Many Goodbyes

Seems like everyone is leaving right now. Carter left a few weeks ago. Dane left this morning. Joanna left this morning. Emily leaves tomorrow and Jackie will be leaving in a couple weeks. Sometimes I hate the transient life.

Settling in Banda Aceh

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. I moved up to Banda Aceh and am taking over the shelter project up here. I've been incredibly busy since I got here but am starting to figure things out. I've been meeting everyone, inspecting procedures and hiring people for positions that are still vacant. I'm really excited about this opportunity.

We have an inaugeration today for a village of 35 houses that are already finished.

Tribute to my Tiger Motorcycle

What can I possibly say about a bike that has carried me through so much? I look back fondly at all the time we spent together. I remember the gleam off the red and black coloring that attracted me to it the first time I saw it. I was in the market for a new bike but really didn't need one. As soon as I saw the Honda Tiger, I knew that is the one I wanted. I remember many a day driving back and forth to work, to the gym and cruising around town. I remember riding it to the beach and back right after I had my wisdom teeth removed. And then of course there was the epic trip up to Banda Aceh. We went 2,200 miles together across broken roads and bad gas. It didn't even have a flat tire or engine problems the whole way. I drove it right to the edge of Indonesia to Kilometer Nol (Mile Zero). I've driven it back and forth from Banda Aceh to Meulaboh a couple of times now and it always drives with hardly a complaint.

I haven't always treated it the best either. I laid it down once while riding in Bandung and broke the foot petal off and snapped the gas tank loose. I missed a corner in the middle of Sumatra and bent up the front end. I ran into a girl on a moped up near Banda Aceh and broke the foot peg off again (apparently it was just glued on from the first time.) I've ridden through some very acidic mud and dropped it while stuck in rivers and quagemires. I always cleaned it up though. Kept the engine tuned up with fresh oil in it and always used the best gas I could find. Whenever anything broke, I replaced it.

I sold it to a good friend of mine who hopefully will take good care of it. Why did I sell it? I'm moving up to Banda Aceh and will no longer need a bike. I'm sad to see it go but I know it is in good hands.



BTW, I'm moving up to Banda Aceh tomorrow afternoon.

Adventures in Panga

I went to Panga yesterday by helecopter to attend the dedication ceremony of the houses that are finished there. The ceremony was pretty interesting. It took an hour after the start time for the anyone from the village to show up. This is really odd as everywhere else I've been the people are there about 2 hourse before the start. We had to keep yelling over the loudspeaker for people to come. When we did get going, the Country Director for SP gave a great speach about how hard it is to work here and no one else wants to do it but we are there because we love the people and care for them. Then the sub-district leader got up and said he wants us to build 250 more houses and a mosque. Then the village leader got up and said he wants us to build the stores and shops that were lost and took up a collection for the mosque. No thank you's or anything. I was a little suprised by the attitude of the people. We still have to love them though.

Late that afternoon we went to the beach near Panga. It was good to get to a beach again. In Meulaboh I live 5 minutes from a really nice beach but never get there. I guess since its rainy season there isn't much reason to go right now. We had a great time splashing in the waves and throwing a frisby.

Sunday we went hiking up into the hills to visit a waterfall. We rode our bikes as far as we could but had to stop at a village when the trail got too bad for bikes. The village kids all decided they wanted to join us so we had "guides" to show us the way. As we were hiking for about an hour to the waterfall, my achenese friend told me that the field and hills we were in were a place where GAM and the Indonesian military would often fight. This was happeneing until about 2 months ago. We could see bullet holes in the little huts around the area. They said it was very similar to Vietnam. So we finally made it to the waterfall and it was just beautiful. About a 15 foot drop that you could jump off of into a clear pool. We hung out, got some sun and swam for an hour or so. Then we decided to take the other way back that went up through the hills. The trail was really wide which suprised me until the boys pointed out some elephant droppings. They said there were often elephants that used the trail. A group from SP that did the treck a couple weeks ago all got leeches and everyone except me ended up getting leeches on this trip as well. I guess it was because of my really awesome boots (thanks Arvin!) The treck was amazing and I was suprised at how beautiful and perfect everything went.

Once we got back Corwin and I were asked to drive a truck back to Meulaboh to get it fixed. What was wrong with it you might ask? The gas had water in it so the engine was running badly. Any time we tried to accelerate, the engine would stutter. 3 bumpy hours later we were stopped by a huge yellow truck that had fallen off the road. We waited about 20 minutes while the tried to pull it out of the river but eventually gave up. Another 30 bumpy minutes and we were safely home.

What a great weekend.

Phishing with Screwtape

If any of you have ever enjoyed reading C.S. Lewis's Screwtape letters and enjoy reading an occasional Phishing e-mail, there is a great piece on the Times Online.

For those of you who don't know, Phishing is when someone tries to get you to give out your financial information so they can steal money from you. Examples of this are the Nigerian 419 scams where someone tells you they need your bank account to transfer a billion trillion dollars and you can keep 25% of it. Another is where they claim to be your bank and send you to a website to change your password when in reality the website is fake and you give them your password.

So anyways, someone has written a spoof of the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis about an experienced phisher instructing a neophite in the art of tricking people into revealing their sensitive information. A good read.

By the way, don't ever reveal your information to everyone. No one is just wanting to give you money. Also, no one will EVER contact you by e-mail asking you to change your password or verify something, especially banks. Always go directly to the bank if you are in doubt. Don't follow the links in the e-mail.

New Job Position

My current job of Livelihood Program Manager for Samaritan's Purse has slowed down since most of the projects are coming to a close. Sometime next week I'll be heading up to Banda Aceh to take over the Shelters project and become base manager. As Shelter Manager I'll be overseeing the building of 500 houses around Banda Aceh. As Base Manager I'll be going to all the meetings as SP and managing the house and different operations. I'll still be Livelihood Manager although that will be mostly just writing a couple proposals around Indonesia. The plan moving forward is to work on the Banda Aceh Shelter program until it completes sometime early to mid next year and then maybe focus on some livelihood again as more funds become available. I'm really excited about this opportunity.

Top Ten Web Writing Annoyances

While in IM conversations or reading posts on the web, there are certain things that annoy me. Granted I'm not a perfect speller nor do I always have perfect grammar but at least I try.

My top ten list of web writing annoyances:

1. WRITING EVERYTHING IN UPPERCASE. LETS YELL EVERYTHING!
2. writing everything in lowercase. its just to hard to hit the shift key every once in a while.
3. not using punctuation ever even at the end of sentences where it should be doesnt that bother you
4. Having way!!! too much punctuation... or... to much... punctuation!!! Yeah!!!!!
5. Confusing "there" "their" and "they're." Come on people, it isn't that hard. "There" is a place. If you can replace it in a sentence with "they are" then use "they're." If it is talking about who owns something(possessive), use "their." I'm tired of reading messages that mean something like, "I'm going over to they are house." It's "their" house for goodness sake.
6. Shortcuts like 2 for "to, "u for "you" and b4 for "before." It may be faster to type like this but it takes me three times longer to figure out what is being said. Not to mention whatever is being said doesn't sound very intelligent.
7. Overusing smilies :) Now I admit that I use smilies every once in a while ;-) but using it too much :) results in making it meaningless. :-D (But I never use them to close out parenthesis :)
8. ROTFL. If someone is rolling on the floor laughing, how can they type ROTFL?
9. Ch4ng1ng num3rs f0r v0w3ls. Why 1s th1s c00l? 1ts d3f1n1t3ly n0t l33t.
10. Replying to e-mails AFTER the quoted text, forcing the reader to read through the entire quoted text before getting to the response.

Have any writing annoyances? Feel free to share them in the comments.

I have no money!

Wohoo! I officially have no money. Why would that be cool? Because as of today I'm no longer in debt. I've been using my bank's online tool to agrigate all my different investment, credit card and loan accounts and today the bottom line is in the black. Thats pretty cool considering just over three years ago I graduated with a pretty large debt. Its all up hill from here!

Horse Quartet

I've discovered a new extension to Firefox. I've seen it before but never bothered to use it yet. StumbleUpon. Basically it allows you to say what types of things you are interested in and then lets you "Stumble Upon" new websites related to your interests.

The best one I've found so far is four hourses singing. It reminds me of a better version of hamsterdance. Quite funny. I'm not sure what that says about my interests though.

New Room

Since Carter, the intern who was overseeing the fish ponds project, has left to go back to the US, I am taking over his room. The new room is hopefully quieter and has less mosquitos. I can't wait!

Fish Ponds Result

Well, it started out really beautifully as we waited for the ceremony to start. Everything was perfect right up to the time it started to rain. When I say rain, I mean torrential rain. Everybody got soaked even though there were tents. We still had the ceremony which was short and cool and then had a meal although the food was all wet but still good. A "memorable" occasion.

Fish Ponds Dedication

Today is the dedication ceremony for the fish ponds project in Gampok Lhok. We have been rebuilding 30 fish ponds for the village that were destroyed by the Tsunami. We are going to have a big ceremony today with a bunch of government officials and all the local villagers. It has been a great project to do and the people we have worked with have been most excellent.

Here is a photo of the fish ponds taken from our helecopter:



It is really cool to go out there now because when we started the area was a swampy marsh with 6 foot growth of weeds and such everywhere. Now you can see the 30 ponds and the guard shack at the bottom of the photo. The pond in the middle on the bottom row is a cement lined pond that is for catfish. The rest are for 3 other types of fish.

Risk on Google Maps

Just a couple weeks ago I blogged about Carmen Sandiego on Google Maps. Now there is RISK for Google Maps! I just played it and it is really cool. Check it out:

http://www.ashotoforangejuice.com/gmrisk.html

Indonesian Bomber Killed

In East Java today the main guys behind most of the major bombings in Indonesia, including both Bali bombings, the J.W. Mariott bombing and the Australian Embassy bombing have killed themselves. They were surrounded by police in a raid and blew up a bomb that killed them.

This is a huge victory for Indonesia and the world. These terrorists have caused major problems for Indonesia and the rest of the world and we will all be safer here without them. For those of you who have never heard of Azahari bin Husin, he is kind of like Asia's Usama bin Laden.

They almost caught him a couple years ago when he was in Bandung. We were really nervous when that happened because it meant he might be planning something there and there weren't a whole lot of western targets besides us.

Read the Reuters Article for more information.

Back in Meulaboh

I spent the last week during Ramadhan up in Banda Aceh and just got back yesterday to Meulaboh. I rode my bike up the inland road through the east coast. It is a MUCH better road than the west coast. It only took me 6 hours as opposed to over 10 on the other. No mud and broken roads either.

Now I'm back finishing up the three remaining projects, agriculture, fish ponds and boat building. They all should be done by the end of the month. I'm not sure yet what I will be doing after that. We'll see...

Lebaran

The month of fasting has just finished up here with the celebration of Lebaran. Lebaran is kind of like Thanksgiving, 4th of July, Easter and Christmas all rolled into one holiday. Huge feasts, fireworks, fancy new clothes and presents are all parts of the fun. This year it seems the gifts of choice for young boys is BB guns and laser pointers. Everywhere I go now I see kids running around with very real looking guns shooting things. Either that or pointing a laser at me. Hopefully it will get old soon.

Handing off project

Today was the last day I was involved in the Women's Vocational Center Project. I've handed off management to the Base Manager here and will be moving on to other things. I'll let you know more about what later. I'll be riding my motorcycle up to Banda Aceh tomorrow morning to spend Lebaran there. I hope to get some new proposals written up while I'm there. I haven't heard from anyone in a while so if you want to drop me a line, feel free to do so.

Are these in the Bible?

I know some of you may have seen something like this before but, guess which of the following quotes are from the Bible. I was suprised on a couple of them. I'll post the answers in a couple days.

1. Cleanliness is next to godliness.
2. An eye for on eye, and a tooth for a tooth.
3. The family that prays together stays together.
4. A house divided against itself cannot stand.
5. Treat someone as you would want to be treated.
6. Beauty is only skin-deep.
7. He who does not work does not eat.
8. God helps those who help themselves.
9. Happiness comes from within.
10. Eat, drink and be merry.
11. One for all and all for one.
12. Man cannot live by bread alone.
13. You reap what you sow.
14. Bad company corrupts good character.
15. We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.
16. A penny saved is a penny earned.
17. A fool and his money are soon parted.
18. Do not judge a book by its cover.
19. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.
20. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
21. Neither a borrower nor a lender be.
22. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
23. Am I my brother's keeper?
24. Hope deferred makes the heart sick.
25. May his children become fatherless and may his wife become a widow.

[UPDATED] See comments for answers.