Project 365

Some pictures! 🙂

Performing 8 songs using angklung, after only 1 month of practice!

Me, in red kebaya costume :D. The dress code for women was kebaya and for men was batik, of course! (except this guy on my left hand side…)

The audiences learned how to play angklung too….

… taught by our lovely conductor, teh Ida (teh or teteh in Sundanese means "sister"). The audiences could instantly play Edelweiss! How awesome!

Not to mention, we had special guests from UK and Germany who came specially for this concert!!! They played kacapi suling and rampak kendang.

Finally, a group picture after the concert! These were the people who directly involved in making the concert happened, including the performers, two lovely emcees, stage manager, and photographers :).

Me and Jessie 😉

I’m still waiting for more pictures and a video of the whole concert to be uploaded. Stay tuned!!

* Photos courtesy of mbak Inne. Thank you, mbak!

This was us, the angklung team, performing at the Angklung Charity Concert at our campus, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven. The concert was a SUCCESS! We all had a wonderful time! 🙂

Alhamdulillah, up until today, we have received a total of 916.52 euro and the amount is expected to increase as people can still donate through electronic transfer until 3 December! I’m so relieved!!!

Thank you all for coming and for supporting the event :). And thanks to the lovely one and only conductor, teh Ida, and to those who worked hard to make this event a success (including teh Desi!). Great job everyone!!!

P.S. this is the video (final version) I made for the purpose of fundraising, which was shown at the concert:

All I can say now is: BUSY! HECTIC! And I LOVE IT!

Tomorrow is THE DAY! Wish us luck!!!!

I had such a long day today! I went for angklung practice in the morning, followed by an ‘election day’ organized by the Indonesian Student Association in Eindhoven (PPI/e) to choose a new president.

The election ran a little bit messy in the beginning. Nobody was interested to nominate him/herself to be the President. As a result, there were no candidates at all. So, it ended up with a direct nomination. But each candidate refused to take the tough job. Everyone was frustrated and there was even a talk that the PPI/e would be freeze as no new leader was chosen.

A good friend of mine, Arya, who was the President of PPI/e at that time, was even more frustrated and worried. He had worked so hard to bring the name of PPI/e to the surface and to make the organization a platform for Indonesian students in Eindhoven to gather. If the PPI/e would be inactive, his effort would be so useless. So he delivered an unexpected and spontaneous ‘speech’ that really stabbed the hearts of everyone in the room. I was so touched. It was a really great one! If I had the guts and time to be the President, I would have nominated myself. But sadly, I didn’t. After he delivered the speech, two candidates stepped in and we finally chose the leader :). Congrats Al!

It was such a long event. But it ended with a great dinner and entertaining video! I enjoyed it.

Finally, decorating is almost done. I still want to fill one wall with all the postcards I got, but I’m still not sure how to do it — without damaging the wall and the postcard itself. I also bought an IKEA lamp so that I can read some pages of a book before sleep each night, but the lamp didn’t work 🙁 . I was so disappointed!

Oh well… I can feel myself at home now. Sunday is spent here in my room, enjoying myself with a cup of hot chocolate, a book, James Blunt’s music, and some candles that light up the room. It feels so good and fulfilling. I don’t feel like going anywhere. Alhamdulillah for everything.

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.

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

Counting down! Super excited! 🙂

I have been so busy lately with moving out (unpacking, sorting, and decorating) and exams that I failed to notice the beautiful view of Eindhoven! Most of the leaves have now fallen. Before they turn into boring leafless trees, I HAVE to enjoy this view as much as I can!

I love it! Cycling to the university have recently became my favorite 🙂

I wasn’t planning to do anything today as I only had few hours of sleep. I was still very tired. I just wanted to stay at home. But then at around 12pm a good friend of mine, Arya asked me if I would be interested to join in for cycling. His cousin was in town for a visit and he wanted to show her around. Since today was my last day of vacation before going back to school, I decided to join them for a city tour 🙂

We first went to the lake near our campus. It’s quite a big lake and it’s a really nice place to do picnic. If it was sunny, we would have done that!

Then we went to Evoluon, the UFO-like conference center which was originally built by Philips to house a science museum. Evoluon is one of the icons of Eindhoven. It isn’t a pretty building if you look at it in closer distance, though.

From Evoluon, we cycled towards the south of Eindhoven to the Genneper Parken (Genneper Parks). Nothing much here, except few museums and a water windmill.

In total, we cycled for around 15 kilometers! I could feel my back needed a massage afterwards :P. But it was quite fun. The weather was really gloomy with occasional rain. If it was sunny, it’d be much better! I reached home at around 6pm and dropped dead to sleep right away. I wanted to go to the Turkish mosque for ifthar but I overslept until 9pm! Haha. I was too tired. Great day!

Found this group on Facebook and I thought I put up some points that I really like and that apply to me here 😀 (And I edited some)

So… You know you’ve been in the Netherlands for too long when…

• Walking from your faculty to the cafeteria has become unimaginable. You take your bike, even if it’s for 50meters
• Eating 7 slides of bread for lunch doesn’t scare you anymore
• You think 15°C is warm
• You don’t remember what a mountain looks like
• You still don’t know how to speak Dutch. But your English has improved. You don’t even bother to ask "do you speak English?", you just speak English right away
• You always check the weather before leaving home
• You have 4 seasons in one day
• You know that kapsalon is not a typical Turkish dish, but a hairdresser
• You can ride your bike in the rain, wind and even snow
• You “wash” the dishes with a detergent without rinsing them
• You go to the market and you only buy the stuffs that fit in you bike
• You have mastered the art of riding a bike and drinking coffee/smoking/eating lunch at the same time
• You understand why they don’t serve coffee at a coffeeshop.