Howie's New Career

Sorry we've been such lazy bloggers lately. When that happens it is usually a sign of either our super-busy exciting lives that don't leave us time to blog or our boring lives that don't involve anything to blog about. This time it is the prior. Haviva's been doing a lot of traveling for work and I've been teaching at a new school that recently opened up here and is run by a friend of mine.

As you'll see from the photo, I've also started a new career as a fashion model. No, not really. One of the guys I play frisbee with is a fashion designer and he puts on an annual fashion show to help raise money for our frisbee tournament in Bali, which is this coming weekend. This year I was lucky enough to be a model. The photos scared my mother, but if you are interested (and I don't see how you couldn't be), more of them can be found here.

A successful second attempt

Sorry we have not updated in a while, I am not sure where this week went, but somehow it is almost over.

We spent last weekend in Pelabuhan Ratu. If the name sound familiar it is because it is the same beach we went to over New Years, where it rained for 3 days straight. Not sure why we tempted fate again, but this time we went with a group of people and came armed with Scrabble and Settlers. (A board game we were introduced to here by friends of ours from Howie’s Ultimate team and are now addicted to.) We also went in a bit more “style” this time, using a car and driver and staying at a private villa right on the beach complete with a maid to clean up the beer bottles after us. Really stunning place.

It was a pretty laid back, up for anything group so there was lots of eating of fresh fish, drinking Bintang and just hanging out. On the way down we stopped about 13 K outside Pelabuhan Ratu and white water rafted the rest of the way. The guides did most of the paddling and worked hard to ram us into as many rocks as possible, just to keep things interesting. Howie, who has been rafting before and claims to always be disappointed in the adventure, reports this to have been a good rafting trip with decent rapids. If nothing else, the view was stunning all the way, complete with giant sun bathing lizards, people fishing, naked kids playing in the water and quaint villages.

The one fault in Pelabuhan Ratu might be the constant waiting for food. At one lunch we asked what the best fish was to get and the reply was, “Well, whatever you order I will have to go out and buy,” which should give you some indication of the speediness of that meal. All tallied, we waited 6 hours for meals one of the days – 2 hours for breakfast (please keep in mind here that we all ordered the oh so complicated American breakfast that includes 2 eggs, hash browns, toast, coffee and juice), 1 ½ for lunch and a whopping 3 for dinner. Dinner we should have just walked out on – the food stank. Luckily everyone was is good spirits and we had cards. Had Howie and I been alone for that we might have killed each other.

The beach itself was perfect. The water was clean, the temperature of bath water and there were just the right waves for frolicking around and not getting sucked into the ocean (although I might have lost my bathing suit a couple times…) It only rained one day (but that was the day we spent waiting to eat) and I got a re-enforcement of my tan without burning, which always makes me happy. It was a great long weekend and we are already planning another trip down – perfect ocean, gorgeous house, good food only 4 hours away. It would just be silly not to.

Organic veggies come with pets in Indonesia!

Last week we signed up to have veggies home delivered from an organic farm an hour or two away (near where I went paragliding, actually). We get an SMS (text message on my phone - everything here is done by text message) each Monday with the available veg and can either order specific stuff or just ask for a grab bag, which is what we'll do unless we start wasting too much stuff. Not only has the veg been really good, but it's for a good cause - the farm takes street kids from Jakarta, houses them, educates them and teaches them how to grow crops.

Last week we received a big bag full of lettuce, fresh peanuts, basil, mint and scallions, plus a special bonus - a big snail which I promptly put into the turtle tank and named Norman. Seemed like a fine idea at the time. Norman, Ernie and Burt lived happily together for a few days but it turns out our little pals are carnivores and they were just feeling out Norman to see if he'd fight back when they tried to eat him. Who knew? Norman had quite a scare and lost a little bit of his hindquarters (and maybe an ear), but I was able to yank him out of there before too much damage was done.

I'm happy to report that after a few days Norman is back to full health. It was touch and go there for a little while, but last night he crawled down from the roof of his new home and ate some broccoli greens, so we're ready to officially declare him a member of the family.

This coming weekend is a long one, so we're heading back to the beach we went to for New Years with some friends. Let's hope we have better weather this time. The rainy season is nearing its end, so we might.

Soundshine '07

Saturday afternoon we attended the Soundshine ’07 festival at the Nikko Hotel downtown. We had only a vague idea of what it was going to be when we signed up – a music festival with 4 bands: 2 Indonesian Indie Rock bands, 1 Swedish band called Club 8 and a Norwegian singer/songwriter named Sondre Lerche (who we discovered has the #1 album on WERS in Boston right now). That much seemed like our thing so, despite the high ticket cost by Indonesian standards (and even US standards, really) we could not pass it up.


Outside of knowing the bands involved, we really had no idea what were getting into. The hotel is quite a swanky one, but the entrance to the venue itself (or standard hotel ballroom as it turned out to be) was through the parking lot. Once on the top level the parking area had been converted into the Dunhill Lounge. For those of you not up on trendy, expensive cigarettes, that is what Dunhill makes. The lounge was swanky with couches and little coffee tables complete with Ikea looking ashtrays and Dunhill brand extra long matches for the taking. There were Dunhill girls walking around selling cigarettes (they confiscated all the cigarettes that were not Dunhill upon entry) and a small array of snack stands including pizza cones (pizza dough shaped into a cone and filled with what seemed to be mostly cheese, but a neat idea) and Cinnabuns. Any other crowd would have been drunk and/or stoned and really enjoyed it, but this crowd was pretty focused on the cigarettes. There was little alcohol around, outside of some terrible vodka drink they could not even give away.

The most shocking thing about this event was the lack of foreigners. It was definitely the hispster neuvo rich with a spattering of expats, but really not more than that. And the locals were certainly into the music. It was fantastic to look around and see everyone singing along in English with Club 8 and Sondre Lerche. They could not have been more excited. It seems that MySpace contributed to the popularity – both foreign bands thanked their MySpace fans for helping them come to Indonesia and both Club 8 and Sondre Lerche seemed a little shocked at the amount of love that was in the room. It was, for lack of a better term, a powerful vibe. (And not one influenced by drugs or alcohol making it feel all that more genuine and fabulous.) We really had a great time and we highly recommend both of the foreign bands, especially Sondre Lerche.

Haviva Feeding the Residents in the Monkey Forest

Ahhhhhh Bali

Sadly I write this entry from our couch in Jakarta. After a weekend in Bali, reality of city and work life, can only be talked about with a hint of sadness. We now know what life could be like and it only took a few minutes to miss it.

When we arrived in Bali Thursday night it was pouring and we really thought the curse of our last beach weekend had followed us. Luckily it had not and although it was a little overcast, I still managed a nice tan, Howie (despite spending all his time under the umbrella) has some bright red legs, there was snorkeling, beach side reading, swimming in the amazingly calm waters outside our hotel, a few hours on a motorbike to see a cliff-side temple and quite a few dunks in the pool. We enjoyed delicious fresh seafood (that had been appropriately bathed in Balinese spices and then perfectly grilled) right on the beach with the water lapping almost at our toes.

We milked the 4 days for all they were worth and even managed to make it to Ubud - the hippy/artsy community in the hills of Bali known for wonderful shopping, great food and the monkey forest. Yes, more monkeys and these were very up close and personal hanging out around temples. Semi- wild these guys were definitely here first, but stay for the tourists bearing bananas and rambutans. Loads of fun.

If we have not made you too jealous, you can take a look at our pics here.

Off to Bali for the weekend, but before we go...

Yesterday was Haviva's birthday. We celebrated with humus, falafel and shisha at the fancy Lebanese restaurant near our apartment. On top of a birthday trip to Bali she also got a purple Buddha painting that had caught her eye at the local 'pop art' shop.

This hasn't been a terribly eventful week. Mostly we've been counting the days until our 4 night weekend in Bali which starts tonight. In one of Haviva's favorite moments of the week she convinced me to eat a deep fried item that ended up being brain. I took one big bite and was pretty sure that was what it was. Looked just like you'd expect a deep fried hunk of brain to look. Tasted a bit like a hard boiled egg. No idea what variety of brain it was - the bill just said 'otak', which means brain.

Have you seen the story in the news about the baby orangutans and baby tigers that are friends (here)? That's not the zoo we visited, but the 'safari park' that is about an hour from here. We're hoping to get there some time. Nice to see some happy news coming out of Indonesia once in a while.