Hello Spencer!!

It’s been a very exciting week for the Henks.  First of all, my sister Jennifer had her baby!  Spencer Philip was born on 3/24 and weighed in at 7lbs 13 oz.  Ben and I are so happy for Jen and Russ and cannot wait to meet Spencer!  It’s times like these that make it difficult to be so far from home.  It’s great living on the other side of the world and experiencing new things, but being away from family at important moments like this is so hard.  I just hope to hold Spencer before he enters preschool!  Congrats to Jen and Russ!  Be sure to send us lots of pictures.  Good luck!

 There is a saying we have here to explain things that seem so illogical and beyond understanding:  TII.  This Is Indonesia.  Our power goes out but the neighbors 2 houses away have it?  TII.  The gardener prefers scissors to a lawn mower to cut the grass??  TII.  Keep that in mind as you keep reading:

 The other exciting news is that we had some packages arrive from the states!  You have to understand that we NEVER get mail here.  We don’t even have a mailbox.  This story will hopefully help you to understand how things run in Indonesia.  So when we were told at the end of February that both sets of parents had mailed off boxes to us, we were thrilled and could hardly wait.  Both were sent through the post office with an estimated arrival date of 5-10 days.  Great!  Well, 2 weeks passed and nothing.  No problem, maybe it takes a few days to get through customs.  3 weeks go by, and nothing.  Having never received mail in Indonesia, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I at least thought that if something did arrive, I would get a notice or something.  After about 3 1/2 weeks, I was out shopping with a few other wives.  (By the way, when I say shopping, I mean out shopping for necessities for the house.  One cannot just go shopping to the mall or Kohl’s to look for something to put around the house or new clothes.  It really is a full day process since you cannot just get everything you need in one store.  Matahari has ziplock bags and a good selection of snack food.  Galael has cheese, olive oil, tomato paste, and pickles.  Chandra has the best selection of meat but you must go in the morning because they run out of the good chicken [good chicken is the kind that does not have the head, neck, and feet attached] and they have the best produce section.  No one stop shopping!)  Sorry for the side note.   Where was I?  Oh right, out shopping with 2 other wives and I brought up the subject of the packages we are waiting for.  Gail, who has been here nearly 2 years, suggested we just drop by the PO to let them know I’m waiting and see if they know anything.  The driver (who can translate for me) and I go to the package area and the PO workers, upon finding out my name, know exactly who I am!  My packages are there!  I was kind of thinking to myself that I lucked out by going to the PO on the day they arrived.  Come to find out, they had been there since March 7th–I went to the PO on the 21st.  So, what’s the problem?  I still don’t know.  I also don’t know why I had to pay 14,000 Rp to take the packages with me (about $1.50).  These things aren’t explained because when asked about why they were not delivered, the workers said that if another week had gone by then they would have sent a notice.  Question not answered. 

Doesn’t really make sense, but whatever, we got our packages!  TII.

This occurred on a Wednesday.  Two days later on Friday, I got the notices that the packages arrived and I should come pick them up.  TII. 

 Anyways, it was very exciting to get the packages and open them–thanks so much to both families for taking the time to put the stuff together and mail them off.  One complaint though–both packages came at the same time!  Let’s try and coordinate a timetable of some sort to space these things out!  I’m kidding of course!  If anyone ever wants to send us things like Doritos or a pizza, that would be great!

 I’ll leave now with a few photos of Ben since I’m sure you’ve come to expect silly photos of him on every post!  These were taken at Indonesia’s version of a buffet.  Instead of you going to the buffet with a plate, the buffet comes to you.  One minute after sitting down, five people began bringing bowls and bowls of various foods.  One dish was a fish that Ben took a liking to. 

–Sarah

Another Post from Ben…

Hello all of you fellow blog followers, I thought it was about time for me to write a bit given Sarah has been doing all the writing and doesn’t write about some of the experiences I have at work and so forth.  First of all, some of you may be wondering if we’ve been affected by any of the things you might have seen in the news.  It appears that this area is quite the hotbed for activity.  Since we’ve been here there has been airplane crashes in fairly close proximity to us, a 6.3 earthquake about 200 or so miles away from us, a couple of fires on ferries which were close to here also near Jakarta in the strait that separates Sumatra and Java, and the long since old news of a flood that had several hundred thousand people without their homes in Jakarta.  All I have to say about all of this is that it is good that we are not in Jakarta, but we are close enough to keep us on our toes.  All in all we have not been affected by any of these above items thank goodness!  During one of our first weeks here it rained very hard all day and we had about 12-14″ of water on all of the streets here, cars just barreling through the water, motorcycles doing the same, bogging down and so forth.  The local people do not keep the drain system clear of debris therefore it cannot drain as fast as it needs to when the rain comes down hard, this is what Jakarta suffered from.  Anyhow, enough of the doom and gloom here, we have been doing very well despite what it may seem on the news! Other than the occasional 3″ roach in the house, there isn’t much new at the house.  I guess I did notice that I suspect a rat has burrowed a hole in my front yard.  I’m guessing he staked it out due to the location of the trash we put out each day.  Speaking of rats there are quite a few around however they only come out at night, they are very large rats.  There are no problem of rats in the house because there is no way for them to live inside, with everything being concrete and some sort of stone in the house, it isn’t possible for them to be in the walls or foundation, this is a good thing!

I guess I could tell you about the interesting drive to work I had a week or so ago, I saw my first accident here and it was quite interesting.  All of you know from previous posts that driving is pretty much nuts here, no holds barred no rules type of driving, this is why none of us working here drives and we have a driver, too high of a liability if we were to get in an accident.  Anyways, the accident I saw involved a motorbike and a car, the car bumped over into the bike.  The car I was in was stopped at one of the only intersections in town that has a traffic light that people actually obey, it is the busiest intersection in the area.  Anyhow, we were at the front stopped waiting for the light when this happened.  The bike had two people on it, a guy driving and a woman on the back.  After the car hit the bike, I’m not sure who was at fault, it looked like they both were, but evidently the car crushed the lady’s ankle because she was screaming in pain.  The guy then jumped off of the bike, put the kickstand down, didn’t even attend to the woman, ran over to the car which had stopped, and started pounding the driver of the car!  While he was punching feverishly the woman fell off the bike to the ground, a couple of other people came over to help her, she couldn’t put any weight on her ankle.  All this while, there was police at this intersection who were watching, they didn’t come over and help or anything, just were sitting there watching it all play out.  About that time the light turned green and we cut off the oncoming traffic to make our turn to get to work.  Anyhow, it was quite the experience, they obviously take the law into their own hands here…

 In case any of you are wondering, work is going well for me.  We are staying on schedule for the time being having hit a major milestone getting the refractory cured in the boiler and now are looking to get our start-up burners fired for the first time in April, this is a big step to getting coal into the Unit.  Long ways from done but we’re doing well.  I can’t remember if I have mentioned in the previous blog, but at work the Unit is about 150 ft tall, no elevator, hence I get a good workout each day in the sweltering heat, it is never below about 83 degrees with higher humidity.  I’m hoping by the time we get around to commissioning the second Unit that the elevator will be done!  Other interesting items at work are less than quality scaffolding and a workforce that would rather do nothing than work so I fight this daily also.  A couple of weeks ago I noticed some newcomers to the plant site, a pack or gander or pride or whatever you call it of goats!  I’ve never seen goats allowed onto a power plant site so it was new to me.  I watched them a bit only to see one of the little ones jump into where the oil pumps are and so I followed it and found it nibbling on some of the wiring!  I promptly threw a rock and hit it in the butt and off it went, but this might give you an idea of the craziness for what is allowed here.  The guys onsite who are walking the beams sometimes are not tied off at all, and when they are the type of fall restraint they have is a simple rope that attaches to a belt around their waist, if they fell it would snap them in half and probably leave them paralyzed!  With all of this being said, I double check all scaffolding and try to stay aware as possible for an oddity that I am not prepared for, what is next, maybe water buffalo on the premises?  You might laugh but that is not out of the question!

 Yes, I need to go to bed and get this long blog wrapped up but there are a couple of other items I wanted to mention, first is the interesting guys Sarah saw walking down our street the other day, it was two guys with cows/bulls (look like a type of Brahma type with the hump on their back) walking past our house.  Not something you see everyday I guess unless you are here.  I am going to attempt to attach some pictures at the end here when I finish so you can see.

Well, the only other interesting happenings is that Sarah finally went to the pool with the ladies the other day, quite a nice pool but it rained on them, I will attempt to attach those pictures as well…  Also, Sarah and I went out to eat last night with a couple of the guys I work with as well as the fan vendor, his wife and his wife’s brother.  We ate at a Japanese restaurant and it was the best food we’ve had since we arrived, it was similar to like a Kanki type place in the states if you are familiar where they cook it in front of you and so forth.

 

Today Sarah, myself and Chris M. from work went out golfing, Sarah did awesome!  She parred a par 3 that was about 175 yards long!  She hit her tee shot about 7-8 feet from the pin and two putted!  I was pretty impressed with her play!  We are going to try to play a little more, she has the knack for it!  I’ll let her fill you in more in her next blog, this one is too long and needs to end finally…

I hope not to make it so long between the times of my writing as I did this time, I know I am leaving out many oddities that you might be interested such as how they make sand here on the island, or the mysterious naked man on the way to work, just so many that I’m probably missing…  I hope this all reaches you well and please comment on what you’d like us to write more about or to take more pictures of!  (and no I have no pictures of the naked man!)

Take care all….

Ben

Our weekend

Hello Everyone,

We had a very eventful weekend and were able to get out quite a bit.  Friday night we went out to dinner to a local place for Indonesian food, then we went out again Saturday night!  Saturday we went to a hotel in town called the Indra Puri that does have some “western” food on the menu.  They’ve got steaks and chicken, but they smother that stuff with a mushroom sauce, so it’s not really like steaks back home!  After dinner we went out to play some pool with some friends.  A new couple arrived the weekend before, so we’ve got some more people to hang out with now!  On Sunday (Ben’s first day off in 13 days!) we went out to do a little shopping and to look for a new fridge.  The fridge we have already is small, which wouldn’t usually be a big deal since it’s just the two of us.  But we keep lots of cold drinks in the fridge so those take up a lot of room.  Also, I can’t count on finding quality meat at the market every week, so I stock up on that and other things which makes the freezer very crowded!  We found an inexpensive fridge that we think will work out quite well!  They even delivered it to us.  Here are some new photos.  Click on them to get all the info!

             

Hope you’ve enjoyed the pics of our exciting weekend.  I’m sure you don’t get to read many blogs about buying a new fridge!  Love you and miss you all!

Sarah and Ben

Ben’s New Look

Ben has been a little lax in the shaving department since being in Indonesia.  He finally decided to get a little creative the other night so here are the before and after photos!