An ode to my new home

Last week while I was homeless I received two signs from the Universe in quick succession. The message was clear: find a home!

The first message was from Grand Days by Frank Moorhouse:

The opera played on and she thought to herself, each of us has a space around us which we could sculpture, and then we could work outwards, each from our gardens, spreading into the world, as in Geneva the League would build a Palais des Nations in the parc l'Ariana, and grandeur and reasoned order would spread outwards. But unless that centre was is good working order, no good order could flow from it.

Here I was, languishing without a centre in good working order. What was I thinking?! (I'm starting to think my rat infested centre might not exactly be in such good working order, but at least it's a starting point right?)

Shortly after reading this passage I moved onto Star Magazine. If I didn't get the message the first time the The StarScope by Jennifer Angel was happy to hit me over the head with it:

Aries
Transforming your house into a home provides comfort and belonging. Let a sweetheart know that his or her opinion is appreciated and respected. Money mix-ups are likely; double check the details.

OK, I know only the first line is relevant but I just have to mention that this star sign was written for the week that the tax office gave me a stack of money and promptly sent me a bill asking for it all back. Money mix-up, I think soooo! Spooky, right? Obviously completely wrong about the sweetheart knowing his/her opinion is appreciated and respected. I mean...come on...I don't care what you have to say.

In conclusion I am very happy to have a home. And will be even happier when it stops smelling of rat wee. Furthermore, star signs are obviously true!

Finally I have a home...and rats

Yay, I have a permanent home! It's actually the guest house I stayed in when I first arrived (yes, the GIANT place). UNIFEM has a new intern, Clara, so with our powers combined we negotiated the hell out of the owner and now only pay a small fortune for the second floor. There are two bedrooms, one bathroom and a living area that we share. And as the title of this blog suggests, we also have rats. There was one in my room the other day. I'll tell you the story of getting rid of it when I've dealt with the trauma.

Here is a photo of Clara and I at a Hari Raya dinner the other day. You might be aware that Indonesia stops for the 10 days after the end of Ramadan, but did you know that the next MONTH is spent entertaining friends and visiting everyone you've ever met and eating bucket loads of goat curry? Well it is! This was my first dinner.














Anyway, back to my new house, or more specifically: the area around my new house and the animals that live there.

This is my street.



















And here is the view of the mountains from the street.














OK, so now that you have a sense of the landscape, let's go in a little closer and meet some of the guys keeping it real at a grassroots level.

#1 Duckies!














#2 Old Mr Goaty. Old Mr Goaty (I think his name is Terrence) has an owner who is also old and thought I was strange for taking a photo of Terrence.
















#3 Cute little baby goaty. Once upon a time Terrence would have looked like this. Poor Terrence, he hasn't aged well.


















#4 PUPPY! Hello little puppy, you're not gross and chock-full-o-rabies yet! Even so, I restrained myself and chose not to pick him up. Being a mature adult is hard work.














Yes, puppy is playing in the rubbish dump. That definitely helped me make the mature adult decision not to pick him up.

The rains are 'ere

Since about two weeks ago it has been raining every day. Not always a huge amount of rain, but enough to signal the beginning of the monsoon. But three days ago, on my way home from dinner it started to rain hard. It bucketed down. By the time I made it home there was a stream flowing through the driveway.

When I woke up the next morning it was still raining. The stream in my driveway had turned into a gushing river and I got soaked through when I dared to leave the cover of the porch to get into the car. It was only one step away!

This is what it looked like in the car on the way to work. I felt very sorry for the motorbike riders.














One of the major obstacles of driving through this rain was that the water on the road concealed the huge potholes we usually go to great lengths to avoid.














And just when I thought I'd seen a lot of water, we got to the guesthouse to pick up the new intern. This house is right next door to the giant house I was living in before.














The awful thing was that it kept raining that hard for another 8 hours, so imagine how much worse the flooding got. Apparently this amount of rain is not usual, but not entirely uncommon.

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Did you know that having a good vocabulary can help you save the world from hunger?

Have a look at the Free Rice website. I got to 500 grains of rice before I felt guilty for wasting time.

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I am medium slate blue

According to the spacefem.com colour quiz I am medium slate blue. To honour this I have changed my post title and link colour to reflect my true personality.

you are mediumslateblue #7B68EE

Your dominant hue is blue, making you a good friend who people love and trust. You're good in social situations and want to fit in. Just be careful not to compromise who you are to make them happy. Your saturation level is medium - You're not the most decisive go-getter, but you can get a job done when it's required of you. You probably don't think the world can change for you and don't want to spend too much effort trying to force it. Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Stuck in traffic?

Thank you everyone for sending me "get well soon" emails. I am healthy again and perhaps even feeling at my best since arriving! (Probably just jinxed it. Helloooo typhoid)

I didn't even get to take a day off work! On Monday morning I was back in the UNIFEM car stuck in traffic once again. For a small city the traffic flows unbelievably poorly.















This is a photo of the stationary traffic. It doesn't even look that busy but we sure weren't moving.

Wait...What is that up ahead?...
Soldiers! And they are singing! Do Australian soldiers sing? Do they march up the streets of Canberra?














After struggling for a while we finally get in beside them to overtake. I think my driver Pak Halim was just trying to get a good vantage point for my photography.














Eventually we make it to the office and watch the soldiers as they march past. Off they go, merrily marching...oh no....














I've been spotted!














What is that shining young representative of the government of Indonesia in the middle of the photo doing?














Oh yes, he's giving me the finger(s).



















Debate amongst yourselves if you think he intended to show me a peace sign. And then further debate if it is hypocritical for a soldier to make a pledge for peace, which might lead to further debate on whether a highly militarised government has a greater or lesser chance of achieving peace.

Have fun with that and report back in the comments.

Just in time for the weekend

I think I have my first bout of proper illness. Don't get me wrong, every day in Aceh is a sick day, but I think this might be the kind that sends me to bed to watch DVDs for the weekend.














I'd like to blame illness for my bad hair pale face, but unfortunately that's a daily reality too.

Hold the phones: these reports are inconclusive. I could just have a slight headache.

Watch this space.

Homeless but not destitute

I moved out of the guesthouse last weekend so no more hot showers and cable for Sarah.

But better than that, I don't have to pay the insane rent, and was able to avoid the invasion of the owner's relatives for Idul Fitri.

Now I am staying with another AYAD who has been here a few months already. This is my bedroom:














Well, it's actually just the bed and the window, but I had to cut my mess out of the frame.

My host is very sociable and friendly, so my 3-day long weekend (everyone else had 5 days minimum!) was spent hanging out with lots of friendly people and having a great time.

One afternoon we played touch footy. OK, I didn't actually play. I took photos on someone else's fancy camera. Me playing touch footy, I don't think so.

I don't have any photos of the football (I can hear your sigh of relief from here), but I do have a photo of the low cloud over the mountains outside the stadium!














In other news, I ate fish and prawns by the river last night (all from the sea, the riverside location is incidental). It was tasty, but one disconcerting thing about the fish here is that they don't gut it before they cook it, so you have to be careful about what you're eating. I've just grossed myself out thinking about it too much.

To change the subject, I have been going crazy in the DVD store. I bought a million movies the other day and I only scratched the surface. I also bought....wait for it, you're going to squeal with glee...the first half of the Gilmore Girls season 7! Booyah! However I am still expecting a delivery of the official release for Christmas...Put it on your shopping list folks (but you should probably harmonise those lists because realistically I only need one copy).

Put in your movie/tv series orders now. They've got everything you could imagine. And I'm gonna be watching a.lot.a.tv!