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January 30, 2005
muslim names
robert and i needed to do a small ceremony before the exchange of our wedding vows since the vows will be in the muslim tradition. i'm not going into the details of the ceremony, as we can get into a long discussion over spirituality and religion; both of which i think are very personal relationships between you and whatever you believe in.
i'm just happy because saturday's ceremony was conducted by my father's good friend, oom jusuf. oom jusuf is very similar to my father, in personal presence and in mannerism, so that put robert at ease. seeing oom jusuf reminded me of my father and suddenly i was overwhelmed by a great longing for my father.
one of the questions that we were asked was muslim names. it's just for formality, it's not meant to replace robert's given name. however, we hadn't thought of this before and were stumped. i guess we took it more seriously than we thought we would.
once you get into it, you want to pick a good, solid name, one that just rolls off your tongue, a name with meaning that reflects the person's character or a meaning which you wish the person would aspire to. we searched online for names, which was fun! we also enlisted the help of my sister in portugal.
we picked names based on the sound and on meaning and some were just favorites of mine; i did not realise how much indonesian names were influenced by the arabic language. even my name, yasmina, is taken from the muslim name meaning "a beautiful flower that shines". *hihi, whether i actually live up to that name remains to be seen*
here are the names we shortlisted and their meanings:
- lightsaber: "patient"
- shaker: "thankful"
- jamaal: "beauty"
- kareem: "generous"
- isa: "a prophet's name"
- fuad: "heart"
- zafeer: "bright", derived to the european xavier.
- farhan: "glad, happy, joyful"
- daniel: "intelligent"
in the end we didn't use anything, since it was completely optional.
even so, we had a laugh doing this, even getting silly over it, combining the names into things like jamaal kareem al-shaker, which sounds really bling-bling somehow, like some hip-hop star or an NBA star. can you guess which names were my selections and which ones were robert's selections?
Posted by Yasmina at 02:16 AM | Comments (9)
January 28, 2005
midweek entertainment
moving to rotterdam is probably the best thing laszlo did last year. because that way we get to go out in rotterdam and sleep over. haha!
last night we went to see this performance at the de doelen. indian classical music is complicated. i sat there trying to understand and read the tune and where it was going, the conversation between singing, hand tapping and the instruments.
the violin was strangely soothing, in a cloying, sticky-sweet way. the drum was very similar to the indonesian gendang and it reminded me of street musicians at festivals during my childhood. there was a string instrument, similar to the indonesian rebab without the bow, and this provided the repetitive base notes.
the voice was so rich in intonation and so free. it's haunting in a way because when i close my eyes, the voice feels really ancient, something that reaches out to me across the centuries. it reminds me of the songs that come during latihans; they must come from the same place.
afterwards, on the brisk cold walk home, laszlo and i had a nice chat on the ramayana and mahabarata epics, since he'd just finished reading them. i grew up on these sanskrit legends and for a long time believed that they were of indonesian origin because they were so often used for wayang kulit or indonesian shadow puppets.
it triggers a notion in me: when robert and i are in indo, i will take him to the temples borobudur and prambanan in java and besakih temple in bali. and i will tell him the stories of kunti, and surya, and karna, and the five pandawa brothers, and their one-hundred kurawa cousins, rama and sita, hanuman.
i will tell robert of semar, petruk, gareng and bagong. we'll walk around the temples, and we'll read the stories depicted on the reliefs on the walls of the temples, and we'll play a game where we have to find the erotic reliefs or the kama sutra reliefs, hihi ;)
*yasmina goes off in a cloud of her own imagination of how the trip to indo will be*
Posted by Yasmina at 11:46 AM | Comments (1)
January 27, 2005
tiramisu i love you
tiramisu, i love you, i do, i do, will you marry me?
Posted by Yasmina at 12:14 AM
January 26, 2005
the stress before leaving
yay! i am officially on leave until april 4th! hooray!
so why am i stressed out? tons of errands and paperwork to do before i leave, things not going right, packing, bringing all the right documentation, clothes & files that i will need in indo, buying things people have asked me to get for them, ladida dida dida, the list goes on.
really need to get thank-you presents for my cousins ine, tia, santo and avi, since they are the main organisers of my wedding. there's more people involved but i figure we can just take everyone out for dinner after we get back from bali. i don't know what token of thanks i owe my cousins *apart from my undying love and affection and free accommodation whenever they come to NL*. suggestions, anyone?
today i had a really nice lunch with gina at the hoogste tijd. we talked non-stop. and she is one of those people who orders food that looks better than yours. i was constantly eyeing her plate.
then in the afternoon, i wandered around rather aimlessly. ordered new battery for my dad's powerbook at the apple center; also ended up buying an airport extreme card for when i am in the borneo rainforest. i heard the trees there have built-in WiFi so i can now post photos of my jungle adventures :)
tomorrow, more errands to come... *sigh* relief comes in the form of a night out in rotterdam. tomorrow evening we will be going to rotterdam. going to see an indian classical music performance with laszlo and lesh and then staying over at laszlo's. it would be nice to spend some time together before i leave. :)
Posted by Yasmina at 11:26 PM | Comments (7)
January 25, 2005
hainan chicken rice
i wanted to make bubur ayam (rice porridge with chicken and spring onions) but decided it took too long so made hainan chicken rice. i miss my mom; she makes the best hainan chicken rice.
Posted by Yasmina at 08:11 PM
January 24, 2005
shoeprints in the snow
it snowed a little bit last night and as i walked to work this morning, i looked at other people's shoe prints in the snow. i think i found a mother wearing pointy-toed, square-heeled boots, walking with her child, wearing round-toed ecco boots or shoes. i imagined the mother was on her way to her office, and was walking her child to the daycare center, and they were holding hands so that they would not slip on the icy snow.
i trailed them from the sidewalk near my apartment block, up until the town hall. the sidewalk was being warmed up by the sunshine, and the snow had melted, so i lost my mother and child. :(
then i saw a cyclist abruptly stop cycling and abandon his bicycle on the sidewalk as he went running into a parking lot. my view was being obscured by a fence so i did not see that an old woman had slipped on the ice in the parking and the man went to help her up and walked her to safety.
it made me happy to see that spontaneous, kind act. i smiled at him as i walked by and he told that he'd fallen off his bike twice this morning already whilst cycling to work, so he knew how painful it could be. we wished each other a safe journey and i continued on my way to work.
last day of work *i hope*. yay! then i am off to indo for 2 months! :-)
Posted by Yasmina at 10:58 AM | Comments (4)
January 22, 2005
stuff on kurt's desk: marvin the martian
Posted by Yasmina at 11:02 AM
January 21, 2005
stuff on kurt's desk: lava lamp
Posted by Yasmina at 08:09 AM
January 20, 2005
stuff on kurt's desk: dalek
Posted by Yasmina at 09:18 PM
a new photoshop trick!
yay, today i learned something about photoshop CS from michael. i've been having problems with photoshop CS compatibility with older versions of photoshop. there is an option to maximise file compatibility when you save .psd native files, but it still doesn't allow users with photoshop 6 or 7 to open your photoshop cs files. then i heard that this feature is for ensuring compatibility with future versions of photoshop. i don't know if my source is correct or not.
anyway, the trick to make your .psd CS files backwards-compatible is to open the .psd in ImageReady and doing a "Save as..." (.psd) then you can take those re-saved .psd's into an older version of photoshop with no problems.
well, good luck everyone... :)
Posted by Yasmina at 09:05 PM | Comments (5)
January 19, 2005
new sweatshirt
nooby in the rain in chocolate, from noodoll e-shop.
Posted by Yasmina at 12:33 AM
yay! noodoll! mng! high heels! blog!
*edit: because i got requests from readers in the comment box to show a picture of the black stilettos that robert bought me, you can now view them here
noodollicious! today i got my noodoll stuff in the mail! woo hoo! i don't know whether yiying handles her own sales, but i suspect so because i got an extra t-shirt on top of my order *which is this and this if you're so curious*.
so yiying, if it was you, thanks so much for the tshirt! we should definitely meet for coffee or something when i'm in london next, i'm sorry i keep giving everyone short notices when i pop by. if it wasn't you, well, thanks for being generous anyway... :)
i was planning to work yesterday but the client in US cancelled our telco, so i shopped at mango before going home. *kemakan omongannya bu lely nih, bahaya deh, huhuhu* i managed to escape with only 3 articles of clothing *ya para hadirin yg terhormat! hanya tiga potong baju, percaya ga sih* i managed to limit myself by paying with whatever cash i had in my wallet. i got five cents change in return.
after the shopping, i sat at home and worked on making my blog pretty, with new header images and slightly modified layout *you like you like?* and i was also practicing to walk in high heels. i know that sounds schtoopid, but...
basically, for some odd reason, robert likes to buy me shoes, and he got me these beautiful black leather pumps. i feel kind of guilty for not wearing them often enough; i demand to be driven door-to-door when i wear them, to minimise the walking distance.
robert laughed so hard when he came back from work and saw me prancing around the apartment in heels, especially after i told him whyi was in heels. gosh, i do it all for love, why is that anything to laugh about? ;)
Posted by Yasmina at 12:00 AM | Comments (4)
January 17, 2005
self in elevator
Posted by Yasmina at 06:18 PM
January 16, 2005
the macro guessing game
robert and i were bored last night, so we decided to play the guessing game with my canon macro lens. he had to hide in the other room while i went round taking abstract photos of objects and vice versa. later, we viewed the images and tried to guess what they were...
can you guess?
this is my collage of 4 images.
this is robert's collage of 4 images.
Posted by Yasmina at 05:05 PM | Comments (4)
January 15, 2005
the commuters
i slept over at laszlo's apartment on wednesday after the dinner gathering, simply because it was easier than having to try and catch and the last train back home.
the next morning i had to get up super early. 7 am! much much too early. i just can't crawl out of bed when it is still dark outside and oh-so-cold. then i read about bears being woken up early from their hibernation because it wasn't cold enough (!).
after a quick wash, getting dressed, and breakfast, laszlo, lesh and i left to catch train from central station. the metro was not packed at all, surprisingly, compared to london at that time of day. there were a bit of delays on the trains; laszlo says every couple of months, the train system throughout the country seems to collapse and everyone, everything is delayed to anyplace, anywhere.
we ran into matt at the station so we all got into a compartment together on the train. it was a nice commute, the sun had started to rise and was shining through the windows. i was a bit sleepy.
commuting rotterdam-eindhoven is really really good compared to commuting london-london or jakarta-jakarta *all that traffic jam! and i don't even drive! oh my poor driver, driving me from meeting to meeting*
commuting on the london underground was like this: northern line south. change at king's cross for piccadilly line, and ride piccadilly line till my stop. or change from northern line at warren street, for victoria line, and change at green park for piccadilly line. my easiest commute to work was when i lived in bromley, and worked near london bridge. took 1 train, then an easy 10-minute walk from london bridge station.
jam-packed at rush hour, i wish i was taller so didn't have to look into someone's armpits during my journey. mornings are okay because everyone smells like soap or aftershave, but evening rush-hour you might as well bring your own gas mask.
in summer season, expect large groups of american and german tourists in the crowd *don't other nations visit the UK?!?!*
on the dutch train commute: i could sit and read a book, or fall asleep, or chat to colleagues who also make the journey, or open my laptop and try to catch up on a bit of emails or work.
robert wants to eventually live in the randstad, and i don't know if we'll both still be working in eindhoven then. if so, i hope we'll live in the rotterdam or utrecht side of the randstad so the train commute will be about 1 hour each way.
anyway, it's nice to know these things.
Posted by Yasmina at 11:45 AM | Comments (1)
January 14, 2005
dinner at laszlo's
went to laszlo's for dinner in rotterdam wednesday night. took the train with anton after work. it was nice to see anton on his own. during the one-hour journey, conversation went from wedding proposals, relationships, world religions, individual faith, sufism, dreams, vertical-horizontal relationships, subud, latihan kejiwaan, spiritual journey, quantum physics. phew!
i love conversations with anton. they are never boring, or mundane.
i had never been to laszlo's flat in rotterdam's south bank; he moved last summer. joao came from brazil especially to paint laszlo's living room *haha, personal joke, sorry*
laszlo has no furniture, except for his round table and four red eames chairs, but the emptiness of the living room was just perfect. i want my living room like that, so i can do my latihan and move as freely as the latihan takes me. i noticed he'd changed the photos on the wall strip with pictures of lesh and himself on their trip to brazil.
dinner was so so nice. anton, kata, lesh, laszlo and myself. rice, lamb curry (with plantains and chickpeas), salad with yoghurt dressing, tiramisu ice-cream, apple-cinnamon yoghurt, plenty of robust red wine.
i was explaining the procession of the traditional javanese wedding and the gestures and symbols that the rituals represented; anton loved the idea of siraman, cleansing your soul before entering marriage.
we called monica in chicago and shouted our messages on her voicemail so she'd get it and have a laugh when she came back from her lunchbreak. we miss you, mon!
kata demonstrated how to do a one-hand cartwheel, which she learned this week in capoeira class. soon, she and anton were doing cartwheels in the livingroom.
talk shifted to dowries, in arabic and indian cultures as well, wedding rings, not having kids *haha*, biochemistry, the work anton did in the cancer research lab, proteins, the process of isolating them.
all these rich images flowed through my head, our cells as multicolored ribbons, kind of like a line blending in xara-x *been reading too much GF threads*
we should have more dinner evenings like this.
have a good weekend everyone!
Posted by Yasmina at 12:49 PM
January 11, 2005
macro'd tulip
taken monday afternoon, living room.
Posted by Yasmina at 10:41 PM
apple day
edited january 13: yay! it's alive! it's alive! i'm so happy, i could just kiss you, little pbook! i cannot believe that you are fine and back to your old self, little pbook... let's keep you away from any kind of liquid from now on, hokay?
the bad news: don't die little powerbook, don't die
i spilled some tea on my powerbook last night. i really have no idea if it's damaged; after spilling, i immediately pulled out the battery, wiped the damp/wet bits with a dry cloth and used a vacuum cleaner to suck the whatever liquid remains was beneath the keyboard. *damn, why don't i own a hairdryer*
i don't think it was too much liquid, maybe less than a fourth of a cup, and most went on the screen. i think. anyway i left it to hang upside down at an angle and the rule book states i should leave it for 2-3 days. i so so hate this waiting period though.
the good news: iPod shuffle and mac mini
i told myself if i couldn't revive my powerbook, i might go for the mac mini. looks good, not bad performance, just whack up the memory. i wonder if it be cheeky to include the apple cinema display on our wedding list, hahaha. :)
and the iPod shuffle sounds perfect for me. i don't use personal audio unless i'm working out at the gym; certainly not when i'm cycling or mountainbiking. all the home music (and video and photos) is saved on the home media server anyway and we have problems already with iTunes authorization when we copy between devices. those were my considerations for getting an iPod. i'd much rather spend the money on travel or camera accessories.
the iWork software is also a curiosity, i haven't experienced any of them, but i think i could maybe upgrade my dad to that. i know he's been making his university lectures in powerpoint and he wants to make to make his lectures more interesting to his students. he's quite cool my dad, he's just totally attached to his powerbook now, emailing, chatting, using iTunes and iPhoto to make his digital photo libraries, even using Adobe PhotoShop to edit his images.
so looks like tomorrow a visit to the apple store at the shopping mall is in order. *2 temen di indo udah pada pesen iPod shuffle nih, hehe, yg lain ngantri yah kalo mau* :)
Posted by Yasmina at 10:37 PM | Comments (1)
January 10, 2005
shop shop, shopping
today, we finally bought our tickets to indonesia. we're flying with singapore airlines, which was surprisingly cheaper than KLM. better food, better in-flight entertainment and bigger seats too. i leave at the beginning of february. robert flies a month after me, but on the return flight we will fly together.
it's like a trial: let's see how well the newlyweds survive a 16-hour journey jakarta-singapore-amsterdam. ;)
remco and robert's parents also bought their tickets today; they are all flying singapore airlines. remco's excited because apparently robert told him singapore airlines have the prettiest stewardesses. ha!
i also went on an online shopping spree. i visited yiying wang's noodoll e-shop. yiying and i did our degrees together at ravensbourne and even in those days, she was forever drawing these really cool characters. i bought this and this.
i am so pleased. i am looking for pretty skirts and tops for my trip to indo; the summer 2005 collections aren't in the shops yet, hence online shopping to the rescue. i also looked at camper shoes.
i totally love the pink wabi boots for girls; perfect for weekend walks in the seaside *not for tropics though*. i also love the pink polka-dot mary janes from the twin collections; the problem is, i already have a pair of mary janes, plus two pairs of camper twins. uh-oh.
well. i have to make up my mind pretty soon so the goods will be delivered in time, before i leave.
Posted by Yasmina at 01:02 AM | Comments (3)
January 09, 2005
spinach quiche for lunch
my sunday lunch. yumm!
Posted by Yasmina at 11:10 PM
January 08, 2005
seafood day and soy sauce packets
fu ho and i went for a late lunch today at ons. ons is a cafe-bar-restaurant which serves modern/fusion asian food. i had the pad thai with salmon and prawns, fu ho had the fish in yellow curry with pandan rice. the portions were huge, and were both satisfactorily tasty. we were really really stuffed. hence the late dinner at 10 pm.
for dinner, fu ho wanted something light. so i made a big bowl of salad, and went to the store to buy ingredients for a cold seafood platter: smoked scottish salmon, harring fillets, sushi moriawase --> mixed sushi. i baked fresh bread rolls, and a garlic baguette.
the sushi came with a packet of wasabi, pickled ginger and soy sauce. the soy sauce was in a little plastic container shaped like fish, with a red cap as its mouth. it reminded of when i was working as a waitress in a japanese restaurant in london.
one of my tasks was to fill the soy sauce bottles on the tables, as well as the little soy sauce packets for the take-away orders. sometimes when it wasn't busy, and i was really bored, i would do about 100 of those packets at a time, sitting there all night behind the sushi bar, squeezing soy sauce from the big plastic bottle with the syringe-like tip into the small take-away packets.
we were supposed to give each customer 1 packet for every 4-5 sushi pieces and then charged 50p for every additional ones, but i used to chuck the extra packets in there for free.
so there's my little soy sauce story. i'm going to play grand theft auto san andreas on the ps2 now, with fu ho and robert.
Posted by Yasmina at 11:19 PM
January 07, 2005
friday sky
the sky view from my office window tonight.
Posted by Yasmina at 11:08 PM
not sleeping well
haven't been sleeping well. some nights i'm awake, silently thanking god for protecting judith and marnix on their sumatra trip, for keeping my family safe from harm. i have recurring dreams of my rafting trip, the one where i fell into the rapids and nearly drowned.
at times, i kick myself for being here and not there. i can't stand this feeling of helplessness.
i spoke to tante isti this week. she has cut short her trip to porto. she has left the children, em and luke, with my sister and hamid, and she is going to aceh, with the portuguese team of 2 nurses and 6 doctors. they will be there for one month, going to the remote areas of aceh. *take me, take me*
*sigh* i wish i could do more.
linky: http://indonesiahelp.blogspot.com/
Posted by Yasmina at 11:52 AM
January 04, 2005
not looking back in anger
2004 my mission was to get happier, be more positive and creative. i felt that in recent years i'd been dragged down, more negative, less creative, and i miss having this joyous bubbly feeling i carried inside me.
i moved in with robert, and we learned to live side by side and get on each other's nerves. during this time we also decided that we want to be together now, tomorrow and hopefully many more days to come. so we're getting married this year, yay!
i started working 4 days a week instead of 5. i didn't have to get up early on mondays anymore, and that made me happy. on my day off, i'd go swimming, meet friends for coffee and lunch, go to exhibits and museums, and work on small, fun projects like charity websites, school idents, portfolio of friends.
i discovered godote's forum where all indonesian designers have been hiding. i met lots of amazing indonesian talents, who make inspiring and refreshing work. i even got to contribute to the GF Offline book.
sweet, funny valentine xavier was born and i'm officially auntie'd. he's a lot of fun and i can't wait till he is older so we can take him to the park, play ball, finger-paint and go swimming.
it took a lot of crying, arguing and disappointments, but i learned the importance of family, how to love one another as is. my parents retired and moved to indonesia, and i realise now that i can't just "pop over for a long weekend." we drive each other crazy if we spend more than 3 weeks under one roof, but i miss them when they're gone.
this year i also dearly missed good friends monica, karen, and alexis, who moved on with their lives to chicago, berlin, and london respectively. joao and his girlfriend denise came over to NL. twice.
i had the chance to work together on a really cool project with joao, who specially flew over from rio de janeiro to NL. patricia moved to sweden from colombia, and she came over to visit, along with karen. girly night out in town, dancing, with monica, karen and patricia; one of the best night-outs in a long time. and for a moment, it seemed like things were like they were 4 years ago.
really, i've been blessed. thank you so much. goodbye 2004. hellow 2005.
Posted by Yasmina at 08:16 PM | Comments (2)
