Gmana, Miss Erin?

I saw Balibo today at a fundraiser for the John Byrne Memorial Trust.  It was not only a chance for me to see a film I’d heard so much about and missed at the Melbourne International Film Festival, but also an opportunity to learn a bit about a remarkable man who spent time working with refugee young people in Melbourne’s West.  See: http://johnbyrnememorial.com.au/

The film, we were told by two of the young actors involved, was 6 years in the making.  For those not aware, it’s based on a true story.  Balibo looks into the fate of 5 young journalists who were in East Timor around the events of October-December 1975.  Anthony LaPaglia plays the veteran journo trying retrace their steps and find out what happened after they went missing in action.  A young Jose Ramos-Horta is also a key figure in the story.  The film was actually shot in Timor, and the brilliance of it for me was that it drew me into both the landscape and the political tension/fear.  The editing skewed time, switching between scenes of the Balibo 5 going after their iconic news footage on the Timorese/Indonesian border, and LaPaglia following their trail weeks later.  The suspense in the cinema was intense.

1.My flatmate Bec from England got offered a job as a sales promotion girl at the local shopping centre.

2. This Saturday I’ve volunteered my time to become an extra in an Indonesian film set in Cairo.

3. I went to the post office to send a parcel to Tasmania, which many of us know to be a province of Australia. The posties looked on a list of countries to ascertain how much to charge me. They couldn’t seem to find Australia….After much umm-ing, ahh-ing and discussion between the post office employees, we agreed that Tasmania was not in Africa. They were looking at Tanzania.

4. One of the other ACICIS people here got mistaken for a Swiss film star on the bus.

5. This one takes the cake: my friend Ada woke up one morning with a bat on her pillow. Yes, a bat.

ok I just googled stonefish and that thing below looks nothing like a stonefish…..what on earth is it????? I’ll shout anyone who can tell me to nasi bakar!

Well that was quick the computer just ‘recognised’ my camera! Ok so here are some from the Environmental/Art Festival a few weeks ago, which I should be busy finishing an essay on right now…

Screen printing t-shirts with public art collective Taring Padi

Eg of artwork with enviro message. This piece is from a series of cartoons which talked about the future of public health if water is mismanaged. The text from this section, set 50 years from now says ‘now, our children buy water for quite an expensive price’.

Backpack made from discarded coffeemix packaging.

Imposing sculpture at entrance, made from recycled material. Flag says ENERGI ALTERNATIF.

Well this is the conclusion I’ve come to after only a few weeks of wet season: whoever said there’s no time like the present to do something never had to contend with the wet season. Every day around 3ish the Yogya sky opens up and wherever one is is wherever one is stuck until it closes again. Seriously, I’ve never seen rain like this before, probably more in one downpour than Australia’s seen in a long time. It’s useful to carry around a book and a stock of small talk and make the best of it :0)

Some useful vocab for the wet season includes kilat (lightning), kehujuanan (see title of post), hujan deras (heavy rain) and puting beliung (cyclone – a small one hit campus last Friday afternoon, trees and roof tiles everywhere but the rest of the city seemed not to be affected!).

Not much else going on this week, have taken up a few opportunities lately for voluntary english language teaching/conversation practice, and finally finished mid-sem exams. What a goose I accidentally anwered all questions on one exam (7) instead of choosing 4 as the paper clearly stated. No language excuse, it was in big bold letters and quite simple vocab. D’oh.

Went to the Dieng Plateau with Tom last weekend, it was very beautiful if cold (yes, cold!). I’ll post some picutres once I find a computer that will let me.

So in the 2 week holiday Tom and I went Salatiga…Kalimantan….Jakarta. Here are some pics from Salatiga, and terus from Kalimantan below. No pics posted from Jakarta but a great few days of catching up with friends, going to a couple of days AIYEP pre departure training for this year’s participants and going to a friend’s wedding (congrats Topan and Novi!). Oh yes, and malls!

Megawati street mural….As Indonesia warms up for next year’s election every party has promotional material out and about.

Classic becak shot, Salatiga…
Salatiga celebrates Idul Fitri, the end of Ramadan. I ducked for cover at a warung and drank tea as the masses cruised past in trucks (including one blasting early 90s pop music – Jump around!! Jump around!!) and bought firecrackers from stalls and let them off in any which direction (thankfully mainly up).
Mt Merapi, the local friendly volcano.

From Salatiga we went on to Samarinda in Kalimantan Timur, to see our mate Said, his hometown and his funky fashion shop Snorky, owned with Andre and Ima and with one of the town’s first (if not the first??) plastic bag recycling schemes. Yeah, go Snorky team!! Above is the largest mosque in Southeast Asia, pretty spectacular set across the road from the mighty Mahakam river.

Below is Ogi, one of three orphaned baby orangutans we met one day at a government owned wildlife park. They’re living in this facility because their mothers were sadly killed by farmers who considered them pests to their crops. Ogi climed from one of us to the other quite happily for a while for hugs – the picture was in no way forced. There is a theory that too much contact with humans leads to a loss of some natural instinct with orangutans, but I just found it too hard to refuse an approaching baby orangutan who’s lost his mother. The babies were 2 years old and remarkably similar in temperament and the way they moved to people.

Also below is a canopy tree top walk (we saw lots of deforested areas in Kaltim but thankfully areas like this still remain. Also, a photo with new friends from the Snorky community and a Lembu Suana, mythical creature from Tengarong, north of Samarinda, the oldest kingdom in Kalimantan.

Heya,

It’s been a while, a 17k cycle to Prambanan temple on a bike with no gears (but a basket!) and a beach trip involving getting splashed by high tide and frightened by angry geese since I last wrote…

The internet cafe I’m at doesn’t seem to be able to upload my photos which is a shame but nevermind, suffice to say it is the end of Ramadan tonight and the mosques, fireworks and celebrations are going off!

Tomorrow and the next day are public holidays, where people generally go and visit family, ask for forgiveness for any wrongdoings over the past year and eat.

I’m at a wonderful homestay in Salatiga, a town in the mountains of central Java. It took about 3 hours by minibus to get here through the winding roads, by car or motorbike is more like 2 hours (less too-ing and fro-ing droping people off, waiting and so on). After a week of assignments and progress exams, five ACICIS people chose Salatiga to spend this uni break, and yesterday we trouped out to a waterfall that was so powerful you only need go in the general vicinity to get soaking wet, and saw Merapi quite close up on the way back. (Mt Merapi is the local active volcano, quite spectacular but often obscured by cloud and maybe a little Yogya pollution. From Yogya we can only see it occasionally despite it being so close to the city.)

Today I started my research (for a research unit) on Festival Mata Air, an environmental/arts festival to be held this year in October. More on that later, it’s going to be great (concerts, street parade of costumes made from rubbish, stalls and sculptures involving recycled stuff, mural painting etc etc etc)!

Apalagi….oya, just for fun, here are some of my favourite new Indonesian expressions. There are some great ones too, people who study the language tend to sometimes say lots of new words just ‘make sense’, for eg ‘jam tangan’, literally ‘time arm’ means ‘watch’. My new faves are:

Shortcut – Potong Jalan – literally, ‘cut street’

Back streets – Jalan Tikus – literally ‘mouse streets’

Speed bump – Polisi Tidur – literally ‘sleeping police’ (is that not gold??!!)

Subheading – Anak Judul – literally ‘child heading/title’

Satu dayung, dua pulau terlempaui – means ‘with one stroke two islands can be passed’ (as in rowing) – Indo expression for killing two birds with one stone.

I like that one. Alright, back to the homestay for me, lots of eating (home cooked meals, yum!) for me to do the next couple of days!

There were a couple of rooms with exhibits, around a courtyard with graffiti, bands and really old trees. We’re talking wow where did you get branches like that twisted old skool trees.