Bahasa Indonesia

I took my first lesson in Bahasa Indonesia (also called 'Indonesian'). My tutor, the school's Bahasa teacher, was very proud of me and kept saying that I was a very good student. Of course, now I can't remember a thing, but I have it in my note book. It is very logical and since there is only the present tense, it is easier than learning most languages. The people here, not surprisingly, love it when you can say anything to them in Indonesian. I am impatient with myself on this account, but there's so much to do and plan for that one cannot get everything done as quickly as one would like. One expat told me that 100 words would be sufficient to get around town, order food, get help, etc. I think 1000 word is not out of the question. "This" and "that" can suffice when you forget what something is called but I keep thinking about Wittgenstein who said, essentially, that one's world is only as large as one's vocabulary, so why choose to live in a world that is smaller than it needs to be?

We have extracurricular acitivities twice a week. I had planned a film course, which I will try to do next term but opted instead to teach basketball. I'm not qualified to do that in the States but here I'm an expert. My assistant and I went to the mall yesterday to buy basketballs--we bought ten. They're outdoor balls and we will be playing outdoors, but they're not of a particularly high quality, not terrible, but not top of the line. We carried them out of the mall in three bags and we were, apparently, quite sight to see--two white guys walking around with sacks full of basketballs, it was difficult to explain. There is the bit in the film Hudsucker Proxy where the Tim Robbins character (the fictional inventor of the Hula Hoop) carries around his design with him before he's had a chance to produce a single hoop. When asked about his life prospects he invariably would pull out the design, which was nothing more than a slip of paper with a circle drawn on it, and say "don't worry about me, I've been sitting on this little beauty." Those he spoke to would look at him curiously and he'd try to reassure them saying, "you know? For kids." That was us yesterday.

Indonesia was instructed by the world community after the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 (not the Christmans Tsunami of noteriety) to procure 22 warning buoys. They were able to get 12 and most of them broke immediately. No one was warned about the oncoming wave. Apparently, as soon as news of an earthquake gets out, most people just flee to the highland, there's no telling them that no tsunami is coming. They've been burnt before.