Good Friday in Palembang

If we hadn't moved to Palembang, I would never have guessed that Good Friday was a public holiday here. I would also never have realized that the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation had so many over crowded churches. According to Wikipedia, only 8.7% of the population here is Christian but, 8.7% of 237 milion people is A LOT.

On normal Sundays, the church is already full to the brim. On days like today, they put up a temporary canvas/tarp roof outside the church. There is a photo of what the church normally looks like here. Today, the outside looked like this:



Arriving at 2:30pm, we were 30 mins early and managed to grab three of the last few seats outside. There were a few TVs outside so that the select few who had seats in front of the TVs could see what was going on inside. We weren't one of those but at least we were in front of a fan. Unfortunately, 45 mins into the service, it started to rain so heavily that water was soaking through part of the temporary roof. We were shifted behind the fan. And there we stayed until 5:08pm. No no, I'm not complaining. In fact, we had a very smooth time there. Aaron was kept contented the whole time with color pencils and scrap paper. In fact, all the children I could see were well behaved considering how long they were kept there.

I hope Aaron (and the other kids) will give us a repeat performance when we go for the Easter Mass. Its going to be just as long ... or even longer.

Have a happy Easter weekend everyone!


Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

Who isn't on Facebook?

Apart from my parents, it seems like everybody else I know has a Facebook account. Many of my friends are active Facebook-ers. (Is there a name for people who actively publish on Facebook?) I'm one of those late adopters and only signed up sometime last year, and, I'm definitely not active.

When I first joined, I was very enthusiastic about finding my friends. That died down after a day or two. Since then, I get another surge of enthusiasm every couple of months when I find one friend that opens the links to a bunch of other friends. We spend a few days exchanging messages. Then, it dies down again. Some weeks, I only login to the Facebook page if I get a notification of a new message there.

I never update the "Whats on your mind?" box and often wonder why some people feel the need to tell all their friends that they are about to go to sleep. I'm not saying that all the thoughts and updates are useless. There are plenty of tidbits out there that I liked reading. I guess everyone is free to write whatever they like in their own space. Although these days, with the new Facebook, there seems to be so much additional clutter that its hard to actually find a genuine "thought" from my friends.

I can see why Facebook would appeal to many but I don't quite understand the addiction that many of its 200million users feel. I'll use it as a tool to find my old friends but once I find them, I'll either meet up with them in the real world or just drop back to the occasional "Hi How are you?" email. Of course, I sticky beak into people's photos and get that warm, fuzzy feeling "seeing" them again but I am always reluctant (maybe lazy) to upload new photos of my family. Maybe its because I do enough of that on this blog! Then again, sharing one's life, in an unrestricted way, with friends and strangers alike is a whole other story that I don't think I want to get into.

Pleasant Surprises

Everybody knows that you really should keep your eyes on a young child at all times. But, we also all know that it would be impossible to do that. So, we make their play areas as safe as possible and check on them every so often if we have to be away from the area.

Recently, when I had my back turned, I've turned back around to find him eating my lipstick. I've also turned around from grabbing some canned tuna from the shelves in a supermarket to find him biting down into a pack of raw beef!

Sometimes though, the surprise is a pleasant one. Today, I walked past to see that Aaron managed to reach a stack of sticky notes from my desk and was busy scribbling all over them. I was about to tell him he did something wrong but then he showed me that he was writing down words and labeling Thomas.

We ended up making a game of it. I gave him the spelling and he wrote and stuck the labels on.



This is something I do with different items in the house each day and he was just imitating. Can't get mad with that!

Jakarta was exhausting!

The weekend was a blast! We left early on Saturday morning and didn't get home till 9pm on Monday night. Three very exhausting days! We walked, and walked and walked the malls. And since we didn't want to waste any time on naps, we took turns carrying Aaron, now 15kgs, while walking whenever he needed a nap. WHY did I leave his stroller in Brisbane???

I'd call the weekend a "shallow getaway" because we did no research on Jakarta and didn't really plan to visit much (or any) of the city. The only plan we had was the vague idea that we wanted to spend the weekend shopping and eating.

I read in the papers recently that Jakarta was home to some mega malls. I wanted to see what that was all about. They were big and shiny but very similar to the malls in Kuala Lumpur. The first couple of deserted floors are full of luxury brands, then as you move upwards, you have your more affordable ones. We ended up focusing on the top two floors where all the food was. Believe it or not, we had 9 meals (medium sized ones) between 10am Saturday to 8pm Sunday! The only thing that disappointed me was that the famous line "We're out of the xxx" was as frequently used in Jakarta as it is in Palembang. Almost every time we go to a restaurant, we inevitably pick something on the menu that they don't have. I thought this was just a Palembang "specialty" but I'm now wondering if its something that afflicts all Indonesian restaurants.

This isn't the best photo of Aaron and I but it shows you just how shiny the place was. All the photos were full of reflections.



We window shopped at the mega malls but we did our actual shopping at a very different place. It was more of a bazaar than a mall and that is where we found plenty of bargains. I think there were 6 packed floors of clothes, shoes, bags, watches, DVDs and some electronic stuff. The clothes and shoes were mostly "normal" goods but the bags and DVDs were all fakes and pirated versions.

And here's a photo of the "bazaar". In the background, there is a man in a blue shirt. Behind him, you'll see a pile of "stuff". Those were all bottles of perfumes. I don't know if they were real or imitation ones but they were all the "branded" perfumes and there were 4 little hills of them there. The people started yelling at us not to take any photos as soon as Richard got the camera out so, this was the best we could manage.



Contrary to all the warnings of horrendous traffic jams in Jakarta, we were lucky. Even on Monday afternoon, when it was raining heavily, we managed to get to the airport without any delays. The delay came after we got to the airport with our flight delayed an hour.

So in the end, we had a fun weekend. Jakarta is definitely a diverse place that I'd like to explore more of in the future but I'm glad that we live in a smaller city like Palembang, even if there is nothing to do on weekends here.

Facebug

This is Facebug. Or maybe I'll call it "Smelly Facebug" because its defense mechanism (apart from that warrior like mask) seems to be an awful stench that hangs around long after it has left.



We found him outside in the garden but it moved too fast for me to get any decent photos. So, I put it in this container for a little while to get a better look.

Actually, we often come across different looking bugs (although this is the first colourful one) but I never know their names. I should make more of an effort to find out what they're called instead of just making names up myself.


Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

p/s: My next post will be on Tuesday because we're going to Jakarta for a long weekend. YAY!

Will they like me?

This year is turning out to be a bumper year for making new friends. Its great and all but I've noticed that my self confidence has plummeted since becoming a stay-at-home-(literally)-mom. I'm always second guessing myself and wondering if people will like me. In the past, I just assumed that I was the most likable person around!

After each meeting with another family I'm always wondering if they liked us enough. Did I talk to much? Was I too pushy? Will they want to meet with us again? Did they think we were too lenient with Aaron? Or did they think we were too harsh?

I know its just me and these wonderful people probably, hopefully, didn't think anything like that. I really need to forget about worrying what other people think. If they're really not that into us, so be it. There's no sense in pretending to be people we're not anyway.

Another thing that constantly has me worrying is Aaron's behavior. I swear, he behaves decently when we are home alone. I can even say he's well behaved. However, when there are other people around, he decides to test all his limits. People are going to think that I don't teach my son....

Today was an exception. I met up with some people and there were 6 kids in total. And Aaron was normal! You can't imagine how it felt to just sit back and watch him play peacefully with the others. I didn't feel any of the usual anxiety and didn't need to sit on the edge of my chair.

Anyway, I think I need to stop taking things so seriously. And, stop wondering about what people think of me, my family and my parenting skills. Having new friends is meant to be fun!

No More Fools Here

Its 5.08pm and so far, nobody in this house has played any tricks. We've all grown old and serious. And boring. So, I don't have any April Fool's Day 2009 stories to relay here.

However, the day has reminded me of the last time I played a joke on somebody. The "somebody" was my dad and my brother was my accomplice. And, this was just 3 years ago, to prove to my parents that they're kids had not grown up yet.

During one of my trips to Australia, I helped my brother move from Tasmania to Canberra. He had to drive his car the 800kms and I accompanied him. Our parents flew directly to Canberra. Anyway, during the move, we had to re-bottle his soy sauce in a used Fanta grape bottle.

As we were unpacking, we saw that my father put the soy sauce in the fridge. Aha! He thinks it is Fanta grape. Opportunity!!

After unpacking everything, my brother and I got ourselves some real Fanta grape and made a big show of drinking it, saying how cold and satisfying it was. It didn't take long for my father to ask what we were having and we told him that there was more in the fridge. It was so easy! He went straight for it. He never noticed that there weren't any bubbles there or that it was black instead of dark purple. OR that there was a strange smell.

Can you imagine what its like to take a big gulp of soy sauce when you're thinking of Fanta grape?? Obviously, my brother and I had a good laugh but at the very last second, I did have a fleeting moment of regret. My dad wasn't laughing at first but he joined us once he rinsed his mouth out. Phew!

Over the years, my brother and I have had lots of practice playing tricks on my father. He's always a good sport with things like this. We never dared to do much to my mom though. Until now....I think she's ripe for something big.