Mommy's Next Step

New semester has begun. The holiday has passed, now comes the busy school days.

Mr. Inventor and Mr. Professor have been going to school for a week. And they have gone back to their routines. Including routine play time with their best friend.

Those two little guys have a good friend who is also a neighbour of us. The friend, Mr. Familiar, is one year older than Mr. Inventor. He is in grade 5, while Mr. Inventor is in grade 4 and Mr. Professor now is in grade 3.

A Neighbour Who Becomes A Good Friend

As we are neighbours, I know Mr. Familiar's mom quite well. We even talk about our kids' behaviour, especially when there is something important. I have written about it here in Bahasa Indonesia: Dua Tawanan Saya.

They were not best friends from the beginning. But somehow someway they found similarities and became friends.

Later, Mr. Inventor spent less time interacting with Mr. Familiar. But, Mr. Professor did the opposite.
People say that when two kids play together, they play …

If you were a businessperson, have you ever pictured your business had a great loss?

Nobody nor company wants to be in that position, I'm sure.

But, there is a man who is popular in internet nowadays. I read a lot of news about him. He's even in YouTube!

It's Chong Ket Pen.
Who Is Chong Ket Pen? Chong Ket Pen is the Group Managing Director of Protasco Berhad, a public listed company since 2003 on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia. It operates six business segments which are road maintenance, construction, property development, engineering services, trading and manufacturing, and education.

He has been reported to the Indonesian Police for fraudelences.

What happened?

Here Is The Manuever of Chong Ket Pen Global Capital Limited,  an Indonesian venture capital and asset management company - and also major shareholder of Protasco Berhad, filed a civil suit against the company’s Group Executive Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Dato’ Sri Chong Ket Pen for alleged abuse of p…

Mr. Inventor attended a special event last Saturday, November 3rd. It was the Tahfiz Graduation. It was when students who had finished memorizing a certain juz of Quran being certified.

Mr. Inventor had just finished his Juz 30. There were other 20 students with him, and some more students for Juz 29 and Juz 1.

Completing the memorization of a certain juz means that a student has been working hard memorizing and tested by the tahfiz teacher. Once he passes the test, he will be enrolled for the graduation.

Mr. Inventor started memorizing Juz 30 from grade 1. He started with surah An-Naas, went up surrah by surah until he reached surah An-Naba which is the first surah of the juz.

It took almost 7 semesters for him to finish it. He actually had to complete the juz on his 6th semester, but, he wasn't able to.

That is okay. For me, the most important part of the memorizing is the process itself when he had to be very patient and had to work hard.

Students learn reading Quran with Waf…

Last quarter of the year there is mango season here in Indonesia! Hurray...!
That's the unique thing of living in Indonesia. We have many seasons, not only dry and rainy ones, but there are also season of durian, rambutan season (usually coming soon after mango season!), getting married season, and entering school season. LOL. Don't take it seriously. It is only a joke.

Okay. Back to mango.

I love mango very much. I had a mango tree in the backyard of my old home. It was 'honey mango'. The name tells us all. Yes. The mangoes are so sweet and orangish! There is a kind of visible dark orange line in the flesh circling the seed.

I always enjoyed picking them myself. Not by climbing up the tree but by using a specific tool to pick. With the help of my father, ofcourse. 😄

My dad, mom and my siblings love mango as well. We really, really felt blessed to own such a tree in the backyard.

Fun Facts About Mango I always thought that mango was originated from my country as we …

Cycling with kids around the paddy fields is amusing. My sons (8 and 9 yo) love to bike. You know, they are young boys. And young boys love to make themselves sweaty and dirty. No matter what the risk is, what they care about is they are having lots of fun.

I love to bike, too. That's why on certain times when I know they are bored, I take them out for cycling. And thank God, where we live has the best place to cycle around: the paddy fields.

We usually start from home, bike slowly to North and then turn East. After some minutes we will see the vast paddy fields in front of us.



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Sebuah kiriman dibagikan oleh Diah Dwi Arti (@diahdwiarti) pada 14 Agu 2016 jam 10:54 PDT
Not only rice, actually. There are also fields of sugar cane tree. Not far from our place there lies a sugar factory which was build in 1903 at times of Netherland's colonization.

The existence of this factory, and other four, can't be separated from the Colonial's policy c…

Doing zikir after each salah is strongly recommended. Prophet Muhammad Shalallahu alaihi wa sallam (pbuh) always used his right hand to do that. That becomes sunnah for muslims to follow.

In hadith narrated by Abu Dawud, it said that:
"I saw the Messenger of Allah (pbuh) counting the tasbih." Ibnu Qudaamah said, "With his right hand." (Sunan Abu Dawud).


How to Do Zikir on Fingers Using Right Hand Only?
I used to use each finger to count 1. I needed to count each finger on both hands to make 10 and repeated them again three times until I reached 30. And then added 3 to make 33.

Unfortunately, using this technique was hard because I sometimes got blank and not sure how many I had counted.

Related article: Teaching Kids About Hajj

Now,  after searching in Google, I use different method to reduce mistakes, and it really helps.

Here is how.

On each finger we have 3 joints, except the thumb that only has 2. Each joint has inner and outer parts and its point.

Each finger…

Early in this September, my sons, Mr. Inventor and The Professor went on a hajj teaching ritual class. It is an annual class conducted by the regional teaching department. There were more than one thousand students from15 different elementary schools. It took place at the local square.

This year is special for us because male students had to wear ihram, a clothing of male hajj pilgrims. I was imagining it would be great as kids would learn almost the real hajj would like. The last year class didn't obligate male students to wear ihram, just white clothing.

Surprisingly, Mr. Inventor refused to attend the class.

"I will not go," he said.

"Why not?" I asked.

"I just don't want to."

Okay...it became a problem for me. I needed to find out what caused him not to. Mr. Inventor is 9-year-old now, so I think it is common for such a boy to feel uncomfortable about something new. Perhaps he wanted to look good with the ihram.

I persuaded him to go. I told …