Power's Out...again...SO...random bits of info

The power was out tonight, just like last Wednesday night. However, this Wednesday wasn't as frustrating, because last week's outage coincided with our newly-arrived-from-the-plane guests and I showing up at our house ready for dinner. Talk about an Indonesian welcome. The Malcolm's had said that they wanted to 'truly experience Indonesia' and I can't think of a better way to start such an adventure than experiencing what a huge percentage of the population of this country goes through every night. Fortunately for us, Tris and I used our cell phones and a recently purchased lamp to find the keys to our car, and we all drove to the mall for dinner.

Back to the power being out...I woke up just before midnight wondering what was sitting on my chest, only to realize that it was just the humid, hot air that was making it harder to breathe. It's really not so bad if you don't move around too much, and sometimes if we open our bedroom door we can catch a cooler air movement passing by. We can't complain, really, when I realize that I can get ice cubes from our freezer to cool down, or use our super-duper electrically-charged flashlight (lasts for up to 7 hours!) to get ready for bed with. So many others here don't have that privilege, and every night they contend with hot sleeps and stagnant air, especially those who sleep on a second or third story. Our power is now back on and I've left the a/c off in the room where I am typing, just because I feel I can't justify turning it on for 20 minutes computer time. Not sure if I'd categorize that as guilt for being a Have-family where so many are Have-Nots, or if I just want to relate a bit more.

Sometimes once I wake up, I'm not able to fall asleep right away, and the computer is a great time-filler for a while. I think I take after my night-owl mom, but I don't get up and clean floors like she used to. I have memories of waking up on some school mornings to the clean smell of PineSol, but I digress....I was debating what to write about. There are a variety of tidbits of things I've seen and learned over the last while, but nothing that's big enough to make up a post. I've wanted to share a few things like:

-to describe the man I saw whose beard grew about 20 cms long, but not out of his chin. He has it growing out of his neck. What made is especially weird was that he didn't have any facial hair.

-to mention how funny it is that the little bajaj (little tin can people transporters) have written on them: maximum people 3, maximum weight 150 kg. That means that the powers that be recognize the average weight of Indonesians to be 50 kg, or about 110 lbs. That's about the average weight of a skinny teenage girl in Canada!

-cockroaches can fly, at least the little ones. I was at a friend's house last night and one flew onto my arm. Not nice.

-It costs about 50 000 rupiah, or $5, to get into SeaWorld here in Jakarta. It costs about 2 000 rupiah (20 cents) to get into a local museum (little or no English though).

-when we play ultimate frisbee on our school's playing field, we are experiencing something that very, very few Indonesians do. A flat, clean playing field with lots of space to run around.

That's the info floating around in my head tonight. I need to head to bed. Tomorrow's a big day: it's Abby's day to present her Exhibition project.

Thanks for reading.