What happened this week ?

Well, not much really to be honest. I've set myself the objective of putting up at least one post a week here but I have to confess that it is sometimes a struggle to stop lapsing into a daily diary which would make for spectacularly uninteresting reading and have my already tiny hit statistics falling off a cliff faster than I could stop them.

Almost as interesting as Anne Frank's diary (with apologies in advance....)

For example :

Monday :

6.30 .am Got up, .took my doxycycline antimalarial, had some bananas, bread and coffee for breakfast. Washed.

7.25 am Went to work. Slow morning, internet wasn't working very well so not able to do much.

11.00 am Coffee break

2.00 pm Home, change and out for lunch to one of three of four regular places.

2.45 pm Back home, read or snooze for an hour.

4.00 pm Maybe go out for a drive on the bike

6.00 pm Darkness, usually back home by now. Spend the next four hours sitting on the front porch with one or more of our friends, some of whom are very keen to improve their English. One of my new friends, Frid, has become my new Indonesian teacher so it's a good mutual exchange.

Tuesday :

See Monday

Wednesday :

See Tuesday

Etc. etc

So, you will be pleased to hear that I am going to spare you this ordeal. Last weekend, we had a visit from a very good friend Nick, who is a VSO volunteer who has spent the last year and a half working in Yogjakarta with some deaf groups helping them to develop training programmes. Nick was one of the welcome party when we arrived in Bali all those months ago and so was one of the very first VSO volunteers I met in Indonesia. He has just returned to Indonesia after a holiday at home and is spending his last three months before his placement ends on some roving assignments, the first of which is a two week visit to Bajawa in western Flores. Instead of going out for dinner on Saturday we ate at home and my housemate and resident chef Peter excelled himself with pizza and apple tart. Pizza may not sound that difficult to make but consider some of the challenges : tomato sauce made from scratch, dough from scatch, chicken bought in a restaurant and shredded at home, mozzarella brought from Bali by Nick, the oven is a tin box on top of a paraffin stove.... and what a spread it was, as good as you could get ! Frid, my ojek friend, had made the arrangements for Nick to travel onwards from Maumere to Bajawa on Sunday (better pricing always available to locals !) and joined us for dinner that night also. The next day I went with Frid to visit his cousin in the hospital where I work and met his aunt. Frid told her that he had had dinner in our house the previous night and explained what we had eaten. I could see the puzzled look on her face as he described what a pizza was and when he had finished she asked : "What about the rice, was it fried or boiled ?"

Above : Indra & Dewa (you don't smile for photographs in Indonesia !)

Above : from left,Kristo, Daniel, Indra and Hartadi relaxing on our porch.

Nick departs for Bajawa with Frid (with apologies for a rushed and badly composed photo !)