Cinema Hedonists

Well, we did it.  We finally went to a Velvet Class movie.

I have touched on the movies in Jakarta before... we are pleased and surprised at how quickly (sometimes simultaneously) big U.S. flicks show up on Indonesian screens, plus we pay very little for tickets and less than that for food- of which there is a great variety.

Once, a long time ago, we bought tickets for Satin Class, which basically gets you a La-Z-Boy on the mezzanine of a regular movie.

Not too exciting and you end up sitting with a big fat end table between you and your boyfriend which is NOT good.

But today we went to the movies.  It was 1pm on a Sunday, and we could do Velvet Class or wait until 2pm.

We decided it was time to do Velvet Class.

Velvet Class is basically a big bed slapped down in a regular stadium theater along with a buncha other big beds.

Until now, we have avoided it for two main reasons:

1- Eww. Really? A big bed in a public theater? Eww?

2- We are older and any kind of squishy reclining tends to make us take a nap, thus cancelling out the purpose of being at the movies.

But today, we felt brave and awake and decided it was time to go for it.

Now, Velvet Class is shockingly expensive... $14 for each ticket.  To New Yorkers that probably sounds like a bargain, but in the rest of the U.S. that's still a pretty pricey ticket, and to Jakartans it's three times what they normally pay.

We held our noses and ponied up the RPH 250,000.

What that got us was two tickets to Hedonism Indonesian style, plus a movie.

We were escorted back to the Velvet Class Lounge where you can sit in comfy upholstered chairs and wait for the theater to be ready.  In this lounge are TVs and a snack bar, along with private bathrooms.

From there you go into the theater which has a capacity of about 45-50 people.  Three or four lounges (beds) per row and about 5 rows.  That's it.  In the whole theater.  With a regular big sized screen (not a multi-plex mini screen).

This is a picture from the theater website because the pictures we took with Ted's phone were really bad...

There is a hostess who checks your tickets to make sure you paid, and then she whips out a blanket and asks permission to open it for you and spread it on your legs.

Each person has a little nightstand area to put Cokes and whatever else you like, and there is a button on one side to call the hostess if you would like something (fer instance, she will bring food on china and set it up on small tray tables that sit on your bed).

The beds themselves have two giant floor type pillows, one long bolster and two throw pillows, all in velvet, of course.  So we mushed those around until we were nice and comfy and settled in to watch our movie.

We are sold.

The movie was 2 hours 8 minutes long and we were just fine.  No fidgeting in narrow seats, no crowds eating and talking all around us, no nothing.  Just the best date ever, slap in the middle of a Sunday afternoon at the movies.

And lest your mind is tending to the gutter, they remind you three or four different ways that the theater has CCTV and leave you to connect those dots.

When we leave here, no theater in America is going to let me watch movies while reclining on a giant square sofa with velvet pillows while a hostess brings me food... and that's going to make me cranky.

Venice, Who Knew?

Well, okay- to be fair apparently everyone knew but us!  

We had thought that someday we should make a trip to Venice but it never made it very far up the wish list.  There were all those stories about the filthy water and the expense and the fact that the whole city was sinking and fetid.  


Lies lies and more lies. 


Well, okay- to be fair it is really expensive and it remains to be seen if the sinking has really been arrested, but the water is no longer the stew pot it was 20 years ago and is reliably scrubbed by daily tides...


So once again we ventured into a land where we do not speak the language, taking our usual care to learn please, thank you, and I'm sorry- the three things we can speak in every language we've encountered.  Especially the last.  Mi dispiace (me dis-pee-ah-chay) a thousand times for all the misinformation I've believed about Venice. 


The city is magical and is certainly one of our all-time favorites!


We were smart enough, or lucky enough, to decide to go during Carnevale (pre-lenten festivities) - five days of Carnevale and four days of blessed peace after all the Carnevale revelers left.  It was a perfect split. 


For Carnevale, people dress in costumes- everything from Casanova and his lady loves to Pooh Bear and Mickey Mouse.  Masks are always a Venetian staple as souvenirs, but during Carnevale you can choose one and wear it without a costume day and night if you like. 


Here's a sampling of some costumes...




(note the tourists in the background of this first shot, with their masks 

 on their heads...)

and then a shot of one of the widest streets/sidewalks on the day before Fat Tuesday... it was a very international crowd- people walking left right and center speaking a half dozen languages and with varying needs for personal space.  


After the first 24 hours we started knocking into people the way they had been knocking into us, since our cultural need for some personal space was clearly not ever going to happen.  

Occasionally we would just stop and force people to move around us since everyone considered their chunk of sidewalk proprietary and we got tired of making way.  


The best way to deal with the crowds of Carnevale is to stop at every 5th shop and buy a small cup of hot wine.  It does wonders for your disposition and people are slightly more careful around you when you are holding a hot, red beverage. 


The people watching was stupendous, and thankfully Venice has no shortage of outdoor tables where you can sit (often in the sun) and sip more wine and just mock... er... admire the passing parade. 


I also claim Smartypants status for this trip re: public transport.  Soon after arriving we stopped by the ACTV ticket booth to check on possibly getting 'bus' tickets to get around.  They offer single tickets, day passes and weekly passes.  The prices are discounted as one would expect when you purchase more time.  I advocated for weekly passes and prevailed... best idea I've had for a long time.  


Bus travel in Venice is by wide flat boats. 

Venice Bus Boat

There is seating inside and out, plus a large area for people to just stand if they are only going one or two stops.  


The boat pulls up to a bus stop, usually banging it pretty good and the conductor throws a rope out and opens the waist high gate and everyone who wants off goes, then everyone who wants on comes.  


The stop rarely lasts more than 30 seconds and you're off to the next one.  


All the bus stops are floating docks with walls to shelter you from wind and/or rain.


Here's my scale model...

...waiting for the bus

We used those bus tickets like crazy.  Hop on hop off, walk four miles out... take the water bus back to the hotel.  

We took the water bus out to Murano Island where they make and sell Venetian glass and where we had the best lunch we've had for a very long time. Picture a place full of Italians on legitimate lunch breaks and only a handful of dopey tourists like us, eating pizza with the freshest ingredients ever and pasta made by people who know how.  




Our hotel was right on the Grand Canal, another opportunity for me to claim Smartypants status.  I told Ted if we were going to do Venice, we were going to do it right and I booked a hotel not only on the Grand Canal, but steps from the Piazza San Marco which is ground zero for Carnevale.  He balked when I did it, but now agrees that I can be Head Smartypants. 


The hotel was formerly owned in the 1500s by a family who was apparently tried and convicted of some treason or other...but now it looks like this:

Click on it to make it bigger and you can see our room.  We were right above the G in Regina on the 3rd floor (4th floor in America).  


And as you look at the picture you say to yourself, "Hey! There's no road.  Did they arrive by boat?" 


Well, yes and no. 


We arrived by really super crowded boring slow boat filled with jet lagged tourists from all over the world that left from the airport docks and cost us 15 euros apiece.  Bleah.  It dropped us and the other Smartypants hotel bookers off at the Piazza San Marco and we headed for the hotel on foot.


Family Rule #1 since the beginning of time: If you can't hump it, don't bring it.  So we were okay for luggage because we never have more than we are willing or able to carry for a mile or two and we knew it wasn't that far.  


Although we had no idea in which direction it was that we didn't have to go far to. 


I spotted an information office on the Piazza, and we did Rock Paper Scissors to see who got to be the dopey tourist with the stupid question and poor language skills.  


I lost.  


Ted stood with the luggage while I went inside and showed the nice lady my reservation sheet.  She told me "Italian Italian Italian, Tesselini, Italian Italian.  Over bridge Italian turn left Italian then left again."


I smiled, trotted out my best 'Grazi' and backed out of the office. 


Ted said, "Okay! Where do we go?" 


I said, "Okay! I dunno." 


Fortunately he laughed and I used the pause to look around frantically for Tesselini which turned out to be the name of a street nearby.  I faked some confidence and told him "This way."


Luckily there was a bridge right away and when we crossed it and turned left there was an actual sign for our hotel leading down what, in our previous experience, would have been a back alley...

...that's the hotel sign in the right center of the picture and we took two of these street/alleys before suddenly popping out onto a little campo in which was located the front door of the Hotel Regina and Europa.  


TaDa!  We had arrived.  


And this is how we knew we were in Europe...

Our son's favorite (NOT) part of Europe has always been the phone booth elevators.  So this shot is for him.  Airplane bathrooms have nothing on these guys.  A porter had taken our suitcases to a service elevator, and good thing, because the pair of us barely fit in this one. 

Scale model demonstrating European elevator.

We used it to go up, but came down the stairs every time... too claustrophobic even for lazy people to use going down.




















From our Front Row Seat Room, the windows of which were rarely closed, Sunday morning about 10am, we heard music.            Italian music.  


We looked out the window and saw variations on this theme...

Remember, [almost] all the pictures are bigger when clicked.

They were having Carnevale boat races right outside our window.  Mickey and Minnie won this one.  Off camera to the left was a larger flatter boat with the race committee and large speakers playing atmospheric music.  


Three races and they were done, among much happy yelling in Italian.  :)


Meanwhile, on the Piazza San Marco... there is a huge open space in the area around the Campanille (giant bell tower) and the Doge's Palace (where Casanova was once imprisoned and escaped), and a statue to Saint Theodore, who was patron Saint of Venice until he was dumped around 800 A.D. for St. Mark.  


So here for your viewing pleasure is a picture of St. Theodore and Regular Theodore, together for the first time. 

Up on the plinth with the Saint is a big lizard or something... we are unclear about his lore, but I prefer my Theodores regular anyway so...


At this point in our tour, I will just put up some pictures.  We took over 500 but even I understand that would be too many to share, so I grabbed some highlights.

The Campanille at Piazza San Marco

Get a fresh apple as you walk...

Canalside, Piazza San Marco

From a bridge...

From another bridge...

,,,and yet a third...

These are called 'sotoportego' - through buildings...

Wow.  Just wow.

Ditto.

One of hundreds of tiny campos.  Sit, order wine, rest.

We would get to a spot like this and say...what's around that corner?... and we'd be off for another mile.  We couldn't resist.

Saturday morning after Friday night...wine kegs.  :D

And that's your whirlwind tour of Venice by picture.  If you're a glutton, ask me to see the other 485 some day.  


Finally, a quick shot of my scale model getting us the most delicious Italian Salami sammiches while I lounge in a window table admiring my lushly Venetian surroundings.  This truly is a magic city...

We had to say good bye eventually, but we were determined not to repeat the slow boat to Venice we arrived on, so we asked for a taxi and it pulled up right outside our room.  We reluctantly entered what we knew to be our last Venetian boat and gazed pathetically out the back for as long as we could...

Ciao Venezia!

Say Hello to our Little Friends...

Africa and Indonesia share one of our favorite forms of wildlife- the gecko. 

The big dog used to rush 'em and scared all but the tiniest ones out of our house in Africa, but he's no longer with us, and the other dog doesn't even see them.  

So our Indonesian geckos have free run of the house and provide us endless seconds of entertainment while eating mosquitoes.  They are the perfect house pet.

They feed themselves, don't need to be kenneled, don't need vet care, and come in all sizes and colors.  

Sometimes they get closer to my food than I would perhaps prefer, but they have never filched any, so I suppose it's all in your perspective.

 

This guy is about average, although they get a little bigger and they get a lot smaller.  We have seen some that are about half the size of a bobby pin with legs. 

They hang on our walls and doors all over the house, inside and out.  At any given time, I can usually find at least half a dozen if I look, but we rarely notice them unless they are running or we are bored.  

I am not looking forward to the day one (or more) explores our bed -that happened one time in Africa and I almost broke a leg trying to get back out from under the covers- but otherwise, we are fond of them and will miss them when we leave the tropics.

Australia Redux

Our son has always borne a grudge that we came home from Australia to have our baby (which turned out to be him), thereby cheating him of the chance to live down under.

Being the excellent parents we are, we rectified that situation a little for the New Year and took him to Queensland for a dose of G'day Mate!

We forced him to relive our years there (...and whoa! modern countries change a LOT in 20 years) and spend time with some of our old friends, but then we took him to our favorite kangaroo and koala preserve and the Great Barrier Reef for some diving, so a lot was forgiven.

 This guy was protecting some pellet food from the ducks.  The one 'in flight' had just had his clock cleaned by the 'roo.  The one on the left was complaining to management.

   Think about this next picture next time someone complains to you about their grown child moving back in...

 

I'll spare you the details of our old house and neighborhood because I know they would interest you as much as they did our captive passenger, who got soft tissue damage from eye-rolling.                                                                                                                 

When we got to the reef, in time for New Year's Eve, we found our "omg we forgot to get a hotel until November!" booked room was actually in a very nice location...

...and that we had arrived smack in the middle of breeding season for the protected Mutton birds.  They are also some kind of Shearwater Something or other, but we are not bird fans, so we didn't really pay much attention to the particulars.  

The birds, however, we did pay attention to, since they were everywhere.  Birds in trees, birds in underground nests, birds on the sidewalk, birds on a wire... it was like a Hitchcock movie without the fun.  The carnage was non-stop; sea gulls eating babies fallen from nests, bird poop raining from the sky 24/7 and bird sex all over the place. 

Then at night, these guys (the aforementioned Muttons) would start pining for something and making a sound that was somewhere between a baby crying and a cat in heat....

and I'm not talking about after dinner night, I'm talking about 1am night.  But they are a protected species so we weren't allowed to go out and punt birds.  Even though they were dumb as stumps and frequently took off into the sides of buildings and poles. 

But, that didn't spoil our snorkel/diving adventures.  On this trip I got to see a whole new kind of starfish!

It's a starfish, I swear!  We had just learned about these at the island research station, and then I might have accidentally flipped it over with my fin to check it, and it was light as air.  Very cool.

In one section of the beach off the island, there was a place that rays liked to rest and as I was lazing my way back to our room I found this guy...

...just lying there, watching me swim up.  I got all verklempt and started fumbling around with my camera, trying to turn it on and get the shot before he zoomed away.  

I needn't have worried.  His right eyeball never stopped following me, but this is the position he was in when I looked back later from 20 feet down the beach... I guess he was too tired to zoom for yet another stupid tourist. 

The best part was, our island is home to Loggerhead and Green turtles, and it was egg laying season!  Yay us! Finally we showed up someplace in time for their big show! 

This entailed getting out of bed at 2am and wandering down to the beach in the hope of seeing a laying turtle.  

We walked to the end of the boardwalk in the picture above and POOF! there was a mother flipping sand everywhere.  We stopped and stood still so as not to disturb her while we mentally flailed about wondering what to do.  Finally we backed slowly up the boardwalk and returned to the beach on another path.  

Our luck continued that night when we hooked up with a pair of volunteers who work with the research teams, counting eggs, checking turtle tags, etc. and they gave us lots of information and helped us witness the whole thing without disrupting the turtles. Yay!  

They had lights and knowledge and we were able to rub a turtle, hold one of her eggs, and watch her lay as they held up one of her back fins.  The beach was alive with the sound of these giant heavy turtles dragging themselves up to the top of the beach to dig a hole, then fill it back in and drag themselves back down the beach.  It was amazing and worth the 2am trek out of a cozy bed.

In the morning, the beaches were covered with these tracks...

And although this is a good deal smaller than the laying turtles we encountered, here is a turtle "on the hoof" so to speak.

 After we left the island, we moseyed back down the coast to Brisbane stopping on the way to run jet skis up the water behind Bribie Island (which used to be one of our favorite weekend getaways in our 4WD 20 years ago), that fulfilled another of our progeny's desires (even though we had a ski boat in the U.S. he would complain that we should be towing a jet ski as well, "just for fun").  

Here's my scale model and his scale model on their toys as we sit in the calm brackish waters and gaze at Queensland's Glasshouse Mountains (actually just big hills, but in Queensland they are tall, so...).

Are we having fun, or what?

We had a good time, the man boy got to drive on the left side of the road and the right side of the car, (all the while saying "This is so wrong.") and we got to spend time with old friends that we don't see nearly often enough.

The parting shot is the Great Barrier Reef in January.  Can't beat it, really.

Jakarta Primer 1.2

Living in a country with a Muslim majority can be a little tiring for someone not used to the traditions, but nothing really outrageous.

For instance, wearing comfortable clothes for the climate can be a bad thing (it's the tropics, yet sleeveless tops and shorts are considered slutty).

Getting bacon should be trickier than it is... but we can find pork products fairly easily, although they are usually banished to a special area.

Each Mahjid (Mosque) tries to outdo the other during the 5 times daily prayers, so they all get loudspeakers and broadcast the call to prayer.

Except they don't start at the same time, and they don't all sing on key.  So you have a cacophony instead of a respectful call to piety.

I really like muezzin calls, just not the wailing ones jumbled into a ball with four others all starting within 30 seconds of each other being blasted over cut rate loudspeakers.

Good news: can't hear them in my bedroom, so there is sanctuary.

Occasionally, the politics of religion rears it's spectacularly ugly head and we have to deal with fanatics (which come in all religious shapes and sizes, they just happen to be Muslim here...) who defy the government authorities and make minor trouble for everyone just to be cussed, blocking off streets on their own initiative or blaring intolerant sermons over their tacky speakers, or just being bad humans- but that's not unique to this location. 

Although it can be more difficult in a foreign location just because we aren't native to this culture and have no say in the laws and consequences of this nation, so we must just watch, and learn, and try not to judge. 

Too much.

Meanwhile...

Water is another stumbling block.

It's filthy.

In Africa I used the tap water to cook with if I was boiling it- like pasta or potatoes, but here I don't ever use it except to shower and brush my teeth and the use for teeth brushing often brings gasps of horror from a lot of expats.

Our dishwasher temp control is set to Hot Lava. We hope that’s sufficient.

Our water comes from a well and the well is supplied by groundwater which runs through god knows what to get here.

Okay, god knows some of it.  And unfortunately so do we.

Human waste, compost, litter, animal waste, decomposing animals, garbage, chemicals... you get the idea. Theoretically it gets filtered, a little, by nature... but...

And it's got a nice sulfur component to remind you just in case you get lax and think about using it casually.


So what's the good stuff about Indonesia you are asking? 



A lot.  

Truly.  :-)



Unless they are driving, the people here are kind and helpful, gentle and quiet- anger and loud voices are considered bad form and that's a truly nice way to live.



The other day at lunch we saw a man who was very angry because he made a request that wasn't honored.  He was livid and showed it to the restaurant employee by silently pointing very hard at the perpetrator of his ire, and then speaking so softly that we couldn't hear him from 5 feet away. 

His friend came and retrieved him to calm him down, embarrassed at the ostentatious display.  Pointing is a no-no and using it as he did showed his extreme displeasure.

(That makes loud, complaining expats all that much harder to endure for us, but life goes on- because the angry entitled expats surely will...)

And Indonesia delivers anything you want.

Anything.

Food, clothes, gasoline, you name it.

I once had beanbag beans delivered so I could re-stuff Elliot's bed.  Cost me an extra buck on top of the price of beans.

You can have groceries delivered or restaurant food or catered food.  Even McDonalds delivers here.  There is no mail service (or even reliable addresses) but if you buy something, they will send it to you on a motorbike, damn the size.  So you will see motorbikes with precarious loads fairly often on the roads, just to add to the joy and hilarity.

A truck comes every Friday with my four 5 gallon bottles of clean water from the local Coca Cola bottler.  They cost me about a dollar apiece and the delivery is free.

Life is pretty easy here.

We get most of the big Hollywood movies within a week or so after the U.S. release.  Except they cost about $10 for both of us.

On a Friday night.

With stadium seating and cushy rocking seats.

And the food concession at our movies has popcorn (sweet OR salty) and coke plus hot dogs, but they also have sandwiches, spring rolls, french fries, cheese breads, hamburgers, pizza and tons more- and a typical popcorn/coke/hot dog combo will cost you about $3, I kid you not.

 If you would like to be more comfy while you watch your movie, you can spend an extra buck and get La-Z-Boy recliners with little tables between them for your inexpensive food (which will be delivered after the movie starts) and if you want to be at home while you watch your movie, they will put you in Velvet Class which is a nice comfy double bed with pillows.

Ted and I do not do this because it's hard enough for older people to stay awake as it is.

We've got tropical fruit like you wouldn't believe, although here they just call it... fruit.

The previously blogged Durian notwithstanding, we get so much really good fruit at cheap prices we practically bathe in it.  Dragonfruit, mango, papaya, pineapple, melons, rambutan, star fruit, and on and on.

So the cultural differences are why we come, because they put the spice in life, and the cultural positives are why we stay because they make life pleasant, and when we notice the tap water is a little brown, or the traffic makes us late...again, we remember the things that annoyed us at our last 14 locations and try to be thankful for not having those anymore.

No place is perfect (or if it is, we haven't found it yet!), but all places are interesting in their own way so... challenge accepted!

Jakarta Primer 1.1

Traffic.  Traffic jam.  Macet (mah-chet).  It's a fact of life here, and epic in its proportions.  I wish I could say that this is only a picture of rush hour traffic.  But I could only do that if by 'rush hour' you mean anytime between 7a.m and 10p.m., seven days a week. 

Frustrating.  Selfish.  Thoughtless.  Lawless.  It's so bad that the company provides a car and driver and requests that we never use one without the other.   

It's so bad that even after driving for years in the demolition derby that was Africa, we aren't even tempted to get behind the wheel of a car.

I am never in the car without a book.  I don't look up, I don't backseat drive, I try very hard to be NOT IN THE CAR.  It has the same chaotic components of Africa, but much worse due to sheer numbers and the addition of motor bikes by the thousands.

All the people in the cars are very very important and have to be wherever they are going first, or at least before you.  Common sense, common courtesy, rule of law, and safe driving practices go right out the window as soon as an Indonesian starts his car.

Need to turn left from the right lane?  No time like the present.

Need to turn onto a street, but stopped by a line of cars coming off the street? No problem, just turn into the wrong lane and shimmy over later.

Don't want to stop when the light turns red?  Okay.

What are those lines in the street? It's like they are there to keep me from making a new lane to drive in, and that's just stoopid!

Add to this the thousands of motorbikes who weave, drive on the wrong side of the road, ignore traffic signals of every color, and swarm through stopped car traffic like a machine made ooze  and you have a recipe for frustration, anger and tons of wasted time.

Ted sits there and stews. 

He watches, he gets indignant and he itches to ram the whole mess with a Bradley tank, but all it does is feed his ulcer.  I have extolled the virtues of books and being NOT IN THE CAR, but he just can't seem to let it go.

The company requires our drivers to learn and follow safe driving practices, but that mostly covers safety of the vehicle and occupants, not what we would call defensive driving.  

We have given our driver a letter outlining the things we would like to have him do- over and above the company regs, and he has made a valiant effort to comply, although he isn't completely on board.

We asked him to stop or at least slow for pedestrians instead of playing Carmageddon.

We asked him to allow other cars to pull in front of us as they exit parking lots and side streets. You know... when you wave someone out?  Unheard of here.  Crazy foreigners and their crazy ideas.  Why would anyone do that when we are all so important and have places to be...?

We asked him be courteous to other drivers even if it took longer to get where we were going.

He thanked us for being crazy...er...helpful to him in his job and we've moved on with a kind of half-assed courtesy and patience policy that still makes him the most courteous driver in Jakarta.

I will not test your patience with my traffic whining by including stories about what happens when there is rain/hujan (hoo-john) and the streets flood/banjir (bahn-jeer). 

Bottom line: we both drove cars in Africa where the traffic is legendarily bad.  We do not drive cars here.

Although we are still thinking about getting a scooter and becoming part of the ooze... (don't tell the company).

Jakarta Primer 1.0

Selamat datang!  

It has come to my attention that I have neglected your cultural introduction to Jakarta and Indonesia.

We have been here a little over a year now, and it's past time I gave you the low down on the fun, the sometimes frustrating local customs, and some of the laws and quirks that are part of what makes living overseas interesting.

Much of Indonesia, and especially this giant capital city, would be familiar to most people.  It has miles and miles of fairly good paved streets, lots of shopping malls and fast food, cable TV, movie theaters, and skyscrapers. 

But there's plenty of stuff that wouldn't be so familiar (some of which I haven't mentioned because it was true in Africa too and I forgot that it might be noteworthy).

Let's start with the things I was happy about when we spent that week in Anglo-Saxon London...

Body language.  Whew!  This is a minefield.

Bad things: showing the bottom of your feet (try sitting all day without lifting your foot, I dare you), offering or accepting something with your left hand, eating with your left hand, patting or touching someone on their head, standing with your hands or hand on your hips, pointing with your index finger, or smacking yourself in the forehead (as in: I could've had a V-8!)

All these things are disrespectful/rude, except the hands on hips thing which is just seen as arrogant.  I never realized how much I did that in the U.S.- it's a handy place to keep my hands and in my family it's practically genetic to stand that way.

Since I am left handed to an extreme I am handicapped here to a certain extent.  I constantly remind myself to hand people things with my right hand and extend my right hand to accept things, but it's very, very hard for me because it requires that I basically change everything instinctive in order to comply.  All my stuff is arranged for my left hand, just as yours is arranged for your right.  Try spending all day doing things only with your left... and there you see my problem.

Few of my right handed friends and family have ever understood the left handed thing- when I took Ted to his first "Lefthander Store" he kept walking around picking things up and saying "Oh wow! I never thought about how hard this would be for a lefty..."  - so I know you are shaking your head and thinking, 'Get over it!'.

All I can say is, it's not something I can just switch (a fact proven by my medieval 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Geary).  My brain is hard wired to use my left hand and it can't simply be altered by wishcraft.

Even though this using of the right hand thing is so ingrained in Indonesian culture, when I mess up- aside from the occasional flinch- people are kind and pretend I didn't just make a mistake.

Think about shaking hands with a small child you just saw pick his nose.

That's what it's like to deal with me in Indonesia and they do it very well.

Anyway, for the most part we muddle through, although my Blog Photo is... the bottom of my feet.  I have had that photo for many many years and it transcends this single blog, (and is actually 1/3 of the family feet triptych that hangs in my house with our family hand triptych) so to my Indonesian friends I just beg a little cultural indulgence.

I'll continue this primer in installments so you don't get overloaded.  :-) 

Your job is to spend the day not putting your hands on your hips, resting your ankle on your knee, or using your dominant hand.

Just to practice being here with us. 

Working Vacation!

i.e. He works, I vacation!

My hardworking husband had to fly to London to talk with company lawyers about an old project.  
                                                                           
                                                                           
I am the mother of a grown up child, and as such am no longer shackled to the public school system calendar.  



These two facts equal a sudden vacation in Jolly Olde England!  Whoopee!

If you want an account of the basics of London, see our previous trip in An American in Africa circa 2005- it has bonus stuff from England and Scotland too! 


This time, we were in full geek mode, and began our explorations in Greenwich because we wanted to stand on the Prime Meridian (which runs straight through Ghana, as a bonus Geekfact).  

If you are unfamiliar with the whole shootin' match, here is a quick explanation (just click it to make it bigger):

and most importantly, here are our two pairs of Nerd feet straddling the line between Eastern and Western Hemispheres...

We were way too pleased with this outing.  :-)  

So next time someone tells you that it's XX o'clock GMT, this is the clock they are using:

You probably aren't as excited by this as we are, but you should be.  



After this, we got a little less nerdy and headed out to Brighton (kind of disappointing) and Hastings (actually a pretty nice place) and Dover- of the white cliffs fame.  They also have Dover castle so for us it was a must-see destination.  

This is actually a really cool place to walk, although windy and truly scary if you think too hard about the fall and what's at the bottom. 


Here's my scale model showing you how not to fall off the cliffs of Dover. 






...and Dover Castle.  Really pretty, but oh what a damp and dreary place this must have been in 1100.  

From there it was on to Canterbury, just because it's Canterbury!  The town is the usual English mix of old and new, and on the whole it was a pretty interesting place...

...and we had to find the cathedral where Becket met his end...

Not my favorite cathedral...too lacy by half, but it has some really great carvings of saints on its face.


The shocking thing was its condition.  

The stones are crumbling and the work to preserve it has only just begun.  

I would have thought that Canterbury Cathedral would be considered pretty darned important to history and have been better looked after... now it will cost Britain 16 million pounds to restore it, which is just a freaking lot of money.




In any case, we returned to London, and one of us went back to work while the other watched a fascinating "news" story about Travellers being evicted in a place called Dale Farm that was being covered wall to wall by Sky news like it was really important.  I love Sky News. 






Finally on our last day in London, in true Nerd Tradition, we went to the British Library.  

Really gorgeous building - only about 10 years old.  

Inside we saw another of the four extant copies of the Magna Carta (we have also dragged Cooper to see the one in Salisbury Cathedral), a manuscript copy of Beowulf, and an illuminated copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.  

On that day I realized why I have never bothered with a Bucket List... because on it would be ridiculously impossible things like being able to hold that copy of Chaucer and turn just two pages of it.  


So I contented myself with standing there, staring at it, trying to notice every single detail and imagine what it must feel like to hold a beautiful, illuminated, hand written 600 year old book.


Maybe my first tattoo should be "Book Nerd". 


Also, Crazy King George III's library has been enshrined in a four story glass room inside the library.  We ate a sandwich sitting next to it, looking up at all those books...


It was a good week, and we had a good time.  One of us more than the other, although the other enjoyed my recounting of the Dale Farm antics for the two days that it lasted before it was blasted out of the news cycle by actual events.


My parting shot for this trip is a great sign we found.  

We have absolutely no idea what it means, which is bad, since we were driving at the time and probably should have been aware of the caution, but we were laughing so hard we didn't care what it meant anyway.