Monday, 21Aug06

Highlights: hanging out with my friend Shinta, and sharing a stomach ache (bad dinner decision) & a strange Japanese movie.

It’s hotter & muggier here than Yogya,,, (I remember being my first thought of the day, as I headed out of the air conditioned hotel). Today is still a holiday, so my check-in at the embassy will have to wait for tomorrow.

My friend Shinta, from Batam, is here & we hung out today. This is the first time I’m meeting a friend from the other side of the internet. We sent some e-mails back & forth when I was in language school (thanks to Jeremy showing me his favorite website) ha ha, and have kept in touch since.

She’s a naval architect working in a shipyard on Batam island (near Singapore) as a ship-building engineer. Pretty smart girl.

We ate at Hoka hoka Bento (which was probably a mistake), and then killed some time in the mall walking around & watching a movie (Ashura),,, which was a strange science-fiction/martial arts movie in Japanese with Indonesian subtitles. I think I got the gist of most of it. Ha ha. Although dinner wasn’t sitting very well for either of us later in the day.