26 Oct 13
There’s a scene in “Gran Torino”
where Clint Eastwood’s character is invited over by his Hmong neighbors to eat
“bar-b-que.” You see him sitting at the
table getting food served to him by the platefuls, and as he refuses they
insist and they win in the long haul. This
is very similar to my situation, in that I am provided 2 meals in which plates
of food are put before me. In the
beginning, I had no issues eating most of what was put in front of me, but the
train is slowing down. In fact, I was
eating so much, I had no desires to eat lunch during my lesson hours.
It is a
culture thing, because when I don’t eat the food served to me, it makes the
Indonesian people feel bad. At the same
time though, it is physically impossibly for me to eat all of this food. So, I have explained to them that the food is
delicious, and I would like smaller portions.
This is pretty easy, because the contract that I am under pays for the
food; I would imagine this would be a lot different if someone was giving me
dinner as a gesture of kindness, and I could not eat all of the food. So, we will see how the next week goes.
I was able
to take a break Friday to do some more sight seeing in downtown Jakarta. There was a new-comers brief at the Embassy,
but I was unable to attend because it was not arranged for me to show up…I
really didn’t want to watch a 2 hr video anyway.
In the
afternoon, I went across the street to the Blok M Plaza which has more of a
“contemporary “ feel to it and the set up was similar to the Guggenheim Museum,
where you could keep walking up in a spiral fashion the 6 floors. I ate lunch there, watched a movie, got a
haircut, and bought a couple of books.
Later in the evening I attended a farewell party at the Defense
Attache’s house and it was really nice to be around military people once
again. He talked about all of the good
things that the U.S. is doing in Indonesia, and it really made me proud to be
working in this type of job.
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