Still in business

Highlight of my weekend: Priesthood Session of General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ with my son. I have looked forward to attending this session of conference with him ever since he was born because I love going to this meeting twice a year myself and love the bond I feel with other priesthood holders while attending it. The challenge this year is a couple of things. First, priesthood session is live 7 am to 9 am in our time zone but not broadcast over the Internet, only by satellite. Second, our branch holds regular meetings, starting at 9 am on that Sunday. Third, if they did the broadcast before church over satellite at our church building it would likely be in Indonesian since that is what they speak here. So I decided instead of going to the church the next week to listen to the meeting in Indonesian that I would download it and watch it at home with my son. We put our church clothes on, got some ice cream at a local market and then settled in to watch it after the other kids went to bed on Saturday night. It was almost like the real thing, except I didn't back my car in to the parking space at our house.

LDS General Conference

U.S. House Chamber

Highlight of my weekend 2: Watching all of the sessions of General Conference at home. Since our branch, and all the others in Indonesia watch the Conference the weekend after in Indonesia at the meetinghouse in Indonesian, we watched the sessions at home in English on our own. I downloaded all the sessions and connected my computer to our big television. It was awesome. Our kids even listened some of the time!
Frustration of my week: Waiting for Congress to pass a budget. I work very hard and wish they could pass budgets on time so I can do the work they've mandated me to do more efficiently.
Relief of my week: A budget passed and the government will not be shut down.
Frustration of my week 2: A couple of days or so of sickness bad enough to make me feel a little miserable: congestion, headache, tiredness, etc.
Relief of my week 2: I feel like I am getting better after going home from work early one day, skipping a meeting and getting a lot more sleep than usual. Just an occasional cough lingers on.
Question of my week: Why do mosquitoes love me so much? I have been bitten this week at least 20 times. Almost every one while in my own house. Not sure how so many are inside my house all of the sudden or why if the numbers were always the same why they're biting me more now. But I itch everywhere. I have them on my neck, arms, elbows fingers, knees, calves, and ankles. The night before last I woke up a little after 3:30 am because one buzzed so close to my ear that the sound woke me up.

What's interesting this week?

Let's see. . .
What's interesting this week?
Still a bunch of Emails to go through from the time while I was gone last week to Hong Kong. It's hard to get through them all when they just keep coming!
Work continues to be interesting. There's always plenty going on. I'm never bored. In fact, time seems to be going so fast.

LDS Conference Center in Salt Lake

Today was a busy Sunday for me: I had to conduct sacrament meeting, open and close the adult Sunday School and attend the primary class for the older kids in between conducting Sunday School, conduct opening exercises of priesthood meeting, teach the lesson for the young men in their priesthood meeting, and process donations after church. Luckily, I didn't have any other meetings or anything after that. If I was in the U.S. I would have been watching General Conference today, but since it's broadcast live in the middle of the night everyone here watches it rebroadcast during our day next week. Looking forward to watching it and watching the priesthood session with my son. We'll probably watch it on the internet late Saturday night or something after the younger ones have gone to bed.

In other news . . .

Sometimes found on their backs, legs twitching

I found out that cockroaches actually do fly sometimes! There was one on the curtain in my bedroom a little higher than I can reach. I got a magazine and a container thinking I would sweep it off into the container, cover it with the magazine and leave it for someone else to kill (our house staff maybe?). But it didn't quite happen that way. Just as I pushed the curtain back and began to sweep it off, it began to fly, missed the container, hit my hand (gross!), and flew past me, landing on my bed! I jumped over to sweep it off again, but it didn't go straight down and landed on my bag (sick-o!). I tried to move it so I could put the container down on top of it and it ran under my bed. In the short time it took me to reach over there and look under, I couldn't see it anywhere. It's dark under there, but even after getting a flashlight I couldn't find it. I looked all over the room and behind things and couldn't find it. There's a big space under the panel behind our bed that is part of the wall. My wife and I figured it must have gone under there. When I got up in the morning I noticed the container in the bathroom over a cockroach. It turns out my wife got up very early to use the restroom and there it was. (Hopefully that's the same one and not another).

March on

The cardboard boat race

I've considered not doing this blog anymore after missing a couple of weeks. I do best when I can just continue on in a regular pattern. If I miss doing it for too long, it will be hard for me to start again because it feels too overwhelming to go back and summarize. But I have decided to march on and keep posting.
March has been a busy month, as they all seem to be these days.
One of the biggest things is that my oldest turned 12 and I was able to ordain him a deacon. It has been great seeing him take on Aaronic priesthood responsibilities and watching him as he passes the sacrament and helps take care of the building. It has also been fun to have him in the Aaronic priesthood meeting with me, since I am still teaching the lessons every week there. It is a little different to remember to say everything twice in the lessons, once in English and once in Indonesian. I don't want anyone to get shortchanged so I try to make sure to repeat things evenly in both directions and translate comments from the youth.
There were also some big things at the school this month. There was a big production where they march all of the kids by country with a flag like the Olympics and then have them perform something that has to do with their country. My wife and children, of course, were really involved in it. It was fun to see. There was also a race on Pi day (March 14, 3.14) of boats that the middle school students built from cardboard and then raced in the school swimming pool. It was also a lot of fun. My son's group spent a lot of time on it in the months leading up to it and did really well.

Buddha on a peak in Hong Kong

We had a really fun vacation in Hong Kong for spring break this past week. We did so many things and spent the entire day every day out and about. Some friends of ours met us there and went around with us which was also really nice and fun for us even if it may not have been as much fun for them to just do family things.
Among other things, one of the highlights was going to Disneyland with our children from open to close. For the youngest it was his first time and for the one just older than that the last time we went was too long ago to remember. I can't believe that our entire family went on the Space Mountain roller coaster at the same time! Since the lines were really short, some of us went multiple times. We also loved going on the Buzz Lightyear ride and trying to rack up as many points as possible shooting the little Zurg targets with a laser. We had some pretty awesome scores. A tip if you go: the ones that move are worth more points when you hit them and you can just keep hitting those as fast as you can to really accumulate points. (I guess it's pretty clear I liked this one too.)

Hong Kong Temple

Anyway, there were a lot of other fun things to do like take the cable car on Hong Kong island and go to the peak, go to the Buddha statue on the tram, check out markets, go on the ferry across the bay, ride the MTR, watch all the people, see the tall buildings, find places to eat, find our way around, etc. The main reason we chose to go to Hong Kong for spring break is so that we could go to the temple since we don't have one here in Indonesia. It was good to go to the temple again even if a little challenging since I do not speak any Chinese languages. The very best part was that my oldest was able to go to do proxy baptisms for his first time. He had a good experience and really wants to go again. We already have plans.
It was great to be on vacation and get away to some place really different from where we're living, especially some place as clean and modern as Hong Kong, but it's always nice to come back home, too. I'm familiar with how things work here and my body is definitely more used to the warm weather. I wore my jacket almost the entire time in Hong Kong and it felt cold since the temperature never even made it as high as the low temperature here in Indonesia.
I'll go back to work tomorrow and tackle the hundreds of Emails that have accumulated as well as all of the rest of the work I have to do. It's a good thing I like the work! Just marching on, continuing the blog and finishing up March.

Hong Kong street

Converge

Sometimes a lot of different things converge at the same time. This was one of those weeks.
For months I have been working on assuring that the imposed implementation of a set of consular services by an outside contractor works for our post. It has been challenging and I am grateful for the help of a great colleague in Jakarta who was great about remembering the needs of our small post throughout the process. We are the customers to some degree but it effects our customers for visa services and we want it to be done right. This entailed going over everything that was proposed and making sure that it was as much as we could before it launched. Part of the service includes a Web site for making appointments for visa interviews. The experiences I had in my previous job were very helpful for managing this and also seeing the mistakes that were being made. But after months of delays, it launched this week! Very exiting, but now we still have a lot of work trying to figure out how to make it work for us and pass on lessons learned to others who have not yet made the change.
We also had some trainers in this week to refresh and update us on the consular computer applications we use every day. They are still working with us but have done a great job so far helping us use the applications better and more efficiently.

Meeting with students at a school after a presentation

On Saturday I worked at an education fair promoting education in the United States. We had a great turnout. I got to stand at a booth representing the consulate and answer questions. I was joined for a few minutes by another colleague of mine, and the Consul General herself, and even for a few minutes with the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia who was visiting Surabaya! I had some interesting questions and felt like I said, "I don't know," quite a bit. "What is the best university for a masters in accountancy?" "What university is the best for a degree in aquaculture?" "How long does it take for me to get an immigrant visa?" "How can I get a scholarship?" That last one was asked dozens of times. 4 hours, hundreds of people, routine and crazy questions. Pretty fun. I also got to speak for 45 minutes about how to get a student visa. Seems like a pretty dry subject to me. I tried to spice it up, but really couldn't think of a good way to do it. It's a little like math, do this and this to get this. Necessary but hard to love unless you love technicalities. (I love technicalities, so I get into it a little but I know not everyone shares the love.) There were probably 100 people in the room listening to my presentation. It was standing-room only! I struggled to find a few minutes this week to put things together for this and some other presentations I needed to do next week that were cancelled or postponed at the last minute. But it all came together in the end. You will probably be able to take a look at information and pictures from the fair on our consulate Facebook page very soon, http://www.facebook.com/Surabaya.USConsulate.
I think I have to thank my previous job for a lot of experience in many of the things I did this week. That certainly made it a lot easier and less stressful than it could have been otherwise.
I guess in a way that means even my previous job converged into my week. And it seemed to work out.

Still warm

Rice Fields near Poso

Last week I went on a business trip to Central Sulawesi, one of the provinces of Indonesia, and visited the cities of Palu and Poso. I had some interesting experiences there, met lots of people, had fun visiting some schools, met some U.S. Citizens living there, and met a family living there who are the only members of my church in Palu. Sometimes in our church we think it is challenging to have a demanding church calling, a lot of church activities, etc., and it is. But it is also a big challenge to not have any other church members to do anything with and always just being on your own. It was good for them and for me to meet.

Drying cocoa beans by side of road

The whole area has beautiful thick forests, high mountains and the sea. The part of the province near Poso has tons of cocoa trees, rice fields, and fish. There were goats, chickens, some dogs and cats, and people wandering around on almost every street. It was great.
I didn't write about it when I got back because our internet was down all afternoon and evening Sunday when I have time to do it. Then during the week I was sick. I don't like being sick especially since I feel sick enough not to feel like doing anything but not sick enough to not actually do anything.
I gave another talk in church yesterday, but the time was pretty well out by the time my talk came up so I had to cut things down and just share a little and do my best in Indonesian. It's a little more challenging to do that in another language, but luckily a week before I had spent a whole week in Central Sulawesi listening to and speaking with people in Indonesian. My usual daily interactions in Indonesian are much shorter and less in depth so this was a big boost to helping me communicate. The talk worked out fine.

Cool Mosque in Palu

I must be out of practice blogging because I'm having a hard time writing. My apologies to any who read this.

Veggies!

River near Poso

Boats off the shore

Homes over calm water

Rats!

The exiting thing last week was that we found out what has been making noise in our ceiling for a couple of months. We all had our guesses: a mouse, a bird, a lizard, a gecko, nothing. But we had a trap put up there to catch whatever it was (someone went up before that to take a look and told us it was a small tikus, which could be a big mouse or a small rat). Anyway, as you may guess by the title, it was a small rat. The great part about it is that it does not wake us up at night anymore and we don't hear anything scratching around up there anymore. The bad part is that it sat in a cage in front of my house before someone came to take it away and kill it! The bad part about that is that I went to look at it and I thought it was kind of cute in it's own way. It definitely has beady eyes! Anyway, that was about the most exiting thing to happen around here and is still a topic of conversation for us.

The actual rat, and a random snail friend in the corner.

Now the only thing we hear in our ceiling is an occasional drip from the rain. It's rainy season here right now, which does not mean that it is cold. The temperature is pretty much the same as always. The difference is that usually every day it rains for a couple of hours in the early afternoon, maybe again around sundown, and then often during the night. The ground is always wet and mud is abundant. Sometimes we have floods when the rain is particularly heavy which makes traffic even slower. It took me 1 1/2 hours to get home from work a couple of times last week. If there isn't much traffic, like on a holiday, it only takes about 1/2 hour for me to get to work. Most of the vehicles on the road are motorcycles and the rain doesn't stop anyone from driving them. They just put on their rain gear, take off their shoes or sandals and sometimes even drive with their feet up high on the stem  of the bike below the handle bars. Motor bikes still get around faster than the cars since they weave in and out of traffic and cars, not just down the lane between cars but also between the cars as in the tiny space between the back of one car and the front of another until they're at the front of the light. Many of them then don't even wait for the light if there is one and just go if there is any break in the traffic and they think they can make it. It's pretty cool but also a little scary to watch sometimes.
Church is sometimes a bit challenging too. Today none of the Elder's Quorum presidency showed up (it's been weeks since they've been to a priesthood meeting). Today is supposed to be the lesson taught by the presidency. Since I conducted the opening of the priesthood meeting I felt like I should help out. I asked if anyone had been asked to teach and no one (out of the 5 in attendance) spoke up. I was pretty sure that no one had been asked so I started a discussion about something that seemed relevant. It seemed to go okay, but I did get a lot of looks like they were really concentrating to try to understand me. I wish I could speak this language better, and I'm sure they think the same thing!

Surprise

Kind of a long week this week for some reason. By the time it was Wednesday, I couldn't figure out why it wasn't Friday. And that was despite the fact that I had Monday off work for Martin Luther King, Jr. day!

But, the beginning and the end of the week were the best part of the week for sure. Amy and I went on a daytime date on Monday since the children were in school and I had the day off. We went to lunch and saw a movie together. It was fun. And the end of the week we celebrated my wife's birthday by opening presents, going out for banana splits as a family (same place as last blog post), and going out to eat a meter-long pizza as a family. We had a good time.

Mmmm . . . . Mango Gelato

My wife was happy that I finally surprised her with a present thanks to a good friend. She is very hard to surprise for a few reasons. Usually since I always come home after work if I can help it, if I try to go anywhere to shop she wonders where I am and what I am doing not coming/being at home. If I order on-line she might get the Email receipt of the shipment or it goes to our house and she gets it before I do. She usually gets the mail before I do. She can see if anything has come out of the bank account and where it's gone to. This year things are a little different since our mail and packages are delivered to my work twice a week and I access the bank accounts from my computer at work. Add to that our friends willingness and suggestion to do the shopping for me and ship it to me and I have the perfect way to overcome my previous challenges with creating a surprise. My wife has been talking for months (if not longer) about having an iPod to listen to while walking and running that is not so bulky as her phone and she can pick the songs more easily than my old one she's been using. Surprise! Happy birthday. I hope you enjoy it.

It's fun to surprise people. I'm not exactly sure why that is, but I have loved it for a long time. I remember when I was young leaving things for people at their doors or surprising them with some kind of service. I try to find ways to do this at work also. The best things are not things that people expect you to do, but little things that they are not expecting. Just doing something unexpected for the benefit of someone else gives me a thrill. I am not always the best at doing this. Some people I know are practically experts at noticing something small someone else needs and doing it. I admire them a lot and wish I was better at this because it is one of the joys of life. Is this just me or do you enjoy this also?