Adventures In Pearl Farming: To recap the last few crazy weeks...

So I’m sorry it has been forever since I have blogged. Sounds like I am in church. I’m sorry father it has been forever since my last confession! Haha! Anyways I have been swamped at work and haven’t had the time after work to sit down and type. So back to my birthday on May 23. We had a bbq that night with all of the tech girls that I work with. They made a new hot sauce (sambal) that I really like called bling ding. Its like a sweet bruschetta more than a hot sauce. The little things around here, like discovering you love a new hot sauce, make all the difference! I didn’t get thrown off the dock like they usually do on your birthday, so that was a plus. I have been wanting to try bettle nut. Bettle nut is kind of like the local tobacco. It’s a nut that turns red when you chew it with chalk and some kind of green twig. It makes you feel a bit loopy and you can’t feel your mouth (kind of like novocain at the dentist). Well I didn’t want to try it in front of everyone in case it made me do something stupid. So the other night Daniel and I sat on our porch and I tried it. Badly! I don’t have bettle nut chewing skills what so ever! You are only supposed to chew it on one side of your mouth and don’t swallow at all! Tastes horrible. Well ya I was drooling and chewing it all in my mouth and spitting it down my leg. Tried 2 different nuts, first one was sour and bad I think, and the second was still bad. I’m not a big fan of the bettle nut chewing. Tomek is a regular pro chewing at work and stuff. Lol!

A friend of the family that reads this blog was asking for more details about the process and what actually goes on to seed oysters to make pearls. Well I’m sorry but I don’t think I can talk about that part of my job freely on the internet because of trade secrets and all. Its all confidential. Not even sure if I can be writing this blog really! So I try to keep it brief when it comes to what I actually do at my work. Just give you guys an overall idea. Sorry I can’t divulge more!

The xray session is now finished in Alor. The machine is packed up and sent back to Bali. There were a few mistakes along the way like mixing two separate groups together and things, but overall it went pretty well and we finished on time. Now it is just business as usual with the normal cleaning schedule until we start operations here in August. My new vacation time is now in Aug/Sept so I can be in Alor for the ops session here. I plan on seeing my family in Washington and spending some time with James in New England (somewhere?) over my break. I may be staying in North Bali when I come back from leave, as they have a few crazy months of operations there. More on the work front, we had one of our ships come to Alor last Sunday and bring us oysters. They have already been seeded so they will just be grown out here. Was quite a day, my first unloading. Started at 4am and finished about 2pm. At the first it was easy, one tank got unloaded and hung on one long line. And then towards the end it got super sloppy with lots of small groups hung where ever! We will sort it out in the coming months. So these early mornings at work have left me sick. I have a bit of a cold and I don’t even think I caught it from anyone but myself. We didn’t have a day off last week so we have been working non-stop. I am just all congested and tired. Rested some this weekend though as we were back to our normal schedule with half day off on Saturday and the whole day off on Sunday.

I have still been doing Mutiara Kids with this girl Tini helping. It’s a bit manic. Loads of kids show up and they are just naughty. Yelling, kicking each other, crying. Just bad. They wanted to celebrate my birthday and we gave them each a little package of rice and they were all hitting each other and crying because they thought they wouldn’t get one. Even though there was enough for everyone. I made them an obstacle course that day and it was the first one that they had done ever I think and they liked it. I just got done with them today and I sent this boy home early because he was being a brat. He hit someone when we were playing a game so I had the 2 boys sit out, and then during another game he kicked someone after he said he was going to be good. Well I set an example of him and had security escort him right out. I said, “Dua kali!?” Ya dua kali, kamu pulan. Sampai jumpa minggu depan. Means…2 times! Yes 2 times, you go home. See you next week. Oh I was pissed! So ya he better be good next week.

I haven’t had any luck getting a sailboat. In March it was going to be cheap, and now in June they upped the price because they found out a foreigner wanted it. So it was $25 and now its up to $70! Def not worth $70 and I don’t want them to feel like they can rip off a foreigner, so I can just do without. Its super windy here in the afternoons and it kind of kills me a bit that I can’t be out zooming around the bay in the wind. Grr…. Maybe later I will get one. I haven’t been studying my Indonesian either. I should be studying more, you can tell my vocab is slacking. Just takes a lot of effort after sitting behind my desk all day to sit down and study. I’m not in school anymore you know! I have been crochetting up a storm lately. I have made a hat, a scarf (until I ran out of the yarn!), and a head band so far. Really enjoying it too. So grandma of me! I have been getting along with Daniel well, Tomek is still in Lembata covering for a guy that works there who is on vacation. Daniel and I have been watching this TV series called Homeland and really getting into it. Its pretty good. Today we took a boat out and snorkeled near outside of bay. It was a great snorkeling/dive spot, beautiful colorful healthy reef. Our compressor is broken at the moment so we just went for a snorkel. Below are some pics of people at my work. Enjoy! I will try to get better at keeping up with this blog. Sorry!