EFGS goes to Bogor... wait, or was it Puncak?...whatever, it was somewhere in the hills!

2015 EFGS Trip

Every year, by way of a treat from the franchise owner, Pak Agus, all of EF Swara's centres get to take an individual school outing. No, not an outing with the students, that would be logistically crazy especially when considering the diverse age range of our students. No, this is more of a bonding trip for all of the staff that work at the centre, Admin, teachers, support functions etc with the aim being to get to know new people and to hopefully ensure success through familiarity. It always involves games and activities that promote teamwork, it always involves communal dining and a barbecue and it is always a lot of fun.

"Oi mate, have you got wifi on here?"

2014 saw us board a bus for Anyer, a coastal resort to the west of Java island, but for October 2015 we chose to head for the hills to the south of Jakarta, to a place with the vaguely-humorous-to-westerners title of "Bukit Pinus".

As you'll know if you've read previous blog entries we usually wait until work has been concluded on the Saturday before boarding a coach and hitting the road. This year was different. This year coincided with....Halloween! It was because of this that it was decided, due to the need to organise events before people arrived at the venue, that I would drive the school car and along for the ride would be Nina the Centre Director, Katherine the Assistant CD, Lusi the marketing co-ordinator and Weina, one of the Gading Serpong teachers. Everyone else would be following onboard the coach.

We arrived relatively quickly considering the erratic nature of Jakarta traffic and I was immediately struck by the remarkable beauty. I was also struck by how remarkably easy-to-find the resort was as I'd had visions the night before the trip of us getting lost in the wilds of Sukabumi. These trips are great because even living in a relaxed place like Gading Serpong you can sometimes forget just how built-up the area is so it's always appreciated to get out into the fresh air.

anyone hungry?

After lunch, time was spent relaxing, if you were one of the four girls, or in my case it was spent preparing the games and activities that we'd be doing over the next 36 hours. At this point I should mention that in much the same way the weekend is about teamwork, it could never happen without teamwork too and Alex the assistant DoS is just excellent when it comes to helping to create activities and atmosphere alike.
So it was that when the coach arrived, having taken a bit longer than we did, everyone was ready to tuck into the meal that had been prepared and. once that was over, people were split into their teams for the weekend and given the first task. Find the pictures of horror movie characters that had been hidden around the resort and bring them back to Alex and I to redeem points.

As much about helping people to orientate themselves with the resort and its facilities, the people of EFGS are competitive to a fault and took swiftly to the task which, once completed, was quickly followed up with a team quiz with both Indonesian and English questions.

The evening is always about downtime and relaxing and that was the order of the day as a prelude to the evening barbecue. The resort has a swimming pool, pool table, strategically located gazebos and plenty of communal areas as well as extremely clean and comfortable rooms. Bukit Pinus also has the luxury of a fire pit around which everyone sat eating the barbecue until late into the evening. Even this had a competitive edge as points were available for which team could tell the creepiest fireside story. Well, it was Halloween!

Sunday morning arrived and with it was a solid breakfast to fortify everyone for the games ahead. These included the energetic "British Bulldog", the hillarious-to-watch  "Snake" game in which blind-folded participants have to be led around a course collecting objects, team volleyball competiton and the concluding basketball shooting.

Lunch was served prior to our departure and for the first time in the weekend it rained. Not that this mattered as we were well undercover but then again it was the beginning of the rainy season and we were in the wettest area of Indonesia. To conclude the weekend, points were tallied, prizes were handed out, congratulations and commiserations were shared and multiple, multiple photos were taken. It was an exceptional weekend highlighting the camararderie that exists amongst such an assorted group of people. We're going to have to get thinking now to stand any chance of 2016 beating this.

A little bit of physics and a lot of luck

Have you ever fallen over? By accident I mean, not drunk? Depending on where and how, you know, raised paving stone, or misjudging distance for instance, it usually hurts like hell and bruises both body and, depending on whether you have an audience or not, ego equally.

Lets take it to the next level. Fallen off of something? Like a bicycle? Skateboard? Rollerskates? escalator? Grazed knees and hands are a minimum and I guess egos are again only bruised depending on the level of showoffiness.

Next step up, what about bumping into someone? Not in the metaphorical sense, I mean actually crashing body parts into body parts, and not in a bedroom sense either. It could be two people bending over to pick the same thing up and banging heads, or maybe concentrating too much on that Tinder profile while walking that you don't see the person coming in the other direction. Hurts.

At the centre of all of these events you will find physics and the numerous laws and principles that define the nature and properties of matter and energy such as Newton's First Law of Motion where A body continues in its state of constant velocity (which may be zero) unless it is acted upon by an external force. Thank you Big Bang Theory.

Now science was never my strong point so don't beat me up if, for instance, thermodynamics are also involved in any of those situations I described, it's just a device to bring me to the main part of this blog post. I was knocked off my motorbike on my way home from work two nights ago.

I've been carried from rugby fields, been struck by cricket balls and dislocated my shoulder trying to accomplish an eskimo roll in a kayak. I've crashed cars, fallen off bicycles, bruised my spine in a speedboat, been down to my last seconds of air while scuba diving and broke my big toe kicking a punching bag while learning Ju-Jitsu. But I've never been involved in a motorbike accident before.

I'm not sure that I overthink things but I definitely do think about things. When I decided to start riding a motorbike I was living in Chiang Mai in early 2009. It was a popular way to travel in a city with plenty of traffic, but organised road systems, and the decision to take the automatic moped rather than the Honda Phantom was decided as much by inexperience and price-per-day as it was by wanting to ride a mini Harley. I seriously wanted to ride the Phantom, I just didn't know how. Technically I didn't know how to ride the moped either but since it was fully automatic the worst thing I could do was over-rev the throttle.

which one would you choose?

A lot of my school mates (when I was a kid, not now I'm a teacher) rode 50cc motorbikes, I passed that by and went straight to driving cars. So with over 20 years of car driving experience, riding my first bike was fun but guided by common sense and an awareness that the protective cage around me had now disappeared. I also have a clear understanding of The Highway Code.

On arriving in Indonesia I was back on a bike inside a year but the conditions were remarkably different. I was still riding a fully automatic moped but the conditions of the roads; potholes, increased traffic, lack of signs, made riding a different challenge. South East Asia, with the possible exception of Korea (http://www.korea4expats.com/article-traffic-laws.html), also has a notable lack of Highway Codes. This means that rules of the road are more arbitrarily interpreted, by both drivers and authorities alike.

That video was of a toll road which doesn't allow the use of motorbikes, except in times of flooding... in some areas... maybe.

For a better idea of motorbikes, here's a video from Surabaya...

What was interesting in the second video is that most people are wearing helmets and not using mobile phones, this isn't necessarily the case in Tangerang and Jakarta.

These videos highlight that a person's understanding of road etiquette is only useful if the other users have the same respect. Where there is a lack of understanding, there is a driving test, where there is a flouting or disregard of the rules, there is the police and courts. So what happens if you find yourself in a country that has neither?

Of course I'm being argumentative. Indonesia does have a driving test but it is not essential to being able to drive. The driving licence may be purchased, illegally, and speaking to friends it would appear that a significant number of people go through this route. An equal proportion of people don't even bother to get an illegal driving licence, they just hope not to be stopped.

So what happens if you do get stopped by the police? Well in that case you just hand them the vehicle documentation and a folded up bank note and hope to talk your way out of anything. The highly unlikely worst case scenario is that if the policeman doesn't take the cash then it will mean a trip to the courthouse in the area in which you were stopped to pay an elevated fine.

Let me be clear, this is not some indignant tirade against the country in which I have lived for 6 years, rather it is an explanation of how things work. I now ride a Honda CBR 250cc motorbike, equipped with anti-lock brakes that I paid extra for and of all of the things that I have mentioned, the single biggest thing that I have taken into account before riding a bike and while riding a bike, is other drivers and what they might do. Indonesians are not bad people, they are a product of conditioning as we all are and where road use is concerned this area is not good.

Have you ever had that feeling, when sometimes you just know that something is going to hit you, or at the very least may hit you. Sometimes you just know you're going to be in trouble. That didn't happen to me. I approached a roundabout fully expecting that someone in the right hand lane may, instead of going all the way around to the last exit, may indeed head straight on, I was also aware that it was equally possible for a person in that right hand lane to pull off the stupidest of moves and turn left across the inside lane. I was in the inside lane, had slowed to take these things into account and then BANG! I'm lying on the road with a truck still seemingly trying to continue forward over my prone body, the only thing stopping this being the frame of my bike.

This truck had done just that, moved from the inside right to turn left at the roundabout. So even with all of my preparedness I still got hit. That I escaped with a swollen elbow and superficial cuts and bruises was down to the lack of speed on the part of myself and the truck.

Furthermore, the indicators on the truck weren't working, the truck driver had no STNK (vehicle documents) only a police slip proving the confiscation of those documents for the truck being pulled over earlier for another offense. In a slight case of irony, trucks are not even supposed to be on this particular road.

What would happen in the UK in this instance is that police would be called to the scene, drivers would exchange insurance documents, and injured parties would be taken, if necessary by ambulance, to a hospital.

What happened in my case was that I was assisted from my position by approximately 20 people, including local security guards, who seemed to appear out of nowhere. As I was able to stand and speak, and fortunately being only 2 minutes from home, I called Uchiel, my wife, to come and help out with language difficulties. The outcome was that the four guys in the cab admitted liability and agreed to attend a local garage to review the damage and agree on the amount to be paid. Insurance isn't mandatory in Indonesia, which means that most don't have it so "negotiations" are carried out privately. (http://www.expat.or.id/info/insurance.html)

The following day, the driver and his mate appeared at our house on return from the repairs garage and, having pleaded poverty, agreed to pay half of the total repair cost which they transferred electronically into our account there and then.

This post should serve as both information and a warning for what to expect in this situation. Had I not had the benefit of someone I knew at the scene, it would have been branded my fault just through me being a foreigner. Had I been more badly injured, who knows what would have happened. What I do know is that had the police been involved it would have cost us money too and we probably wouldn't have received any money toward the cost of the repair.

I choose to ride a bike. I enjoy it, it's easier to get from A-B in heavy traffic and I am aware of the pitfalls. Will I stop riding a bike? No. Will I be more careful? Well certainly at roundabouts, but I don't think that I'm a careless rider or I'd have had more problems in 6 years.

So in the words of the Hill Street Blues desk sergeant, "Let's be careful out there"

thanks to the original owners of the pictures and videos used here.

What would you do with a Wetwang?

So what would be your answer to the title question? Would you eat it, offer it as a service to someone, or live in it? 

The fact is that I love names. Indeed the whole aspect of naming someone or something sould require imagination or knowledge, or it may be something as simple as a feeling. Depending on your cultural background there may be a ritual involved where perhaps the first thing that you see following the birth of a child is used, or, for the sake of posterity, the taking of your father's name and adding a number at the end.

In his book "Notes From a Small Island", the author Bill Bryson takes great delight in highlighting some of the more unusual place names that may be found on a trip around the UK. I am ever curious to know how places wind up with the names that they do. Sometimes it's a simple process of moving from an olde English name where -brook, -ton, and -ford all have meanings to their suffix (eg. the ending -ton, as in Darlington, could mean homestead). The name of the village of Wetwang in this blog's title, and also my favourite place name ever, is supposedly derived from an old Norse word meaning "Field for the trial of a legal action".

Our own names and family names are equally fascinating. It would appear that my family surname of Stoker has a number of possible origins. Firstly it may be attributed to an inhabitant of the city of Stoke-on-Trent. Examples of this could be, say, Lyndsay Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac or David Coverdale of Whitesnake, but probably not Hannah Montana . Secondly, the job of a stoker was to put coal into a furnace so it could come from that, or there is even a link to arsonism too. I've been able to go back 4 generations on the Stoker family tree with no sign of residency in Staffordshire however my brother lives there nowcoincidentally and neither is there a link to stoking or arson.

Before Indonesia I lived for a short while in Thailand and the general feeling is that most short surnames are from indigenous Thai families whereas the longer surnames are more often linked with Chinese immigrants. The Thai nicknames are much more visual and often relate to something around you. If you wish to convey size, you might use a nickname for something that represents that size.

Western names are generally family linked in the surname but the first and middle names are not averse to representing the parents love of sport or gardening, or even the city of conception.  Here in Indonesia that doesn't necessarily have to be the case as families are not bound by the same constraints. Depending upon your ethnicity you may have one or more names and none might represent any familial link. This freedom allows parents much greater flexibility and only recently I came across Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln. Indonesia is blessed with such different tribal and religious ethnicities that it is reasonable to find many varieties of names and structures. My wife falls into the cateogary of only having one name, Yohana, but due to the need to synchronise forms and paperwork on her passport it says Yohana Yohana and she only refers to herself on social media with my family name.

When we do eventually get around to having a family I can only hope that propriety isn't our only focus and we choose something suitable...

Good days and bad? Put them into perspective.

As with any job it would be naive to think that all days will be good days. It took me a long time to work out that the job that I was doing previously was giving me less and less satisfaction and, if I'm honest, encouraged me to spend more time than I should have in continuing, and to put less and less effort into it. I had been inspired when I started on the road to becoming an area manager in the pub trade and benefitted from working with some incredible people, many of whom I am fortunate to still call friend.

In hindsight there were numerous other reasons for this trajectory as my personal life was in perhaps even more disarray than my professional one and trust me when I say that that's saying quite a bit!

Suffice it to say that it was a risk in leaving the UK and heading to Chiang Mai to take the CELTA. It could have amounted to an intense month spent learning the disciplines of the EFL teacher but with nothing at the end of it, or even worse the discovery that teaching was as equally demoralising as working in the pub/restaurant trade.

The CELTA was as tough as I'd been led to believe but I can unequivocally confirm that it, and the following 6 years that have brought me to where I am now, have been some of the best years of my entire life. Sure there have still been good days and bad days, there always will be, but even the bad days aren't all bad, are they?

Today has been one of those mixed days but the way it started was just the warmest justification for why I chose this new path. I arrived to find this photo on my desk and signed by the students on the back. Somehow puts everything else into perspective.

I was once told that if you have a bad day, write it down and it becomes the benchmark for all future bad days. If ever a day is worse than the one that you wrote down, that replaces your previous benchmark. I can heartily recommend this to anyone struggling for perspective and who wants to enjoy each day as much as they can...

Honesty

When I was in my early twenties there was a group of us who used to get together to play a board game. It was called "Scruples". In this game of moral dilemmas you were given a scenario and a yes, no or depends card. The dilemma in the scenario card needed to be matched with another of the game's players who would ideally answer yes, no or depends to the situation given. As for strategy, you could be honest in your reply, or alternatively you could play Devil's Advocate to stop someone else from winning. If you chose the latter option, you had to have a good reason for choosing the way you did and your rationale would be open to inspection/ridicule from the other players. A straight, or poker face was also a useful weapon, the first sign of a smile and people would know you were lying.

There are times in life when full fledged honesty is a choice that has to be made. The whole concept of white lies, or lies that don't hurt, came about from the desire to protect someone from a harsh truth. It has also been utilised to avoid saying what is truly on your mind. The downside is that sometimes by shielding someone from a truth makes that same truth doubly hard when it is eventually heard.

The rights and wrongs of absolute honesty is a conundrum for the ages. Biblical stories suggest that Peter denying knowing Jesus Christ was an act of self preservation in the face of betraying beliefs and principles. Such extremes show people to be shallow and untrustworthy. Yet in answer to a wife's question "Does my bum look big in this?", what should the husband say?

Sycophants, blithely agreeing with a boss to allow themselves the favour that may or may not come from that, are possibly self delusional but it's hard to deny them their choice when you look at the potential rewards that come from that sort of behaviour. Alas, if the superior is at fault, the wave of support can blind one to the reality and prudence of the situation. Nazi Germany, anyone?

So who amongst us hasn't wanted to tell a superior when they're doing something wrong? Sometimes blunt facts are the perfect broadside when leaving a job as you have no immediate reason to be wary of the words you chosse. But what if you're not leaving and still need to get your point across? A superior who doesn't want to hear the truth because they may not like it needs to look inwardly at themselves. I have seen 360 degree feedback used as an effective tool in this kind of situation. But it still comes down to the choice of words that one uses. A person who chooses to deliver information without considering the impact of what they're saying, shouldn't be surprised at the outcome, especially if in future they need something like a reference etc.

This is where diplomacy and tact join the party. These two guys allow us to pick and choose not only the words we use, but also the time and place in which we use them. Therefore it is possible to still tell the truth but also fall short of being considered impertinent. Alternatively, a good leader would encourage honesty, yet still to be delivered in a thought out manner.

As I said earlier, I guess it boils down to personal choice...

National Sport

Every country has a national sport. Well, most do anyway. Here's a quick quiz and see if you can get them right. I'll give you the country and you tell me the sport. Ready?

1. England

2. Wales

3. Scotland

4. Canada

5. Sri Lanka

6. Chile

7. India

You can find out how you did at the end of the post, and I'm guessing you're in for a surprise?

When I was at school all sports were considered 'fair game', as it were. The UK has been responsible for the creation of many sports and games; badminton, baseball, cricket, rugby, snooker, tennis, darts, football, table tennis, netball, golf, bowls, curling, and squash to name just a few and a cursory glance at some stats (I may have been gender or team specific) says that we're world number one in only 4 of that list.

The first secondary school I attended had a great attitude towards sport and games. If you were inclined and showed enough interest, the Physical Education Department would offer their help and resources to help you to do it. So it was that I got to play football, cricket, both codes of rugby, track and field athletics, basketball, volleyball and swimming. On top of this we were able to do lots of outward bound activities such as orienteering, hiking, sea surfing in kayaks, and mountain climbing, basically cause we had a great bunch of PE teachers. I will be eternally grateful to Chris Booth and John Hacking, the teachers, for their interest in us.

It was surprising that when I moved schools at 14, the new school only focused on cricket and football, even though in some ways it was in a better part of the country. I can only guess this was down to interest, or the lack of it, and the calibre of the PE dept.

Technically Indonesia doesn't have a national sport. Some may argue football or the martial art Pencak Silat, but in 1992 Indonesia won 5 medals at the Barcelona Olympics and since then it has been the de facto national sport. It could have been much, much different though as four years earlier Indonesia won it's first ever Olympic medal, a silver, in the archery competition.

Looking around, and especially teaching the youth of the country, one might be forgiven for thinking that electronic sports and games are king in. But when you look at how badminton can very quickly be set up and equipment not needing to cost the earth, it's easy to see the appeal.

Currently, football in Indonesia is in the doldrums. The professional football association is beset by problems relating from bad organisation to rumours of corruption and this has an effect on the teams and the fanatical supporters.

Indonesia is about to spend huge sums of money in building facilities for the 2019 Asian Games, including a velodrome complete with tennis courts. But many sports are elitist and expensive so I can't help wishing the focus was on getting to kids and giving them similar opportunities to those that I had.

I was lucky enough to meet some members of the current Indonesian men's badmnton team recently and I laughed at how even though we invented the sport Brits aren't very good at it when compared with Asians. They in turn joked that Indonesians are good because many don't work. Joking aside, if more people here were able to access the sports for free, rather than paying huge sums of money for facilities that will only be used by a ridiculously small proportion of the population, we might see a few more Indonesian world champions.

Quiz Answers 1. football, 2. rugby union, 3. golf, 4. la crosse and hockey, 5. volleyball, 6. rodeo, 7. hockey

sources:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatpicturegalleries/9438973/Sports-invented-by-the-British.html

"Takeaway beer" or "take away beer"?

Wandering around the internet looking for examples of extreme, crazy, or extremely crazy laws, I found these;

Only a qualified electrician is allowed to change a light bulb in Victoria, Australia

In Canada, by law, one out of every five songs on the radio must be sung by a Canadian

In Florida, it is illegal to pass wind in a public place after 6pm on Thursdays

In all of these instances, I find it hard to disagree. Anything electrical is potentially life threatening. Who among us hasn't screwed in that bulb only to get a vivid surprise when the bulb springs to life, indicating our lack of forethought where surging volts of death are concerned? Secondly, if we all started doing the jobs of electricians, they might be encouraged to take up secretarial work, or policing, that's not a good idea.

Canada has produced some awesome songsters. Leonard Cohen, Alanis Morissette and Joni Mitchell are just some of the amazing musicians from the land of maple syrup, so the chances of having to listen to Justin Bieber or Celine Dion that often seems within tolerance levels.

As for Floridian flatulence, well chances are that you're only going to be adding to the unnecessarily high methane levels if you go around casually bottom burping so maybe it should be enforced globally?

None of these laws would stop me from enjoying my time in these countries but that is where they differ from Indonesia's recent decision to remove bottled beer from sale in Minimarts.

The government of recently elected President Joko Widodo seems to be doing all it can to appease it's conservative coalition partners. To protect the morals of young people in a 90%-plus Muslim populated country by removing the temptation from the purchaser and the Minimart sales staff, is something I could live with. 

However, as far as I have been able to determine, the ban only applies to the "local store", not the supermarkets, even going so far as to specify that any supermarket with more than 12 square metres of sales floor area may continue to sell beer as long as it is located in an area next to the checkout.

So I'm perplexed at having visited the four big supermarkets in my local area this weekend; Hypermart, Farmers Market, Giant and Carrefour, to discover that they have all removed beer from their shelves and when asking a member of staff about it I was greeted with thinly veiled contempt. And laughter. 

 



It is not a need for alcohol on a daily basis that drives me, just the need to be able to enjoy a cold, frosty pilsner in the comfort of my own home whenever I feel like it. This is why I have less of an issue with the minimarts being banned from selling it. But why the need for supermarkets to jump upon the same waggon? 

Sure, beer is still available in restaurants, but at marked up prices and not the comfort of my own home. The agreement to allow Bali to be exempt from the law, on the grounds of disrupting tourism, is so shallow it resembles a beer stain. Tourism is a driver throughout the archipelago.

I also don't believe it's 'Creeping Sharia', a term that suggests Indonesia's slow move to that kind of  government. Rather, it's probably similar to visas and other red tape where the right hand refuses to take any interest in what the left is doing.

The House...now 6 months on

Having just returned to Indonesia from an extended trip to the UK, Yohana and I thought we'd go and take a look and see what's changed with the house that we have bought 'off plan' and which is being built from scratch.

Our expectations were pretty low, especially as Indonesia's rainy season seems to have been extended, but we got a pleasant surprise.

Not only has quite a lot of building work gone on (they are making good headway with ours), we were able to take a look inside one property which is the same as ours will be and should allow us to start making plans for fixtures and fittings.

We'll also be able to speak with the site architect about immediately extending the rear of the house to increase the size of the kitchen and master bedroom.

Currently they are targeting December for a handover which means we'll only need to extend the rent on our current place for 6 months.

the land in the foreground is for phase 2. Our house is over at the back, far right

Add caption

Chuffin' Hell It's Cold - UK Trip February 2015 part two

Saying good bye to Uchiel at the gates to the check-in desks, next stop was to find KLM. A quck x-ray of my bag later and I saw an official looking guy and approached him with a look of what I hoped said good day my man, i'm looking for something and i think you can help me, rather than I've just had a run-in with an obnoxious pillock and am still stark raving crazy.

"Can you tell me where KLM is please?" I asked in Bahasa Indonesian. "Gone" replied the man in English while at the same time gesticulating in a way that reminded me of an Italian stereotype rather than an Indonesian one. "You're too late, next one tomorrow" he said with an air of finality and turned to talk to the colleague on his left. "er, no" said I, holding out my e-ticket, but at the same time holding back my exasperation "It's tonight and I need to check in". Obviously annoyed that he'd been challenged, he turned to me once more and glanced suspiciously at this piece of contradictory evidence......

At this point let me just tell you that there was only one flight going out at 01.05am, it was going with Garuda, rather than with KLM due to their partnership and we were stood opposite the Garuda check-in desks.

........"Try down there" he said, pointing to the next departure hall, "they'll know." and so off I wandered in the direction he was pointing. Halfway down the next departure hall, with no sign of KLM, I stopped and asked another airline official. This conversation explained everything I had discussed with the first chap and, excusing himself, this new guy went off to consult his superior due to his perplexion at the information I'd been given.

The culmination of this was that 5 minutes later I was trapsing back to the Garuda desk where I had spoken to the first guy. Looking around with a view to giving him my best Paddington 'Hard Stare', where did I see him? Yes, behind the Garuda check-in desk! You've got to laugh, evidently.

Next stop in the airport process is the passport desk. This is pretty much pot luck as sometimes you get straight through and sometimes you get asked a leftfield question. It's possible you may also be asked to donate to the Injured Passport Officials Holiday Fund. Today fell into the second cateogary.

When you arrive in Indonesia, you retain the departure section of your arrival card for when you exit the country. Mine had actually been stapled into a page of my passport by an incredibly organised immigration guy who saw me in from Singapore. You could be forgiven for thinking that this would be pretty straightforward. "Where's your departure card?" he asked me in Bahasa Indonesian. "There in my passport" I replied in Bahasa Indonesian. "This isn't correct" he shot back at me in Bahasa. At this point I became possessed by a moment of pure Bahasa Indonesian greatness and proceeded to tell him the story of my last entry into Indonesia and how the card came to be there. Whether it was my Bahasa or the fact that he really couldn't argue with the actions of a colleague, he had no choice but to somewhat reluctantly let me through.

The next two hours were spent having a couple of beers and a cigarette in Royals Cafe near the final x-ray check and passing time chatting to a Dutch research scientist and his wife in the departure lounge before being called 30 minutes late for the flight......

Chuffin' Hell It's Cold! - UK Trip February 2015 part 1

I was thinking about my parents the other day. Things with Dad's cancer are deteriorating and Mum is Dad's nurse, which obviously isn't easy even with the help they get from the amazing Herriot Homecare girls, the wonderful sitters who allow Mum a few hours respite each week, Macmillan nurses, and the doctor. Additionally, I haven't seen my parents since October last year and whilst Skype is great, it doesn't make up for seeing someone in the flesh. So I spoke with Uchiel and we decided that a trip back to the UK was a good idea.

Next step was resolving work issues and I asked Katherine how many holiday days I had left. If I was living in the UK I guess I could travel to Leyburn on a Friday after work, spend the weekend and then maybe even travel back home on a Monday morning. But living 8,000 miles away needs a tad more planning.

It turned out that I had three days left to take before the end of my contract in June so, with the use of the Saturdays at either end as my 'Saturdays off' and Nina very kindly allowing me to take a couple of days unpaid, I went ahead and booked the flight.

Last October, Uchiel and I flew with Lufthansa and they managed to lose one of our cases for four days. Because of this, I was reluctant to use them again as I planned on bringing some perishables back so I booked with KLM, one of the better prices on skyscanner.co.id. As it happened, two days after booking the flight I received a telephone call from Lufthansa with a most generous offer of 250 Euros as compensation for the situation with the lost luggage. In light of them doing that, it certainly made up for the experience and I would now happily book with them again. (I know that sounds a bit nonchalant, but in my opinion the offer more than made up for a) the loss of the bag and b) the three months of waiting for some resolution to my complaint!).

Anyway, I was now booked with KLM meaning I would travel with their flying partner and Indonesian national airline, Garuda, from Jakarta to Amsterdam, and then on to Newcastle. The return leg would include an extra stop in Singapore and all this for 15 million Rupeah. The original price on Skyscanner was 13.2 million but I waited a few hours before booking and the price went up and then there were the "administration costs" for the company Skyscanner forwarded me to. (it's also interesting to note that the flight actually cost 6 million, the other 9 million was tax and admin costs!)

The Soekarna-Hatta to Schipol leg of the journey would take twelve and a half hours with an extra ninety minutes to get to Newcastle. Added to a layover in Amsterdam of three hours this was still going to be the fastest I had ever done a trip to the UK. The reality was a one hour delay in reaching Amsterdam but a thirty minute reduction in the time to Newcastle due to a very nice tailwind meaning I shaved half an hour off of an already quicker trip. Result!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Uchiel gave me a lift to the airport where I needed to check in at about 10pm. We left with enough time to navigate the complicated entry to the airport, caused by works to create a new MRT terminal, and to get something to eat together. Having parked, we made our way to the new Bakmi GM restaurant in Terminal 2's arrivals section, pushed my case into a redundant space next to a table for two, and off I went to the counter to order the food. I'd only been stood there two or three minutes when this Indonesian guy wearing a Songkok started having a go at me for bringing my case into the restaurant. I'd previously noticed this guy when we arrived as he was loudly complaining to a waitress about something equally inconsequential so I new he wasn't anything to do with the running of the place. I was also quite taken aback by his attitude, as it's really unusual for outbursts of anger, especially over something trivial.

I admit I wasn't in the best of moods as travelling to the aiport is a grating experience. From the amount of traffic on the road to get there, the unnecessarily complicated entry to the airport that I mentioned earlier and the attempts to park the car which are always stunted by the inability to drive of a significant percentage of the population, I was just looking forward to a relaxing bowl of fried rice with my wife, not having to put up with this git.

For a few monents I stood there in two minds. I'd already verbally established, in a defiant manner, that I wasn't moving my case a) just because he'd told me to and b) at least not before ordering our food, but it was his final demand that I was to just make sure that I "do it!" that left me with the indecision. Part of me wanted to just leave the queue, gently take him by the throat and nut him. Another part of me wanted to continue the debate, regardless of the gawking onlookers. Thirdly was the choice to allow others to accept that this guy was some sort of FPI-following, Westerner-hating imbecile and just ignore him. I really was livid at this point and I quickly left the queue, went back and collected Uchiel and the case,and explained to waitress on the way out that due to the behaviour of said gentlemen, they wouldn't be receiving any of our money. She was so apologetic and the sneaky grin on his fifty year old face that he made no attempt to hide nearly caused me to lose complete control.

Five minutes later, sat with some chicken and fries in the nearby A&W, I'd had the chance to calm down and we got to discussing normal stuff. But in the back of my mind I couldn't get over the guy's behaviour and that it is also the first time in six years that I've experienced it....

The New House, 3 Months On.......

I thought that even though the handover isn't until March 2016, we'd go and have a look at the progress

Here's a reminder of what we saw the day we bought it......

And here's what we saw last week......

so not a lot happening then heheh. 

But actually there were some signs of movement.....

The cluster's entrance gate and the show house is nearly finished and they've started on the recreational facilities too. We'll be back for another look in March.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas 2014

There aren’t that many things I don’t look forward to really. There are the obvious things of course, like dental appointments or the first day of every month when the mortgage payment goes out, but apart from that I like to think that I’m an optimistic and forward thinking kind of chap.Christmas has always held a particular fascination for me and everyone from my parents to ex girlfriends will tell you that I used to get into....well let’s call it a state of hightened anticipation.

This year would be my first Christmas in five years that would be spent in our own house in Indonesia. Well, rented house, Yohana and I will have to wait until December 2016 to spend it in our very own. In 2009 I went to East Java, in particular rafting in Probolingo, climbing the active volcano that is Mount Bromo and chilling in Bali, 2010 was spent visiting my parents in the beach resort of Goa, India, 2011 saw me back in the UK whereas 2012 was our honeymoon in Bali. Finally 2013 was Uchiel’s first experience of Christmas in the UK.

It was on that last trip that we bought a Christmas tree. Prices on Boxing Day, the name for the 26th of December in the UK, always drop to embarrassingly low levels for anything Christmas-related with stores trying to improve their cash flow and as such we ended up with a 6ft, black, fibre optic lit tree with an incredible array of decorations for next to nothing. This waited patiently in the UK until our most recent trip back in October when we were able to bring it back with us in what amounted to a large golf club bag.

To help decorate, we invited a few friends round on the 30th November with a little-needed ruse of providing food and drinks. The surprising result, considering the amount and variety of alcohol available, was that both the house and the tree looked fantastic, right down to the snowman on the front door!

The bottom of the tree was gradually filled with a number of presents so that when Christmas Day finally arrived, with blue sky and sunshine and a much appreciated 28 degrees at 8am, It made for a truly memorable Christmas Day morning. It’s impossible not to think of family at the most family-orientated time of the year, but Skype is a marvelous thing and, if the connection is good, can nearly make you believe you’re having a face to face conversation.

Christmas Day lunch was originally going to see us cooking for a couple of friends who’d chosen to stick around Jakarta, but a change of plans saw us heading for the definitely-not-Christmassy-at-all Tony Roma’s steak restaurant in Jakarta. Back home for the evening, those same friends arrived bearing wine and New Zealand beer (courtesy of Colm’s recent trip there) and a great evening was had supported by loads of cheese and finger food.

Indonesians, even the Christians, don’t seem to see the holiday season in quite the same way as Westerners do. The feeling that the season is just a marketing event is as unavoidable as it is becoming back in the UK and obviously the lack of snow doesn’t help. But Australians have been celebrating Christmas on beaches for long enough and I too am happy to forgo the snow and bad weather. I Just wish the family could have been here for it.....

The Underwater World of Jacques (Daron) Cousteau.....(transferred from my old "Ikyosan" blog from september 2009)

Indonesia is a land where the things that can kill you are nearly too numerous to mention. Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, bombs, spiders small enough not to see, but poisonous enough to end your life, snakes, monitor lizards that can detach their jaws to swallow you whole and actual, real life dragons. So with this in mind I thought I’d head below the waters for a holiday.

Most of the other teachers at EF were heading for Bali or the Gili Islands for the Idul Fitri break (The end of Ramadan has a public holiday to celebrate the end of fasting) but I wasn’t really interested in going somewhere so touristy. What I wanted after 5 months teaching was a completely relaxing holiday away from the masses and the thought for this came from a conversation with two of the teachers, Jeff and Chloe.

Jeff and Chloe along with two departed teachers had been to an island called Pulau Weh off the North coast of Sumatra at Christmas and done their PADI Open Water Scuba Diver course. This to me seemed like a perfect idea. I’d seen the pictures and the island is pretty remote with the only people really going there to dive, so about 8 weeks ago I booked the ticket.

As it’s a national holiday and I’d left it until relatively the last minute, the air tickets were quite expensive at 2 million rupeah (£125) for the return. I reckon if I’d booked a few weeks earlier I’d have got it for half that. Anyway, three weeks before departure a new teacher arrived at EF. Lucy Hiscocks is from Bristol and is already qualified to Advanced Open Water level and once she knew I was diving asked if she could join me.

So it was that on the 19th September we had a taxi arrive to pick us up at the house for the journey to the airport. We were booked on the 9.05 flight from Jakarta on Java to Banda Aceh on Sumatra with a short stop in the Sumatran capital of Medan to pick up/drop off passengers before catching a connecting ferry to Pulau Weh island.

Arriving at the airport around 7.20 we discovered on entering the departure lounge that the flight was delayed for 2 hours and this quickly progressed to 7 hours! The culmination of this was that instead of arriving in Banda Aceh with sufficient time to catch the 4pm ferry to the island of Pulau Weh, we were now going to have to find a hotel in Banda and leave the following day. This was to prove relatively easy but the first 3 hotels we tried were full and you get that little “Mary and Joseph” feeling that you’re going to be spending the night in the open air. (I should point out that the Mary and Joseph analogy is used for effect, Lucy and I are neither a couple or pregnant with the next Messiah). Checking into the 100 rupeah a night twin bedded fourth hotel, we dumped the bags and headed out to grab some food and were delighted with the chicken sate with lontong and sauce.

The taxi that brought us the 45 minutes from the airport had charged us 70,000 (£4.50) and seemed pretty reasonable so we agreed to a pick up to the ferry terminal for 100,000 the following morning. This was immediately cancelled when we found the chancer was overcharging us by 60,000! And again so it was that a great guy called Evan picked us up and gave us his card for the return when we got back to Banda Aceh a week later. I must mention his business card which had a picture of a beautifully sleek Mercedes SLK on it. I can only assume this was his other car because the one he arrived to pick us up in was a battered old Toyota with ill fitting doors.

It took no more than 10 minutes to get to the ferryport and we’d left early due to differing reports on ferry sailing times. These ranged from the typically British sharp intake of breath followed by lots of head scratching and consultation of similarly perplexed people to the extremely knowing look with a firm “yes, 2, o’clock” reply.

I never really know what to make of responses to questions in foreign languages. All of the phrase books give you excellent language points for asking questions but the analysis of the response if you don’t truly understand the language is entirely open to interpretation. Let’s take the two scenarios above, firm response coupled with a positive facial response equals definite whereas perplexed, shrugging and checking with confederates equals not sure? I’m starting to think that both actually mean “what is he going on about?” And the firm reply and look means you just go away faster.

This thought process was encouraged when at 12 noon on arrival at the ferry terminal having been assured by Evan there was a 2pm sailing, the first chap we met assured us the ferry wasn’t sailing today and would we like to go back into Banda Aceh and stay at his friend’s hotel for the night and get the following morning crossing. This was starting to get annoying. There were maybe 20 or so other people in the terminal who showed no sign of wishing to stay at this chaps friend’s hotel but neither was there any real sign of positive commercialism either. No food stalls catering to the captive market. No ticket office selling ferry crossing tickets etc. So we did what most Brits do in a situation like this, we sat down and refused to accept the potential inevitability.

As we sat there we were joined by 4 Indonesian guys. Encouraged by the opportunity to practice their English and accepting free cigarettes we soon found out that there was indeed a sailing but not until 4pm so armed with an English – Indonesian dictionary, Lucy’s practical Bahasa notebook and a copy of the Lonely Planet guide to Indonesia we spent the next hour and a half trying to discuss everything from the state of play in world economics to comical Indonesian swear words.

We were joined later by a modern day Robinson Crusoe and his girl Friday. Will and Mel were twenty-something dive instructors from Scarborough who worked 6 months of the year on Pulau Weh and 6 months at Perentian in Malaysia. They were a fantastic source of information and great company on the wait for the ferry, in fact on the ferry crossing too and if it hadn’t been for the fact that I’d already booked with Rubiah Tirta Dive School I’d probably have gone to Lumba Lumba Dive School with them. I do hope our paths cross again.

Finally arriving on Pulau Weh 33 hours after setting off we got a taxi with a family of 3 obnoxious Scots from Aberdeen. The saving grace of having them in the cab was that it saved us money. Sometimes I meet people I just don’t like and the bloke was a bore, the older of the two women was a complete space cadet and her younger sister was possibly a sandwich short of a picnic too. When it turned out the bloke and the older woman had worked for EF as teachers in China I nearly cried.

Jeff Eide, who had left EF at the end of his contract 2 weeks previously, had extended his tourist visa and headed straight for Pulau Weh. He met us off the taxi and helped us to get some accommodation straight away. I’d planned on accommodation costing us around 100,000 (£6) a night following advice from the Lonely Planet so to be told that the rusticly attractive bungalow overhanging the sea with it’s extremely comfortable–looking veranda hammock was going to be 40,000 (£2.50) between us was perfect. Jeff was trying to barter it down to 30,000 but I just didn’t have the heart.

To call it basic may be a bit of an understatement, the only interior furniture was a double bed shrouded in mosquito netting and a stand fan plus some strategically placed nails for hanging clothes on. The bungalow was attached to another next door occupied by a French guy and his son and both units shared a squat toilet and a bucket shower. I hope the description of squat toilet needs no further explanation but a bucket shower is just that, a big container of water and a bucket to tip the (cold) water over you. This would no doubt not be to everyone’s taste, but to me it was as close to ideal as I could have hoped for. Lucy sleeps in a sleeping bag liner (like a little cocoon) so the double bed posed no problems plus I have a girlfriend in Jakarta and Lucy’s tastes run normally to Aussies for some bewildering reason.

It’s also worth stating again that this is an island nearly totally dedicated to diving and with a little sightseeing thrown in. The beaches aren’t the long stretch of golden sands you find in Bali and Lombok, rather they’re small patches of sand and broken coral ideal for a walking entry to dive the area and according to Michael my dive instructor the island has hardly changed in 10 years. You won’t find posh villas and 5 star hotels and instead of Starbucks you get freshly made Aceh coffee and homemade doughnuts for 4,000 (25p) for one of each made by one of the village women. Personally I find it a double edged sword in that I hope it remains this way for many years to come.

Having dumped our bags in the bungalow we followed Jeff to the Rubiah Inn, the only place open in Rubiah due to the recent end of Ramadan, and met some of the Islands other tourists, Manuello and Guillermo from Spain, Christof and Wolfgang from Austria and a Swiss couple whose names unfortunately have escaped me. I had some Nasi Goreng with a huge piece of chicken and a can of beer and a can of coke and called it a night. The food was more expensive than in Jakarta but only just more and the beer at 20,000 represented the fact that we were in a strongly Muslim area where alcohol is actually illegal. Many more people would arrive over the next 24 hours both foreign and local tourists but these were the guys who greeted us.

I couldn’t believe how quickly I was relaxing, so much so that I woke at 6.30 the following morning and just lay in the hammock. There is something fundamentally right about being on this type of island and relaxing on this type of furniture. At 8 I headed to the dive site with Lucy to find out the scores on the doors with the dive course. Yudi the owner’s son and the man I’d been liasing with was nothing like I expected. A skinny bespectacled Indonesian bloke in his mid 20’s, he was reassuringly warm and friendly. I would start my course that very same day with Guillermo as my partner and dive buddy. Filling in the time before 1pm we had free use of the fins and snorkels so Jeff, Lucy and I snorkelled over to the nearby Rubiah Island marvelling at the clarity of the water and the fish. The coral in this area was devastated by the 2004 tsunami and Rubiah Tirta dive school have made it a mission to help rebuild the coral in this conservation area.
Michael the dive instructor is a 40 year old German guy who’s been coming to Pulau Weh for nearly 10 years and whilst I had no reference point for dive instructors found him to be funny, positive, informative, patient and encouraging, not exactly traits I associate with Germans I’ve met to this point. Both Guillermo and I had previously done introduction dives so had a rudimentary knowledge of the principles involved but the course was to be extremely thorough and day one saw us doing basic skills and any thoughts of staying close to the surface saw us doing a 35 minute Open water dive to 12 metres.

Every dive finishes back at the Dive Shop which is the communal centre of the area. All the divers gather around to drink tea and eat sugar puff biscuits courtesy of the shop whilst cleaning your gear of the accumulated salt water and setting up for the next days dive. This really is a great opportunity to flick through the reference books and identify the fish you see as well as share stories of your personal adventure and experiences. This particular day we saw giant clams, star fish, lion fish, sea slugs called nudibranches, pipefish, clown fish (the ones in Finding Nemo), featherstars and long spined sea urchins.

I can only relate learning to dive with learning to drive a car. The equipment is varied and some of the techniques are complicated. You need to get your head around basic physics, chemistry and biology as well as mathematical equations to know what’s happening to you. We would have to complete the course and 6 dives within 4 days as Guillermo was leaving on Friday and had to have time to rest before flying. Each day was a mixture of theory and practical concluding with the final exam on Friday that we both passed with flying colours. The feeling of both satisfaction and relief was tangible.

Days 3 and 4 saw us doing 2 dives each day and the two dives that we did on the morning of day 4, the Friday, were amazing. The last one in particular was at a dive site called Arus Paleh. This translates as The Bastard Current and it was easy to see why. As we approached the surface following our dive we had to have a safety stop at 6 metres to get rid of excess nitrogen. This entailed holding on for all we were worth to a rock in a current so strong it was not only dragging us away from our hand hold, it was even loosening the breathing regulator in our mouths! At one point the rock Guillermo was holding broke away in his hand and I think the poor guy was hyperventilating in his effort to get back.

Having completed the course I was a little disappointed not to have seen a reef shark. They are getting rarer due to being hunted for their fins which sell for excessive amounts on the black market, but I’d seen plenty of other things including turtles, rays and moray eels. I was given a good price for a tutor-less fun dive of 15 euros so signed up for one more dive which allowed me to go out with some of the more experienced people. Diving with and Indonesian dive buddy I’d been at around 22 metres, a little over my allowed depth when my buddy gave the signal for shark and there about 3 or 4 metres away was the receding body of a reef shark. The experience was both dramatic and rewarding and when I also saw a turtle pass within a couple of metres of me ensured I would return and immediately arrange a week in February or March to return for more.

The week has been one of the single most relaxing weeks I’ve ever had. Thoughts of days sat in a car on the M25 and arguing the toss with belligerent pub managers and even more sycophantic business managers seem so far away that I have to remind myself that I have only been doing this a few short months. Playing volleyball with a group of Germans, eating basic food in basic surroundings, learning new skills have all been great and even revising for tests didn’t detract in the slightest from the experience. I think a good indicator of any trip is the people you meet and the friendships you make and by that account this has been special.

I’m looking forward to getting back to the teaching but Pulau Weh has quickly found a place in my heart and I am already looking forward to coming back.