Jakarta - BINUS - Rabu 18 Nov

Would my meal have been cheaper if fewer staff had served it? This thought was leftover from last night, as I watched three staff approach my table, delivering my salad and mie (noodles). Cost of the meal equivalent to 10 lunches at UKSW. Noodles not a patch on what I was eating in Aceh. Such are the rigours of hotel living.

Breakfast: toast and Berenberg jam, fresh fruit, some croissanty-style pastries, and kopi instan, the usual industrial swill. Against the advice of my dentist, I add some gula (sugar) to make the impossible vaguely palatable. Aceh has spoilt me, resurrecting my inner coffee snobbiness. Sugar sachets here seem to contain 2 and a half teaspoons of the stuff. Required for the industrial slop kickstarting my first day at Bina Nusantara University, known as BINUS, and its employees and students/clients, known as BINUSIANS. Located in West Jakarta, hence my stay at a hotel reasonably close by.

So many hotel staff. One spending endless time and energy micromanaging the cereal and pastry section of the buffet, shifting containers a centimetre at a time, getting things perfect. Another, while I'm at the buffet choosing some more pastries, whisking away the dirty plates, so that I'm momentarily unable to recognise where I'd been sitting. Then I sight the scrappy tatter of my notebook. Piped music puts me in mind of Richard Clayerdam, neutered Librace. Standards of Western songbook. Lite, sterile, sexless jazz. No grit. Pointless lingering over breakfast. iPod's upstairs - need a fix.

Yes, I'm bule, but does that mean I want a complimentary copy of The Jakarta Post delivered to my room? Give me Kompas, you ethnocentricists! Spare me the stereotype! I'm looking forward to filling out the guest feedback sheet.

• Arthur Russell - Nobody Wants a Lonely Heart
• Alemayehu Eshete - Teantena Zare
• Efterklang - Playing Butterfly
• ESG - Come Away
• Anon - Unknown (on Cambodian Cassette Archives there are more than 10 songs credited this way)
• Talk Talk - Desire

Picked up at 8am by Greta and her colleague/friend Priscilla. Drive past the shiny new BINUS campus, heading to its original site. Staff sign in electronically. There's a shared academic staffroom, for all academics, not just by faculty. At 9am, my first presentation: "How to write a research proposal." Not going to clog the blog with ANU work stuff. Tour. Head to the newer campus, Kampus Anggrek, named after the road it's on. A fan of the main building, mainly because of its use of orange.

The interior is like a luxurious shopping mall. Sound richocets and bounces around, students talking in the hall.

Tour of library. BINUS considered wealthy because of student laptop use. 25,000 students. Meetings. Mentoring program. Student Advisory Centre. Writing tomorrow's lecture. Leave office at 5.30.

To Greta's kos, like a studio apartment. A house refitted into 6 small apartments. Got to naik angkota lagi (ride the angkota again). Took two to get to a shopping area so I could hunt for a couple of DVDs. Lucked out with Janji Joni, but found a couple of good substitutes, though they lack subtitles. Returned by angkota to Greta's part of town; she said it's pretty unusual for foreigners to use this mode of transport, they prefer the safety and airconditioning of private cars. Hairy travelling, with a near-miss sideswipe of motorbike. Pretty sure the woman I'm sitting next to is a man - waria or off to a pretty good party. Headed to a Manado restaurant (north Sulawesi). Ordered perkedel jagung (deep fried corn) and tumis kangkung bunga pepaya (a green vegetable dish, with pepaya flowers), as well as avocado juice. Dinner by candlelight. Relax, Leonie, Greta requested the candle to keep the flies away from the food. Other tables had them also, so it was no big deal! And the candle was really small. And the lights were on. And . . . And . . . And . . .