The lazy days of the unemployed…
Let’s see what’s been accomplished in the two weeks since my return to Jakarta from the land of snow and ice (perhaps land of winter golf and 12C January days might be more appropriate moniker):
- a single blog, a single movie in the cinema and a dozen catch-up emails;
- head shaved & moustache and goatee shorn for first time in seven years (no one is gonna take Bongo the Moonfaced Boy seriously);
- first steps made towards sorting a new passport and visa, sleeping virtually every day till 1030 and watching far too much TV;
- several boozy nights including Friday and Saturday extravaganzas with visiting former workmates that seemed to get weirder and weirder as time passed;
- Rp 340,000 (US $40) worth of DVDs (about 50 discs) purchased along with a new Queens-sized Serta bed that cost roughly more than a lot of cars I’ve owned;
- new home office set up – and plans in the works for another capital outlay on a 20” iMac to supplement this beaten up PowerBook;
- one nasty day of flooding dealt with – foul waters throughout the living room, kitchen and bedroom – and nothing to complain about as the city copes with huge flooding that has displaced 320,000 people throughout the Greater Jakarta area with no sign that the situation is going to improve anytime soon;
- a dozen magazines and at least four books consumed including latest installments of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series about the exploits of a British soldier in the Napoleonic wars, and a parallel novel – part of the series that was represented in Master & Commander – about the exploits of a British naval officer during the same period. Both definitely ‘boy books’ but hugely entertaining. Ate Cormac McCarthy’s latest apocalyptic vision, The Road, in three sittings, including a marathon last Thursday that kept me up till nearly 4 a.m. And there’s more waiting in the wings including: Harp of Burma by Michio Takeyama, The Face of Another by Kobo Abe, Jose Saramago’s Journey to Portugal comes highly recommended; picked up Annie Proulx’s Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 for $6.99 at Chapters in Vancouver, and on principal I’ve gotta re-read Ryszard Kapuscinski’s The Soccer War following his unfortunate death last week at the age of 74.
So the bottom line is that there is much lazing yet to do so I’d best not waste time on quasi-useful things like writing blogs.