I am in...
... Indonesia! (What did I say about how most of my posts begin, again?)
The weather here is incredible. Right now we're in the midst of an enormous thunderstorm, with lightning flashing all around. I stepped out of the climate-controlled conference room earlier and it was absolutely bucketing with rain, the kind of tropical torrential downpour that you never get in England, and yet still blessedly warm and humid, but not cloyingly so. I've experienced tropical wet-season before, but I still love it.
Gave my paper at the conference this morning and it was good; I got some useful comments and ideas to be incorporated into the next version (another step closer to the finished product!). Plus I wrote about half of another paper while I was sitting in the afternoon sessions -- well, I've got the structure down in abbreviated form and I've constructed the arguments for the main discussion in some detail; what I need to flesh out now is the background stuff (introduction etc) with proper references and elaborate on the implications of my argument. Depending on which way you look at it, either the hard part's done (the really creative part, that is) or it's still to come (polishing up the fine details and filling in the boring bits). Actually I think the latter is harder, but oh well... And I wrote a new section for a paper that's most of the way towards finished. Productivity R Us!
Other things I have done while in Indonesia:
* been the laziest tourist ever whilst in Jakarta. Did I go out and experience all the city had to offer? Noooo. Did I spend hours lying on a lounge chair by the hotel swimming pool sipping cocktails and reading? Yeeess. Sometimes it's deliciously luxurious to be a Bad Tourist.
* gone diving on Pulau Pramuka (part of Pulau Seribu, the "Thousand Islands" archipelago in the bay off Jakarta) and earned my Advanced Open Water qualification, yay!
* played hooky from the conference yesterday and gone to the Borobudur and Prambanan temples, two of Java's greatest archaeological and religious monuments. Impressive! Apparently Prince Charles was there yesterday too, assuming I understood first the guide giving some people a tour in Russian and then my non-English speaking Indonesian driver correctly, but I didn't see him. (Perhaps I didn't understand correctly after all!) And I stupidly managed to get sunburnt on my arms, which were worryingly red yesterday, but today I am miraculously recovered and only a deeper shade of brown, not red at all. Hurrah for inbuilt sun protection...
* had a real brain workout on the tour due to said non-English speaking Indonesian driver not, well, speaking English. Put it this way, he knew less English than I knew Bahasa, which is saying something! Luckily I was equipped with my handy phrasebook and Bahasa is a very phonetic language, which meant that any time he said something I didn't understand, I had a fair chance of being able to look it up in the dictionary and understand what he meant. Way to double (still not saying much!) your language skills in just an hour or so!
Am skipping the dinner tonight due to being still full of lunch; I do love Indonesian food, but the amount of gado-gado and spicy coconut soup I ate this afternoon makes it a bad idea to try putting more food in on top of it, and if I go then I know I won't be able to resist! Also having spent about ten hours conferencing already today, I'm thinking a quiet evening with my email, LJ and a book sounds pretty good. Pity it's still thunderstorming, or an evening swim would be divine...
The weather here is incredible. Right now we're in the midst of an enormous thunderstorm, with lightning flashing all around. I stepped out of the climate-controlled conference room earlier and it was absolutely bucketing with rain, the kind of tropical torrential downpour that you never get in England, and yet still blessedly warm and humid, but not cloyingly so. I've experienced tropical wet-season before, but I still love it.
Gave my paper at the conference this morning and it was good; I got some useful comments and ideas to be incorporated into the next version (another step closer to the finished product!). Plus I wrote about half of another paper while I was sitting in the afternoon sessions -- well, I've got the structure down in abbreviated form and I've constructed the arguments for the main discussion in some detail; what I need to flesh out now is the background stuff (introduction etc) with proper references and elaborate on the implications of my argument. Depending on which way you look at it, either the hard part's done (the really creative part, that is) or it's still to come (polishing up the fine details and filling in the boring bits). Actually I think the latter is harder, but oh well... And I wrote a new section for a paper that's most of the way towards finished. Productivity R Us!
Other things I have done while in Indonesia:
* been the laziest tourist ever whilst in Jakarta. Did I go out and experience all the city had to offer? Noooo. Did I spend hours lying on a lounge chair by the hotel swimming pool sipping cocktails and reading? Yeeess. Sometimes it's deliciously luxurious to be a Bad Tourist.
* gone diving on Pulau Pramuka (part of Pulau Seribu, the "Thousand Islands" archipelago in the bay off Jakarta) and earned my Advanced Open Water qualification, yay!
* played hooky from the conference yesterday and gone to the Borobudur and Prambanan temples, two of Java's greatest archaeological and religious monuments. Impressive! Apparently Prince Charles was there yesterday too, assuming I understood first the guide giving some people a tour in Russian and then my non-English speaking Indonesian driver correctly, but I didn't see him. (Perhaps I didn't understand correctly after all!) And I stupidly managed to get sunburnt on my arms, which were worryingly red yesterday, but today I am miraculously recovered and only a deeper shade of brown, not red at all. Hurrah for inbuilt sun protection...
* had a real brain workout on the tour due to said non-English speaking Indonesian driver not, well, speaking English. Put it this way, he knew less English than I knew Bahasa, which is saying something! Luckily I was equipped with my handy phrasebook and Bahasa is a very phonetic language, which meant that any time he said something I didn't understand, I had a fair chance of being able to look it up in the dictionary and understand what he meant. Way to double (still not saying much!) your language skills in just an hour or so!
Am skipping the dinner tonight due to being still full of lunch; I do love Indonesian food, but the amount of gado-gado and spicy coconut soup I ate this afternoon makes it a bad idea to try putting more food in on top of it, and if I go then I know I won't be able to resist! Also having spent about ten hours conferencing already today, I'm thinking a quiet evening with my email, LJ and a book sounds pretty good. Pity it's still thunderstorming, or an evening swim would be divine...