Apartment update

The painting is done or nearly so. I'm not thrilled with the color of the other two bedrooms but the master is nice. The color is not what I selected off the color chart so I don't know what happened. It looks too slightly blue to me and was supposed to be a sand color. Mixed the paints? Dirty rollers? Bad color chart? I don't know but I'm stuck with it now. Just hope it doesn't look too awful with the drapes that we are keeping. I couldn't tell yet because they are out being cleaned. Maybe at a different time of day it will look better?

The wallpaper is in process and it's going somewhat smoothly. The base color is an ivory with a very, very mild textural stripe, not really much color to the very fine striping, that I believed would run vertically but it is horizontal. The strips of paper run vertically but the striping is horizontal so the stripes are supposed to be horizontal. You have to be very close to the wallpaper to even see the striping.  It basically appears painted if you just glance around the room. This photo also includes the choice for the lightblocking(heat blocking) drapes for the living room and dining room.We're trying to keep the main living areas very neutral in tones of cappuccino, mocha, lt. espresso so we don't offend the owner. We will add some "color" with accessories like pillows.

The only issue is that they are not matching the striped wallpaper. Perhaps the striping is so subtle the wallpaper guy can't even see it. It will drive me nuts. Maybe I can hang something over the worst areas. They have command strips here and I will be purchasing some for these tasks.

The other thing I may have to hang something on is the wall mount bracket for a large TV that was supposed to be removed from a pillar dividing the living room and dining room. It was not removed so the pillar was wallpapered around the bracket. Yuck! Our agent is going to try to get them to fix that. Exactly how they do it remains to be seen. There is also a conduit for electric this area that is arctic white and runs from the ceiling halfway down this pillar and it was supposed to be wrapped in the wallpaper to make it less obvious and that wasn't done either. I asked the realty agent to be sure they leave me paper to fix it. I will do it myself.

There is a coordinating patterned wallpaper that is being used on the above mentioned pillar and in the foyer and I really like how that looks.

A young man seemed to be doing some general cleaning while we were there yesterday so we are moving along. There was also a floor polisher sitting in the middle of the living room so I guess that's going to be done soon. Even the balconies have been re-painted and they look nice.  We flipped some furniture around in the apartment and what we did seems to fit.

You might have thought to take photos of the progress and we did have a camera. We just forgot. I will take the camera again, just in case I remember to shoot a couple of photos.

The big search

We have begun the search for a household helper(maid), though household helper seems to include cooking sometimes where the definition of a maid may or may not. We're getting some help from one of B's admins. We learned about a couple of possibilities but I've also submitted an ad for one to an expat online classified listing run by an expat who started a catering business here. Long story but she also includes want ads, maid postings, and for sale listings, etc., at the end of her daily mailings about the catering side of things.

We did our first interview on Friday and we are not very good at it. Also, I have no idea whether she would work well with us or not. We're leaning to a live-out maid but the one we spoke to on Friday is looking to live in due to the distance she'd have to commute daily. She is married so not sure about this. She also said initially she wanted only 3 days a week, live out, then when B explained earlier in the week that we were looking for at least 5 days a week for the first month to get settled, she switched to "live-in."

We also asked a relocation person if she had anyone looking and also our realty agent. So we will continue the search.

Catching up

My apologies for not posting anything for quite a few days. When I first sat down to write something earlier in the week it just didn't "gel." I determined it was just not going to happen that day, so I waited for future inspiration. I will now try to catch everyone up.

I was off to AWA(Amer. Women's Assoc) twice this week. On Monday was a weekly coffee & chat and then on Tuesday I attended my first "Social and Shopping" at the AWA. This is their general business monthly meeting but they've named it something that sounds like a lot more fun with the hope to lure more attendees. They also do have an area of vendors at the meeting so, yes, there is actual shopping involved. I didn't see anything this week to purchase. They also always have tables set up for reps of their corporate sponsors which includes a couple of travel companies. It sounds like they really do some interesting trips within Indonesia and elsewhere. They do carry on business of the club and also have a guest speaker; this week's speaker was the current US Ambassador to Indonesia. Also on hand was a member of the Consular staff at the Embassy who is involved with the US Citizen Services department. The Ambassador had some interesting things to say and when queried about what happens if we get arrested, the Consular staff liaison was happy to walk us through the details. Hint: You do not want to get arrested here.

Some of the ladies adjourned to the dining room at the American Club for a light lunch. I had lunch there and followed that up with a brief lesson in Mahjong. It remains to be seen if I will enjoy this game but the ladies were nice and it was a very social and not very competitive version. I hear this game can get quite intense and addicting. A group of AWA ladies plays on most Tuesday afternoons so we'll see. I was learning to play the American/Western version but the other table was playing the Chinese version. It's a traveling game moving from house to house week to week.

B had a French visitor here early in the week and they went to a place called Potato Head Garage for dinner. Would you believe me if I told you there is actually a Potato Head as well as the Garage? It's outside of the mall right near the future apartment so we'd be able to walk there! Pretty good food.

B and I ate at an Indonesian Soul Food restaurant on Wednesday night. No reservations for couples ( just large parties) so we went extra early. Food very good. Dessert, not so good. What they called a peanut cake was equivalent of a large hamburger bun with a drizzle glaze of peanut butter , confectioner's sugar and a little milk. Will not be eating that again.

The "game" and a dessert

Sunday evening.
Today we woke bright and early to enjoy a nice breakfast in the hotel before the 7:00 am live coverage of the 8:00 pm Saturday night football game between The Ohio State Buckeyes and Virginia Tech. The score did not turn out in our favor, but the streaming live of the game was partially successful. Everything went fine at first, but then we lost the ESPN stream and resorted to another stream channel that apparently had no audible commentary. I depend on commentary to know what's going on! We could hear ref calls and some crowd noise and band stuff but nothing else. At one point we heard "testing one two three repeatedly" but then it stopped and nothing changed audibly. After some time I located a live audio stream for my tablet so we listened and watched on two different signals. They were slightly out of sync and made things more confusing for me. B thought it was "tolerable." We hope we have better signal strength next week. Here's a shot before the streaming hit a snag. Laptop computer tethered to the living room TV. Video, nice! Audio? Couldn't get it sync with the sound bar so listened off the laptop.

In summary, we did not play very well at all and the technical aspect of this procedure needs some refinement but overall it seems to work, somewhat. It is possible. Hopefully, next week it will be better. The score?  OSU 21; VT 35. Boo hoo. A historic loss for many reasons. I won't state all of them here.

With all the discussion about the salak yesterday, I forgot to mention the yummy dessert we had with lunch at a fish place on Saturday. Sizzling pineapple cake with vanilla sauce. In the background is the menu showing what it looked like as it arrived at the table before the dessert buzzards got on it. We stopped to take this picture during the feeding frenzy then quickly finished it off. By the way, we were not the only folks in this restaurant photographing their desserts.

The server poured a wee bit too much sauce on the really hot tray and the sauce foamed up and boiled all over the tray and even onto the table, but who cares? We had to wait a few minutes before diving into this delicious dessert because the sauce was very,very hot. For the record, the dessert buzzards did not make the sauce mess on the table. Mom, you would love this!
 

To salak or not to salak

That is an excellent question so today we decided to test it out.

But first, we've done 2 visits to the future apartment and things seem to be progressing well. Painting is ongoing, the AC system seems to have been checked and cleaned, the drapes we are keeping have been removed for cleaning, the furniture we wished removed and replaced is gone so it's all going well. On my Thursday visit I met the "relations manager" for the apartment building. He followed me up to the apartment and brought along his assistant. He wanted to be sure I knew how important communication is with the tenants, owners, etc., and how he hoped we'd be happy there, etc.

Today, B and I both stopped by and the young man at the reception desk just gave us the key and used his pass key to let us into the elevator, but no one accompanied us upstairs.

We were able to make some additional measurements. On Thursday when I was there they were actively painting the master bedroom so I could not get in there. I got the measurements today. PS The master bedroom color looks nice, but the paint smell reminds me of the pachyderm area at the Zoo.

Back to the salak (or as it is commonly called in English, snake egg):
B had tried this fruit on a previous visit, but so far I had not tried it. B's impression was not too favorable. Salak is a native fruit, grown both on both Java and Bali. It is the fruit of a type of palm.There are the two main ones: salak pondoh and salak bali. The salak pondoh is the darker one. They sell both here. For our first experiment, we chose the darker on that is grown on Java because we are on Java. We brought the one lone salak home, properly washed it and after dinner I decided now was the time.

 After looking up exactly how one goes about eating the salak, we peeled it, then peeled off a very thin plastic-like film covering each segment.

Now... for... the... tasting!

My impression is about the same as Brad's. It's ok if it's all you have, but it doesn't hold a candle to dragon fruit or passion fruit or soursop. And, on top of that, the fruit smells a little funky. Our research revealed a tiny tidbit of information that might lead to another experiment. It seems that the  salak Bali is more fruity in aroma and taste. Do I feel another experiment coming on?

By the way, each of the 3 segments contains a large inedible pit. I ate one segment and B ate the other two segments.

Views from the new apartment

The apartment is in the heart of the Central Business District. I had a request for more of a description of the views from the future apartment so here we go. Keep in mind some shots are from the apartment that was 2 floors lower, so everything will appear slightly smaller than in the images.

From different spots in the apartment we will have views to the East, North, and West. The living room, dining room and the larger balcony face North. So, we have quite a wide view of the surrounding area.

You will have to use your imagination to blend the paired shots together for a panoramic view. [My desktop computer and I have not been reunited yet.]

The building in the far right of the left image and the far left in the right image is the main police station for Jakarta.

 The MBR (and smaller balcony) faces East:

  The other bedrooms face mostly West:

One of the bedrooms has a pretty much full on view of the apartment building on the right if you look straight out the window. You can see other stuff if you look way to the left. The other room has a much more scenic view.

We will probably take better pictures once we actually move in!