Project 365

Ya Allah… I hope papa is in a much better place now… 🙁

Look at love
how it tangles
with the one fallen in love

Look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life

Why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad
Pay attention to how things blend

Why talk about all
the known and the unknown
See how the unknown merges into the known

Why think separately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last

Look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs

Look at water and fire
earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once

The wolf and the lamb
the lion and the deer
far away yet together

Look at the unity of this
spring and winter
manifested in the equinox

You too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me

Be like sugarcane
sweet yet silent
Don’t get mixed up with bitter words

My beloved grows
right out of my own heart
How much more union can there be?

— Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Innalillahi wa innailaihi rojiun.

I was very shocked to find out that my uncle (I usually call him papa) has passed away today. I still can’t believe that it happened to him. He had an accident on his journey to Madinah. The bus driver suffered from sleep deprivation and hit a truck. Everyone, except him, was fine and only suffered from minor injuries. It was as if Allah SWT deliberately wanted to take him away…

His death is a great loss to our extended family. We can no longer hear his laugh that can be heard all over the house. His "goooooooollllll" scream when he watches a football match. His encouraging words. His jokes…. Oh, I feel like it was only yesterday that we had this interesting discussion about politics in Egypt. I still can’t believe this.

I’m greatly worried about my aunt and my four cousins, especially the two youngest ones. Ya Allah, give them the strength and the patience to go through this difficult time…

I told him that I would be going to the stadium of AC Milan next month and he told me to take some of the grass in the stadium hahahhaa…. Crazy dude, as usual.

To the woman who has given me endless inspirations…

To the woman who has taught me how it is to be a real woman…

To the woman who never fails to remind me to be strong…

To the only woman who has given me life…

To my only mom. Happy Mother’s Day. I love you always.

We always have a lot of things to share. Or to joke about. From serious stuff to some stupidest things that you could ever imagine. We love to talk in broken Arabic, just to make fun of those foreigners (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and even Indonesians) whose Arabic is unbelievably funny! If I’m in Jeddah, I spend most of my time in his room. Every single day. We laugh until our stomach hurts, listen to music (AND sing & dance as crazy as we can!), watch movies, and talk (it’s bloody hard to shut his mouth, seriously).

I miss him sooo much!

I had been wanting to go to King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) for so long and I was so happy that today I had a chance to go there with my whole family!

It was such a HUGE campus! The moment we stepped in, I was already amazed by its size and the fact that it had its own golf course! Super cool!

 

Then there was a cozy library with its beautiful view of the Red Sea! The tall structure seen below was actually a lighthouse!

Everything was so new, clean, shiny, and cozy!

Without the help of these Indonesian students who studied at KAUST, we wouldn’t be able to visit this campus! Thanks to them, I got to discover a lot of cool things about KAUST. I’ll write more about it in my primary blog! Stay tuned! 🙂

At least, there’s something to be grateful about with my flight being delayed! Hehehe.

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 didn’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 weren’t any queues. So I didn’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 it’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 year’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 people’s houses too! 😀

   

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

Hope you all have a great Eid celebration!

One afternoon chat with my lovely brother. How I miss him so.

Mother’s Day is celebrated today in the Netherlands. And although Indonesians celebrate it on 22 Dec, I just want to post this great song titled Bunda (Mother) by an Indonesian singer Melly Goeslaw; dedicated to all the great mothers in the world, including my beloved Mama. I miss you, Ma!

Another interesting talk from TED, this time by Adora Svitak about what adults can learn from kids. The fact that kids are so naive and have much less experience than adults makes them dream with no limits and boundaries. As a kid, I used to do that. I used to dream about traveling abroad during the time when my dad had little money to even support us. But who would have thought that few years later, my dad took the whole family to travel around the Middle East. I also used to dream about studying in an English-spoken country when I knew that it was impossible to even talk about it! But who would have thought that I got the opportunity to set my foot in Australia in 2004? It’s amazing.

Now.. moving on to my dream about setting up a school for lower class to middle class Indonesians in Jakarta. I’m no longer a kid, but I still have this dream. Whether or not I’ll be able to realize this dream is another story. But I just need some support from people around me, especially my own family. Mom supports me, of course, but she has this skepticism (as always) and she thinks that it’s very hard and I shouldn’t be too ambitious about it. Now, I don’t like this kind of attitude. Of course, I’m not expecting it to be easy: building a school with cheap tuition fees but high class teachers… who would think that it’s going to be easy? But positive attitude (including trust) and continuous support is all I need, and that makes me want to dream more, feel motivated, and try harder. I don’t think I mind if I don’t get to reach my dream, but as people say… the experience and the journey to reach such dream is what makes a difference.

If I look back to my life, I realize that high expectations and trust from my parents is the reason how I get into this milestone of my life. I do think my parents place a very high expectation on me, as the oldest child in the family, but if they don’t do that, I’d probably end up doing Bachelor degree in an ordinary university and doing ordinary job. As a person who will end up being a parent later, I’d place a high expectation on my kids too later on. But perhaps I’d take a different approach from my parents. I’d give them freedom to do what they really want and continuously support them without forcing them to be on top of the world every single time. I don’t know how exactly I’m going to approach this, but like I said… I have all these exciting ideas about teaching and educating my kids and I have to read a lot of parenting books… 😀