2017 Is The Year Of Changing Speed

It's the last day of the year, which means it's time for that yearender post.

Hello lovelies!

2017 kicked off quite slowly. I even managed to watch my first international ballet gala in February, but then the months rolled onto the fast lane as I had to finish all my work before the end of my work contract, which ended in June.

I've been wanting to experience a project closing, and this year, I finally got what I wished. In June 2017, I was released from the project I've been working with since April 2015. At first, I was scheduled for release at the end of May. But a week before May, the HR asked me if I would be available for one-month contract extension. 

I was actually looking forward to spending Ramadhan in peace. But the HR really asked a favor, and I thought I had yet to have a new job in the pipeline anyway, so I said okay. Despite having to work during Ramadhan, I still had some peace and even did i'tikaf. 

I only had 10 days of freedom after the end of contract as I got another job and the first day of work at the new office was July 10.  The new office is in Tebet, South Jakarta. It's in a residential area, but it is surrounded by cafes, restaurants, and parks. It takes only 15 minutes to walk from Tebet station to the office. I spent much of free time exploring the eateries.

Have you also noticed that I have posted in this space quite a lot after I was released from previous workplace? That previous job really took a lot of my time and mind. I have been able to allocate more time to write and plan for posts since July this year. Having free time is a real privilege.

But the best thing about current job is it has sent me to Sumba Island. I've been to Flores Island and Timor Island, but those trips didn't really prepare me for Sumba, which is one of Indonesia's outer islands. There are several small islands in the southern part of Sumba, and people says that if we look towards the southern sky on a cloudless morning, we can see Australia's northern territory skyline!

The project in Sumba island will conclude in March 2018, so I need to find new workplace after New Year. However, there is a wonderful update in the work department: I got a freelance job from a former colleague. Good things come if you treat other people kindly, this is so true. The freelance job will last until end of 2018. It's my safety parachute should I had no permanent job after March 2018.

This year, I tried my hands at organic produce trade, and am still learning. It's definitely not easy, especially if you're living in a low-middle class area and the goods you're selling is organic produce. Some neighbors don't even care about eating healthy as long as they eat. One good thing from this experience was I knew how to cook vegetable. Just stir fry them with oyster sauce!

I threw vegetable stalks on my backyard, and they all grew! Since I put the stalks randomly, they kind of grew in a disconcerted pattern. M told me to place them in a dedicated pot. So I turned a former water pipe into a plant pot and moved most of the vegetable sprouts there. Let's hope they survive in the new habitat.

Also this year, I watched my first horror movie, Joko Anwar's Pengabdi Setan, in a cinema. It's a milestone for a scaredy cat like me. I watched quite a lot of movies this year but only a handful that made it into this blogs, including Marlina The Murderer in Four Acts and Arrival.

I thought I would not have any holiday trip this year. Then a friend called and asked me to accompany her to Bali because she had a hotel voucher that would expire in October. It was a very random request, but I decided to join her. We didn't do much during our three day and four nights there, it was a very relaxed holiday, no itinerary, no rush.

2017 has been a year with low achievement. No vacation abroad, no big plans, so unlike me in previous years. It's a year of changing speed, from slow to fast to slow again. Nevertheless, I still found that it has been a beautiful year too.

How was your 2017? Wishing you a wonderful New Year's Eve and an amazing year ahead, dearest.

[Movie] The Alchemist of Happiness

Found here

2004 | Director: Ovidio Salazar | 80 minutes

A friend introduced me to this movie, which is available on this link (I hope it will still be available in the long run). I also hope I can do this movie and this Muslim figure a bit of justice through this review.

The movie tells the life of Imam Al Ghazali through three methods: (1) actors portraying Imam Al Ghazali and people in his life, (2) the narrator who travels to Imam Al Ghazali's notable sites, and (3) the scholars who had conducted extensive studies on Imam Al Ghazali and his works.

Born in 1058 in Tus, Khorasan - present day Iran - Al Ghazali started to learn about sufism after the passing of his father that made him and his little brother to be in the care of a Sufi. He was thirsty of knowledge and would go to other cities to learn about theology from teachers, scholars, lecturers and people of knowledge.

But some of his most important lessons came from unexpected source. Once, his travel group was ambushed by a gang of mobs. He pleaded to one of the mobs to not destroy his textbooks and other writings he had copied from his teachers. The mob looked him in the eye and said,"So all I have to do is take them from you to strip you of your knowledge."

He began memorizing his lessons because he realized that "you only possess what you don't lose when the ship wrecks." He didn't write anything on the theology until he had memorized at least 12,000 pages written by great theologians on Islam.

He joined the court of Nizam al Mulk, a powerful vizier of the Seljuq sultan, and soon came to prominence in Nizamiyyah college in Baghdad. However, he experienced a spiritual crisis in 1095, during which he decided to go on a pilgrimage and live in seclusion.

Al Ghazali lived during the period of upheavals and uncertainties. People looked up to the clerics and took sides. As time went by, many people only had concerns on who-said-what without paying attention or questioning that what the clerics said could possibly be wrong. It's pretty much like today.

Al Ghazali realized that human's nature and one of its basic conditions is the emptiness and ignorance to the unseen world of God. He observed that the external factors shape different forms of revelation and religious experience.

Syaikh Hamza Yusuf from Zaytuna Institute says that God is the Ultimate Concern, and if we replace God from our lives, we should find a substitute. "This is human nature, to fill that hollow space, because humans are hollow beings," he says. 

Syaikh Hamza Yusuf adds that Imam Al Ghazali gets the idea of what will ultimately come and perishing, and what goes on forever. Therefore, Al Ghazali spends his lifetime to learn what one needs for the infinite journey.

But what does one need? What is the human nature, or fitrah as Muslim calls it?

D. Mahmoud Bina, Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy at Isphahan University of Technology, says that fitrah means nature of man as created by God. It is love of God and worship of God, because that is what humans created for. "The highest worship is to know (ma'rifat) God. If serving God means knowing God, then it signifies that God has given men the tools that one can know Him," he says.

Al Ghazali takes the knowledge in the cosmology based on the Islamic concept of Tauhid (oneness) and how the unity of God manifests through the diversity in the world. One of the many veils that keeps people from seeing God is religious fanaticism. For Al Ghazali, "an ignorant Muslim is more dangerous than non-believer because the ignorant only accepts what is right by who said it, rather than what has been said."

TJ Winter, Lecturer of Islamic Studies at Cambridge University, said that Al Ghazali showed that in the heart of every belief, every practice of Islam, there is a spiritual purpose, process of repentance and transformation (hijrah). That is why Al Ghazali is called Proof of Islam.

Wednesday's Wraps - #RabuRok

I have been a tomboy in my pre-hijab days. I have been wearing hijab for more than 12 years, but  sometime I still dress up in androgyny style: boots, straight leg/boyfriend jeans, cargo pants. Some things are hard to let go. 

On any work days, you would see me in shirt-pants combo. To achieve self-improvement, I do try to set some rules and boundaries on dressing up (or down), though. For example, (1) I buy wide-leg pants, (2) pair straight-leg pants with knee-length or at least thigh-length shirts, and (3) wear skirts once a week (I pick Wednesday, because it's the least busy day in a week). Other rules include: (4) only wear cargo pants and other utilitarian pants when I travel/go to the field/do some nature sightseeing, (5) wear my boots with skirts, which is the least I can do to reduce its masculine vibe.

M dislikes the boots and has been trying to change this tomboy girl into a ladylike woman, quoting a hadith that forbids women to dress like men, and vice versa. We have been arguing on this issue. In my defense, I do not wear boots to resemble men, but rather to anticipate the rain.

I have checked Islamic clothing requirements, and so far found several rules as the following:

• Clothing should cover body parts that should be covered. For women, the standard of modesty calls for clothing that cover body, except face and hands, with headscarf should cover chest area. As for men, the minimum coverage area is between navel and knees. However, bare-chested men in public space (unless it's public swimming pool area, I suppose) would be frowned upon.
• Clothing should be loose, not skin tight or body-hugging
• Clothing should be thick enough, of opaque color and fabric, not transparent
• Overall appearance should be dignify and modest, not flashy/shiny/attract public attention
• Clothing should not imitate people of other faiths
• Clothing is just one aspect, but beyond clothing there lies more important purpose: what you wear should reflect what is in your heart.  

Apart from the boots issue, I do try to improve each day. But I also want to do it in small steps, making the efforts ingrained in my daily habit, instead of a forced habit. 

A friend once asked my opinion on whether she should wear hijab after she performed umrah (short time pilgrimage). "Girl, you'd be damned for not wearing hijab, and you would still be damned if you're wearing it. Also, if you ever decided to wear and then you took it off, you'd be even more damned than ever," I told her. I didn't say that to discourage her, but rather to show her how the society, including the Muslim communities, always judge other people. Reading this interview with Australian young ballerina Stephanie Kurlow on wearing hijab and being a ballerina has been quite humbling. 

Here are some of my Wednesday's wraps or #RabuRok in Bahasa.

If you are like me, a woman struggling to wear skirts, I would love to hear your story :).

Sumba In December

Hello lovelies!

If you're following my Instagram, you'd have noticed those photos from Sumba island. I went there between Dec. 5 and Dec. 14, 2017. I have given some short captions on the photos, but I'd like to write a longer story on the trip and keep the memories here. So here it goes...

December is the month of Christmas celebration in Sumba island, almost everyone is taking a break. But it does not mean that the scorching sun of Sumba is taking a break too. I arrived at Umbu Mehang Kunda airport (heretofore will be called as UMK airport) with the sun shining in full force. I call it the sublime power of Sumba's sun. But of course, the rainy season in Sumba is just as powerful too. The people told me that the rain could last for 3 days without stopping. In fact, a week before my arrival, the rain caused floods from the five rivers that run in the villages.

I took both Deuter backpacks and the Makalu sleeping bag with me this time to anticipate the cold nights in the villages, but December nights were not as cold as August nights. For me, taking two backpacks to Sumba and putting the bigger one as the baggage were wise decisions. At least, I didn't have to worry that the trolley would break when the airport staffs threw the baggage onto the conveyor belt. Yes, UMK airport does have a conveyor belt for baggage. Its free Wi-fi is also immaculate.

Visiting Sumba in August and in December will give you different impressions. In August, which is the peak of the dry season, the landscape is in golden brown hue, water is scarce, and there is an extreme temperature drop between day and night, especially in the villages that I visit. In December, the landscape is turned into a green carpet, water drips from the limestone and the temperature between day and night is not as extreme as it is in August. Personally, I like it in December, especially because it is my birth month too :).

I went to the island to see two trainings: (1) organic farming and (2) post-harvest management. Organizing training in the island is a challenge on its own. The participation is low and it is hard to keep the participants staying interested on the subject. By the time the clock struck 4 p.m., the participants already looked uncomfortable and restless, they just wanted to go home.

I think the trainers did a great job at holding the participants as long as they could. One trainer saw that the participants liked playing cards, so he invented a group game, pitting one village against the other village. Everyone was excited.

Then I went to a village that has hybrid power plant of solar panel - wind turbine and micro hydro power plant. I climbed up the hill to see the wind turbine, then went down a valley to check out the micro hydro power plant. Now my body felt like it had been jabbed around, jousted and trampled over.

I forgot to bring one of D's mobilephones, which use T3lk0ms3l numbers (the provider that monopolize the eastern Indonesia area). But a girl is blessed with good friends who are more than willing to give free WiFi. Thank you, dear nephews.

This month's trip also resulted in a new hotel discovery. On my previous trip, I stayed in Elvin Hotel (an old style hotel) upon arrival and Padadita Beach Hotel (a bit expensive) before flying back home. But this time, the driver suggested that we checked out Sacca Residence & Resto. It's a small hotel, it doesn't even look like a hotel in a first glance. I like it for the fact that the food is delicious! I tried Tom Yum Soup for dinner and then had a fried rice for take away before going to the airport, and both taste perfect.

If you wondered why I made a fuss over food taste, well most foods in Sumba felt tasteless. With all do respect, I think most Sumba people do not know how to cook good food. I'm not an excellent cook myself, but I believe I can whip up better dishes. I had been encouraging my boss to hold cooking class for the people, and a week before my arrival, a trainer was flown in to Sumba to hold a baking training. The people were ecstatic to learn new tricks in cooking and baking. I heard there was even a new cookies business starting up in one of the villages. Yay!

The trip home was a series of delayed flights. The Waingapu-Denpasar flight was late for two hours, and when were about to take off, there was a sudden heavy downpour that we had to wait for another hour inside the plane. We reached Denpasar only to find that the Denpasar-Jakarta flight was also delayed for another hour. Argh. As the motto of the airline says: "It's better to be late than to never arrive."

The Social Media I'm Currently Using

I remembered having a Friendster and MySpace accounts, which are no longer available, too bad (OMG, I'm old!). Social media has developed into a far more interesting landscape since then.

However, many friends of mine have exited from the social media landscape, claiming that they have since lived a better lives. I have yet to reach that stage, because I still love sharing (to some extent). In my humble opinion, the key to a healthy life is having everything in moderation, which include social media consumption.

I like the fact that each social media serves a specific purpose, therefore I can show different side of myself in different platform. Also, with many socmed options out there, there is no pressure to make accounts, approve friend request or follow everyone you know on different platforms. You just have to be selective. Again, everything in moderation. For my peace of mind, I have placed all of my social media accounts on my iPod, except Instagram that is still on my mobilephone.

Here they are in no particular order...

Facebook 

Showcasing my outer shell, this is basically where public found the generic version of me and reach out to me. Facebook is like a socmed that almost everyone has, so it's the perfect media to stalk your exes, gather information on new flings, and showcase the best sides of yourself (ha!). I simply use Facebook to read news (because I don't subscribe to print newspapers), share web links on miscellaneous information (TED-X, Natgeo and online shops), check out fan pages (Idris Elba, ahem), and follow accounts that post regular cooking video (Tasty and Tastemade, you have ruined me for good).
Unfortunately, things have gone quite rough on Facebook since the presidential election. I had to hide or unfollow several friend accounts for the sake of my sanity. There are just too much noise and negativity on Facebook. However, I'd like to see this platform as a friend filter. You'd know that you can befriend someone, or at least tolerate someone up to certain extent, by reading their status updates.
  

Path

No other country but Indonesia has a large number of Path users. This is a simpler version of Facebook, aimed for community groups. When it was first launched, it only allowed 150 friends. Now the number has been increased to..I'm not sure, perhaps 250? I only have around 20-25 friends  (divers, journos and colleagues) on this platform, though, so the friend limit doesn't matter much.

What I share on Path is mostly self-deprecating rants on being single, photos that should not see the light of day (just kidding!) and movie/music reviews.    

LinkedIn

While Facebook is more about putting the best face forward, LinkedIn is about the works I've done, which are not much. I like that it's a focused platform on jobs. It has information on the latest job vacancies, who works where and tips on getting the job. I have yet to land any job through LinkedIn, but it has helped me reconnected with long lost friends. This is one serious socmed and if anyone ever made a fake account on this, they must have had a lot of free time.

Twitter

This platform is more about beautiful quotes, complaints on Commuter Line delays, and random thoughts on life. In the past, I posted photos through this platform, but now most photos are on Instagram. 

With many international publications, such as NY Times, Washington Post and Huffington Post, have Twitter accounts, many journo friends made Twitter account just to follow their accounts to get the latest info. The 140-character limit was a perfect rule to get a correct, compact and concise info on any socmed. Therefore, I was one of the confused people when Twitter decided to expand its limit to 280 characters. What would I write? A novel?

Instagram

The Architecture graduate in me still loves visual composition, colors, and. therefore, I made this account.  This platform mostly shows the food/drink I had, the landscape I saw during holiday/work trips, and other mundane life updates. Sometimes the caption is irrelevant to the photo. After I made the account, a revelation came upon me: I like being photographed, but I don't like posting that much photos of myself.

Blogspot

This is one platform that does not define me by my friends and my works, because I don't make this space for other people to see, but rather a personal online journal on life. It's more about my thoughts, feelings and other randomness. It's like my home in online world. Although there are many other social media, I just keep coming back here because I like writing and this platform gives me a lot of space to do so. I don't share or link this socmed with the other socmeds. Only a handful of my real life friends know the web address of this socmed. If you, by happenstance, find your way to this space, feel free to comment/ask me a question in a gentle attitude, I hope, and please don't be anonymous, I'd like to get to know you.

I heard some friends having more than one account or use pseudonym either for safety reason, stalking purpose or doing business. I only have one for each at the moment.

How many social media account do you have? And how do you use it?

Either Becoming A Journalist Or A Communications Person, It All Starts From The Heart

A newspaper stand in Macau

In a time where print media switching to online and some even go as far as stopping publication at all, where do print media journalists find their Noah's Ark?

That first paragraph was an attempt at writing a dramatic lede, which I kind of missed (Ha! Former journo through and through).

To answer that question, anyone, journos or not, can always make the career switch. To quote the adage: You can do anything!

Tangent: I stumbled upon Justine Le Conte's You Tube video on her career story, which elaborates why and how she made the choice to change her career. She was not a famous person, so her experience was real and something we can relate to. I like that her channel gives off positive vibes.

But I digress, where was I? Oh yeah, many of my journo friends have made the transition to analysts, entrepreneurs and also, the inevitable role as public relation people. A few weeks ago, I saw one journo friend wrote in her FB status that she did not want ever to be a public relation person.

As a former journalist with around 10 years of work experience, I was once guilty of this sin too: looking down on the profession (and practitioners) of public relation. I used to think that the public relation people sell their souls to the corporations they work at and create a false utopia through the press release. Ok, this is overly dramatic, but I was young and idealistic once.

Fortunately, several years later I had an opportunity to write advertorials. Then it all came to my senses: both journalist and public relation were paid to do their work. There were times, when I was a journo, that I felt uneasy to write the news, because the news angle could not always cover both sides.

Sometimes an editor asked me to write from an angle that I did not like, other times another editor edited my news to suit his/her point of view. I was furious when I read the newspaper and saw that the lede had been severely mutilated (again, drama queen).

I love writing, always have been and will be, but I don't want my writing to benefit just one or two people. I want my writing to give impact to many people. Therefore, I decided to walk away from the profit sector and searched for jobs in the not-for-profit sector that matched my interest. I would prefer to call my current profession as communications person, instead of public relation.

Working for not-for-profit sector has its own drawbacks, though. Most jobs in this sector are usually under one-year contract, with possible extension. I consider myself fortunate, because I'm a woman, still single and my parents give full support on my decision to work in the sector. What about people who are married and have children? What would they do when the contract/the project ends?

Believe it or not, there are men, who are married and have children, in the not-for-profit sector. They work from one project to another, and they survive. These men are my reminder of Allah's abundant blessings. The ultimate factor that makes my heart at ease is the thought that Allah provides for each living being, even if we sometime (or most of the time, astaghfirullah) don't remember Him.

Blessings are not always in the form of monetary gains. Faith in God, health (physically and mentally), fresh air, a smile from a handsome fellow commuter, the rain, the sun that comes after the rain, family (parents/siblings/spouse/children), and good friends, those are all blessings. To sum it up, your life is already a blessing.

Also, I believe everything starts from the intention of the heart. I try to remind myself on a daily basis that I work not just to get money, but to have contentment in the thought that I have helped people. A good intention brings lots of good things into your life. It will also be great if my work gets appreciation through the high remuneration.

I'm not saying that everyone should just quit their permanent jobs and work as contract employees. I just want to say that each profession has its pluses and minuses (so don't look down on other people's profession), never put your faith on humans (and corporations), give the best of yourself on every thing you do while finding opportunity to grow your skills and always be grateful for everything that you have.

Oh geez, have I bored you enough with my ramblings? Wishing you a terrific Thursday, lovelies.

[Movie] Arrival

Source

2016 | Director: Denis Villeneuve | 1 hour 56 minutes |

I have just watched this movie during a weekend's movie marathon. Although it's a sci-fi movie on alien, it has been giving me some philosophical thinking.

"Memory is a strange thing, it doesn't work like I thought it did. We are so bound by time, by its order." 

The words of linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) opens the movie, followed with a quick recap on her life with her daughter Hannah who later died of cancer. Then it brings audience to the day 'they' arrive. They are 12 unidentified extra-terrestrial objects that land on 12 locations worldwide. One of the objects is in Montana.

Charcoal gray and rough to the touch, the objects are suspended in the air with their tips facing downward, making a pretty cool way for an entrance. A few days after their arrival, no humans are abducted, no threats are announced. The objects stay in silence and grace, while the aliens make appearances and give messages in certain time.

Due to her linguistic expertise, Louise is recruited by the US Military to translate the messages and figure out why they are here. To be able to understand the language, Louise goes with Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) inside the objects, where gravity takes a holiday. Both manage to establish communication with the heptapod duo, who are later named as Abbot and Costello, after the famous comical duo.

The movie is a bit lagging in the middle, giving audience little bits of information along the way. The conflict in the movie is built through excerpts of missed communication between the 12 countries where the objects are located, news that escalate fear and distrust among the military personnel and scenes of the expert duo working hard to translate the message. I think Amy Adams nails the role perfectly as a calm linguist who works hard to hold everyone down until she manages to get things straight.

Language and communication are the things we do every day and yet, many still can not get or send their messages right. The movie reminds us, through its many beautiful quotes on language and communication, that those fields of study most people look down are actually the ones that tie human together.

• Language is the foundation of civilization. It is the glue that holds people together. It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict. - said by Ian Donnelly to Louise Banks in the military aircraft, it's a passage from the preface she wrote.
• The language you speak determines how you think and see everything. - quoting the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
• Like their ship or their bodies, their written language has no forward or backward direction. Linguists call this non-linear orthography, which raises the question,"Is this how they think?" - Ian Donnelly on translating the heptapod language
• The weapon is their language. They gave it to us. If you learn it, when you really learn it, you begin to perceive time the way that they do, so you can see what's to come. But time, it isn't the same for them. It's non-linear. - Louise Banks

The movie also has a mind-bending ending, which is quite refreshing for a Hollywood production. There is a question in the movie that has been lingering in my mind:

If you can see your whole life from start to end, would you change things?

Finding Yourself During A Loss

In the zen zone. A throwback photo of me in Seoul, South Korea, in 2010

A few weeks ago, a friend sent me messages about his bag being stolen while he fell asleep on board the commuter line. Inside the bag were wallet, mobilephone, and most devastating of all, his 15" MacBookPro laptop that he just bought January this year. He blamed himself for falling asleep in the train while leaving his bag unattended on the overhead shelf.

I could only say,"Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi rojiun." To Allah everything belongs, and to Allah everything shall return. I told him to let it go and start anew again.

A few months prior, I have lost many personal photo files in my portable hard disk. I have uploaded some of the photos to this blogs and other social media, but the rest were totally gone. I grieved the loss of life mementos for a few days, then I pushed myself to see things in bigger frame.

Material things such as the mobilephone and the laptop, we can always replace them with the new ones. One may argue that the contact numbers in the mobilephone and the files in the laptop are difficult to regain. But hey, in this global era, we can find a way to connect to the people and we can always recreate the files that were started as tiny abstract ideas in our grey cells. In the case of lost photos, make new ones. Nothing is impossible, as long as we are alive and doing well.

What if you lose a person that means the world to you, such as parents, siblings, spouses? What if you lose your eyesight or a body part?

The second paragraph will still be relevant. After all, we don't really own anything. Our bodies, our parents, our worldly things, and even our souls, we borrow them all from The Almighty. We only have time, such a short time for some people, to prepare our journey for the eternal hereafter. We don't even know how much time we would have.

Just like humans are only visitors on this planet, feelings are also visitors in our hearts, they come and go. Don't stick around too long with a particular emotion. Remember that this too shall pass.

Being grateful helps reduce the sorrow of losing. When losing someone dear, we should be grateful that we have met/have the opportunity to get to know that person. When losing one of the five senses, we can be grateful that at least we are still alive. There is always a lesson we can take from a loss, hence not everything is lost.

Also, if we have accepted that we don't own anything, then the life journey would be a lot easier.

Sorry if today's post is loaded with deep philosophical thoughts. I have a lot of things going inside my head and my heart lately. Writing some of them down in this space helps reducing the noise and hopefully will strengthen me during the time of loss in the future.

What would you tell yourself when you experience a loss? 

[Movie] Marlina, The Murderer In Four Acts

2017 | Director : Mouly Surya | 95 minutes

A co-production between Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and France, the movie tells about the story of one Sumbanese woman Marlina and her journey to find justice.

The movie opens with Act I, The Robbery, where the newly widowed Marlina (Marsha Timothy) receiving an unexpected visit from Markus (Egi Fedly), who nonchalantly told her that there would six more men coming to take her money and her livestock. "And if we have time, we'll sleep with you," he said while playing a small string instrument next to Marlina's mummified dead husband.

He told Marlina to prepare food (chicken soup) for his robber gang, and even demanded to be served betel nut and coffee, just like a respectable guest. Marlina does as told, but adds a secret ingredient that leaves four robbers die after consuming the soup. When she tries to serve Markus the soup, she drops the plates and then decapitates him as he forces himself on her.

Two other robbers already leave with her livestocks: 10 cows, 10 pigs and seven chicken. She spends the night burning the small string instrument in the kitchen and leaning to her dead husband in the living room.

Act II, The Journey, shows Marlina leaving home the next morning, with Markus' head in tow, to report the case to the police. She runs to her heavily pregnant neighbor, Novi (Dea Panendra), who is on her way to the city to reunite with her husband Umbu. The chatterbox Novi as well as a lady who is delivering two horses for her nephew's wedding do not balk at the sight of Marlina's weapon and "evidence". They even share tips and stories on how to have smooth labor as they share ride on a truck.

In the middle of the journey, the two robbers take over the truck when Marlina and Novi are taking pee stop in the bushes. Novi distracts the robbers to another place and continues travelling with the truck driver, the lady of the horses and the nephew. Marlina later finds a horse tied on a rope and rides the animal to the nearest police station. She arrives early at the police station and decides to have a plate of satay. A little girl named Topan (Safira Ahmad) takes her order and helps keeping a box containing Markus' head in her place.

In Act III, The Confession, Marlina has to wait for the police officers to finish the table tennis practice before she can report her case (which is rape and robbery, but not the murder). The police takes note on her case, but does not really pay attention. He told her that to prove on her rape case, they had to wait for the arrival of the medical equipment, which is scheduled in the next month. She walks out of the police station in a disappointed state, and later being comforted by Topan's hug.

Meanwhile, Novi finally meets her husband Umbu after the lady of the horses and the nephew manage to take over the truck from the robbers. However, Umbu thinks she is cheating on him because Franz (Yoga Pratama), one of the two robbers, insinuates him with the idea when he takes Novi's mobilephone. Umbu hits her and leaves her, while Franz slowly approaches. Franz forces her to call Marlina and ask her to come back home with Markus' head.

The movie concludes in Act IV, The Birth, with Novi decapitating Franz's head and then delivering the baby. Oh my God, so many blood in this movie one would think Mouly Surya tries to copy Quentin Tarantino. 

Just like many (if not all?) Indonesian films out there, this movie also has many scenes that do not  correspond well with the reality. For example, (1) a small eatery serving satay in the middle of Sumba's savana is almost impossible to exist (I'm saying this based on my own experience), (2) they use cellphone for communication, but then light up candle at night (why not show a solar panel?), and (3) in the closing scene, Marlina rides one of the motorbikes, which made me thinking:"Instead of hitching the truck to reach police station, why didn't she use the motorbike in the first place?"

Some of my friends, including those who have lived in Sumba, commented that the movie does not portray the real Sumba. They said that the movie only sold the beautiful landscape of Sumba without really showing the culture that is ingrained in everyday's life. Having visited Sumba myself, I can agree with most of their comments.

We can always criticize everything, but there are a lot of things to be celebrated about this movie. Let me mention the top three from my point of view: (1) It features women as the lead actors, and the women are not portrayed as weak, timid creatures, but active humans that resolve their own problems, (2) Despite the slightly missed portrayal of the culture, it brings public attention to Sumba (and most eastern Indonesia area), because most Indonesian films were shot in Jakarta, Bali or other western Indonesia area, so it really puts the area into the limelight, and (3) It has garnered several nominations from international film festivals.

This movie has been screened in Cannes Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Sitges International Film Festival and Busan International Film Festival. Marsha Timothy even won best actress awards in Sitges International Film Festival. It's not everyday that an Indonesian movie gets such a good rap. Go and catch Marlina in the nearest cinema near you.