Lori's Diary

Friday May 30, 2008

Friday evening, Katie and I, and some of her friends from school went to a Hip Hop Concert. It was sponsored by LIP (Lembaga Indonesia Prancis), the French Cultural Institute in Jogja. What a show! There were seven young men undulating, twirling, and flipping to music with spooky, insect, and African themes. The moves were creative and the group had no problem keeping us entertained for 2 hours.
Afterwards, Katie and her friends went up to the stage to get autographs. That moment gave me pause – seeing her there, among other excited young people, I could see that she is growing up. I hope she stays young for a while longer.
It was a great evening.


Tuesday June 10, 2008

Weather today started out a bit overcast, and more comfortable. This morning, went to the Post office at Gadjah Mada to mail a letter. As opposed to my experience in Salatiga, the post office here has been easy. This morning I walked in, was the first in line at the Post biasa (Standard Mail) booth. The girl sitting at the desk spoke to me in English and understood my own. She stamped my letter and I walked out within 2 minutes. Then, I took a becak (pedicab) to UKDW, Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana to finish up some editing.

I am editing papers for faculty at the university who are doing PhDs overseas, and need to write their dissertations in English. This work is a bit tricky. I need to correct grammar and spelling, but sometimes I can't do this without changing the meaning of the sentences. As Indonesians tend to speak and write in the passive form, I often have to wait till the end of long sentences before realizing the general gist. Sometimes, I am left scratching my head as to what the writer is trying to say. As these are all theologians, could it be that I am unaware of specific theological terminology, that doesn't make sense to the lay person, like me? Or is it just plain poor English? As a result of this, I can spend about 1 hour doing this before getting a headache.

We had another pembantu issue yesterday. As we are relatively new to having Indonesian househelp, we are continuously encountering situations that need addressing. Our cook (who is a bit of a tattletale, and very territorial) was trying to get my attention in the kitchen yesterday. The other one, who helps with cleaning and looking after the kids, was once again, working in her kitchen. She was making fruit salad, using the papaya, (which the cook brought from her mother's house 1 hour away on bicycle) and other fruits (which the cook just bought at the market in the morning, for our day's meal). Granted, we had plenty of fruit, but the cook was not happy that the nanny was helping herself, both to kitchen space, and also to food which was meant for something else.

Most of the time, we let issues like this go, as we don't want to amplify a situation that could better be left alone. This time, we are wondering whether or not to say something.


June 11, 2008

Re: the pembantu issue yesterday, contrary to our dynamic, zealous natures, we have decided to do nothing, just wait and see what happens!

I had an interesting discussion with a friend from the university today. Her son has a developmental disability, which no doctor really seems to be able to diagnose. He isn’t able to sit yet, though he’s almost 3, and the latest CT scan shows that his metabolism is compromised, so that he is losing his eye sight and can’t hear. Something about amino acids. She is struggling to understand what the doctor says, and the doctor keeps apologizing to her and telling her to have another baby! There is much better health care in Singapore, but if she had enough money to get there and take him to a doctor once, she wouldn’t be able to continue treatment in Singapore indefinitely. It is clear that she wasn’t asking me for money – this is someone I see several times and week and get along with quite well. I suspect she is bringing up the subject with me, partly because I, as a foreigner may have some knowledge of what may be hurting her son. As a mom, my heart aches for her, its clear that she loves him very much.

Lori