So I am starting to get used to the food here. I liked it immediately, but I am now starting to find some dishes that I really like and starting to grasp some of the eating etiquette that surrounds the food here. Everything is fried in some fashion. I will probably be the only person to move to a third world country and NOT loose weight. Now that I have found some dishes I know and like, my adventurousness in trying new things has subsided a bit. I also have a few restaurants that I am starting to become something of a regular at. Nasi Goreng and Mie Ayam are my two favorite things here. They are pretty simple, Nasi Goreng is basically friend rice with some sort of meats or sea food in it. Mie Ayam is noodles with chicken. The other day I was at Achung (I believe its called) right up the street from my apartment and got a little adventurous. I asked the man what he suggested and the next thing I know there is a plate of rice and a bowl of soup-like consistency next to me. This soup had more seafood in it than the damn Atlantic Ocean. I recognized some of the basics: shrimp, octopus, etc, but the rest of the seafoods were a total mystery. Something that looked very fatty and dark, something that had the texture/consistency of edible foam (the material, not whats on top of a cappuchino), and little fried things that looked like chicken nuggets but on the inside had the consistency of either really soft fish or a stiffer cheese: I’m not sure which it was). Now, from my almost Doctoral level of knowledge of East Asian fishing practices from my never-ending viewings of the Whale Wars series and The Cove (a terrifying doc about dolphin meat consumption and the terribly inhumane ways these animals are caught and killed in Japan), I must make the conclusion that I ate some combination of Shamu, Flipper, and Jaws that afternoon.
Sorry Captain Paul Watkins and the rest of the Whale Wars crew, but apparently The Bob Barker and The Steve Irwin need to step up their anti-whaling piracy tactics.
Anyway, even the mystery foods I eat are made palatable by this magical sauce that they put on everything after already having cooked it in said sauce. It is like a very thick, darker, sweeter Soy Sauce, and it is AMAZING. I cover everything in this sauce. They also have jars of chili sauce for everything, or if you get it to go they put the chili sauce in little baggies for you. This stuff is hot as all get-out, but really really good as well.
Another food I really like here is the Sate (or Satay). Its basically the same as back home: chicken, duck, beef, or dove (although I havn’t seen any dove, so I assume the Dove Sate is actually whatever birds they caught in their backyard...maybe Mockingbird or Cardinal Sate) on a stick, basted in that soy-type sauce I mentioned earlier and then cooked over charcoal. They then pour some chili sauce, more of the soy-type sauce, and peanut sauce in a newspaper page and wrap your chicken up in it. Its really great stuff, but the other day my teacher was saying that there is a rumor going around that one of the warungs is using some human meat/fat with the chicken to give it more flavor. Apparently this place has pieces of fat, almost like bacon (which it couldn’t be because of the Muslim aversion to pork) between the pieces of chicken. When he asked one of his Indonesian neighbors about it, he very non-chalantly said it was probably human. As disgusted as I was by this, the next day all I could think of was sate and walked to the nearest stand to buy some for lunch. How screwed up is that thought process?
After all of this wild, spicy food I still haven’t really gotten the “traveler’s diarrhea” I was warned about. By the way, “traveler’s diarrhea” is probably my favorite disease name. It is so straight forward, no complicated medical names; just a simple cause (traveling) and effect (diarrhea). Simplicity of cause and effect in disease naming really should the way most other diseases are named. I feel it has the potential to really scare more people away from things like STD. Imagine is the cause and effect naming method were applied to Syphilis or Herpes: Sex Sores. Sounds a hell of a lot more scary than Syphilis. I think Trojan should have a new add campaign based on that type of naming.
About the closest I have come to Travelers Diarrhea happened the day after going out and drinking beers all night, but I’m convinced that was more beer-shits than anything else.
I’d really like to have a post that doesn’t involve bathroom humor, but apparently that level of maturity has somehow managed to evade me all of these years; sorry Mom, I’m sure it has nothing to do with your parenting style. Probably the results of having a beer-man for a father more than anything and spending my formative years in an all-male school. So thank Scott Turner, Mr. D, and Mr Gioia for stunting the maturity of your son at 13.
On a more serious note: I am starting to get a few job offers. None from Bali yet, in fact all of the schools I’ve sent applications to are currently filled until around January at the earliest. I have interest from two schools here in Surabaya, one in Solo, and one in Bogor. Solo is a smaller town, about half a million, but an artistic and cultural hub in Java. Bogor is more of a suburb of Jakarta, but about an hour outside the city. And Surabaya is Surabaya. I am starting to like Surabaya a lot more each and every day though. There are actually some really nice parts of the city, some greener areas, etc. And there are more expats here than anywhere but Jakarta (everyone seems to hate Jakarta; they say it is TOO big and full of awful New York-esque traffic. I have no desire to sit in 3 hours of traffic on a motorbike on the way to work each morning). The school in Solo is a private language school but only has about 7 expat teachers and from what I have gathered they are all significantly older than me. The school in Bogor is an EF (English First) school, but again, I don’t know that I really wanna do Jakarta. The two schools in Surabaya are an EF School and the school where I am currently taking my classes. I am kind of torn between the two right now, the EF School won’t pay nearly as well as the other, but I will be with more expats and possibly even in a shared house with other expats. That sounds really great right about now. But anyway, as of now I am pretty content (and borderline excited) to stay in Surabaya and trying to decide between more money or a bit more societal comfort and easier social-life immersion. No matter where I go, I still won’t have hot water for my showers in the morning. My teacher said he has been here for 4 years and that no, I will never get used to that. The cold showers are pretty rough each morning. They aren’t so bad if you take one in the afternoon after walking home from school when its hot as hell out, but waking up knowing how cold the shower will be makes it a struggle to actually take one. I’m looking forward to a vaca in Bali or in a hotel somewhere that offers hot water. All I want for christmas this year is a hot shower.
It's great to get caught up. Sorry, you can't put the blame for your bathroom fascination off on anyone else. At 20 months of age you were fully potty trained because the only thing more exciting to you than Sesame Street was stripping down naked and going potty. Now would be a good opportunity to thank you for potty training Peyton as well. M&Ms and cheerios !!! I love you, Mom
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