Category Archives: Culture

The people, the places, it’s all muddled up together

Midterm Madness

It’s the middle of May and I’m just giving my midterms. The academic schedule here has it’s own rhyme and reason, much of which I’m still trying to figure out after 3.5 years.

The first semester always seems to start in the beginning of September and goes for 16 weeks. This is really a [...]

Monday Haiku #35

Cloaked in Night’s maelstrom,
Prosodies invade your soul,
Urging on self-truths.
Yogyakarta was great. I saw the sights I missed the first time around, ate some good food, drank some beer (but not too much). I also went to a Christian wedding. I wish I would have taken some pictures or The Last Supper mural [...]

Monday Haiku #33

Mists of aroma,
drenching auras with umber,
silken aged ghazals.
I’m still recovering from last week’s conference and did manage to see some of Bandung in the process, particularly a very quaint coffee store on a side street. They keep the beans for eight years and roast them using an old rubber-wood fired contraption. I didn’t [...]

A few more straws…

Yesterday was a black comedy. The electricity went out (not unusual) around 2p. The electricity came back on around 7p, but only for 3/4 of the flats in my building. I ask around and one tenant tells me it’s because the voltage is too low. I don’t really understand how [...]

Equatorial travel

Three flights (Banda Aceh—Medan—Jakarta—Pontianak) Total mileage: 2,553km. As the crow flies mileage: 1,663km. And three flights back.
Luckily, the travel was all work-related and for a two-day workshop in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, famous for being settled on the equator. The workshops went well and our hosts were magnificent, taking us out for a [...]