HANZKY

What a rare way to spend Thursday night (that feels like a Friday night). I am now sitting in the corner of Starbucks Senayan City, sipping its signature hot chocolate drink while reading The Hermes Temptation book (obviously I'm taking a break from the book for a few minutes to write this post). I had dinner with Oki at Brew House. It was a pizza, onion rings, philly cheese steak and coke kind of dinner. Very healthy. Now he has a meeting and I'm here waiting.

Last week I said to myself that I thought all the craziness would end once Women Wired Weekend was over. But now here I am, working at the office until 11 PM and continued the work at home until 3 in the morning. Oh well. Jehan showed me this drawing of her before I left for work. I was pretty shocked when I saw that because to me, in that first second, the drawing kind of resemble man's private part!. When I asked her what it was, she proudy said that it’s a NAIL POLISH bottle. Phewww!. Us adults, (or maybe it was just me) do see things from different point of view than kids. Our mind has been contaminated by many things, and some times, our worries and fears skewed how we see the world. Some times we see the negatives first instead of the positives. I’ve created a pretty comprehensive family financial plan last year. Fast forward to a year later, I’m kind of lost track with the investment. I don’t know which one performs well, which one needs to be closed and move to other Reksadana that is more promising. I’ve also had a few change of plans that I haven’t implemented and then we’re planning to apply for KPR, so there are quite a lot of changes in our financial situation, so it needs a more serious analysis and planning. We decided to be QM Financial client and last week was our first meeting and already am feeling more relieved. At least that's one less thing to worry about. I can be a perfectionist some times, that I think I can do everything and want to do everything by myself, because I feel that the part where I can learn more and use my brain. Now I learn that some times, I just have to delegate. We should have another meeting tomorrow. We had a big presentation last week and since Vanya was on leave, Syita was the one who had to deliver the presentation. It was the first time for her to present for a new project (usually a report-kind of presentation), and it's for a multinational companya It was amazing she could pull off such a promising presentation on a last minute notice. In fact, she only saw the final powerpoint presentation 2 hours before the appointed time. But she looked very comfortable in that cold meeting room. She explained everything thoroughly. Transition between points and slides were done very smoothly. Very proud of her!. I was especially moved when she explained about Female Daily Network and can actually feel her emotion there :') When I came home last Thursday, I was surprised to see identical suitcases lining up. They are from the travel agent who is arranging our Umrah trip. The lady said it's not fix yet that we can go on the date we want, but I don’t understand why she's already sent us the suitcase, along with the book and the uniform? Anyway, when I looked that, it just registered in me how I long to have this trip. I was almost in tears. Mudah-mudahan diizinkan dan dimudahkan untuk pergi ke sana ya Allah. Jibran loves to play Congklak. He is so excited that in school, the teacher just introduced the game to everyone. He is so proud that (according to him), he is one of the rare who already know about the game and that he, along with other friend, is the best at it :D. We lost the Congklak shells so we used the smaller Lego instead. The kid is pretty good, he understands the strategy and tactical aspects of it :D. But don't worry, I beat him 3-2. Speaking of investment, I was all smiles when I took my latest investment out for a spin last weekend :)))

Today we had a presentation for a pretty big project. I always love the feeling I get after our team delivered a presentation, especially knowing that we've tried our best. Even though most of the time my best is never enough for me.

Anyway, today reminds me of this post that's been sitting on my draft list, written last October after Affi and I had an opportunity to share our story on how we build Female Daily Network. Basically this post is just a compilation of a few things mentioned from that meeting.

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"Female Daily Network is actually an already established business, so it cannot be considered as a seed funding because the business is growing, profitable and pretty mature". Wow, it's nice to hear that from someone outside of the company who understands the digital landscape in Indonesia :)

Below are what came out of our mouth, through our heart :)

"Everything we're doing right now is a combination of everything we've been doing all along during school/college days or work experiences prior to this". That means we're meant to be doing this, right? If it's not something we are so passionate about, we won't last the past three years. Money is not even one of the reasons why we're sticking to this.

"On a personal level, we believe we still have to learn and improve more. But we're two very determined individuals. We realize that passion will only get us so far if it's not equipped with humility and integrity"

"We both are product of stepping out of the comfort zone. Affi left her well paid corporate career in a prestigious company and Hani left her American dream life, to create our own path and build our own dream"

"This is not a lifestyle business, and this is not just a part of us. This is us"

"We dream big, we want to be like ibu Pia Alisjahbana or Ibu Martha Tilaar of our generation. We want to have our own little business empire. We want to build something we can pass on to the next generation"

"Our team is very special because they are consist of people who are a long time member of Female Daily forum. They are people who believe in us, and they see Female Daily Network as a place to channel their passion".

"We deliver awesome contents and often asked to be contributor for International publication"

"We want to focus on our strength and build solid eco-system for the industry"

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There are a few more notes but that's consist of what we're going to do in the near future. Don't think it's time to share them here.

I remember that day wasn't easy. It was a day before Affi left for London and Aluf was having a fever and cough. The day before, I did a three hour test for an institution so I couldn't focus on the presentation. We received the final file from a graphic designer we hired at 5 PM and it was a mess! There were 66 slides while we only had 15 minutes to present. Lesson learned: never ever outsource your presentation! I also had a class until 9 o'clock that night. I got home at 9:40, took Jehan to bed, read her a book..and went back to my laptop after changing my clothes. I didn't even had a chance to eat dinner or wash my face. I re-do the powerpoint presentation and worked on it until 3:30 in the morning! And in between that, Jehan woke up twice and threw up all over the bed :(.

See, there's nothing fancy about being an entrepreneur and a mom...but I wouldn't have it any other way :)

Just realized we didn't take picture from that day. Arrggh!

Affi's tweet on that day:

Nothing good comes easy so I'll be ready for whatever today may bring. Happy Friday, everyone!


My grandma's ring, energy muse bracelet, alligator cuff - weird combo but I need all my lucky charms!

Mine the next day:

Soccer mom for the day. But waking up early on Saturday morning is not that bad when you end the work week with a bang :)

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Just part of the journey we have to go through :)

• This was in March 2006 during Missouri Valley Tournament, the road to NCAA
• Of course we won the tournament :)
• Guess who wears that Afro wig?
• Yes, we were (or he was) that crazy!
• The back of Oki shirt says SO.ILL (for Southern Illinois)
• I miss college basketball
• I miss supporting for my dawgs
• I miss being in a stadium filled with maroons
• I miss singing Star Spangled Banner with thousands of people
• I miss screaming my lungs out and jumping in delight whenever we scored
• I miss being fanatical about something and wear it on my sleeve
• I miss the energy
• I miss the road trip to watch the game
• I miss watching the game on my living room while having King & I or Dominos take out
• I miss everything about it
• I know, this post is supposed to be wordless (WW stands for wordless wednesday)
• So I guess I must end it now

Yupe, just like expected, it's getting harder and harder to sit down and write a blog post. It truly needs a discipline to set a side some 20-30 minutes of my time for some serious blogging sessions. I found that, the busier I am, the faster the days gone by and the more time I wonder where did the time go? What did I do? How did I feel? How come I didn't remember many details about that moment? I always feel a sharp pang in my heart when I look at pictures of Jehan when she was much smaller and I don't seem to remember the milestones and moments. It's different with Jibran where I was a stay at home mom throughout the first 4.5 years of his life.

So, in an attempt to document my days in a more systematical manner, I create this weekly roundup where I post every Monday (and today is what? -__-) on what's happening, or the highlight of that past week, with pictures and a little story.

As a soccer mom, there are many times where I start my Saturday morning at the soccer/futsal field, especially when Jib had a tournament or a friendly match. Last Saturday was a friendly match with Jibran's cousin school that is located near my in law house. Since his cousin was also playing, we spent quite a long time at the school because we had to wait for different teams. My in laws were there too. After that, we went to 7-11 to drench our thirst with a cold cup of slurpee!. Then we lounged around at my in laws' house. Later on that day, we went to Citos to see Nopai as a mom guest at Scotch Brite event, followed by a little chit-chat with Vanya & Richoz at Dome.

Nah, just kidding :p

Some pictures from the weekend. I *think* I had a productive weekend. I ran! Twice!!. I finished a book. It was Rumah Cokelat by Sitta Karina. I baked. Only a banana bread, but still. I de-cluttered. I reorganized our tale of traveling corner. I also threw many items from the storage. A stroller, a few unused clocks & frames, an old laptop, a monitor and a CPU, lots of cables I had no idea what for and so many other things. I'm not finished with that area, yet. I also sort some of the kids toys and moved the bookshelves from Jehan's room to the play area. As a family, we ate out at Chillis. We grocery shopped. We went to the fish market and adopted a few fishes, a turtle from Papua and a baby lobster. We checked out the progress of the townhouse renovation. We visited the grandparents and went to Informa to get office furniture and had a quality time together. No mall visit, not even a stop at Starbucks (we enjoy our Nespresso so much) and didn't even turn the TV on, except for the MU vs Liverpool match (Indovision just decided to stop working so we used the old school antenna instead). Sweet :)

A close family member passed away yesterday. Not too shocking considering he is 70 something old and has been really sick for the past two months. He lives in Cirebon so I didn't go to his funeral. I didn't feel anything when I heard about it this morning but when I did my Ashar prayer, I suddenly thought about him and a wonderful memory flashed back through my mind.

I stayed home last Wednesday cause I was catching a cold, but the kids were bugging me to make mac and cheese so I had no choice but to drag my butt to the kitchen to make my cooking debut in 2012. I wasn't confident it turned out great because I didn't feeling it when I made it (I'm never into mac and cheese anyway) plus I didn't have variety of cheeses and the dry mustard to make it more yellow. But as long as I put a lot of cheeses, what's the worst thing that could happen, right? It will turn out ok no matter what :D.