The Questions

 

I Decide To Jump Into The Online Dating Pool And Here Are The Apps (Yes, Plural) I Use

When I was in my 30s, I installed dating app Tinder out of curiosity. However, I immediately uninstalled the app in just a few months, because I did not know how to work around the algorithm, many weird guys out there and also, at that time I was confident that I could still meet a decent man offline. After all, I had a job in an office, had colleagues and commuted for two hours (one way) every day. When I decided to be a freelancer, I still had the same confidence because I could meet people whenever I went out to do some meetings.

Then came the age of 40 and the COVID-19 pandemic that hit the world badly for two years and gone were my confidence. The days in the first year of the pandemic were quite bearable, and there was hope that the pandemic would end soon. But when 2021 rolled, with Delta wave crushing all hopes and confidences, I just knew that we should not take things, such as time, for granted.

So, 2022 kicked off and I decided to just roll with every opportunities and challenges that came in my way. I said yes to travels, I bought my first 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, and finally, I installed a dating app again following an occurrence that poked my curiosity on my preferences.

What kind of occurrence was it?

Well, I've been participating in an online class on Islamic study and one day, the Ustadzah (teacher) casually asked if anyone was already going for haj/registering for haj. I said I had registered and was supposed to go in 2023, but due to the pandemic, it was probably re-scheduled to God knows when. The Ustadzah was excited to hear the information and told me that hopefully I could get married before going for haj. Then she suddenly offered a CV of a single man, right then and there, in front of other classmates. I was too surprised to say anything. But what made me even more shocked was her next sentences,"Oh, by the way, he is not handsome. But you are not looking for a good-looking man, are you?"

I felt numb upon hearing the Ustadzah's words. I know very well that I am not pretty or sexy by the Indonesian standard (and most likely by any country's standard), but does it mean that I have no right to marry a man who looks good (at least, looks good in my eyes)? Are those words really necessary?

Anyway, I simply smiled and thanked her for the offer. I looked into that CV the Ustadzah gave me and then I politely told her that I didn't feel any inclination toward the man. It was not because of his looks (by the way, the Ustadzah was right, he was not handsome), but it was more because the CV did not mention his preferences: what kind of woman he's looking for, what kind of marriage he's looking to build with the wife, etc etc. It was a business and formal CV, the one you use to apply for jobs.

After rejecting the CV, I thought long and hard about the whole situation. To tell you the truth, at the age of 42, with my father's unstable health condition and amidst this ongoing pandemic, I have given up all hopes to get married. I just want to complete my duties and responsibilities as a good, obedient Muslim daughter to my parents. I've been thinking to save up all of my earnings and one day, after both parents have passed on, I will do the things I've been wanting to do. Such as doing the round-the-world trip like Phileas Fogg, moving to a small city or simply making my own life decisions without any fear of disagreement from my parents.

At that point, I believed that the incident was a sign for me to take action and do the last efforts to find my spouse. So that if one day, Allah asks me on the Day of Judgement, I could say,"Ya Allah, I have tried to find him and I always mention Your Name in each and every action I take." Bismillahirrahmaanirrahiim, with these words I started the journey of finding that half-deen.

This small incident also made me ponder on the qualities I should seek from a man. I know for sure that I don't fall for the good looks, but rather the good body (LOL, sorry, just have to say it). I think I will write another post on the qualities, as a self-reminder to always keep my standards high. All jokes and seriousness aside, here comes the tough question: how can I meet a single, decent man amidst this ongoing pandemic and my work-from-home situation?

Having been attracted to and becoming object of affection to non-Muslim men, I decided that I would use Muslim-based dating app. There are many of them on the app stores, so I did some browsing to see which one(s) people use the most. 

I started with Salams, which used to be Minder (a twist on Tinder), but then it was renamed to Salams to give a more Islamic feel to the app. I downloaded this app on July 28 night (I remembered this clearly, as it was the last Friday of the month aka payday hahaha). After I filled in my profile and uploaded a few photos, I checked the Home button and found the profiles of the men. If I liked him, I could swipe right, or to the left, if I didn't. The Explore button shows people who Liked Me, as well as whom I Liked and whom I Passed, while the Matches button contains the chatting box with those I like and who like me back, or to simply put it, they match with me. 

With Salams, you don't really have to be a paid member because almost everything is open to access. You can actually send message to a person you like, although there is a limit on the number of free messages that you can send. There is also Unmatched & Blocked features, when you decide that you don't really like that person after a few chats. In Salams, you can set location preference, so you can find potential candidates from other countries. If I'm not mistaken, this app doesn't limit users to a certain number of swipes in a day.

After a month of using Salams, I downloaded Muzz, formerly called Muzzmatch. The features are pretty much the same with Salams, but the layout of the interface put emphasis on the photos. If you are a visual person, this app is a treat to your eyes. There are also options to upload audio (an advantage for people with beautiful voice) and video. On the Explore button, you can see people who Liked You, Visited You, whom you Favorited, Liked, Passed, Blocked. The Your Chats button offers in-house voice call and video call features, so you don't have to use another app to do voice/video calls. Muzz also has location preferences, just like Salams, but it has a certain limit of swipes in a day (if I'm not mistaken, you can only swipe up to 100, cmiiw).

Then I found Muslima, which turns out to be the most limited dating app of all three apps mentioned in this post. This app encourages the members to take up paid membership. If you or that person you like is on free membership, you can't message the person and vice versa, although you have matched him. The good thing is this system shows which men are serious and really put in efforts to find spouse through the app.

I think those three apps are enough for now. I will let you know how things progress as I try to tweak and work around the algorithm. Anyone wondering what kind of experiences I get from these app? See you on the next post then ;)

A Week Of Self Quarantine With A Box Of Puzzle

 

The IG post that started it

On March 17 (Thursday), I had a meet-up with a friend. We chatted and had a meal together. Then the next day (Friday), she called me to say that she was positive and advised me to get myself tested. Later on that day, she was admitted to Wisma Atlet, Jakarta's COVID-19 recovery facility, because her symptoms were between mild and medium. 

I decided to wait for 3 days (until Monday) to go to a community health center (Puskesmas) near my home to get tested. However, even after three days, I still didn't show any symptoms. No fever, no cough. The officer at Puskesmas checked my temperature, it was only 36.3 Celsius. The doctor asked several time to make sure that I didn't have any symptoms and then deduced that I didn't need any test, because the test could be used for people with visible symptoms.

"You should just stay at home for at least one week, have enough food, drink and sleep. Soak in the sun for 30 minutes everyday. Take vitamins. If you show any symptoms, you should come back here for the test," the doctor said.

Having worked as a freelancer since 2018, I've been used to staying at home. But even a freelancer go to convenience store at least once a week. Now that I could not go out at all, I needed to find something to while away the time. I stumbled upon Tom Holland's Instagram post on Impossible Marvel jigsaw puzzle a few months ago and then decided to give it a try for this self quarantine. I checked out the item off my shopping basket and quickly worked on it once it arrived at my door.

I had my first jigsaw puzzle back in elementary school when one of M&D's colleagues gave me that as a birthday gift. It was, if I was not mistaken, a 500-piece puzzle bearing a picture of Lake Tahoe. I assembled the puzzle with my cousins. Jigsaw puzzle was an expensive and quite rare gift to acquire back then. It is easier to find puzzle now, but it still is a relatively expensive hobby item.

For Clementoni's Marvel Impossible Puzzle, I applied several steps of sorting method. The first step was to sort the edge pieces and form the edges. Second, I sorted the inner pieces based on the picture on the piece. Since the puzzle bears the illustrations of the Avengers, I looked for faces, bodies and costumes. Last but not least, I separated the pieces based on the shape of the pieces.

Apart of the edge pieces, this puzzle has six other piece shapes as shown in the above picture. It may seem easy to find the right piece. But there are sides of a piece that overlap with other pieces. 

Here are the progresses that I managed to record in my phone, either on photo or video. I would advise you to mute the sound or  use head phone before you play the videos, because my voice could disrupt a person sitting next to you :D. 

Things that help during the puzzle completion include the ability to memorize the picture on the pieces and on the box, recognize the differences of color hues in each characters and also realize that each character has different line stroke. For example, the lines and red hue on Iron Man is different on Spider-Man.

I completed the puzzle in seven days and probably spent around 2-3 hours each day to work on it. However, I did not exactly clock in on the time so I was not really sure of the total number of hours I spent on this. In this photo, I think it was on the fourth/fifth day. At some points, I reached the dark valleys of desperation because the pieces didn't seem to fit in. If that happened, I walked away and did other things to distract my mind off the puzzle.

On the seventh day, as I concluded the self quarantine period, I also put the puzzle pieces together.😌

 

And this is it! The Marvel Impossible Puzzle by Clementoni in all its glory. All in all, it was a great puzzle to work on, especially if you're a comic fan like I am. I would definitely redo this puzzle over and over again.

Self quarantine was not easy, as I had been having negative thoughts during the 7-10 days I spent inside my room. But this puzzle has helped me in many ways. I would love to take puzzling as another hobby and would pick another Clementoni's Impossible Puzzle (most likely the Justice League variant, hahaha). But of course, I need to save up first, because it definitely is not cheap here in Indonesia.

If you are a puzzler, what are the recommended puzzles to have for a freshly minted puzzler?

Some #AchievementUnlocked In The Past Few Days

After working hard in January and February, I managed to visit a friend who was house-sitting her friend's apartment in the past few weeks. The apartment building has a swimming pool area, which was always vacant, so I got an opportunity to enjoy the whole pool for myself. Yay! I think I will come on every weekend as long as she is still apartment-sitting there.😀

I introduced my colleague who was injured with HNP to my friend (she also has had HNP) and we went to the pool to do some physiotherapy. My colleague could not swim so she used the kid's pool, while I practiced my backstroke in the bigger pool. I miss swimming so much. The pool was not doused heavily in chlorine, so it had been a very convenient swimming session.

The Sumba Island project and the earthquake aid relief project have been completed. My colleague has been able to take up half of the work load, so things have been going better so far. I still had to do more than what I should do, but being the work-organized person, I managed to finish everything on schedule.

Last week I picked up the tax-related documents from my clients and a few days ago I went to the tax office near my home to submit my tax reports for 2019 and 2020. Last year I could not submit the report because the online format for freelancers was confusing. I would rather come to the office and ask assistance from one of the officers.

Apart of going to the swimming pool and the tax report-related businesses, I spent time at home and monitored the news on the government's vaccine program (because it's part of my work). I have started some advocacy work on M&D so they take part in the vaccine program, but still no positive result from them. Let's just see the progress in the next few months.

February 2021 In Recap

February always feels shorter as it only has 28 days, but this year's February felt like zooming past me. I spent the days taking in my colleague's work load, my own work load and also working on my other clients' assignments. 

This month I still had three projects from the SG-based clients and two projects from my ID-based clients on a fixed contract. Meanwhile, I was also working on the revision on the Sumba Island project and starting on the earthquake aid relief project. Whenever I woke up from my night sleep this month, I quickly checked the day/date and the to-do list that I had wrote down the day before. This habit actually helped me to stay on track and finish every daily/weekly tasks on time so that I still had time to work on the other projects.

In the past, my colleague often joked that I have this mechanical response and work on a predetermined schedule. Well, look who's benefiting from my unique trait, none other than herself! 😆

Anyway, the writing assignment on the earthquake aid relief turned out to be in either raw form or in limited amount. Some of the data are in the form of newsletters, while some others still in the form of audio/video files. I also had to do additional interviews (note the plural form!) via Microsoft Teams, transcribe the audio/video files into text and then compiling the words into comprehensive articles.

Tangent: after using Skype and Webex for the SG-based client, I have been using Zoom, GMeet and WhatsApp Call for various work purposes. However, this was the first time I used Microsoft Teams and I was impressed. Teams can allow a computer to take over another computer so it can browse the content of the overtaken computer.

If I had more time to work on this assignment, I could enjoy the process more. But it was all about catching up with the deadline, so to be honest, I would say that it was not one of my best work. On a normal situation, I would beat myself for not giving the best result. During this pandemic, I just want to end the assignment as soon as possible, I could not wait to feel at ease again.