A little Schmutzer on the weekend

This weekend Howie and I went to visit the Schmutzer Primate Center inside the Jakarta zoo. The zoo itself costs about 50 cents and the animals in it seem to be treated that valuably. There are chained elephants available for riding just to give you an example. We did not spend any time in the zoo itself, except to walk to the Schmutzer center. The Schmutzer Center is the complete opposite of the zoo in care and only costs an extra 50 cents to enter. Only housing monkeys (and maybe a loris but we only saw pictures of that) it is pristine. The habitats are large and clearly well made with the animal's best interest involved. They even check you bags for food before you go in and there are no snacks for sale once inside. They took away our water, marking it neatly with Howie's name and returning it to us on our way out.

And the monkeys, wow. we spent most of our time in the orangutan habitat watching the mother and new baby you see below. Although the video is short, I think we spent about 30 minutes there. The other monkeys were pretty amazing too - swinging around and showing off for us clearly used to being on show, but not bothered enough to stop grooming each other. While we are not fans of most zoos and we actually made a point of saying we were not going to go to the one here, the Schmutzer Primate Center is well worth the visit and pictures of swinging monkeys will make us smile for some time to come.

More photos here.

A breath of fresh air

The beginning of this week was pleasantly spent in from Jakarta (less than that if youSukabumi - a small town about 3 hours have a crazy driver who weaves in and out of lanes at about 100 miles an hour.) I had a training for local teachers and Howie decided to come along for the ride. I was trying to convince him to go to the cheese factory I read about, but Howie was more in for the cool mountain and air and a break from city life. And a break from city life it was! A small town nestled in the mountains, the air is a bit cleaner, the sidewalks are actually walkable, and it is cool. (There were several moments when we regretted not bringing any warm clothing and for the first time in a long time, we slept without AC.)

Although I did not see too much of Sukabumi (I really worked those trainees to the bone!) what I did see, I have to say, gave me the warm fuzzies about Indonesia. While it might seem like a gross generalization the people are incredibly sweet. They do not see foreigners often and yet I did not feel harassed when I walked down the street. I went to real local holes in the wall for lunch with the trainees (I mean real local joints where I thought to myself "Well, what is ruder - telling these people I do not want to eat with them or vomiting during training??" I chose the risk of vomit) where I ate delicious food, for less than 50 cents (you heard me, a whole meal for less than 50 cents!!) and was not looked at like that freaky foreigner. Did I mention it was delicious?? It was an absolute pleasure. We were even able to walk around town a bit in the evening - something you just cannot do comfortably in Jakarta. (Jakarta is notorious for not being a walking city.)

Howie did get to see the sights a bit traveling like the locals, there are no taxis in Sukabumi so it is either little minibuses or motorcycles, to a lake, a tea plantation and some small hill town he is not sure the name of. The most fun part for Howie was the multicolored minibuses ranking Sukabumi highest in city organization.

Charming little place that Sukabumi.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Chinese New Year was made a national holiday in Indonesia a few years ago, in part to improve strained relations between ethnic Indonesians and Chinese-Indonesians. There's a large Chinese community here in Jakarta and there are celebrations planned all over the city.

What makes this particularly interesting this year is that the new year is the Year of the Pig - kind of a tough one for the pork-free Muslim government to celebrate. They just issued a set of 12 commemorative stamps celebrating the holiday and managed to leave off the pig.

We celebrated by going out for dim sum. We were hoping for a big bustling restaurant filled with Chinese people, but the place we went on the recommendation of a co-worker of Haviva's was empty. At least the dim sum was delicious, with the exception of the pictured dish, which was called "Salad Spring Roll". I assumed that meant they were some form of vegetarian spring roll. I guess that was the case, but the filling was a bit of a surprise - mayonnaise mixed with fruit salad.

Water gone, smelly mud left

On Sunday I went back to the area near our apartment that Haviva and I visited during the flooding. The flood waters are mostly gone but they've left a nasty mixture of mud, sewage and trash that coats pretty much everything. The cleanup has started and people are slowly moving back in, but it's going to be a while before things are close to normal. The kids we play frisbee with took me to their school, which had been almost completely submerged and it's hard to see them being able to use it any time soon.

Follow this link if you want to see more pics. They're in a folder together with the ones taken during the flooding so scroll down to see the new ones. http://picasaweb.google.com/howieandhaviva/JakartaFlooding

For those who are concerned about us, please don't be. We're fine. To be honest, we could go about our daily lives without ever seeing the effects of the flood if we didn't go looking for them. We're taking the usual precautions - we washed our hands often and didn't drink the water before the flood and that hasn't changed.

Indonesia 1 The Maldives 0

I'm sure it was headline news around the world but, in case you missed it, Indonesia defeated the soccer powerhouse Maldives 1-0 in a 2008 Olympics qualifier the other day and I was there to witness it (along with 7 or 8 other people). It was held in the giant stadium near the city center and the small crowd made a surprising amount of noise. Indonesia dominated the game, but only eeked out the win with a last minute goal.

Update on the flooding

Still no sign of flooding in our immediate neighborhood, but just a mile or so down the road is some of the worst flooding in the city. Frisbee practice was canceled on Sunday due to the flooding, so we donated what we would have paid for the field rental to victims of the flooding in a neighborhood where a lot of the kids we play frisbee with are from. In the afternoon Haviva and I went with one of the frisbee organizers to deliver some medical supplies and food that he had bought with the money.

The video is from a high spot on Jalan Casablanca, the road we live on. Our building is the one poking up from the trees with the funny looking roof. In the other direction is a low area called Kampung Melayu that is completely filled with water. We toured the area with one of the locals that we play frisbee with. Pictures can be found here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/howieandhaviva/JakartaFlooding

The government is now reporting that the flooding has left some 400,000 people homeless. We were told that the area we visited would take about 3 days to drain and a couple of weeks to clean before people could move back into their homes, but forecasters are saying that they expect heavy rains over the next two weeks so it may get worse before it gets better. Many people displaced by the flooding are staying in shelters set up in mosques and schools. The neighborhood we visited had a number of aid stations set up by local civic, religious and political groups and I’ve got to say that it seemed pretty well organized considering where we are and what’s going on.

As bad as the situation is a mile away from us, we are remarkably unaffected. We’re just lucky to live on high ground. The shelves at the grocery stores near us are getting a little bare, but we are able to get everything we need. The roads from our apartment to the city center were open and clean on Sunday and we were able to get downtown without a problem.

Fear not, we will be eating chili on Superbowl Sunday

We won't actually be watching the Superbowl until Monday morning, but Sunday night we are going to celebrate with Haviva's famous Halftime Chili. She may not have been able to follow her recipe to a T but we were able to find a can of Chili Beans and some taco seasoning, which seems to have done the trick (as usual, it's been cooked a day early because it's always best reheated). You'll also notice that the usual secret ingredient, a bottle of Sam Adams, has been replaced with a bottle of Bintang, the local brew.

Sideshow Bob, meet the other Sideshow Bob

Soggy Jakarta

I just returned from three days at the spa (no just fun, I was there for work, but yeah, it was kinda nice with the facials, massages and all) to find a large part of Jakarta under water. It was raining when I left on Wednesday and continued to do so basically the whole time I was gone. On the drive back we passed whole neighborhoods displaced by thick sludgy water up as high as your chest. We were stuck in some pretty awful traffic since many main roads had flooding that forced traffic in all directions. All along the way we saw families walking, somewhat aimlessly with plastic bags clearly containing all that was left. Some areas of the city are simply blocked off all together and my co-workers (many of whom were headed to various hotels and friend's houses since their homes were flooded) said this is the worst flooding Jakarta has seen since 1996.

Having spent the last few days being pampered, today was a sobering reminder that we live in the developing world. Boy am I glad we live on the 32nd floor in that developing world.