Salty Chicken Fillet for the Politicized Religious Congregation

Second day of fasting, I didn't eat anything other than the fried duck J bought me. Had it with rice and killer sambal at 10 pm. I fell asleep at about 3 am after trying to finish some work on text and writing a review about Channing Tatum's hot ass. So, because it's Sunday, and to preserve energy, I slept until around 12.30. Only woke up to go to the bathroom, turned some music on, and turning the modem on. Connection was slow as usual so while loading pages I fell asleep again, and was awake briefly to check if the pages loaded properly, if not I had to reload the page and... fell asleep again.

Yes, life is good.

J bought fruit soup again :) but from different hawker because it had smaller fruit chops with pinkish syrup and more ice cubes. Last night, on his advice, I marinated a piece of chicken fillet with salt and black pepper, which rebelliously I added two more ingredients in accordance to my own imagination: thyme and some olive oil. The chicken fillet was supposed to be fried and had for sahur this morning, but was just toooo lazy to do it and chose to sleep. Heheh.

So J discovered the chicken still sit in its bowl in the fridge and fried it for me just before Maghrib while I had my shower. IT SMELLED RRREEAALLLYYY GOOOD! Only... it turned out that I put too much salt on it. But, other than that, the chicken tasted pretty good. Too salty, but still very much edible. I cooked a small pot of rice and had it with half the chicken :D nomnomnom!

The traffic in Yogya seemed to be very much tamed by the Ramadhan. It's a lot less crowded than usual. Starting from 3 pm prayers and even homilies could be heard from the numerous mosques and mushallah's speakers. I am torn between the thought of "how cool, I don't have to leave the house to listen to these homilies, hah!" and the thought of "Too much noise! If the Christians are doing this, I bet the church will get protested or something. Sheesh!"

Last night I read about a certain Indonesian Islamic Party protesting the police for keeping an eye to Friday mass services in Indonesian mosques. They think not only it's a discrimination, it also will spark tensions. I'm not sure how to react on this issue, but I think that people shouldn't be so naive by thinking that mass congregations, especially the ones held in religious places, do not posses any potential in being political(ly dangerous). And yes, mosques are included.

Based on my own experience with Friday mass services in big mosques, somehow the preaches tend to be provocative and in some cases even seemingly aggressive and agitative. A Friday mass sermon that preaches calmness and kindness or even giving knowledges is very rare to find. Usually the sermons preaches about "let us all Muslims unite to fight against Christianization/the (Zionist) Jews/the western (American) capitalist-globalist". Sometimes, the trendy topic was brought and morality was discussed and it is preached "let us all Muslims unite and deter the moral decline brought through dangdut immoral gyrating dances/corruption/terrorism".

Some other times, although very rare, deeper and more difficult topic was brought up such as domestic abuse, or child trafficking. And almost never do the preachers preach about "Let us Muslims to always stop fight poverty by giving to those who truly needed/fight stupidity by never stop to learn and give education to all who needs it". Listening to these preaching, it somehow seems that the Muslim's God, Allah, is always angry and strictly unforgiving. It's sad :(

Back to the homilies that could be heard in my place, it was delivered in Javanese and thank goodness it mildly talked about social norms and manners and its relation to the Islamic teachings. But still, if these people ever heard the same amount of noises from a nearby church, preaching approximately about the same thing, they would probably be not as considerate as they thought they are.

Or it's probably just me, being cynical and pessimistic and prejudiced, just like them. HAHAHAHA!

Nasi Padang again tonight for sahur :D and toasted bread with chocolate and peanuts! :) May tomorrow be a better day than today.