7: More Bahasa, more shopping, fantastic guest speakers and Operation Formula Drop

Wasssssup

Today's blog will be a wee bit more boring - nothing much went on today. With that lesson in advanced marketing, I will begin!

I woke up at 6:30 this morning AGAIN which has been happening a lot recently - it probably has something to do with the heat, since my A/C likes to randomly turn itself off when the room is JUST getting cool. I also happen to have bought, in my infinite wisdom, nylon sheets, so I am generally boiling at night. The mosquito net doesn't help - I've stretched it over my bed so it forms a sort of claustrophobic cave, and it generally ends up at the base of the bed and to hell with the consequences, type of thing.

I made up the baby formula and only gagged slightly, and headed over the bridge to class, passing a very old woman who begs on the bridge quite a bit. Luckily I had brought my apple with me, so I gave that to her and she looked pretty stoked, so I felt I had done a Good Deed.

Class was a bit of a struggle today, since the ulcer has made me feel a bit off and my language skills, true to form, are actually getting WORSE if possible. But I had a good chat with the other class mates about their travels around the world, and good places to visit (India, but don't expect your stomach to survive, Nepal and all of South America). Thanks to the reviving efforts of the mid morning coffee during break I managed to pull through the rest of the class. A brief aside about dairy in Indonesia: you can't really get it. They have milk powder everywhere, so I've been drinking straight black coffee, which isn't too bad, with sugar in it. Bread is also a bit weird - the stuff at the supermarket is super sweet which made my evening dinner of tomato, processed cheese (bleargh) and lettuce sandwiches a very strange experience. Also at the supermarket were fried whole baby eels - DISGUSTING! My phobia of large quantities of small things combined with my dislike of snakes and twisty things in general, and I made a quick exit.

Lunch was spent eating a carrot (trying to get some vegetables into the system - Indonesians don't seem to eat many veges, and their dishes are quite often fried, with maybe one slice of tomato on the side - generally washed in local water and so best avoided) and wandering around the mall AGAIN trying to find various things. I managed to get phone credit and some crackers and headed to our afternoon lecture, which was AMAZING. It was by Bambang Harymurti, editor of Tempo magazine, an Indonesian magazine that has a formidable history of challenging producing quality stories that challenge the elite (hard to do in Indonesia) and he was just so knowledgeable but pretty down to earth, and his experiences were amazing - he'd even been selected for the Indonesian Space programme as the back up for the space station, before Challenger exploded and the project was cancelled. He said he applied for the project to try and get information about the contenders for a story - brilliance! I really enjoyed his talk, and admired the guy, but would never be able to do his job - he said that he'd been to Somalia and all over during the civil war, and had been in South Korea during the elections, and was attacked by a mob whilst travelling with the New York Times correspondent. He made it out, but said it was the scariest experience of his life. Amazing talk, and an amazing journalist.

Then it was BACK to that damned mall to buy a Batik shirt for Batik shirt Fridays (it's actually a law in Indonesia, or it used to be, that everyone had to wear a Batik shirt on Fridays, to encourage this local form of art and cloth design/printing unique to Indonesia). Continuing a generally scary theme, it makes me look pregnant as its modesty leans toward bagginess, but it's a sweet as pattern so I don't mind. Then I bought some ingredients for dinner in the vain hope that I won't have to return to the supermarket or the mall for some time, only I've just realised that tomorrow is Friday and I forgot to buy beer. Unacceptable.

When I walked across the bridge today, the lady with the baby was back, so I gave her my baby formula in this very cute yellow baby bottle and said "Unuk bayi anda" which I hope means "For your baby". She nodded and smiled, but when I looked back, she had put it beside her and the baby was as it is every day - lying there with half open eyes. I hope it's okay. I will make up another bottle tomorrow, because there was another lady with a toddler on the bridge. Maybe someone's told them a rich Westerner is wandering around with baby formula? Ah well, I don't mind, and I have two baby bottles and a box of baby formula left. I also have some baby biscuits packed with vitamins, but the lady who does the washing downstairs has a toddler that cries all the time, and whom the Australians think might be sick, so I might save the biscuits for that girl and slip her one every now and then. At least the apples seemed to go down well, so I will continue buying them and handing them out. These ones are kind of floury though, so I think I'll invest in better quality ones next time. Maybe I'll throw these ones at Helena and pretend it was one of those dancing monkeys. Ha, I joke! Or do I...

I got home by 5pm today for once and had a good chillax, then made my self horrible sandwiches for dinner and played around on the computer. I've been avoiding my homework which is naughty, but I guess I will slope off and do it now, then read the Globe and then head to bed, to try and heal this bloody ulcer. Swallowing food is a bit of a mission and I would love to go to sleep without feeling like I am breathing in soup and smothered in blankets but there you go. The rest of this trip is freaking amazing, so I can't complain.

Tomorrow, I check in with Sarah about possibly heading to a local island for the weekend. Oh yeahhhhh.

Laters gaters!

LESSONS LEARNED 7:

- Not to pile on the cheese, but helping people (when they smile and it's obviously doing good) feels good

- Throwing apples at Helena is a bad idea

- Journalists CAN have integrity

- I can still follow my dream of being an astronaut WHILST being a journalist! THE DREAM LIVES ON!

- Kos are not great places for privacy - Moko, the caretaker/building manager pops in and out of our floor all the time, showing people new rooms, cleaning bathrooms or generally just wandering around checking things. He's nice, but I also don't know him and the most we've been able to communicate with each other is to say 'You're studying Bahasa?" "Yes, I'm studying Bahasa" "*Very fast Bahasa*" "Ummm...."

- It is only a matter of time before I am struck down with a stomach bug/parasite/summer flu - it's now at 7 journos and counting.