My life here in Holland has been quite a journey. Picked some new best friends and I have my own family here. I know I can always rely on these people whenever I need them and I hope that I can do the same for them. (You know who y’all are!) I don’t know if it’s still the honeymoon phase of the move or I just accustom to change very fast, but I’m already feeling like this is my second home. I wouldn’t change it for anything. There are times of homesickness here and there but overall it’s been nice.

I’ve recently picked up a new hobby that I’m soooooo happy about! I’ve discovered that I love cooking! Well I guess you have to cook when you’re living alone and all but now I’ve really found a huge passion in cooking. I come home from a long day and the only way I can think of to unwind is to put on an apron and just start cooking. I’m talking about big stuff cooking though not the simple throw it together dishes that you’d normally expect from a student. I don’t know if everyone will understand if I compiled a list of my experiments because most of them are Indonesian dishes. I just love being in the kitchen and experimenting with all these delicate tastes and flavors that I’ve never really appreciated before. Speaking of appreciation I have a cool story to tell you about my journey back to Holland after the holidays.

I traveled completely alone on the 15 hour flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam this time and I was so grateful to have a really nice person to talk to on the flight. She was an older lady that I suspected to be in her 60s because she had been living in Holland since the ’70s. She told me that her father was Dutch and her mother was Sundanese. This was also a rare occasion for her to travel alone but her husband had already left for Holland a week in advance. For the life of me I don’t remember where she said she lived in Holland but she did say it was near Enschede (time to open your google maps and look that one up :p). She asked some basic questions about what I was studying, how I liked Holland so far, what places have I been to and so on. After awhile the conversation turned a little more serious and I was so enthusiastic about the topic that I didn’t even sleep like I usually do on planes.

She first told me that she’s seen a lot of students pass through in her life from Indonesia. Some of them she said turned out to be a great asset to the country after receiving their education here but there are these few that just disappoint her. Even though she’s practically lived here in Holland for most of her life, she never forgets about the true Indonesian blood that runs through her veins. Every fiber in her body oozes of Indonesian culture and a love for her place of birth. She says that it’s always sad to see people that come here and trash Indonesia because of all of the rotten things that are happening there. Then she told me something that I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

“Sometimes we forget that Indonesia has more than enough resources and more than enough capable people to turn the country around. We focus so much on what is going wrong with the country instead of all thinking positive thoughts and working together to make it better. We have so much more culture, passion, experience, and diversity than all of Europe combined. But why is it that the younger generation are molded into people that hate their own country? It saddens me to hear that children are pushed by their parents to move out from Indonesia ASAP. I’ve lived my life in a so-called better country but never for one second of my life have I said that I wasn’t Indonesian. Never in my life will I give up my Indonesian passport. I adore Indonesia because it’s who I am. You never forget that too. Tell your friends that they may think that another country is better than Indonesia, but have them really look into it and they will find that nowhere is even comparable to what we have. It’s time you all push your minds together and work towards just being Indonesian.”

I thought about it during the ride back to Delft from Schiphol and everything she says just strikes me as being true. Why do we want to change and be like a different country? Why do we want to be advanced in so many things? It’s time to take a step back and not try to be the best but try to be just who we are. Has anyone really traveled around Indonesia and soaked in how extraordinary it is there?
To all those people out there that let go of their Indonesian citizenship to leave a country they think is crumbling should be ashamed of themselves.

Be the change you want to see.

I’m now following a Master program at the Technical University of Delft under the Technology Policy and Management faculty. School is to be expected, I guess. It’s hard and time consuming but I guess that’s what we have to deal with as students anywhere. I have an amazing group of friends that I can almost already call my second family. We are such a diverse group of students that are open minded enough to accept any of the weirdness that occurs from having such a multicultural group of people. Friends from India, Greece, Italy, Romania, Belgium, South Africa, Iran, Vietnam, China, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Germany, and many more are what I know will become my friends for life. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of friends to meet here and I thank God for sending them all into my colorful life. Courses are on full speed now as we are approaching our first ever exams as Master students and already some are cracking under the pressure of all these assignments and presentations to do. During the first couple of weeks we partied hard as we knew this was coming.

Life in Delft in general has been nice. The city is so small and quaint. I immediately felt at home in this city because I didn’t have to worry about the big city hustle and bustle that I was surrounded with in Jakarta. It reminded me of a smaller Bandung because it is also a student city as the largest area of the city is the university. It has a couple of nice places to hang out, a movie theater, some shopping stores and it’s also half an hour away from Den Haag/Rotterdam/Leiden which are much bigger cities if you ever get bored. I’m living in a small studio student apartment about 15 minutes by bike from the university which is also nice. All the residents of the apartment building are international students so we’re all on the same page on getting to know the system around here.

Visiting the windmills like tourists!

Everything they say about the Dutch people being direct, individualists, English speakers, and very tall are all true! It takes some time to get used to their very abrupt answers to your questions as a timid Asian newcomer but after a while you barely notice it. In terms of their directness in dealing with issues or stating what they feel about something I find mildly comforting to be with. As some people that are close to me may know by now is that I can barely shut up about my opinions on things which back home would be deemed rude sometimes but here it’s what everyone does! I’m quite afraid that I’m going to be a bit crass by the time I go home. Fingers crossed that it won’t happen!

My mom spent a week here when I first arrived and she arranged my room to make sure that it had a homey feel to it. I really appreciate all her help because now I can’t get enough of my room! I absolutely love the idea of living in a studio apartment because it’s easy to clean! Some of my friends complain that living here is too quiet sometimes but that is actually what I enjoy about it. Takes me back to my days in Bandung when I would hole up in my room for an entire week just to isolate myself from people being too caught up in school work. I can already foresee this happening during winter this year.

The weather is as horrible as everyone says about European weather. Thankfully I experienced one PERFECT week of weather just before the gloomy Fall started to come. It was truly the best weather ever and I spent it sitting on the grass with all of my textbooks and papers. Those days were when I felt that I was living the European student dream. Studying outside in the sun with canals and quaint looking buildings nearby. It felt like a postcard. Alas it was only for one perfect week. After that it was all downhill with no sun whatsoever. It’s been raining everyday with constant drops in the temperature to boot. This weekend the forecast is actually 3degrees Celsius during the night. That should be fun!

Something that needs to be noted and adopted from the Europe way of studying is that whatever your workload looks like and how busy you may be you MUST always spend a day or two in a week to have some good fun. Go out and party, meet friends, or go and get drunk in some cases of these guys. You need to have balance in your days to keep you sane. A happy student is a more productive one as well. I’m keeping that in mind because I hereby promise to spend one day in every week to be completely oblivious to anything related to school for 6 hours straight. Unfortunately I can’t afford to completely blackout from school for an entire day.

I will be sharing my views on culture shock very soon as it is related to a paper I’m also writing as an assignment. I promise to keep it light and happy for this audience though. It’s great to be writing again, hope to do it more often!

The hotel area seemed completely deserted as there weren’t even any cars in the parking lot. The front desk also seemed to be in ‘relax mode’ because they didn’t greet me when I entered. But walk straight through the hotel lobby and you come across the spa area. Walking around the enormous pool you can enter the building used for the massages. Inside the ambience was very relaxing with vanilla-scented candles or essence clearly burning. I was led to a room that had a massage table, a semi-whirpool, a small waterfall like shower and also the usual toilet, sink, and normal shower. Getting on the table the therapist start massaging every single limb on my body. Starting from my head, all the way down to my toes. After that body scrub was put on and scrubbed off again. These two treatments took about 2 hours. Then last was a short ‘simmer’ period in the whirpool. It was filled with natural hot water from the Ciremai mountains with a little salt to cleanse everything. Aaah, I nodded off a bit here. After that was the grueling task of showering all the goo off your body. Good thing the shower was super complete with hairdryers as well. Word of advice for anyone wishing to try this, bring soaps+shampoo and also a change of underwear.

After that I went into the city of Kuningan to find some tape ketan and all sorts of snacks and whatnots for my Grandma and people at home. Next in order was searching for lunch. Before that, I stopped by a place where you can swim with fish in the pool with you. It wasn’t that interesting to swim with fish but it was interesting to know that it’s possible. Then I ate lunch at a grilled chicken place that serves very nice goat satay.

I headed back to Cirebon after that and just quickly bought some mango manisan, and some cincau for snacking at the hotel. Then I took the car around town to see the Keraton, bale kota and stuff like that. I have to say that the angkots are frustrating, motorcycles are annoying but Jakarta is for sure worst then that. Right now, I’m chilling at the hotel searching and deliberating what to have for dinner. Tomorrow my train is at 2 so going to do all the batik shopping next morning. Updates again soon!<div class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 650px"

Mi Casa for a couple of hours

Keeping it real!

Here I am!

Are my series of mini posts getting annoying yet? Hehe.. Well, here I am in Cirebon! Lovely hometown of my dear friend Farah.. It’s amazing how everything is so near. Had a small freak-out at the train station when I arrived cause there were so many big and tall people! I think emphasize on them being far too big compared to me. Good thing I didn’t put my bag in the overhead compartment. I would’ve stayed on the train for a long time just to get that down. After passing through the swarming crowd of people, I managed to find the exit and catch a becak. First stop was of course empal gentong! My favorite food ever! Had a nice 2 bowls of it with lontong then I ventured to find my hotel. It’s a bit unnerving when you’re used to travelling 2 hours in advance to get everywhere in Jakarta and now it takes like 5 minutes to get to 2 places.

Now I’m waiting for a car to pick me up to go to the spa. Staying at Hotel Zamrud and it’s nice. You can sense the 3 star feel of the place. But it’s clean so I guess that’s all that counts. The elevator is a little odd. It only fits 3 people. Very small and takes forever to get up or down. The bathroom is a little dark but not creepy. The bedcover a little stained but I’ve prepared my own blankets so it’s not my main concern. There’s a faint smell of cigarettes lingering but still tolerable.

So far my expenses are:
1. Becak from station to empal gentong 8000 (did not know how to bargain at all, so I accepted whatever he offered)
2. Two bowls of empal gentong with lontong Rp. 24.000,- with free hot tea
3. Hotel room+car for 2 days+driver+gas+parking (including service charge for the driver) Rp. 1.000.000,-
This might seem a little pricey, but I am going out of town from Cirebon to get to the spa. So I thought it was a pretty good deal. Any thoughts or comments?

Aaah, so the car is here so now I’m going to travel the 45 minutes to reach Kuningan.<div class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 650px"

Bon appetite!

Keeping it real!

Pretty eh?

Nearing the end of the train ride, and I have to say I missed most of it. Left at approx. 6:10 from gambir and I’ve been asleep since then. We just came across the first stop which is Jati Barang. The ride is quite picturesque, but being the lazy-ass I am I just slept through it. Paddy fields are all around making me certain that I’m nowhere near Jakarta. Some sort of a mountain is also looming in the distance. Might that be where I’m headed next?

This train did make a couple of stops along the way. Picking up people at stations outside of Jakarta. I should’ve been awake to watch my bags for that. Oh well, Alhamdulilah no one has bothered me. Only the kindly gentlemen that checked my ticket. This sore throat and stuffy nose isn’t going to stop me from today!
Stay tuned