Article Archive for November 2015
A Visit to an English Cram School
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Yesterday, Sri invited me to visit her English school. It was all terribly confusing and somewhat unsatisfactory. The confusion extended even to the name of her school. In Indonesia, they call these schools “courses.” Sri attends the Alex Essential English Course. Every time I called it a school, someone corrected me and called it a course (pronounced “curse”). In my mind, you …
Hitting the Streets with My Real Camera
Friday, November 20, 2015
Day seven of my time in Sumatra has begun with more rain. It rained for much of last night, and it is quite wet outside. On the positive side, the rain brings down the temperature. I imagine that in the non-rainy season, it is much, much hotter here.
Yesterday, I finally got out what I think of as my real camera. Till then, …
Facebook Culture and Martabak Mesir
Thursday, November 19, 2015
This should be a short journal entry today. I don’t feel the urge to write much, and I didn’t do very much yesterday that I could write about. It was sunny in the morning, which was an encouraging sign, but then the rain clouds moved in and I had to run for cover for much of the day. I had plans to …
Changing Hotels and Meeting the People of Tanjungbalai
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
In the past, I’ve always had either a notebook and a pen (a very slow method of writing for me), or my AlphaSmart NEO (which is a brilliant and simple writing keyboard). This is the first time I’ve had a laptop computer let alone a laptop and a smartphone. It’s a bit overwhelming to have all this power at my fingertips, particularly …
The Obstacle Course – Walking in Tanjungbalai
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
I seem to be stuck in a time loop. Every morning is exactly like the previous one. I wake up after a long sleep but still feel fatigued. Then I hear the rain drumming on the roof. This morning was a bit different in that I also heard loud peals of thunder. My understanding was that during the monsoon season, it would …
First Full Day in Tanjungbalai, Sumatra
Monday, November 16, 2015
Well, according to my smartphone (which has access to the Internet), it is 8:30 in the morning. According to my watch, alarm clock, and computer, it is 9:30. It seems that the Internet is much smarter than me because it knew that the time in Sumatra was one hour different from the time in Malaysia. I honestly had no idea. The trip …
From Malaysia to Sumatra by Bicycle and Ferry
Sunday, November 15, 2015
I’m already in Sumatra inside a fairly grubby little hotel in the coastal and port town of Tanjungbalai. However, before I describe the hotel, I should go back to getting the tourist visa. For Indonesia, that can be challenging because they have a lot of rules about visas, and they change their rules often. Then they aren’t very good about keeping their …
Trip to Penang to Get an Indonesian Tourist Visa
Thursday, November 5, 2015
It’s been a while, so I thought it was time for a note from the “road.” It still isn’t much of a road, but at least it isn’t Kuala Lumpur. I’m in the George Town district of Penang about 5 hours by bus north of KL.
My journey here falls pretty firmly into the “things like this only seem to happen to me” …