Surabaya

While wandering around the grounds of the city’s council building I was chased down by a lady who had just arrived in a group of cars. She asked me some questions about why I was here and I suddenly felt I may be in trouble for trespassing. But no, she took me over to and older lady who she introduced as the mayoress of the city. The Mayoress spoke some English and invited me inside the building to look around. She then organised for one of the security staff to show me some underground bunkers that are part of the building.

While walking through a park, singing attracted me to a performance space in the centre of the park. Teenage children, both boys and girls, were performing what looked to me like some sort of military style drill as per directions from a young man. What mad the moves interesting though is that they weren’t just set practised routines. The instructor was getting them to move a certain way purely from his instructions. Certain words meant certain moves so he was like a puppeteer…sort of.  I sat and watched and then they stopped, responded to further instructions and faced me and while looking me in the eye, sang a song. Fortunately this happened as a was using the video recording option on my SLR camera for the very first time. I got the lot (will get up here when I work out how). After playing back to Freddy that night, he explained they were welcoming me to Indonesia. I find out later that they may have been school kids doing some pre-military training. They were having a lot of fun and were very talented.

Woke up with a decent headache this morning and it wasn’t from the Bintang. I suspect the pollution here has something to do with it. Freddy says the life expectancy of men here is short. He is in his early 40s (so he says) and many of his friends have died, from disease brought on by unhealthy living. I would think the pollution would contribute to that.

There is no talk or news of the cattle trade drama here. I did see some chickens being badly treated, crammed in the back of a truck. I hope they weren’t from Australia!

PS: it is hard to find a beer in this town! Is that the Muslim influence? Oh…and smoking is allowed everywhere, restaurants, shopping centers, hotel rooms! But I have a solution – I’ve taken it up so I can cope!!!

PPS. I’ve only seen three flys (could be a handy symptom of the pollution) the whole time I’ve been here and the streets have less litter than the streets of Cairns, swept continuously by sweepers with straw brooms. What an amazing society.

PPPS. I apologise for the long blogs. Initially I intended to give you the follower priority and keep my blogs brief. Now I’ve decided to use the blog as a diary, selfish I know and a test to any follower. Stay with me please!