Coming home to a warm and healthy meal

As I have noted on here before, I didn't start out as a Director of Studies, at one time I was a teacher and that meant living with a group of other teachers in one big dorm-style house. Each of EF Swara's schools has a teachers house (with the exception of the two Bogor schools where the teachers are given half of their bonus up front to allow them to rent a accommodation).

There are definitely ups and downs to sharing digs, as anyone who has done it will know, but I honestly believe that the positives outweigh the negatives. If sharing isn't your thing, then you can simply choose to find your own place but that is sometimes easier said than done and can prove costly if you're not careful.

That EF Swara provide housing was a great comfort to me on arriving here back in 2009. Not knowing any Indonesian language meant I would have found things difficult. From laundry to food shopping, using public transport to having a conversation, all of these things would have been tough. But not insurmountable.

For many people this is all part of the adventure and I certainly understand its appeal. But I think that even for a few nights, while you find your feet, it's nice to have the reassurance of being around people with a bit more experience, you know, just until you feel that you have your bearings.

As I mentioned, the size of the house in BSD represented the number of teachers working there and there were potentially 11 rooms that could have been used (although one of them was this dark, forbidding place that seemed to have been turned into a store room). It was a pretty modern building in a quiet estate and it also gave us the use of a swimming pool. In the house two of the rooms were en-suite doubles, just in case a couple were employed, the rest contained single beds, a wardrobe, a vanity table and an A/C unit. This same furniture list appears in all of EF Swara's teachers' housing, the only thing that changes is the architecture. Some houses are big, some small and not many of them have access to a pool! As I remember, the teachers' house for EF Puri near Jakarta had an indoor garden.

All of that was back in 2009 and EF BSD now have a second teachers' house to contend with even greater teacher numbers. Here in Gading Serpong, we have always had one main house and this was increased to two back in 2012. Recently we have returned to having just one house, not because of falling teacher numbers, rather it's because more of our teachers here choose to live elsewhere, usually for relationship reasons.

The reason that I decided to write about this side of things today was food. I found out that the maid at our teachers' house here in Gading Serpong has just started making food for the teachers, giving them lunch and dinner for a very reasonable sum. One of the things that I always enjoyed about being in the teachers' house in BSD was our maid Suti's cooking. Maids aren't employed to cook, just to keep the place clean but Suti was a bit like a mother hen taking care of her brood.

Having a maid in Indonesia is pretty much a standard. It is in no way indentured service or slave labour, rather the role of maid is taken very seriously by those that do it and most take an enormous amount of pride in their work. They are paid the going rate and given somewhere to live. Admittedly on first viewing the facilities it may surprise many westerners, but it is the norm. In my five years here I have met many people who have an inability to cook, I watched one American girl burn water, so to have a maid who is also prepared to cook traditional meals using fresh local ingredients is a real bonus.

The news I've been expecting...

Cycles. Processes. Rotations. Renewal.

We're told that this is the way of things. Crops are sown, harvested and re-sown. Trees, bud, blossom, bear fruit and then return to their bare, winter state. And I guess it is the same with people....

4 years ago, while on holiday in Goa, my Dad was diagnosed with cancer. It was treatable but ultimately incurable and the last 4 years have been a merry-go-round of medications and therapies. This week I was told that we are in the final stages.

Most of my friends are aware of this as, of course, is my family, but I wanted to take a moment to think about things.

Honestly? My initial thought was one of selfishness. An expectation that my Father, in my case the man who partly moulded me into who and what I am today, will not just be here forever. Insane, I know. But the fact that for 4 years he's been the same bloke he has always been, who travelled to Indonesia (twice), trips away with friends, especially to Pat and Chris's place on three occasions and where he drank Bretagne cider with me 7 months ago, who had Christmas goose with us only last month. It's unfair.

My thoughts were for Mum, who has lived with the shadow of this. Married nearly 50 years, that puts my own thoughts into a perspective when broadened by that number of years of living with someone. Whatever my thoughts, I know hers are infinitely deeper and more complex.

But then I reflected on those initial thoughts.

We have so much to be grateful for. Time spent together that many don't have, for one. Yes it's unfair for someone to be taken away, but to have had the moments, to have been able to share experiences, even in the knowledge that they are finite, in truth I think that's all that any of us have when you think about it. We have the time ahead to be positive, to revel in the life and the fight that carries on and to continue to make memories that will, later, become part of what makes my Dad the most special and most courageous of men.

My Dad wants none of us to be sad and yet, while there is an inevitability to sadness that cannot be helped, I would encourage everyone to have their thoughts and in them make the sadness a fraction. Think more about how he continues to live and will carry on doing that in our memories and hearts.

teacher's thoughts on a student

"....to focus his considerable energies on his work rather than on horseplay; to battle more vigorously the demons of complacency."

My favourite comment made by a teacher about a student....ever.

No Show Snow for Christmas in Yorkshire

I’ve experienced Christmas in many different places and circumstances. In fact it was at Christmas five years ago that I packed my bags and left England to work as a teacher in Indonesia. So coming back to the Uk, with my wife Yohana, has been truly exceptional. It wouldn’t matter where we were really, the family aspect to it is what makes it. But Yorkshire also has a certain je ne sais quoi.

Obviously the key reason for our second trip to the UK inside a year, was to spend time with my Dad whose cancer has seemingly managed to get the upper hand at the moment. He wasn’t expecting us back until the 14th January and had been telling everyone how much he was looking forward to it. Mum slipped Dad a mickey by telling him she was going shopping when in fact she was collecting us from Darlington railway station. I only wish I could show you the look on my Dad’s face as Uchiel walked into the living room. He did a double take and as he looked at her for the second time, his facial expression was the dictionary definition of ‘gobsmacked’. What I can tell you is that everyone, including my father, will remember it forever.

As for the weather, well Uchiel was cold enough when we came back in May but this time she’s been positively frozen. We had no need to buy winter clothes, not that we’d have known where to find them in Jakarta, as we have basically just been wearing hand me downs. But we have made it outside into the fresh air a couple of times, in fact today the car was frozen solid so that was another experience. But still no snow (technically, there was a light dusting of snow through the night into Boxing Day, but it could have equally been mistaken for a particularly hard frost).

Christmas Day was a class affair. We roasted a goose, had vegetables and yorkshire puddings too and some quite stunning desserts. There were artisan chocolates, loads of wine and some pretty good port and Mum’s Christmas cake, decorated with pigs, ladybirds and pandas due to the unavailability of more traditional Christmas cake decorations. Presents were opened, tv was watched and all in all it was just a truly great day.

The Teardrop Paradise

Sri Lanka is a mysterious, exotic country. Famed as much for its cricketers as its Ceylon tea, many people equally associate the country with the rebellious Tamil Tigers and The Maldives. I was fortunate enough transit aircrafts there on this recent trip back to the UK.

It wasn’t the best of starts to a trip in many ways. Unable to check-in online, we boarded the plane for the five hour trip to Colombo expecting to find our pre-booked, extra legroom seats and staff waiting with a cold Lion Beer. Instead we were met by the 3+3 seating arrangement common on low-cost airlines, no tv monitors onthe seats or hanging from the cabin, and a pricelist for alcoholic beverages. On top of that our seats weren’t located near to an emergency exit so had no extra room. Anyone familiar with low cost travel will immediately recognise the conditions in which we would spend the trip.

Actually we had already been made aware that this leg of the journey would be conducted by Sri Lanka Airway’s ‘sister’ airline, MINLanka. We just expected that whilst the conditions would be a tad cramped, they’d have pulled out the stops with everything else. As I said, we could have had a better start.

Turning the clock back for a moment, Yohana and I had found out a couple of weeks prior to our journey that we would be accompanied by one of our friends from Jakarta. Stewart used to teach at EF Gading Serpong but is currently employed by the Jakarta International Montesori School and was heading home for Christmas on the same flight as us. With the 3+3 seating it was very easy to arrange for Stewart to move from his booked one into the one next to us.

Another thing that we were painfully aware of was the transit in Colombo. All nine hours of it! What to do with that time had been the source of much discussion. Stewart had talked about leaving the airport for a few hours, but on checking into it it seemed that Uciel would need another visa. For the sake of a few hours this didn’t really seem to be worthwhiile so Yohana and I had resigned ourselves to getting some sleep on an uncomfortable airport bench and trying to sneak complimentary shots from the duty free sellers.

As it transpired, in conversation between the three of us, we decided that it would at least be worth checking into the transit visa thing so, on arrival in Colombo, we headed for the customer services desk. They directed us to a short queue where we waited to speak to a chubby Sri Lankan guy. On reaching his desk and explaining that we had 9 hours to kill and wanted to leave the airport, and him having looked through our boarding passes, he finally suggested we speak to his colleague sat next to him. This meant going to the back of a slightly longer queue. As our turn to be seen approached, the guy we’d originally spoken to moved from his original seat, sat on the opposite side of his colleague and called us forward. My initial suggestion that we had just spoken to his brother produced not a titter. Maybe I need to work on my timing.

Explaining our dilemma, he kindly pointed out that we would be given a free meal due to the length of our stay and then started talking to his colleague about hotels. Quickly stopping him I explained again that we had only a few short hours and didn’t really want the expense of a hotel and that we’d rather do our own thing if he could just see his way towards letting us out of the airport.

His answer was that if that was what we wished to do, we should go and explain our situation to the head of immigration, who would issue us with a pass. Coming from the rampant corruption of Indonesia, I jumped swiftly to the conclusion that to arrange this money would have to change hands and, at the same moment, a thought dawned on me.

“Er..., that hotel thing. Is it free?” I enquired, tentatively. I was thinking that he’d been happily looking into hotels and maybe it wasn’t an address that we needed as part of the short stay visa thing, but maybe we could wangle this another way or, that even between the three of us, the cost would be minimal.

“It depends on the type and cost of your ticket” said the portly chap. “Let me see those boarding passes again”.

Next thing we know, we’ve had our free meal vouchers taken away from us and replaced with a white docket entitling us to a single and a double hotel room and a meal each at vaguely cricket-sounding The Sunhill Hotel, and this would come with complimentary transport to and from said hotel. Winner!

Now at the risk of seeming ungrateful, a few things should be pointed out. From receiving this voucher, it then took another hour to get to the hotel due to the Sri Lankans seemingly endless fascination with making visitors join pointless queues. This, plus the wait for the complimentary taxi. On arriving at the hotel, we were shown to our more than adequate rooms (evidently a single room is a smaller room that contains a double bed and our double room had a double bed plus an extra bed) but on requesting the location of the restaurant were were given the perplexing reply that there wasn’t one. On asking for the bar we were again informed of a lack in this area too. But the guy on duty just took us outside, over the road and into a nearby Indian restaurant   where we were told that a few beers and some red wine for Uciel was very possible and that we could pay by card (on account of not having any Sri Lankan Rupees).

The final thing we were left with was the confusing; “Please be back at 9pm for food”.

We ordered the drinks and sat chatting and watching Liverpool condemn Cardiff to another Premiership defeat and decided that food must be a take away affair. It’s a shame as, on reflection, we’d have gladly stayed in the place we were and whose prices were very reasonable.

We weren’t the only people in the restaurant, two other tables had groups of guys seemingly preparing for Christmas. Sri Lanka is predomninantly Buddhist but never let that get in the way of a celebration. They seem to be  a lot like the Thais in this respect. It turned out that one group was having a birthday party for one of their number but the other group, sat on the table nearest to us were celebrating after a positive stock take result at work. They did this by sharing a bottle of gin and some food and then banging on their table to a beat that went well with “We wish you a Merry Christmas”. This was produced in pretty good English and was obviously for our benefit as when they finished they all stood up and came over to our table. Hands were shaken, cheeks were kissed, high fives were handed out, photos were taken and emails were swapped. The genuine emotion these guys displayed as they talked about their hopes for our appreciation of their country was mirrored when the next table of guys did exactly the same thing. Nearly too awesome for words.

Back at the hotel we had time for a shower and to eat the fried rice and spicy chicken that was delivered to the room before the taxi arrived to take us back to the airport where the plane that would take us the UK, the decidedly bigger and better equipped plane, was waiting.

Those few hours have really given me some encouragement to revisit the teardrop island.

The smell of home...

I can't believe that I've neglected this blog for so long. It seems that time just gets away from me and other things take the place of my musings. Well not today.

Indonesia, just like anywhere, invites you to use all of your senses for the complete experience. Touch is important in so much as it may actually be impolite to touch, for instance when greeting a Muslim woman. The gesture is to hold out your palms, pressed together with thumbs pointing upwards and then very nearly touch the outstretched hands of the person you're being introduced to. *If I have misunderstood this particular social interaction, feel free to correct me to ensure I don't feel like a complete pillock the next time I'm in a similar situation.

Sight and Hearing are of obvious importance. My first earthquake experience in Indonesia wasn't actually indicated directly by sound, rather my inner ear (of all things) received a message from my brain that my eyes had detected a slight swaying motion in the building. This then in turn connected with Taste as I knew I was about to vomit due to the previously unknown motion sickness. Fortunately my class of 8 year olds were vastly more experienced than I in these matters and got me to the relative safety of the front desk before I unloaded my breakfast.

But Smell, now there's a sense. I can only pity those souls born without it. To go through life and not experience the smells of mown grass, a freshly cut rose, cool rain on hot tarmac. That's unfortunate. What led me to think of this blog entry was the last of those three things I just mentioned. I have always associated those three smells with the UK, but I was to be pleasantly surprised.We're in the heart of the rainy season here in Jakarta which usually lasts from October until April. Unlike the UK where it usually lasts from September until July. Coming home the other day in brilliant sunshine, the clouds just burst. From a clear sky the rain fell and as it hit the hot road surface there it was. That smell. My olfactory organs engaged the on switch of my mind's time machine and I skipped back to my first, dulled memories of receiving this aromatic information. Having been here for nearly five years, A rainy season has come and gone before. But this was the first time I was aware of that smell. We don't have a great deal of grass that needs cutting around me so it's not like smelling a lawn getting mowed back home and as for roses, well there are more plastic ones than there are real ones it would seem.

In some people this smell, like other sensory examples, could cause homesickness but my point is that homesickness comes and goes, sometimes when you least expect it. I find these smells to be comfortable and go a long way towards easing it because they remind me that home is sometimes just a smell away. I don't regret my move to Indonesia in the slightest, but I think it'd be unusual if I didn't miss some things. The rain experience was a help, not a hindrance and it made me start thinking about other smells.

Indonesia is a land of smells, some good and some...less so. In the 'less so' category, I rank at number 1 the Indonesian fruit delicacy that is the Durian. I've written about this before so suffice to say the smell that once caused a pressurised International airliner to make an emergency landing isn't going to surprise many. If you don't believe me, buy one. I'm sure an Asian supermarket will have one. If not, try asking the local Masochists society for help. As a developing country with a hugely overpopulated capital city, pollution and waste disposal create an aroma that is understandably difficult to miss at certain times.

But there are so many more interesting smells. Indonesia is a coffee growing country and freshly brewed Indonesian coffee is as diverse as French wine. Keep your Starbucks, thanks. The recent food festival held outside the local shopping mall invited you to close your eyes and breathe in the subtle differences from the myriad regional dishes. Sure a lot of Indonesian food is fried but that smell of oils cooking in a pan also has the same effect here as walking past a Fish and Chip shop in the UK or a patisserie in France. Charcoal barbecues set up by the side of the road cook different types of meat and all meat eaters love a barbecue, don't they? I think it appeals to our ancestral instincts.

Sure, senses are best served when they are in harmony but Smell is my favourite.

ctive

A Return to Singapore

Today, 19th July 2013, saw me heading to the airport to do my annual 'visa run'. Part of life on an annual contract, even an extended two year one like mine, is that if you leave the country for an extended amount of time, you need to return on a tourist visa and then go back to Singapore for the full visa transfer. Somewhere else on this blog I have already gone into the reasons for this but, it's a great trip. Apart from the waking up.

Yes, the day starts at 4.00am with a shower and dressing the part. This includes shorts and a t-shirt plus flip-flops. The bonus of dressing this way is that you speed through the airport check-in scans, the downside is there is absolutely no chance of a free upgrade to Business Class (not that there ever was, as we use the lowest cost low-cost airlines)

Anung, the school driver was there to pick me up, on time for a change, and we winged our way to the airport with my much improved Indonesian, meaning we could talk about my imminent new motorbike and Anung's impending trip back to his village for the Idul Fitri celebrations at the end of Ramadan. The roads were empty and we arrived in plenty of time for the check-in. Plenty of time, that is, until I realised I'd joined the queue with the slowest check-in person possible. I frantically looked around for another queue, but all that I saw were sad, sympathetic eyes, empathising with my plight. At least this was what I saw on the outside, on the inside they all had that smug, self-satisfied grin that screamed "sucker!".

As the clock ticked towards boarding time, I decided that breakfast would have to wait.

Boarding went without a hitch, other than people trying to get on the plane before their seats had been called and snarling up the entrance to the boarding tunnel, and we arrived in Singapore ninety minutes after leaving Jakarta. Ninety food free minutes. I know this is a low cost carrier, but they usually offfer you food and a drink to buy. Not today.

This meant that the first sustenance to pass my lips since an apple juice and toothpaste cocktail at 4.15am was, yes, a Singapore Sling! On numerous visits to Singapore, the one experience that has escaped me was this country's contribution to alcoholic cocktails. The reason I've never felt ispired to find the eponymous concoction before is that it contains gin, my least favourite spirit. Today though I decided to find the Raffles Hotel where the cocktail was first created, and down one.

....Actually, that's not entirely true. The real reason for my Search for Sling was the lack of new movies available to watch in Singapore. This, along with a couple of pints of cider, is how I usually spend my trips. I was hoping for 'Wolverine', or at the very least 'Red 2' but no, they don't open until at least the following week. So with no cinematic goodies to fill in my time I'd decided on unearthing Raffles.

I'm glad I did actually as, after dropping off my passport and details, I realised I was pretty close to the MRT station known as Raffles Place. Yep, you're ahead of me, aren't you?

That's right, Raffles Place is actually 1.5km away from the Raffles Hotel, which is something of a let down. I know this, not because I carry a pedometer, but because it was a great way to interract with the locals and they wanted to make sure a walk that far wouldn't kill me.

"Hey, I'm new in town. Can you tell me how to find Raffles?"
"This is Raffles"
"Yeah, I can see that, but I'm looking for a Singapore Sling"
(after checking her watch suspiciouslyand seeing it was 10.30am)  "oh, you can get those everywhere"
"Yeah, I know that, but I want the old colonial place where they were invernted"
Really? Let me find it for you"" and so she entered the hyperspeed world of the internet via her handphone.

I know, it would be like someone in London having to check directions to Buckingham Palace, but this poor girl was just in awe at my story of the invention of a drink she had no doubt tried at least once.

And then she made me take a picture of the directions on her phone.

It was a great walk and I got to see the iconic Marina Bay Sands hotel, three towers topped with what looks like a stranded ocean liner. I walked past the Singapore Cricket Club, another excellent old building situated in the heart of the modern glass financial district and then, there it was. The Raffles Hotel.

The hotel part of the hotel is off limits to non-residents (as was the wi-fi, I was later to find out) so I wandered in the direction of the billiards room. Turned around by a kindly porter and advised that this was now a restaurant, he gave me complicated instructions to find The Long Bar. To say this place is a maze is an awful understatement. It was 20 minutes before I found a sign informing me that the bar wasn't on the ground floor! However, once setlled in a wicker chair with a copy of the Singapore Times (Friday's edition makes the Sunday Times look lean), I took a sip of my first Singapore Sling. You couldn't taste the gin, was a pleasant surprise. It really is a refreshing drink and on a day as humid as this one I applaud old Mr Raffles for his creation.

Thirty Singapore Dollars later, I can only assume the monkey nuts had been laced with gold leaf, I noticed I was hungry and the best place to eat your fill and still have enough for a bottle of water is Little India. Only two stops from Raffles on the MRT, I found myself on the Racecourse Road and outside the Gayatri Restaurant. The chicken biryani I had here is the best indian food I've ever eaten, and I've travelled in India. True, the two ice cold large bottles of Tiger were pretty damn good too and a total of 26 Singapore Dollars for the lot (including popadoms) was exceptional value.

Food over it was time to head back closer to the Visa office. I'm sat writing this in a coffee shop callled Tom 'n' Tom's on Tras Street and now can't wait for people to know about Gayatri and Singapore Slings and coming back again with Uciel to try them too.

And you too Mum!