570 photos!

The end.

Home sweet home! Call me!
I'll add a link to a Picasa album in a couple days when I get one together.

Yay India!

India is colorful, delicious, and amazing. Ankit is being a great host and I'm having a blast!!

Next stop...

Yesterday was our last full day in Jakarta and we packed in a lot...first was going to the TOP of Monas (see my 7/20 post for a pic--the tall thing with a flame on top). We had gone there the first day we were here, but it was closed, so I'm glad we finally went back for the view. It's like the Space Needle of Jakarta! Next was the National Museum for some fun with artifacts and statues. Then, for dinner, we went with Wiji and Izana to a place known for really good Gado Gado, my favorite dish here--peanut sauce with vegetables, tofu, and rice. When conversation revealed that neither Wiji nor Izana had ever been bowling before, we decided we had to go! Kudos to them for making it through their first games with double digit scores and no bumpers! Still not ready to call it a night, we met up with a couple of Wiji's other friends for karaoke....good times.
A great day, and the perfect way to end a really amazing trip. I could get really mushy here but I'll leave it at that.
Now I'm off to India to visit my friend from college, Ankit. I have long layover in Bangkok, where I plan to squeeze in a couple sights, but most importantly, find myself a plate of authentic pad thai!

Around Jakarta

Over the past weekend, we made several day trips around Jakarta. First, on Friday, we rode the train to Bandung. There we visited the West Java provincial BPS office. We saw more processing of census data, similar to what we observed at the office in Manado, except the scale here was so much bigger! (The Manado office is working with 2 million people's data, this office is handling 43 million people's data.) There was a rented out parking garage stacked with boxes and boxes of completed census forms. I could not have imagined. I was, once again, impressed by the enormity of this task and the organization of it all. We got to meet our boss's husband on this trip too, since he works in Bandung at the Institute of Technology.
Saturday, our friend Izana, who is from Indonesia and also in our MPH program at UW, took us to her family's home in the southern tip of Jakarta. A bunch of her family (her mom and dad are each one of 7 kids!) were getting together to break fast, so she invited us to join in. One part of the custom I really enjoy--eating dessert first! (because of low blood sugar after fasting all day) We had lots of delicious food, some of which I really want to try to recreate when I get home, but we'll see how that goes, and they did prayers for Ramadhan. It was a really fun night.
Sunday, we went to Bogor to see the Botanical Gardens and Presidential Palace--from what I understood, sort of like the Martha's Vineyard of Indonesia, a presidential retreat home. It was a nice place to walk around and breathe fresh non-smoky air.
Now it's our last week in Jakarta, just trying to finish up our projects at work and spend time with the many nice people we've met here before it's time to leave...

Mountains of data.













Appetizers/dessert.










Jake, Bagus (Izana's cousin), Izana, and myself at the Palace.

Dragons & Flags

I think we pretty thoroughly celebrated Indonesia's Independence Day. Visiting the entire country in one day and watching a ceremony at the President's house is about as much as you can ask a person to do, right?
We started the day by attending the flag raising ceremony at the Bureau of Statistics. It was impressive to see all the staff dressed in their matching batik and although I didn't understand the Director's speech (given in Bahasa), I'm sure it was very inspiring. Next, we headed over to "Taman Mini", which translates to "Mini Park", where they have buildings representing the style of each major region of Indonesia. It's all centered around a lake, so you drive/walk around the perimeter and tour the country! Inside the park there are also several museums, but the only one we visited was the Reptile Museum--lots of big snakes, crocodiles, and a Komodo Dragon! In my experience, zoos traditionally allow you to look at animals through glass/cages, but here they brought the snakes out, letting anyone who wanted to hold and touch them. I did my photo-op with a couple pythons, but I drew the line at going into the cage with the Komodo Dragon! Jake, however did not. He was eaten. Just kidding. After the park, we heard there would be a parade on one of the main streets in Jakarta, so we went looking for the celebration. We kept wandering and weren't seeing anything, but a few people directed us towards the President's house. Apparently there were ceremonies that you could try to get a glimpse of from the street. Well right was we got there, they were allowing a few people to go inside to fill seats set up just outside the gates and we got to go in! We got to see marching bands and some awesome dragon-costumed dancers, followed by a procession of members of all the different armed forces and the flag-lowering ceremony to end the day. Of course my camera battery died right as we got there, but I felt really lucky to be able to see all of it! To cap off the day, we decided that any really good birthday should be celebrated at Benihana, where we toasted Indonesia reaching retirement age.





Mmm...ya, I'll stay here, thanks.

Happy 65th Indonesia!

Back from a great weekend in Bali...it was beautiful and relaxing. My first time to see the Indian Ocean! We were looking at hotel options for an IHME conference next year, and checking out the awesome resorts was my pleasure. We also spent some time in Kuta, the tourist hub of the island. There were lots of restaurants with Western food that I'd been missing and bars with cheap drinks that played American music, which made for a fun Friday night. My favorite part of the weekend was Sunday afternoon, when I took the guide book's advice and headed to the southwest tip of the island to the best beach I've ever seen. It was a postcard come to life and I spent an amazing few hours staring at the waves and lounging under an umbrella.
Tomorrow (Tuesday, August 17) is Indonesia's Independence Day. It's a public holiday and while apparently there are usually various ceremonies and games, I think it is going to be more subdued this year since it falls during Ramadhan, which started a week ago.



Door from the villa straight to the beach.




One of many temples. (Bali is mostly Hindu)
Daily offering set outside of most stores and businesses.


My favorite beach.

:)

I am currently in Bali. Have died and gone to heaven.

Don't take my word for it.

For a second opinion on my tales, check out my coworker/co-traveler Jake's new blog as well.

Work and play.

The trip to Manado was great! It really was a very different part of Indonesia...different climate (more beachy, tropical), different food (spicier!), different predominant religion (Christian). The things we got to do with work were really fascinating. We saw the steps involved in processing the recently collected data from the census. It's an unfathomable amount of work--personal data on 240 million people--I cannot imagining organizing that! We also went out with some surveyors collecting data for a household survey. It was interesting to see the interviews being conducted, but just as interesting was being in people's homes. That was my favorite part of these past few days--getting to spend a lot of time with people from here and having chances to talk with them about customs, cliches, college experiences, anything. Some of the staff from the office out there were around our age and on Friday, we all took a little boat over to Bunaken Island, where there was amazing snorkeling. I swam with fishes, ate a coconut, and loved it! That night, we went to dinner at a restaurant that had karaoke performance-style: anyone could get up onstage and sing a song with the keyboard player. Well, unfortunately, I was up there singing "From this Moment On", by Shania Twain. Fortunately, two of the other girls I was singing with were really good and I just held the mic far away from my mouth. (There will be no pics of this event!) Saturday, we did some more touring around, including a visit to a sulfurous river where the water temperature was so high that they boil corn on the cob in it. I was also introduced to tempura battered sliced banana. Yum!


Super interviewers
















View of the ocean floor from the glass bottom of the boat




Sulfurous river

Blue water, here I come.

At the airport ridiculously early to go with our boss to Manado, on Sulawesi Island. We'll be visiting a provincial office of the Statistics Bureau to see some household survey data being collected and processed and generally observe what they do at these smaller offices.
Also, there is supposed to be amazing snorkeling nearby! I'm excited to see a totally different part of Indonesia.

*Yogyakarta (see previous post)

The first weekend away.

This weekend we flew to Yogyakarta, on the other side of Java. We didn't spend much time in the city, but left from there to see Borobudur, a Buddhist temple built ~800 A.D. After that, we went to a smaller town nearby, where we found ourselves in the midst of a monkey war! We stumbled upon a bunch of them in the road and I thought they were so cute until they started fighting with each other, which was scary! From the town, we hiked to Chandi Sukuh, a Hindu temple built in the 15th century. That was also neat, but my favorite part was the walk there. We wandered along a road through a valley with a few villages and hills filled with crops and people working in their fields. The scenery was incredible and the people were so friendly. THIS was the Indonesia I've been waiting for...amazing. I'll let the pictures do the talking!


Borobudur

The babies!

Gorgeous.

Chandi Sukuh

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!!