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.

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.

The day I became a celebrity...

A Celebrity Fitness member that is. It seems my never ending search for a good yoga class ended at the mall on Sunday when Mumu, a fine Celebrity Gym salesman, lured Howie and me into the gym with the promise of cheap membership rates and the best gym in town. The tour and "sell" lasted about an hour and included such highlights as pointing out every other white person in the gym and an analysis of my workout motivation and several questions about my goals. Mumu informed me that after 6 months I can look like J.Lo. Before I go any further, I must remind you that going to the gym is a new fad here in Indonesia. Most people who walk through the door have never been to a gym before and have no idea how to use the equipment or what it means to go to the gym, other than what they have seen in the movies. This place is what you see in the movie and while Mumu was not lying and they do have the most modern machines in all of Indonesia, you could not help but get that cheesey 1980s feeling. On the plus side, there are tons of machines and everything is new. The locker room is gorgeous and clean and there are nice showers, a steam room and a sauna. There are literally about 75 classes to choose from and that includes a plentiful amount of spinning and yoga. And they gave me a free gym bag.

On the negative side the gym is filled with the most intense pounding techno music. I am talking overpowering cannot listen to your iPod loud. And then there is the glass. In the vain of letting people know you are wealthy enough to be a gym member, the gym is encased in glass and wraps around the second floor of the mall so anyone heading from Starbucks to the Hard Rock Cafe on the escalator can watch you on the bike, treadmill or even in your downward dog. Call me prude, but I prefer a more private setting when I am trying wrap my legs around my neck in yoga.

And, for the record, the name is a lie. The only celebrity I have seen is Ali G who runs the hip hop dance aerobics class and uses moves that puts the Fly Girls to shame. I could stay on a machine for hours watching that class.

For a good chuckle, check out the website: www.celebrityfitness.com

More Movies and Eating

Another weekend, another movie and another evening spent searching for a new restaurant...

Not sure if it made the news anywhere else in the world but an Indonesian film maker just released a film called Long Road to Heaven, based on the Bali bombings, that's been reasonably big news here. As you can imagine it is a pretty controversial topic here. The Indonesian censors had a few things to say about the intertwining of religion and terrorism, but what was left was still pretty contentious. I wish I could say differently, but the movie really wasn't very good. It had a bad TV movie feel, complete with bad acting and a pretty thin script.

After that we attempted to try a Middle Eastern restaurant we had read about but found it to no longer exist. A nice woman in the place that replaced it sent us nearby to a whole street of Middle Eastern restaurants where we had delicious humus and baba ganoush at Al Jazeera restaurant. Just the change of pace we were looking for.

Hi Mom

My mom complained to me about the recent dearth of blog postings, so here goes...

Nothing much to report, really. Most of our excitement comes in the form of planning weekend getaways and finding new places to eat. We've also started doing some more cooking. Our local Carrefour grocery has a nice fish counter so we tried the salmon the other day and are planning to try the tuna next. Not cheap - about $8 a pound for the salmon - but quite tasty. They also sell a decent fresh pre-cooked pizza dough, so we've been making some homemade pizzas.

The other day we made a trip to the fancy grocery store that carries lots of imported stuff that we can't get at the Carrefour and came home with tortillas, enchilada sauce, Heinz ketchup, cheddar cheese and white wine among other goodies.

Went to see Babel over the weekend. I guess it was good, although spending two hours thinking horrible things are about to happen to anyone who is on screen isn't really all that enjoyable.

Yes, I did get to watch the Patriots game live at 6AM on Monday morning. Good game but not a good result. I'm sure I'll watch the Superbowl, too, but it'll be a different experience with a bowl of frosted flakes and a glass of orange juice rather than a bowl of chili and a beer.

PS The photo comes from our wanderings around Chinatown. We had high hopes for finding some good Chinese food there and we did, but it was at a big chain restaurant, The Duck King. It's a sad reality of eating in Jakarta - we end up eating a lot of meals at chain restaurants and in malls, but there's actually good food to be found there. It's not "mall food" as we think of it in the west, but good quality food that you'd find at a stand-alone restaurant elsewhere.

Introducing Burt and Ernie

Introducing Burt and Ernie – the newest additions to Casablanca Mansions! We had seen turtles being sold on the street when we first got here, but these little guys were rescued from a tank at the Carrefour a couple weeks ago. Treated like kings, they reside in our extra bedroom, in a large Tupperware bin. We think they were a bit traumatized in the store – they seem to burrow in the rocks when they hear us coming – but with the way Howie spoils them, they should soon learn we are friend not foe. They have a ton of space in their Tupperware toy box home, with large Jakarta rocks to sun on and plenty of room for swimming laps. There are even nooks to hide in. These guys live the life! We could not be prouder parents. Enjoy the show!