betty loves blogging

The year in review

Every news organisation in the world is currently filling their pages with "year in review" content so that their staff can perhaps take some holidays.

So... I figured I better get in on the year in review action.  Not to mention that I am having withdrawal from writing the year in reviews myself.  The year is just not over until you have painstakingly trawled through archives to compile an annual overview that most people won't give a shit about...

So, here we go. :p

In January, I made resolutions, none of which I have kept.  I went on a South Coast beach holiday for Australia Day, where I drove the car into a pole and played the best party game ever, King of the Cocks.

In February, I got really really sick for a few weeks.  I also moved to the North Shore, which was very pretty, but the people there thought that broken running shoes belonged in the paper recycling tub.

In March.  Hmm.  The blog doesn't give much insight except that I made some salads and watched Home and Away and took the piss out of it.  I also almost got into fisticuffs with an old lady at the Neutral Bay supermarket.  Was still sick.

In April, I went to Albury and took lots of pretty photos of autumn leaves.  I also baked Anzac Biscuits and flashed my tits to my neighbours.

In May, I turned 23.  Ranted about the lack of plus size fashion.  Found out I had to get my wisdom teeth out.  Lucky my dentist was hilarious.

In June, my computer died and I lost everything on the hard drive.  I also went to Berrima and ate jam and scones.  I was also still sick.

In July, I got my wisdom teeth out and it was painful and horrible.  I also got my tea leaves read at work.  I also talked to the Pope when covering World Youth Day in Sydney.  A big month.  I was also really sick again.

In August, I finally found out why I had been sick all year.  I also started applying for overseas jobs, thinking it would take months and months to find something.  Three days after I had applied for a job in Jakarta, I had it.  I had one month exactly to pack up my whole life and move to Indonesia.

In September, I packed up.  It was busy and stressful.  I also said goodbye to my beautiful friends and work people and said sayonara to stunning Sydney.  I arrived in JKT.  Big WTF moment.  Dove straight in to work four days after leaving my old job in Sydney...

In October, I saw strippers and dangdut, among other things.  Also went to Singapore for the first time.

In November,  I went to Singapore again, went to crazy house in Pelabuhan Ratu... and our paper launched!

In December,  I went to Taman Safari, Pucak (x2), Bandung, Sunda Kelapa... also had a few weeks of just being grumpy about Jakarta, but I'm feeling much more settled now.  Think I just needed a break.  Had a nice Christmas (first one away from home...) with my friend from Oz visiting and my Jakarta peoples.

So... that was my year.  I went from baking biscuits and flitting around farmer's markets on the weekend in Sydney to moving to Indonesia, literally in the blink of an eye.  But it's funny, a lot of the stuff I remember about the year isn't written on the blog.  The frustration of being constantly sick, messing with my mindset so badly.  Not knowing what to do next with my job. The constant self-doubt about whether my writing or my photos would ever be good enough. The extremely overwhelming month where all of a sudden I was moving to Indonesia, a place I knew pretty much nothing about, and I had to pack up my whole life and say goodbye to everyone... didn't even get to say goodbye to my family because I didn't have time to go down south.

The second thoughts about whether I had made the right decision when I got here...

But now, I'm feeling much more settled.  I am lucky to have met some very cool people through my work, and I'm excited about the possibilities for writing and travel and learning here.

And I also feel so grateful that when things were bumpy in Sydney, I had my dear friends and my amazing work collegues back there who helped me through, and I know that being over here and away from them won't change that.  And my family, of course.  They are biologically obligated not to ditch me.

So these are my resolutions for '09.  Not even going to bother with the usual "go to the gym regularly", "eat less chocolate" crap.  It never works.

Here they are:

1.  Get as much out of living in Indonesia as possible.
2.  Produce at least 6 portfolio-worthy journalistic stories, as well as some other wishy-washy lifestyle writing and hopefully some more published photography.
3.  Try and be sensible with my money so I can do more travelling.
4.  Be happy and have fun!

Happy New Year everyone!

More out-of-car-window shots...

A couple more street shots taken on our way back from the tea plantation the other day.  Quality a bit shonky due to being shot through car windows or while speeding along in a traffic lane that our driver seemed to create all by himself.

Kampung Kids

After our visit to Sunda Kelapa, we decided to take a tour of a local kampung with a guide who persuaded us at the port.  He was a cool guy who had been doing tours of the kampung for 20 years.  He also had a modest house in the kampung, which is called Luar Batang.  It is home to the Pasar Ikan (fish market) and one of the oldest mosques in the city.

The historic fishing kampung used to be where the Javanese lived outside the walls of Dutch Batavia.  It's very run down, and the people live in extreme poverty, but they were so friendly and welcoming and the kids really wanted to be in photographs... we seemed to collect packs of them as we walked along.

I even managed to say some things that made the locals laugh in Indonesian.  Don't know whether I successfully made a joke, or if they were just laughing at my terrible language ability.

Some pics.

It was a real eye-opener, I hadn't really had an up close look at kampung life since arriving in Jakarta.  It constantly amazes me how this city has luxury malls, fancy restaurants and people living in absolute poverty... the divide between haves and have-nots is just so massive.

Bird flu on a bike?

The women and girls in this photo are putting individual stickers into tiny clear plastic bags so they can sell them.  Despite their menial task, they were still smiling and chatting and laughing (at me and my bad Indonesian I think...).

Sunda Kelapa

Having a friend here pushed me to visit Sunda Kelapa Port.  Some might call it a tourist attraction.  Some might call it a smelly old port.  I call it "real and interesting but unfortunately poorly scented and in need of a good scrub".

The huge boats come in to this port from Kalimantan, Sumatra and Sulawesi to bring in resources for this heaving city of Jakarta.  The boat captains use no navigational aids, just their knowledge and experience, to make the journey.  The historic harbour was an important part of the spice trade in the Dutch Indies.

But in the words of my travel buddy, "you are lucky these photos aren't scratch and sniff".

The city...

that never sleeps.  And when looking at it from the top of my 46-floor apartment block, it never ends.  It extends as far as the eye can see in every direction, light pollution mixing with the air pollution to give the tall buildings an ethereal glow.

Gunung Mas Tea Plantation, Puncak

Cloud in the trees, Puncak Pass

We went to Puncak the other day, up to Gunung Mas Tea Plantation.  It was wonderful to wander around in the cool tropical mountains, watching the wind rustle the tea leaves while breathing in the fresh air... drinking some tea.

It was pretty quiet up there, and it seemed like the factory was closed and there weren't many people picking tea, probably because of the holidays, but it was a lovely day.

Anyway, pictures.

   

All I want for Christmas is food...

Cleaning up after Christmas... Ella exploded some "safe celebration toy that unleashes a shower of joy with compressed air"... unusually for Indonesia, it didn't contain explosives or fireworks.

I survived Christmas relatively unscathed, besides developing a deep rooted fear that whenever I step in to an elevator I will be attacked by terrible covers of Christmas carols.  In fact, I even had a rather good time.  My friend Heather was over from Australia, so I went all uber-tourist with her and showed her the mix of tragic poverty, air conditioned middle class consumer enclaves and smoke-filled bars that make Jakarta so special.  We would have seen more, but we got caught in traffic jams a lot.  So she had a genuine experience.

We had an amazing dinner on Christmas Eve at Emilie, the fanciest French resto in town, where we had somehow scored a private room... it cost us an absolute fortune, but it was amazing.  The dinner was also in celebration of my friend Amee's birthday and it was such a great night.

On Christmas Day, we gathered in a friend's apartment, watched Love Actually while eating pancakes and tropical fruit, cracking jokes and exploding dangerous looking tubes of confetti and streamers until some people had to leave to go to work.

Then, the floor was swept, and Christmas was over.  My tourist regime with Heather resumed and we went forth to tackle the bins of dodgy DVDs at Mal Ambassador.

This was my first Christmas away from home.  The regulation Christmas Day phone call gave me a reminder of the usual chaos...

Mother: "Oh... I'm so busy.  Without you here, nobody else has any bloody culinary ability.  BRITTANY GET THE MINT OUT OF THE FRIDGE WILL YOU?  So what are you doing to... NO THAT'S NOT MINT... sorry... OH DARYL FOR CHRIST'S SAKE WILL YOU HELP HER FIND THE MINT... sorry... BE CAREFUL DON'T LET THAT FALL OUT OF THE FRIDGE... oh that sounds nice... THAT'S BASIL... oh Jesus Christ almighty it's a shambles..."

Nanna: "Are you coming home for Christmas then?"

Me: "No Nan, it's a bit far to get from Indonesia, and today is Christmas?"

Nanna: "How are you going in Sydney?  When are you coming home?"

It reminded me of the usual day of Christmas chaos... Christmas is the busiest time of year at my parent's shop, so the day is always strung together in moments between long shifts at work and the general chaos of our lives.  But despite our house always being a mess, mum always finds some space to stick up a tree, often not until December 23 or 24.  She always manages to buy enough food to last weeks... hams, roasts, seafood, salads, cheeses, dips, desserts.  Nothing is ever missing.

We all manage to drag ourselves out of bed despite working until 7am on Christmas morning to put together the grand production of Christmas lunch.

But, even though Christmas Day has now passed, after a week of mostly Indonesian fare, I found myself at Kemchicks tonight looking for some bule food... and wanting to stock my trolley with things that might usually be on our Christmas table.  I gazed longingly at prawns... managed to flit past the dips but got stuck on a pack of Australian camembert and couldn't go past the dolmades and olives...

It must have been the subconcious programming from the Christmas carols in the background.  Wonder how long it will be before they get turned off?

Snapped

Man fixing his bike on a grassy spot at Mega Kuningan, Jakarta.

Speaking of snaps, if you want to read my writing about people who take better photos than I could ever hope to take, hop on over here to read my review of the World Press Photo exhibition in Jakarta.  I'm tentatively hanging on to the title of journalist here by actually daring to write something besides a blog post for the first time in three months.  I blame the Bintangs and spew doughnuts for the distraction... and I probably needed a break.

Funky food: the spew doughnut

Today I decided to go to this doughnut chain store called J-Co, which is super-dooper popular here in Jakarta.  People crowd and queue up to get some of its sugary goodness.

The doughnuts are all the colours of the artificial colouring rainbow, but I had never actually ventured close enough to see what the flavours were.

Until today.

The doughnut that first caught my eye was the one THAT LOOKED LIKE SOMEONE HAD REGURGITATED A PIZZA ON IT.

"Apa ini?"

"Pizza doughnut"

"Mau ini."

I had to have one.

How could you say no to this?

(I'm obviously talking about the one in the middle with the chunks on it... the other two are Oreo and choc-mint.  Boring flavours.)

It was sitting next to the cheese doughnut, and another one that looked like diarrhea doughnut.  I'll try them some other time.

So, the taste test.

I thought the doughnut itself might be savoury, but no, the usual super sweet doughnut.  The glaze tasted weird... kinda like sweet but spicy tomato with sausage flavour... I think that sauce on the top is sambal (chili).  The chunks of sausage were what really pushed it in to "WTF???? WHY???" territory.  Yes people, that's meat on a doughnut.

It didn't taste unpleasant.  Just sweet, and really bloody weird!

There's quite an obsession in Asia with sweet/savoury combinations... lots of sweet cheese rolls, corn or peanut butter in sweet foods... some of it is fine, but some of it my meek Western tastebuds just can't understand.

The promised animals...

I promised photos of animals at Taman Safari, and I forgot to post.

Can't be bothered to post most of them...

That's one of my favourites.  I chucked them in a Flickr set, so if you are in to animals, truck on over to here.