Monday, November 16, 2009

Monday Banda Aceh 16 Nov

More from the iPod world:
  • Richard Davies, Evergreen
  • Anon, Unknown
  • FourPlay String Quartet, Now to the Future
  • The Heavy Blinkers, Say There Honey
  • Tesri, If the Day Remains Unspoken For
  • Boards of Canada, Happy Cycling
". . . I say, if a man giggles at something puerile and his body glows from the joy, does it matter that it was caused not by a profound artwork but by a rerun of Bewitched?" (Toltz)

Iskandar is at work, Ella at a workshop (being run by Greg Fealy, ANU, what a small world), so I'm being taken around by their driver/helper, Nyakni. A day of bahasa. Visit the Aceh Museum, but it's closed. Go to the Tsunami Museum, but it's not open.

Head to the impressive Mesjid Raya Baiturraman, the centre of Banda Aceh. Not sure if it's a cultural thing, but when I'm poised to take a photo, a number of my Indonesian friends have insisted that I be in it. Preemption is in order: I've taken to getting out of the car and quickly getting some photos of buildings and things before I submit to being in the foreground.

Next, a return to the coffee culture. Head back to kadai kopi UK. Delicious cake, lovely coffee, and Nyakni enjoyed being able to smoke. From there, taken on a tour of other tsunami sights, including a small boat that landed on a house in Lampulo. Those in the house died, those in the boat, around 60 or so, survived. Disaster tourism.

Lunch at Pizza Hut with Iskandar. In Australia, poor person's food. Here, for the rich. But it did have a salad bar.

Do Indonesians have bule envy? So many skin-whitening commercials on TV. As well as, given it's rainy season, ads for mosquito coils. Coils that last 10 hours. Need them here. At night, watching TV, it's hard to see the screen due to all the swatting.

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