Our Place

We thought folks might like to see our place here in Bandung. The family we rent from has been so much fun to get to know, and we really enjoy our neighborhood.

At least our folks will enjoy seeing our place. If you have suggestions (we didn't pick the pink tile), please don't tell us - we don’t have time to make changes before we move :).

If you're looking for a place to rent, it’s available end of Oct. Seriously, maybe you should consider coming here – or some other place. We only live once, why not?

Anyways, welcome to our home!



Front Porch - we live on the second floor.
View from the back of the livingroom / diningroom towards front door
View of livingroom from the front door
Diningroom
Kitchen
Kitchenette

View of bedroom from livingroom entrance

View of bedroom from front porch entrance.

(For view of the kamar kecil (little room) see Dysentery Diaries post.)

Dysentery Diaries

Wed night at about 8:00 I was treated by a cranky doctor at the local hospital. Perhaps my doc subscribed to the merger of the magazines Commentary and Disent - yep, you guessed it, Dysentery (Thanks Woody Allen via Wikapedia)...amoebic dysentery. The news comes as no surprise given my frequent trips to the kamar kecil (little room) over the last week. Unlike Sir Francis Drake, Hernando Cortes and a couple kings of England and France who died of dysentery however (thanks again Wikapedia), it seems like I'll probably pull through. Here's to antibiotics and less frequent trips to the little room!

Pangandaran Tsunami Projects

I was just down in the beach town of Pangandaran a couple weeks ago. In the summer of last year, a tsunami hit this area and did extensive damage to the beach front and claimed about 300 lives. Renovations of the infrastructure seem to be coming along well despite the usual corruption. The major decline in tourism since the tsunami, however, has made the city’s comeback slow.

Here are some pictures of the CAMA funded projects there I’ve been assisting with:

The “Goat Blessing” project provides two female goats to poor families. Participating families commit to returning the goat’s first kid to the “goat bank” and the third kid to another family in need. CAMA also purchased two male goats for breeding. After an initial miscarriage, all seems to be going well. The first goat blessing baby was born last week.















CAMA partnered with a local youth org. to plant over 600 trees on the beach. The project helped revitalize the group post-tsunami and should help with tourism as the trees grow and add to the natural beauty of the shoreline. About 4 months after the trees were planted, the department of tourism decided the beach needed to be “flattened.” They hired a bulldozer which began to mow over the trees. When the local people realized what was going on, they ran out and stopped them. About 350 or the 600 trees are still doing well.

CAMA also helped provide vegetable seeds and has an on-going project to provide small loans to local business people. These trips to Pangandaran have been a nice change of pace from language study, and a great chance to be involved in community development efforts on the ground here in Indonesia.

Those Aren’t Peanuts

We fried peanuts a couple of days ago, actually peanuts ++. As we sat down to eat our sticky rice with sweetened condensed milk and peanuts we noticed some black things. I guess I fried some little peanut beetles. The peanuts tasted so good, though, that we just picked the little fried guys out and kept on eating. Drummonds -1 Bugs – 0.

Grocery Stores & International English

The language of my homeland (which let us Americans not forget is a hand-me-down from the Brits) is taking new form in many countries and cultures. I’m not convinced economic globalization is an altogether great thing, and I’m even more skeptical that any good will come of Westernization, but at least the explosion of the English language as an “international language,” is allowing a lot of people from a lot of places to talk…even if what we say in this “international language” sometimes still comes across as not quite what we were intending.

The other day we were in the grocery store and happened to have our camera, so we thought we’d take some pics of products whose names don’t quite translate well from Indonesian / Asian English to American English.

We all know sports drinks taste like sweat, but why advertise it? (This is what the doc. perscribed when Elissa was in the hospital with dengue fever & typhoid.)









It’s hard to see, but if you look close, below the label “Abon Sapi” is the description, “Beef floss.” Pretty novel idea actually – why floss after you eat beef when you can floss with beef?

I think this is my favorite. If I had kids, I’m not sure I’d want them eating these.

















Or these actually - especially with childhood obesity on the rise. At least they're warning us…











Now these guys are just plain confusing though…












And this one…go on, “Take-it” – nobody’s looking – no one’s going to miss one candy bar - and we complain about the morality of kids these days.









At least after all that chocolate, there’s “Happydent, white, baking soda” gum to keep your teeth…happy? (I wonder if you’re suppose to use this before or after beef floss?)









And if that doesn’t make you happy, try the whole tin!


















Yep, not the flavor of breath mint I was looking for.











Bag-o-mistakes?









Cereal for bullies?


















Only slightly less popular than Hello Kitty.


















And last…if you’re looking for a mate, why not try a Ciggy Mate...getting Ciggy with it?











Anyway, we had fun shopping.

Take 2

Well...this is our second attempt at blogging - our first attempt (two years ago) began and ended with our first post. Here's to all the abandoned blogs out there and to second tries!