Krakatau

I will write this now since it has already happened and Mom can't be freaking out. We decided that for some silly reason we would go camping. That was great- a chance to roast some imported marshmallows from Singapore, drink some warm Bintang beer by a fire and get eaten alive by mosquitoes. So, where will one do this? At the bottom of a volcano... that is active... and experiencing tremors...and currently smoking and spewing boulders!

Ah yes, my friends. Just a short boat ride from a nearby coastal town will get you at the base of a volcano known around the world because of the largest recorded eruption known to mankind. Allegedly so loud that it was heard in Australia, nearly 4000km away. Krakatoa was actually three volcanoes that were connected as one large island. But, in 1883, blew the shit out of two and a half of them. Krakatoa is dormant and only half of it is left. Wuss!

But, in the place of one of the previous volcanoes lies 'Anak Krakatau' (Son of Krakatoa and Caden's new nickname) which, only last week, was banned from public visits due to its nasty demeanor. In 1927, this Anak Krakatau grew from the ocean and is now a popular tourist attraction..... yay, for us!

Beautiful black sand beaches. White sand is for beotches! Black sand is way nicer. Decent coral reefs and enough pumis stone even Marni can have soft feet. And.....no mosquitoes! We were able to climb a significant way up the slope to the crater. The tour guide telling us when some of the most recent explosions had happened (last Tuesday being mentioned). As well, the same day as the earthquake in Bali, there were eight or nine tremors on the island. Bali gets all the fun stuff.

One nice thing when we camped is that we were joined by a group of French tourists that were on a tour of different volcanoes in the region. We all felt much safer because, as history has shown, any time there is an explosion or projectiles falling from the sky, the French are the first to leave.

Living in Jakarta too long.

One of my friends posted this in Facebook. I thought I would share some of the

• When after every sentence you say ... Iyaaahh!
• You too believe traffic lanes, stop signs and one way streets are mere suggestions and that sidewalks were meant to drive on or they wouldn't have paved them.
• You can drive 60 km/h two inches from cars on either side of you, but cannot back into a parking space in an empty lot without two guys yelling “Kiri…Kiri Terus, Terus, Terus…”
• You can kill cockroaches with your bare feet
• The footprints on the toilet seat are your own
• You no longer wait in line, but immediately go to the head of the queue
• You stop at the bottom of the escalator to plan your day
• You habitually punch all the buttons as you leave the lift
• It has become exciting to see if you can get on the lift before anybody else can get off
• You're willing to pay to use a toilet you wouldn't go to within a kilometer of at home
• It is no longer surprising that the only decision made at a meeting is the time and venue for the next meeting
• You rank the decision making abilities of your staff by how long it takes them to reply “up to you mister”
• You no longer wonder how someone making US$200 per month can drive a Mercedes
• You accept the fact that you have to queue to get your number for the next queue
• You have considered buying a motorcycle for the next family car
• You find it saves time to stand and retrieve your cabin baggage while the plane is on final approach
• You think the Proton and Kijang are stylish and well built cars
• You answer the telephone with “Hello” more than 2 times
• You are quite content to repeat your order six times in a restaurant that only has four items on the menu
• A T-bone steak and rice sounds just fine
• If when listening to the pilot prove he can't speak English, you no longer wonder if he can understand the Air Traffic Controllers
• You regard it as part of an adventure when the waiter exactly repeats your order and the cook makes something completely different
• You're not surprised when three men with a ladder show up to change a light bulb
• Taxi drivers understand you
• You own a rice cooker
• Due to selective memory you honestly believe you could return to the western world
• You can shake your hands almost perfectly dry before wiping them on your pants
• When crossing a busy street you believe that a limp wrist motion with your right arm creates a force field that repels oncoming traffic
• You think it's logical to dry your hands with Kleenex
• When dining with your family at a mexican restaurant, the table next to you is occupied by an overweight, bald, fifty-something Australian petroleum worker who has each of his arms around a teenaged Sundanese girl
• You find yourself getting upset with inflation because the price of the buffet in a five-star hotel is now nearly ten dollars
• Going out for a drink with your coworker, he shows up with his girlfriend, even though you are on a first name basis with his wife
• There is no discount for what is clearly a demo model
• A gaggle of teenage girls swoon as you walk by
• The cute looking girls in Singapore seemingly pay you no notice whatsoever
• McDonald's is out of hamburgers and KFCs is out of chicken
• You ask a person taking your order, “Do you have cheeseburgers?” and the server responds, “Yes, we do.” And so you say, “OK, I'll order a cheeseburger.” And the server says, “I'm sorry, we're out of cheeseburgers.”
• You can walk into a five-star hotel lobby unshaven, in jogging shorts, ratty t-shirt and flip-flops and DON'T get an awkward glance from the management.
• A bathroom with four attendants is so disgustingly filthy that you wouldn't step into it back home ... and one of those attendants sole job is to hand you flimsy, single-ply toilet paper to dry your hands.
• You look left, right, backwards, forwards, up and down before crossing a one way street.
• You've seen every hollywood blockbuster three weeks before its premier
• You pick your nose in public
• You take a book to read on the journey to work ( thank you for that one Mr Cook)
• You consider an 18 year old getting on a bit
  
• Your current girlfriend is younger than your daughter
• The titles "Mr. Bob" and "Miss Barbara" begin to sound normal to you
• You stop wondering why the concept of turning lanes never occurred to traffic engineers in Jakarta
• You stop wondering if the concept of traffic engineers ever occurred to anyone in Jakarta
• You find a fly in your Bintang, and you fish the fly out with a spoon and drink it anyway
• You find a fly in your Bintang, and you drink it fly and all. (That's how you know you have really been in Indonesia too long).
• you are no longer confused when you are asked if you want some 'beep bacon' (beef bacon) with your eggs.

Excuses

Working for the winners of society certainly has its privileges. Educating children that are catered to, nannied, driven and basically coddled since birth has allowed me to experience some of the finest excuses from physical education I have ever been privy to.

Yesterday, I had the honor of getting four parents' notes regarding why their sons could not participate in swimming.

Excuse #1: My son is still having ear infections and the doctor tells him he should not go swimming. Okay, this one is legitimate. After doing some more digging the child has had tubes in his ears when he was younger. They have been causing him trouble. Fine.

Excuse #2: There is some disease in Indonesia that makes this student throw up when he showers in cold water. The boy explained that he also tends to throw up when he eats too much. My answer to him was "Yah, it's called eating too much!". I also followed it up with a "I'm not a doctor but I think that is a stupid diagnosis. Get a second opinion."

Excuse #3: Getting better.... This boy (who, last week, missed two days of classes due to growing pains) came to me in the morning with a mommy note saying " My little Douchebag* son can not swim because he has been complaining of earaches.". Great. He later came to me and needed to go to the bathroom because he has had bleeding in his ears. Getting more legitimate. When I asked to look in his ear he had a scratch from his finger nail! I told him to keep his finger out of his ear. He also told me he suffers from nose bleeds. My answer to him "It's caused by the same finger."

Excuse #4: This was the best one yet. After years of girls having 3 weeks of menstruation in a month when teaching junior high this one has to be the lamest excuse.
Note from mom "Please excuse my little Pussy of a son* from swimming because he is a bit tired." Are you f#$king kidding me? Its a Monday morning- who isn't tired?
Anyway, as I probed the boy (no, I don't work in a Catholic school) for more information he mentioned he has been losing a lot of blood lately. Oh shit- another ear scratch! Possibly ebola? Oh, no...the student says he has been losing blood from his gums while brushing his teeth. WHAT?! Somebody find me a dentist and see if you can become anemic from brushing too hard. To solve his ailment I recommended a softer toothbrush.

Mom, I'm going to need a handful of notes when you come at Christmas.

*To protect their identity, the names of Pussy's and Douchbags have been changed.

Haircut

I have found a new love.

At the PAXI barbershop across street is my new best friend, Unang. The man is like Edward Scissorhands. He may actually be the Chuck Norris of barbers- just glaring at my head until the hairs couldn't resist and simply break off at the appropriate length. In fact, if it wasn't for the hair hitting the floor around me I wouldn't even know he was touching my head.

He stares at the mirror and measures the length of my hair to the proportion of my ears as if DaVinci was going to critique him. I hope he noticed that my eyes are crooked and my nose is bent.

An errant hair was caught on my brow, gentle Unang whisked it away with nary a flick of his hand.

Then comes the shoulder massage. Unang performed some sort of Voodoo magic and pulled demons from my spine with his firm hands. By the time he finished my hands were tingling (and my pants may have been wet).

The first I went to him I opted for my first straight shave, ever. I came out of it with the skin of a newborn child. I think the hair was so afraid of Unang that it stayed in my face for three days.

So I am developing some new tourism ideas for Indonesia. Men, grow your hair long and visit Unang for a shave and a haircut, play some golf with 19 year-old girls carrying your clubs, and drink your face off for about $12. Women, getting touched by Unang may make you want to leave your husbands. I suggest you be careful. The power and grace in the mans hands could shake your foundations and his 'Blue Steel' gaze will make you melt to a puddle. It is a Pandora's box of manliness.

Snorkeling

Nana came for a visit. Really, what else is a person going to do when they are recently retired but fly half-way around the world?

Well, school started on the first day of Ramadan. That means that there is a somewhat reasonable excuse for the renovations at the school to not get done. There will be another week of uselessness due to everyone recovering from Idul Fitri break. After that, everyone will simply be lazy.

Seems how our nannies had the week off we figured we would get out of town. No sense doing our own laundry and cooking when we should have someone do that for us. Off we went to Bali.

Our first experience of Bali, although wonderful, was a little underwhelming. It is hard to get around without a car and the sights are very spread out. We were encouraged to try another part of the island. In this case, we went to Seminyak.

T'was a beautiful place except for the abnormally high proportion of gay men (not that there is anything wrong with it). Many 'Sugar Daddies', too many Speedos and a lot of ass-grabbing. None of the ass-grabbing was done to me and I am still wondering if I should be offended or not.

A couple of highlights- Nana got a little teary-eyed when she saw these beautiful Macaws flying around in the bird park. They are truly wonderful and I think could only be appreciated when they are in full flight. Caden and Zoe got to feed some pelicans and Caden learned not to tease pelicans with food and that pelicans do not have teeth. He learned this when his arm was halfway in the male pelicans pouch.

With Nana fretting about getting into the ocean to do some snorkeling we was quite a trooper and jumped right in. I am scarred by the vision of her in a wetsuit but like a good son-in-law I stayed with her in the water while everyone else took off in other directions. Unfortunately, the buoyancy of the salt water was too much to overcome while pushing her head underwater.

There were a large variety of fish- fish that if you coloured them like they were no one would believe that actually exist. We did see some large Parrot fish, a Moray Eel and a Peacock shrimp. The Peacock shrimp will snap at you so fast that it can break your finger. I learned that after our guide pointed it out to us. Caden and Nana did see a big starfish, too. Marni and Nana successfully fed the fish after a bout of seasickness. All wonderful memories!?

Back to work on Monday. Time to think about what to do during our next break. We are thinking of heading to Krakatoa for some hiking.

New School

Apparently, many of you have been missing your dose of me. I am sure that there is a hole in your heart that cannot be filled by anything other then the words I scribe.

After returning from the paparazzi-filled, pig-ass eating trip to China we returned to the squalor of Jakarta. After realizing that 4:15 every morning is the time for the locals to pray we are reconsidering our move to the south side of Jakarta. Let me just say that the local religious folk are not belting out tunes by Frank Sinatra. More like Janis Joplin sober....and the name Mohammed mentioned several times. But, for a small donation I can get the local mosque to move the direction of the loudspeaker.

We are in the midst of Ramadan. The locals are fasting from sunup to sundown. This is wonderful because now there is a legitimate excuse for them not doing a good job of anything. Sadly, many of our students are fasting as well. They are dragging their sorry, skinny bodies around the school. There are some as young as grade 1 fasting for the full day. Although, I guess the rule is that a child should hit puberty before starting the fasting process. I do have a great deal of respect for the people that are able to fast and still have a productive day.

We did hear a story of some local American kids (have to be Americans) that replaced the mosque prayer recording with a Beastie Boys cassette. Needless to say at 4:15 the locals awoke to a great surprise. By 4:30 am the young boys and their families were being deported with the threat of death. Who knew you couldn't make fun of someone else's deity? He did invent the platypus.

We started work at our new school in south Jakarta and things are quite a bit different. Zoe and Caden are not the only blonde children. That is a bonus. They are also not the tallest children in the whole elementary school.

Marni and I are the only two teachers without an accent. Well, there is a girl from Vancouver but I am not sure we can count her. We have to use terms like 'fortnightly' and 'rubbish'. I have introduced terms such as 'hoser' and 'toque' but have yet to educate the others in Canadianisms such as 'Jesus H Christ' and 'For Fuck's Sake!'. I may wait until after Christmas to bring out those bombshells.

I have been assigned a Year 6 (Grade 5) classroom. Cute little kids but they do not understand sarcasm. Losers! I have never had the chance to do everything in a classroom but now I am doing spelling, english and checking journals. I am totally out of my element. But, I think it will be a blessing in disguise. Not really in disguise, just dressed as 4 foot Koreans. Like Ewoks!

This past weekend we had to travel to Singapore for our work visas. We celebrated our 12th anniversary and Zoe's seventh birthday there. We did a very Canadian thing in that we went to 'Snow City' which is a large warehouse filled with a tobogganing hill and slushy snow. The temperature was a balmy -5 which was our first experience with below freezing temperatures since we left. Actually, it is our first experience with temperatures below 25 degrees.

We also hit Universal Studios over our trip. Betty Boop was undeniably Asian and Marilyn Munroe was apparently a transvestite but Kung Foo Panda was exactly as you would have expected. Marni was all cocky when she noticed the local Doo Wop group giving her the eye. When I explained that they did the same to me she was a little more humble. Zoe and I went onto a huge roller coaster and when we finished she had the greatest smile on her face. She wanted to go again! Seven more times later, she had to finally pack it in. Marni only went once....wuss!

So, we are now legal in Jakarta again eagerly awaiting Kathleen's arrival and the end of Ramadan. We will celebrate the Muslin 'Xmas by going to the predominately Hindu island of Bali. I know many of you would envision Bali as paradise. But, if you think that white sand beaches, fabulous food, rainforests and wonderful surf is paradise then........you should come and visit.

Lost in Translation

Marni and I were on the hunt for some badly translated t-shirts while in China. While we never found some for sale, there is a few that we saw on other people that were quite funny.

Basketball is very popular in China. You may be a huge fan of the NBV's Miami HFAT or Orlando MHGIC or the L.A. LACERS. All shirts were very popular.

Maybe you are into exercise. To motivate yourself you live by the mantra 'No Paint, No gain'.

You could be into top designer labels like, Kalvin Clein or Parda.

Then, on the train- not a t-shirt, but in the bathroom you were warned "not to flush while meeting emu". We have no idea what that could have ever meant.

While at the museum in Xian there were signs marking the ancient pottery. All three said "Plate with depiction of bear". Great, meanwhile one plate has a bear, one has a fox and the other a turtle. the explaination in Mandarin was correct, the translation was a tad off.

At the zoo we learned that a Walrus is a large fish found in the amazon river of South America. Hmmm.

Inuit use caribou to pull sleds. Maybe they do.......I don't know.

One of the greatest 'feel good' set of signs we saw were the Stay off the grass signs. They were not that blunt but were messages such as "Budda deserves your peity. Do not destroy the beautiful nature". "The grass brings beauty to your life and should be respected". "Share your environment with others.", etc. There were many others that were wonderful to read.

All these signs were lost on the Chinese, though. At the zoo, the 'Do not feed the animals' sign was followed....unless you talking about the ostrich. Then, you could feed them chips. Or zebra. They were not fed but letting your son piss into there enclosure while almost getting his dick chewed off by a wild donkey was fair game. Oh yah, and Baboons like Sprite. Who knew?

And I did learn how universal teh F-word is while a "Taxi Driver" tried to load our bags into his "cab" at the train station. Zoe got right into it by grabbing the suitcase and pulling it away from him. Caden was truly upset by the man then all the other Cabbies got pissed off at the guy. Then, a legitimate cab offered to take us to the hotel. Mental note....blonde kids crying is a great way to get anything.....except toys from his parents.