Christmas holidays in Jakarta

 

We are very, very lucky to be in the tropics.  Nevermind that EVERYTHING grows at warped speed.. plants and bacteria alike.  There is no "I have to pee" once the coat, hat, scarf, boots, and mittens are on. But, it's true too that we miss cold weather in which to have a proper Christmas dinner.  Alas, we are not yet Australians.

Here's one that freaks me out.. dead trees, spray painted silver, hung with cotton balls, and strung with white lights. There's something about it that's just wrong.  What was rather fun was the Lego display at the closest mall:

Eiffel Tower!

 

love the chickens pulling Santa

 

and the dogs with reindeer ears :)



 

Raiding the stockings!!

 

Look what I got for Christmas!!!

 

Christmas cuties!! (nevermind the no-pants!)

happy man amidst LOADS of presents

happy dog with pig tail

 

...and finally, my first attempt at pannetone.. Zeric and Jaffa say it was AWESOME :))  Next year, I might be able to get it made for Christmas morning -- rather than the morning after Christmas morning!

Spa day

In celebration of school being over for a few weeks, a bunch of moms took ourselves and a bunch of kids to the spa for massages.  Everyone had a GREAT time.  Memere ran off with Ibu Marni to a single room.. as Marni is the only one that can rub the knots out of her back.  We stuffed the three giggly girls in room with three brave women.. Lou and her friend Leslie took a twofer, and Eben and I took the other two-bed room.  He and I chatted a little, then he got quiet and got a blissful glazed look on his face.  Overall, it was a lovely morning .. to be followed by a wonderful Pakistani lunch made by Afia (who had to forego the spa experience to cook for us -- a true friend!!).

School holiday show

The school show this year was solidly bilingual, and completely multicultural. 

Even Americans (our kind!) were included.

Because we are big kids now, there was a lot of poem-memorization involved. The one that Jaffa recited had something to do with Santa not getting presents, and having to call in the president of the United States to help make a decision about getting him one.  The one they finally offered him had something to do with peace (a branch? a dove?). Eeeesh.. when the grown-ups don't even understand the thing..

Eben's class was funny.. and Eben was an elf.  He makes a good elf!

 

What a cute bunch of kids!!  And their fab teacher Mr. Touboul (no, it's not Mr. Bean!!) 

cute dogs pix

You can skip this one if you don't like cute dog pix.. but Blu is really a funny guy, and we got some of it recorded digitally:

 

Sleeping on his favorite toy, asparagus.  We learned that Mercy was finally starting to feel better when she began stealing asparagus from Blu and running around the house teasing him!

Blu really likes Mercy's bed, and this time.. she got there first, so he accommodated!

How can you not love this face??

 

 

"Yes, I have permission to be on the couch.  Memere gave it to me!!"

 

"Are you SURE that's your bed???"

We call this 'Olivia belly'.. but Blu does a really good rendition of it!

SBY - Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

International anti-corruption day and I was privileged to be invited to attend President SBY's speech.  He started his speech saying "Last year on this day, I stressed four points.  They are still very important..." and then went on to repeat his speech from last year.  I guess that means he remains committed to anti-corruption.  This is a good thing ya? -



They sure had really nice statues!

With Juani, the Chief of Party of our anti-corruption program, SIAP ("Ready") - zks

10 nights of Hannukah

 

 

My cute children are spoiled.  In addition to the well-present-ed eight night of Hannukah they had.. they had a supplemental night with gifts from their aunties and uncles that came in memere's suitcase.

They were thankful for allllllllllll of the gifts they got, even if they were so overwhelmed that they can't find room in the playroom for all of the fun.

 

Then, a few days later (but still early in the holiday season), we had a Hanukkah party with about 110 of our favorite friends.  Wow!!! It was fun :))) 

(but how do I still have 10 pounds of shredded potato in my freezer??)

I may have mentioned this before, but Indonesia is a GREAT place to have a fried-food-party as Indonesians are really good at frying food!!  So, we got Sri and Ati moving on the latkes, then moving on the donuts.. and we ate good!!  We even had our driver, Pak Sukijan, working the meat-on-skewers over the frill (even heard of satay??). 

 

Indonesia is the best place to have a Hanukkah party!!

Me and Caitlin (who has since move to Anchorage, Alaska) looking festive!!

Me reading the story of Hanukkah, after showing the lighting of the menorah.. and this is just a FRACTION of the people stuffed in our house!!

Mem is here!!

...and we all really love sniggling with her!!

East Java to Maluku province

 

 

Plenty of trips in the past couple months including an award ceremony in East Java Province that we sponsor to help provide incentives for use of best practices in local government management.  We awarded a dozen districts prizes for everything from financial transparency to improving business enabling environment.  I'm in the photo below on the top row.  Can you find me?

From East Java we continued to Maluku Province and caught a ferry to Buru Island that evening. 

Buru is Indonesia's equivalent of Alcatraz except in Indonesia, it was primarily populated by political prisoners.  All night trip included a five person bunk!

The island is undergoing a gold rush with miners digging up the hills with little oversight and no safety or environmental practices in place.

Below is a traditional still for producing eucalyptus oil.  Boiled in the larger bucket on the right (with a fire below, the distilled oil is cooled through the second bucket and drips out into containers below).  Powerful smell!

Buru ponies at the mayor's house.

A water taxi in North Maluku.  By fare the cleanest place I've been in Indonesia.

The main towns are located at the bases of a series of volcanic islands. 

 

Sunset soccer match in Ternate, North Maluku.

 

 

 

Ternate city in the rearview mirror.

Thanksgiving dinner

Our Thanksgiving dinner included a few good friends, and a lot of good food.  Our friends included the American clan of Afia and Amira, who brought their New York accents (and left the Pakistani ones home for the evening).  Also included was the British contingent (Lou, Kutty and Malvy); the Brits have been known to call this day "good riddance day".. but I'm sure those words have never been uttered by these friends. 

 

Side note: Some time later, I got a text from Afia saying that Jaffa told her daughter Amira that I said that the Americans used to be slaves of the British.  It was story time before bed and I immediately diverted Zeric from Little House on the Prairie to "Colonization 101".  Now we have clarity between slavery and colonization.  I think.

 

We also had the Dutch (who know nothing of colonization, ahem) at our table, with the Van Berlo family--including Lisette's mom who had never been to a Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a nice dinner.. included the turkey, stuffing, green beans, mashed potatoes, cranberry chutney.. and three kinds of pie (pecan, apple, and pumpkin). 

 

grown-ups table

 

kids' table

happy, fully kids!!

 

Vespa friends

I sure love my classic Vespa, she is a 1965 model and always draws stares from passing fellow drivers.  The best thing is the built in brotherhood of Vespa riders.  Almost anytime she brakes down, which happens about every 5th trip it seems, someone stops to give a hand.  In this case, a Vespa brother who sanded my carbonized spark plug clean. zoooom zoooom as good as new and off I go.

 

Zeric in Bangkok

 In Bangkok it is apparently all about elephants, at least at my hotel.  They had invaded the bath and the bed on arrival! 

A week long training on impact evaluation for Democracy and Governance took me on my first trip to Thailand, and unfortunately, the combination of long hours in training each day and political protests that blocked streets and caused many neighborhoods to be unreachable meant I really didn't get out much.  I did have a chance to sample some the ubiquitous and delicious Thai street food.  In this case a long row of venders in a close-by shopping mall.  Food court heaven!!

I also had the chance to share a terrific short set of really fine tenor AND soprano jazz at a nearby club with my colleague Nenad. The band was all very young Thai and really good musicians.  The headliner, name I don't recall, was also a Thai jazz player who told us he tours internationally. 

We pled with him to come to Jakarta soon!! 

 

One other side trip to the red light district with some colleagues who work on sex trafficking issues.  It was really frightening!   -- zks