Photos 4

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I'm here for your blood

Sorry for not writing for a long time; this has been due to a mixture of sampling trips, tiredness and laziness on my part. Anyhow, before going into more detail on my sampling trips, I figured I’d give a few more general impressions.

Indonesia is not actually the third world. I can tell this because their stores sell Coke Zero. Nowhere truly third world ever sells diet anything. Though, it’s also odd because in the small, isolated villages I sample in, one can buy Sprite and Strawberry Fanta but not Coca-Cola. It’s perhaps the only place I’ve been except deep in the Congo where one can’t buy Coke. Also the only flavor of Fanta I’ve found in the entire country is Strawberry, which is definitely not the best flavor of Fanta. I had to choke down 1.5L of the stuff to get my sharps container.

Indonesia does, however, have several quirks. For one, despite having large tubs of water (from which one scoops water out to shower or “flush” the toilet) above/next to their toilets, they have neither flush toilets nor actual running water showers. They’re 95% of the way to them, but they seem not to care. Why?

A bigger concern, though, is their lack of TP. In general, one is expected to wipe with one’s left hand then rinse it off by scooping water out of the vat of water next to the tub. And then one is expected to do everything else with one’s right hand. Why waste an entire hand on wiping? You could use both hands socially, which would be especially nice as you also generally are expected to eat and serve yourself with your hands---which makes it hard if you’re a lefty to avoid a major faux pas of sticking your left hand into the dish. The store in Ketapang even sells toilet paper. They don’t have a large stock, but clearly it’s possible to get it here. These people, while relatively poor, own mopeds, nice cell phones and apparently buy diet sodas---they could afford the 17 cents a roll of TP costs! I understand some things are just cultural differences, but this just seems inefficient.

Speaking of odd, while most people own chairs, tables and many even own couches (all of which are nasty 70s-looking red monstrosities), they do almost everything on the floor---eat, entertain, etc. My legs are very sore from trying to sit Indian-style so much, especially after my futsal injury (I bent my left knee forward). They could have TP if they wanted, they do have sitting apparatuses and they also have silverware (at least I think most do); why not use them? I don’t get it. They also strictly forbid shoes in their homes, but they bring their motorcycles in at night (and their homes are full of smoke all the time). Heh.

A timely note: there are many ethnic Chinese here; they came about 100-150 years ago and fulfill the roles that the Indians fulfill in Uganda or the Jews fulfilled in medieval Europe. There are also some simmering tensions between them and the various Indonesian ethnicities like in those other places, though mostly people seem to get along quite well and be very opening. In any case, the way that this impacts me is that Andy’s house is in a relatively nice neighborhood in Ketapang (he’s paying $400/year in rent which is at least twice what he’d probably pay for the same house if he were Indonesian) and so we are surrounded by ethnic Chinese people. This would be great except that they blare the worst music every morning around 7am. Let’s just say that I’d rather have a dozen roosters placed in my bedroom at 7.

Our little trash heap for our neighborhood has been the site of a soap opera for me. There are, alternatively, people, dogs, cats, chickens and goats picking through the trash. I’m still trying to work out the hierarchy between them all.

So I’ve spent most of the last week sampling or traveling to sample. The day before I was supposed to leave, my counterpart student (a student from an Indonesian university who I am supposed to pay and give academic credit to ideally for helping me but sometimes it works out that you have to just drag them along) sent me a text message saying he wouldn’t be coming with me and good luck Sir. Great. Now he gave off the impression of being a pretty boy so in many ways this was a good thing, but still it was a big setback---I can’t go to these villages alone saying “I want blood” or “I need blood” (two of the few Indonesian phrases I know---I also know “I take dog blood now”) and expect anything but being burnt at the stake. So I scrambled and thanks to the help of an Eli here, I found someone who is quite good. But still---he f*ed me over by text! It’s like breaking up with someone by Post-It…

So after a couple days’ delay, I got going. We rode our mopeds out to the first village; about a 3 hour drive given road conditions. The main road is pretty good (by third world standards), but the side roads can be treacherous. Imagine playing a game that was a mixture of bull riding (for obvious reasons), slalom (dodging various particularly large rocks, potholes, missing bridge elements, mud mountains often while going down San Fran-like gradients), chess (you have to plan at least 5 moves in advance) and motocross---then imagine doing it with a 30 kg bag strapped precariously behind you and another 20 kg bag on your back (pushing you into an uncomfortable almost standing position) AND doing so just after a rain has slickened the course and added up to 2 foot puddles. You’ll start to get the picture. The bridges were the most interesting part---off the main road, they were composed of two long planks spanning the distance with some cross beams at 90 degree angles. Pretty normal stuff, except most bridges were missing some/several of their cross beams. So the only way to cross was by going balance-beam style on the long planks that span the distance, looking down at the rushing water beneath. Let’s just say that driving off the main road here has a steep learning curve. Driving on the main road does as well, but for different reasons. Not only are there all manner of vehicle/farm animal on the road, but directionality of lanes is only followed sometimes. Frequently you’ll find yourself with people going the opposite direction as you on both sides of you if it makes it easier for one of them.

This pales in comparison, though, to the second major sampling trip I took. It wasn’t that the roads were bad, but the directions were quite interesting. First we drove 85km to visit the Western doctor who runs an NGO here. We got some phone numbers and names from her employees and called to make inquiries as to the road condition. We decided to take a boat instead. So we drove another 20 km to a dock area, found a person to watch our bikes and found another person to barter with over the boats. We got in a little speedboat and traveled upriver. We got let out at a dock and carried our bags up a hill to a snack bar on the road. We made friends with the people there and then got their help flagging down a passing truck. We piled ourselves and our things in the back. Then they wanted to extort us, so we ended up paying $6 to go now instead of “sometime later”. We went to the main village. We walked to the head of the village’s house. We made friends with him. Then, we (along with one of his sons as a pseudo-guide) started sampling. The next day, repeat approximately the same thing to go to another village along the river.

We’ve been staying with the village leaders in each place. So at least it’s the nicest house in the village, but still has generally not been the Hilton. Though I have gotten to watch several local football games, some Indonesian soaps and one Oprah on TV during this time. I thought maybe the Oprah was just some weird thing going on, but later I heard my employee and a different village leader talking about Oprah. We generally have managed to find small pads to sleep on, though in one place we slept on the floor (and there was no place to put up a mosquito net). So that night I didn’t get to sleep until 4am from a mixture of discomfort at the sleeping arrangement and the itchiness of a couple dozen mosquito bites. Lately though I’ve been really tired---I even fell asleep at 7:15pm at the last place.

The actual sampling involves going house-to-house (after getting permission from the village head). We ask to come in, invariably get permission and sit on the floor with the man of the house and frequently a couple of his friends or sons and/or his wife. We smile, exchange pleasantries, and then my employee (Deddy) explains why we’re there. Reactions are quite varied; most people are at least somewhat interested though some are very afraid of even tiny needles. About half the time we get permission and take anywhere from one to eight samples in the house. We ask questions that relate to their history with malaria and their risk factors for getting malaria and I poke them in the finger and get a couple drops of blood for later analysis. Per person it only takes about five minutes. Then we give them soap, shampoo and toothbrushes (I am the Hygiene Fairy---this is what happens when one asks the doctor servicing the area what one should give out) and some candy for children and are on our way again. I tend to get more samples from adult men than any other group (which is a good thing for my research); adult women are a close second. There are some places where the men are wimps though. One that sticks out in my mind is a house with five or six adult guys, a 21-year-old woman and her 4-year-old son. The men were all too afraid of the needle but the woman and her son participated. I’m a little worried about my results because I don’t think this is the high malaria transmission season, though in a couple villages we did find people who were sick with malaria. Really only 2 or 3 of the 5 villages visited so far had a good number of mosquitoes, though.

Meal times reinforce the sharp gender disparity. Deddy and I usually eat with the village leader. It is just the three of us. The women serve us and then sit on the other side of the room while we eat. When we’re done, the cats come and lick our plates clean (they let their cats get away with everything. It’s a nation of cat people. They treat their dogs like crap and some of them eat them). There are also sharp distinctions in smoking; basically every male over age 14 smokes but I have not even once seen a woman smoke here. I asked Deddy and he says no Indonesian women smoke. Probably overstated, but not by much.

In the villages we usually have to bathe in a river or drainage ditch. For all this is a mostly Muslim place, they are remarkably willing to allow expedience to take over frequently. People of bot genders will go down to their underwear to bathe as anyone walks by.

At this point I’ve collected 155 samples from 5 villages. I am trying to hit 3 more before I’m done. I’ll try to post more frequently over the next couple weeks, though probably not again for 5 or 6 days. I’ll try to upload a few photos later today though if I can.

Indonesian manners, etc

So a lot has happened since the last time I wrote, but I'll try to make this a bit more than just a laundry list. First I got a moped (95% of the vehicles on the road are mopeds or motorcycles); it's $27/week to rent (which is a good deal even for here). I got such a good deal by renting from Andy's friend's father. To do any sort of business here (and especially to get a good deal), one has to pay in time instead of money. So, we went to this guy's house, spent about 3 minutes working out the details of the transaction, and then had coffee, cigarettes, more coffee and cigarettes and chatted for about 2.5 hours. The guy is interesting; he taught himself 5 languages having never graduated high school (though not English) and gets up every morning at 5am to do Tai Chi. He looks remarkably good for a 70-year-old. But, particularly as the conersation was in Indonesian, it did get old after awhile. But yes, time well spent (and Andy had already talked to them earlier about it so the groundwork was laid...it would have been longer otherwise). This brings up a kind of general point about here and just about everywhere tropical---you can't expect privacy or time alone. I guess because you pretty much need community to survive, everyone fosters relationships with very long and frequent contact. Another example: after agreeing on a couple guys to come help me get dog samples at the house of the head vet in this area, I had gone and done some more errands. I got home tired and ready to lay down and read. All the sudden, there's a knocking. The guys had come over just to chat. Of course they didn't speak English and I hardly speak any Indonesian so it was mostly pleasantries and was over relatively quickly, but yeah...never get comfortable! It's nice in some ways to have such community, but it is a double-edged sword.

My first trip from Ketapang was to Sukadana, about 100km north along the main road, a couple days ago. Andy and I went to visit his friends Kinari and Cam. We had a good time; it rained very hard (and some lightning) while we were swimming in the ocean which actually was really, really nice. They also had a wide selection of imported booze, of which I could only have a little as I was driving home. I got to try rainforest honey too, which was good. Kinari is a doctor who works in the area; she gave me helpful sampling pointers and told me all the places just lousy with malaria. So now I get to go on a tour of the malarious tropics. Not much malaria (or mosquitoes) here in Ketapang, but now I know where to find it. One island I will be going to apparently gets everyone sick. Yay. At least I have a good antimalrial. The things we do for science. On the way there, btw, I got hit by a truck...only my mirror was hit though, so no real harm. A $1.60 repair and the bike's as good as new.

I injured myself at futsal on Friday, bending my knee a little the wrong way. Hurt horribly at first but now it is almost all better. Just in time for me to catch a little bug. Nothing too bad though.

On Thursday I'll be heading out to the real field for 3 days to do some sampling. No contact then and primitive conditions---staying with the local head man, sleeping on a straw mat on the floor, etc. Should be fun to really get out there. I'm also looking forward to really getting started with some research. Got to get my things in order for that and also trying to sample some dogs this afternoon and tomorrow morning. Whee.

PS - Submitted a paper to American Naturalist last week and have a news article on Cori and I's honeymoon in Science this week. W00t.

Got me some samples

I managed to get blood samples from 5 orangutans yesterday at a local waystation for orangs confiscated from people who keep them illegally as pets. I also got some very cute pics, though none with me with them which is sad. They were all young (generally pet orangs are picked up as babies by people who kill their mothers in the wild), inquisitive and playful. They groomed me, I reciprocated and then they were happy to offer me their blankets for tug of war and offer their fingers for me to poke and collect blood from. I only took a blood smear to look at under the microscope from one and it was positive for a low-level malaria infection, though I don't know enough about simian malarias to say for sure what species of malaria it was. W00t things falling into place and me feeling almost competent.

Today I also collected blood samples from 7 dogs for a dog genetics project. It's much easier and more fun to do when Cori is with me, as it is hard to coordinate with people who don't speak English (my Indonesia is still very, very rudimentary) and with Cori there, I don't have to concentrate on every single thing all the time. Plus she has the touch with dogs (hence her being labeled a witch in Namibia). But, despite the difficulties (including a blown fuse in the centrifuge setup and a low-speed moped crash on the back of the regional vet's moped) I managed to get nice (if sometimes smallish) DNA pellets from all 7 dogs in the end. Hopefully I'll get many more in the future; the people helping me want to take me around a few places further afield in the next couple weeks. Then comes the fun of trying to get export permits for the samples. At one house we sampled from, they had quite the animal managerie; cows/bulls, chickens, ducks, 2 macaques, peafowl and cats at the very least. It's always sad to see tied up monkeys, even non-endangered ones. I'll try to post a couple pics in the nearish future.

Next week I will probably be going to a zoo a few towns away for a couple days, going with the regional veterinarian and his team. I hope to get more monkey blood samples and cute monkey photos.

A few photos

Me at the Equator.














Small street festival across from my hotel in Jakarta with yummy food stalls.















Equator cats say, "The sun is too much." Fell asleep at the boob, like someone I know at home.


Hopefully I'll manage to upload some cooler pics soon.

Finally in "the field"-ish

After an uneventful flight, I landed in Pontianak, West Kalimantan's provincial capital which straddles the equator. I went straight to the hotel and after dinner fell asleep, waking up not knowing which hemisphere I was in (how's that for a hangover story, though I wasn't hungover?). As labor is cheap, by the way, my hotel had an overabundance. It was actually a bit intimidating since any time I left my room, there were five or so people asking what they could do to help me.

Meetings an the local university the next day went well. It was much cooler than Jakarta. Since it's on the equator, "dry" season is a very relative term as it's always pretty rainy and so it was pretty cool since it had just rained there. While it was still a city, it was also much more open and laid back in a good way than Jakarta. Chickens, goats and various other animals roamed the streets and I felt like I was back in the good, not over-urbanized part of the developing world. I also visited the equator and checked in with the Northern Hemisphere and found out tickets by boat or plane to Ketapang, my base of operations, would be difficult to obtain because of the impending Indonesian Independence Day. Somehow my counterpart (a local university student I pay and take along with me and put on publications in return for his local expertise, assistance planning things out, etc; they are required by law but also should be genuinely helpful for my project) managed to find me an economy ticket on the boat to Ketapang on Tuesday. I'm not sure what he did to get it because he refused my money to pay for it, saying he had bartered for it.


On Tuesday, despite my protestations (in Bahasa Indonesia---he should have understood), my taxi driver erroneously took me to the airport. However, we had time for him to realize his error
and make it back to the port in town though I got pretty worried. He was pretty embarrassed by it too, so my ride was quite cheap. The 8 hour boat ride reminded me of how much taller I am than almost all Indonesians. The space between seats was not large enough for my femur so it was pretty uncomfortable. The people next to me were very nice though and the seas were calm, so between trying to talk to the people next to me and sleeping for a few hours, I was able to pass the time pretty well.


Ketapang seems pretty nice. Fairly small, but certainly more than just a village. Right after arriving I went with my advisor to play futsal with some locals. I did pretty well, scoring 2 goals and serving 3 assists (to get in on all 5 of our goals) as well as preventing some goals. However, it was ultimately in a losing effort. I'm also staying in a house my advisor is renting, so it keeps things pretty cheap. It's fairly basic with standard Indonesian squat toilet without a flusher and shower=vat of water you scoop water from and pour over you as well as just a mat on the floor to sleep on, but it's nice to have a "home" and it's much more comfortable than many places I've stayed. And it at least has T.P. unlike most of the toilets (which are all squat toilets except at nice hotels) here.

I will try to post a couple pics of the equator and stuff in a separate post since the internet is pretty slow.

Also, as we have no internet at home, I will probably be posting much less for the next 5-6 weeks or so.

Guy question, Jakarta airport

I lied about that being my last post from Jakarta. I'm at the airport now, which has free wireless. Crazy. It's actually a decently nice airport; many of the walkways are open air and it's laid out cheerily. It wasn't quite as big a hassle to get checked in as I thought it would be, though it involved 3 airline counters and one other counter to pay for my domestic terminal service fee.

Quick question mostly for the guys. Let's say that there's a bathroom in a well-trafficked public place and the door remains open all the time, exposing two of the four urinals to view from those walking by, like this:
X X X* X* where X* are exposed to casual observers.

The angle of exposure is maybe 45 degrees, so it's not looking directly into one's back, but it's also possibly to mostly block out the actual action. Now, if the 2nd urinal from the left in that diagram is in use (and it is the only one in use), is it appropriate to use the far right urinal (as would be normal guy etiquette) or should one use the far left urinal, which normally would be wrong but would leave you unexposed to passersby?

Last Jakarta Post

So two trips to the Home Affairs Department and one more to the Forestry Department and now all I (supposedly) need is to have someone pick up my letter from the Forestry Department allowing me entrance to Gunung Palung National Park on Tuesday (maybe) and to have them fax it to me.

I’m flying to Borneo (Pontianak) on Sunday. I’m very much looking forward to leaving Jakarta, though Friday afternoon and today (Saturday) have been relatively nice. No trips to ministries. I went to the Eijkman Institute Friday afternoon. It was pretty nice; one of (the?) premier biotechnology institute in Indonesia. They do a lot of work with pathogens there, especially malaria, tuberculosis and bird flu, as Indonesia leads the world in cases of, and deaths from, bird flu. They also have all 4 (well, probably all 5) species of malaria parasite that cause illness in humans, which I guess for me is a w00t. I had a conversation with a researcher there and met a forest ecologist who works in Sarawak as well. There may be some good opportunities for collaboration with the people working on malaria there. The institute had some pretty nice facilities and a new BL3 lab to study bird flu. To get there we went past some of the nicest suburbs in Jakarta; very nice homes, including the American ambassador’s, which was huge and guarded like a fortress.

After that, I headed back to my hotel, ate at an Indonesian place in the mall food court and then watched some local news (including bird flu victims’ corpses being burnt) various Aussie sports and some of the Olympics opening ceremony. There was rugby, Aussie Rules Football and a third game, the name of which I’m not sure. It’s closer to American football than either Aussie Rules Football or rugby, though it has 5 downs, no first downs and no forward passes. This morning I watched the Yankees lose to the Angels on the YES network (we don’t actually get the YES network, but ESPN Southeast Asia or whatever version of ESPN it is puts it on for some Yankees games I guess). Then I headed down to a small street carnival type thing going on in front of my hotel and had some good food, none of which I know the name of, but it was mostly seafood. They also had great sweet iced tea. I was planning on spending some of the afternoon on the internet, but it seems that every wireless network in my part of Jakarta is down. The one in the hotel and the one at the coffeeshop and even all the other ones I could normally pick up but not logon to from the coffee shop. Weird. So instead I’m just reading and writing; I’ll swim a bit later and maybe visit the nearby mosque.

I’m very much looking forward to making it back out to the field. I have a meeting Monday morning in the large city in Borneo I’m flying into but after that I hope on Tuesday to take the boat down to Ketapang, my base of operations. The boat takes 7 hours but if you swing the extra $2 for a VIP seat it’s not supposed to be too bad, and you’re a VIP then. The stay in Jakarta has reinforced that I do not generally like staying in large cities, even if they are interesting. The forest is calling me.

As a human interest note, Jakarta is full of canals. The Dutch had at one time wanted to make it a tropical Amsterdam. As anyone who has been in the developing world could guess, these canals are now cesspools full of untreated sewage and all sorts of other flotsam produced by the teeming masses. Many houses and other buildings hang out over the water with their waste going directly into it. As you can imagine, the water is absolutely disgusting and smelly. I hadn’t seen anyone near it until Wednesday afternoon, when I saw three boys bathing in it. Shudder. Having now been several places in the developing world on various continents, it seems pretty clear that there is very little difference in how the poorest or richest live between the various places (though Kinshasa’s urban poor may have been a step lower than everywhere else’s); the main difference is how large the middle class is. I guess it probably doesn’t require much thought to figure that out though. Jakarta does have much more security than any of the other places I’ve been, though. Kinshasa had a good bit too, but Jakarta has metal detectors at every entrance, guards that go through cars at most parking lots, etc. But then again, they also are the only place I’ve been with a real terrorism problem.

Well hopefully my next post will be from Borneo. While I should have ok internet access in Pontianak, where I’m flying into, I’m not sure about Ketapang, so my posts may become less frequent.

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Update: So while the hotel and coffee shop wireless were out, my computer wireless card has also decided to go down. Ethernet via cable is working now...

Bureaucracy Update

A quick update on the paperwork. The second day I was doing paperwork, I again started at RISTEK where they said I should have gotten a letter to get my KITAS (paperwork) from immigration in Pontianak on Borneo, not in Jakarta. Maybe the Jakarta immigration will give it to me, but they doubt it. And they say they sent me to the wrong (further away) immigration office in Jakarta. They give me more letters. I go back to the immigration office hoping it works out. When I get there, they direct me to a window in the downstairs madhouse to pay at. I have to block out others trying to cut in front of me and hand in my slip and my money. I am directed to another window where I eventually get my receipt. Back to the first window. Directed to a small office. In there, they take my photograph twice each with two different digital cameras and take my fingerprints. I pay them as well. Back to the first window. Directed into a back office where I sign my name in 8 places. Told to come back the next day. I go to the main police office which is all the way across Jakarta. Taxi drops me off at the wrong entrance so I wind up having to walk around the building and eventually am directed to the right office. Given a form (in both Bahasa Indonesia and English) to fill out. Asks my religion. In Indonesia, everyone, citizen and guest, has to be one of five religions: Muslim, Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist or Hindu. Each of the five are equal under the law, but you must be one of the five; it’s even on Indonesians’ government ID cards. It also asks for every country I’ve ever visited. Fill it out and drop it off along with more money and a copy of all of my documents. Told to come back the next day. Head to the Forestry Ministry. This is the nicest ministry in Indonesia. Beautifully landscaped, large, modern, with a parking lot full of beamers and Lexuses. And, given their official salaries, you know where the money for those cars is coming from. It looks much nicer than the Oil Ministry even. Am directed up to the 8^th floor. Find the right office. The woman takes one look at my paperwork and tells me to come back after I get the paperwork from Police and Immigration. Head back to Immigration hoping the paperwork is ready this afternoon. No luck. Next morning: Start at 8:15am at RISTEK again. Get my official researcher card and a few other documents. Immigration at 9am. Pick up my KITAS at one window and my passport at another. Motorbike (ojek) over to Police. Pick up my Travelling Permit at a different office on the 2^nd floor. Over to the Home Affairs ministry (similar to FBI) back all the way across Jakarta. Turn in all my paperwork. Get a letter saying I can pick up my real letter the next day at 4pm. Back all the way across Jakarta to the Forestry Ministry. Up to the 8^th floor. She looks at my paperwork and tells me I need to go myself to make copies down on the 1^st floor. Find the back office with the copier. Wait 15 minutes for those in front of me to be done. Get my copies made. Back to the 8^th floor. She looks at my paperwork. I need to wait for the real letter from Home Affairs. But at least this time she took a copy of all the rest of my paperwork. If I get my Home Affairs letter to them the next morning, maybe it will even be ready that day (of course Home Affairs says it won’t be ready until 4pm). I head back to RISTEK where there is some more confusion, they make copies of my paperwork from Immigration and Police and they make me sit down at a computer and write out a document saying I won't export samples without the appropriate agreements signed by the university I am working with and a man named "Pretty" at the Health Ministry.

After this, I go to the backpacker area, Jalan Jaksa, to buy plane tickets to Pontianak in Borneo. Apparently because their Independence Day is approaching, all the cheap seats are full. I pay more than I should have to and have to fly Sunday instead of Saturday. Then I go to Carrefour where I eventually find silica gel beads next to the Glade plug-ins. Ah the fun of having lots to do in a developing world capital. On the bright side, I went with my advisor and another guy who works in Indonesia to a Steakhouse/Tavern last night where they serve steak raw with a hot cooking stone so you cook it as you eat it. It was too expensive for me (I had fish and chips) but it was still kind of fun and the live music was cool.

Well time for me to head back to the Home Affairs Ministry and see if I can get my letter to drop off at Forestry. I also have a meeting with some scientists in the afternoon (maybe I can actually think about science for once since getting here!).

Highlights of the Trip Thus Far

1. Meeting my advisor for an "early dinner" with "little alcohol" so we'd both be functional the next day. We figured we'd save the real fun until Thursday night. Then starting dinner at 9:30pm in a jazz club after having had 3 beers each waiting for his contact to meet us, splitting a *very* nice (and *very* expensive) bottle of Pinot Noir (provided by my advisor) and ending with double shots of Jack Daniels on the rocks and several clove cigarettes each before heading back sometime around midnight. He did not meet me for breakfast at 7am like we had agreed on... Good conversation though. Thanks for the awesome night, though less so for the next morning.

2. Getting hit by a car while walking with my advisor. It hit my arm, sending the box of mango juice I was holding flying and making quite a noise when the mirror snapped back. I hardly felt anything, though and so could be bad-ass in front of everyone by just picking up my juice and continuing on. The mark was gone by the evening. The minivan never even stopped.

3. Riding ojaks. Yeah, they're dangerous and I'm generally using cabbies, but in rush hour it takes 1/3rd as long to get across town and is so much more fun. They even have helmets for their passengers here. Crazy.

4. Watching the sunrise over a hazy Jakarta.

5. Walking aimlessly around the city Monday evening.

6. Getting hit on by 3 very conservatively dressed teenage Muslim girls waiting in the Immigration Office. I totally tried to avoid it (I don't want to get anyone, including myself, in trouble) by ignoring their giggles and looks, but then one of them struck up a conversation with me. I didn't really flirt back, but it was kind of funny. I could see that before I came in, they were playing the "what will you name your kid" game. None of the names looked like a name I'd want my kid named...

7. Watching Deal or No Deal, Indonesia version, in the Immigration Office. The woman wasn't even upset when she opened the 400 million case. She wound up knocking the top value (4 billion) off as the third case---leaving only the 2 lowest amounts left (500 and 1000). And, to add insult to injury, her case wound up to be the 500 rupiah. Enjoy your nickel, dumbass.

8. Realizing that while Law & Order isn't always on in Indonesia, apparently Mythbusters is.

9. Realizing that I may eventually actually get into the forest to do research.

Office of Immigration

So I go to RISTEK yesterday morning bright and early and they inform me I have to go to a million different places (5?) scattered across Jakarta with various documentation. Being a smart traveler, I already have copies of most everything, though I didn't realize I'd need 12 (!) more passport photos (4x6 cm with a RED BACKGROUND required) in addition to the 8 I had already submitted. I also needed copies of the visa stamps and exit cards they'd given me at the airport. So I head back to my hotel and make some copies and get the photos. Then I head to the Immigration Office. It is tucked into a back corner of central Jakarta in a fairly nondescript building on a very nondescript street. My taxi, even with the address, has lots of problems finding it and eventually lets me out so I can find it on foot. I hand the letter addresses to them to various people, watch them point and eventually find it.

The first floor is a madhouse. A few windows, lots of people, long lines, no signs in English. I find someone who looks knowledgeable and show them my paper. They point me upstairs and show me three fingers. I go to the third floor. More windows but no lines; just a bunch of haggard-looking people in chairs in the middle of the room. I go to the first window and hand them my paper (all this time trying out Indonesian greetings and phrases of exasperation). They point me to another window. I go to this window. The man talks to me in Bahasa Indonesia. I can tell from his voice when I'm getting warmer or colder. Eventually he gets from me everything he wants, hands me an application form and points me to the room marked FOTOCOPY. I go to the room unsure of why (I already have photocopies of everything). A woman takes my paperwork and hands it to a man in the back. She also takes 10,000 rupiah. He motions me in and eventually I realize he wants my address. I give it to him. No, Jakarta address. Ok. Eventually the form is filled out. He hands it to me and points me back to the window. I realize my departure card is missing. We find it under his desk. Go back to the window. They're on lunch break. Guy takes my paperwork anyway and tells me it is incompletely filled out (by pointing). I figure out, through trial and error punctuated by his positive or negative intonation, what to fill out where. He tells me to come back in an hour, after lunch. I go outside and buy some street food (<$1 lunch).

Come back in an hour later. Now they're praying. Thirty minutes later, I go back to the window. He motions me back to my seat. Thirty minutes later he waves me up. He picks up my folder from where I'd left it, hands it to another man who motions for me to come around to his desk, and the man initials two of the pages of my application and hands it to me. He motions me across the hall, to another window. I drop the paperwork at that window. A man takes it to a desk behind the window. Forty-five minutes later he motions for me. They've rearranged the papers and marked "USED" on my visa. He motions me back to the first window. I drop the paperwork off there. Thirty minutes later he calls me up again. The papers have one more stamp on them. They motion me toward a back door and try to intimate taking the stairs. Eventually one person from the back yells out, "Basement! Mr. John!"

I walk through the door and down the stairs. The last flight of stairs to the basement has open, cracked stairs, tons of water damage, no light and broken down office furniture piled high. Hmm, this can't be right. Go to the second floor. Open the door and say "Mr John?" to the first person I find. He points toward the stairs. Go to the first floor. Open the door into some kind of office and ask "Mr John?" to the first person I see. He points to the stairs. Hmmm. Go into the basement. It has high stacks of very old files and cobwebs. Are these the files of people killed by Suharto's regime? Should I start my own investigation? What's going on? Creeped out, I go back to the first floor. Ah, there's a small doorway tucked next to the stairs leading to a very plain office with a lot of red folders, similar to the one my paperwork is in. Seeing someone, I ask "Mr. John?" He smiles and answers affirmatively. I sit on the chair and hand him the folder. He looks at the paperwork briefly and initials one of the pages. He hands it back and motions me back toward the stairs. I go back to the first window and drop off the paperwork. Twenty minutes later, I am motioned to take it back across to a third window in the room. I drop it off there. The guys in that room are watching TV. After forty-five minutes, they call me back, hand me back the paperwork and motion me back to the first window. I drop it off there and the man, looking at his watch, intimates that I should come back tomorrow.

Day one of bureaucracy done. Now it's time to start Day Two of bureaucracy. Fun. Back to the Immigration Ministry with me.

Welcome to Indonesia!

My second flight was much like the first; the carry-on smuggler game, good seafood, etc, though this one had the cool in-flight entertainment system where each seat had its own tv screen and lots of entertainment choices, though not as many as on Emirates Air (why we got that on the shorter flight and not the longer one is beyond me). We got in just before 1pm and walked off the plane to a blast of humidity and a large sign proclaiming, "Welcome to Indonesia. DEATH PENALTY FOR DRUG TRAFFICKERS!" (emphasis theirs) This message was also on my customs declaration form (guess you shouldn't list the cocaine) and on several other billboards in the airport, some punctuated with an image of a gun, in case you weren't sure of the method of execution. I got through customs pretty easily and made it through the gauntlet to get cash, buy a soda (so I'd have small denominations) and hail a taxi with only having my cart fall over under its own weight once.

I got in to my hotel, Atlet Century Park, after going along a toll road that reminded me I was back in the developing world. Who needs traffic laws? My cabbie did just fine without use of the "lane concept" as painted onto the road.

The hotel is in relatively swanky southwest Jakarta, near a couple malls, an FX "fun bureau" which has an unclear purpose to me or Andy (it's not as obviously prostitution as it sounds), a 24-hour McDonald's drive-thru, a KFC, a Starbucks, a Cold Stone Creamery (!) and several other Western stores. Across the street from the hotel is mini golf and the hotel has a nice pool and rec area. The malls are mostly electronics stores (including an Apple store). Cool phones are pretty cheap here. Of course, the sidewalks, where they exist, often have huge holes in them leading down into sewage and other reminders we're not in Kansas anymore. As a biologist, so, so far I've seen on the streets: a young macaque in a vest riding a skateboard, 3 urban free-range goats, 2 stray dogs and 1 very skinny pregnant cat.

Yesterday I went to government offices. I should point out here that the cabbies not only don't speak English (most of them at least don't) but also tend not to know where they're going. Printed addresses + pointing on a map help, but they still usually have to triangulate and ask for directions several times. I have gotten to see a lot of Jakarta though.

Anyway, I started at the foreign researcher coordination group (RISTEK) from where they sent me with paperwork to a couple other places. I will try to blog about the Immigration Ministry and last night shortly, but now I have to go to breakfast.

Trust fund babies

Jesus Christ the [humanities] grad students sitting at the next table are annoying. I can't help overhearing their inane chatter about all the Westins they've stayed at, East Asian massage etiquette and their daddy's friends' vinyards in New Zealand. And dude, your thought of maybe bungee jumping sometime does not make you bad-ass. I can't wait to get on my next flight...

Why is blogger.com suggesting "scooters, vacation, fall" as possible labels for this post? Foreshadowing? Time to learn more Bahasa Indonesia. Haven't found "Could you hold this stray dog's leg like this to make the cephalic vein more prominent so I can draw blood from it?" yet. Will keep looking.

Travel to Taipei

Blogging my flight to Taipei:

11:33 pm – Arrive in the back of the line at China Airlines check-in for my 1:35 flight. Wow is this a long line. Spend the time figuring out how to best slide, push, pull, carry or otherwise move my 3 enormous bags + 1 overstuffed carry-on 5 feet at a time. Get pretty good at it by the 200^th time.

12:25 am – Arrive at the front of the line. They’re pretty efficient. I notice employees being very strict about weight limits and checking to make sure carry-ons are under 7 kg. I don’t know what my carry-on weighs, but I know it’s much more than 7kg…

12:30 am – Show up at desk. Immediately tell the guy checking me in I’ll have to pay for an extra bag. He asks for my credit card and fills out paperwork while I get my three bags, 2 of which are probably over the weight limit, on the scale and passed back to the other employee who is putting the tags on them and moving them onto the conveyor belt. No one notices I’m holding the bags up a little. Bags, and I, checked in fine. As I am about to leave, he asks to weigh carry-on. 11.7 kg. Damn. Look exasperated. He says ok for now and advises me to find a way to make it under 7 by the time they weigh it again as I enter the flight. And no, he says, I can’t put some in a shopping bag…only one bag allowed!

12:45 am – Make it to gate. They’re paging passengers. I pray they don’t page me and tell me my centrifuge, vials of liquids, needles or anything like that look suspicious and make me go through my bags with them.

1:05 am – I’m frantically stuffing anything I can into my pockets. Front, back pants pocket and shirt pocket full. Tuck camera into my sock. Try bag. Still over 7 kg, I’m sure. Most of what is left is large…computer, folders, hardcover book. Take large Indonesia travel guide and feign to be reading it as I walk toward the gate. Briefly consider tucking my computer into my pants but decide against it.

1:08 am – The person in front of me is lugging a huge carry-on suitcase. They stop him. I duck around the other side of him and into the jetway. Turn the corner. I’m free!

1:12 am – Stop at the seat in front of me. Spend 3 minutes clearing my pockets and sock like a clown car and repacking my carry-on. Will I have to do this for my next flight too? What is the penalty for too much carry-on weight? No one’s told me…

1:15 am – Take seat. Damn. There’s someone in the middle seat next to me. He starts talking to me. He sees my Indonesian phrasebook and tells me he’s from Indonesia, from Bali. Asks where I’m going. We talk for 10 minutes and I’m a bit worried we’ll talk the whole flight, but he lets the conversation die.

2:00 am – Take off.

2:03 am – Fall asleep.

2:45 am – Wake up as lights are raised. Cute, at least for that East-Asian-I-look-like-a-preteen-boy way that all East Asian young women have, stewardess asks me if I’m Mr. Boyko. I wonder what it is about and answer yes. She asks if I ordered the seafood platter. I answer affirmatively. She asks if I’d like wine with it. Affirmative. “What kind of wine? Red, white or beer?” Intrigued by the beer-wine, I ask for it.

2:46 am – Seafood platter and can of “Taiwan Beer” arrive. Looks amazing. Stewardess makes person in front of me put their seat up. Awesomeness, food and space. Seafood looks great; some smoked salmon salad, some grilled white fish meat (tilapia?) and some very fresh-looking fruit. “Taiwan beer” is the only English on the can, though it does have some French as well announcing it a medal it won.

2:47 am – Person in front of me, looking jealous, asks why I got my food. I said I ordered the seafood when I booked the flight. I feel a little like the kid whose mom always packs the best snacks, but never packs enough to share. Ah well.

3:00 am – Food was great. Beer sucked. No one else near me has gotten food yet. My seat is still fully reclined…

3:25 am – Regular food cart finally arrives to my area. People have the choice of beef or chicken. Neither looks nearly as good as my seafood. Having finished my beer, I get some red wine. It’s much better than the beer.

4:00 am – Narnia comes on. I try to watch for five minutes, but fall asleep.

9:30 am – Wake up and notice a football movie set in the 1920’s is on. I remember it was fairly famous. I watch the last 45 minutes. It’s pretty good.

10:15 am – Fall back asleep.

11:45 am – Wake up as they raise the lights again. Seafood breakfast arrives with coffee. Seat in front of me stops reclining.

12:20 pm – Regular food cart arrives. I raise my seat and get another cup o’ joe. Notice it’s still dark outside---realize that flying west, I’m in the midst of an 18-hour plus night. They’ve put some weird European flick involve kids playing at being Rambo on the screen. What I had thought was the English headphone channel turns out to be generic non-Chinese as it alternates between English and French.

1:15 pm – Still dark. Look through their version of SkyMall. Prices not in USD and descriptions not in English. After finding one price in USD and the other currencies (mostly NT$), know the conversion. Wow, that $700 bottle of scotch is expensive. But it does come with a free $75 bottle of champagne…

1:45 pm – Still dark. They announce we’re about to land. They put a cartoon on the screen with people coughing, having glowing foreheads, wearing masks, etc. There is some talk about something involving quarantine, but I don’t have my headphones on and the English subtitles are too low for me to read.

1:55pm – As we come in to land, they play a horrible remake of “California Dreamin’” along with a montage of photos from around Taipei. Strange. I wonder if they paid The Mamas and the Papas anything to so thoroughly mangle their song.

2:00 pm – Land. They never tell us the local time, but you can just barely start to see a sunrise. As we disembark, my Indonesian friend next to me gives me a terrorist fist bump and tells me good luck. We had talked maybe half an hour during the flight and it was actually pleasant. Maybe you just need to take international flights to actually have decent conversations with the person next to you.

2:30 pm/5:30 am – Manage to eventually find a screen with the local time and where I’m supposed to go for my connecting flight. Other than the anime posters on the wall near the arrival gate, the rest of the airport reminds me of a Soviet gulag. All gray, all the stores closed and locked up, dark outside, generally dreary. Then I walk past a Smoking Lounge. It has neon lights and a swank interior. It looks like mini-Vegas inside this gulag. I consider smoking so that I can feel cool and have someplace nice to be, but realize all the shops that sell smoking supplies are closed. Walk to gate.

5:35 am – Make it to my gate 3 hours before boarding. Completely deserted. Emptiest I’ve ever seen a major airport. No one in sight at all. I sit next to a metal structure labeled “Escape Chute.” It’s big enough for a human to fit through and empties out onto the runway. Have no idea what its purpose is but I consider using it as a urinal before another American couple enters a few minutes later. I watch the sunrise through the window. I conclude that Taiwan looks like an airport.

6:15 am – Venture forth from terminal. First stop, restroom. Mouthwash. Find squat toilet. Next try, find real toilet that is maybe half the height of a normal toilet. Have to squat anyway.

6:20 am – Next stop: food stand that finally opened. They take dollars. Six for a coffee and apple pie. Airport prices are the same everywhere. They have photos of American national parks with accompanying Thoreau quotes on their walls. There are some cute American kids traveling with their parents. Obviously good travelers. Makes me look forward to traveling with Cori and Oisin someday.

6:42 am – Bingo! Free WiFi found.