Home sweet home

as an urban guy, i never thought about living in a small house in suburban area. so indonesia is changing my life, so i am a proud renter of a small house in a "kampung" in the subburbs of yogyakarta. indeed there are no high rise buildings at all in jogja, but the place is different to the area where i used to stay. locationwise it is pretty much allright cause its in the "cool" north of jogja- student lifelyhood, hyatt in walking distance and of course the office is also nearby. you have to ride your moto whereever you wanna go in jogja anyway- so no problem at all. this is indonesia, so things tend to be different here. sometimes you could compare certain situations here with former "east" countries (GDR e.g.). So you could not rent just a place in a kampung like mine. when you move in, you have to show up at "Pak RT"- he is the head of the kampung. when we went to pak rt he got already copys of our passport- amazing! in indonesia you don't just show up for a talk- you have to bring gifts. therefore pak rt got a cake and some money as kind of entrance fee to the kampung and for "safety" within the kampung. our pak rt is pretty old and just have a few tooth left- i would rather say just five. but this is a serious thing- he asked a few questions about us and agreed later on welcoming us to his kampung. but pak rt is not the only one who will get gifts- also all neighbours should get a lunch box. so you have to organize thoose boxes and present to your neighbours to say hello! all that is pretty important, cause when you skip this you won't get any security- nobody will care about you if your house will burn or there is a robbery.
coming back to the topic- our "garden" looked more like a desert when we moved in. my roomates chris and dita engaged so i decided to suprise them with a new garden. i had a few hours to prepare everything and with "little" help of some gardeners we are now living in a green environment. the only "problem" is that the green needs a lot of water every day, so i find myself often wearing my sarong watering the garden. i can't wait to be able to chat with the neighbours and clean my moto every saturday.
stay tuned for my next story about my new golden fence!

sauna and spa

since i arrived in yogyakarta i am member in a so called health club. that is more or less important cause the food is not really healthy at all in indonesia, so you need some sort of sports. i am not a sports guy at all, but rest and relax @hyatt pool sounds good for me. my health membership includs also the use of the so called spa. in this case it is more or less a changing room with an attached jacuzzi and something you really need in the hot climate of indonesia- right a sauna!!!
after a few weeks i got used to the climate and i thought i could check out the sauna as well. as a regular costumer, i realized that my indonesian friends have kind of different understanding of how to use a sauna. their behavior at all is indeed what u might can call rude. between 4pm and 7pm there is allways a group of half dead chinese-indonesian daddys, which are my favourits! they don't close the door to the sauna- cause it could be getting to hot and they love to get wet not by sweating- no way- they using the water for the hot stones to shower themself. the provided scoop is used by them to scrubb their back. after they finnished to use the "sauna" they go either for diving in the jacuzzi or taking a relaxed bath in the cold tub.
so if you wanna use the sauna be prepared- it need some time to heat up again and to dry it. if you are lucky afterwords there is nobody of the half dead left in the cold tub- so you can dip in directly. heading back to the changing room if was amazed to see one of the older half deads sleeping on a bench in the middle of the room. first time i joined the spa party i thought to call a rescue to team, cause if they are "dive" in the jacuzzi it looks like they are dead finally.
stay tuned!!

First steps

i wasn't sure if i should start to write in such a way. all the new media shit, everybody is writing stuff about their boring life and of cause there is allways somebody who wrotes exact the same...anyway- here we go with what i have to add to the boring shit of all of you. feel free to comment.