Last two days...

Okay I lied. Two posts for the weekend. On Sunday, my new friend introduced me to her spa experience. It was pretty amazing to say the least and I splurged. At the same time, I had a pedicure with massage, a hand massage and a "cream bath". For the bath, they wash your hair then slather on some heavy conditioner and massage your head and then your shoulders. It was really something else. However, having it all done at once made it difficult to appreciate each treatment individually. (Photo: TBA).

After such indulgence we headed to the aforementioned mega-mall where my friend wanted to introduce me to the premier movie experience. However, we didn't have enough time and the movie playing wasn't any good - but apparently there is a full leather recliner and a packaged blanket for each movie goer. All for about $10.

Monday (today) I finally had my presentation. Did it go well? I actually don't know. But now it's over with promise of doing more follow up on the project from the US. Tonight I am homeward bound with mixed feelings - it's nice to go home, but it feels too early to leave. It has been a great experience in all ways. Thanks for coming along!

The inner sanctum

It's been a week of work, work, work so I will sum up the weekend in one fell (and hopefully succinct - oh who am I kidding) swoop. Saturday morning, I headed to Pasaraya which is one of the many - and I mean many - shopping malls in the city. Truly this is a city all about shopping malls. I saw one on Sunday (not even the biggest) that reminded me of Mall of America. There are limited green spaces in Jakarta so everyone goes to the mall.

I was on the hunt for one-stop-shopping souvenirs and managed to a find a few among the two floors of handicrafts from around the country. It is a bit overwhelming to say the list that after two hours, I couldn't handle the though of doing any regular shopping for myself. In the afternoon I went over to the neighbor's house - she is also my coworker's next door neighbor and we got to talking Thursday night at a group dinner, where we discovered that she had flown to Bali on the same flight as me. I had seen her at the airport and hadn't recognized her and she hadn't seen me. I think the Jakarta expat world is actually very, very small.

So Saturday we hung out and talked until it was time to go to a pro-Peace Core party being thrown in the "Inner Sanctum" also affectionately known as Wisteria Lane (after Desperate Housewives. In the complex where I have been staying there is the apartment building (where I am), then you go through a gate to the housing complex, and THEN you can go through the big green door into the inner sanctum where anybody who has anything to do with the US embassy lives. (I may have described this before). We went at night and it was rather eerie. It was like a movie set. Very pristine, tree-lined street with no signs or sounds of life except for frogs and crickets. I was told by another party-goer non-inner sanctum liver, that the floor plans of each house are nearly identical which gives it just that extra bit of hmmm.

The sites & sights of Ubud

After a leisurely breakfast including very good black rice porridge with coconut milk and bananas, Dave and Patrick caught a bus to their next destination. It was kind of rainy out, so in lieu of bicycling (and getting really sweaty), Sarah and I hired a driver to take us to the rice terraces. When I had imagined Ubud, I had thought that you would be surrounded by rice paddies and beautiful countryside. Nope, you have to drive to it many kilometers away past lots of tourist art shops. The terraces were pretty enough but as we stood taking in the view with all the other tourists who had likewise hired drivers to take them there, some of the glory of scenery was lost on me.

Back in Ubud, we strolled the streets poking into little clothes and jewelry shops. I ended up with a Balinese style shirt which I half suspect was a demo model but I didn't have time to have anything made, and the seamstress seemed very pleased to sell it too me, so some bartering later, I was the owner. We also made time to eat at a very well known roasted duck restaurant. It was pretty good.

We had just enough time to fit in a little spa treatment before we caught our bus. Sarah was heading to a beach town - which she reported later was really unimpressive - and I was heading to the airport for a luckily very smooth flight home. Though I was borderline tickled and concerned when the flight attendant finished her safety briefing with "And let us all pray to god for a safe flight". Hmmm, always a good idea, however...

All around Ubud in a day

We didn't really have an itinerary once we were in Ubud. But what I did know was we were meeting a friend of mine from Portland who very coincidentally was in Ubud with his 13 year old nephew for exactly the same weekend as us. We had arranged to stay at the same guesthouse so Saturday morning it was great to see a familiar face.



First on the list was to visit the Monkey Temple in the Monkey Forest - a Hindu site that is home to, go figure, a community of monkeys. I am not a fan of monkeys and like other monkeys I've met, these were rather aggressive and weren't above jumping on people who walked too close and grabbing food out of people's hands - as happened to a Japanese tourist who unwisely decided to eat a candy bar in view of a monkey. She shrieked, the monkey retreated a couple feet away, opened the package and chowed down.



Afterwards we headed back to the guesthouse and rented motorbikes (automatics since I am clutch-inept) and took a little tour around the surrounding area, stopping to visit a very old Hindu temple. It should be noted that in Bali there is always a ceremony going on. There are everyday ceremonies, weekly, monthly, yearly...everywhere are food, incense, and flower offerings in handmade palm leaf containers that are woven that morning. This particular weekend was a ceremony acknowledging the return of the ancestors (who had been visiting for ten days) to the spirit world with god. So besides all the tourists in the area, there was a lot of local activity as people were dressed for and celebrating this holiday along with coinciding temple festivals.

In the evening, we caught one of the temple shows. This one was based on a Hindu story and was "narrated" by several circles of men chanting with different characters coming in and out of the circle. The show was followed by a horse trance dance, where a man with a horse head costume (hard to describe) galloped over burning coconut shell coals while music played. We had ringside seats which was great for the show, but meant Sarah and I were liberally sprinkled with soot from the burning coconut shells. (Pictures to follow).

Also today - we found the shop and healer featured in the book Eat, Pray, Love. However, due to the festivals, though she greeted us, her shop wasn't open for lunch. Sarah got her picture taken with the "celeb", and we were on our way.

Bali Bound

Friday was a partial day culminating to my very long and tedious trip to Ubud, Bali. The plan was to meet Sarah at her office at 3p, have her office driver take us to the airport, fly 1 1/2 hrs to Bali, and have the guesthouse driver drive us to Ubud. Simple enough. However, 2:30p Friday afternoon rolled around and their was no driver at my office, or taxi available to take me. I suggested someone take me on their motorbike but there was no one available. Finally, and running out of time, one of the security guards hailed a motorbike "taxi" for me and I spent 20 grimy minutes, speeding through the hectic traffic and pollution of Jakarta to Sarah's office. 1 1/2 hrs later we were at the airport where the plane was first delayed but after we sat down for a quick dinner, there was an announcement that we were actually boarding. Throwing dinner into a take-out box, and hurrying back through security, we figured out which gate to use and boarded. Upon arriving an hour late in Bali, and meeting our driver, his car wouldn't start. It died once on the way to Ubud but finally by 11p we made it to our guesthouse - where the driver requested more money because our flight was late and the guesthouse requested more for the room because the ceiling fan didn't work and we had a/c instead. Not the best way to start a "relaxing" vacation but we were at least happy to have arrived.

Diet histories in the urban slum

Thursday morning, I headed out with a translator to visit four families in the urban slums. We were to collect 24 hr. diet recalls and food expenditure information from two very poor familes and two not-as-poor families. Definitely not scientifically based, but to gain an observational snap shot of actual child feeding practices relate to socio-economic factors.

My translator was an 18 year old half British/half, Chinese/Indonesian girl who is bi-lingual. And while I don't think she completely understood what we were doing, she was a great source of information on local food and customs. This picture is of the 2nd to the poorest of the four families. They live in this one room house along with the 10 year old daughter and husband. The baby is 12 days old and probably because of the bad Jakarta traffic, was born in a taxi.

The interviews were essentially mini case-studies supporting what is already known - almost everyone spends a lot of money on pre-made food and snacks from street vendors which are essentially very poor nutritionally. However, the mom from the poorest family did not have enough money to always feed her family three meals a day let alone afford snacks for her kids. She rarely was able to provide them with a protein source. The second poorest family at least had cow skin on the menu (though the jury is still out on how much protein that contains). Regardless of income, mothers reported that their little kids were filling up on snack foods and not eating meals - and in a report I read, one reason for giving in is the community pressure to keep your kid quiet in such densely populated neighborhoods. So when they throw a tantrum, the mother's first priority is to make the child happy. Spoiling one's appetite is definitely a world-wide, time-honored practice so hardly surprising it exists here as it does everywhere.

The other habits of the urban poor is to shop daily, and cook every morning all the food that will be consumed that day, and without refrigeration, they keep reheating it for each meal until it is gone. It was really interesting getting to three out of the four families' homes - ranging from one room to perhaps four rooms in total. The mother of the poorest family - 7 children ranging in age from 3 to 24 with only one source of income and whatever the oldest sent home as a maid - came out to the alley to talk with us. She had, I believe, put on her best dress and did her hair nicely to meet with us. My translator became increasingly uncomfortable and then told me that the mother was acting very uncomfortable answering questions about how she fed her family within earshot of all the neighbors. Needless to say, we finished the interview without getting all the information we needed. (Pictures coming soon!)

New accommodations

As mentioned earlier, Monday I moved to an expat staff's apartment while she is away traveling. The apartment is part of a giant complex which includes my building, a series of two/three storey homes laid out very similarly to a western condo/apartment complex and a third area which I haven't seen because it's behind the giant "green door" which cordons off the embassy housing from the rest of us. Along with being behind gates with a plethora of gate-men, there are three swimming pools, three tennis courts, a gym, coffee shop and spa. The complex is next to it's own little neighborhood strip mall complete with grocery store and is a five minute walk to the office.

Now that all sounds well and good - and it is. However, as with any move, your first night can be literally a rude awakening. For starters, there is no TV or internet connection in the apartment. Alright no worries there. What was causing me grief was shortly after going to bed, I had the feeling that I was being snacked upon. Flip on the light and yes I had bites but I wasn't sure what kind. So thinking it might be something in the bed, I switched to the other guest room. Things were going better but the occasional sting followed by burning indicated that yes, I was being bitten by mosquitoes. Very silent, very small but very vampire-esque beasts. In half slumber, I realized that they/it was making a small meal of my face. So a little deet mask later, and I managed through the rest of the night. Upon awakening in the morning, I was puffy-eyed and lip swollen and a bit itchy all over.

My colleague upon assuring me that my lip was more pleasantly plump than a fat-lip, arranged with the housekeeper to install a mosquito net that day. Tuesday night was much nicer. In fact, sleeping under a mosquito net has a certain romantic, out-of-Africa feel to it. AND while working from under it last night, I discovered a free wi-fi signal too. I also tried out one of the pools. It was beautiful but a little eerie having a dimly lit, deserted, night swim complete with prayer call and bats for ambiance.