K2K

My bike is approaching 2000 Kilometers on it. This morning when I parked at school it was at 1999.8 Km. I'm almost at the big K2K!

Plain old Plane Tickets

How hard can it be to nail Jello to the wall?

Thats about as hard as it is to buy a plane ticket here in Indonesia. It costs nothing to reserve a ticket until about two weeks before the flight so almost all the flights are always booked until the week before, then everyone cancels. Those who have been waiting for a seat can then purchase tickets.

I thought I had reserved my ticket well in advance and have been trying to get it delivered for the last month and a half and have finally found out that my ticket is not confirmed yet. I have three weeks to go and still not ticket. Hopefully I will be able to get one though. If not I will be pretty upset. I really want to go home for Christmas.

Carrying on the tradition

Last night at Thanksgiving dinner we had about 23 people there and in the tradition of the first Thanksgiving, it was a mix of cultures.

We had:
1 Indonesian (Muslim) family
1 Korean family
1 Canadian family
1 American Family
1 person from Indonesia
1 person from Holland
1 person from Canada (but born in Texas! He emigrated)
3 singles from America

Quite a mix and a lot of fun. The food was out of this world too.

Give Thanks

Today is Thanksgiving day so here are some things I am thankful for:

1. For great friends and family who keep my life interesting
2. For Indonesia being willing to host me as a foreigner
3. For a great school and the opportunity to teach here
4. For great colleages
5. For being able to find a turkey and cranberry sauce in Indonesia
6. For Reece's Peanut Butter Cups!
7. Last but not least, for being saved by Jesus Christ

Turkey dinner tonight!

Short staffed

Today we had the unfortunate ending of employment for my main computer technician. This will leave us with one part time technician until I hire a new one. Good luck to Agus as he pursues a career elsewhere.

Today we had the unfortunate ending of employment for my main computer technician. This will leave us with one part time technician until I hire a new one. Good luck to Agus as he pursues a career elsewhere.

Where are you?

Saw this on the drive to week without walls.

Someone's having a case of the mondays

It's monday and I can tell. After a week of no classes monday is not much fun. I can't wait for Christmas...

Next week has walls.

We finished off the last day at the drug rehab/mental health clinic yesterday for Week Without Walls. I was very happy with how the students responded to going there. They really enjoyed it and interacted well with the people there. I think a lot of our students are tired of learning and want to start doing. This gave them a small opportunity to do just that.

We had a full group of 22 on Thursday and it was a little overwhelming for the people there but yesterday we had only 8, including me and Pete. This was really nice to have a smaller group. In the morning we played volleyball with the people, then we ate lunch with them and then they had a program set up for us! They danced, then had us dance and sang. I taught them the macarena since that is the only dance I can sorta do.

There is a guy there that we called the laughing man. His favorite thing is to come up to you, ask a question and walk away laughing. His second favorite thing is to play chess. I've never actually won a chess game that I can remember so I don't like to play very much. He kept asking us all morning to play so finally I decided to play him. I was playing my hardest and was up by only one pawn when I noticed that he was crying softly. I felt really bad and started trying to lose but he was so shaken he wouldn't take any of my pieces. I then accidently checkmated him. I felt so bad that I made the laughing man cry. I tried to play him again to be able to lose but he wouldn't do it.

Next week is back to the grind... with walls

Soteria

Just got back from the first day at Soteria Half-way house. It went really well. Basically we hung around all day and played games with the 60 people there. I played a lot of Uno and then when I told them I was from Texas they all wanted to know about pistols and how easy it was to get them. I told them my brother has an old WW II gun and they were really excited. They also really enjoyed Uno and my pathetic attempts to explain how to play in Indonesian. "Skip" was the hardest to explain.

Later I played Yahzee (they never really understood this one) and some volleyball. Quite a fun day. The time really flew which was a blessing.

At lunch though I went out to get some food since I had forgotten to bring anything (typical of me). I asked a street vendor how much some egg rolls (something like that) were and he said 2 and a half. I figured 2,500 RP (about 25 cents) so I asked for 5,000 RP worth since I wanted two. He gave me twenty so I guess they were actually 250 RP each. Oh well. I was able to feed just about everyone with that much food.

BTW: Soteria is a Greek word that means: deliverance, preservation, safety, salvation

Week Without Walls

This week our school will be a little different. We are doing something called Week Without Walls. It is basically a school wide outreach program. We are doing different activities in the community to help out. Originally I was on a Habitat for Humanity team but that fell through so now I am helping lead a team to a drug rehab clinic. Should be interesting.

Break

I haven't been doing a whole lot the last couple of days. We had the first vacation in almost two months of school. It is also Idul Fitri which is the night of power for Islam kind of like Christmas. Everyone goes home and gives gifts, then asks for forgiveness. I've been reading, relaxing and getting small chores done that I haven't had time to do in a long time, like cutting my hair and buying soap for the laundry. Very relaxing. I also went to see the Incredibles. Funny movie. I'd give it a 7 out of 10.

It is almost time to decide for next year on whether I am going to stay or not. I'm almost sure about my decision now but I am going to give it a few more days to make sure. I'll let you all know when I have turned in the letter.

Please forgive all my sins against you, internal and external.

Browser Update

There is a great article up on ArsTechnica about Malware for beginners. Basically it is software that does stuff to your computer that you don't want. If your computer is running slow or is doing things you don't want it to, check out this site. The most common ways to get it is to download P2P software such as Kazaa, Napster, iMesh or to use Internet Explorer (The big blue "E" on your desktop) or to install free stuff like smiley packs or screensavers.

ArsTechnica Article on Malware

In other news, Mozilla Firefox has released version 1.0. If you want to keep from getting malware and/or want a better internet experience, download it now. Almost everyone I have ever shown Firefox has never used Internet Explorer again. Give it a try. You won't regret it.

Download Firefox

Skit Night

Tonight is skit night and we will be doing a series of short skits and improv. What this means is tomorrow I can rest! Yay.

We will be doing the following:
The Bomb Squad
What's My Sign?
Missions: How Exciting
Whose Line Impromptu
Pyramus and Thisbe (William Shakespeare)
Delirious
My Tomorrow

If you are in the area, come on by.

Smoldering

We seem to have identified most of the broken stuff on the network. The internet is now working again (after a new power supply and network card). The damage done was a lot less than last time but still annoying. Most stuff is covered under warranty and insurance so we should be okay. We still have a few teachers without internet but there aren't many.

Tonight is the final rehearsal before the drama tomorrow night. Hopefully things will go well and I can go home early. We will practice until we get it right. Can't wait for the weekend. We have all next week without school.

Smokin'

We got hit by lightning again today. Luckily this time it only took down our internet server (should be easy to fix), a network switch and one laptop. It is kinda cool to be sitting by the servers, hear a loud pop followed by very loud lightning. Doesn't take long to figure out what happened. I'm writing this using the bluetooth and GPRS on my phone since the internet at school is still down.

The Real Thing

I've heard a lot of stuff about Coca-Cola. I've seen it dissolve a tooth in 24 hours and I've heard you can clean car engines with it. I do know it does a remarkable job of cutting grease after you eat a pizza. There are some people here in Indonesia that say you should drink one a week just to clear out the germs in your stomach. There is a news article that lists probably the most crazy use for coke I've ever seen though. Check it out

Bugs go Dead

Picture Redux

I've told you about some of these pictures and now here they are:

1. Fu Fa Poo Shampoo
2. Chickens on the golf course (I wasn't able to golf because I pulled a muscle in my back working out)
3. Meat at one of our favorite restaurants.

Hopefully I will be posting more pictures for everyone.

Thank God it's Thursday

I'm such an idiot. I came to school this morning thinking it was thursday instead of friday. On fridays we wear our school shirts so I had to go back and get mine. I guess it is better to be friday than thursday.

Go Team Go

I followed the election last night although it was daytime for us here and I am very glad that Kerry conceded instead of dragging it out into a nasty court fight. One thing that cracked me up is that every news channel had a different name for the election. They ranged from "You Decide 2004" to "America Votes 2004" to "Decision 2004" to "America Decides 2004." Even BBC had their own slogan. Why not just call it the American election 2004? Why do you have to give it a fancy name?

It will be interesting to see what will happen in the next four years. The American people have put a lot of power and trust in George W Bush and I hope he uses it wisely.

I'm batman!

Last night I was out riding my motorcycle around dusk when all the bugs are out. They always fly in my helmet, which I can't close at night because it is tinted, and then buzz around my ears. The bats are also out eating the bugs. They always amaze me because they will zoom right beside you but always manage to miss. Anyways, last night one must have had a cold or something because I ran smack into him with my helmet. 1 down 1 billion to go.

One more documentary

I watched one more documentary last night which is called "The Art of War." It is an interview with Robert S. McNamara who was Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War. This is what I would expect from an ordinary documentary. It wasn't boring or angering, nor funny and exciting like the other two I have watched recently. There were some points that really stuck out though. It was made before 2000 and the Iraq War. He used a lot of the same phrases for Vietnam such as "winning their hearts and minds." There were some pretty apparent differences though. I was not alive during the Vietnam war so I don't know a lot about it but from what I could gather during this documentary, the war was being fought by two sides trying to be free that each though the other was trying to enslave. Another thing that struck me was that when Kennedy died, LBJ really messed things up. McNamara even says that had Kennedy lived it probably would have turned out different. Makes me scared for America if Kerry gets elected. He is saying the same things that the challenger in 1964 was saying. Things could get ugly if we have a President who is against the war and is not trying to win.

Overall a good documentary with some really good lessons. Not an exciting piece though. There is a lot of truth in it since it comes straight from the man responsible instead of conjectures from an outsider.