Taro's Travels

And you think you have it rough: Sales Rep, married, four month old kid, travels for thirty days around Java and Sumatra at a stretch and only gets to spend one week at home in Surabaya between tours. Some other companies provide 1 week a year, but he gets no holidays.

Mosques: My rooms have been often been within earshot of multiple mosques so when I've forgotten to earplug myself I've received 4:30 am wake-up calls.

Mobile Vendors: Many mobile food vendors have music. The one used by a lot of icecream sellers isn't "Greensleeves" but it's quite catchy. In Solo there was a bread seller that broadcast short snippets of Christmas Carols. I suspect that someone may have wired up a musical Christmas Card to a loudspeaker.

Computer Programming: If Solo's Gramedia bookshop is any guide, the most popular language is not Java, but (Visual) Foxpro.

Foreign Products:
- KFC sells spaghetti bolognese
- McDonalds sells fried chicken and has 24 hour home delivery
- the most common brand of bottled water is Aqua from Danone.
- Tim Tams are available
- contrary to earlier suggestion Diet Coke _is_ available, but it's rare-ish, AFAICT only in cans and is generally 2-3 times the price of a bottle of the regular variety.
- The icecream company that makes Paddle Pops, etc is named "Walls" but has the same logo as Streets; "Cornettos" are "Conellos"

Fun with Linguistics:
melukis - to paint (from "lukis")
memakai - to wear (from "pakai")
membaca - to read (from "baca")
menasihati - to advise (from "nasehat")
mencari - to search (from "cari")
mendorong - to push (from "dorong")
mengambil - to take (from "ambil")
mengganti - to change (from "ganti")
mengunci - to lock (from "kunci")
menjawab - to answer (from "jawab")
menyogok - to bribe (from "sogok")
merokok - to smoke (from "rokok")
1/ "tari" is the root for "dance". What is the Indonesian for "to dance", and why?
2/ Where in the mouth is the standard Indonesian pronunciation of "s" likely to be? What would "menyogok" probably be if the pronunciation of "s" were the same as in standard English?

Leaving Indonesia: Faced with an 8+ hour train trip from Yogya to Jakarta, I opted to stay an extra couple of days in Yogya and spend AU$35 on a plane. The downside was that I missed out on Jakarta entirely; the upside was that Singapore Airlines put me on an earlier flight so I got to spend a few more hours in Singapore