I'm the Honeydew Honey

There are many downsides to travelling alone.  It is not as fun when you can’t share an experience with someone.  When you come back, no one really can get an idea of what you’ve done or what you’ve seen.  It’s always nice to have someone along for the ride.

But, sometimes travelling alone opens you up to the unexpected. Running into an old colleague leads to a drink, which leads to meeting a new acquaintance, which leads to a glass of wine and then a  bottle wine and a nice dinner and then an unexpectedly great evening.  

I say all this as a caveat.  Yes, the evening was great, but the wine may have made what follows more interesting at the time.

I’m in Wellington and it’s a fairly balmy evening and after dinner I stumbled upon an alley night market with some great sounds and smells coming from down the alley. Diving in,  I chanced upon a honey guy.  Actually, it was honey kid.  He’s some 21 yo college kid studying bees and business.  School full time, business full time and beekeeping full time.  It was rather impressive.  

Anyway, Mrs. S.A.M. had given me a task.

Maybe as retribution for travelling so often, she gives me tasks.  

“Bring me the broomstick from the wicked witch of the east!”  

“Return this ring to the fires of Mordor!”  

Bring me a selection of cheeses from the pasturelands of Australia despite your lack of reliable refrigeration for a week.  

Often these tasks involve money. She once asked me to bring her a black opal, neglecting to tell me that black opals are only found in one place on earth and thus are the most expensive.   I like a good challenge though.  It’s a quest.

This trip’s quest?  A simple one. Honey.  Specifically Manuka honey grown from a type of tea tree in New Zealand. It is well known for it’s anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties.

So, I found this honey guy and he’s selling Manuka honey. Great, I think.  Quest accomplished!  

Because he’s a honey geek he proceeds to tell me that this manuka honey has been tested at 180 MOG.  I tell him I have no idea what a MOG is.  He says it is a measure of something honey has and the 180 is a good number to have.

He then proceeds to give me a primer on all the honeys of New Zealand, opening jars and dipping toothpicks and letting me taste each one.  Manuka, Kanuka, clover, creamed and so on down the line.

Now here is the fascinating part ( or not so fascinating part)  He pulled out a jar of Honeydew Honey and explains that this honey is made in a rather bizarre symbiotic relationship.  There is this aphid that burrows into a beech tree in southern New Zealand.  Once it burrows there, it secretes fluid with pheromones and nectar that attracts the bees. The bees fly around the bark of the tree collecting all the aphid secretions. They go back and make honey out of it.  But the honey doesn’t have enough sugars in it to be of any use to the bees and so their hives fill up with what is essentially a waste product and the colony flies away before it starves.

My beekeeper friend collects the honey, thus saving the colony a move and making this interesting honey to sell. He tells me it’s got lots of MOGs and other mystical properties and it’s the only honey that true vegans can use because it is not a product that exploits the animals.  Who knows if that is correct.  

Again, at the time, maybe with the wine, I thought it was a pretty cool nature story.  Now, though, a day or two later? Maybe not, but at any rate I accomplished my task.

Until the next day when I checked and realized that my next stop in the Pacific won’t allow anyone to bring in honey.  So, I must spend $50 to ship the honey home in the mail. Fifty dollars! That’s almost thirty cents per MOG!

The Haircut

Looking back at my last two posts and some of the comments, I think I’m coming across as overly negative on the place. But, I don’t mean to be. I really just wanted to point out the weakness of local building codes and maybe comment on why some regulation is a good idea. We’re really pretty happy and feel reasonable safe.

I got a haircut a while back at a nearby shopping mall. Another expat sent me there. He told me they were used to foreigners and could understand English. Oh, and they use fresh razor blades with each customer. I’d been there a few times, but on my most recent visit I think I sat in the chair of the master.

I’m not sure about the language ability. I think he understood “short”, but nothing else. It was a quiet haircut and he did a pretty good job with the actual cut.

The amazing part was the massage afterward. Part of the package at this place and many barbers here, is the massage after. It’s just a chair massage of the neck and shoulders.

Now, I’ve had only a few massages, but none quite like this. This guy worked me over from behind my ears to the middle of my back. Deep tissue does not describe it. He was trying to give me a breast exam through my shoulder blades.

At the end he takes a towel and wraps it around my neck, followed by his arms. Being in a small degree of pain, I’m not really aware of what he’s doing. The he whispers something that must have been “Relax!” and then RIP!. pop...pop..pop..pop...pop. I came out of the chair wondering what just happened. Nearly all the vertebrae in my neck cracked.

Then he moved around to the other side to do the same thing, but now of course, I’m aware of what is going on and I prepare myself. “Please don’t hurt, please don’t hurt, please don’t hurt!” Sure enough, my neck cracked again. I felt half an inch taller and a great deal of energy was radiating up and down my spine.

As a finishing touch, he plucked the skin between my eyebrows and slapped his hand and I felt a last pop at the top of my head. I swear some chi dribbled down my chin.

All this for 10 bucks.

Jakarta Burning

I was coming back from the airport last week and one of the highway flyovers launches traffic into the air and sweeps south toward the city.  As we made the turn there was a solid plume of black rising into the sky.  From afar, it looked like an entire city block was burning.  I wondered about some terrorist incident as we’re all conditioned to do, I guess.  

One thing about Jakarta is they haven’t really gotten into the whole 24 hour news cycle. You can’t flip on the radio and hear second by second coverage.  TV crews aren’t out scouring a neighborhood for the edentulous of the world so they may garble a statement into a microphone.  

I asked the cabbie what was going on.  “Looks like a fire.” he said. Yep.

I read in the paper a day or two later that it was a fairly large apartment/housing area that caught fire.  It was a pretty densely populated area.  The fire started via short circuit, they thought and quickly swept through the complex. This happens quite commonly.  In some places during rainstorms, water drains out the outlets in the walls and onto the floor.  

Fire trucks couldn’t get close enough, because of the narrow streets and there are no hydrants, so they used an old fashioned bucket brigade to pull water out of the river to help fight the blaze. Given the condition of the water who knows if they helped or hindered their cause.

3000 people were left homeless. 1200 homes were destroyed. It is that densely populated. Do keep in mind that the homes were maybe the size of a dining room. 

Perhaps miraculously, only one 18 year old man lost his life.  A lot of people lost everything.  But perhaps sadder than being made homeless by a fire, I read where one man gathered his property and all his remaining belongings and sold the lot for $23 dollars and left town.  Yes, he left town with nothing but $23.00.

Four days later, we were riding to work and we came upon a 20 story building that was a total inferno right there on the city’s main street.  Flames licking up the side of the building.  Glass and metal tumbling to the ground.  There were fire trucks there and lots of people craning their necks to the sky, but no apparent water was being sprayed that we could see.  It looked like a total loss.

Many locals speculate that because it was a government building, the fire was arson in an attempt to cover up some sort of corruption. Corruption has been big in the news here lately.  The newspapers wouldn’t speculate.  The fire spread it seems, because the pump that was supposed to supply the sprinklers was broken that day, so no water flowed.  

I’m told by a colleague who watched from across the street, that they tried to extend their ladder as high as it would go and spray water, but it wouldn’t reach.  Then they tried to spray water from the building next door but it couldn’t reach.  25 fire trucks were on the site at one time and they fought this blaze for 18 hours before they got it under control.

The city of Jakarta has vowed to step up inspections of fire safety systems, saying that building owners have been far too slack for far too long.  The crackdown will begin immediately and those that are found in violation will receive a sticker.

Said sticker will be required to be placed on the front door to serve as a warning to those who may rent or use the building that the premises are not safe from fire.

Sigh….

All the talk of lack of fire safety has reinforced a fear in our youngest.  “I am terrified that something dreadful will happen to one of us and we are going to be totally screwed and we’ll die wherever we fall. I mean we're living on the ring of fire!"

Indeed all week, everywhere I go, I've found my eyes drifting upwards looking hopefully for sprinklers or fire extinguishers only to to be disappointed.  I’ve seen long hallways with an exit only at one end. Our dog searches in vain for a fire hydrant on the street. All the stuff that we sort of take for granted and ignore. None of it is there.

To be sure, I’m gonna start looking for that sticker.  

(Photos courtesy of Jakarta Globe and Jakarta Post)

Special Orders Do Upset Us.

In an odd turn of events, I found myself home alone for the weekend.  Both the spouse and offspring were away.

I wandered out into the evening in search of a meal.  Along the way I came upon two mormons.  Doing a mission trip here must have been required for some bad misdeed back at Uncle Brigham’s. I can’t imagine how hard that must be.  Fearing my own conversion, I didn’t stop to ask.  

I also saw three men relieving themselves.  Jakarta doesn’t have a lot of street lamps, so there are lots of shadows to hide in.  Just watch where you walk. That puddle may not be leftover from the rain.

Eventually I found a place called “Three Buns-Burgers and Heads”. I had only a limited idea what this meant until I asked and found out that the place is run by a group who also runs some restaurants called "PotatoHeads" 

Anyway, the set-up of the place is kind of funny .  There is a food truck out front that serves no purpose other than to handle cash and give workers a place to check their cell phones. Inside, on a series of very high risers, is the seating area.  Imagine, if you will a restaurant designed like the old “Q-bert” video game with tables and steps rising randomly and steeply around the room.  That’s this place.  Honestly, it is an alcoholics nightmare.  It was a quiet night when I was there, but I can only imagine women in heels cascading down to the ground floor in the wee hours of the morning.

There was a large grid of 36 numbers on the wall. Every so often a few numbers would light up. I asked what this was and was told it's a Bingo game. "Are people playing bingo now?" "Yes"

I looked around. No one was playing bingo.

I picked out a burger and then asked for the house fries.  The bartender started upselling me on the “Naughty fries” which looked good except for the beef chili.  I told him I didn’t really want the chili and I asked if I could have the fries without.  “Sure”, he said.  “Or, maybe you can have the chili on the side?”  

“All right. Naughty fries with chili on the side.”  

My burger came quickly along with my fries. The fries were simply and totally slathered in beef chili.

It reminded me of how hard it is to get substitutions here.  

For whatever reason, people here are fanatical about the cleanliness of their cars.  My own 10 year old car is simply flawless having been washed or wiped down twice a day.  My driver arrives in the morning and he wipes the car free of any dust that may have gathered in the closed garage over night. If we drive in the rain, he wipes down the car.  If he’s bored, he washes and waxes the car.  

Car wash/detail shops are tucked in neighborhoods all over.  A clean car is a big, big thing.

But, if you go to a car wash you have to do the whole detail.  We’ve had friends who are in a hurry and just want to rinse off the car.

“No, sorry, mister. Can’t do that”  

“Why not?”

“It’s not what we do.”

“What if I pay for a detail, but you stop after you rinse off the car?”

“No”

“But you’ll do less work and make the same amount of money?

“That wouldn’t be right.”

<scratch, scratch, scratch>

The same thing goes for pizza.  A friend wanted a cheese pizza, but it wasn’t on the menu, so they asked them to make one, but they wouldn’t because it wasn’t on the menu. They asked for the simplest pizza they had, which was maybe a margarita pizza.  They asked for a margarita pizza with only the cheese,  even agreeing to pay the higher price.  Alas, they ended up ordering a pizza and picking off everything but the cheese.

The bartender at the Three Buns told me that their format changed.  It used to be that people came to the restaurant and placed and paid for their order at the food truck and then went to sit down to wait, but people didn’t like that concept.  “Why are we paying for food at a nice restaurant when we haven’t eaten it yet?”  

The bartender said, that prepay concept may work in New York or London, but this is Indonesia. We do it our own way.  Indeed, they do.