From Yogya with Hurt

It is long week end  vacation, 26-28 February 2010, due to commemoration of Maulid Nabi SAW. Alhamdulillah. But I was unexpectedly assigned to go to Yogya, replacing big boss, who already promised to students' association, called Forum Mahasiswa Shariah se Indonesia, that he will deliver a speech about Islamic banking, in their annual camp. This assignment, ofcourse,  leaves my family and wondering; why I should go, when everyone spend their vacation at home, or when everyone will gather for Maulid celebration in pur "pondok" almamater. I shrugged off. That is a work consequence. That is choice of life. I wish I had other choice...


Just one day before flight, I got fever and cought. And it happened when I already at home. No time for reassigning to other person. I tried to recover it by myself using every medicine I have, which I know it might suit for my ill.  My fever and cought continued until tomorrow morning, just before I depart to bus station which will lead to airport. I fell sleep all the time.

Due to hectic air traffic my flight was scheduled to be on 12.40 PM. All other flight are full. And it was working as scheduled. This means I miss Jumah prayer. Off course in a journey people may not be compulsory to pray Jumah and can replace it by shalat jama (compound) by joining zhuhur and Azhar togheter in one of the time. But relatively empty schedule in Jumah time shows how people lack knowledge on fiqh ibadah.

I arrived at Adi Sucipto airport, Yogyakarta. No hotel pick-up is available as promised by my regional office. And it is not the first time I experience this break-promise. Everytime I forward a complain, they just ignore it. May be because I am just a low level officer, so my voice is just a like a sound of bird in a hard-blowing wind. Recently my desk top computer in the office was out of service and I should wait for 3 weeks to repair, while at the same time, one of our bureau head had the same problem and he just need few hours for returning his computer to be in normal work! What a different treatment!

Another mistreatment for me goes on. Due to heavy reservation everywhere in Yogya, I was placed in Sheraton. For everyone who knows Yogya's hotels, Sheraton is a five star hotel. It is located quite outside Yogya. It is good, luxury, elegant hotel, but with a disastrous thing for layman like us. Its  entrance way from street almost 1 km and its climbing! it is lucky for me that my office reservation is with breakfast and dinner. the problem with me is the lunch. For this reason I should go out in the heart of hot sunshine, in the middle of my fever and cought,  just to find a lunch!

It is a maulid Nabi vacation. And it is good to be in Yogya. People know it because there will be always grebegan, an agenda for competing food provided by Kraton (Castle) for people. Some people believe that this food will give them berkat, a supersitious power that may empower them to get sustenance in life. However, with my condition in Shereaton, a bellboy advise me to stay at room since it was a bad jam all over Yogya streets, due to Grebegan agenda after Friday.


I was schedule to speak on Islamic Banking development, after Zhuhur on Saturday. But, may be this is due to all my bad luck, the committee for seminar delayed my speech upto Saturday night. I was then brought in to a landscape camp in Sleman area (another suburb area of Yofyakarta). We were then placed in a modest hall, un-airconditioned, with around 40 participants, most of them students. The only air condition in the room was fan which was turn on in a high speed, making my fever worst.  However, what make seminar worst is that participants, who are representative from all over the country except Papua, are from sharia faculty but almost no sharia questions are relevant! They are good when they are exposing human right issues, like multicultural society, gender empowerment, and all other bullshit issues, but not technical competencies like Islamic banking. They will be better if they do not invite us... 

My fever and cough was back in the journey back to Jakarta. My flight to Jakarta was again in a weird schedule, 06.00 in the morning! I only slept 3 hours after completing my speech in the seminar, so that I might not miss the plane!! It made my fever and cough worse.

May Allah give blessing in disguise behind all off these obstacles.