Every year, Muslims around the world celebrate Eid Al-Fitr to mark the end of Ramadan. During this celebration, millions of Indonesians travel to their hometowns to spend this special moment with family and loved ones. For us, that means driving 500 km to the south, from Jakarta to Yogyakarta, the city where our grandparents live. Fun fact: Did you know the distance between the two cities is roughly the same as Frankfurt to Amsterdam, London to Paris, or Tokyo to Osaka? Now you know!

There are two things that I really miss about Eid Al-Fitr. First is silaturahim, the moment of bonding and reconnecting with family. Second, and the most obvious, is the food my grandma cooks for us. The most authentic food my grandma likes to make are Ketupat and Opor Ayam. Ketupat is a rice cake packed in palm leaves. Opor Ayam is a creamy chicken stew in coconut milk. Mixing it together means perfection. The joy comes not only from eating this special meal my grandma made with all her love, but also from the togetherness that becomes more rare as we grow older and have our own separate lives. Though the internet enables us to connect from afar, there is nothing that can replace the feeling of being home.

Eid Mubarak everyone! Wishing you all joy, peace, and endless blessings.

Last December, I made a promise to myself to write and post it on my blog once a week. Fast forward to now, I struggled to fulfill that goal. I haven’t been writing much lately. Or to be exact, in the last two months. I should’ve posted eight new posts by now, yet I only wrote two.

There are a lot of things that happened lately, which made me unable to focus on writing. Somehow, I forgot how to tell a story. I forgot how to turn an idea into reality. I forgot that I can make something out of nothing.

But I realized, the limitation is not the world who provides me with endless opportunities. The limitation is within my own self, unable to imagine and take action on these opportunities. The constraints are not the world but myself.

It was 3 a.m. at the boarding school. I was still asleep when a teacher knocked on our door. It was time for us all to wake up. That early morning, we walked from our dormitory to the school cafeteria for sahoor, a very early breakfast before we start fasting.

As a Muslim, we have to pray five times a day. The first prayer is Subh or Fajr, which starts at dawn and lasts until the sun rises. That day, it was my shift to be the muadzin, the person who makes the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer. I had to do the prayer call in Arabic, even though I’m Indonesian. But it was not a problem for me, as I had already memorized it since I was a child. In fact, we also learned it in school. So after eating sahoor at the cafeteria, I went back to my room and got ready for my shift.

It was around 4 a.m. I took my sandals off and entered the masjid. Some of my friends were already inside. Some were sitting on the floor reading the Quran. Some who still felt sleepy went to the masjid anyway so they didn’t end up late for the early morning prayer.

I turned on the masjid speaker and took the microphone. As it was Ramadan, first I had to announce imsak, to remind everyone to stop eating and drinking. Then the prayer call for Subh began.

الله أكبر ، الله أكبر
الله أكبر ، الله أكبر
أشهد أن لا إله إلا الله
أشهد أن لا إله إلا الله
أشهد أن محمداً رسول الله
أشهد أن محمداً رسول الله
حي على الصلاة
حي على الصلاة
حي على الفلاح
حي على الفلاح
الصلاة خير من النوم
الصلاة خير من النوم
الله أكبر ، الله أكبر
لا إله إلا الله

God is Great! God is Great! God is Great! God is Great!
I bear witness that there is no god except the One God.
I bear witness that there is no god except the One God.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
Hurry to the prayer. Hurry to the prayer.
Hurry to salvation. Hurry to salvation.
Prayer is better than sleep. Prayer is better than sleep.
God is Great! God is Great!
There is no god except the One God.

The fast for the day had officially begun. We had to stop ourselves from eating and drinking until the sun set, marked by Maghrib, the fourth prayer of the day. The fast lasts for the whole month of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, ending with the festival of Eid al-Fitr. Which means, it’s time for a school holiday!

In 2019, I took a flight from Jakarta to Bangkok to attend the Asia Pacific Conference (APC) hosted by AIESEC, a global non-profit, youth-run organization that promotes cross-cultural experiences by facilitating exchange and internship programs for youth. APC is a five-day leadership development conference where newly elected members learn how to run the organization. I had been part of AIESEC since 2017, and in 2019 had just been elected as head of marketing—we call it Local Committee Vice President or LCVP—in my local chapter in Bandung, Indonesia. I wanted to meet and connect with AIESECers from other countries, learn from their best practices, and bring those insights back to my marketing team in Bandung. The leadership term in AIESEC is very short, only 12 months, so every year we run elections for the next executive board. You can run again for the next term, but I decided to serve only one term as I wanted to focus on my bachelor thesis the following year. So this was my only chance to attend.

Actually, I almost didn’t go to the conference. I felt satisfied with what I had. Most of the organizational knowledge was already accessible in AIESEC’s digital library, so why bother paying more to go abroad for something I could already access from home?

But I went anyway. I realized, even though everything was so accessible on the internet, it didn’t mean the internet had everything. There were many things you can’t get from the virtual world. The feeling of walking into the venue. The anxiety of approaching people you want to talk with. The nerves of standing and talking on stage in front of hundreds of people (yes, I did. We had an awarding night and our local committee won an award! Since I was the only one representing my LC, I had to accept it and say a few words on stage!).

Looking back on that experience, I think the reason for not wanting to go wasn’t because I felt satisfied. It was because I felt afraid. But as Robert Greene said, “Our life inevitably involves obstacles, frustrations, pain, and separations. How we come to handle such moments in our early years plays a large role in the development of our overall attitude toward life.” It was the best experience I ever had. Not only did I learn new skills and knowledge, but I also built lasting connections with young leaders from around the world.

The first book I read in English was Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. I was in my first year at university and saw this book lying on my friend’s front car seat. I grabbed it and skimmed the book for a few minutes, and got interested in reading more. A few days later, I went to the nearest bookstore and bought myself a copy. 

At first, when I found unfamiliar words, I highlighted them with my pencil, opened my phone, and searched for the definitions on the internet. As I found more unfamiliar words along the way, I decided to just keep reading and look for the definitions later or never at all. I realized that when words form a sentence, they could have a thousand meanings. Sentences form paragraphs, then sections, then chapters. That’s when I found the idea that when looking at a problem, I need to understand the bigger picture first, then look into the details, and see how everything is connected to one another. This practice changed how I see the world, and I started understanding it in a different way. 

“There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis,” Malcolm wrote. “Through experience and expertise, we can learn to instinctively sort through the barrage of details to identify those that really matter.”

Facing hard times is, indeed, always hard. Looking back on my 27 years on earth, it’s oddly hard to remember those easy, beautiful and meaningful moments of my life. Yet it is very easy to remember those moments when I felt very low. But as I grow and become mature, I learned that hard times serve an important purpose. Hard times are the trigger for greatness. Without them I would not reflect on my actions. Without them I would not reach out to friends or people I adore. Without them I would not look to books to seek answers about what and why something went wrong. Without them I would never learn to improve myself and become a better person. Without them, there would be no easy, beautiful and meaningful moments in my life.

Happy Birthday, Dandy. This is only a beginning. There are lots of exciting things yet to come!

Last October, I was invited to speak as one of the panelists at the International Conference on Borneo’s Green Heart, organized by the Sabah Forestry Department in Sabah, Malaysia (I was there representing Palakali Creative, thanks to Caretakers of the Environment International Indonesia for connecting me and giving me this incredible opportunity!). It was my first time speaking at a conference where most of the audience consisted of government officials, policymakers, scientists, private sector representatives, and NGOs involved in conservation and sustainable development from all over the world.

During a coffee break, I was having a conversation with a Malaysian friend who later told me something that shocked me.

“Did you know the population of Greater Jakarta is significantly larger than the entire country of Malaysia?”

I knew Jakarta is one of the most populous cities in the world. But when he put it into that perspective, I almost went speechless. Larger than an entire country?

In a different conversation, I shared that fun fact about my city that Jakarta is larger by population than Malaysia. Then a German friend asked me a question that left me speechless.

“How does it feel to live in the most populous city in the world?”

I don’t know. I don’t have the answer!

I know the traffic in Jakarta is very bad. I know the streets almost never go silent, even until midnight. But how does it feel to live in the most populous city in the world? I don’t know! I think I never would have asked myself such a question. Because it is what I’ve always considered normal. But I realized that the definition of “normal” is not the same for everyone. And that difference is what makes us uniquely human.

What I love about reading history books is that it’s like looking at the possible future. The world, in fact, runs in patterns. Just like any story, there is always a beginning, a peak, and an end. A rise and a fall. Growth and decline. What happened years ago might happen again today. What we find new might have already happened in the past. What we find surprising and confusing might be something normal to others.

The benefit of living in the 21st century is that we already have a huge repository of collective knowledge from thousands of years of human civilization. Knowledge about love, life, work, family, relationship, business, and so on. Then around 30 years ago, humans invented the internet, which makes knowledge more accessible to anyone and anywhere in the world. And now we have AI, which makes things even faster.

Of course, we cannot exactly predict what comes next. A story might be misleading. A theory might be wrong. A fact might be a hoax. With that in mind, we should keep learning and refining our understanding. We can look at patterns of how history unfolds and use them as a map and guide for whatever comes ahead. And start building the future we want to achieve.

The choice is ours to make.

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Happy New Year!

2025 has been so kind to me, and I didn’t give them enough credit.

Even though it was not the perfect year, what should I expect? There is no such thing as absolute perfection.

Life itself is already a blessing. Either we feel happy or sad. Excitement or boredom. High or low. Win or lose. Those are momentary and normal parts of life. Cycles of life.

Then, why are you still head down with the one and only life you have? Life is uncertain. The only thing that is certain in life is death. So cherish it, every day. Every second.

After a morning walk in Yoyogi Park in Shibuya, I went to a coffee shop with a friend and wanted to order two lattes for us. I also wanted to use my Japanese, testing what I’ve learned in the past six months and seeing if the barista would understand me or not.

The conversation was something like this:

me: 「カフェラテを一つお願いします。」(kafe rate wo hitotsu onegaishimasu – “One cafe latte, please.”)
barista: 「はい、かしこまりました」(hai, kashikomarimashita – “Yes, certainly.”)

But then, the barista only made one latte instead of two. I was so confused (I showed her my confused face!) and asked her if she made a mistake.

barista: 「あ、すみません。一つだと思っていました。二つですね？」(a, sumimasen. hitotsu da to omotteimashita. futatsu desu ne? – “Ah, I’m sorry. I thought it was one. Two, right?”)

I just realized that I mistakenly said 「一つ」(hitotsu – “one”) instead of 「二つ」(futatsu – “two”). That’s why she made only one latte! So I ordered another one and proceeded to payment.

It feel amazing when the person you speak understand what you’ve said, and don’t switch to english right away. it feels like you already part of the community, even though that language is not your native language.

And that what I felt that day. And yes, I made a mistake, but I’m so proud of what I just accomplished!