To the best of my knowledge there are 5 parties who actively read my blog. These being my mom, my friend Sarah's mom, my girlfriend, CNN, and my friend Brindan. Two out of these five individuals have now visited me in Indonesia. I invite you to keep reading but be warned that there is a 40% chance you will be visiting Indonesia in the near future.
Close up with one of my housemates: Mr. Pitchai
I live in a house with 8 boys, coming from 5 different countries. I have recently become close with Pitchai from India. His full first name is Kanipathipitchai, in case you are looking for baby name ideas. If you google the meaning of his name you will not find anything, but if you ask him, he will explain to you that it means gift from God. Pitchai would have 3 older siblings but they all died during childbirth. Pitchai himself was presumed dead during childbirth but survived. He was given a name that would reflect the miraculous nature of his birth.
Mr. Pitchai is currently a maths teacher at Bina Bangsa School but use to work as an assistant film director in India. This field did not provide a steady income so he got into teaching to help raise his children and help pay for his wife's schooling to complete her masters. His ambition is still to be a film director one day and create his own movie.
Pitchai's friendly nature and Indian manner of speaking has helped make him so easy to get along with. We have begun cooking lessons where he is teaching me how to make Indian food. He told his wife on Skype that he has made a new friend and I give him good company. I think that is a compliment! Although I am fairly hopeless in my learning to cook Indian food, I have eaten some spectacular meals throughout this experience. I have learned that the golden rule to Indian food is that it tastes better when you eat it with your hands. At risk of offending the chef and wanting to make the cuisine as authentic as possible, I give the knife and fork a day off and dig right in there. I am not sure if it tastes better or not but I do know it makes it slightly more challenging to eat, and that your fingers will be pruned when you finish your meal. "Don't play with your food" - a quote no Indian mother has ever said.
Although this changes often, one of my top travel plans for 2014 is to travel with Pitchai to India and spend a few days with his family in his home town. If any of you have read the book Shantaram (a large reason I am so keen on visiting India), I think Pitchai would make a similar tour guide to Prabaker. From here I will be able to easily visit Mumbai and Delhi in this remarkable country. I will also take some time and travel to the Maldives, as it isn't far from India and has some of the most undisturbed diving in the world.
Kanipathipitchai and I, and a little bit of Movember
Friendly/Helpful Indonesians
I have said all throughout my time here that Indonesians are incredible friendly and helpful people. Yet after five months living here I still continue to be surprised by the extent of the kindness, patience and how far out of their way they will go to help you.
I was trying to catch a taxi home from playing Squash with an expat friend Jim. I asked 2 ladies roughly, "Which direction will I need to be heading to get to Dago terminal". With a language barrier it sounded more like "shrug, "Terminal Dago?", confused face, smile". They decided to delay where they were going and help me flag a taxi. Another gentleman approached, asked the ladies what was going on and also helped stick around to flag down a taxi for me. Next, a police officer approached and was eager to show off his limited, but overall fairly impressive English ability. He asked me where I was from, explained that he was a police officer and he would help me get a taxi.
Equipped with my team of 5 the possibilities of what we could achieve were endless. I had suddenly wished I had a more challenging thing to do than wave down a taxi. My entourage started asking more questions about me. What brings you to Bandung? "Saya guru" (I am a teacher). How long are you here for? "Dua Tahoon" (two years). Seeing how exhilarated everyone was with my extraordinary Bahasa fluency I began to show off. "Saya sinang bertumoo dengan anda" (I am happy to meet you). "Kamu teman saya" (You are my friend). Unfortunately when I was too busy performing I didn't notice the police officer had snuck off. He had found two more girls and brought them over to introduce to his Canadian friend. To one of the girls he said "he is from Canada", and to me he said "look how beautiful she is". I've never witnessed an arranged marriage before but I think that is the closest I've ever been to being a part of one. Fortunately a taxi had been recruited by this point and I was able to avoid the wedding and say goodbye to all of my new friends.
Karnivore
On Halloween, Kyle, Cass, Alice and myself went to my new favourite restaurant. With a name like Karnivore, and t-shirts for sale in the lobby that read "stay calm and meet our meat", I knew this place would be a keeper. The menu had a special section with items named monster steak and burger tower. Kyle and I returned to Karnivore recently to handle some unfinished business. The burger tower consists of 5 patties weighing in at 1kg and standing over a foot tall, served on a tree trunk of a plate.
Champion (burger) and challenger
When we tried to order a burger tower for each of us at first they wouldn't let us order more than one.
When they finally caved in and brought us two it was too late to undo the spite that they had caused us to feel. There was no way we were going to prove them right and be unable to finish.
Although it may not seem like it, I spend the majority of my time in Indonesia teaching. Saying that I don't like standardized testing would be a euphemism as big as those burgers. But when I am not teaching to the test (which encourages memorization and kills creativity) I have been able to do some fun assignments in my classes which are geared toward creative expression and allowing students to utilize their artistic strengths. One such assignment involved explaining a concept in the plant reproduction unit in any creative way that they could think of. Students wrote stories, comics, posters, filmed a talk show, and one even wrote a song complete with guitar chords. The one that I will be sharing with you today and taking with me to show as an example of student's work in future interviews was a pop up book. I am not sure I understand the technology involved in a pop up book but definitely enjoyed reading them growing up.
What impressed me most about this novel was the likeable characters
Another area where students had the opportunity to express their talents was the Chinese singing competition. It was a singing competition, but in Chinese. It was a very enjoyable break from teaching on a Friday morning to listen to all of our very talented students compete.
One of my form students stealing the show!
Four of my year 11 students enjoying the competition
Being the funny guy that I am I made a joke to one of the Chinese language teachers that I would like to compete in the competition. After a bit of a language barrier she laughed and said okay maybe you can be number 16? I said that would be great and she walked away. The year 11 students next to me started laughing uncontrollably, being more aware than I was that the joke was missed. The Chinese language teacher had talked to someone back stage and looked at me and gave me the thumbs up. Apparently the fact that I was just kidding got lost in the language barrier. Despite the logistics of it being a competition for students, and that all the singing is done in Chinese, the teacher was having none of my "I was just kidding, I am not actually going to do it". To save myself from the embarrassment and convince the teacher to let me back out, I had to agree to perform at the Chinese New Year celebration in January. Last joke I ever I tell to her.
Brindan's visit
I have only known Brindan for just over a year after meeting him in cooperative housing during my Bachelor of Education at Queen's. This year he is on an international adventure of his own as an exchange student in Hong Kong. Fortunately his schedule worked out that he was able to come visit Indonesia for a long weekend.
It is truly amazing where life takes you and how unpredictable it can be. I met Brindan in Kingston, Ontario just over a year ago and neither of us would have ever imagined that one day soon he would take a weekend out of his studies in Hong Kong and visit me in Indonesia. Both of us were in a little bit of shock to see how much the other had grown and matured since the last time we saw each other in April. Experiencing another country truly broadens one's perspective and it was awesome to see this in a good friend of mine.
Brindan is Canadian but many people he has met in
Hong Kong think he is born in Africa
I feel bad that I am only able to give you Indonesia from the perspective of one individual. You can read about Brindan's perspective of this wonderful country here:
http://brindaninhk.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/being-a-bule-in-bandung/
Having previously polished up my tour guide skills I was excited to show him around Bandung. Having a visitor in town is always a great excuse to try new places that you have never been before. We rented a car and driver for a day and visited the floating market, an active volcano, and some hot springs.
The floating market was very interesting in that it is a typical Indonesian market with stalls selling food, clothing, artwork and many other miscellaneous items, but all of these stalls are floating. You are able to get a kayak or small boat and paddle around to the different stalls. Alternative you could just walk because all of the stalls were attached to a dock but that's not quite as cool.
Don't underestimate how treacherous the waters of the floating market can be!
Fortunately they were inches from shore, wearing life jackets, and could probably touch the bottom
Also found at the floating market was "The rock"
For you wrestling fans I am doing my best people's eyebrow
The highlight of the weekend was definitely Tangkuban perahu, an active volcano that was closed for tourism just weeks earlier due to too much volcanic activity! For those of you who have never seen a volcano (this was my first one), you will be very disappointed if you think they are as epic as I thought they were; flowing with molten lava and a thousand foot drop into a boiling pit of doom. They are actually quite friendly looking. Ok put it this way; If I were an ancient explorer and came across a volcano I would for sure build my village next to this cool structure, assuming it to be harmless. I never would have suspected that this structure could cause such a devastating effect.
Tangkuban perahu
I don't even flinch any more when people ask for photos but this one was a first for me. A car pulled over and a man stepped out and said "my wife would like a photo with you, is that ok?"
Who would turn down a photo with Cruella Deville?
Trevor: An unexpected journey
When against all odds I had finished my improbably journey, and climbed (gotten driven) all the way to the top, I was faced with an unexpected challenge! J. R. R. Tolkien never mentioned anything about a fence and a sign saying not to cross it.
In a moral dilemma between following the rules or not I decided to step over the fence because my mission depended on it.
I was ready to do what I had come here to do
But my greed and not wanting to let go of my precious caused me to hesitate
But at last, good trumped evil. I threw the evil ring into Mordor and Middle-earth was saved
Lastly I would like to share a video of another incident with monkeys and my water bottle, and a video I took of the coolest creature I have even seen diving, the Mola Mola.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1FA8h5jRSisRGExVmZ0MzVtb0E/edit?usp=sharing
