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| Missed plane |
| 06.14.04 (2:48 am) [edit] |
My driver assured me that if we left the apartment at 4.30 am we would make the 5.30 plane. We didn't! There were no traffic jams, no breakdowns, no car jackings, nothing. We got to the airport at 5am. Got to the check in desk at 5.05 and were told that check closed at 5am sharp. So much for being a rubber time country. I haven't been pissed off for a while but I was pissed off at the driver this morning. :x I told him off and he realized his mistake but it was impossible to tell if he knew the hassles he had caused. I asked him if he understood and he said "ya ya sorry sorry"??!!
So after exploring other options we rebooked for tomorrow and came back to Jakarta. I wrote some reports and emails, worked on accounting issues and plan to go home early. Tomorrow we leave at 3.45am. :oops:
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| US will win in Iraq |
| 06.14.04 (2:36 am) [edit] |
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Really I don't think anyone will really win in Iraq at this stage. This is just part two of my experiment. Since my last entry entitled "GREAT SEX" my hits went up by 58. Considering I have been doing this blog for about 5 months and had reached only 1905 before the entry, it was a huge number of hits for one day. People sure like sex. I will see how it goes with the above title. I am going to West Papua in far western Indonesia tomorrow. I don't whether I can connect to the internet?!? :?
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| GREAT SEX |
| 06.12.04 (7:43 am) [edit] |
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Sorry to disappoint you. This is not actually about sex at all. I am just doing an experiment inspired by [url=http://alfranken.tblog.com/]Al Franken [/url] who wrote Iraq War in the heading just to increase hits. But I reckon that humans being humans and generally addicted to sex still find sex more interesting than the Iraq war. So this is part one in the experiment. Tomorrow I will try thing with 'Iraq War'. Currently my hits are 1905. How will they be in 24 hours??? :idea:
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| Ramble |
| 06.12.04 (7:27 am) [edit] |
I’ve been working really hard the last couple of weeks since my family left to go back to Japan. I figure that if a I really put in a few extra miles now before reporting back to HQ at the end of July I should be able to impress the powers above that I am indispensable here in Indonesia and that they had better let my family come here. My intuition is telling me that I have a connection with Indonesia. It is not like I am enamored with the place or anything. It is a similar thing to Japan. I like the Japan and think there are some absolutely beautiful areas and charming people. But I am not a Japan nut. Some gaijin in Japan try to become more Japanese than Japanese. I speak the language better than 98% of gaijin there but still feel that I am not attached to the place. It will be interesting to go back there in July just to see how I feel about the place after some distance both physical and psychologically. I haven’t been away from Japan this long in about 7 years.
The other day at the Embassy there was a meeting about Japanese aid with the Economic Minister and some other government people. I felt a bit nervous in front of this really high level guy and hadn’t spoken Japanese properly for probably a month so ended up not speaking properly. I said some words which don’t even exist. Words which if thought about from the perspective of the kanji characters make sense, but are not real words. I wanted to say that we are planning to revive our emergency relief program which would be 緊急援助のプログ ムを復活する予 があります。復活 fukkatsu means revive but instead I said 再活 saikatsu which if you look at just the characters, 再 means again, afresh and renew, and, 活 is vitality and live, so what I said would be something similar to fukkatsu but the problem is the word isn't in the dictionary. After I said it I sat there thinking while ignoring the ongoing conversation, is that a real word??. After returning home my suspicions were confirmed when I found it wasn't in the dictionary. Nobody seemed to notice that I was using words that didn’t exist, or maybe they were being stoically polite as Japanese are very good at.
Anyway, back to Indonesia, I started learning Indonesian a few years ago when there was a chance that I was going to be sent here to set up an office for another Japanese NGO. I really wanted to come so started learning so as to strengthen my case. The whole thing fell through with 9/11 as all the focus was shifted to Afghanistan. I later went there and did the initial research for setting up an office there. The office in Afghanistan was eventually realized after I left the organization according to my recommendations but that is a different story. (I can’t focus on one story tonight!)
Anyway, I eventually quit my Indonesian lessons as I couldn't see anyway for me to be able to come here for work again. My intuition was telling me to continue but I couldn’t see the point. Logic won out and I gave up. Of course intuition was right and here I am. I am catching up with my Indonesian now. But I think this indicates that I am supposed to be here for a while. I think if I was to be here for 1-2 years my Indonesian would be pretty good as long as I keep studying hard. I certainly think Indonesia holds great potential for my organization to do good work and expand its current small programs. I hope to play the leading role in this fukkatsu of the organization here.
:lol:
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| Trip |
| 06.09.04 (5:56 am) [edit] |
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I'm off to Papua, Central Sulawesi and South Sulawesi from Monday for 2 weeks which should be an adventure. I wanted to go to Maluku too but because of the renewed instability and difficulty in gaining access to important resource people the trip to there had been delayed until after the Presidnetial Elections on July 5. I'll try to take some good photos for this blog (and work!). Recently I have been busy talking to other NGOs and Japanese officials here. Things are looking pretty positive in terms of getting new funding for projects. Anyway I gotta go! :shock:
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| decision plus 1 |
| 06.06.04 (8:27 pm) [edit] |
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One more decision that I think was rally good was the decision to give up drinking and drugs. I want go into detail here but I remember going to parties in my late teems and early twenties and seeing two groups of people. One taking drugs or drinking too much and the other not. The not side always seemed to be having a better time, looked more alive and brighter. So I thought I would rather be like that. From working at some pretty rough working class bars around Melbourne I knew the damage that over drinking could do and from some friends of friends I knew what long term drug taking could even with so called light drugs. With this experience I knew that I didn't want to be part of it, so I quit it all and haven't regreted a day. People look at me sometimes like your an Australian who doesn't drink!!??? They exist??? But people always accept it and once they know they never ask you again. :D
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| Decisions |
| 06.03.04 (7:21 pm) [edit] |
The best decisions I have ever made in my life.
1. Decision to marry my wife, who is the greatest. I was nervous at first about getting married but after 6 months of soul searching I decided to take the plunge and haven’t looked back since. I love her more now than I ever have.
2. The decision to do a meditation retreat in southern Thailand in 1992. I has just said goodbye to a friend who was leaving the island I was staying on. It wasn’t just a goodbye, it was in many ways the final closing of an era. She left and as soon as she was gone I saw a notice for the retreat just 10 minutes drive away with registration starting in 2 hours. I thought, this is exactly what I need, and went to the retreat. 12 years of meditating and countless retreats later, that decision to go to that retreat changed my life for the better.
3. Decision to go to a yoga class at Dance of Life. A friend managed to convince me to go to a 6:30 am class. I had done some yoga before then, but not seriously. 2 and a half years of intense yoga 4-5 times a week from 6:30 am later, my body, my mind, my attitude had changed completely. The friends I made there I still love, my teacher is still the most optimistic energetic person I know and through the experience I met my Guru.
4. Decision to learn Japanese. After traveling through SE Asia for a year I had ran out of money and decided to go to Japan, a country I knew little about, for the sole purpose of making money. Little did I know the relationship that would begin from this materialistic aim. I decided to start learning the language out of curiosity and a desire to move beyond just English. This was especially since when I was traveling I was always meeting Europeans who spoke 2-3-4-5 languages, which I thought was just fantastic. Learning Japanese to the point where I am now has expanded my mind, given me more to appreciate and understand in the world and created fantastic opportunities, which I may not of otherwise had.
5. Decision to follow Amma. Amma has been a huge influence on my life. She is the embodiment of compassion and goodness in this world. Everyday I bow down to her and set her grace.
That’s all I can think of for now. After writing about these decisions, I just noticed a pattern. All of them were bold and required sacrificed and hard work. I am now learning Indonesian and working hard here away from my family, which requires sacrifice and effort. I hope that in the future that decision will be seen to be a great one. :D
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| Warm Japanese |
| 06.01.04 (6:14 am) [edit] |
In my last Japanese entry I wrote somewhat harshly about Japan. How people had become strangers and lost some of their warmth. However, now I feel that I may have been too rash in my feeling. May be it was me who had lost my warmth, toward Japan at least.
There have been a couple of events that made me review my previous feeling. One was the treatment my wife got at the Japanese consulate in Melbourne when she had to get a new passport made for one of my sons faster than usual. My son’s passport was soon to expire and was unable to leave Australia on the date planned. This wasn’t discovered until check in at the airport so there was a mad rush to get a new passport. My wife said the staff there were so kind, expressed such empathy and did so much for her beyond the call of duty. My wife she said she almost felt like crying from such kindness. The consulate didn’t ask for details but expressed sympathy for my wife and made the passport overnight at no extra charge. In contrast when she tried to get an Australian passport at the local passport office for my son they were inflexible and accusing. I realize the terrorist threat but my wife said they were just cold.
Another event which made me review my feelings was a group of Japanese older women who came to Jakarta and who donated some money to us. It was the first time for me to interact with a group of Japanese people for a whole day in a few months and I really enjoyed it. I was like their tour guide for a day. I was a Japanese tour guide all throughout my graduate school studies in Melbourne so it brought back a lot of memories. I enjoyed that job. I wouldn’t want to do it as a career as it has not much in the way of challenges and promotions once you get the job down, but it was fun, light and a nice way to help people to enjoy themselves.
These Japanese women were all very qualified (doctors, executives etc.) and rich, but they were humble, polite and still could enjoy a good laugh. Of course I had to be polite to them, but unlike what most non-Japanese think, Japanese politeness isn’t necessarily cold. I enjoyed joking with them and stirring them a bit. You can go too far in what you say, but just like anywhere in the world, if you say it with a smile and without malice (and use the right polite verb forms), you can get away with a lot. They were fairly typical Japanese women (maybe richer than average?) but really nice people.
So I think Japanese people are still warm people. I think I was having a bad day, or maybe month. I don’t want to lose my connection with Japan as it has been so good to me. Given me so many great experiences and opportunities. For that I will always be thankful. 8)
![]() =http://img7.photobucket.com/a...
View from the back of a bicycle taxi on the way to Sunda Kelapa port in North Jakarta. Do you like the skier on his shirt? A nice contrast in tropical Jakarta I thought.
![]() =http://img7.photobucket.com/a...
On a boat tour through the port. These photos have nothing to so with the blog entry.
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