Project 365

One day, I gave a gift to my friend when I was in Indonesia. It was wrapped and that was quite rare because I just couldn’t bother to wrap any gifts that I wanted to give. Anyway, so I gave it to her, she said thank you, and she immediately put the gift in her bag!

At that point, I was offended. Was she a person who didn’t like to receive gifts? Was she too busy to open it? Or didn’t she appreciate it at all? Or what?!

Then I was told that in Indonesia, gifts were not supposed to be opened in front of the giver! It’s not actually polite! I seriously didn’t know that! I really hope I didn’t offend anyone 😐

But then I’m thinking, why can’t we open it in front of the person who gives the gift?! Hmm, let’s see…

From the point of view of the giver, the reason can be that we’re not confident about the present that we give for others. We don’t know if he/she will like it and we choose to be ignorant about it (not wanting to know whether or not he/she likes it).

From the point of view of the receiver, perhaps we don’t know how to react if we don’t like the gift that is given. Indonesians are polite people, we try not to hurt other people’s feelings. Of course, most people would rather pretend that they like the gift. But still, not many people are good with it.

I admit that I’m quite terrible at gift-giving. I call myself an ignorant; I barely notice many details surrounding me, including the things that others are interested in. And I’m extremely forgetful person. Somehow my brain doesn’t allow any details to be kept. It’s a waste of memory, my brain once complained.

So most of the time the gifts that I presented to my friends were not that special. I did feel embarrassed — not to the fact that I gave a lousy gift, but because I didn’t pay attention to these important details about my friends. If these people were part of my life, how could I be unaware about the things that concerned them the most?

But whatever the outcome would be, I’d appreciate if the person opens the gift in front of me. Somehow it feels better that way. And I don’t mind if they tell me that they don’t like the gift. Choosing something for someone else is not an easy job. Everyone has their own preference; when I buy gifts, although I’d picture the person first before choosing the things… in the end, it’s based on my own liking. So I don’t actually blame them not to like my gift. Perhaps, the way they tell me matters the most. At least, I’d expect a little appreciation 🙂

Anyway… now that I know the difference between the two culture, I try to be more understanding. The next time I give/receive a present, I need to remind myself: the Indonesian way or Western way? 🙂 Either way is eventually fine.

I should have not done it in the first place. I knew it would not lead us to anywhere. I knew it should be stopped. But I chose to be ignorant. We chose to be ignorant. Reality was one thing we could not reach. Not even touch.

The next thing I knew, we were strangers. And I was the one who felt miserable. Could there be any other way to end this?

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 future husband is going in with the commitment of traveling around with you & your husband, or else there will be no marriage! And ur husband has to deal with the same commitment!

— Jessie

I have been traveling with a good friend of mine, Jessie for few times and we’re planning for more: Spain, Italy, Egypt, and Indonesia! We’re just so addicted to traveling that every time we go back from vacation, we’re already planning where we should go next! No matter how broke we are, we still travel! LOL!

So today, I chatted with her over the YM and suddenly we were talking about marriage and I was like… “Sigh, I can’t imagine what we’ll be like after we’re married.” Will we still be able to travel again freely? People change. Most people change after they’re married. Well, that’s for certain because they’ll prioritize family first on top of anything else. So Jessie and I made this kind of commitment, which requires our future husbands to agree on any traveling plans we have! Woohooo! We rock! 😛

* Continuing this project again, after 3 months of hiatus — due to privacy concerns. Now this project is powered by WordPress! 🙂

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

Such a hectic day today 🙂 Jessie picked me up in the morning to go to her place in Utrecht. I helped her moved; coz she’s moving back to her mom’s in Helmond. There were so many stuff and the car was extremely full! She even felt like the car stood a bit lower LOL. Once we arrived in Helmond, I helped her unpack some of her stuff and re-arrange her room. It was tiring yet I enjoyed being with her 🙂

After the whole moving out-in drama, we went to Eindhoven to attend our friend’s farewell party. We stayed there for quite a while to wait for Ari and Qonita who came all the way from Hamburg, Germany. The four of us went to Helmond again to Jessie’s house and had the second dinner 😛 We talked talked and talked…

This would be the last time I saw Jessie before she’s leaving for Indonesia on Thursday. I’m going to miss her so much! We’ve been spending so much time together these days and it feels weird now that she won’t be around for two months. But anyhow, I really had a great day today 🙂 The sun was shining til 25 degrees Celsius (and I was hoping I got a bit tanned, but apparently not). The laughter. The talk. Everything was great. 🙂

In this semester, I got the opportunity to do group assignment with my Dutch classmate. This is the second time that I work with a Dutch. Most of the time, I always paired up with my “usual” friends who are international students, mainly from Romania, China, Korea, and Columbia. It’s convenient to work with somebody you know, because you know what to expect. You know how they work. You know how to handle problems with them if it ever occurs. It’s more to do with convenience and familiarity.

For this course that I take, the lecturer assigned us into groups of two people, mixing the Dutch with the non-Dutch speaking students. There’s one thing that concerns me the most about doing assignments with somebody you don’t know: what if my group partner doesn’t produce a satisfactory work that leads to the failure of the assignment (or leads to unfair amounts of work to be done between us). I’m quite flexible to work with anyone. I don’t mind working with somebody who has less knowledge about the course than me. But I’d expect that he/she to work harder in completing the work. And I normally become more open (especially to criticize and to be criticized) when it comes to group assignments. Even if my groupmate is my close friend, I’ll never hesitate to tell him/her if he/she does something wrong (for example, not coming to the meeting; or not replying emails; etc). I even almost kicked someone out of my group (even though she’s my close friend) because of her behavior that was quite unacceptable to the rest of the group members.

But anyway, I am lucky again that I team up with someone that matches my expectation. He even leads and manages the whole assignment and decides on how to proceed. I’m not trying to be arrogant or something; but I’m usually the one who leads (“voluntarily”) because no one is eager enough to step up; especially when it comes to taking the first step (which is actually just as simple as sending emails to make appointments for the first meeting!) and getting the project started. But this time my teammate leads everything and I’m the one who give ideas, etc. I enjoy it 🙂 I’m kinda tired to be the project leader all the time.

One thing about working with Dutch people (whether at the university or at work) is that they’ll NEVER want to work during weekends or public holidays. Weekdays are the only time when they do assignments/work and many of them don’t even bring those assignments to be completed at home! I admire them for that because eventually they can still get the work done on time although they have to “waste” two days that can be spent on working on assignments. They work very effectively and they fully respect the need of having the time off. Life is not only about work, they say 🙂

I chatted with a friend of mine who had spent quite a number of years in the States, but finally came back to Indonesian for good about a year ago. It’s been sometimes since I last talked to her and it’s always a joy to share each other’s latest updates.

She told me how hard it’s to be in a society where men are expected to be served by their women all the time. Many people think that the relationship between she and her husband are quite strange — merely because they share responsibilities together. These responsibilities are not only about household chores, but it also extends to their daily life as a couple. There are no unwritten rules about who do what. They take turns — naturally. Though for example, the wife is used to make tea for the husband; when she’s tired, the husband sometimes makes tea too. When dinner is served, then no one is expected to put the meals on the plate for the husband. As long as he’s able to do it himself, why should anyone serve for him?

This is what makes me not completely “connected” to Indonesian guys. I’ve been raised in a different environment. My dad, though he’s a busy man, always has time to help my mom. Yes, he never cooks because he doesn’t like it (I don’t think I remember he ever cooked for us. If mom was ill or was tired, he would rather buy us foods). But doing laundry was his job in the house. Gardening too. Cleaning the backyard. Sometimes vacuuming. And many more. I think it’s hard to find the kind of husband (in Indonesia) who sees his wife as a life long partner rather than a server. Even if I can find such a guy, it’d be very hard to implement it because people in Indonesia expect different things. They expect the wife to serve her husband and they’ll try so hard to “enforce” it on other families. I’d say: mind your own business!

But yes, it’s hard to find  the kind of person I describe above. My mom even told me the same thing. If you can find him, that means he has either been abroad (meaning: live. not visit) or was raised in such environment. My dad was a student in Egypt and I figure: that’s how he gets that “behavior” and open minded thinking. People who have lived abroad have completely different mindset than those who have never seen the outside world. Besides being completely independent, they have the chance to see different culture and see how people in different countries conduct themselves. They are able to compare it to what they have been taught to believe in and realize that a few things need to be left out.

A friend told me that I need to find a guy who had lived abroad. Otherwise it’ll be hard for him to fit into me. Or vice versa. That’s true. If only I can peek on my future 😛

Eindhoven’s weather has been quite strange lately. The temperature kept on going up and down. At one point, it reached 6 degrees Celsius. What kind of “spring” was this? This was definitely winter in May! The boots and jackets that I packed in boxes had been taken out again. The sun was nowhere to be seen. Weeks passed with rain and cloudy day. Such a weird weather.

Today was the first day that the weather turned back into normal (10 – 16 degrees). The sun wasn’t shy to brighten people’s day. It was such a beautiful Tuesday. I decided to go out, dressed up (yay! with my summer clothing), and enjoyed the sun. I contacted my friends Indah and Elva and we went to Centrum to do window shopping. It was a great day to be out. The wind was quite chilly — but I could survive with only wearing my flat shoes; although yes many people still wore their boots. I could see many people sitting under the sun, having beer or coffee and enjoying themselves. I used to loath sun, but now I know how it feels like for not being able to see the sun for WEEKS! It’s the most awful thing ever!

Anyway, we had a fantastic time! I always loved to do window shopping, although yes I couldn’t resist to not buy anything. Sadly, there weren’t that many discounts (I’ll keep an eye on that!). I was gonna buy a high heel red shoe that I reaaaalllllyyyy liked, but I decided to wait until I went back to Jeddah. Hmm, or should I buy it now? :P