Sorry, I don’t have the answer. It’s Tuesday evening, and I’m slowly packing up this and that, determining what I can leave here in a dehumidified plastic box. It’s no fun.
My passport remains in an unknown state. Either it gets stamped tomorrow and overnighted to me here in Makassar, or it gets stamped Thursday and one of the trusty office personnel will be meeting me at the airport between my domestic and international flights. Or it doesn’t get stamped and I’m sucking exhaust fumes in Jakarta until it gets done. As Nepalis say, ke garne? Update: between the time I wrote this and posted it, I received a text message saying the passport has been sent via courier and should arrive tomorrow or the next day; I’m going to the USA.
The newest office saga is of my own doing. I miscalculated the total grant amount for an upgrade to the listening lab at UIN Alauddin. An honest mistake that left us around USD400 short. With the input of my counterpart, we prioritized the purchases. That seems logical, doesn’t it? The prioritiy was a Walkman-style cassette recorder with built-in microphone. Well, we spent about three hours looking for the brand and make we wrote the grant for. It turned out that we found most places don’t stock more than one! We did purchase a few walkmans with comparable features and prices, but the total numbered three. We’re going on a hunt tomorrow for the rest. May luck be with us.
Last Friday my houseboys taught me how to make onde-onde, an Indonesian snack. It was pretty simple. I’ll post up the pictures of what we did soon. If you’re lucky (and I can find gelatinous rice flour), I’ll even force you to eat them.
4 Comments
I have recently had similar frustrations looking for halfway decent recorders here - the upshot being you just can’t get them. OTOH you can get reasonable mics quite cheaply.
Also, you sir, are a bum!
I’m a bum and a wanker. The problem with the recorders is they just don’t stock them to the quantities I need and no one seems willing to order them. Evidently, no one wants money.
Personally I would go for either a digital voice recorder or one of the better cheap mp3 player/recorders, if quality is not too much of an issue. But I think you’d have to go to Jakarta or Surabaya (or SIngapore) for them.
Well, I wrote the grant for cassette recorders taking into account the listening material already on hand and the durability of the recorders themselves. Pretty nice knock-offs abound…