Sleep, Padang and Beluga Whales

"Blah, blah, blah. Blah. Cliche 1, cliche 2, sports cliche No. 4 and sports cliche No. 7," Jefferson said. "We didn't do a very good job. We didn't give 110 percent. We've got to give it all we got. We've got to leave it all on the court, and we didn't do that."
New Jersey Nets forward Richard Jefferson, as quoted by ESPN
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The main two events of the week were between midnight and 10am, Thursday. At around 12:30am I realized my newish, seemingly brilliant strategy for randomly pairing subjects in the experiment rounds would make creating the printed material I was planning completely impractical. You know you're a nerd when you lie awake, for hours, over badly executed combinatorics of experimental logistics. At around 4am I decided I solved the problem (I didn't quite, but it helped me sleep for an hour, and 48 hours later I think we're good to go.)

At 5:30am I met Mr. Z, a friend who's lived here for 8 years, for an expedition through the awakening kampungs of Jakarta, along the canal down the road. Those who've experienced my state at 7:30am can imagine what 5:30 is like (after one hour of sleep), but even I must admit the advantages of early rising ("best hours of the day" and all that.) If not for Mr Z, I could easily have gone through the year missing most of Indonesia not through space but through time. I'm generally asleep when "Indonesia" happens.
Photos/descriptions of the 4-hour walkabout will follow when I solve some other minor technical issues.
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Complementary arguments:

“A politician from the PDI-P, Soetardjo Soerjogoeritno (Mbah Tardjo), said he was very opposed to the visit, because Israel still occupied Palestine, and besides, Indonesia would not gain anything from Israel because Israelis were famous for being stingy.”
Indonesia Matters (PDI-P is the nationalist party of former president Megawati)
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In other news, Friday was Balinese Hindu New Year, Nyepi Day (a day of silence.) Tourists and their dollars were not allowed out of their hotels in Bali, which I think shows a lot of Balinese dignity.
So far, in the span of three months, I've seen a (Latin) Christian New Year, a Muslim New Year, a Chinese New Year and now a Balinese Hindu one. Each one of these is an official holiday here as well. Happy new years!
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Apparently, Beluga whales enjoy the note G
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Sunday I head back to Yogya, to begin actual recruitment/survey of subjects. Crunch time has really arrived.

In the meantime, a bit more from Padang:












This is (a very dark photo of) a banner congratulating the Tionghoa (Chinese-Indonesian) population for Chinese New Year. It’s of a new political party, Hanura (The People’s Conscious Party), set up by former general Wiranto (left), who was head of the military and a major actor when Soeharto fell from power in 1998. Wiranto was also head of the military when East Timor became independent, and allegedly oversaw the horrible violence perpetrated by the military and pro-Indonesia militia (here’s the latest on the East Timor situation.) Wiranto ran for president in 2004, and wants the new party to help him do it again.


This one is of PKS, a newish, rather radical and very interesting Islamic party trying to make headway outside of its Jakarta base (it’s the biggest party in the Jakarta assembly.) I’ve been told that only a couple of years ago you couldn’t see a sign of them in Padang; now they’re holding conferences and conventions everywhere (even in Hindu Bali.)



Some more from the river: