Household Help

This week's Friday Weekly State Department Roundup is being hosted by Ogles and Observations. The theme this week is household help. Be sure to click over on Friday to check out everyone's stories of having help around the house.

I was totally blessed to have possibly the best staff EVER in Jakarta. I had a maid I adored and the kids loved and a driver who was funny, patient with the kids, and got my husbands humor. I still keep in touch with both via FB!

One day I was cooking dinner. Dwi (the maid) was outside with the kids and Haryono (the driver) had gone to the embassy to retrieve David. I was alone in the house with my glass of wine, the dinner prep, and my computer which was streaming a country music station from back home. I was happily chopping away, sauteing, and simmering. At the same time I was also singing along with George on the radio and two stepping my way around the kitchen. That's George Strait y'all, just in case you are wondering Geroge who?

I forgot one thing, the kitchen window was wide open. It faced the driveway so that when Dave and Haryono returned from work the first thing they saw was me dancing and singing around the kitchen. To this day I have no idea how long they were standing there, I just know that when a station break came on, I quit singing and there was a sudden burst of applause from the window. I looked up to see my husband camera in hand, Haryono, Dwi, the kids, several of the neighbor's staff, and a gardener or two, all standing in the window grinning like mad. Totally busted! I blushed furiously and took a bow, what else could I do? Then as soon as everyone had scattered I slammed that glass of wine.

One of things I looked forward to the most about coming to Malawi was having help again. A few years of doing it all in Frankfurt had me looking forward to living the easy life again. It is strange thing to have help, at least if you were brought up in America. Most Americans don't have household help of any kind. A few of my friends had a maid that came in twice a month and did the dusting and such but no one I knew had a full time maid, never mind a living in. That was something you only saw on TV, like Alice on the Brady Bunch.

So far there isn't an Alice for me here in Malawi. In fact I am currently without household help although I do have two gardeners that I am totally convinced are somehow related to Naoma's driver. If it weren't for the kids I would probably be content to keep it that way, but in Malawi if you want to someone to watch your kids once in a while so that you can go out to dinner you need to hire a full time helper. Seems a bit like overkill, but that's the way it is.

I had hired staff, not only a maid but a cook as well, before our arrival here at post. They were the staff from the people that had this house before us. That didn't work out as well as we had hoped. They have both since moved on to new positions and I hope are much happier. I have decided that I will never again hire staff before I arrive at post, not even if it means I may need to do without for a while. It is just too important that I be happy with the people sharing my personal space on a daily basis. It's a tricky business this having staff thing.

Model Primary School Menteng 01

Living overseas during an election year has been interesting to say the least. Rather than endless campaign commercials, we get to listen to what the rest of the world thinks of the candidates. I have very deliberately NOT mentioned politics here on the blog. This blog was begun as a way to keep in touch with family and friends back home when we moved overseas. Today I am going to mention Obama. This is not an endorsement, in fact I sat on this post until the election was over.  I would have posted it no matter who won. Here is that post:

It is no secret I lived in Jakarta Indonesia for two years. One of the things I had a chance to do was tour the school Obama attended as a child. Just to make it clear I did not set out to see the school, I was on a tour of the Menteng area looking at historic sites and the Dutch influenced architecture. We passed by the school and stopped to snap pictures of the sign out front.


Hopefully someone fixes that hanging P soon. Anyway the guard noticed a rather large group of bule (white people) peering through the gate and came over to see what was up. One thing led to another and pretty soon we got the grand tour. The school is much like any other elementary school. It has classrooms, playgrounds, and bulletin boards displaying children's work. It is really not very different a school in the states.




I had pretty much forgotten about that little tour until I heard something on NPR in mid October that reminded me and made me laugh. NPR interviewed some people from Jakarta about Obama and the upcoming elections. One of the men interviewed was a guard named Adang who works at the school. I don't know if is the same gentleman we met, but it is nice to think so. Anyway Bapak Adang says he wants Obama to win next month simply because he's an alumnus. "It would be good for the school's image", he says, "to be able to say that the president of the U.S. studied here, too."  That struck me as funny and along the same lines as "Washington slept here." You know, "Obama studied here."


One of the interesting things I saw at the school were these signs hanging in the halls. Each sign had a different inspirational saying but this is my favorite. Sometimes we forget to teach our kids that it is OK to be wrong sometimes, after all no one is right ALL the time. Oh, in case you are wondering, all Indonesian school children are required to take English. That isn't to say they are all fluent. Judging from the number of "Hello, Misses" I got on the street, most achieve the same level of fluency that I did from my spanish classes. That is I can say hello and ask the time, but that's about it! Oh Well.

Take a few minutes to listen to the interview. It is interesting to think of how others view us.

View From My Window Today

We are THAT family posted today about fall in Texas and how we revel in it even though it is still warm enough to wear shorts well into November most years. It may still be warm but it isn't so hot that you can't breathe like late July and August. That post got me to thinking about how different fall is depending on where you live.

The last two years we didn't have fall. We were in Jakarta which is tropical. There was only wet season and dry season. No fall, ever. Although I have to say about twice a year the tree in my yard would abruptly lose all it's leaves in one day. When you looked out the window you could see leaves raining down each time the wind blew. If you are me you could turn down the A/C, put on a sweater, make some hot tea, and pretend it was fall for a little while. Of course the second you open the door you realized it was 90+ degrees like every other day of the year.

This year we are in Germany which is colder than anyplace I have ever lived. My husband is finding my reaction to the cold quite amusing. Don't worry I am not going to whine some more about the cold, not today anyway. There is an upside to the cold weather, the leaves have all turned the most amazing color. This is the first time I have really experienced trees changing colors. Sure we made a trip every year to Lost Maples State Park to see the colors and it was lovely. The trees really do change color even though they are in Texas and the hill country landscape is always beautiful. I have great memories of making that trip each year and when I look back at the pictures I can see the kids and our family growing year by year. I wouldn't trade those times for anything. This year however, everywhere I look I see a kaleidoscope of colors. Look at these pictures I took out my living room window this morning.


The pictures don't really do the colors justice. The colors, especially the yellows just seem to glow. I love it. There is one more thing about fall in Germany that is fun. NUTS. Lots of nuts. The boys have collected buckets of nuts. Hazelnuts, walnuts and chestnuts. they are having a blast and I can't wait to use some of those nuts in a batch of walnut chocolate chip cookies. Now if I could just get the kids to wash and shell the nuts too.

Cicak cicak di dinding

We were out exploring a bit today and stumbled across a little import store in one of the malls. We were amused to see painted cicak wall hangings just like the ones we bought in Jakarta.   We stopped to check out the prices.  Those were some pricey cicaks!  20 euro for the smallest and close to a 100 euro for the larger ones.  That is about 40 times what we paid for our cicaks in Jakarta! Talk about your mark-ups!

Scusa

A while back I went to the AWA bazaar. This is not surprising since going to bazaars seems to be almost a sport here. It seems every association, school, or organization has a bazaar at some point in the year as a fund raiser. What made this baazar special for me was for once I actually won something in the raffle. I won ONE MILLION RUPIAH to go out to eat at the restaurant
of my choice. In case you are wondering 1 million rupiah is about $107 at current exchange rates. I credit this win to my bloggy freind Jenny who is the luckiest person I know, she always manages to win a door prize at the balls. We went to brunch with her shortly before the bazaar and obviously some of her good luck rubbed off on me!

I didn't even have to think twice about where I wanted to go for my special dinner. The choice was obvious. Scusa at the Intercontinental! Scusa is my favorite Italian restaurant, anywhere, not just here in Jakarta but anywhere. Scusa makes me want to move to Italy just for the food. We have only been a few times though because it is a bit expensive. We used my winnings and went there for dinner this evening. We were not disappointed.

I hope you are not dieting because I am about to screw up your diet. When we were seated we were given a choice of plain mineral water or sparkling water and we were each given a little loaf of brown bread with a small dish of olive tapanade. When we broke the bread open there was a pocket of crumbly cheese in the middle. I loved the bread! For an appetizer we ordered a trio of bruschetta, one traditional with tomato and basil, one with mushrooms (chanterelle I think) and one with a yummy thin sliced parma ham and shaved parmesan cheese. Dinner was off to a very good start.

Main course was a little harder to decide upon as there are many choices. I decided to go with a potato gnocci stuffed with goat cheese and topped with shaved black truffles and herbed butter. I also indulged in a very nice cabernet sauvignon. I am sure I gained several pounds but it was totally worth it. David went with fresh angel hair pasta and lobster tossed with tomatoes and chili. I tasted his and it was just as yummy as mine but a bit spicier. His dinner was so pretty I made him take a picture with his hand phone before he ate anything.


For dessert Dave and I split a dish of tiramisu. I only recently tried tiramisu for the first time. I probably would have tried it sooner but I read the recipe when I was first learning to cook and the thing that stood out to me was soggy lady finger cookies. The one dessert in the world I loathe is banana pudding with soggy vanilla wafer cookies, actually I loathe it because of the soggy cookies... in my mind both desserts were linked by soggy cookies so for the last couple of decades I have been missing out, but no more! I tried tiramisu at an event earlier this year and it was love at first taste! I am afraid I ate my half and a good portion of David's half of the dessert as well, afraid but not sorry.


We finished of with a shot of a very tasty lemon liquor to cleanse the palate.  It was a very satisfying dining experience.  Even better, it was free!

Wordless Wednesday-Motorcycle Mayhem

Wordless Wednesday-What's so interesting?