Wednesday, 17 May 2006 @ 6:31pm. Thanks to the person from Downunder for correcting my Indonesian from a previous blog post concerning phone registration. I accidentally typed the second SMS from when I was double-checking, rather than the first one that I got right after registration. 
Thanks to folks who have suggested taking pictures of the newspaper articles as well. We’re looking into that option right now. Someone suggested making use of the digital archives. We’ve looked into this and have run into two problems: (1) it’s expensive to either print or save the articles to a CD, and (2) the digital archives don’t always include photographs and captions. I need the photographs and captions because frequently the full stories are missing, and I still need to code those cases. We’re going to check another location to see about the completeness of their digital archives.
Still have a bit of a cough, but I feel a lot better than earlier last week - yeah! I think the sun helped… Julie and I ventured to Pulau Seribu (Thousand Islands - there’s actually only around 100-300 and even fewer are developed) last weekend. It turned out to be so pricey that we only spent one day there or rather a day and half including travel time. We visited Pulau Sepa. It was a small island - we walked around it in less than 10 minutes and we strolled! We were in the cheapest accomodations since we’re just students, but even that was ridiculously expensive. No hot water, mattresses on the floor, ants on the wall, rusty doors, broken toilet, etc., but we were essentially paying to be out of Jakarta. The main thing that was worth it was the food, which was served buffet style. We had fresh ikan kakap (snapper) for dinner for example. Pulau Sepa is about 1.5 hours by small boat/ferry from Ancol Marina, which is in North Jakarta. The water was a beautiful blue-green close to the island and dark blue farther out. Unfortunately, there was garbage in several parts of the area. Successful eco-tourism is very much lacking. One couldn’t help but wonder where all the money goes, especially since many tourists (domestic and international) pay a ton of money to visit the various islands… Julie and I waded into the water to check out some of the coral, which was not very colorful at all, but had interesting fish swimming by. I saw lots of cool fish with a simple pair of goggles. Think of the exotic fish one sees in tropical aquariums. I saw little bright blue and black fish. Fish with black and yellow stripes. Several fish that reminded me of black & whites (those yummy cookies in New York that have half black frosting and half white frosting). But then there were the pale pink aggressive fish. At first, I though, “Oh, how cute. Pink fish.” Before I knew it, I got bit on my leg! I think they were just a tad too territorial for my tastes. The next day when we went into the water, the pink fish left us alone, but funny enough, we got stung by a jellyfish! Didn’t see it coming at all. Didn’t see it after it stung us. It was a quick sting on my arm, different from the mini-chomp of the fish from the previous day. I had little bumps in a nice, neat row. All I could think was that these were more stories or fodder for my love-hate relationship with Jakarta. Pretty beach and fresh air, but can’t tame the wildlife. We also rented a little paddleboat of sorts for half an hour. We didn’t go out very far as the waves were strong. It was really nice to do something outdoorsy for once, however. I’ll try to post pictures at some point. My computer is in the States being repaired, so I don’t know the next time I’ll be able to upload pictures…
Now it’s been back to work. I hired a second assistant to help with certain kinds of data collection this month. I hope that goes well.
