The End

Well, we're back!
It's 11AM and I've been out of bed for an hour after spending 12 hours in bed. I don't think I've slept that long for aaaaaaaaages! Actually, I had better check what DAY it is too, just in case I've spent even longer than I thought. Phew, it's Tuesday. All day yesterday I thought it was Sunday, so why is it Tuesday? Because yesterday went for longer than 24 hours, that's why!

We were up at 5AM Sunday morning and it was dark and raining outside! First time there's been real rain in the morning since we arrived. Of course, it's still hot and humid, but it still was just a touch of remembering home in Melbourne =)

We tried as best we could to even out the suitcases and we left a ton of stuff behind. My satchel was over 8kg, Tari's laptop bag was over 5kg and our suitcases, well, they were heavy but more on that later. (Oooooh, suspense!)

We left behind a few books (which was hard for us, you know what we're like about books) and some old clothing and the extension cord and some toiletry stuff and... Nothing that won't be easily replaced, and I'm sure that the books and extension cord will get some use by other people staying there!

Shinta arrived at about 6 sans Wulan. We felt terrible that we hadn't said a proper goodbye, but totally understood her not coming so early on a Sunday morning. (They mostly work 6 day weeks, so Sundays are often referred to as Holiday.) Turned out that her alarm hadn't gone off, but she still wanted to say farewell, so we just waited a couple minutes for her to show. In that five minutes, after having checked out, one of the club staff came running up to the car looking very stressed and urgent.

My first thought was - uh oh, they found the damage when we trashed the room on our way out. Then I remembered that we didn't trash the room. Actually, he was concerned because we'd left our novels behind. We had to explain that we didn't want them. Really. Seriously. Leave them there. Throw them out. We don't want them. Thank you for checking but we DON'T WANT THEM!

The trip to the airport was super fast, there was almost no traffic (which means there was almost as much traffic as peak hour here). We said a fond farewell to our favorite intrepid looker afterers with culturally appropriate handshakes. It seems so pov to just handshake where over here you'd do a big hug and cheek kiss. Anyway, we promised that if they were ever in Melbourne to look us up and we'd return some of the favours that they'd shown us.

In the terminal we went to check in our bags. You're allowed 20 kg. My bag was 18kg, Tari's was close to 24kg. The nice lady asked if we were together. What, the two, tall, white people that stood out like two, tall, white, sore thumbs? Yes. We were together. We put both bags on at once and combined they were only a little over, so she waved it through.

Then it was just a matter of paying 100,000 Rp each for the exit fee and we were on our way. The Singapore-Jogjakarta route is always really turbulent. Well, apparently not always, because we had a really smooth flight. Actually, it ended up being the smoothest of all the flights.

In Singapore (where we had 10 hours to kill) we picked up our luggage and headed to the Jetstar check in people. It was (not too surprisingly) too early at this stage. So we took our bags down to the sub-basement level where you can leave them locked up. We learned that people are stupid-lazy in Singapore too. There is a smallish elevator for people with luggage, wheelchairs etc. Of course, what you actually get is people who cut in, crowd in, after waiting a few minutes for the elevator, then they get off one floor down. Grr.

Anyway, before I talk any more about Singapore. Man can this country do things right. Everything worked. Whenever we're in Singapore we're amazed. The taxi queues work, the baggage all works, the transportation works, everything just seems to work.

We had plenty of time to waste, so we set to work straight away! Slowly and calmly straight away. Firstly some food (surprised you there huh!). The tables were fairly crowded, but it was about 11ish I guess so it wasn't as busy as later at proper lunchtime. We had a salad for the first time in I don't know how long. Lettuce never tasted so good. Well, the dressing that you put on lettuce never tasted so good.

While sitting munching on vegetables we noticed that the majority of the other people were actually young people. And were they laughing, joking, making a huge rowdy noise? No. Most of them were studying. Yes. You read that right. There were math textbooks, languages, all sorts. Some were solo, headphones in, head down, pen going flat out. Others were laptopping away busily. Some were in small groups trying to solve problems together. Crazy youth, always disobeying the rules. Seriously. There were signs up saying: "No studying. No boardgames." And a sign like a no-smoking sign, but with zzZ" on it instead of a cigarette. No sleeping. What sort of country says "No studying". I think it's secretly a reverse psychology thing. "No alcohol" over here just gets you a train station full of drunk young-uns. No studying seems to get them a crowd of scholars.

Well, Singapore airport is split into three main terminals (T1, T2 and T3) resisting the urge to call T2 "Judgment Terminal" we decided to do the grand tour. The terminals are also split into two halves, an exterior and interior. The interior is for after you've checked in your luggage and are actually an official traveller. We had to be on the exterior for at least 4-6 hours. Each terminal has lots of shopping, the better shops are on the interior, but to kill time we visited them all. It takes about three hours to do the whole loop. Unlike other times (like the trip to the summit of Mt. Merapi) I can tell you this as experienced fact rather than passed on information.

My feet can attest to the full three hours. We walked really slowly and had a trolley for our satchel/laptop bags so I had something to use as a walking frame the whole time. To get between terminals you get to take the Skytrain!

You can also see how lush the greenery is. Each terminal also has one or two garden areas, big, spacious, green areas with seating and restaurants. (One of them is a cactus garden!) The Skytrain runs on about a 4minute round trip, so you never have to wait long. They split it in segments too, so there's two trains at each terminal and you never have to go past a station. A bit like how it's best to organise your trips in SimCity. Much more efficient this way.

The train station was the only time I could be bothered getting out my camera, but all around the complex, you'll see these odd holes:

I took this, because to make my odd comment above make more sense to some of you, T2: Judgment Day was the second of the Terminator movies. Skynet was the computer system that took over the world. Hence I found it amusing that there was a T2 Skytrain. The holes above may be for the air conditioning, but I think they have camera systems and guns in them for when the Singapore Airport system becomes self actuating. It's just a matter of time, people, wake up!

They also have paintings, sculptures, it's really a nice place to be. Some of the modern art was just a little too obtuse for me though.

After the three hour exterior tour and some lunch, we had killed enough time that the Jetstar peeps were open. They were there for a Perth flight, but were nice enough to check us in anyway. The people before us had been troublesome and the people next to us were also being pushy and unfair to the check in people. We put on our happy, friendly faces and went into "most polite and friendly tourists of the year" mode. Although our bags were technically over the limit, we had been nice while other people hadn't and we were waved through by the supervisor. The people next to us who were being pushy etc. were 1kg over, but were made to shuffle their stuff around to reduce the load.

I really REALLY feel sorry for a lot of the people we saw working in the airlines on our trip. I really hope that it's just tiredness and stress etc. but some people are just so SO rude. I just don't get it. We saw just plain bad manners a fair bit and also a lot of "I'm so much better than you are, so do what I say woman!" sort of attitudes. Also the good old fashioned, complain to the person you see, rather than the manager/company regulation that is actually the source of whatever problem you are having. The poor flight attendants/desk jockeys were without fail polite and personable even when being derided and yelled at. I would snap in about five minutes and send their baggage to Coonabarabran.

Anyway, after checking in our bags we then had about five hours left. So we found that it also takes about three hours to do the interiour tour of the three terminals. The train system is so cleverly designed, one carriage opens doors on the left, one carriage (separated physically from the other) opens doors on the right. So one train can carry people from both the interior and exterior sections on the same trip.

After three more hours, we managed to find a quiet, out of the way seating area. Big open space, there were a few clever people with sleeping bags, but mostly it was quiet and empty. We zoned out for about an hour, had a little bite to eat and stretched etc. before heading over to board the plane.

I already talked about people who are rude on planes, so I won't do it again except to say: 20kg luggage, 1 item of hand luggage of x kg (depends on carrier - we had some Qantas and some Jetstar). Now we all know that you can take 2 items of hand luggage really, a laptop bag and handbag for example. But there were people who had "hand luggage" that their own could fill an entire overhead compartment. And, get this, when they couldn't fit all their stuff in, who complained, the other passengers? No. They complained about the lack of space! Don't get me started.

Flight to Darwin was okay, 4 1/4 hours. It was a little delayed, but that was fine, it just meant we'd have to spend less time in Darwin airport really. We got to Darwin at about 3AM or so, I can't honestly remember. We had to get our bags and then sit around for about an hour before we could check them in. Lots of people just sleeping on the hard floor or on hard chairs. Our flight wasn't scheduled until 7:30AM so we had plenty of time to kill again. So tired by now though. Once checked in the upstairs terminal chairs were actually quite comfy. We both managed to doze for about half an hour, but with bright lights, lots of movement and the coffee person yelling out orders it wasn't possible to sleep really.

The "fun" started at about 7AM when announcements came over saying that the Darwin-Sydney flight had been cancelled and the Darwin-Melbourne flight would be delayed by an hour - hour and a half. Lots of people less than happy about that. We had already been sitting around for ages, the Sydney flight included people that had to transit to other flights leaving from Sydney. Some of them ended up getting spare seats on the Melbourne flight, so they'd be doing Darwin-Melbourne-Sydney. Others though were going to have to wait until mid-afternoon for theirs.

We were dead tired, and annoyed at the tardy plane, but at least were entertained. Front page news in Darwin was a pygmy hippo that had been shot. A local lad had been out shooting for pig. When he pulled up next to his most recent effort he saw that it was a little hippo. He rang his mate, who essentially told him to sleep off the booze and in the morning it'll be just a pig. Well, he did and it wasn't. Apparently it escaped from a wildlife park some time ago.

So our flight was late, but at least it came eventually! Then we had the poor hostess trying to get people from three different flights onto her plane, they'd had to process a lot of it by hand and some people were being fussy about where they got to sit, hand luggage etc. Again with the whole taking it out on the person in front of you thing. Anyway, by the time we actually got to Melbourne, about 3PM and by the time we got our baggage (getting close to 4PM - don't get me started on the stupid, inefficient method by which airlines make you collect your luggage, I mean, come on now, can you think of a worse... sorry, I'll stop before I get stuck right in!)... now I don't know where I was going to begin with with that one.

Anyway, we were home about 5ish after an, um, interesting taxi ride. The puppies got LOTS of hugs, so did Juni. She'd done a great job of making the house clean for us. She'd washed our doona covers, done the dishes etc. AND cut and groomed the dogs! (Cut as in hair cut of course!) We had Safeway BBQ chicken (for me), mashed potato (for TJ) and well cooked broccoli (for Juni) before watching another West Wing and heading to bed. Where, as I already mentioned, we spent a good 12 hours!

So we left our room at about 5:30AM Sunday morning and were home by about 5:30PM Monday evening. We managed to sleep for about 2 hours worth of 15 minute naps and walked umpteen kilometers to fill in time. Oh, and I read a novel that I think will end up where the others were. Clive Cussler. Airport novelist.

Any more info than that and you can ask me direct =)

Thanks once again for all your comments, emails etc. It really did mean a lot to me, every time there was something from back here it just really, really helped. You know I'm not great at expressions of stuff, so just a really big thanks to you all - even getting just a one line email would make an entire day so much brighter and more bearable!

Until next time,
Take care,
Sim.

Hi ho, Hi ho

Well, this is it, the last blog from Jogja. I had a really great opening line, but then I was asked a question and now I can't remember what it was (the opening line that is, although now I can't remember the question either). Take my word for it, it was a really great line. It summed up the thoughts, feelings and emotional turmoil of the final day here in Jogja. It would have made you laugh, cry and think epically philosophical thoughts about time, space and the place of humanity. Oh well. Maybe next time.

It's Saturday afternoon here (evening for you folk), we've just had a torrential downpour. It seems as though this last week the dry season has finally kicked up the last dry dusty footstep on the way out. It's rained properly three times, and the other days have often had a little shower. Everybody is feeling much more positive about crops etc. now.

From our window, the camera didn't capture it well, but it was raining hard enough that it jus looked kinda white and misty. You may also be able to see the poncho-clad cyclists motoring on through the downpour. Some of them look particularly awesome when they're going fast, with super hero style capes flapping behind them. Of course, they're cheap, plastic capes that come in mostly black and yellow, but hey, low budget heroes are heroes too.

You can compare that pic to the one in an earlier post to spot the difference. (Hint: there's lots of water in this one.)

I also popped outside (on a different day!) to grab an exterior showing our room. Well, the window that is the boundary between our room and the outside world. This was taken at about 8 in the morning, I wish the camera could catch the feeling of heat when standing in the direct sun. Yes, I went through that just so you could see the window of our room. That's how you know I really care. Also I had to wait while they cleaned our room and it was quite humid, hot and stuffy indoors.

Ours is the one on the top floor, up and to the left of the U on the sign. Hence the noise we get, right above the driveway. You can also see the two "guru" elephants in the entry-way.When I came in from taking the shot I sat in the lobby to try and get internet access (without success that time) and saw on the TV some Scooby Doo. I have seen a LOT of Scooby Doo and Popeye merchandise over here. Thought it was a bit odd. After a while I realised that there were no subtitles on the TV. Odd. Normally they put Bahasa Indonesian subtitles on. Then I realised that the show had actually been dubbed. The voices were actually pretty similar to how they should be (hence I hadn't noticed). They'd particularly done a great job with Shaggy and Scooby. Velma could have used a little work (but hey, we all knew that already).

It was good enough that at the end the evil ghost who could throw lightning bolts, once the lights came on and the mask was taken off turned out to be the college professor! Who would have guessed, what, with the crazy white Einstein hair, labcoat, clipboard and funding cutbacks. The "... and I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you pesky kids!" line was exactly the same as always, anak-anak is the word for children, kids etc. and that was the only word I understood in the sentence, but it was clear that the script remained the same even if the language didn't!

Coming up on TV later (awww, we'll be going out so I'll miss it) is one of the endless repeats of "Glitter" (with Mariah Carey, who, I've mentioned previously, is quite a hit here). Even in my most bored and vegetative state I would rather just nap than watch that. (Last time it was on I completed a couple of chapters of vector equations from the textbook.) For those of you who haven't seen the movie (please, oh, please I hope that's everybody) it's well worth a read of the reviews on RT:

http://au.rottentomatoes.com/m/glitter/

The reason we couldn't watch it was because we wanted to take Shinta and Wulan out for dinner to thank them for all the field trips, housing, internet etc. that they arranged for us. We went out to a local seafood place and stuffed ourselves. Coley, you know how we feel about seafood, but it was really good stuff. I think you would have liked some of it too! Yummy fish, a tofu dish (which I don't usually like), salt and pepper squid (with bonus extra green and red chilli) very good stuff. The fish didn't even really taste like fish. Some of it was spicy enough to require a lot of drink, and, of course, there was plenty of fruit juice to help that along. Tari had strawberry, I had lemon iced tea.

There were some MC Escher (my favorite MC) paintings on the walls.

When we got back afterwards and thanked them for the lift, they gave Tari a really nice red handbag as a present. So far Tari has not been able to one-up anybody on present giving. We keep trying to thank people and then they just have the last say by dropping another present on her! She's got some nice jewelry, a scarf, a top... and tonight we have a farewell dinner, so I'll bet there'll be something else by then that will cause another luggage re-shuffle.

Diah and her family took us out for lunch yesterday. She wanted Tari to try these special prawns in "her kitchen". The restaurant is three houses from their home and when she doesn't feel like cooking, she orders the family to go to the kitchen. I was told that it would be seafood again. I want you to picture the sort of restaurant you go to in Indonesia to eat seafood. Are you seeing bamboo, thatched roof, marine type paraphernalia around? Well, try this:

Yes, affectionately referred to as Dracula's Restaurant. Soragan Castle. We sat where you can see the grape vine draped windows on the bottom of the turret. It originally sold European food, but didn't do so well, so now they sell Indonesian food and are doing so well that it's usually hard to get in. We were there on Friday lunch, which is a very quiet time over here. Many places close early for prayer on Fridays. You may be able to make out the old cannon from the Dutch colonial days to the left of the stairs.

And I'm sure you'd have been with me in thinking that the interior would not look castly at all.

Check out the wrought iron chandelier!

Anyway, was quite bizarre, but the food was great. It was all about using your fingers. There was a tap with bamboo piping for regular hand washing. It wasn't because you were making a mess (well, it was that too!) but mainly because some of the sauces on some of the food were soooo spicy that you just had to wash it off your hands so that you could scoop up some plain rice to help out the lips and tongue!

I thought I'd better mention the spicy food just in case the pictures had confused you into thinking that you'd clicked the wrong link and ended up on some other blog. Of course it was all open air and there was a nice breeze that day too, so it didn't feel too hot.

Well, today we did our last chance shopping here, ducked over to the big mall to pick up a few things. Most notably Tari's weekly coffee from Starbucks. My last musings of the shops? Well, I'm still not used to hearing the un-bleeped versions of songs on department store music. Every now and then you get a surprise of a loud swear-word among the women's handbag section of the shop. I'm also not used to the sheer number of people employed. As you pull up in your taksi there is a guy to open the door for you. Another guy to welcome you and direct you to the security search. The two security guards who check your bags, the doorman of the place itself and that's all before you get inside.

Once there there are shop assistants who stand out the front of the store to say Selamat-Pagi, -Siang (Good-morning or day) or whichever Selamat you're up to at the time. Then inside each store there seems to be an employee attached to every rack or shelf of clothing. At the Kashier, of which there is one every ten meters, there is someone to take your goods, someone to do the cash register and someone to put your goods in a bag. And of course every single person is so polite that sometimes it drives you crazy.

As you leave the mall there is another guy (apart from the gang I already mentioned) who escorts you into a departing taksi, there is also a guy at the driveway back onto the road who has a glow stick, whistle and vest that stops oncoming traffic so the taksi can pull out. Now I know this sounds like it's at the nice big mall for the wealthy people and tourists, but it's not, it's everywhere!

Any place where there is parking of any kind, there is a parking attendant who waves you into and out of a spot and a guy who stops traffic to let you back onto the road. You've seen pictures of the crazy roads, you'll understand why this job is essential! You tip them a couple thousand Rp on your way out.

Well, that's all I can think of for now. I'm sure if you ask me questions, or email, or comment, or catch up with me once we're back I'll yak on and on for as long as you can stand it. We leave on a 7:30 AM flight tomorrow for Singapore. Due to get in to Singapore at 10:30 AM local (two hour flight and one hour time difference). We don't leave Singapore until 8:20 PM.

I'll let that last bit register with you. That'll be fun huh. Just when that sounds like all the layover fun you can have in one place, wait, there's more! At least at Singapore Airport there's stuff to do. It's quite large. According to a teenager we overheard on the way to Singapore five weeks ago it's "at least five times as big as Darwin Airport!". For those of you with Google Earth, you might want to see why that comment made us laugh out loud.

Anyway, we get to Darwin at 2:30 AM but don't leave Darwin until 7:30 AM. So. Five hours in Darwin. I'm sure that time will go by really quickly. Sort of hoping that there are big delays departing Singapore. Sitting in the Singapore airport is MUCH more appealing!

It does mean that on the way over we got to see sunset in Darwin and on the way back we'll get to see sunrise. It's little touches like that that make it all worthwhile. In at Melbourne by 1:30PM Monday arvo. Assuming nothing exciting or overly interesting happens, I'll just do a quick "I made it back safely" post on Tuesday. Where I'll have internet access! Yay!

Take care all!

Sim.

Mount Merapi

Well, after blogging yesterday morning, I figured that it might actually be the last one I did. Had a nice Sunday morning, (as you read) and managed to get onto Skype with a really good connection, it didn’t drop once! Was good to see my family and have a decent chat, though still looking forward to actually getting home. Realised that yesterday I said Mad Cow restaurant, it’s actually Cow Mad. Makes more sense now huh? =) I also need to remember in Indonesia to say “medication” instead of “drugs”.


We got settled in for a nice lazy afternoon when Tari’s mobile went off about three times with different offers from people of things to do. We’ve worked out by now that you HAVE to do something when people offer because word seems to get around otherwise!

Among the options were Shinta and Wulan suggesting a trip up towards the mountain because they knew that I wanted to see it and hadn’t been able to due to the haze and cloud cover. Also they have a special museum up there that Tari would enjoy.

So at about 2pm we were picked up in the funky Honda Jazz again. This time I took a photo of the dashboard mascot, thought Slippers might be interested...

 
Of course, then we had to talk about our friends back home. We related the wedding confetti and rice stories =) Wulan has a new baby nephew so we talked about the fun of helping look after other people’s babies too and how it has all the nice bits and then you get to leave and still have a good night of sleep! (Hope Charlotte and MacKenzie are still sleeping well!)


The radio has all sorts of music on it. From Mariah Carey to Indonesian music that sounds like Mariah Carey to... um... more Mariah Carey. As mentioned previously there’s a bit of a thing for slow balladdy 80s music, though some of it is progressive 90s style. Part of it, I think, is because they can probably make out some of the lyrics in the slow songs. Part of it is also that they have bad taste in music. Too harsh? You come over here and listen to the radio then.

Mt. Merapi is so close to town, there’s a road just out of the uni that drives pretty much straight there. Because it is almost always wrapped up in clouds, it gets a lot more moisture than anywhere else here at the moment. The girls were complaining again about the dry weather and how it’s so unusual and that every year it seems to get worse. Up on the mountain though it looked lush, green and jungly. Amazing difference.

 
Apparently up there is a favourite place for people to go after dark. It’s 5-10 degrees cooler and very pleasant. Drove with windows down instead of AC going. (Must resist Microsoft joke.) I noticed one of these street signs and can’t remember if I blogged it last time we were here. I find that it’s particularly apt when you’re in a taksi. Some of those drivers are just insane. I mean, the traffic is already nuts, with people going left, right, backwards, bikes weaving in and out of everything else. This sign pretty much sums up my feelings the entire time:

The roads on the mountain are twisty, turny and all over the place, it was not uncommon to have a five way intersection with no signage whatsoever. Now I know what visitors to our place in Selby think. I have no idea how they navigated to where we ended up, but they managed to get us to a museum that had lots of artwork, lots of batik and lots of history. There were two prices for entry, International: $5, local: 25,000 Rp.


The advantage of the extra money you spend on the International ticket is that your guide speaks English. This was good, because otherwise how would I have found out about the cultural dance and costuming of the last few hundred years.

We weren’t allowed to take photos (girls may say a heartfelt “awww”, boys, just go along with it), but the museum was built in a series of jungle encroached, volcanic stone buildings. Many were below ground level so it was wonderfully cool. It was odd in several places to see “Tari” written. Over here it means “dance” and so MY name is the one that is uncommon.

So much history here, this was mainly about the royal family so it had lots of stuff about women and dresses and clothing and stuff. I did my best to stay interested. You’ll have to ask TJ about it all though, because I’m afraid I didn’t take much of it in for some reason. I do recall two things though.

The batik clothing patterns actually mean something; our favourite was one that you wear for “a small but consistent supply of money in life”. Of course there were others for wisdom, long life, fidelity, fertility, wealth etc.

One of the stories I remember was one of the princesses who was drop dead gorgeous (that has nothing to do with me remembering it), being wooed by the king who was fabulously wealthy etc. However, many of them were polygamous, including this guy, and she refused to marry him on these grounds. Caused quite a scandal at the time.

Once we were out of the museum we were allowed to take some photos on the grounds. It was very Tomb Raider/Indy Jones scenery. None of the statues came to life and there were no massive rolling boulders, but with a few more tourist dollars I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. It must take a lot of work to stop the jungle growth from encroaching too much, as it was there were root systems everywhere!

 

In many places it was like walking through those curtain bead things that they hang in front of doors. The thin little roots would just be all hanging down from the ceiling. Here’s a picture of us both to prove that I was there too!
 

And yes, you’ll have noticed that I am (relatively) clean shaven. I’ve been a good boy on this trip and kept reasonably neat and tidy. We found out at this point that Shinta is a bossy photographer. Stand back one step. No, left. No, just Simon left. No! Too far! We stood in the right spot eventually. (Tourists! What can you do?)


After the tour we had a cup of special tea that reminded us of Mum’s special spicy Christmas drink. It was a special formula that guaranteed us health etc. Definitely had ginger in it as well as other spices. Quite nice I thought. Mum, you need to make up some blurb to go with yours now!

Shinta then drove us to a spot that had a pretty good view of the volcano. The most disappointing thing for me about this whole trip was that getting sick stopped me from going up there. It’s a five hour hike that starts at 3AM and they don’t run it all the time. By the time I’ll be up to it physically we’ll be gone =(

Well, at least I got to see it. The topography is so cool up there, not like what we get back home, which is mostly erosional and different to New Zealand’s fjord and ice-crushed landscape. I’m sure there’s a reason for the lack of glacial erosion. Let me think for a while... I took a few shots, but it was pretty hazy still, and I waited to get a shot where the cloud and volcanic smoke were cleared, well, mostly cleared.

I’ve been a fan of volcanoes since I was little. I remember I was sick once and Mum got me a National Geographic magazine that had Pompeii and Krakatoa in it. Lots of diagrams with cutaway shots of how volcanoes form and work etc. One of my favourite Masters projects was looking at tectonics etc. on other planets.

 
You can see how lush the jungle is around the cone, but notice that the west face is mostly cleared. That’s the side that gets the majority of lava flow, and Jogja is to the south, which is why they don’t stress about it. Apparently most eruptions head to the north and west, they seem to tell you this a lot, not sure if they’re repeating it to convince themselves as much as anybody else =)


There was some massive bamboo there too, but it looked a bit too wilty so we didn’t do our Crouching Tiger routine. Although we really wanted to.

It’s hard to get the scale, but that’s a big fence/wall thing in the foreground. The bud bit on top is head sized. You can see a head in the shot above near one of them. After telling us repeatedly how safe etc. it was you get to walk past one of the volcano shelters as you go to the clearing to take photos.
 

Handy that it’s locked up huh. Also handy that it was mentioned that some people died in one last eruption. Even down in the bunker of concrete and steel they burned to death. I’ve seen enough movies to know that you can just drive right over lava anyway (thanks Pierce Brosnan) so I’m not so worried. As long as you have some sidekicks (preferably attractive female ones) you’re guaranteed to survive, although you may rip your shirt at some stage. Fortunately I’m wearing an old shirt from the up-market Target at Fountain Gate. I’m thinking maybe I’ll have to do an advanced degree in something geologically relevant. I just don’t think I’m ever going to hear “Is anybody in this room an astrophysicist!?”


We had a spot of tea at a locally famous place as the sun began to set. They like things very sweet here so it was a lump of cane sugar in the cup that you pour your tea over. You basically just let the sugar dissolve until it’s sweet enough for you, then remove the leftover crystalline lump. I fit right in (yes Mum, here I don’t get looked at funny if I ask for *2* teaspoons of sugar). There were two menus, one International in English and one local in Bahasa Indonesian. The prices were more expensive on the English menu, so we let Wulan do the ordering.

On the way back home we stopped at a supermarket to do some quick snack shopping. Amongst other things we saw that there were fish tanks with BIG live fish so that when you get fresh fish for dinner you get FRESH fish for dinner.

I also discovered a way in which I could become very rich! Bear with me, because it may take some time, but I’m willing to persist at it. My grocery bill came to 44,820 Rp. Now they have notes over here of 50,000 Rp, 20,000 Rp, 10,000 Rp, 5,000 Rp, 2,000 Rp and 1,000 Rp. They also have coins of 500, 200, 100, 50, 20, 10 and 5. Now obviously 5 Rp is a phenomenally tiny amount of money. It’s only in grocery stores where you pay by weight for fruit and veg that you get amounts that aren’t rounded off. In most places things are just priced to the nearest note value, 1,000 Rp. Sometimes you’ll get it down to 500s. Well, now that I’ve cut another short story long, the register didn’t have coins. The check out chick went wandering away and came back after visiting with several people, including the floor manager, and handed me 6,000 Rp change.

Tari has also noticed that they just can’t be bothered with the coins. So, my cunning get rich extremely slowly scheme is just to always make sure that my grocery bill tallies up so that I get more change than I deserve. Brilliant!

Anyway, I’m going to go and eat the extra packet of lollies I bought to make sure that I went slightly over the amount that would ensure I got more change back. And no, I don’t need the flaws in my plan pointed out, thank you very much.

I’ll post this next time the internet is up, but until then, take care,

Sim.

End of week 4

Feeling much better now, thanks for all your emails, prayers and support (and also thanks to the many drugs I was taking)!

There's a weeding going to happen today, so there is a lot of activity. It's Sunday morning. The first noise started happening at about 5:30, by 6:30 there were children running and laughing, tables being moved etc. Not the biggest Sunday sleep-in ever!

But I'm jumping ahead here. Nothing much happened to me this week, and it's been another busy working week for Tari. She had lunch with the Dean on Friday and in the process of talking about this and that he invited her to do a lecture on The Structure of the Australian Health System, including state, federal, money spent etc. Not her area of expertise, but she thought it would be interesting so agreed. He said great! And that the lecture was in an hour. An hour!

Google got a workout in that hour, but it was a big success anyway. Tari says she had a great time, it's a lot of fun over here to lecture and teach. The students are so friendly and eager to learn. They're never there to try and catch you out like you often get back home. It's a very open style too, with questions being asked a lot and discussion happening. I guess it would suit some, but not others. I've always been a fan of the more informal approach (as some of you know!) but I guess others wouldn't like it so much.

There was a really big conference with dinner on Friday night (unrelated to us) so when Tari got home (about 5:30) we wandered down to have dinner only to find it an absolute hive of activity. The boss of the Resto (who is a lovely guy!) caught our eye and explained that it was a conference dinner. We said we didn't want to make life harder. He insisted we still come in and he'd make space for us anyway. We compromised and ordered room service which made everybody happy. He didn't have to make room for us, we didn't have to go further for dinner!

Most other dinners I either don't have my camera with me or I've already started eating before I remember to take a picture. Room service being, well, in the room, I had my camera.

This is Nasi Goreng Ayam. Essentially fried rice with chicken. There's a big prawn cracker, pickles (note the green chilli), lettuce, cucumber, tomato, chicken and fried rice. Sometimes I also get Nasi Goreng Telur (same thing but with a fried egg instead of chicken). I know some of you just read that twice because I don't like eggs. Well, I think I blame all of you for having never cooked it in whatever oil/grease they use over here. Health be ignored, it tastes nice here!

On Saturday we had a slow morning and then headed off to Malioboro [not the cigarette brand, although if you do want cigarettes, there are roaming guys all over the place with big tray thing at stomach height strapped to their shoulders like what pie sellers use at the footy (or did last time I was there {at the footy})]. Sorry about the nested brackets there, I waffled a bit, didn't I.

Anyway, it's a street where they have shops all down the length of it (several kilometers) selling mostly batik clothing. Had a go at one of the famous ones to get some clothes but if you do manage to find some in your size (not particularly easy over here for us!) they don't have many options. Some are soooo brightly coloured they'd fit in well in your kitchen Mum. Lots of greens, oranges, etc. No success there in the end, it was just a bit too over the top for our tastes. The sort of thing you'd wear once, but probably not again.

As you walk along you get lots of offers for lots of stuff. The people with the big bikes that have a two person seat behind them like a carriage are always wondering if you'd like a ride. I always say no, because I think that if I can barely stand the heat and walk, how can I make some other poor guy do all of the work to move himself, a bike, a cart AND me! Most of the stalls along the road are manned (and womaned) by relatively poor (in a financial sense) people. Lots of just sitting on the side of the road etc. The odd thing from my perspective is how many of them are SMSing or talking on mobiles. Super ultra mega cheap here! There's no way they could keep any infrastructure (wires etc.) so they just made mobile technology easy (and cheap) for everybody.

We then walked to the big mall there (much smaller than the other one I've talked about). Although pretty much recovered, the combination of long walk and hot sun had put me on the "you look like you're about to pass out" list. I must admit, I sort of enjoy playing with the feeling of vertigo I've been getting when about to faint. It's not something I've really experienced before, so I sort of do little experiments to see what it feels like. Now I know more about what it must be like to be afraid of heights. Hey, at least I don't stick needles in my eye like *some* scientists!

Although there was a Maccas, we didn't cop out and lower ourselves to that sort of "getting away from the local delicacy by cheap US food" so we went to Pizza Hut instead. Tari amused herself by playing with a little girl and her dog balloon animal. We had to use the dictionary to find out what noise dogs make over here instead of woof.

There was a book store downstairs that had english books, which was good 'cos we were out and are going to be spending a LOT of time in airports and planes next weekend. I think we leave here at 4:30 AM and get home at 1:30 PM a day and a half later (well, 29 hours) for an actual 8-10 hours of "real" flying. Stupid layovers. Anyway, if we don't read the books before then we'll be better ready for the trip.

As we were reading our first books Saturday afternoon we heard the band strike up again at about 5:30, except there was something different about it. They sounded GOOD! What was up with that?? Well, after weeks of individual musicians practicing, they were all marching down the road playing the same song at the same time! I hesitate to use the word simultaneously for reasons that those of you who know relativity will be aware of.

We were picked up at 7pm by Shinta and Wulan, as polite and lovely as ever, and they took us to dinner at the house of Yarti. Wonderful woman, with an unassumingly polite husband. They're in their late 60s and very grandparenty with pictures of recent grandchildren all around. Very welcoming and friendly etc. Also both incredibly intelligent and accomplished. He was until this year the Dean of the medical faculty here and she just won the Asia-Pacific paediatrician of the year award to add to a list of accolades they both have. In amongst a life of high-powered accomplishments they also have built an absolutely gorgeous open plan wooden house and filled it with antiques (including a bedroom furnished by an ex-king of Malaysia for just one example) and photos of family.

I couldn't do the place justice if I tried but you could easily charge for entry like a small museum! They took us to a local restaurant (walking distance) called Mad Cow. The first beef we've had in a while! The best cold lime juice we've had in a while! Although Tari had strawberry juice, still can't get over the fresh juice you can get here! We were going to eat at their house, but one of their kids has chicken pox. They live in a sort of compound with separate houses and fences, but all on the same large property, for their three children and grandchildren.

After dinner we were taken on a tour of the city in Shinta's air conditioned car. Red leather interior and Mariah Carey on the stereo. The place is very busy on a Saturday night, it was only 30-32 degrees so lots of people out and about, eating, drinking (non alcoholic of course around here) and being merry. We had a bit of history etc. was a nice end to the evening.

Anyway, going to try and Skype with Mum and Dad now, so will finish off with some pictures of the local Sunday morning market. We were there at about 8:15AM so it was starting to wind down a bit in the heat. These three pictures show the market itself, narrow and packed and you can imagine how Tari and I stand out! The next picture is of one of the car parks. Well, bike parks. You can see they pack 'em right in there and most just leave their helmets. Lastly some of the local transport Andong (horse) which we haven't tried because it seems cruel to expect a horse that's half my size to carry both of us! You'll be happy to know that the horses are looked after VERY well here, often eating better than their owners!

Last week! See you all soon, or at least be emailing from a local IP =)
Study hard, students, almost there!
Sim.

Week Four

Hi all!

Sorry for the big gap in blogging. Had a trip to the hospital yesterday and today I'm feeling much better. Still wobbly and in a bit of pain, but definitely an improvement on recent history! To cut a short story long (don't know about you, but I have plenty of time)...

You know me, I tend to undersell myself when I get sick, especially since one of the fun benefits of my variety of chronic fatigue is a weak immune system. I say it's because I don't like to complain and that there are plenty of people far worse off than me. Tari says it's because I'm a stupid, stubborn man with an irrational phobia of doctors and hospitals. Either way, by the weekend when Tari was around me all day it was pretty clear to her how sick I was.

If you want slightly too much information (don't worry, I won't give you the far too much version), highlight the next bit of text with your mouse, I coloured the text white so you can't see it unless you do.

It was kinda cool, though painful, when my gut was doing some massive crampy gymnastics you could actually look down and see it jiggling around, it looked just like that bit in Aliens before the chestburster jumps out!

Anyway, Tari called one of her lovely doctor friends, Dr. Diah, (who is mentioned in the original series from the last time we were here). She just wanted to ask for a doctor to go to. Instead we got picked up by Diah, who had taken the morning off, and driven to the hospital to see a... well actually, I was on the verge of passing out most of the time, so here's an extract from Tari:

"We saw a general medicine specialist and a gastroenterologist today. Sim is a little hypotensive (90/60) but no other major problems.
The provisional diagnosis is enteritis post either viral or bacterial gastroenteritis.

He has been given anti-emetics, anti-diarrhoeals, anti-inflammatories and antibiotics; in other words, the complete armoury of available pharmaceuticals.
No doubt one of those or the combination will fix him right up!"

All I really remember in that three/four hours was that on TV in the indoor waiting area one time was a show called 60 minutes. Yay, dry current affairs in another language. No. Wait. There was a video clip that looked like (Tari says) Bad Bon Jovi late 80s. Talking massive hair, lots of leather and, my favorite, a light chainmail shirt on the lead "singer". After the video clip it cut to, how to explain this, some sort of competition with two hosts standing by a pool being very excited.

Five contestants who were eliminated one challenge at a time. The challenges? Well, very high tech. The first one we saw was diving into a pool to get a t-shirt, shorts and socks and then putting them on while sopping wet. The second was spinning around and around then being told to "go!" where they had to sprint off to a big tub full of polystyrene bean bag chair beans and sift through it for some flippers.

That's all I remember of that. Sorry.

After getting out of the first doctor, going to the lab, waiting for lab results, coming back to see the doctor again and being given some drugs, Diah had a chat to him (she's a doctor that has worked with him before AND they both play tennis) and while we were waiting at the apothek (pharmacy) one of the nurses came up and said that the gastro specialist was wanting to see us. Some wheels had been greased and a phone call had been made and he came down to see me. Anyway, the drugs seem to be working!

My foot was painful again this morning!  Most of you know that my foot hurts all day every day, but when something is more painful I don't notice it. It's always a good sign when I feel it again, 'cos it means that whatever else it is must be far less painful. Diah is a legend! Everybody is so nice here! I know I've said it before, but there you go.

Well, since I've only been semi-conscious I don't have anything more coherent for you. Here's just a random sampler of stuff since the last post...

In Melbourne, when using my laptop without sufficient airflow, and playing any half decent game, it would sometimes heat up to shut-down point. In Singapore I got one of these...

USB powered, curved with a fan. Keeps the air circulating nicely underneath and completely essential over here! Haven't had it shut down with that going.

Tari played tennis on Sunday. Yes, as I mentioned above, people play tennis here. Sure, it's 35-40 degrees and culturally you have to wear pants and long sleeved shirts and cover your head, but hey, why not run around and around!? I didn't go (for the above reasons) but she had a great time. They had a trainer there who was very good. He'd hit the ball right to Tari, who'd hit it off on some wild angle. He'd sprint after it and hit it back... slowly... right to her again! Rinse and repeat. I think all tennis should be like that, personally, someone should hit the ball to you so that you don't have to run but you're still allowed to hit it wherever you want! (Kinda like wii tennis I guess!)

After that, while the others were playing a proper game, Tari befriended a little girl (I can't remember how old, but maybe 3 years old?) She played fetch, catch, etc. The little girl knew more English than Tari knew Indonesian, but at some stage she started babbling away in Indonesian. Tari tried to explain that she didn't speak Indonesian, but the little girl was confused by this. After the little girl talked quizzically to an adult, followed by laughter, Tari had it explained that the little girl had asked if Tari was an alien or a dinosaur? What other bizarre creature wouldn't understand Indonesian?

I think that's kinda cool, I like both aliens AND dinosaurs so it's win win really.

We also finally saw Mt. Merapi...

I tried to use the Windows image processing software, but you'll need to click on the image for the full size to even vaguely be able to see it. This was the least hazy day we've had so far. Still no rain and the temperature has been right back up again. People here now just shrug and say "the world has gone crazy". The wet season is soooooo overdue now.

Some more randoms... The place we're staying at used to be three separate buildings, the place people stay in, the conference hall and the place people eat. They're all joined up now, but the renovations are always just additive, rather than removing anything old. So you might not be able to make this out, but this is guttering that is now INSIDE the building.

And there are plenty of places where the wall just sort of stops half height and there are big open gaps to the outside. It's not like it matters from a temperature perspective, it's hot outside, it's hot inside! This means you get many visitors...

In the big mall we've seen many amusing things, but I don't usually get the camera out for them. For example, they have lots of very cute T-shirts here with slogans like:

"I am wrong"

"I love her ->" with a matching "<- I love him"

(you'd have to make sure you stood on the right side of each other for that combo to work!)

"Phis Ed"

"I am happy and oh-so glad"

Unfortunately it's hard to get t-shirts that fit me. Awwww. However Tari managed to find one that fit her (she went for the Phis Ed one) because she needed a long sleeve t-shirt for tennis.

We also saw an evil corporation at work. You know, the sort that tell mums that they really need to feed their babies and toddlers special food and antibacterial, pro-V (or is that shampoo) etc. stuff. While Tari was foaming at the mouth and working out whether or not she would internally combust, I was laughing at the "around the world" section. Here's a picture of my favorite one!

The kangaroo was, unfortunately, behind one of the pillars at the time. You can see the security booth in the background. They are all over the place. You actually get searched by armed guards before you're allowed into the mall in the first place.

And on the way to the mall, we were stopped in traffic next to this store:

We expect profits to be in the tens of thousands! Unfortunately the profits will be in the local currency. (7000 to 1 ratio, or thereabouts.)

And speaking of outrageous monetary things. The UC Resto has almost literally doubled it's prices! They now have a larger menu, which looks fabulous by the way. They've done a really nice classy job compared to the old menus they had, which must have been printed 10 years ago (and hence, the prices were 10 years old). So now we pay outrageous prices for our food.

We both had dinner last night with enough food to not quite finish and fresh squeezed cold fruit juice in big tall glasses for 45,000! That's a lot of money for a dinner! Until you divide by 7,000. So I guess we can't compain too much huh. It's going to be a shock to come back to Melbourne and have a Maccas lunch (we're back at the airport at 1:30pm and flying the el-cheapo option means we'll be hungry!) that costs way more than twice as much for way more than a halving of food quantity and quality.

Actually, I just did a check, it's currently a factor of 8,600 so I REALLY can't complain.

Well, that's all I can think of for the moment. It's about half past eight in the morning and while I've been sitting here the temperature has been a relatively pleasant 36 but I'd rather be up in the 26 degree room where there's less humidity!

Just waiting now for the internet connection to click back on so I can hit send. Under two weeks to go!

More than halfway

This Wednesday marked the halfway mark of the trip! Yay! Downhill from here on!
We celebrated by me getting some massive stomach upset, kinda traditional for visitors here I think.
Been less than comfortable for the last few days, but it's no biggie 'cos it doesn't hamper my TV watching, book reading, computer playing... and yes, maths text booking.

It's quite a challenge to do some of the questions. The straight calculation stuff isn't so bad (good practice with no calculator) but the worded and more advanced problems are sometimes hard to work out what the heck it is they're actually asking. Still, we might look for a uni text somewhere, although it's been ages since I did straight maths, I kinda do a quarter of the book a day, so that even though I've only spent a little time on it, I've just about finished.

After the triumphant rain last post it hasn't really rained since. There's been a little sprinkling a couple of nights, but it's been back to dry and hot, which is not how it's meant to be so people are grumbly again.

Not half as grumpy as these guys:

Came out from dinner and saw the pavement moving. Was lots of little frogs. Or toads. My education in this area has been sorely lacking, apart from a book I remember when I was a kid called "Frog and Toad are Friends". In which case all you need to do to tell them apart is talk to them and work out if they're grumpy (toads) or cheerful (frogs). Unfortunately they hopped away when we got near and wouldn't submit to psychological profiling.

Speaking of dinner, here's the club resto:

You can see how crowded it is. Waking up at 4 in the morning means that TJ gets back from work pretty tired, so we're usually having dinner by 5:30 or so. They have a buffet style thing that starts at 7, but since it's costing us all of $4 to have a full meal whenever we want of whatever we want, we just have an early dinner. There are two things of great importance in the picture. One of them is obviously Tari, the other is why I also have VERY long lunches there. Yes, the air conditioner.

But what about breakfast? I hear you ask. Outdoors while it's nice and cool. I'm typing this just after breakfast today, it's a lovely 29 degrees, so nice to be so cool outside! I'm sitting in the lobby, I've found it's the only really stable connection. And yes, stable doesn't mean the same over here, but it's far less painful than any other method I've found so far!

Selamat Pagi (good morning) is just one of the many Selamat's you have to use, there's about five in total, for different parts of the day. Good morning, good day, good afternoon, good evening, good night. See, back home I have a g'day that kinda does all of that for me. Apparenly it's good for my learning and more polite to learn the whole rainbow.

Oh, and Clayton, about the whole guru thing, here's a picture of the epitome of scholarly learning, you'll see these guys all over schools and university campuses (campi? campusi?). So before you go denigrating "slippers"...

This one is actually one of a pair at the front of the university club. Charlotte and MacKenzie, make sure that Mummy or Daddy (or both) show you what noise an elephant makes (and take a photo of it if they do that thing where you put your arm in front of your nose to pretend it's a trunk).

Now I've had several emails wanting to know what our room looks like. I realise I kinda described it, but forgot to show you pictures. Well, for the last half a week we've been watching a crack in the ceiling expanding slowly. Other than that, it's a really nice room. here's a panorama...

Firstly, here's the kitchen/pantry/study area. Most importantly, you can see the two power points in this shot. No fridge, so we kinda buy stuff a day at a time rather than stocking up, and go down to the club for a cold drink. There are no appliances except... wait for it... an electric kettle. For all those hot drinks you want over here. Needless to say, it hasn't ever been a worthy contender for one of the power points.

Eagle eye readers may note the bright orange extension cord. One of the best purchases made on this whole trip. Except for maybe the cold root beer  I had in the mall, that was pretty good. Oh, and the lounge chairs are there because we watch West Wing on the laptop on the counter there, so we switched the chairs that were there for the chairs in the "lounge"...

Here we have the lounge. Um. Yeah. That's about as exciting as it is. Oh, there's a carpet/rug on the floor here. Moving on...

The bedroom, massive king sized bed. Obviously I've been "working" hard on something there, probably Evil Genius. The DS is there too, Scribblenauts, Giana Sisters and Mario Karts are the three most on rotation at the moment. I alternate between the bedroom and study depending on the light coming in through the windows.

So there you go, really huge room compared to most other hotel type accomodation I've been in. If you want to feel more a part of it, those three pics were taken from one spot so you could digitally stitch them together if you wanted to. Oh, wait, you all have lives! Sorry, I'll do it when we get back and I find my photoshop disc.

As always I have other photos, but unless you're keen to see a crack in the ceiling at different stages of development or the air conditioner I'll leave it be at the moment.

Well there are only really two other pieces of news before I sign off. My stomach has meant that I haven't been able to wander too far from the room so there's nothing else to tell you about I'm afraid.

News story 1: Tari got confirmation that she's made the shortlist for the Harkness post-doc fellowship! That puts her in the top 8 candidates of the country! They only pick 1 or 2 a year though, so it's a super amazing honour, confirming her general and specific levels of awesomeness. She's too humble, so I'll take any chance I can get! We'll head up to Sydney in early December for the final interviews. She'll be there among the sort of people who get Australian of the Year for researching amazing stuff, it's that prestigious a fellowship. If she gets it they pay a really nice amount of money and we go to the US for a year. Anyway, can't get hopes up because it's still a really long shot.

News story 2: After watching more ads on TV I can confirm the rough proportions mentioned earlier with a few clarifications. I saw a car ad once. Still no ads for stores or insurance etc. I also had it pointed out to me that the cosmetics ads are just about all for skin lightening cream. My theory is that they have a massive centrifuge that they put in barrels of cosmetics. When they spin it up, the skin darkening stuff settles on one edge, the skin lightening stuff settles on the other. To maximise profit they skim off the darkening stuff to sell to US, Europe, Oz etc. and the lightening stuff to places like here. Some people suggest theat it's evil the way that the companies play on humans by using models with darker skin and tans in Oz, and people with milky skin over here. I'm sure that really they're just trying to waste not want not because of their centrifuge.

Well, only two an a bit weeks to go now, so next time I post it'll probably be less than two weeks to go!

Happy Birthday if I don't post before then Paul.
Happy final bits of holidaying Mum and Dad.
Have a GREAT trip Dave and Tori.
Hope the girls are letting you sleep more Clay and Mandy.
Juni, hope you're feeling MUCH better and that the puppies aren't making you spoil them TOO much =)
Uni and School studyers, hit those books hard! Look forward to the MASSIVE holiday you get after the exams =)
For people I've forgotten, sorry, but my battery is just about dead and I need to visit our room again.

Everybody, enjoy the last bit of October and be nice to any trick or treaters!


P.S. Juni, if you read this before Halloween, feel free to buy some lollies for any kiddies that come by, we'll reimburse you when we get back. (And buy ones that you like so if there aren't many kiddies you get a bonus lolly bonanza!)

Weekend

Internet has been as good as ever. That is to say it almost never works!

The weekend was nice and quiet, but the big, important news of the year is that it rained!

At about 3:30 in the afternoon, the usual threatening clouds gave us an awesome thunder and lightning show followed by a good half hour of torrential rain. Since then it has rained a tiny bit every night, but no more proper downpours.

There is now palpable relief among the locals. The roads were immediately awash, and the day after we went for a walk and saw a much greater multitude of birds, lizards etc. feasting on the bugly goodness.

The photo doesn't do justice to the river of water flowing down the road.

Anyway, since then it's only been in the mid 30s, rather than the previous 40+s. Pleasant enough for the local ninja brigade to be out jogging after dusk. (For those of us old enough to have played The Last Ninja on the C64 or Apple IIe, you may identify with the white figure...

The only real thing of interest we did on the weekend (apart from catching up on sleep) was go to the local big mall. It's about as big as Knox, but vertical rather than horizontal. On the ground floor is a Carrefours, can't remember if I talked about that store chain yet or not, but a mix between department store and supermarket. They sell everything (well, everything that's for sale here). That includes "standing dispensers" as well as DVD players, Rice Cookers and other things. Never found out what a "standing dispenser" was, but was in bold letters on the front advertisement next to TVs.

Iced tea drinks are cheaper by far than any other drinks here, so we've been having more and more of them, although Tari is a super fan of our local's lime juice too. We bought a stack of bottled water, the trip was about 5km so we Taksi'd there and back. I know it doesn't sound so far, but on these roads, 5km involves walking far further to avoid/dodge/backtrack etc. and it was still VERY hot and humid.

As I mentioned with the advertising, so it is with the actual shop contents. About 1/3 of supermarket space is cosmetics of all sorts. They have about two "helpers" per aisle too, which means you spend more time "permisi" (excuse me) than anything else as you wend your way through the helpful people.

Lunch was at the oh-so-local A&W All American Eatery, a mug of frosty cold root beer and that all American favorite meal, black pepper chicken and rice.

We also found a bookstore that had some books in Ingris (English). Tari got an Ingris - Indonesian dictionary, I got a bilingual maths textbook (for $6!!!). It's only higher level year 12, but Tari thinks we can track down a university bookshop somewhere. And yes, I admit that it's pretty geeky to be doing maths questions, but at least *I* didn't spend part of the afternoon reading a dictionary.

We finally found some dried fruit over here, mango, which is normally fantastic. However, it seems as though they have used at least partly a salt method to dry the fruit. Salty dried mango. I think I'm acquiring the taste. At least, you know me, I'm too "thrifty" to throw things out. It'll take a while, but I'll get through it!

As promised, we are now blending in with the locals.

Tari's giving me the grimace of "I just got back from work after walking 15 minutes in over 30 degree heat and you want me to smile for your blog?" look. It's all the rage in Milan, I think it'll give "magnum" a run for money.

We passed on the plastic sunglass rack outside the supermarket, even though we could have purchased super cheap "special imports" with Gucci, Prada etc. on them (must specially import them from Singapore then slash the price by several thousand percent).

Tari's favorite moment of the day was NOT actually finding the 47 types of dried fish available (seriously, 47! - We all know that 48 would have been overkill, so they stuck with a more modest approach) It was coming out from the supermarket and being stared at (not unusual here) by a 4 year old eating an ice-cream. She made a face and said "mmm, enak?" (enak = delicious). He got a shell-shocked, stunned expression before turning to his mother then laughing and being so excited that it was only the reflexes of his mum that stopped the enak ice-cream from flying across the room. Very very cute!

Treated TJ to an iced latte from starbucks, it was a discount bargain at 50,000. With a croissant. It's still bizarre to see price tags sometimes in the millions!

There have been conferences all weekend here at the uni club. Some of them we've had difficulty deciphering. We think there was a school parent meeting, but there were few kids (though all in immaculate military style uniform) and there was great pomp and circumstance. They do take their education pretty seriously over here, it's very highly regarded to be a teacher (guru) so I get props and niceness rather than slight disappointment or embarrassment. Quite nice really!

One of the other meetings was of shareholders of Garuda. This morning when we came downstairs there were military uniforms everywhere (this time being worn by adults rather than schoolkids). Some sort of military conference.

It's a bit hard for us living here, because most of the conferences seem to stay up late partying, then get up early the next morning while we (well, TJ anyway) has to get up and go to work like normal.

Well that's about it, nothing particularly exciting happening, and I imagine the week will be boring as all heck.

To finish off, Tari's got a story about some of her colleagues when they were in Singapore. Some places expect tips, some refuse tips, it's impossible to tell at a glance. They went out for dinner, paid (including a tip) and left the restaurant. A minute or so later they heard shouting as one of the people from the restaurant sprinted down the road chasing them, waving money until they took it!

Sitting here in the lobby, very hot, definitely dinner time so gonna leave it there, hope this finds you all well and healthy and happy.

Love to you all, Sim.