Working backwards:
-I've been struggling with my key and the front door for weeks. On the inside, it slides right in; from the outside, I fight and fight until I muscle it in. I think that muscling finally backfired, as today I could. not. open. the. door. Atik finally heard my struggles and came down to open it for me. We held our keys up next to each other and sure enough, there is a chunk of the first "hill" on the key's body that is missing from mine. She's going to see about getting me another one. Please, I hope!
-Before that, I decided to give satay another try, especially after the carbo-loading of today (see below). I asked Nita for the best place around here and she directed me to a stand close to Wolter Monginsidi, the main road. It is extremely close to the office, and I walked in a giant circle trying to get there, but I made it--and FINALLY found the supermarket Julia has been raving about. As she said, it is like Total, but twice as big--it has a TON of stuff, minus granola bars, or anything remotely healthy that isn't fruit or produce (does anything healthy exist outside of ex-pat-catering super-markets???)
-I also realized on my walk home my view of Jakarta has changed immensely from my arrival: when I first got here, my fears on my walk home consisted of terrorists, robbers, and lecherous men looking for a white girl to attack. Now, I am afraid of giant rats, giant cockroaches, and bats, all of which exist due to the piles of trash that never seem to be picked up (I saw a garbage truck on my walk to work this morning, but somehow, the roads still smell like a mixture of sewage, petrol, and rotting fruit). The walk to work looks like this:
-Another observation of Julia's that I completely agree with is that people here do not cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze. Perhaps we only know this due to some CDC or WHO campaign from our childhoods, but I have taken it for granted. Now, not only am I afraid of what the pollution/cigarette smoke/rotting trash are doing to my lungs, I now have to worry about all the germs mixed in with the particulate matter. And TB is common here. Great.
-Julia and I did discover a little piece of heaven across the street today, though: Helen's Cakes. Not only do they have gourmet cakes for a third of the cost that they would be in New York, they have fresh coffee, salads, and other non-Indonesian foods. I will be back. A lot.
We purchased a tiramisu cake to commemorate Hugh's departure for Sri Lanka:
Apparently it is tradition for the receiver to cut a piece of cake and hand it to someone he or she is feeling particularly happy toward, then someone else should take over, but we made Hugh do most of the work:
And the next reason I will be coming home with the summer sepulu (sepulu = ten, my idea of Jakarta's version of the freshman fifteen) goes back to lunch, where we celebrated the fourth of July with one line of the Star Spangled Banner, a ton of pizza, and cokes (the burgers here aren't quite up to par, and the beer too expensive):
That pretty much summed up my Fourth festivities (except for my breakfast; see below)--the American Embassy was all exclusive about their party (hint, hint--us lowly Americans need some celebrating too!)
-I also still haven't figured out the texting culture--one of my co-workers pulled out her phone and started texting while my boss, who had come into the office specifically to talk just to her about something, was in the middle of talking. Kari and I speculate that it honestly might just be the culture--for example, she told me that in Malay, there is no word for "please" unless you are talking to someone equivalent in rank to the king.
-Common sense, or what we in America would term common sense, also seems to be lacking sometimes. Case in point: when asked about why there was no pre-test for one of the LWI trainings, the answer was that our local NGO partner "forgot" to administer it, and SFCG was not present yet, so couldn't enforce the requirement (like they keep "forgetting" to send us the lists of names of attendees of each training, lists that were complete at the trainings themselves, but I digress). Fine. However, when asked why there was no post-test, the answer was "well, because there was no pre-test." Julia and I remain baffled.
-As I said I was working backwards, I am missing an important part of my morning and Fourth of July celebrations. Total did not have chopped fruit of a variety I wanted, so I bought an eighth of a watermelon, chopped it up at work, and enjoyed it for breakfast. YUM. America, I miss you sometimes, but I also loved that I paid less than one dollar for that quarter.
That's all for now, folks! Off to submit some EIW bids, upload some Borneo pictures, and maybe get some sleep. Coming up next will be a Borneo post!
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