LifeInContrast.com

 
(Photo: A massive KFC here in Bandung)

There are many Pizza Huts, McDonald’s, and KFCs in Bandung. In most cases the food is not exactly the same, but it’s still pretty good. The sauces are usually a little different, sometimes sweeter. The ingredients are generally the same, with tiny changes. Combo meals cost $2-3 each, and usually come with rice (or sometimes french fries). Every establishment has fried chicken, including McDonald’s, but none of them have bacon, due to Muslim sensitivities. I just had a “Big Double” at the new Wendy’s in Bandung, and found it to be “okay”. Of course they also had fried chicken. The restaurant interiors are remarkably similar to back home. I admit to eating fast food a bit too often, but not as often as back home. McDonald’s has 24-hour McDelivery - how weird is that?

Thursday the 13th marked the beginning of the holy month of Ramadhan (also known as “the fasting month”), when all Muslims must refrain from food, drink, and sex during the daylight hours.  In fact, nothing must pass their lips during the day, so that includes water and smoking.  Ramadhan is a time when Muslims are expected to show great restraint in emotion, and also tremendous spiritual discipline as they attempt to focus and become closer to God.  Here is a Wikipedia article on Ramadan.

Since the sun rises around 5:00am or so in Indonesia, that means that the morning call-to-prayer now comes around 3:30am, reminding the faithful to wake up and eat something before they start the fast.  I guess it’s more of a wake-up-and-eat than a call-to-prayer.  When the sun finally sets around 6pm, they break their fast, generally with a light meal and some tea to get their digestive systems moving again.  Indonesians often break their fast with friends, and with joy.  In the evenings (and often during the day), they visit the mosque to pray.

For Westerners, it is noticeably harder to get food during the daylight hours, as all of the myriad warungs (streetside food stalls) sit eerily empty during the day.  You can find some restaurants open, but even then you must take care to be respectful, not eating outside or brazenly in front of those who are fasting.  The streets have much less traffic, and the calls-to-prayer seem to happen much more often, almost constantly.

Last night I was talking with my Sumatran friend Dedyan in his brother’s Padang restaurant in our neighborhood.  He explained to me that this month (about 29 days) is about control.  Control of desires, control of hunger, control of emotions and thoughts.   This month is “all about God,” as he put it.  Truly a holy month.

My motivation to post lately has been pretty low, but I assure you we’re still alive.  :)  Oddly, we didn’t feel a thing from the 8.2 earthquake that happened on Sumatra earlier this week, or any of the 40 massive aftershocks that are still terrorizing residents there.

It’s late on Saturday night, and we’ve spent most of the last 2 days battling fevers, stomach cramps, and diarrhea from hell.  And Denise also vomited several times.  Today was basically a wash - napping, reading, drinking fluids.  The fevers and vomiting are gone, but the stomach cramps and diarrhea are still there.  Crappy way to spend a Saturday.  And I must have sat on the toilet like 8 or 9 times yesterday.  It sucks.  Hopefully it will clear up soon.

About midnight last night I was working on my laptop when I felt the whole house shaking, our cement house. I yelled for Denise to wake up and stand under a doorway, although in retrospect all of our doorways have glass overhead. It lasted for about a minute, pretty minor shaking, similar to the tremors we’ve felt back in Seattle. Apparently the epicenter of the earthquake was in Jakarta, about 7.5 magnitude, which makes it a pretty major earthquake. Fairly harmless here in Bandung, but I kept thinking about the predictions of a Bandung earthquake that I’ve heard lately. Thankfully it was no big deal.

Here’s a link to a news story about the earthquake.

Last weekend we took a trip to the province of Garut. First stop was the traditional village of Kampung Naga, where they eschew the use of electricity and live the way their ancestors did. It was a little depressing to see antennas sticking out the top of some of the huts, but it didn’t detract from the natural beauty.

(View near Kampung Naga - click thumbnail to enlarge)

Then we headed to our hotel, and later on to some hot springs with an awesome water slide. Read all about it on Denise’s blog. We also visited the resort-y Kampung Sampireun with beautiful uplit palm trees, a fantastic buffet, and traditional Sundanese dancing (see below).

After a crappy night’s sleep, we headed up to the smoldering volcano known as Papandayan. On the way we saw this other “floating mountain”:

Check out the pictures below of Papandayan, one of the most active volcanos in Java, and know that the sulfur crystals were truly that yellow, and the smoke was extremely noxious to the nostrils.

Then we traversed a small lake to an island that holds the oldest stone Hindu temple on Java. It’s also very possibly the smallest Hindu temple in the world - it couldn’t have been more than 50 square feet of land area. A little bit anti-climactic, but the trip on the bamboo boat provided some stunning views:

This weekend we are off to Pangandaran (the most popular beach on Java) and the smaller Batu Karas beach.  Can’t wait to catch some waves and see if I can remember how to surf.

Here’s my new motorbike - a 2006 Honda Supra Fit that I bought for about $900 USD. It’s got some serious power! Now I just need to practice more so that I can actually ride the thing. Then maybe I can join that motorcycle gang.

(click thumbs for larger images)

Here’s a cool view that I found when I was out practicing:

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 cellular networks, and claims speeds up to 3.6 Mbps. We’ll see about that. But it’s blazing fast, and I can have broadband wireless access ANYWHERE I go. Very nice. Here is the device that makes me happy (the modem, not the beer):

Update: My download speeds are approaching the realm of cable internet.  Woohoo!

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 and candles complete the treehouse feeling.

About 10 very friendly guys were sharing our large corner booth, and they kept pouring Jim Beam in a glass for me to drink. Before long I was sitting in the middle of them, talking and laughing loudly. They seemed nice enough, if a little more confident than your average Indonesian.

Only after they left did our Indonesian friend explain that they were members of the largest motorcycle gang in Bandung, and he was on pins and needles the whole time they were there. Apparently they were dangerous guys. I guess now I have friends in low places.

In other news, I bought a motorcycle today. It’s a 2006 Honda Supra Fit, and it cost me around $900. I’ll post a picture soon.

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 friends, where a cover band was playing “YMCA” and other songs.  They asked me to come on stage and do the hand motions, and when I said I was from America, everyone cheered.  Then they pulled me on stage a second time for the grand finale, along with my friend and fellow teacher Russell.  After the band was finished, a DJ spun house/techno music, and everyone wanted to dance with us.  Super happy just to see a bule (Westerner) cutting loose with them, I guess.  The previous weekend I hung out with the neighborhood guys for a couple of hours, drinking some awful ginseng cherry brandy and singing while they played guitar.

In other news: We’ve been here for two months now, and it’s starting to feel like real life.  Everything appears to be sorted out, for the most part.  Our pembantu (maid) comes twice a week to do the laundry, wash our dishes, clean the floors, etc.  We leave the house most mornings around 9 or 10am to get a head start on our lesson planning.  Some days I catch an ojek (motorcycle ride) part of the way.  This morning my ojek driver, a very friendly local guy who has latched onto us, told me that it was a good morning because he’d only had a little to drink thus far.  He offered me a drink, but I turned him down.

And I test-drove a motorcycle, sort of.  I began with 10 failed attempts at trying to get it into first gear, and stalling it instead.  Finally I got it into first gear, shot halfway across the parking lot before remembering the brakes, and promptly stalled it again.  The seller said she wouldn’t sell it to me unless her brother could give me a free lesson.  I decided to keep looking for another bike anyway, though.

Here’s a silly picture:

When I said I was going to send a p*n*s photo, what did you think I was referring too?  Sheesh.

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 chorus it mourns, “Billy you’re so far away from home.”  Listen to the song here.

So I’ve been outside of the USA for about 7 weeks now, and I’m starting to realize some things.  First, I will always be a semi-celebrity everywhere I go.  Even just walking down the street means there will be many eyes on me.  This is a blessing and a curse – it is nice to have people so willing to smile at me and say “Allo mister”.  But sometimes you just want to blend in, and that’s just not possible most of the time.

On a more amusing note, last night Denise and I were taking a taxi home with some furniture and groceries, in heavy traffic along a main thoroughfare in north Bandung.  There are generally troubadours with guitars and violins along this street, playing to the cars and angkots.  But on weekends there are often huge throngs of high schoolers, singing in unison to cars and acting like… well, wacky high schoolers.  On this particular occasion they caught me smiling, and suddenly swarmed the taxi as if that was a green light for wackiness.  They spread themselves out on the hood of the taxi, pounded on the doors and roof, took pictures like paparazzi, and sang a song to the smiling bule (Westerner).  The taxi driver pulled up the e-brake and we all had a good laugh while they sang their hearts out.  Maybe they thought I was a movie star.  Or perhaps it had something to do with the school term ending that Friday.

My second observation is that being unable to communicate meaningfully with the vast majority of people around you is very frustrating, and sometimes depressing.  We’re taking Indonesian language lessons, but we’ve had to cancel the last few due to schedule conflicts.

My third observation is that buying the cheaper version of something means it is likely to break quickly.  If you want it to last, go ahead and purchase the more expensive option.  In the U.S., sometimes you can buy a cheapo version and have it work just fine.  Here in Indonesia, it feels like many things have failed recently at our house because they were cheap, and it’s kind of exasperating.  Our kitchen faucet suddenly stopped working, meaning we couldn’t turn off the water (yikes).  Our drinking water dispenser started leaking all over the table.  And the height of irony: our voltage regulator (surge protector) electrocuted me twice today.  Go figure.

Looks like it might rain soon, which is odd because the rainy season ended 3 weeks ago.  I’m off to go play Playstation 2 with the local lads, for the bargain rate of 30 cents per hour.  Planning to get a motorbike soon, for the convenience and freedom to explore that it gives.