Goats on the soccer field

There are goats on the soccer field.

Goats on the street.

Goats on the sidewalk.

And most especially, goats at the mosque.

It’s kind of fun having all this livestock around in super-urban Jakarta. But the fun has an expiration date, as do the goats.

Dec. 31 is Idul Adha, which commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son (Isaac, according to Jews and Christians, but Ismail according to Muslims). You may recall that in the end he sacrifices a sheep instead. So for Idul Adha, people who can afford a goat, sheep or cow are supposed to buy one, have it slaughtered, and share the meat with friends, family, and the poor.

An estimated 73,000 animals will meet their end on Idul Adha. The city has called for them to be killed at slaughterhouses rather than mosques. But some clerics have said there aren’t enough slaughterhouses to do the work. Since so many goats are gathered at the mosque on our street, I assume they’ll be dispatched there … so I guess I’ll avoid that end of the street tomorrow.

Office improvement and a vibrating belt

I have a few days off in honor of Christmas, New Year’s, and Idul Adha (more on that later), so today we got a dangerous notion to use all that free time to organize the office. Off we went to Carrefour to buy files, file boxes, reading lamps, scotch tape, etc.

Carrefour is a Walmartish sort of place, only, in Jakarta style, it’s a bit louder and more chaotic. Today they had a Surf laundry detergent demonstration with loud music and some guy talking up the glories of Surf, and they had employees wandering around with hot dog samples and soda pop samples and best of all, ice cream samples.

They also had a vibrating belt, modeled by the woman on the right. She seemed pretty cheerful even though she had to wear a vibrating belt in public, and even though nobody was asking her about her vibrating belt. That’s Chad in the background, by the way.

Carrefour’s slogan is “Ke Carrefour aja, ahhhh!” or roughly, “Let’s just go to Carrefour, ahhhh!” I think it’s meant to imply a sense of relief that instead of running around to lots of stores, you can go to Carrefour and find everything you need. Which is sort of true. For example, we found scotch tape. The files, file boxes, and reading lamps, however, were a different story. Carrefour seems to specialize in having a lot of stuff that’s kind of like what you want, but isn’t really what you want. Which is why, in my mind, the slogan reads, “Ke Carrefour aja, aggggh!”

Toilet instructions

This was in the bathroom at our homestay in Yogya. It was clearly affixed to the toilet by the manufacturer. The top says “Correct use of the closet (i.e. water closet).” And the large pictures are labeled “Men” and “Men and Women.”

At first I couldn’t figure out why there was a need for instructions. But then I remembered the “do not squat on the toilet” signs you sometimes see in Jakarta. People are replacing their squat toilets with Western-style ones, and they don’t want their houseguests leaving footprints on the seat.

I’m still a little unclear about the pictures on the side, under Maintenance (Perawatan). The top one must mean “do not scrub,” but why can’t you scrub? “No chemicals,” on the bottom, I can applaud from a water-quality point of view, but if you can’t scrub or use chemicals, how are you supposed to clean this thing?

As to the middle one, my first guess was “Do not make tea.” But it must be “Do not add boiling water.” Is that something people do? It never occurred to me to pour boiling water into a toilet … until now.

If labrador retrievers could testify

The moose, the whole moose, and nothing but the moose:
BearDog and favorite toy

A while back I read in the Jakarta Post that the bloodhound is the only dog whose testimony is accepted in U.S. courts. It got me thinking: what would trials be like if Labrador retrievers could testify?

1. “I knew beyond the SHADOW OF A DOUBT that somebody was at the front door. So I ran over and barked my head off, but somehow, it turned out there was nobody there.”

2. “My nose tells me that in this distinguished court, right at this moment, there’s a ham sandwich. I request a recess to conduct further inquiries, your honor.”

3. “Well, Ms. Bigshot District Attorney – if you think I’m lying you can RUB MY BELLY!”

4. “What? Sorry, I kind of fell asleep for a second. I have this little narcolepsy thing. I don’t let it stop me from living my life. Where were we?”

5. “May it please the court – I present EXHIBIT A – a dead skunk! With your permission, I’d like to roll in the evidence, your honor.”

6. “I am now absolutely certain that the defendant is NOT the woman I saw holding the gun that night. And I’d like to add that my testimony has nothing to do with the fact that she scritched my ears for ten minutes during the lunch recess.”

7. “My apologies, your honor. I thought someone had planted something suspicious in your crotch.”

Christmas in Jakarta

… is crazy mall decorations ….

… and unlucky mall employees dressed as Santa Claus in the tropical heat.

And of course it’s many more things to the nine percent or so of Indonesians who are Christian, who are celebrating in the usual ways.

Merry Christmas to all! I understand there’s a War on Christmas in the US, so stay clear of the crossfire, all you guys back home …

Secret Buddhas

Photo: Wikitravel

As I’ve mentioned, we only had half an hour at the Buddhist temple at Borobudur, which was a little crazy. We only had time to capture the feeling of the place, which to me was a happy feeling. Even the lions looked cheerful — especially the ones with the raised paws, who reminded me of the little gold waving-cat statuettes you see in Chinese restaurants.

The top of the temple is ringed with bells, and inside the bells are Buddha statues.

Some are missing their heads, so you have to peer into a few to find a Buddha smiling serenely to himself.

One of the Buddhas is considered especially lucky, because a terrorist put a bomb inside his bell, but the bomb was a dud and didn’t go off. People reach in and touch the Buddha for good luck. It’s hard to imagine how anybody’s understanding of religion could compel them to put a bomb in a place like this.

Beautiful mold

I think I was waiting for Chad to finish checking e-mail at Realia when I decided to take about 37 pictures of this cool yellow stuff growing on a concrete wall in a partially-roofed outer room.

Unintentional offering

The first thing we noticed at Parangtritis beach was the SUV in the water. It was hard to miss. It was stuck in the sand and the rising tide was rocking it a little harder with each incoming wave.

Someone had made a poorly-planned effort to go offroading. But that wasn’t the real reason they’d gotten stuck. Everybody knew the real reason: the truck was green, or at least greeny-blue, and green is the favorite color of the Queen of the South Sea. People always warn you not to swim at Parangtritis in a green bathing suit, or the Queen will grab you in her strong watery embrace and you’ll never be seen in this world again.

Furthermore, a Protestant minister on the beach informed us, this particular Monday was a very spiritual day on the Javanese calendar, so our offroader was really asking for trouble.

People hung around watching. The minister said later, when the tide started going down, they’d get a bunch of guys together to push the truck out. We didn’t want to wait, so we strolled off down the beach.

We had dashed out to Parangtritis after school that afternoon, just for a little getaway. We were glad we did. There weren’t many people. It was quiet. The air smelled like ocean and the sand felt like ocean. It’s crazy how rarely we see the ocean, given that we live in an archipelago.

We had a good walk and then bought an ear of roasted corn spiced with sugar and chili. It was so good we bought another. We watched the sun set.

Later we got some fish at a little strip of restaurants back near the parking lot. Everything had that offseason feeling. The restaurants were all lit up, but they were empty. Our taxi was the only car in the parking lot.

On the way back the driver told us he’d watched them get the truck out of the sea. The guys had waited for each incoming wave and then pushed, letting the ocean help them. As we sped home in the dark, often straddling the white line in the middle of the road, we passed the green truck being towed to the repair shop, still dripping. Maybe the Queen of the South Sea decided she didn’t like SUVs.

Rewarded for good behavior

We felt pretty sorry for ourselves when we had to leave Jakarta in the middle of the film festival last week, but it was the only time we could both get away, and language school seemed more important. So it felt like validation when we stumbled onto a documentary film fest inYogya after our classes on Friday.

Left: Larry Weinstein tries to wrap it all up

We saw most of Beethoven’s Hair and all of Mozartballs, and director Larry Weinstein was even on hand to take questions. One audience member asked, “I didn’t really understand the movie. What was it about?” That seemed to leave him at a bit of a loss.

We went back the next day to catch some movies at a cafe, and struck up a conversation with a bunch of students. They turned out to be members of a group blog called Cah Andong, named after a traditional horse cart used in Yogyakarta. The blog is about “exploring the exoticism of Yogya,” and part of its mission is to help draw visitors back to the city after the earthquake of late May.

Alex discusses the philosophical underpinnings of “Smallville”

After watching a bunch of docs, we went to a nearby EsTeler 77 and got some noodles and of course es teler, a syrupy concoction of ice, coconut milk, jackfruit and avocado. Everybody talked in a mixture of English and Indonesian about Yogya, movies, TV, and the relative merits of various Indonesian sci-fi soap operas.

Alma tackles a plate of dumplings

They were an impressive bunch. I sat across from Alma, who’s studying engineering. Next to her was Alex, who majors in Informatics, a discipline so new that Indiana University recently established an entire department just to figure out what the heck Informatics means. But they were cool and didn’t try to explain any math to us, which would have been hopeless in any language. We parted with promises to keep up with each other’s blogs and try to get together again.

Our triumphant return

We’re back from Yogya! with me- and -kan verbs coming out our ears — and sometimes our mouths, even.

One of the unusual things about the school, Realia, is that all the teachers are trained to write upside-down. That way they don’t have to slow down the class by turning the paper around all the time.

Here’s Bu Etik, who taught our often raucous afternoon class. (We had individual instruction for the first two sessions of the day and then Chad and I had class together after lunch.)

This method really does save time but at first it’s hard to concentrate, because you’re so busy ogling their writing technique.