Office life

Food is pretty important for Indonesians and even during ramadhan topic number one for daily office life. My colleagues invited me for breaking the fasting to their place, which is mainly just a huge dinner. Therefore everybody has to bring some food, resulting in one week discussion in advance who will bring what, how much and how it might taste- keep in mind, that’s during ramadhan, where nobody eat and drink during the day!
Anyway my colleagues don’t just chat personally to each other- they are using all kind of modern communication tools to organize like email, messenger, text messages e.g.. Once I got back to office from lunch- yes I am allowed to eat, I had more than 10 new messages in my post-box on the topic of “breaking the fasting”.
Another main part of daily office life are the daily freshly provided snacks by one the office members. As this is a serious problem and this is a “technical” office I do received nearly one week before idul fitri an email with the topic “snack schedule” with an attached excel file. In this excel file every office member can check, when he or she has to provide “snacks” for the whole office. Today everybody came back to the office from holidays. First thing they checked where the provided snacks, but their weren’t any, cause the responsible guy didn’t showed up yet. A little bit later he arrived and put his “snack box” as usual on the snack-table in the middle of the office. The office boy- yeah that’s Indonesia, is than in charge to prepare everything. The today provided snacks included a bottle of red fanta, garlic nuts, cookies kind of pudding and a can of dole tropical fruits! The office boy was really not amused, cause he didn’t know how to open. It sounds really strange when he tried to open the can in the kitchen, but finally he managed. So you could imagine its always a hit and miss with the snacks.
The importance of the snacks seems to be adopted also by my other western colleague: Even he is in Bali for holidays, he ask me by text message if everything is all right and of cause what kind of snacks are provided today.
Stay tuned for more existing daily life stories!

Travel

In end of December I will travel around for a few days. Therefore I prepared a strange travel schedule. Some Friends will join me for:
Singapore- Hong Kong- Jakarta- Kuala Lumpur- Singapore- Jogja- Bali- Jakarta.
If you are at any of these places or you have recommendations for anything regarding bars, clubs, food e.g. feel free to drop me a line.

Idul Fitri

You might got it- I am a western guy living in a Muslim country, so I have to respect the given rules. After a long month of “fasting” of any kind of entertainment the holy month ended up in what Christians might know as Christmas holidays. I was looking forward for the end of ramadhan and thought it might end up a huge party with celebrations e.g.
Nothing like that happens- it’s a nightmare. All Indonesians travel back to their families to celebrate. The result is- prices are doubled, tickets are sold out weeks before and nearly every place in my hometown was closed. Even the places for western tourists shut down. At least for four days I could choose between to bakery restaurants and a 24/7 convenience store to get entertainment, food and drinks. Not funny at all besides the “bintang” party in front of
circle K at one night until 5am!
Next year I will leave the country or fly in advance to a small island to relax by the beach instead of getting pissed off in a huge city where everybody left.
Stay tuned for next reports on back to “normal” life.

Boys on holidays

I used to stay a few times in indonesia but never went to bali. Even my indonesian friends were wondering why I never went- so I decided to plan a weekend trip. First of all I planned my honeymoon trip with a friend of mine- he is an Indian guy, but believe me he acts more like a cute german “pornoralle”. To complete our village people travel group finally a german police men decided to join us. So I booked a honeymoon suite for the three of us on bali.
After the usual Club’n’bintang @bintang resto we took garuda to bali at friday night. Our place to stay was a run down small holiday resort for european truck drivers, their asian women and single female office staff in their late 50ies.
It was low season- so no worries, we where more or less the only guests.
The main focus for the trip, behind gang bang- was to go to the beach, that’s why we went immediately after arrival to it for a bintang.
The beach is like in any typical tourism resort of the world- huge hotels, shops, posh italian restaurants (remember- its indonesia!)- so really nothing to write home about. On the next day I started to realize that I maybe left Indonesia, cause people where cycling on the streets or taking a walk- this wouldn’t be possible in jogja. Anyway, we took our rented motorcycles and head to “dreamland”. It took us nearly half the day- just wanna add: don’t trust locals about directions!
The beach is a hip surf hot spot- so the place to be for the “pornoralles” from abroad. So I am not able to surf, I am not looking like a surfer boy, but indeed I wasn’t the ugliest guy at this spot. Some ladies thought it might be necessary to “show up” what nobody wanna see.
After the second night I realized what was wrong about travelling with my village people friends- three guys in one room are two to much- at least for sleeping. My fellow travellers acting like on school class vacations! The result was a locked washroom door- resulting in asking for assistance from hotel staff. The good thing about this- we got an invitation to a complimentary “arak” party. Next morning I locked myself inside the washroom- locker completely destroyed- so no more invitations from the hotel staff.