How to Survive Life in Indonesia - Volume 2

So it has been several months since my last update on how to survive life in Indonesia. In case you missed it, you can read the first volume here. Here are just a few things I have learned in the last few months living here in Indonesia that I consider necessary for survival...

Cockroaches definitely qualify as an arch enemy, although I am getting better at just killing them right away. I still hate the physical contact necessary to kill them, so I recently went through a stage where I sprayed them with bug spray. So late one evening I was in our dining area and saw one make a run from one of the bedrooms toward me and I grabbed the can and gave it a squirt. What I wasn't paying attention to was this crack in the floor...

So apparently our house does not have a much of a foundation (if one at all) and was possibly built directly on a pile of dirt. So the floor tile has shifted and broken in areas allowing things living in the dirt direct access to our house. So when I sprayed the bug spray accidentally into this crack I must have sprayed the insect kingdom living just beneath and they all came running out trying to get away. No less than 20 insects were all of a sudden scurrying around on the floor :) So note to self... if one is going to spray these cracks, one should at least be wearing shoes and preferably be standing on a chair!

One of my other favorite pastimes these days is reading the directions on the backs of packages of food etc. It is good language practice because many packages are in both Indonesian and English. Sometimes they have been translated from English to Indonesian and other times from Indonesian to English. These can results in some hilarious translations. Take the package below. They were doing great until they got to almost the final line - the directions.

I am pretty sure "wind" was not quite the word they were looking for.

And just in case any of you were confused about how to use a drive-through at McDonalds there are directions that even include pictures here!

But don't worry - if figuring out the drive-through is too difficult, you can always just order it to be delivered, on little motorbikes with boxes on the back, directly to your house. There are not McDonalds in most places of course - just a few in the big cities. My nearest one right now is a good 60 minutes away and I am not even sure there is one at all in Kalimantan.

Our presentation today on Surviving Life in Indonesia was brought to you by Skimmed Milk by Diamond...

I have to admit I love milk, so being able to get fresh milk here is a huge blessing. One that I am going to sorely miss when I move to Kalimantan in March!