I'm Rules The World

Ok, I bet you’ve all been waiting in confusing states of delirium before my next update…

Its your lucky day, you can all relax now, cos here it is!

I’ve only had the chance to use the net 2 or 3 times since I actually got in the country! Hopefully I’ll be able to remember enough of the last week and a bit.

So, I flew with Garuda from Sydney to Bali (after a great 4 days in sydney! Hi to everyone there!). I was sitting next to a lawyer from sydney who was going to a ‘conference’ with about 60 other lawyers… it just happened to be held in 2 of the best surfing spots on Bali, and most of the participants were surfers. Hmmm. In true style of australians on holiday in Bali, who like to make good use of their wads of rupiah in exchange for much alcohol, they decided to get started early: so set up a bar in the back of the plane! And ignored all requests to sit down and put their seatbelts on over the indian ocean. Oh well. So in Bali I stayed in a pretty nice place, but so expensive considering indo costs! It was only about $20, but that could get you 100 bottles of water from Circle K, or 30 budget lunches from a street side stall.

I was in Bali for Independence Day (the indonesian one!), and saw some celebrations on the beach. One was a whole lot of singing and chanting that I couldn’t understand, then teams of guys had to co-operate to climb to the top of 10m high bamboo pole, which was wet and oily, making it very hard to climb. It’s called panjat pinang, you can probably see it on youtube, quite funny. Once someone gets to the top, they get first pick of prizes hanging up there for their team. Then met up with the brother of a friend who lives in the next city east of jogja, but works in bali. We went cruising on his bike to some yummy warung (indo style café/restaurant) in the backblocks and had javanese noodle soup for dinner. Then we went down to the beach, had a conversation 100% in indonesian for about 2 hours… can’t believe I could swap from english in sydney to indonesian in a day!

Then we went to his flat for a bit in the denpasar suburbs, watched dodgy indonesian wrestling, then he took me back to my place. In the morning I had to get up at 5:30 for my 8am flight… yay! Had nasi goreng at the airport, and was fed lollies and chocolate on the plane. The bali-jogja flight is quite spectacular… because of the 100+ volcanoes on java alone (maybe twice the size of tassie), the planes have to dodge them! It’s like playing dogem flying cars! Although the planes fly higher than the volcanoes, they can’t go near them due to the possibility of an eruption and the ash stopping the engines. All along the way are huge mountains popping out of the blanket of cloud covering the island, with puffs of smoke coming out.

In jogja I caught a taxi down to the budget tourist area (just a street really… quite insignificant compared to bali) and found a place for $7/night. There I made a really good friend, Didik. He’s an artist and costume designer, works in Jogja and Jakarta, but lives about 10 hours away from here by train, in the direction of bali. He is very persistant in inviting me and some friends to go and visit, hopefully we can find 3-4 days off soon. For those few days, I went out with him and another indo friend, Feby. She has a car, so we went driving down south to a local village where she is doing agricultural research. She studies at the same uni as me, but their main research facilty is out in the sticks. We also went to see indonesian bands, and just hung out a lot. And we went to a really good cinema complex, saw The Dark Night for only $3!!!

On the 20th, the ACICIS orientation began, so Didik and Feby dropped me off at the uni hotel… or what they thought was the uni hotel. There are soooooo many buildings and faculties, that few people know where everything actually is. We actually turned up at the building for some economics masters program, which had a similar acronym to the hotel. Oh well. I must have looked intersting walking into a research building with all my bags!

We found the right place next, and I had to say goodbye to my new friends… the last few days had been ‘super bloogy bagus’! Next… meeting all 25ish new australian ACICIS students, with an american and 2 londoners mixed in. We had an orientation session that afternoon, cant remember what it was called. That evening we were all invited to an art exhibition of an australian artist in the southern part of the city. It was opened by an indonesian band (of course! For every event here, there’s a band. So much music!). that was fun (what isn’t here?!), some of my friends ordered beer, so we sat around a large fancy table, and whenever their glasses looked slightly empty, a waiter would rush over and top up their glasses. A little on the fancy side!
Later the band invited us to their next gig that night, so we all walked up the market street at about 10pm… I think the locals were a bit shocked to see so many westerners wandering past late at night! On the way me and 3 friends met a busking group who knew some australian songs… killing any chance of being reputable residents of this city, we decided to dance to Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport, and other disputable classics.

By about 12:3oam, I managed to convince some friends to leave the café to get a taxi home, due to having to meet with the police early in the morning. We walked and walked, all the taxis either had no driver, or he was asleep. We eventually found one who agreed to take us for a little less than a small fortune, and 2 other friends had to get a becak (3 wheeled pedicab) all the way home! It must be atleast 5-7 ks! Meeting the police was interesting. We had to fill out forms for the uni international student department, and also the regional police department. The most interesting bits were: a policeman classifiying almost every bit of our bodies in code… such as hair, eyes, nose, ears, lips, teeth, height, weight, tattoos, and my personal favourite, disfigurements!!! Everyone who wears glasses had to tick the disfigurement box! Then there were four types of face shape… long, oval, round, or box!! I don’t think any of us were lucky enough to be box faced. Then we had to fingerprinting! Black ink everywhere. I’m surprised we didn’t have to have our teeth sketched or something.

That night (last Thursday) we met our Pendampings/student helpers/dumplings for the first time. They help us find somewhere to live, set up our room, and help us at uni. ‘My’ one is Tyas, a really sweet girl who is always concerned about whether I’m too hot, thirsty, hungry, and never stops asking me about it. Friday was our first opportunity to go ‘kos’ (student sharehouse) hunting, and by now everyone has found one. I found this one on Friday, but maybe I should have kept looking, even though I seemed almost impossible to find one with spare rooms. There’s 3 rooms here, but one of them is occupied by the worker of the adjoined warung and her husband, and the other one is supposed to be for a girl from sumatra who hasn’t arrived yet. Oh well, we’ll see what happens.

One night… must be Friday, I’ve run out of other options, we heard about a huge concert in ther suburbs, at thhe Jogja Entertainment Centre… so we decided to tag along! There were 2 huuuuge concerts, 1 pop/emo thing in the concert hall, 10,000 rp entry fee. That’s only $1.25, but we collectivley forgot to take lots of money, so we decided to save it for the taxi home. Anyway, next to the hall was a huge outdoor stage, we saw a great metal band there, followed by reggae. It was some motorbike celebration thing, so even more people brought their bikes than normal. There was a type which seems popular with the police, it’s almost a very fast moving couch. I think it’s a modern type of harley? Doesn’t look anything like an old one… anyway, they’re huge, maybe half the width of a car.

On Saturday I met the brother (Inug) of the guy in Bali (Luki) and his friend in jogja. We went to the kraton (sultan’s palace),and saw a wayang kulit (shadow puppet) show in javanese, walked around the buildings and saw traditional cloth of the palace, hundred year old paintings and javanese scripts. The gardeners there cut the grass with huge scissors, while wearing the traditional sarong of the kraton. Then we ate lunch at a roadside stall near uni, and chatted until their train back to solo.

Later went shopping for a fan (I can feel it now, so refreshing!), towels, and other random household things. Went out on the street at about 10pm with ada, an aus friend to find something to eat, stopped at a tiny little stall which frys different and wondrous combinations of flavours in bread… we chose chocolate and pinapple! They use a mini size loaf, cut it 3 times down the middle, and fry it all over on a hotplate, then add the flavours, fry them into the bready goodness. It’s very big and filling! It wasn’t too high on the fried side, but tried not to eat anythi ng too greasy for the next day. We met up with another group of aussie acicis people, who of course wanted to find a local bar. It was empty except for us, and by 1am the waitresses looked like they wanted to kick us out so they could go home. I was so tired that I kinda wished they would! I think by that tiime I still hadn’t been to bed b4 midnight for the whole time in the country. We walked back to the hotel via one girl’s new kos, which is in a compound of islamic style kos’s. it was sooo quiet there, I think we woke up a lot of people because some people kept forgetting where they were (due to the copious amounts of beer) and yelling… once we got outside, someone told us all to sit down on the street (don’t worry mum, it’s the pedestrian part of the street… there’s no room for pedestrians on the footpath cos its fulll of trees. Cars were on the next bit over.)in a circle, and play the new ACICIS game… slap your face with either hand, send it to the next person depending on which side you slap. The 8th person has to salute and yell ACICIS in either direction, and so on it goes. Anyone who stuffs up is supposed to drink.
On Sunday morning I was woken up by a thumping bass coming from the street, rattling the windows in my room. I looked outside… party time! Only 6am, but why not?!! Sleep is so over-rated.

I woke up Ada across the hall, we wennt outside into the squinty bright day. It turned out to be he Gadjah Mada University’s Sunday market! Bought a fluro green wasking basket for my room for $1, had some wierdly coloured snacks, and then went to an adjoined Pocari Sweat festival. Is Pocari Sweat a known phenomenon in aus? I think it’s only sold in asian shops in hobart… behind the times people!! It’s a rehydrating drink from japan, quite popular here. Eda and I decided to pay 7000rp each for 2 bottles, a ‘green’ bag and a game token. With this we had the unique opportunity to be human chocolate wheels!

I was strapped onto a chocolate wheel, and wherever I stopped, I won a prize according to the word at the top. We both got pocari sweat festival t shirts! It was so crazy, but so fun! Late on Sunday we checked out of the uni hotel, and moved into our kos’s.

On Monday we did the language placement test, and I’m at the advanced level, so I can do all normal classes if I want… but I think that might give me a headache. I’ve enrolled in 2 forestry units, a camping subject (yay!), gamelan, indonesian for research and indonesian grammer. On Wednesday I went to my first class… it was at 7am!!! But even then, it’s still hot. Anyway, the class was so good! I was told not to expec t too much, that the stanndards of teaching aren’t as high here… but it was just as good as at home! Oh, and I could understand the lecturer too! Very interesting class about land use and mapping it. After class had breakfast with Didik, Ada, and 2 other acicis people, Brooke and Heather. We sat on a little wooden seat, on a dirty street,but had one of the best meals yet. Rice, veggies, corn patties, fried potato balls and tempe… yum! Later on I found out that there was a javanese class at 1pm, so I went along to that, it was really interesting to learn another language through indonesian! And it’s so useful, cos we can then use it on the street after class.

After that I met up with didik again, he took me on his friends motorbike to a computer market. I’m looking for an external dvd drive… there’s one for about $80-90… does that sound good? After that I started battling with the centrelink website… so not fun!
Then I met up with everyone at the acicis favourite café/bar, Bintang (also the name of the most common indo beer). And that brings us to today! What a journey! I went to uni this morning, finalised my enrolments, found out how to become a member of the forestry faculty library, and met the leaders of the forestry club… I’m invited to their agm next weekend!
I think that’s enough for me now! I’m starving, time for dinner!

Don’t forget to write a reply, send me a txt or sumthing!

Selamat malam!

Sydney!!!

Hurray, I'm done with all the organising in hobart, and I left yesterday morning!
I finally got my passport last friday, a whole 5 days before leaving!
Since the last post I finished work at centrelink, held a hilarious fancy dress costume party, where I was a scaly man fish from the Mighty Boosh, commonly known as Old Gregg (look it up!), went to dinner with mum and cameron, went to the movies with friends and saw The Square... bad name, cool movie.
And now I'm in sydney! got picked up from the airport by my great aunt and uncle, staying at Neutral Bay (really nice green suburb), got my new camera from the city... and have conquered the bus and ferry systems! now i'm at harbourside, an expensive tourist shopping centre at an internet kiosk with 2:40 remaining and counting... I'll update this more next time, hopefully with photos too!
Hope you're enjoying the snow if you're in tassie (i saw enough from the plane to keep myself satisfied for the next year), and please tell me how you are... i think you can reply to this.
ok, gotta go and have lunch now!
cya xox