Posted by marshall
Thu, 31 Mar 2005 19:00:00 GMT
Indonesian TV is fun to watch. There's the low, low, low budget teen dramas, the "localized" American shows like "Indonesian Idol" and "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" (actually misnamed, as the winner gets a billion rupiah, or about $110,000), and the Japanese anime with Indonesian subtitles. But last night I saw something really crazy. The Wednesday night movie was "Leeches!", a wannabe horror movie about some leeches that get ahold of steroids and terrorize a college campus. It wasn't that interesting, so we changed to something far more scary: "Goin' Country". I can't say I've ever seen anything like Indonesians singing English country music with misspelled titles while line dancing. Even Miss Indonesia got up and sang "It's So Easy To Fall In Love". I don't know what's more frightening: the concept, or the fact that some of them were really good. Either way, "Leeches!" couldn't hold a candle to "Goin' Country" for pure shock value.
Posted in Indonesia, Pictures
Posted by marshall
Wed, 30 Mar 2005 22:00:00 GMT
There are cows everywhere here. Sure, there are the cats roaming the UN camp or fighting on the tin roof of the house, and there are the occasional dogs, goats, and ducks. But the cows are everywhere. They seem to like the street in particular. Walking along, sleeping on the grass divider, or maybe just standing still in the middle of the road. I haven't yet figured out how people keep track of all these random cows. Phil said there's usually someone watching or following along, but if so, they must be hiding pretty well. To my eye, the cows seem free to wander where they will. Beware.
Posted in Indonesia, Pictures
Posted by marshall
Wed, 30 Mar 2005 04:00:00 GMT
Last night we had an earthquake. I had just put away my laptop and gotten into bed to read when the bed began to shake rather violently and the house started creaking. It didn't take long to realize what was happening, especially when the power went out. I put on some more clothes (trying not to fall in the process) and opened the door to my room. Phil said, "stand in the doorway", and he and Tom and I all stood in our respective doorways and waited for the quake to stop. Patar -- our interpreter -- was very much afraid that it would be another tsunami, and this thought seemed to be echoed by the many locals heading for the streets. Phil guessed that it was about a 6.0, and reassured Patar that if a 9.0 hadn't knocked over this house, something like this quake wasn't going to. He appeared to be right, as even the digital camera that I had set on a ridge on the dresser didn't fall.
With no power (and thus no phone or Internet), we eventually headed back into our rooms and went back to sleep. When I woke up this morning, the power was back on, and I got on-line to check my e-mail. I had several messages from people asking if I was OK. Apparently the earthquake was an 8.7, and was the big headline in the news. Joy King (IT Director at MAF) had gotten in touch with the Meulaboh folks, but no one had heard anything from Banda Aceh and they had no idea if something had happened to us. I wrote back to the various concerned parties, letting them know that we were all OK.
The cafe opened early today in an effort to accomodate others that would be wanting to contact people, but it wasn't overwhelmingly busy. Phil figured he could manage the cafe, so after lunch, Tom, Patar, and I went to the Air Serv house to see if we could get their connection up and running. Based on the testing that Phil and I had done over the weekend, we were able to get the connection up and running fairly quickly this time. So now Air Serv has a broadband connection at their place too.
We went home right after closing the tent at the end of the day instead of sticking around for dinner, since earlier in the day I had been told to expect a call from WMBI in the evening. As soon as we got back to the house and plugged in the VoIP phone, WMBI called and put me live on the air with Dad. We talked for about six minutes, although it felt a lot longer than that to me. Lara managed to get an MP3 of the interview from the station.
After I got off the phone, we talked to the guards, and they went out to get some food. They came back with a good supply of mie goreng aceh (Aceh-style fried noodles, pronounced "mee GO-rang AH-chay"), nasi goreng aceh (Aceh-style fried rice, pronounced "NAH-see GO-rang AH-chay"), and cane (pronouned "CHA-nay"), an excellent bread made with rice flour and egg with loads of sugar. The cane in particular is great stuff. The guards put out their mat on the front patio, and we all sat out there and ate together. It was a good time. It was Phil's last night in Banda Aceh, and I think he quite enjoyed spending it outside with his Acehnese friends.
Posted in Indonesia
Posted by marshall
Tue, 29 Mar 2005 22:00:00 GMT
A day in the internet cafe generally starts with showering and eating breakfast in the morning, although I usually just have a cereal bar. Then our driver Adi takes us the mile or so to the UN camp, and we begin setting up the cafe.
The internet cafe doesn't serve any food, just bandwidth to NGOs that want to keep in touch with their organizations, families, and friends. It's a big tent sitting near the entrance to the UN camp, and it has folding tables and plastic chairs inside it. Each table has a couple Ethernet cables running to it so that people can plug in, and we've also got a wireless network set up. Each morning we bring in a couple of big rubber tubs full of equipment. The actual network switch and satellite modem remain in the tent, but the laptops and Voice-over-IP phones get brought in and set up each day.
Once we've set up the equipment, the tent is made available for people to walk in and use. It's officially open from 9 AM to 6 PM, although the wireless connection is always up, so people with their own wireless-capable laptops can use the internet connection 24-7.
We get our lunch at the mess hall, and it's almost always crepes, cold meat sandwiches, and then some kind of soup or noodle dish (usually out of a can). The bread and crepes are fresh, which is nice; I like the crepes in particular. We generally go to the mess hall one at a time and bring our food back to the internet cafe to eat.
For dinner, we either eat in the mess hall, order take-out, or occasionally we eat in a restaurant. The mess hall varies from bland canned Chef Boyardee-style spaghetti more elaborate meals like beef with spiced potatoes and chocolate pie with peach slices. One night we had tacos, or an approximation thereof: hard corn shells, ground beef, tomatoes, lettuce, and onions formed the list of standard ingredients, but they also had cucumbers, cabbage, and other vegetables out as toppings. Noticeably absent was any kind of cheese. Kinda hard to do Mexican food right without cheese.
Tom Mason arrived yesterday to assist in the cafe over the next month. What a welcome he got in the evening...
Posted in Indonesia
Posted by marshall
Mon, 28 Mar 2005 04:00:00 GMT
Happy Easter! Today is Jeremy's last day in Banda Aceh, and he wanted to go to a pleasant beach (as in, not a disaster area) before his flight. Our driver arrived in the morning to take us, but it turned out that Jeremy had to spend a good bit of time reconciling finances, and by the time he was finished, there wasn't enough time to go to the beach. We ended up taking a long drive through various streets of Banda Aceh, many of which Jeremy and Phil hadn't seen before. It was quite beautiful. The lush green landscape sat against a mountain backdrop, and the skies were blue. It was a great ride, and the air conditioning of the car made it all the more pleasant. :-)
After dropping Jeremy off, Phil and I went to an Easter service (in English) organized by a group of people from other NGOs. It was excellent. The service was held in a church building that I think normally hosts Chinese services. I met a couple of nurses from Australia during the greeting time, and the sermon was very good. The speaker started with a verse in Ezra about him needing an "unlimited supply of salt" (when all the other ingredients were carefully measured), and went from that into a survey of various mentions of salt in the Bible, relating them to the call to love. We have specific amounts of money, technological supplies, medicines...but everything must be given with an unlimited supply of love.
Afterwards a group of people from the service was going to go to the beach. Phil and I returned home first to change clothes, but before we were ready to leave again, it began to rain. Hard. And the rain was extending far into the distance. So we figured the beach was probably in a similar state and people wouldn't be hanging out there. We gave some money to the guards (20,000 rupiah, or about $2.20) and they went to get a take-out meal for us. Phil and I wound up with a very satisfying amount of noodles, rice, chicken, fried bananas, and sweet bread for that $2.20. And it all tasted great.
Posted in Indonesia
Posted by marshall
Sun, 27 Mar 2005 04:00:00 GMT
The drive to the cafe was fairly exciting. Apparently every road has three lanes: the left-hand one going in your direction, the right-hand one going in the other direction, and a passing lane in the middle. This is true regardless of how many cars can actually fit on the road. Many roads are really only one lane wide, which makes for a whole lot of weaving and honking. It's fun being a passenger with an experienced driver, but as in Medan, I wouldn't want to be the one driving.
Jeremy gave me a kind of tour around the UN compound and an overview of how the Internet Cafe worked, and then I went to work. Not that they had things for me to do right away, but there was a guy with an iBook in the cafe who was trying to figure out how to print, and as soon as they found out I had a PowerBook, I was designated as the one to help him.
After taking care of that, Phil and I went over to the Air Serv house to see about getting them connected to our network. In the past the internet cafe had a directional antenna pointing at the PACTEC house, so we could get broadband at the house. But then a few days ago Phil and Jeremy put up an omnidirectional antenna to provide better overall coverage. Since Air Serv is our partner in this whole thing, it seemed a good idea to get them connected to the network first. We went over and tried a couple of different antennas from their balcony, and when those didn't work, we tied the antennas to Ethernet cables and Phil climbed up on the top of the roof and hoisted them up. The women sitting on the patio of the house across the street were much amused by Phil's rooftop adventure. But we still didn't get the connection working.
After taking everything down, we came back to the cafe to pick up Jeremy and get some food. The mess hall was serving fried noodles, with ice cream for dessert. Jeremy was impressed and said they rarely had food as nice as that. After that we headed back to the PACTEC house for the night.
The PACTEC house is very well described on Dave Ketcham's blog, and I suggest reading that. As he says, it is. Dave says the water for showering is "cool", perhaps even refreshing after a warm day. But it actually just feels downright cold. It's kind of ironic, actually: the UN camp has hot water for washing your hands outside the mess hall at midday when cold water would feel better, and the house has cold water when warm water would be much less of a shock in the morning. Oh well.
Jeremy also demonstrated a kind of taser-flyswatter, which is basically an electrified badminton racquet that is used to attack unsavory insects. He said they used it on a spider once, and the spider curled up into a ball and started to smoke. It's probably considered a weapon in the US, but I sure wish I had one.
The Internet cafe is open Monday-Saturday, so this morning (Saturday) we went in to set it up. Then Phil headed out to do some testing of the wireless range, and Jeremy went to go get a haircut from a local barber. That left me to run the internet cafe for a few house. On-the-job training! :-) After a few hours they came back to the cafe, and I went out with Phil to do some more testing. We managed to get a successful connection just past the Air Serv house in a swampy field, surrounded by cows.
Tonight there was a kind of "going-away party" for Jeremy and Phil, as Jeremy is leaving tomorrow and Phil will leave on Wednesday. Patar and Dede worked on preparing a big meal, with noodles, chicken, rice, goat-on-a-stick, spiced potatoes, and other delicious items. It was fantastic.
Posted in Indonesia, Pictures
Posted by marshall
Fri, 25 Mar 2005 22:00:00 GMT
I'm glad we have a driver. They drive on the left side of the street here, but that seems to be about the only widely recognized rule of driving. Like in Ecuador (and perhaps worse than Ecuador) the signs and lines are largely ignored, and the horn is used as the universal "ready or not, here I come" communicator.
When we arrived at the hotel, Karen gave me my room key and changed some money for me into Indonesian rupiah. The key is attached to a large plastic card that has to be placed in a box on the wall to get any kind of electricity in the room. So while I'm out, the air conditioning won't be running and my laptop won't charge. The room has a normal toilet and shower -- probably the last I'll get for several weeks. There's a couch, a desk, a TV, and a fridge in the room with some drinks in it that I can have: bottled water, Coke, and a drink called "Tehbotol Sosro: Milik Sosro". I tried the last item thinking it would be something like Fanta, but it wasn't carbonated and it had kind of a strange aftertaste. I couldn't quite place it, but then at dinner Karen explained that it was a very sweet tea.
I went to dinner with Karen and a few guys from Samaritan's Purse who are also staying at the hotel. We walked over to a rather nice restaurant. I had a "filet mignon in red wine sauce" meal, which included vegetables. It was good, but not exactly what one would expect from filet mignon in the US. I got red bean juice to drink, which was interesting. Very thick and almost chewy, but tasty. For dessert I got a "black cherry flambe", which ended up being a tiny scoop of ice cream surrounded by black cherries with a bit of caramel. The guy who ordered the banana split seemed to get the best deal.
As I was getting dressed on Friday morning, I noticed some music coming from outside that sounded oddly familiar. I listened for a bit and realized it was "My Redeemer Lives", but in a foreign language. It sounded like there was a Christian church service going on downstairs. As I headed downstairs to meet Karen, I talked to Don, one of the SP guys I had dinner with the previous night. He said there are 5 or 6 church services every Sunday at the hotel. The owner of the hotel is apparently a Christian, and sometimes pipes Christian music through the hotel's sound system. Don says that Medan is about 60% Christian and 40% Muslim, which was very surprising to me considering the strong Muslim bent of Indonesia as a whole.
Karen and I walked over to Sun Plaza, which took about 5 minutes. Sun Plaza is an impressive six-story mall that just amazed me. As Karen put it, "you're in culture shock because you expected culture shock and aren't finding it." There was a Pizza Hut, KFC, and A&W on the lower floor, an ACE Hardware on the third, and high-tech shops throughout. The Pizza Hut was similar to American ones in that it had the same logo and it served pizza, but apart from those two factors it was very different. This Pizza Hut seemed downright nice. It had a wealth of fruit drinks, including ones with ice cream. It had dishes like beef & rice tortilla bowls, and it had things like banana splits for dessert. I really wanted to eat there but didn't have time. :-)
We went to an office supplies store in the mall to get some A4 paper, as the Internet Cafe in Banda Aceh had run out. The store also sold cell phone supplies, although the girl who ran that counter wasn't in yet. I saw a Sony Ericsson S700i for 4,500,000 rupiah, which is less than $500. I expected it to be a lot more expensive here...I think the S710a in the US is going for about that much without a plan. We got 3 packages of paper, then went to a dedicated phone store to get some refills for the prepaid PACTEC cell phones. While I was there I got a SIM card for Telkomsel, one of the Indonesian providers, along with some refill cards. So now I have cell service here on my Treo, and it supports text messaging to the US (which I don't think is any more expensive than messaging locally). We also picked up some generic blank DVD-Rs from a store there for about 60 cents apiece, then headed back to the hotel.
The flight to Banda Aceh was on Garuda Indonesia, which is the "luxury" airline for Indonesia. It was about 45 minutes on a 737, and I had a row to myself (although not in an exit row). They served a small snack (some bread and water) and various juices. When I arrived, I managed to get my luggage without being hassled too much by the Green Shirt Guys. I showed my baggage claim ticket to the security on the way out so that they could confirm my luggage was mine, and as I got into the main area of the airport I was met by Jeremy and our driver. We loaded my bags into an SUV and headed out for the Internet Cafe.
Posted in Indonesia
Posted by marshall
Fri, 25 Mar 2005 01:00:00 GMT
The first flight was from LAX to Taipei on a 747, and had quite a lot of people on it. Each seat had a personal entertainment system with a touch screen and remote control. The entertainment system offered various movies, TV shows, music programs, and even interactive games. I watched The Incredibles and LA Confidential (the latter of which had some pretty funny edits to get it airline-suitable), and I also saw part of the Spongebob movie, which was mildly amusing. The interactive games included a "World Traveler" program that taught basic words and phrases in various foreign languages. I spent some time learning Japanese numbers, days of the week, and months. I played a game of Solitaire on it too. I wasn't able to sleep much...maybe 3 or 4 hours, but it was difficult to tell since it was night the entire time.
I got into Taipei just after 5AM local time. When I got off the plane in the Taipei airport, the China Airlines staff said to go to Wing B for my transfer flight. I took the "skytrain" (a simple above-ground tram) to the other terminal and then had to walk a good long way to get to Wing B. When I got there and went through security, I looked at the screens and noticed that it said my flight was in Wing A. I walked around for about half an hour before going back out through security and finding some China Airlines people who told me that the computer system was wrong and my flight was indeed departing from Wing B, Gate B1R.
There's a "transit lounge" area just before the security checkpoint for Wing B that advertised internet access. It basically looks like a food court with no actual restaurants. Off to the side there are several desks with US-style power plugs and phone cables for plugging into a modem. They have some obscure Engrish instructions for how to dial, but it turned out that I didn't need them. There were two wireless networks available when I opened my laptop: one named "EZ-UP" and one named "ezon". The first one had a poor signal, but was open and free to use. The second one had a full signal but wanted me to sign up and pay. I just used the first one and put up with the slower speeds.
At around 7:30 AM local time I decided to head to the gate. I grabbed my bags and went through the security checkpoint again. As I got to the top of the stairs following the checkpoint, I noticed that my bag didn't feel very heavy...at least, not as heavy as it should with a 17" laptop and several books in it. I opened it up to check, and much to my horror I discovered that the 17" laptop was missing. I had left the desk without putting the laptop back in the bag and just grabbed the bag itself! I hurried back down the stairs, out through security, and back over to the desk. Thankfully the airport was pretty much empty, and no one was even in the area to see the laptop sitting there. I packed it into my bag, made sure I had everything, and went back through security for the third time to get to my gate.
The security checkpoints at the Taipei airport aren't quite as crazy as the US ones. The US ones make you remove your laptop from the bag and take off your shoes. In Taipei I just put the bag on the conveyor, put my cell phone and camera in a little tray, and went on through. It's a good thing given the number of times I had to go through it. :-)
The flight from Taipei to Medan was actually two flights, with Panang, Malaysia, in between. On both I managed to get an exit row seat after the doors were closed -- an entire exit row was free both times! Being able to stretch out and relax made those two flights much, much better than the flight from LAX to Taipei, even though the planes didn't have the whole entertainment system going. I had to get out at the Panang airport for about half an hour as they refreshed the plane or whatever. It looked like a pretty standard airport terminal, complete with coffee bars and shops selling travel supplies. One somewhat amusing thing in the airport was seeing the "Prayer Rooms" right next to the "Cigar & Wine" and "Duty Free Liquor & Tobacco" shops.
I arrived in Medan on time. A shuttle took me from the plane to the international "terminal". Here the airport was much different. There was basically a big, rather dark room divided into the pre-stamping and post-stamping areas. I paid my $25 and got my 30-day visa without a problem. As I stood in line to get my passport stamped, Karen Chase showed up and helped me fill out some of the customs forms. Then we went to pick up my bag.
When claiming baggage at the Medan airport, you have to be very quick to see when your bag appears and grab it immediately. Otherwise some guys in green shirts will take your bag, stick it on a cart, and want money for doing so. That's one thing I really appreciate about the US: you don't have this whole "I just did you a service and now you must pay me, whether you asked me to do it or not" thing. We're not usually surrounded by old ladies demanding money for "guarding" your car or random guys taking your baggage before you can grab it yourself.
When you leave the airport in Medan, you have to go through security. It's the only airport I've ever been in where you have to go through a metal detector to leave.
Posted in Indonesia, Pictures
Posted by marshall
Thu, 24 Mar 2005 04:00:00 GMT
Lara and I left for LAX almost exactly at 5:00 PM on Tuesday, March 23. It took nearly three hours to get to the airport, partly due to normal traffic and partly due to the constant rain throughout the drive slowing everyone down. We arrived just before 8, and we had a somewhat rushed goodbye as I moved my stuff from the car in the rain and we tried not to hold up traffic.
The check-in process was different from the rest of the flights I've been on. Usually in recent years I've checked in at the counter, then carried my bag to a security area where they scan/search them. In this case, they had me take my bag to the security area first, where they scanned it, put a sticker on it, and carried it for me to the check-in counter. It was placed with a bunch of other bags waiting to be checked in, and when I made it through the line I had to point to which one was mine.
I asked the lady at the counter for exit row seats, but I'm not quite sure she understood me. I wound up with a seat at the bulkhead of the first flight, and a normal aisle seat on the second one. Once I was checked in and had my boarding passes, I headed toward the food area. The Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX has a McDonald's, a Mexican place, a sushi place, and other restaurants in a second-floor restaurant area. I didn't get to visit any of them, though, because I couldn't figure out how to get there. The security checkpoint seemed to block the escalators up to that area, but once I'd gotten through security I couldn't find a way to get to the restaurants. The signs all seemed to be pointing me back out through security again. I settled for a grossly overpriced chicken croissant, blueberry muffin, and bottled water from a stand near my gate. It came to nearly $13, and didn't taste particularly good.
Posted in Indonesia
Posted by marshall
Wed, 23 Mar 2005 19:00:00 GMT
Most of the people who actually check this blog from time to time already know that I'm spending a month in Indonesia doing tsunami relief work with PACTEC. But for those who don't, here's the brief intro. PACTEC, the humanitarian arm of MAF, has set up two Internet cafes in heavily damaged areas of Sumatra: one in Meulaboh, and one in Banda Aceh. The Internet cafes exist to provide e-mail and web access for other NGOs working in these two disaster areas. Each has a dedicated broadband connection via VSAT. The project is sponsored by Air Serv, and has been very well received by relief workers, who have repeatedly said they've never had anything like it.
I'm assisting in the Banda Aceh cafe for about a month. I have a 30-day visa-on-arrival, which includes the day I arrive and the day I leave. I've been trying to keep notes about the trip, but haven't had the time to formulate coherent blog postings from them until today (April 3rd), so I'm posting a bunch of stuff all at once now. I've dated the posts roughly when I originally wrote the notes.
For some really good reading of another person's experience in the Internet cafes (albeit the one in Meulaboh, which is quite different from the Banda Aceh one), check out the archives of David Hoffman's blog for the months of January and February.
Posted in Indonesia
