Six Degrees South

Woke up to a beautiful day in Jakarta. May everyone have a Happy Monday, with a beautiful week ahead.

It's been eleven months since I worked in person. Last week I finally made it to my office at the Sampoerna University Tower in Jakarta.  We are now working three days per week on staggered schedules so that no more than 50% of employees are in the office at any given time.  We have a required Sampoerna Batik (Indonesian shirt/blouse with special company design) that we must wear to work each day. On Fridays, we can wear whatever personal batik design we want. I'm pictured in a personal batik I purchased for myself recently. My office isn't decorated as I still haven't received the suitcases I shipped from Kyrgyzstan last August containing my office decor. Though I enjoy working in a lively-looking workspace, for now I'm not worrying about this as I am hoping to eventually be moved from a cubicle to an office with a door before the anticipated arrival of students in August. Maybe my suitcases will be delivered by then? It's been interesting working for Sampoerna

Last week I participated with 50 Sampoerna Students in a Global Citizenship Program sponsored by Common Purpose.  We were joined by 200 other students from around the region for the opening program in an online course on Advancing U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). After last week's forum, students will complete a 9-hour on-line course on SDGs and will meet as a group again in mid-March for a final forum to discuss our learnings. Students who complete the program will receive a micro-credential for their portfolio. This is one of many of our Student Affairs Team's efforts to help students achieve Sampoerna core competencies beyond the classroom--in this instance, Global Learning. Just as was the case with my work at UCA, student life/affairs teams play a vital role in student learning and developing the core competencies students need to be successful members of society. 

Last week we returned to work in our Sampoerna offices 50% of the time. That means I was able to enjoy for the first time one of the benefits of my employment: a free box lunch. And it was quite delicious, especially the curried shrimp with lemongrass and coconut.  The salad was also tasty, made from the go-to green of the region, cassava leaf.  No grechka (buckwheat, the overabundant grain I enjoyed in Kyrgyzstan), but I think I will manage.

In my mostly-isolated world, tasting new tropical fruit is what passes for excitement. Today's discovery is Buah Matoa, in English called Matoa Fruit, sometimes also known as Pacific Lychee. Matoa grows on a tree that is about 20 meters high and is native to Papua New Guinea, though now it is cultivated throughout Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia. Matoa is a cousin of lychee, rambutan, and longon. It has skin like a thin covering of cardboard and fruit that is the same texture as its cousins. Watch out for the big brown seed inside that's as hard as a rock. I found the Matoa to have a sweet, pleasant taste, a bit like a rambutan mixed with melon flavor.  Do not take pity on me, gentle reader, for my mundane existence. The quiet indoor life of online educator and amateur pomologist is not an unpleasant one and contains virtues such as low-stress serenity and frequently-delighted taste buds.

I have attached a picture of something rather beautiful to this post. To those who live in North America, you are likely to remark, "But that's just a taco."  However fellow expats who have had the experience of residing in the Giant Yellow Spaceship (my nickname for where I used to live), in the barren Kyrgyz mountains, where everything that sustains a person is precious, will understand me when I reply, "there is no 'just a' in the world." While the average North American is seldom more than a 10 minute drive from a cornucopia of tacos and burritos, my life in the GYS often found me hundreds of kilometers from anything resembling a taco or most of its ingredients. I would chuckle to myself whenever someone asked me what my hobby was when I lived in Naryn. I always said traveling or reading as that sounds far less bizarre and is easier to explain than "searching for tacos and burritos." And so I would spend my time searching for ingredients wh

As of today I have spent two full months in Indonesia, but had only been out a couple of times with others, never by myself, as I have been attempting to stay out of COVID's way as much as possible. The small pharmacies in my neighborhood did not have the medicine I needed to obtain, so I decided to venture out on my own today, jumping into a taxi armed with the 14 words of Indonesian my feeble brain has learned thus far. The large pharmacy that carried my medicine is located in Lotte Shopping Avenue, a large mall by most any standard, probably 10x the size of Bishkek Park for you Kyrgyz folks, and 5x the size of either of Spokane's major malls. My Indonesian colleagues tell me that Lotte Shopping Avenue is one of the city's more modest malls, as the larger malls like Grand Indonesia Mall are supposed to be far bigger and more opulent.  Lotte Shopping Avenue was certainly sufficient for my needs. I found my medicine and was able to check out the food court in the basement w

There is a settlement next to our compound. The poor who live there have never received governmental permission to construct and reside in their humble dwellings. So the government is tearing down their houses and removing them one by one.  No one seems to know what will be done with the land once it is cleared. One rumor I have heard is that it will be turned into a cemetery as Jakarta has run out of space for the newly-dead in this dreadful year where death has ruled so thoroughly.  No rumors have I heard about the fate of the displaced. And now the rainy season has added its voice to the proceedings. Today massive sheets of water have been drenching Jakarta relentlessly.  The settlement has been saturated and a flood of water, mud, and debris from the destruction process is rising at an alarming rate. Lightning strikes and thunder are roaring all around, raging at the unprotected.  I wonder if indifference is the most powerful force in the universe as most of us on earth and even th

As it is the season of Chinese New Year, the compound grocery store is well-stocked with mandarins and other citrus fruit, at the expense of local fruit. But I was able to find one novel treat: salak. Salak is the name of the fruit and species of palm tree it is harvested from and, though cultivated elsewhere, the salak palm is native to Java and Sumatra. Salak is also known as Snake Fruit for the outer skin it possesses. When I peeled my first Snake Fruit, I instantly understood this nickname as the skin had exactly the look and feel of the recently-shedded skin of your neighborhood boa constrictor.  What does it taste like? The fruit itself has the consistency of a giant bulb of peeled elephant garlic. The taste, as is the case with so many of the tropical fruits I have tasted here, isn't particularly analogous to any Western flavor I know. The best I can say is that it resembles a combination of apple and pineapple flavors, but not exactly. In the quarantine world, trying new fr

Just finished reading Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I had read excerpts of it years ago when it was serialized in The Atlantic magazine, but it is a far more powerful experience to read it in one sitting, in its entirety.  It is an insightful look into the African-American experience in the U.S., as told by a father to his young son.  It's a narrative that shines a light on the moral failures of a nation that is supposedly a beacon of light to the world. Highly recommended. 

Former UCA colleague and great Indonesiaphile, Robin Higgins, has strongly recommended I try the tropical fruit mangosteen.  Finally, today, the grocery store in my compound offered mangosteen for purchase. It's an odd looking fruit. You have to slice the bottom off to get to the fleshy white fruit inside. Robin was correct.  It is absolutely delicious, though the flavor is hard to describe.  It's sweet, but also a bit tart. One description I read says mangosteen tastes like a combination of strawberry, peach, and lychee.  Hmm. It's somewhat like that, but not exactly. I would simply say that it's tasty and it really is in its own distinctive category. So thank you Robin for the tip. I never would have grabbed the peculiar looking mangosteen, the fruit that looks somewhat like a vegetable, a mutated round sort of eggplant, without your inside information.  And now I have enjoyed a positively delightful treat of the day.

What do you do when the three suitcases that you shipped from Kyrgyzstan to Indonesia last August, containing most of your housewares, are still not in your possession?  You can curse and swear or you can give up and call Ikea.  Ikea is the Swedish home store where you can get home goods at a reasonable price. Luckily for me there's one in Jakarta, which seems to have at least one of most things on the planet. Each of the 6,000 goods Ikea sells, from pillows to frying pans to shower storage units has a quaint little Swedish name. HOGSMA. Why that's the name of my wood cutting board, of course. FARGRIK is the Nordic name of my serving bowl. Fargrik and Erik...sounds like we could be cousins. And my retro, 1960s-looking carpet? TORRILD is its name. I now have an apartment furnished with items that sound as though they are parishoners in one of Stockholm's Lutheran churches. But as is with all good things: there is a catch. Ikea became successful because their items' low p

Virtually all my rugs and wall hangings are anywhere and everywhere except in my possession.  Ran some errands with my supervisor today, who has her own car and driver!, and I ended up at a fabric store. Light blub flashed in my head. Purchased a couple of 2.5 meter Indonesian batik fabric segments and suddenly I had instant desperation decor. Brought the fabric home, taped it to the walls, highly sophisticated interior design technique that I employed, and the dreary empty walls of the spare bedroom and living room suddenly possess a splash of life and color.  Best of all, I impressed the store clerk, who thought I was a tailor buying fabric to make myself a couple of shirts. Decided not to disappoint her by telling her I was the infamous Man with Ten Thumbs who would be clumsily taping her delicate fabric to the walls of his apartment. 

 I have been busy reading serious political indictments this past year, like Bob Woodward's "Rage" which documents and chronicles the horrors of the Trump era and of the man himself.  But I think I have had more than enough of that genre. I don't need any more proof that we are living in urgent times and I think the scorecard clearly indicates the tally of shame and moral culpability.  A few minutes ago, I just finished a book from a different universe: "The Little Prince," by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.  Again. For about the third time in my life. My fourth grade teacher read us The Little Prince, but I don't think it is a children's book at all. When she read it to us, it seemed a rather strange tale to me, the philosophical content totally eluded me and my classmates, and the little nine-year-old I was, found the ending disturbing and sad and generally it did not become a fond childhood literary memory like Winnie the Pooh or most anything by Dr. Se

I work at Sampoerna University, which is funded by the Sampoerna Foundation, headquartered at Sampoerna Strategic Sqaure, about five kilometers from where I work and live. . The Sampoerna Foundation is managed by the Sampoerna family. They made their money as cigarette tycoons.  The company started out as a little cigarette cart in Jakarta, but exploded over the 20th Century into the major cigarette company in SouthEast Asia. The company's major claim to fame was the mass production and sale of clove cigarettes as a significant segment of the tobacco market, at least in this region.  Several years ago the Sampoerna cigarette empire was sold to the Phillip Morris conglomerate for billions and the Sampoerna Family now devotes its energy to expanding their philanthropic efforts, including the creation of the university where I now work. Today my boss took me to the headquarters and gave me a tour of HQ and all its opulent glory.  There are about 30 castings of Rodin's The Thinker