Monday, 11Sep06

Highlights: visited UGM campus, adjustments on suits, visited Realia, dinner (fingers & sambal) with Nina

Picking up Nina from her Kos & taking her to & from school at 6:30 in the a.m. as her personal driver is a fair price for borrowing her scooter all week I think! (= gets me out of the house early. Ha ha

I went to UGM campus after & continued working on some projects in the “ruang baca”, my old stomping grounds… and before you knew it, half of my former tutors, teachers & USINDO (INCULS) staff were coming by to see me & say hello! (= Sinta, Erlin, Yudith, Yaya, Ibu Daru, pak Djarot, pak Rukhi, and others. It was great to see them all.

There are a lot of new faces around campus these days! Summer break is definitely over. There are 50+ foreign faces from around the globe (China, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Korea, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan…) sitting in classes that I used to sit in. It’s nice to see the classes full, and so many people with that look on their face like everything is new (they’ve been here a week),,, but I miss having my USINDO friends around.

I mooched a free lunch from their Orientation (= ha ha, then picked up Nina from school. A few months ago I arranged to have 3 suits tailored for me at Merrie’s (my 2nd former USINDO tutor) dad’s shop. The jacket fits great! The pants are a bit wide in the leg,,, baloony maybe. He’s taking them in. I think it’ll come out to $50-$60 something each (= can you beat that?

Next project, extend my return ticket to Jakarta & pick up a bahasa Jawa dictionary (so hopefully I can continue learning a little Javanese)

I can’t tell you how far a little bahasa Jawa goes when meeting people on the street here. (= it’s great the reaction I get as a bule who makes an effort to say “hello” in Javanese. I don’t know how,, but I’m going to try to capture it on video for you one of these days (= there’s a look of shock & glee,, wrapped up in a singular expression… that’s just priceless. (=
I’m going to try to expand my vocabulary beyond my 10 expressions.

There are a lot of language schools here in Yogya in particular. I’ve heard Yogya compared to Boston in several ways- besides having similar populations (600,000 +/-), both are somewhat culturally mixed because of the students that come from all over to study here, and the number of colleges & universities here is high (80 +/-).

I dropped by a few (Elti, Puri, Realia) to make sure my boss at the embassy has enough info to give to any Americans working at the embassy in Jakarta who want to learn bahasa Indonesia… it’s a worthwhile effort.

Nina was excited to get me out for dinner tonight, because she couldn’t wait to see my first experience eating Javanese style,, which is to say- eating with my fingers. (=
It was the sambal I was worried about… but I have to admit it was fun.

A couple things about typical “dining” a la Javanese:

we sit on the floor, on bamboo mats, after taking our shoes off. Sitting cross-legged for extended periods of time on a hard surface… well I have to admit- my feet hurt after about 5 minutes. Nina can sit there like that for hours. I don’t know how. I was constantly squirming around to find a comfortable position, and my legs fell asleep twice. (=

we ordered a bowl of white steamed rice, and a separate bowl of whatever we wanted to mix with it. I got chicken, and stole half of Nina’s fried egg & tempe (fried peanut & tofu?). It all comes with sambal- a spicy red chile sauce. Yeah, spicy allright!

We are given a small bowl of water to wash our fingers with,,,

And then we break off pieces of the chicken, egg, fish or whatever- add a touch of sambal, mash it together in a bite-size ball of rice with our fingers & insert in mouth. (= it’s a messy process, and I was never one to admit to any talent for enjoying spicy food- but a challenge was set, and attentive eyes were watching,,, so there really was no weasling out of this.

My mouth was on fire after the 3rd bite. Felt like a tap dance going on inside my lips… or a hotter version of the pins & needles. A “no smoking or open flames within 50 feet” sign would have been helpful here- because the sensation felt highly flammable. I splashed some sweet tea on it- I’m not sure that helped. Time was the only remedy… and an effort to adjust as quickly as I could muster.

Victory was measured in terms of me still standing at the end of the night… ha ha.
The restaurant had a very cool atmosphere though. Very open space with large, open windows. There was music you could dance to in the background, and a peaceful rice paddy just outside, with fireflies swirling around. Interesting contrast.

All in all, it was an enjoyable dinner.

Just as a note: for all of the significance of today’s date back home, I saw a few mentions of commemorations done on an official level & fielded maybe two questions- but nothing reached out & grabbed the daily consciousness of average Indonesians from Yogya more than usual. It would have been easy to miss here.