Crazy Week - Tuesday: the beginning

--- written on Sunday, August 1, 2010, Jakarta Airport ---

I had high hopes of updating more regularly but those were dashed around Tuesday or Wednesday, can't remember which. This week has been a really crazy one with lots of last minute changes to the schedule. For a more visual description, see Selamat Datang di Indonesia , on the work blog.

Tuesday
After a normal-ish Monday, we decided to get up early to go to the Construction Clinic so that we can skype with Veornica. We had a nice chat and then went off to a meeting with KOGAMI. The meeting took about two hours and we were all very exhausted by the end of it. We got some good information as always but this was just the start of the day. We refueled with some lunch at the same place we ate lunch the last time we had a meeting with KOGAMI. We even sat at the same table.

In the afternoon, we went to assess some more mosques. On our way to the first mosque on our list, we passed by one that looked like it could be an evacuation structure. So we visited that one too and took some notes. Even though this sounds like it's chill work, it's really not. Imagine it being 80 degrees, humid, and wearing long pants, long sleeved shirt, and a head scarf. This head scarf thing is really a cultural experience in itself. Try it out when you get a chance!

The next mosque we visited was inside a senior high school. This mosque had a plague with the person who designed it. Hoping to get more information on this person and possibily some drawings, we wandered into the admin offices. They were very excited to see us (Greg) and one of the admin ladies chatted with us for a while, basically telling us that no one knows anything. She took us to the home of a retired teacher who had worked at the school for a long time but he wasn't in. We met the vice principle on our way out and she told us that the person who designed the school is teaching civil engineering at a nearby university. And this is why you really need to be on the ground to do this type of work. There would have been no way to do such things over the internet or even phone.

After our mosque vists, we met up with Anggun, who is a current student at ITB. We talked about her ideas for TEREP and possibility of other students also working on tsunami evacuation projects. We went to a satay madura place nearby our dorm for dinner. There is apparently many different kinds of satay. The difference is the sauce. Brown, red, and peanut sauce. Satay madura is the peanut sauce one. Pretty good stuff. Still don't know what kind of meat it was. Might have been chicken.