Getting into the swing of things

Every time I think I’m relaxed ok, I’m living this crazy life in Indonesia….another minor catastrophe strikes! I had (and maybe still have) another stomach bug this week. I threw up twice in the same day and totally lost my appetite mid dinner one night. No idea what it could be from! Maybe I’m still fighting off the cold I had a while back? Well today my stomach is feeling a bit better. I'm just taking it easy with what I eat. Mostly boiled eggs, rice, bread and jam, and cereal. Don't have much energy but I did some yoga today and it felt really good to stretch everything out. My hot water is fixed for my shower too so that was great tonight to have a hot shower. The plumber that fixed my water is so freakin cute! Grandpa type, smaller than me, super skinny, big old mouth full of crooked teeth, super nice, and speaks very very softly. Pa Paulie is his name. He is Muslim and has had 5 wives. We don't think all at the same time, maybe he has divorced or some died, because we don't know how a lil man like that could handle dealing with 5 wives at once!

We had a meeting on Saturday with all the heads of each department and I'm starting to realize what my role is in Alor more. Feels like the dust has been blown off a bit, and its a bit clearer. I am technical manager, and I deal with operating oysters. But also pretty much all things pearls. Harvesting, re-operating to grow a second pearl, collecting rejected pearls from the cleaning boats, and grading pearls. Also I'm responsible for helping Sugi organize before and after operations. This includes selecting the oysters into separate sizes, conditioning them before operation, and X-raying to check how the pearl is growing. I've also taken the divers under my wing as well, and they are my responsibility now. I make their dive calendar, where they should be diving every day and collect their data from their dives. And! I am helping with the Mutiara Kids (Pearl Kids) program on Sundays teaching English to the kiddos. So a lot really! And about the Mutiara kids. The word is out that I will be teaching English on Sundays and everyone is interested, parents and kids alike. I am a horrible teacher and I know it! I’m not my mom teaching kindergarten for 20 something years! I don’t have the patience, and I probably seem rude…so we’ll see how it goes. Think I will teach them some slang English, as I always want to know the slang to fit in when I’m learning a language. Like “What’s up?”

A bit more info on the Alor staff. Daniel oversees a lot of personnel issues, finances, government, admin, sorting a lot out for Alor, he is the head. Then Tomek runs the hatchery but he has Moulia as hatchery manager and she is really good. He has also been running the cleaning boats schedules and making sure they stay on task, etc. We are making new long lines and Tomek has been putting together GPS and depth profiles to see how the bottom looks as its a couple hundred feet deep in some spots! Tomek also transports baby oysters to grow at another site a 5 hour boat ride away. He has been running those trips lately. Think he has 3 more trips to do this month!

So ya that's kind of helpful to know where I stand. I have been pretty busy at work lately getting ready for the next operation. A lot of checks to tell if the oysters are ready to operate. Oh and I even spoke a little at our meeting today. I said, "Terimah kasih semua untuk bantu dengan Molah. Molah kerja bagus untuk operasi." Basically...Thank you all for your help with Molah. (the operation site I work at, that everyone has been fixing up) Molah works good for operations. Then I asked Daniel to say some other things for me! But I'm getting there! Really can see an improvement in my bahasa Indonesia. When I explain something to the workers, be it mechanics, electricians, or my tech girls and they actually understand what I’m trying to convey, as I’m walking away I say to myself, “Yes! That’s one point for me! I’m getting this Indonesian-ness!”

I tentatively have a flight booked for my leave in April. Not definite until March 10th. I get into Orlando April 9th, and will fly out of there to Nassau probably to help James take the boat he works on over to Palm Beach. I am planning to be back in the Fort, April 25 and sticking around the area until my flight out of Orlando on May 1st. Daniel and I went for a muck dive in the bay this Sunday morning. Just an easy dive in the bay, near our long lines about 30 feet deep. I think we should call it Nudi-cutie after all the nudibranches we saw! I counted 20! Big beautiful and colorful nudis. 2 species I have never seen before either. For those of you that aren’t divers, a nudibranch is like a slug of the reef. Really wild looking little creatures. They can be orange, white, black, yellow, and neon green with different sizes of ridges all over the body. Not much else to see on the dive except for the nudis, sparse coral heads, and little reef fish. We watched the movie The Town on Saturday night. First time I had seen it and it’s a pretty good movie. I only slept in until 7am on my relaxing Sunday off. Will def be taking a nap later on today. Mutiara kids today are having a field day of sorts. Like the ones we used to have in elementary school. Relay races with flags, balancing a marble on spoon in your mouth, and doing the chicken dance! Ha! We’ll see how it goes! We aren't playing with the kids until 5pm so having a relaxing Sunday in the meantime!

Mid February

Happy Belated Valetines Day! I guess they do Valentines day here but definitely not to the extent we do at home. Before I get into this week’s post I just wanted to share 2 words used in just about every sentence in Indonesian. Sudah means already, and belum means not yet. Ya these 2 little words are used for everything! Its crazy! Have you eaten? Are you married? Have you finished your work? Etc, etc. They are also used as past and future tenses when you put them with verbs. Like it is not yet working, or it is already working. My Indonesian is slowly progressing, but I haven’t really been full on studying it every day like I should.

This week I did another 2 days of harvesting pearls and re-operating them so maybe they can grow an even better pearl after another 2 years. I also wrote a mid month report this week on what I’ve been up to so far in February. The Alor government have decided to build a harbor right where one of our main sites is and where my building for operations is. It is such a mess! The government signed the contract build this 2 years ago and just told us about it a week before the supply ship arrived to start constructing the pier! They want to turn this harbor into a major port. Pretty bad news for us, and we are trying to get them to pay us so we can move all our gear to a new site away from the polluted harbor water.

Mid week there was a birthday party at the site. A woman that works in the hatchery, her daughter had her first birthday. It was pretty stinking cute! All the village kids came all dressed to the T. They usually play with us in just raggedy clothes. Some were there with their moms that are my technicians in operations. All the kids wore Disney birthday hats and sat on 2 benches facing each other. The birthday girl was in the middle in her too big for her pink poufy Easter dress. They sang to her and then had some birthday cake. A few had presents but most just had a note to give her and they all went up (literally at once! Freaked the birthday girl right out and she started crying!) to give her their present and a kiss, and then they got their party favor…fried noodle in a to-go container! So different than a 1 yr old’s birthday in the US! I thought it was really interesting to be a part of that. Also the same night as the birthday party there was a meeting of the chief of the community and other heads of the village here at our site. We are in the process of getting the locals to have a market here once a week with livestock, veggies, fruits, and seafood that we can buy for our kitchen instead of driving the 20 minutes to the town to buy our food. The villagers really seem like they are for it, so it should work out. Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk in the village with Lita (Daniel’s wife). We went through a path and down to the water to the mechanics house (the mechanic at our site). He is a grandpa and he had lots of kids running around, along with chickens and ducks. Nice big garden and a huge tree of this fruit we like that looks like a small mango but tastes like a granny smith apple. He got the kids to collect some fruit for us. And then he walked it all the way back to work with us and wouldn’t even let us pay for it. So nice! Today is Sunday, my day off. I’ve been sick with a cold this past week so I’m just resting trying to get over it. We did play with the kids this morning. More than 30 of them! Right in the beginning a group of girls had to go to dance class, so an extra 10 of them left right away. They do come super early on Sunday mornings and wait around for us to wake up. So next Sunday we have agreed that they are going to come at 5 pm. Much better to have a relaxing morning without a bunch of kids screaming Ibu Lita! Tata Tanya! (Mother Lita, Aunt Tanya) They had fun with us. A little group of about 6 kindergarteners had leggos to play with and I think it was their first time with leggos! They were just loving it! We had other activities for them to do, but they just thought the leggos were so cool how you could stick them together! Pretty cute! They were trying to use all the leggos together to make a tower. We also had a coloring contest and played hot potato with them. After they left I laid out in the sun and took some dips in the bay to cool off. Just relaxing today, its so nice! I attempted to get the hot tub going on Saturday and just fill it up with water as a cool tub, but no luck with that maybe this week we can get it sorted out. Well that’s been my week!

The Last 2 Busy Weeks

Sorry I’ve been bad about blogging! Its been a busy 2 wks! We have been harvesting pearls and selecting oysters by size and getting them ready for the operations in March. Its been pretty full on. Wake up at 5:30 am and work until 5 pm. The harvesting is pretty cool. Some really different pearls too, a lot of huge gold ones. They are from the previous company and these oysters were huge! The size of dinner plates. I get to dig inside the oyster with my fingers and find the pearls. That bit is fun, but all the prep to do a harvest is not so much fun. Just a lot of labor intensive steps that take forever! Oh and we have been having some oyster ceviche and fried oyster muscle and it was so freakin delicious! I guess we sell it for $80/kg so that's pretty good! But we should really open a fine dining restaurant in the Hyatt and these fancy places where we have showrooms. Its tastes like a conch with the consistency of a scallop! Yum!!

I’m thoroughly enjoying my Sunday off today! I’ve been crocheting! I crocheted a square coaster so far and I’m working on a beanie now. I will have to stock up on more yarn when I get home. It is kind of relaxing and chills me out listening to music and crocheting. Such a geek I know! I’ve almost finished one book and I haven’t even broken out the paint set yet, so I’m not bored yet! Today and last Sunday the village kids came and Lita and I played with them by our house. Last week we played with play dough and origami. Today we played tag with Tomek as the monster and I was safe. Tomek is huge and scary already to these little kiddos and some of them were yanking on my clothes and even crying they were so scared of him! Lol! Then we had a drawing contest and we hid lollipops in the yard and they went and found them. We are getting more and more each Sunday. The word is out that those bule (foreigners) are pretty fun! There were 22 of them today from 4-15 years old!

My bum leg is starting to feel better. Less tight and sore, so that’s good. I did break down and call our orthopedic doctor friend back in FL and he said I tore my gastenemic muscle in my calf. But it will heal by itself and in a few weeks. So no worries there! I finally got paid and got my vacation time sorted. Sounds like I will the operations here in mid March then go to Bali and do the operation there in late March, and then be home from April 9th -May 1st. Will spend a bit of time at home and then go see James in the Caribbean, where ever he may be at that time. Things are definitely going better with Sugi. She talks slower to me, just to me, when she is talking to someone else around me its still 100 miles a minute. Think she is warming up to me a bit. I've been asking about her kids and husband and things. She gets frustrated with how things are done in the office, and explains the problems to me. You know there is drama in every job!
We received a delivery of oysters on our ship from Bali too. We took a trip out in the bay to check the depths of our long lines. That was a fun afternoon to just get out and spend some time on the ship. My boss also came in for a few days and he brought steak and sausage! What a treat! I hunted down some cheese in Kalabahi village, but its Kraft singles and come block of processed crap with more ingredients than cheese should have! Ha! My bahasa Indonesia is getting better too! This week when we did the selection, Sugi wasn’t there for 2 days and I had to work directly with the girls and give instructions and things all in Indonesian. They are all really nice and want to help me and they want to learn English too. I sat with them for lunch one day and they all wanted to pose with me for pictures on their cell phones and befriend me on facebook!

We did another muck dive this afternoon, and it was pretty mucky. Not much to see except mud and sticks and soft corals. Daniel assures us that muck diving is better in the dry season. We had time and air left so we went outside the bay and around the corner to a pretty island. The current was ripping but we did a great wall dive. Really fantastic, similar to Fijian wall dives I’ve done. Lots of colors and fish, healthy corals, and lots of action on the reef. Another busy week ahead with more harvesting and conditioning the oysters for their operation in March!