Tough questions.

Lots of posts today. But if you're interested, this survey asks you to make hard choices about which states of ill health you think are worse/better. The collective opinions will be used to assign severity weights to different states of disability for the Global Burden of Disease Study.

http://www.gbdsurvey.org/

I'd like a turkey sandwich.

So unfortunately, Jake and I both caught a little flu-type illness in the past few days. Thankfully, it only lasted about a day, but no fun nonetheless. Not quite sure where it came from. Some theories: the heat, the smog, the constant cigarette smoke, something we ate. Dunno. Especially after being sick, and after eating noodles and rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for several days, I am really missing some food that is more familiar to me. We have decided to try to find pizza for dinner today. We attended part of another conference this morning, on Geographical Information Systems, i.e. presenting your data with maps. Something they did that I've never seen at a conference before, was offering prizes for people who asked the best questions! Well guess who got second place and won a giant ~2 ft. by 1 ft. Atlas of Indonesia book? Jake! haha. --->




Other excitement of the past few days: our first ride in a tok tok (a 3-wheeled motorized vehicle with a cab on the back for passsengers) and discovering the store in the mall that sells DVDs for 7,000 Rp. (=80 cents)!

The view from the back of a tok tok!


Views of the city:

If you have a minute?

I was reading the Jakarta Post online to get a feel for what's going on in the country and came across an article talking about food insecurity in Indonesia. They referenced this website, which I thought was really cool: 1billionhungry.org. You can sign the petition and then notify other people to sign it, and when they do, it creates a map of all your links to other people who have signed. Will you help me make a cool map to put on my blog? (And more importantly, sign the petition against world hunger!)

Settling in.

Getting used to being here after a few days now. We're working at the Indonesian National Statistical Office. Our supervisor is really sweet but with the staff, in general, the language barrier is more difficult than I anticipated. People speak enough English for us to make some small talk, but as far as trying to understand the structure of the organization and what people's roles are and communicate about work, it is a challenge. I'm trying to learn some Bahasa as fast as I can! (Selamat pagi! = Good morning!) We're trying to identify projects that will be both useful to the organization and good learning experiences for us--so far it looks like we might develop a plan for new content to add to the website and/or design graphing tutorials since they tend to use very few visualizations of their data. I'm sure we'll come up with some good projects, it's just taking some time to get started with good ideas. Other than work, our main excursions have been to restaurants. Indonesian food is typically rice or noodles, with meat and/or veggies, fairly similar to other types of Asian food. We've tried out quite a few good places--a really fancy Indonesian one that looked like a museum with all the cool decorations, a Malaysian place with many Indian-inspired dishes, and a delicious Turkish place just last night with Jess and Will (our new English friends). I'm eating so globally! Jakarta really does have a lot of neat and interesting places to go, I think the biggest adjustment for me is just that I have to take a cab everywhere and always have a destination in mind. I can't just stroll around and find places, but I'll get used to it. Last night, after outspending our budgets at the Turkish place, we decided to save some money by buying beer at a convenience store. We found a Circle K and it happened to have a table and chairs, so we ended up having a great time drinking and playing cards at the Circle K! Who would've thought? After that, we went to a club, which did not disappoint. It reminded me of the clubs in Vegas--it was huge with 4 rooms, each with different music. The DJ's were really good and when it was closing at 4am, I was not ready to leave! Good times. Besides working and eating, I've also been quite enjoying the hotel pool. It's so nice to be somewhere with weather for swimming outside! Think I'll head out there in a bit with a book. I fear I will get too used to this life :)

The least walkable city ever.

Indonesia is awesome but Jakarta is not. The traffic is horrible and it's really difficult to walk anywhere, which disappoints me because I think walking around is the best way to get a feel for a new place. Ah, well. Thankfully, the cabs are cheap. Yesterday was our first full day here. We attended part of a conference that Alan Lopez (a frequent collaborator of IHME's) was coincidentally hosting at a nearby hotel. They were discussing setting up a Sample Registration System in Indonesia, similar to what they have in China, India, and a few other places. (An SRS tracks mortality and causes of death in subsections of the population in order to have nationally-representative estimates in countries without Vital Registration Systems.) It was interesting, and hopefully they'll get it started and I'll be reading papers using their data in years to come! Afterward, we nearly exhausted the list of tourist attractions in Jakarta--we saw the third largest mosque in the world (the biggest are in Medina and Mecca), an old church, and went to the National Monument, which was closed so we couldn't go to the top. I'd like to go back to get to the top another day, and see the National Museum, which is next door, but after that, the list of Jakarta attractions will be pretty well checked off. We met a couple of travelers from England at the church and ended up walking across many intersections of frightening traffic (not doing that again) to the area of Jakarta where the majority of hostel/backpacker-type stops are located. We ate some street food, which was delicious and I'm not sick yet, and then went to a bar. It was nice to meet some people and I think we've planned to check out the clubbing scene in Jakarta (apparently the biggest in Southeast Asia and many places open past dawn!) this weekend. But after that, I am definitely traveling every weekend. This is a beautiful country with lots to see and I need to get out of this city!

Finally, some pictures.

Back in Nebraska...









The wedding reception. Awesome.













The first dance!












I just really enjoyed this sign on someone's desk at my uncle's office. Go Nebraska.





And in Jakarta...













The outdoor section of the mosque, with the National Monument in the background.














Inside the mosque.

I need a calculator.

I'm in Jakarta, yay! The cab ride from the airport reminded me that while I may worry about plane crashes and shark attacks, taxis are probably my biggest actual danger on this trip. The shoulder is totally another lane, right? haha. Another day 1 adventure was my first trip to the bathroom. No toilet seat, just a hole. Which is fine, but there is this hose thing next to it that I'm really not quite sure what you're supposed to do with? Spray something obviously, but...?
My first impressions of the city are that it's huge, crowded, and not the cleanest. My hotel is nice, but not quite as lavish as the website makes it look, which I'm glad for. The room is super big though--at least twice the size of my Seattle apartment! The staff are friendly, but I feel bad because when I first got here they were going over the details with me and due to language barrier and poor currency conversion in my head, I thought they were trying to bill me way too much and I was rather uncooperative and skeptical. Then I realized I was being bad at math and rude. oops. I will be very nice to them from here on out. :/

Good to know:
1 US dollar ~ 9,000 Rupiah (I'm a millionaire!)
Jakarta time is 14 hours ahead of Seattle time. (= internal clock very mixed up)

Going to try to stay awake long enough to hopefully get on some sort of relevant time schedule in the morning. Will post wedding pics(!) and a couple from here tomorrow when I have more energy.

Almost there...

Currently enjoying free Wifi at the Singapore airport before catching my last plane to Jakarta! Definitely ready to be there...my 18-hour trip from Chicago to Mumbai ended up having a stop in Frankfurt, to my surprise, since it didn't say that anywhere on my ticket. I've gone through security in 3 countries and interesting to note, only the US makes you take off your shoes! Flew Air India most of the way, which has really good food, minus what I thought was a green bean and made my tongue feel like fire for ten minutes. All in all, not doing too bad, just hoping my luggage makes it...

They have a website!

Haha. Welcome to the 21st century. I didn't know that everyone does this now, but yes, Stu and Erin have a website. Super excited for the wedding and really glad I get to be here for it. Aaron and I are going to be bartenders tonight for the post-rehearsal dinner party. hehe :)

Um...whoa.

Just found out where I'm staying. I think the website speaks for itself: Allson Jakarta

I'm making a blog (obviously)

Thought I would give this a try...I'm leaving in 2 days for Nebraska (for 3 days for my cousin's wedding), then Indonesia (for 6 weeks for my practicum), then India (for 1 week to visit Ankit!) With all the layovers, that's 11 plane rides--really glad that Indonesia is supposed to have cheap massages!!