Food questions answered

First, I don't take a lunch to school as there is no refrigerated place for me to keep it and i don't do too much cooking anyway. We do not have an oven, I don't know of anyone who does, and, as you can imagine, if we did have an oven we would likely use it sparingly. We do have two gas burners and so everything we do cook is fried. There are many little shops that are sort of like convenience stores in America, but family owned. At some of these places one can buy frozen foods like chicken wings and french fries and so on. There are slightly bigger versions of these stores as well and they will carry some vegetables and crackers and toilet paper and the like. There are also enormous supermarkets and these have everything from shirts and socks to fresh bread and deli foods. The problem is finding things without being able to ask questions.

One day I was at Hypermart (it is aptly named) and looking for caeser salad dressing. No luck. They had creamy french and ranch and that's all. The next time I looked they had nothing. There is a shop called Mr. Ben and that has some spices and other things that one cannot find at the other stores. j. spent a week looking for cranberry juice and never found it. Mr. Ben's is the only place one can get tortillas, basil, and cranberry juice--though the week we looked, they were out.

The big grocery stores are like big Target stores back home, though not as upscale, if you will.

We have begun to receive the english language newspaper The Jakarta Post. Not such a good paper but it is good to have. Indonesia has been cited by the World Trade Organization as the 135th best country in which to do business--another way to put it would be to say that it is one of the worst countries in which to do business. Number One? Singapore, who else?