatan) demonstrating in front of the gate of the school, demanding the political prisoner, Johan Teterissa who waved the flag of RMS in front of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to be released.

After spending our time there for quite a long time, we eventually headed to the house of Jessieā€™s motherā€™s friend. While the elders did some catching up, Jessie and I went to the McDonaldā€™s nearby and we had some really nice conversation about the future, Indonesia, the Netherlandsā€™ society, and many more! šŸ™‚

We reached home around 12am and I had decided to stay over at Jessieā€™s place. It was a good day. Iā€™m thankful ya Allah šŸ™‚

Indonesia Night

I was invited to a rare cultural event called Indonesia Night (which was quite rare in Eindhoven; as most cultural events happened in Den Haag, Rotterdam, Utrecht, or Amsterdam). The event was held for the purpose of introducing the Indonesian culture to some Dutch students (majoring in chemical engineering) who were gonna do a study tour to some parts of Indonesia.

The event was started with a very interesting presentation by Prof. Nas from Universiteit Leiden about the symbols of many places in Indonesia. He did an extensive research about this topic in many cities, particularly in Jakarta, Jogjakarta, Denpasar, Bukittinggi, and Banda Aceh.

Symbols in Place by Prof. Nas

Prof. Nas described Jakarta’s 4 tiered symbolism. The city was first built during the Dutch colonialism time and was centered in what was now KotaƂĀ (or city center) which was filled with European architectures.ƂĀ During the Old Order (Soekarno’s era), many huge monuments were built, including Monas,ƂĀ West Irian Liberation Statue, and Dirgantara Monument. According to Prof. Nas, Soekarno, who was an architect himself, tried to “neutralized” the city by building these monuments. There were many Dutch or European buildings during that time and Soekarno wanted to display the Indonesian presence or nationalism symbols among these buildings. The New Order era (Soeharto’s) also saw the creation of monuments, one of them was the Sacred Pancasila Monument. In the 1990’s, Jakarta underwent a number of major construction projects; as a result, many high rise buildings started to rise up.

Jakarta

Moving on from Jakarta to Denpasar, the Professor also explained how the traditional Balinese house was constructed. The house was largely consists of a collection of individual separated structures, including the family temple, sleeping pavilion, kitchen, and many more. These structures were located inside a high-walled compound and were organized in such a way that complied to the Tri AnggaƂĀ concept which the Balinese believed. The concept described the three parts: the high (which referred to the sacred mountains or hills), the middle (land), and the low (sea). In terms of the Balinese house, the high referred to the temple, the middleƂĀ referredƂĀ to pavilions where they lived, and the seaƂĀ referred to the kitchen and so on. Prof. Nas even mentioned that the Balinese slept with their head pointing to the direction of the sacred mountain šŸ™‚ This was an interesting concept that I didn’t know about!

After the presentation from an expert, two students gave a presentation about Indonesia. One was a friend of mine, Qonita, who represented Indonesian students who lived in the Netherlands. And the other was a Dutch student who had the chance to live in Indonesia. Both of them gave very interesting and entertaining presentations which I enjoyed very much!

Qonita's Presentation

Qonita's Presentation

Qonita's Presentation

These are the summary of the presentations that they both presented:

  • One thing that really stands out about Indonesian people is that we’re really FRIENDLY! Our door is literally opened to anyone. Guests can come unannounced and we’re always ready and happy to receive them to our house. We’re very generous and wants to show our warm hospitality to our guests. When the guests come or are invited to our house, we expect them to eat (and by that we mean HEAVY MEALS are awaited to be served). This is rather different with Dutch. Making appointments are necessary if you want to visit a Dutch friend in his or her house. Visiting Dutch people during dinner time is a big NO-NO. This is considered a family time for them and they are for certain have no foods left for you; because they cook only for the number of people present on the table šŸ™‚ (whilst Indonesians tend to cook more foods, in case somebody else visits). When you visit a Dutch house, expect light foods, coffee or tea, and no more. Of course, nowadays Dutch people interact with many people from different cultures, so some of them behave differently šŸ™‚
  • Dutch people are very OPEN. They just don’t hesitate to say what’s inside their heads without considering the feeling of others. On the other hand, many Indonesians, especially the “true” Javanese, aren’t very open. They’re too polite so they try not to hurt other people’s feelings. As a result, they’re not able to say what they really have in mind. They say “yes”, although they’re quite hesitant about it (but they’re hesitant to say “no”).
  • Dutch are surprisingly huge. They’re the tallest people in the world. Even the women are very tall! They are white too and as Qonita said: “have pink skin”. LOL. All the western people, including Dutch, love tanned skin, while the Asians, including the Indonesians, would prefer a fair skin (except me, I’m so glad to have this skin color!). The Dutch presenter was actually surprised to find that there was a whitening lotion in Indonesia! šŸ˜› People were obsessed to get white and they would praise her white skin color. In contrast, whitening lotion is nowhere to be found in the Netherlands. There’s a lotion that makes your body tanned or glowing though. Haha!

I was so glad I came to this event! I didn’t expect that it was gonna be this interesting! Knowing other people’s perspectives about your own country was always fascinating. I learnt many things and I had so much fun! The poco-poco dance turned out to be really great and many people took part too šŸ˜‰