LifeInContrast.com

I’m feeling very clever. After two and a half months, I finally have broadband internet at home. Scorning dialup access, I tried several DSL and wireless modem options, to no avail. But finally I’ve found a wireless broadband provider that will work with my Mac. Apparently it works on the 3.5G [...]

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Denise, Russell, and I were hanging out at a bar above Bandung with friends on Friday night, eating tasty pizza, enjoying Heineken on draft, and choosing our favorite songs from a free computerized jukebox system. The bar is perched on a hillside with a great view of the city lights, and the wooden architecture [...]

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It continues to amaze me how eager people are to interact with Westerners.  On Friday we took a trip with 80 young children to an activities campground, where 4 teachers from an unrelated school asked if they could take their picture with me - twice!  Then on Saturday I went to a bar with some [...]

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The first pangs of homesickness have finally set in.  Not really strong, mind you, and I’m not even sure I’d call it a proper “sickness”.  Maybe more of a “homemissness.”  There’s a Bob Dylan song from the “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” movie soundtrack, and it rings true for me right now.  In the [...]

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(Video: Dance competition we stumbled upon in Bandung on Saturday night. This clip is six or seven guys who have stripped down to more revealing outfits. Silly, but not as silly as the guys before them who strutted around in cheerleader outfits.)
Hello! It’s Monday morning, and I’m sitting here at [...]

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Since Indonesia could arguably be considered the center of the textile/clothing universe, and since Bandung has the largest proliferation of clothing factories of any city in Indonesia, one could say that Bandung is the BEST place in the world to buy clothes.  It is certainly the cheapest.  I have read that there are no less [...]

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(Mouseover for captions… Click thumbnails for fullsize)
A few weeks ago I discovered a place where I could easily spend hours drooling over the latest technology. It’s called the BEC (Bandung Electronics Center) and it includes 6 jaw-dropping floors packed with every type of techno-gadget you could ever want.
Three of the floors are dedicated to [...]

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(Video: The view from the balcony of our new house)
Hello friends – we’re still alive! Apologies for the lack of communication, we’ve been very busy this week. We finally found a house and moved in on Monday after the landlord tiled the upstairs and painted the walls. The balcony has a [...]

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Denise and I visited the Jogya supermarket the other night, and to our great delight we discovered that virtually everything you could ever want is available for purchase, including many Western items.  Click on the thumbnails below to see the larger images.

That’s right, they’ve even got Starbucks here.

Uh…. Finger Cheese?  No thanks.

Whole squid - wet, [...]

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We’re sitting outside at a very fancy Sundanese restaurant, under a tent with a big lowered table.  There are humongous koi on all sides, in a pond that wraps around all the tables.  Even though this is a fancy meal and we are stuffed, our total bill was only about $7.
The temperature is very cool [...]

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