Bali Bombers and The Mentang Kid

In stark fashion, two contrasting news stories have dominated the news here the past few weeks…providing interesting and divergent thoughts on pluralism, rule of law and forgiveness:

Last Sunday morning, the Indonesian government executed 3 men for their involvement in the 2002 terrorist Bali nightclub bombing that killed 202 people. The execution led to stepped up security measures following urgings by the prisoners for people to avenge their deaths. Following advice from the U.S. embassy, we “laid low” last weekend to avoid potential mobs of angry people. The mobs seemed to be contained to the bombers home villages.

Less than two weeks ago, the U.S. elected Barack Obama as new President. Policy aside, President elect Obama represents the best of what America stands for to Indonesia: opportunity, achievement, equality, change and diversity. Add to that the fact that he lived in Jakarta for 4 years as a young boy and that his half sister is Indonesian and you have Obamamania. In fact, he is known as the Mentang Kid here (Mentang is the neighborhood he lived in Jakarta).

sweeda

Tris and Kim's Blog

Here is an interesting story from our friends' blog regarding Janet. Warning: if you are squemish about snakes, you may want to skip this!

http://trisandkim.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-day-and-its-only-11-am.html


Go to the November 6 entry.

Bulan Bahasa

Eric and I blending in with the locals

This week SPH celebrated Bulan Bahasa, the equivilent to Heritage week in North America. A chance for everyone to immerse themselves in all things Indonesian: Language, culture, food, music and dress. Some highlights:

• The canteen sold exclusively Indonesian food. My personal favorite for this week was Sate (pronounced sat-ay) which are skewers of grilled chicken with peanut sauce along with rice wrapped in banana leaves. (I'm also a fan of rendang which is curry and chili sauce over rice and beef or chicken). On the weird side, people here love congealed things in their drinks. It's rather disturbing to get a slimy ball of jello in your mouth as you are drinking fruit juice.


• The kids had competitions in Bahasa (language) which included debate, music composition, dance, and monologue. The week concluded with a large assembly showing off all the winners of the competitions.


• Friday was Batik day when students were allowed to wear traditional batik shirts, dresses and skirts. Eric and I joined the fun, as you can see above.

Talk more later,

steve

Navigating an Indonesian bathroom

Its great to blog again after a two week break! In the future I hope to spend some time talking about people and culture. However, I thought for this week I would sink to the "lowest common denominator" and engage in some "potty talk".

Finding one- If in a public place, you must first find the toilet. While seemingly mundane, this can be an urgent event living in a third world country.

Here are the names (and the first words I learned after stepping off the airplane here):

• Pria- Men
• Wanita- Women

Walking in- All bathrooms here have floor drains. Unfortunately, they don't have traps. This produces two unpleasant side effects when walking in:

• sewer gas floats up smelling up the bathroom (all the time)
• rats climb up and try to push through the drain. We haven't experienced this but friends of ours have.

Choosing a commode: Squating or sitting- Historically, Indonesians use squating toilets. There is two reasons for this: fear of things dirty (sitting where other bare butts have been) and tradition (People here can squat for hours working at various jobs including rice fields). Therefore the preferred commode is a squatting toilet like the one below (which in some locations is the only option):

Imagine trying to enjoy a Sunday morning paper using this thing.

Traditions die hard. Many people here refuse to use a sitting toilet and if faced with no other option will try to mount a toilet and squat on it. That requires signs like this one:

Eric and Neil find particular pleasure in finding signs like this.

Cleaning up- Cleaning up takes on a ritualistic purpose here. This includes rules of which hand to wipe with (left) and a "leave no trace" philosophy (as best I can tell). That means in addition to sinks nearby, all toilets here have sprayers like this next to them:

Sprayer for all your bathroom cleaning needs.

Bathrooms have wet floors most of the time because of this (a pet peeve of Janet) and often the commode itself is wet (another pet peeve of Janet). I don't mind this because it actually misdirects some of the flak aimed at me (and the boys) for our lack of aim. :-)

Thats about it for now! Have a great week.

Don't forget to email or comment.

Top Ten

Even though there are certainly things we don’t miss about New Mexico (2 hours to a big city, wind, dirt, trash on side of the road, lack of culinary choice), nonetheless, in a fit of nostalgia, here are the……

Top ten things we miss about New Mexico

10. Blending in. This needs to be qualified since an Anglo doesn’t exactly blend in in New Mexico. However, we stand out here in many ways (language, income level, skin color, cultural mannerisms) that we don’t in New Mexico.
9. Rains that cool off things
8. Dry heat, change of seasons, and at sometime in the coming months, cold weather. The video link below made us laugh about weather in the U.S.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siM6CPniUgU&feature=dir

7. Limited number of mosquitoes.
6. Cool, quiet mornings.
5. Not locking up everything all the time.
4. Walking to both school and church
3. Blue Sky and brilliant sunsets
2. In no particular order….La Baracca, Grandpa’s Grill, Jerry’s , Gennero’s,
1. Red rocks and hogbacks.

Leaving friends off the the list shouldn't be misinterpreted. We really miss all our friends and family as well.

We are entering the grind here. After settling in, I now face 8 or so weeks of solid teaching before the holidays. This happens as school gets more and more busy. Therefore the updates to the blog will be less frequent. See you in two weeks,

sweeda

Time for another game! Listed below are products and things. For each of them classify them in 3 ways: Frequently seen in Indonesia, Rarely seen in Indonsesia, Never seen in Indonesia:

Products

Wine and Liquor

Beer

Hamburger

Bacon

Clothes dryer


American Brands:

Oreos

Buicks

Fords

Starbucks

Dell Computers


Household and Neighborhood things:

Stray dogs

Escalators

Vending Machines

Pianos and Keyboards



Answers

products

Wine and Liquor- Never (They are available at duty free shops in certain parts of Jakarta)

Beer- Always. Beer is sold in small quantities (as singles) almost every where (even street vendors). The Indonesian brand is Bintang (which was started by Dutch Heineken during colonial rule and is still owned by them)

Hamburger- Always. Almost every store carries hamburger

Bacon- In a Muslim country, Pork products are extremely rare. I know you can get them but haven’t seen it yet.

American Brands:

Oreos- Always. Every store carries Oreos

Buicks- haven’t seen one yet. Few Chevy’s are around.

Fords- Ford Everest (Explorer), Focus and Escape are quite common

Starbucks- Lots of them including the mall about 2 miles from our house. Their prices are as high as they are in the U.S.

Dell- haven’t seen any Dell computers. Other computer names (canon, HP, ect….) are common.

Household and Neighborhood things:

Stray dogs- Muslims consider dogs to be dirty. Dogs are owned by Chinese and Western Expats. Road kill consists of goats.

Escalators- Escalators are everywhere.

Vending Machines- Never. With labor costs so low, for the price of a machine you can employ someone to sell the same products for 2 years.

Pianos and Keyboards- Every mall has many different piano and keyboard dealers.

I could go on with many other things but won’t. If you are interested in other products, please post the question in the comments or in an email and I will reply. As always, I enjoy emails.

Have a great week.

Seeing the sights

Here is a few pictures from the places we visited during our week off:

Janet and I in front of the Dutch colonial headquarters in Jakarta (called Batavia by the Dutch)

Neil on the Ferris wheel at Dufan (Dunia fantasi), an Indonesian Amusement park.

Janet and Hope on a little roller coaster at DuFan

Family in a gondola at Taman Mini Indonesia (Indonesia attempt at Epcot Center)

Hope in front of a Peacock at Taman Mini

Talk more in a week. sweeda