Last week, it was my birthday. I was born on March 9th, in the morning of Jakarta time while the other part of the world still 'celebrates' International Women's Day. And so last week, part of the world is dominated in pink to celebrate women and... equality.

Talking about women, nowadays, cannot be separated with equality issue. When IWD came to 2016, my friend's Book Club is taking the issue with a popular book.

It was cool. Lots of men and women attended the club and shared the POV and situations. Yet, men's old ego and conventional thoughts were in, as well. Interesting.

The first pages of Lean In is about girl being bossy at work. Oh shits like that happen. Men can be bossy, but women can't. Men deserves better salary and privilege. If women wants more, they have to face sayings like "ambitious, selfish, and forgetting birthright" thrown to their face along the way.

So, people from book club... why is it interesting?
It's book club.
Where I think, people who read books are supposed to be smarter than those who don't. More open-minded and have knowledge more than anyone else.

Don't get me wrong. I naively think people who don't read aren't just plain stupid, they're just good at something else. (((MAYBE))).

Turns out. It's a blurry thing...of being open-minded. Once again, we found ourselves back in grey area.

A male programmer came up with statements and question. Long story short, he doesn't believe that women can do programming, because it's a man thing. Well, I was a VB programmer and web programmer starting when I was 12. I created my first website when I was 13. I received the best grade in school, winning from those men. It's just a matter you're interested to do it or not.

After the club was finished, I got introduced to a boy. I don't know his age and education background... or what books he has read. But this is our conversation:

This Guy: "As this is about women, not many of men coming. Usually there are many men, too."

Me: "Oh, really? So they're not coming because the women theme?"

This Guy: "Kinda"

Me: "Ha! So this is equality, huh?"

This Guy: "Yeah, I don't believe and agree with gender equality."

---this stupidity surprised me.

Me: "What? Why?"

This Guy: "People aren't born the same..."

Me: "Yeah, everyone is always different."

This Guy: "There's rich and poor... we all can't be the same."

Me: (this guy is definitely @#$%) "Of course, but you're not born to be men or women, or rich or poor. This equality isn't just about a piece of shit. This is about more than anything you can imagine. See if you're poor, somebody says you can't receive better education. That's not fair. If you want it, you should be given a chance or people should let you try. and not stopping you. No matter what you're born to be, you should be allowed to chase what you want to do."

This Guy: "yeah, correct. Just like LPDP, the people who receive the scholarship is mostly upper middle class."

Then I started to get confused. Did he get the point? Or did he just try to runaway because he couldn't answer me back? Dragging the topic to LPDP receiver?

So yeah. Books are great stuff. But again, books are media. You have to choose what you read and believe. Or you shall be misled.

These men can say such thing like this because the so-called lame patriarchal culture. Why? On TEDx stage, Michael Kimmel ever said, 'privilege is invisible to those who have it'.

In mass media, we were given an analogy: does fish know that they live inside water?

People with power won't realize until what they have is taken away from them. Just like the fish. they won't ever thank for water they have until they live inside water. Once they are taken out from water, they will struggle to breathe and finally understand that it's actually the water that allows them to live.

Talking about equality won't be solved in a day. The change the world has for gender equality is actually like a fight with an iceberg. Too much power rooted down, so strong and unseen.

The challenge isn't just coming from the men who stands up with patriarchal. But also from lazy and brainwashed women who just gave up, who just bitch up towards other women, and who doesn't think far ahead.

What I think gender equality is.... that we shouldn't be classified of what we are. The same chances, the same respect.

I know some woman who still don't want to bring heavy stuff and saying that it's men thing. You know, even man has his own limit. It doesn't mean that you're a woman that you can't hold up heavy stuff. We all have certain limits. Every human does, not classified whether you're man or women.

I remember someone used to said, male pride only burdens and trouble man himself. He has to keep strong, not showing emotional feelings while he actually needs to. Some men are just faking up their strength to hold on their manly image. And it's exhausting.

Gender equality isn't arriving as it is the time for 'coming of age'. It's a matter of when we realize we should.

I Am Malala tells us that there are some men who oppose women for education; learn from Jane Eyre to make decisions for yourself; Living History opens up the journey to make it between love life, family, career and politics with betrayal in the middle; Entrok shows that feminism and modernity changes in each generation and yet spirit to fight conquer anything; Aku Jalak, Bukan Jablay reminds us that people see widow differently and unfairly; and, it is much more harsh for women who committed affairs? Madame Bovary shows love does should be passionate, as well.

When I say, "read without limits", I really mean it.

Books can save your life, living out from your bubble without actually leaving it. Sounds like Mathilda?

Anyway, I mean it (once again). Books can save your life and reading limitless could help you living throughout everything. Nowadays, there's nothing you can't do if you have (the right) books ... and YouTube---oh well.

'Anyone Can Cook'. I wish the book by Auguste Gusteau does exist. However, we have many other cookbooks to help us in the kitchen.

So I have been viewing (and reading) some recipes from Yotam Ottolenghi, Jerusalem. I don't have the book, but some recipes in the book can be seen online as well.

Click to view Ottolenghi's website

Recipes from anywhere should be adjusted to your own preference. Like in Ottolenghi's, some unknown ingredients I don't know and probably not available in my country. I'm reviewing this cookbook by cooking one of the recipes, shakshuka. 

Some people also call it as Tomato Baked Eggs or Tomato Eggs? But in Jerusalem, it's Shakshuka. There, period. It has no meat. I am a meat eater and I hate vegetables, except broccoli, cauli flower and spinach only when it's thinly chopped and cooked with rice and ginger. Getting to Catholic fasting month, maybe this dish can be a way out when I have to skip eating any meat for a day. Or not. I just love eggs, so I think, why don't I try to cook another way to eat eggs?

Shakshuka, then. It's a Mediterranean dish. Reading the recipes, the ingredients should create a unique taste on the tongue. Tomatoes, with spicy paste and egg. This recipe is the first one that pushes me 'playing' with cumin. The interesting part is that the authors are Yotam Ottolenghi who is Israeli-Jewish and Sami Tamimi is Palestinian Arab. Both of them were born in Jerusalem. Together, they bring new level of Israeli's cuisine in mixed-cultural collaboration. Interesting, isn't it? I feel peace while trying this recipe in my kitchen.

Ok, this is my second time cooking the dish. My first time, my only pic of it was... blurred. I'm trying my best to take pics with my smartphone with shaking hands in the middle of rush cooking.

First try!

Guess what, I have to ground the cumin!

I managed to find an excellent YouTube video on cooking Shakshuka. It's from Home Cooking Adventure. Scroll down to find the video. I change some ingredients I can't find with what she had in the video to give spicy flavor.

This is embarrassing. I have been Indonesian Book Bloggers member for years, but this is my first time joining in an event held by the group. Oh well, here you go! I'm telling you how excited I am to give and to receive books (and playing riddle in the middle) from this special-yet-casual event called Marituka Jabo.

When you say 'you're not afraid', are you sure? Do you really mean it?

What if you see a tragedy everyday, would you say the same?
Would you think it makes you stronger? Makes you stronger by seeing people slaughtered?

So, is it okay if inhumanity taking place everyday? You're not afraid, right?

What is fear?

What are you fear of?

Are we having fear for the right reason?

Are we not having the fear for the wrong reason?

Is it still okay?

Is it okay to have fear?

Or, is it that bad?

Does having fear mean you're losing?

Does fear save you?

Could you tell me more when you're closer to fear?

===

It was 07.55 when I tapped my ID card at work. I usually arrive early.  Yes, early. I'm working in an agency where people could arrive at least 10am, yet they would spend quite late at work.

Anyway, nothing was suspicious.

Not until a shocking gigantic sound came to our ears a few hours later. Funny, I've been the one who's always worried with such sound in the office, fear might it be a bomb. Previously, in my one and a half month working in that office, it was whether sound of thunder or something from the construction area nearby. That morning, my colleague also thought it was thunder! But we realized, the sky was clear.

I didn't move until somebody said it was a bomb a few seconds after. The first explosion. We ran towards the window but the smoke was gone. Everything was ok. The person who said he saw an explosion suddenly wasn't sure of what he just saw. We sat back at our seats and the second explosion burst out. There, we started to worry. We ran back to the window yet everything down there seemed to be normal, seen from 26th floor.

The people around the Sarinah wasn't running away, freaking out or something. Like everything was normal. So I thought, maybe it might be an explosion from Burger King's kitchen, despite my colleague said that the explosion he saw was in front of Starbucks. And then I thought again, if it was indeed a blow from the kitchen... how could the sound break so loud?

I took my time to type fast on Path when my colleague tried to search the news about it. That explosion was brand new, of course there's nothing about it on the net. No one answered me on Path for some time.

Some colleagues started wondering, asking someone to find out. I made a few steps back from the window, just right before the third explosion came visible to my eyes.

I screamed.

That's it. I usually don't scream, but shits in my head defended themselves to let out. I remembered someone yelled out to evacuate. I ran to my desk, packed everything quickly while telling my friends not to forget everything behind at work. When we were getting closer to the door, one of the bosses said to me, "Stay inside, it's happening down there, you'd better stay inside. There's a shooting downstairs, you don't wanna go down."

Some people were already near the elevators, I screamed asking them to come back inside. I didn't hear anything but the explosions, so I was shocked too that there were shootings already.

So we stayed. We stayed altogether in one point. The building management officer spoke out an announcement, saying that we should stay inside. Let's say, we're trapped in the office.

Definitely, it was ISIS. Or their previous look-alikes: JI, Al-Qaeda, HT and all. Yet, some part of me still hoped that it could only be a drill. It wasn't. My journo friend said that it was a terrorist attack. Confirmed.

I told my friends about it and the news came up.

We went to the restroom together, and the fourth explosion came. That was nightmare. Suddenly I felt like I lived in Iran or Syria. The big main streets with the coolest places and skyscrapers in the city turned into war zone. As it has been the fourth one, we thought there would be more and we didn't know where. Our office building could be next. And we couldn't leave.

All I cared was I needed to tell my family that I was okay so they wouldn't be worried. I hate it when they worried. My mom was sick since last week, she's not feeling that well. I was afraid this news might frighten her and trigger her pain. I made the call, trying not to panic so I would sound convincing enough that I was okay. I wasn't. My hands were all trembling when I made those calls.

My XL was dead. Kinda hard to made a call straight from my cellphone. I also rushed to contact my brother and sis-in-law who worked in Thamrin, too, with land phone on the desk. I cancelled my meetings and stayed calm.

After calling my mom, another explosion. The fifth. I didn't take the time to get closer to the window to look. The sixth...

Hours there of despair. I wasn't afraid if I have to die on that day. But I was afraid if I might get hurt... living and keep remembering the public distraction of an on-going issue. Just because of it, people died. Innocent ones. Of course, I didn't count the terrorist who died during the attack. Let them be.

Looking for the bigger picture... The spin doctors made a huge success with a handful of ammunition for the day: The hashtags people debated (instead of spreading the right information and verifying the rumors), the public watch on the spot, and the fashionable cops.

People also compared the incident with the one in Paris. Definitely not the same. Indo were debating Indonesians posting 'Pray for Paris' and the French flag applied on their profile pic when it all happened, which for me, it's something normal. As I see it as a way to deliver condolences despite the distance Indo and France had. But this is Jakarta. These peeps are in the same city. And they're debating the hashtags while I was burning my head in composing the plan to escape. I just wanted to be at home.

The incident left me curious.
How on earth it could happen...
How people dare to do this, letting some people who know nothing to die intentionally just to cover things up. I noticed a few illogical clues. I'm writing this, not in the mood to accuse. However, I was surprised on how many people ignore it and CHOOSE to get distracted, even worse, claiming the hero on wrong people and pointing it out as cynicism to be critical about this.

Some people who were consumed with such things... had less sympathy. Well, I can't blame them. I can't blame them for not being there and realizing the absurdities. Instead, they would love to joke (or brag) on 'bravery' of civilians who enjoyed the violent drama, live...only a few steps away.

Anyway, at least I know who were truly cared about me on that day. People who had me on their mind when the incident made the headlines. Thank you! I'm deeply touched. It's always nice to know that people care.

As a person who work in Communication industry and taking classes on Terrorism Studies, I am sure this incident is definitely a set-up. It had been practiced many times previously. By who? Just find the spin doctor....

And it made me realized, we're all Jon Snow. We know nothing. 

Last but not least...

Dear Spin Doctor, whoever you are... Yeah, you won. But I'm not afraid. One day, I'll do the same thing to you.

... what happens in my bedroom, stays in my bedroom...