A word or two about the traffic

Early on Saturday mornings it is usually easy to get from point A to point B in Jakarta. The rest of the time the traffic varies from traffic to heavy traffic to very heavy traffic and on to the Indonesian word for traffic, macet. Macet really means jammed up traffic. I would call it traffic that is basically at a dead stop.

On Wednesday B had to go to the site where they will build the plant. I believe he told me he left there around 3:30. The first text from B came at 5:49 with a comment that indicated to me they were still very far away and a reminder that The Voice would start at 7:05. [They are showing this here express from the US which means within 12-24 hrs so we are able to follow the show.] Most of his texts were various forms of this: "traffic is stopped again." The trip can take 2-3 hours or it can take much, much more. Yesterday it took about 5 hours. That did include an hour or so very near the apartment where traffic was also at a standstill.

He took these photos during his time in macet. Sorry, the second photo is fairly blurry but you get the idea.

I did check a very helpful app here called WAZE and learned that the cause of this mess was not accidents so it had to be something else. It had rained, so was that the reason? This morning's edition of the paper shed some light on a possible cause. Yesterday was the first day of a program to ticket traffic violators on Jakarta's roadways. One big issue is that motorists, specifically motorcycles (scooters), move into the opposite direction lanes when traffic is heavy so they can keep moving. Also, public transport vehicles like buses apparently stop to pick up/drop off passengers at other than designated spots so this causes traffic problems as well. So, a program will run from yesterday through Dec.9. There will be 2700 police tasked with ticketing roadway lawbreakers. Our maid Tin mentioned that she saw a lot of police and police vehicles on her way home last night so my guess is that this traffic program was the reason for the traffic mess or macet. All of those stopped vehicles while their owners had a chat with the police. What were the numbers? 790 motorcyclists were ticketed for driving against traffic and 411 public transport vehicles were ticketed for the infraction described above.

But that might not be the only cause. Jakarta has around 7200 kilometers (4474 miles) of roads at present. The ideal amount of roadway based on the number of vehicles should be 12000 kilometers (7456 miles) of roadway so Jakarta has only 60% of what it needs. There are 26.4 million motorcycles in Jakarta. I read somewhere that we add about 1000 cars a day to the Jakarta's roadways. The government is focusing on these issues.

Yarn and batik

Some of you may know that I've become involved with a lovely group of ladies (at least I haven't seen any male members yet) who get together weekly to chat, eat and share their love of all things knitting and sewing and quilting related. A new acquaintance is going to help me knit either slippers or socks, depending on how it goes. We met for lunch at a mall with a yarn store the other day and she helped me pick out my yarn. I've never knitted socks so I don't know what I'm getting myself into, but I will keep you posted. I also bought needles for the job. Got to love the color!

Every once in a while a pair of ladies who sell batik fabrics come to the home of the hostess of one of the group's events and on Monday this week I was able to select quite a few pieces of really gorgeous batiks. At the moment my plan is to construct with these fabrics the following: pajamas for me, a shirt or 2 for me, a shirt for B and a pair of sleep shorts for B. Those projects will take a lot longer than knitting socks. Here's a photo of the fabric for B's sleep shorts. Cantik, ya? ( Pretty, right?)

A little home repair

Those who know me well, know I am pretty handy around the house. There was this issue that was really nagging at me. We have marble baseboards. The grout at the wall/marble junction was horribly and unevenly stained and also of different colors throughout the living room, dining room, hallway, etc. This entire area is wallpapered and perhaps even some of the staining is from the wallpaper adhesive getting embedded in the grout. The result was that the grout line appeared to either be filthy or was moldy. I doubt if the grout was ever really cleaned over the years, especially over the 3 years the apartment sat vacant. Our maid Tin spent a good deal of time trying to clean the grout and while it did look better, it still looked pretty bad and I couldn't stand it any longer.

At a store that sells art supplies we purchased 3 tubes of an acrylic paint: white, mustard and burnt umber. I mixed the white with just hints of the other colors and came up with a perfect color to paint over the grout lines and viola! Such a huge improvement. I am more than halfway done working around the room.

My preference would have been to use something that would be completely waterproof, but this paint had he proper pigment level to hide the "dirt" and will hold up well to either a damp cloth or to vacuuming quite nicely. If I end up needing to repaint, I know exactly what to buy if I run out.

Shoes

I've mentioned before that you don't wear your "outside" shoes inside the house. You switch to some other footwear. Here is the before and after of our "shoe closet" in the foyer at the front door. Better, right? Both types of shoes go on the shoe reack.

And now B has an "indoor" pair of shoes/slippers he likes. Check these out!

They coordinate perfectly with his colorful sleep shorts.

Malls, Christmas decor, miscellaneous

As has become our custom, we walked over to the nearby mall on Sunday to discover that the Christmas decorations had magically expanded. There was also a giant display of what appeared to be a pile of teddy bears all covered in fake snow. The effect was odd, however. The pile of teddy bears reminded me somehow of the giant snow monster in the old "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" cartoon movie or was it the "Frosty the Snowman" cartoon?  Fake snow/ice covered objects are definitely popular this time of year. They do a lot of all white Santas (no red suit, everything is white), but also snow covered Santas in the traditional red suit. In addition, there are also a lot of unusual colors (unusual to me) in terms of decorations you can buy. It's almost as if they took the colors of Mardi Gras and made Christmas ornaments out of them. Pink is also very popular. As we move towards Christmas Day itself, we are seeing more and more artificial trees in the stores. They were even piping Christmas music at the mall.

We enjoyed something found in malls throughout the US on Saturday- Auntie Anne's pretzels. My first Auntie Anne's pretzel was in the Pittsburgh Airport sometime during the mid-1980s. 

 Have I mentioned that none of the sheet sets we brought with us fit the beds in the apartment?  We also did not bring any type of bedcover with us. We did bring one lightweight blanket. Since our arrival (we've been here almost 4 months) we have visited bedding departments of various shops and finally on Saturday we discovered a bed covering set that was acceptable to both of us. The set includes a fitted sheet, a lightweight comforter and duvet cover (different patterns on the 2 sides), 2 pillow cases and 2 bolster cases. We were first in the kitchen accessories department where we picked up a couple of items. A shop clerk brought us a shopping bag so we didn't have to carry the 2 small items. When we found the bedding set, even though it had handles on it, the clerk brought us a small wheeled  trolley cart. The next task is to purchase a flat sheet to coordinate with this set. Most folks here do not use a flat top sheet at all. They use only a fitted sheet and a comforter with a duvet cover that can be laundered. We personally like the top sheet because we don't turn the air conditioner down very much at night and it gets fairly warm overnight.

As we were leaving the mall on Saturday we spotted a santa-capped individual at the curb helping people in and out of their cars.

Snow, rain and a grasshopper

I was surprised to read coverage of the mega snows that hit Buffalo, NY, here in our morning newspaper.Here is the evidence!

As I'm writing this post, guess what, it's raining. This morning I awoke to blue skies and once again the skies took on a grey cast, the thunder began and now it's raining. Not a downpour at this point but a light rain ( hujan). Here's a shot of rain on the car window with background of lit up buildings. This was taken in the evening on one of the early rainy days.

 

Yesterday we had heavy downpours. I took some pictures as the storm moved in. This is taken just minutes before the rain started. The air is really much cleaner between the rains so the citizens look forward to the rainy season to some degree.

I'm trying to figure out how to tie my next topic into the rain but it's easier to say I'm switching topics. So here goes: Switching topics.

I've also seen large grasshoppers on our balcony. So far, I've seen only one at a time. Should the numbers increase do I need to be worrying about some apocalyptic event? The few that have visited appeared to have selected our balcony for the purpose of resting during their final hours.

Bahasa Indonesia lessons

Our Indonesian lessons are moving forward. We have 2-2 hour sessions a week. We both try to practice between the classes but it's hard to find the proper amount of time. Well, to be honest, no amount of hours is going to make this process move more quickly. On any given day we are introduced to tons of new words. We bought a small whiteboard for our teacher (Fitri) to use during class, but then Brad brought home this whiteboard easel from work. It can be used as a whiteboard or you can clip papers to it. The top one focuses on kitchen and household nouns. The bottom one contains names of school classes. We end up having multiple sheets and whiteboard lists for every class. Belajar bahasa Indonesian sulit. (Studying the Indonesian language is tough!)

We have Internet again!

It's been a tough few days without fully functioning Internet. At first it was intermittent. Then it shut down completely. Then we got robust download speeds of 0.29Mbps. I tried to reboot the router and it wiped out all configuration settings. ( Note: It is not supposed to do that!)  I did manage to get the wi-fi working but not the physical ADSL to the desktop computer. This continues to puzzle me. We had the technician come and take a look and the brand new router had stopped working properly and then died completely. He temporarily replaced the now dead router (the powerful wi-fi signal one we'd purchased) with a lesser quality router (the one they supply) which did give us back our physical cable ADSL to the desktop but provided a wi-fi signal for only about 12 feet into the rest of the apartment. We returned to the store where we purchased the router and were able to get a new replacement. From what we've heard, it's difficult to return things or get things replaced so we're glad about that. This afternoon the technician returned and hooked the replacement router back up and we are now back in the wi-fi and Internet worlds! Yippy!

We have a new printer

After we determined that we would not be able to purchase replacement ink cartridges for our current printer- the chips are only licensed for specific regions of the world and the US and Indonesia are not in the same region- we set out to purchase a new printer here. We discovered that most printers sold here have a lower print and scan resolution than I'm used to using. Finally we settled on a particular model only to learn that it's not available anywhere. At every retailer we visited the majority of stock was dedicated to low end printers. We came down a few steps in level of printer and compromised on a different model but our hopes were pinned on one final shop. And they didn't have the model. They called another store that supposedly did have one in stock so we went there. No, they didn't have it in stock. They only had one display printer. We got them to sell us that one. After a long wait, they found the box complete with warranty paperwork and the original starter kit of ink, etc. So, drumroll please..... we now have a new printer for which we can purchase cartridges.

I will keep the old printer as well. It does have a few features the new one lacks and those features don't require printing so it will work out ok.

Christmas hits Jakarta!

We've located a few things to make the apartment feel a little like Christmas is coming! I forgot to take a photo of a little red and white snowman on the table in the bedroom. Sorry, Frosty. The items include 2 papery shopping bags we purchased for about 80 cents each.

 On our weekly walk over to the mall across the street, we noticed that Christmas has arrived there.

We were back over there a second time with different lighting conditions and the tree took on an odd color shift: the green appeared more of a dark turquoise and the red was slightly orange. Can't explain it but it really looked different.

The mangosteen

We finally got around to testing a fruit called a mangosteen, manggis in Bahasa Indonesian. This is the fruit fresh from it's thorough washing ( see previous posts). On the right, we've broken off the stem and leaves. In the lower photo you can see a flower type pattern. The number of flower "petals" tells you how many sections are in the manggis. I still can't figure out why you'd want to know, except I was told you need to buy the ones with the most "petals."

A quick look on the Internet located a video on how to eat one of these. The method I chose to use was to press both hands against the sides of the manggis and it just pops open a little.  Then you finish opening it to reveal the inside. You can press juice out of the red outer covering  but the fruity part is the white garlic clove shaped items. The smaller ones are pit free while the larger ones do contain a pit. The pit adheres to the fruity flesh with an aggressive attitude making it hard to remove the pit. So what does it taste like? Sweet with a hint of sour, but not very intense.  Maybe the juice is more intensely flavored, but with only 2 manggis we didn't try to extract juice. I'll buy some at the market and give it a try.

A little "museum"

Last week I visited Roemah Djawa II ( which translates to Java House). It's owned by a couple who apparently lead fascinating travel trips throughout Indonesia. They periodically have an open house where outsiders can take a tour of their home. It is a traditional Javenese style home and includes a lot of very detailed and ornate Javenese carvings everywhere. Walls, doors, ceilings, you name it. I kept asking myself, "how do they dust all of this?" The roof line is very steep to resemble a mountain. Mountain symbols are very spiritual and royal and are seen frequently. When we arrived at the address I'd been given, my driver thought we were at the wrong place. It just looks like a small house from the street. 

In reality it is at least a 3 story house with enough main rooms that I lost count, 2 kitchens, at least 3 bathrooms, a small pool and garden, a classroom area ( the wife teaches classes) and even an exercise room, a music room, you name it. Every inch of it is filled with art they've collected mostly from Indonesia but also from other locations. Just a couple of interesting items included: several real blow pipes for delivering a poison tipped dart into your victim (a warning accompanied this information, "Don't try to touch the darts"), and many very old and well-cared- for textiles and batiks including a small scrap of an early woven textile from Indonesia that was lacking a pattern. Apparently few examples of Indonesian textiles without a pattern survive. This fabric contains symbols of clouds, also very common in Indonesian batiks.

Also of interest was a very large room packed with stuff from Papua, perhaps the most remote area of Indonesia. The bottom photo shows just a part of the collection of body masks of the Asmat people of southwest New Guines. These full body masks typically center around spirituality and the dead ( if I understand it correctly.) At one point he said when he was obtaining one of the masks it had to be covered so no children would see the mask because it was considered very scary.

The rainy season is really here

The rainy season has officially arrived and so has the rain. The other day B texted me from his office in Slipi that it was raining so hard he could barely see across the street. I was down in Kemang in South Jakarta and it was not raining at all. That night we did have a lovely lightening and thunderstorm combo that we experienced from the apartment. Eventually it did rain as well. So far it's raining late in the day or for short periods overnight so I've yet to experience daylight downpours. I guess I'll see it soon enough.

Batik lesson becomes a rice pillow

Recently I had coffee at a batik shop with a few friends. This particular shop makes stamp printed fabrics for home decor as opposed to fabrics for clothing. We were able to learn all about the batik process. Stamps can take months to create and start with a drawing. Then individual pieces of copper sheeting are placed until the design is done. When used, the stamps are pressed onto wax containing soft plates ( to avoid excess) and then placed onto blank fabric repeatedly to create a pattern that completely covers 30 meters of fabric. These artists work quickly but precisely aligning one stamp to the next and one row to the next so it appears continuous. Of course, the stamp design must lend itself to this. Then the fabric is dyed and rinsed and dried. If multiple colors are to be used, stamps must also be made to block out certain areas on subsequent stampings. With each color, the fabric is stamped with wax, dyed, rinsed and dried. After the final color application this shop adds a "crinkle" texturing to the background. The fabric is folded up with wax still in place and then the men beat at the fabric with large sticks. I don't understand why they don't accidentally hit each other because they are working in close proximity to each other. After this step which breaks up the wax coverings a little, the fabric is dyed again and rinsed and dried again.

The shop had a mini stamping facility setup outside the shop for our visit. We were able to use a stamp and create a dyed batik fabric. This was mine. You could choose green or brown. I chose brown.

What did I do with my small piece of batik?  I made a rice pillow on my new sewing machine. Fish on one side, flowers on the other.

Pasar Mayestik

Also on Saturday we visited Mayestik market which is a 10-story trading area in South Jakarta. It's a traditional market which opened around the year 1981.Yes, this market sells among other things: drugs and cosmetics, clothing, tools, sports, vegetables, fruits, meat, chicken, fish, baking ingredients. 

There are also a bunch of textile stores and tailors willing to turn whatever fabric you select into a garment. The textiles and such are the 1st 2 stories I believe. I was told I had to visit Toko Maju, a 1st floor shop.This is basically a notions store that also sells some fabrics. At first we thought it was just a small place. You enter a tiny little area to gain access to the hallway to the actual "store" which is huge. I think this one had 3 floors. And stuff was stacked floor to ceiling everywhere. Here are a couple of photos.

We did buy a few pieces of fabric and purchased buttons to match. The fabric will eventually become shirts for myself. Definitely 2 of the pieces. In trying to find buttons to match one of the gentlemen working there was quite proficient at finding good options. The buttons are in boxes and you have to count out how many you need. I also got some thread here but the Needle Nomads advised that I probably shouldn't use the thread sold here and use instead thread I purchase in the US or in Singapore. The same goes for bobbins and needles for the sewing machine. I'm probably going to have to get needles elsewhere. The accessories are difficult to find here. Here's one of the button walls.

It was after spending time in this shop that we drove to the sewing machine shop on the other side of town and purchased the sewing machine. Yay!

My sewing machine

I did already own a sewing machine. It is in storage in the US. We were advised that even with a transformer items like clocks and sewing machines can be fried when you switch voltage. Because of this, we knew I would need to buy another sewing machine here. Last Saturday we accomplished this goal. I met a couple of ladies who belong to a sewing/quilting/knitting group and these ladies gave me the name of a shop in Jakarta where I could get a good price on a machine.  Apparently I was just one of many ladies that a Dutch quilter had sent to this same shop so she has a good relationship with them.  [Note: I did actually meet this lady at a "meeting" of the sewing/quilting/knitting group this week. They call themselves Needle Nomads. All expats.]

This place is more of a machine repair shop that sells sewing machines as opposed to a sewing machine sales store. Many types and a range of quality and price. I just needed a machine that could do the standard stitches and sew manual buttonholes and I now have it. We bought it on Saturday. And for a very reasonable price of about $17 US we also got a table for the machine where the machine sits down into a hole in the top. It's not the most elegant table certainly but it is very sturdy and has rubber feet so that should help dampen the noise for the tenant below us. I don't quite understand the paint choice on the edge of the table top however. I'd have gone with something that matched at least a little better.  As with all things electric here, they wanted me to try out the machine.
My new machine!!!! It has some differences from my Bernina that I've used for decades so that is taking some getting used to and the thread tension, etc., will need to be adjusted for different fabrics perhaps a little more than with my Bernina, but I will just have to learn. I will find some time to practice all of this before I create anything too complicated. And I might get a small can of paint and take care of that burnt orange band around the tabletop.

It's raining!

Yes, it is actually raining enough to notice it. Saturday November 8.

Update: during the early evening hours we had a very impressive lightening and thunder show followed by some light rain. The most intense part of the system did not pass through our area but moved off to the north and south.

Sent from my iPhone

Will we need re-entry assistance?

It was the maid's day off and we didn't know what to do. Doesn't the bed make itself everyday?

There has been talk among some members of the family that when it comes time to leave Jakarta we will need some sort of "re-entry boot camp" to learn how to do all those little tasks that our driver and maid are now doing for us. What do you think? Will we need a "re-entry boot camp?"

Pretty scenes

For many of you fall is quite far along and in some spots you've even seen a taste of winter. In this part of the world, it's in the 90s just like it was in August. Here are just a couple of photos to make you say "Ah....." The first was the view from our room's porch.

Fun and games

On Saturday morning we played some traditional games with the assistance of a Bahasa Indonesia speaking facilitator and a woman who spoke some English. Instructions were difficult to follow because the woman translating did not know how to play the games and her English wasn't the best. Still, for the most part we all eventually caught on to what we were supposed to be doing. This game was pretty easy to understand. It's called water balloon volleyball. Each time has 5 members and everyone holds the same piece of sheeting fabric and launches the water balloon over the net. The opposing team then catches the water balloon in their sheeting. There were a lot of broken water balloons during the game.

Group photos

Here's a few shots of the team members at the entrance to the resort ( yes, it's the same sign- they moved it for the photo) and a nice photo of the ladies from the dinner on Friday evening.

If you remember early photos taken shortly after our arrival you'll see that both the number of team members and the number of family members has grown. There are now team members from the following countries: France, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Italy, US and Scotland.

I'll call this miscellaneous

There were a couple of blocks of free time. I found a very long trail of large ants and eventually discovered that they were actually climbing up and down a tree. Here are a few I managed to catch in action on the side of the tree.

One of the sidewalks along the beach was covered with carved fish.

The resort we stayed at is the place where the team members will live during the week once construction begins-- maybe 1.5 yrs from now. One of the duplex buildings will be renovated for the team members and also visiting team members. In case you're wondering, we're glad to hear there will be renovations. The place is very dated and needs a lot of TLC and upgrades. This is a shot of the bathtub- notice the astroturf on the floor next to the tub (?!?!) There were a couple of other pieces as well. I stuffed newspaper in the opening between the sliding windows at one end of the room to try to keep the mosquitoes out. We also had an issue with ants.

They are very serious when it comes to avoiding dehydration in this part of the world. Note the sign in one of the bathrooms at the resort! They also bring you another water bottle as soon as you pour the last of a current bottle into your glass at meals.

Tour of the plant site

We were treated to a bus tour of the dirt field where the plant will eventually be built. In the background you can see the joint venture partner's property/plant.