WHOA WEDNESDAY

Whoa Wednesday. Slow down day ........ you're going way too fast.

Ok, so I bought this really great lampshade on my "shopping trip to Lombok" White, rice paper, a fold up-down accordion kind of thing for a new hanging lamp. Yeah, I know - the living space in this house has 23 (counted them) light bulbs - but the bedrooms, do not. Anyways, how hard can it be to build a new lamp? Really?

Some electrical wire (white), a plug-in receptacle (white), a switch (white), and a receptacle for the bulb (black?) BLACK? What do you mean black? Believe it or not - a white one does not exist here. Really? I went to darn near every shop. Everything in white except for that. What's with that? Now I have a completely white lamp that looks totally great except for the one-part BLACK. !@#$ Welcome to Balikpapan. Next time I'm going to do the whole thing in black. Yup, next time I'm going with black.

Great day yesterday (except for the one-part BLACK) Wandered. Everywhere. And we all liked that. Stopped in a place called Resto for lunch. Nice little spot. And I do mean little - decorated completely in a Harley Davidson theme (more motorcycle madness), including the bar in the shape of the crest. Nice spot. Good place for lunch and some good company too!

..... and we have boughten the nice little turkey (rather on the large side of little) for our Easter Dinner too.

Today: Last day before the big Election that's taking place over here. All over the news. Appears there's a few issues regarding the voters lists. Seems the same ID numbers are showing up more than twice. Hmmmm

.......... and the jet planes are flying overhead. Today - one, two, three.

.......... and since the other Me is still out and about. Good day for Kepiting - crab night tonight.

Good to Go!

SAGA; TAP

So turns out the easiest (best) way to fix a dripping kitchen tap - is to replace it. Sounds good so far, right? - read on - with a new (used) one that has a sink attached. ahhhh.

Saga of the kitchen tap; first it was broken (didn't even realize that - apparently it was leaking a little bit) and the maintenance guys decided to do us a favor and fix that. Well in their process of fixing a little leak they somehow managed to break the whole tap OFF ........... and so we were without tap for a bunch of days. The new (used) tap they replaced it with? .............. was in fact worse than what we started with. Hot became cold, cold became hot and you couldn't even turn the darn tap. So they came back and tried fixing it, and fixing it, and fixing it again and then I think they just plain gave up.

Yesterday - they replaced the whole lot. Yup, rather than mess around with changing another tap - it became way easier to bring the whole works. Kitchen sink with the tap still attached. From the house down the road - not sure what they plan on doing over there about that.

And so - now we have a perfectly fine working kitchen sink and a tap back. Small things in life are worth a whole bunch.

TODAY: Need to do all the things I should have done yesterday. Didn't get a darn thing done. A little boy we know (driver's son) is very, very sick. Big time fever and all of that. And, unfortunately the first thing to check for here is dengue fever, and that would not be a good thing. (fingers crossed about that) No news yet - still waiting on that.

Today's pic - 2009 GENERAL ELECTION. Well this is just a small fragment of the millions of flags flying here right now. Not to mention the T-shirts and banners and billboards and posters and pretty much anything else you can think of stuff. The roads are literally littered with this stuff. All up in advance of the federal election coming up. Balikpapan right now (and all of Indonesia in fact) is a very colourful place.

Ok, time to go get a whole bunch of stuff done. Good to Go!

.... AND THEY'RE OFF!

So this week kicks off the official start of the CAMPAIGN of POLITICAL PARTIES for Indonesia's Parliamentary (Federal) Election coming up on April 9th. Everyday now, up until the 5th of April, each of the 44 different parties will take turns parading through the streets. Honking horns and waving flags and wearing their brightly coloured T-shirts in an attempt to drum up support for their favorite candidate.

So, officially what this means to all the rest of us is ........... be prepared to get caught up in the traffic. Plan your route. And there is an actual official schedule for all of this.

..... can you imagine having to choose between 44 official parties. Wholly smokes. The Jakarta Post had a picture last week of what the voting ballot looks like. It's huge, like the size of a poster in fact - I can't even figure out how they're going to fold it up to get it in the ballot box.

TODAY: For starters - well, no big surprise, the DRIP, DRIP is back. Yup, pretty much rained all night - and now the leak in the Blue Room is turning into a steady stream. Actually, I don't think it ever really went away - just stopped raining for a bit. The little drip is now even bigger than before. And the black hole, has in fact, more than doubled in size.

And, seems last month we paid someone else's house phone bill by mistake. So, need to get that sorted out. The office inverted the numbers (phone number) on the bill and so when we paid it .......... well turns out we paid the bill for some other house. What I can't figure out is why our phone didn't get cut off - there is like a zero grace period here for anything. In fact, if you don't pay the Indovision (Satelite TV) bill on time, a warning will scroll across your TV screen telling you to pay up or be cut off. Not a bad plan actually. No body ever gets behind on their bills around here.

Ok, so guess it's time to for me head out in tropical rain that seems to have NO plan of easing up. Stay dry everyone - good day for duck suits.

Good to Go!

NEWS SPECIAL: US ELECTION

Finally - the US Election. Seems we've been waiting a long time for that. And it's on every News channel we have. And even the Jakarta Post. Amazing - seems the whole world is watching. Watching and waiting.

The Melbourne Cup - was great. So many funky looking hats. Yes, even I - the hat hater - donned a hat. Didn't win any money on any of the bets I placed - not even sure how that all works. A horse race better I am not. But there were a few lucky ladies amongst the bunch. And some pretty good prizes up for grabs in the pot.

TODAY: Well we had the rain yesterday - so today should be sunny and hot. Seems we've been going through the every other day thing for the past week. That's good. A little rain every now and then to cool things off. Right now the thermometer says almost 33˚C. Yup, today is going to be HOT.

Good to Go!

YEMENI COOKING

The Yemeni Cooking Class - Hummus, mutabal, bureck, and shistaouk. That's what I learnt to cook. And, absolutely DELICIOUS. That was great. I had no idea what to expect - and of course I ate way to much. My favorite the bureck - but wow, what a lot of work. Can't forget to mention that I brought some home with me too.

Yesterday was the Gubernatorial election day here in Balikpapan - for the Regency of East Kalimantan. Time for a new Gubernaught* spelling - no idea, but it's the same as a governor. (Probably a word left over from the Dutch). So the first round of elections was held, back in May. I believe there were about 40 parties running, and if that's an exaggeration, it's not by much. The one with the most votes - didn't get enough. So, have to have a re-election between the top two parties. The two parties - Party #1 is lead by a local from Kalimantan, Party #3 (and it really is #3) from our neighbouring island Sulawesi.

Well, I'm sure you can imagine how well this is going to work out. Not sure how long it will take to count the votes. Last time I think it was about a week. Good thing most of that action will take place in Samarinda the city north of us.

TODAY: Friday, wholly, another week has just zipped past. Pool time this morning - just got back, the sun is trying to peek out. And OMG - was that ever cold. After 4 days of rain and a non-heated pool ............ brrrrrrrrrr.

Need to see a guy at Semut Graphics today. For a project, I some how managed to get myself sucked into the black hole with .........................

Happy Friday everyone. Good to Go!