HANZKY

I was in Jibran's room yesterday, took a few paper off the canvas board because they were not relevant anymore, such as last academic year calendar, invitation, etc. Then it just crossed my mind how boring this canvas is and immediately thought of a few things I could do to color it up. Decided to cover it with a polkadot fabric that I have in my fabric basket.  I love that the color fits his room perfectly :)

Why you no have my size??

it's B by Brian Atwood, by the way..;(.

It's been five days and I am still sick. At least, the head feels lighter now. It's just the cough that is so persistent. But at least it's a productive cough and that means I'm clearing out mucus and hopefully will get better soon. I was ready to leave the house this morning although feeling kinda feverish, Jehan was also ready with her uniform until I found out that my driver was not back yet. There was no way I could drive all the way to her school and my office :(.

Here's what I've tried so far for my cough:

• A full bottle of Bisolvon Extra
• Aldisa (Dari nyokap, untuk relieve symptomps of common cold, sneezing, nazal congestion, etc). Ini waktu hari kedua aja, sih
• Neuralgin (when the headache becomes unberable)
• Degirol (tablet hisap untuk sakit tenggorokan)
• FG Troches (sama kaya Degirol)
• Imboost Force (to help the immune system)
• Peresan air jeruk panas setiap hari
• Jeruk nipis + kecap
• Eat super spicy food
• As much water as I could handle

And it still doesn't get any better. I met my mom in law yesterday and turned out she too has been coughing for the last 10 days. Oh no!.

Today my mom is giving me another medicine. My mom is a walking pharmacy. She has every medicine imaginable and even owns DOI (Data Obat Indonesia) book. Tsk tsk. But I'm done taking medicine. Sometimes, we just have to let it runs its course.

I'm just going to try out some home remedy today:

• Eat lots of grapes. I remember my mom used to tell me not to eat grapes when I have a cough, ugh that's a myth mom. In fact, grapes act as an expectorant so you want to eat a lot of it.
• Keep taking the lemon drops, replace the soysouce with honey
• Rub my chest, neck, back with Vicks VapoRub or eucalyptus oil.
• Drink hot peppermint tea (no sugar as sugar compromise your immune system)
• Drink more water as it thins out mucus
• Continue to eat spicy food (another natural expectorant)
• Try this breathing technique
• If the cough still persist until later on this afternoon I will add 2 tbs of apple cider vinegar into my lemon + honey mix.

Pheww. Wish me luck!

I believe every kids in this world love Goldfish Crackers. It was Jibran's favorite snack when he was little. Too bad, in here we don't always have it. Sometimes, a few of them would pop up at Ranch Market or Kem Chick. But of course, still considered expensive. I found this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. So we decided to make it on a late Saturday afternoon in our backyard. Kids had fun making it. It's one of the easiest snack you can make. Too bad we don't have fish cookie-cutter to make it look like the real thing. But at least it's much healthier too than the store-bought ones :).

 

Last Friday, Affi and I was invited to speak at Prasetiya Mulya Career Week. It was an honor for us to be in the same flyer with Ligwina Hananto & Alex Sriewijono. Perjuangan sampe ke lokasi itu heboh berat. For a start, it was late Friday afternoon and there was a road construction in Cilandak. It was hellish. So we were already 15 minutes late. We decided to stop at Pondok Indah Mall and ride ojek to the campus. Since Nopai wasn't going to speak, she continued the journey driving Affi's car. So Affi left first with the first ojek we saw, and I was standing under the crossing bridge waiting for another ojek to arrive. After a few minutes, I lost hope and just walked to a nearby gentleman and asked him if the motorcycle parked there was his and if he could take me to Prasetiya Mulya :D. After a few seconds digesting what I said, he finally said yes. What funny was, when I arrived there, the talkshow hasn't even started and only 5 people in class. Nopai arrived 5 minutes later and the talkshow still hasn't started -__-. Tau gitu nggak usah ada yang naik ojek, kan?

Yes, that's what I did today :D. I rarely get sick, but when I get one....langsung nggak bisa bangun dari tempat tidur. I remember waking up at 6 to wake up Jibran, but he said he was dizzy (he said that since last night). My head was pounding too so I went back to sleep without asking him another question. And then when Oki woke me up, it was already close to 9. So Jehan missed school, too. What a perfect mom I am, huh? Jehan's mbak has been on leave for more than a week now, so my schedule has been brutal since last week.

I had 4 interviews that morning and an appointment with my trainer at 3. Sad to miss it all. But I really couldn't get out of bed. Forced my self to take a shower but then my head felt heavier each step I took. So I messaged Affi & Nopai to tell them I won't be able to come to the office. I'm so glad to have partners that can fill each partners' shoes anytime we need help.

Anyway, pas kebetulan di rumah lagi ada si mpok urut. Enak juga yah hidup pas-pasan. Pas lagi sakit, pas ada mpok urut. Kemaren pas pengen jam, eh pas dikasih ibu mertua. Pas pengen barang dari US, pas sepupu mau pulang minggu depan, *plaakk*.

Since I'm worthless today, I cannot do anything that requires my brain to work properly. I had sudden urge to clean the house, but I don't have the energy to get up and move around. Cannot sleep too because the carpenters are installing my kitchen cabinet and they are loud. So what did I do? Giving this blog a makeover :D

I changed the background color, as well as the color and format of title and comments. I deleted the ugly button I created not too long ago and just use regular labeling. I even created an ABOUT page. I feel like a professional blogger already.

Playing around with blog design always gives me this nostalgic feeling. I remember sitting in the corner of my room at West College Street, blogging and designing website with my Compaq Presario. I used a software called Adobe Dreamweaver. Little did I know that was exactly what I did. I was weaving my dream :)

Jib went to Singapore last week with his aunt, cousins and grandma. It was his first time going out of the country without his parents. A milestone, indeed. When he came back, he brought home a brand new suitcase, courtesy of his aunt because she was buying a few for her kids too. Jib had been wanted his own four-wheeler carry on since a few months ago. He even wanted to use his own lebaran money to buy it. That's how bad he wanted it. I never let him buy it because we've always traveled as a family so we only need 1 carry on whenever we traveled, which we already have. So when the opportunity arrised,of course he couldn't resist it.


He got his very own luggage. Orange is his favorite color and traveling around the world is his biggest desire. I'm telling you, there's not a single day passed without him looking over the globe or flipping through the maps or Googling about some countries or asking me which country we will visit next.  He knows more about Geography than I do!.

Oh and he said this a few days ago, 'Mommy, I'm gonna work in another country when I'm big. Would you come live with me?'..and my heart melted.

May you (and Jehan) discover more places and become a true citizen of the world. Amiiiin.

Since today is the last day, I'm just going to write down the most important information from first!. Mommies Daily and Bodrexin is throwing a blogging competition. The Prize? Three Kate Spade goodies!. If you don't have enough time to write down a full entry today, you can still participate in sending your kids' fingerprints into Bodrexin Facebook page and they will turn it into a batik motif. How cool is that?



Above is pictures of Jehan with her favorite batik skirt, lined with a white tutu that makes her feel like a ballerina. Ballerina in a batik skirt, why not, right? :D. Batik now is no longer associated with the boring brownish color that is worn to formal events. Wherever we turn now, we always see people with colorful and stylish batik clothes that make us even more proud of our traditional heritage.  The people in the industry is getting more and more creative in producing different kind and style of batik. Kids clothing are not an exception, proven by the skirt that Jehan wears in the picture. It's indeed a good and easy way to introduce batik to kids and to make them proudly wear it on a daily basis. They look much better in colorful batik than they do in Spongebob or Dora t-shirt, don't you think?

I bought a few books for (and during) my umrah trip and since it's a spiritual journey, I only bought ones that I can learn more about Islam, its history and way of life. I haven't had much luck when it comes to buying Islamic books. Most of them are hard to understand and the writers seem have their own stance that is too extreme to my perspective. A sure way to make me closed the book and throw it to the trash. Need to pay attention to the author and publisher first before buying one.




Thankfully, the ones I bought recently are truly an enlightenment to one soul. They put emphasize on the beauty of the religion instead of what it prohibits and the punishment ones have to endure in the afterlife. Looking back to my childhood and teenage years, I think I was taught more on what God doesn't like instead of what He likes.

My favorite book is 'Doa Harian' by Quraish Shihab. It's full of essential and practical prayers that relates to our daily life, written in beautiful words yet easy to understand. Some of the prayers never crossed my mind before, I should have been reciting them since a long time ago. The basic/general ones are also included so it's nice to have them all in one book. I read this one cover to cover when I was in Medina and the other one when I was in Mecca. Here are some of the variety of the plea in the book:

"Perlindungan dari kemalasan, dari sifat senang menunda, kejemuan, kekikiran, pemborosan (!), dari hal-hal yang tidak bermanfaat, dari amal yang tidak diterima, dari kalbu yang tidak khusyu, dari kenikmatan duniawi yang menghalangi kebajikan ukhrawi.

Permintaan untuk diberi rasa aman, kelapangan rezeki yang halal, keberhasilan yang diikuti oleh kebahagaian, untuk dimuliakan dengan takwa, dianugerahi dengan hidayah al quran, mental yang indah dan budi pekerti yang luhur, untuk memiliki kerelaan menghadapi ketetapannya, ketulusan dalam beriman, rasa takut yang dihiasi dengan kekaguman terhadapnya.

Kemampuan untuk bekerja yang giat, untuk menikmati segala anugerah dalam batas yang digariskannya, untuk puas dengan yang halal tanpa menyentuh yang haram dan mensyukurinya dalam jalan yang sudah ditentukannya (zakat, infak, dll), untuk merasakan kepuasan setelah usaha dan kerja keras, kesabaran dan keikhlasan saat sedang gagal, dan juga kemampuan untuk bersikap adil baik saat rela maupun marah, sederhana baik saat kaya ataupun miskin, rendah hati dalam ucapan dan perbuatan.

Permohonan untuk menjadikan awal hari sebagai rahmat, pertengahan hari sebagai nikmat dan akhir hari sebagai kehormatan, untuk disempurnakan apa yang kurang, dan untuk menjadikan sebaik-baik usia adalah akhirnya dan sebaik-baik amal kita adalah kesudahannya serta sebaik-baik hari kita adalah hari pertemuan kita dengannya :')."

And one of the ones that strike me the most:


Such a simple yet strong statement that has so many meanings!. A beautiful reminder for me to go easy with the 'sharing' activity in social media.

Trying out this ipad blogging apps, who knows it would help me blog regularly? :D Yea, the same exact wish I blurt out everytime I find a new way of blogging :). Oh well, what else is new?

I came back from my Umrah trip last Monday. Took Tuesday off and went back to work on Wednesday. I havent been back on full speed yet, I'm still trying to recover. Umrah is definetely not a day by the beach. We did a lot of walking and very minimal sleep. I sleep about 4 hours a night in average during our trip. But it was one memorable journey, the one that opens our eyes, heart, mind and soul!. The whole experience was that captivating that Oki insisted we should go back for Hajj in 2 - 3 years time. Amin ya rabbal alamiin :')