Our attempts to use email have been foiled in the past two days by big thunderstorms that have knocked out internet service in our area of Jakarta.  We did find this place, though, and it’s been pretty nice.

We think we talked before about how hard it is to do some rather mundane tasks like get a haircut because it’s tough to know the words.  Well, today I (TP) got a haircut, and our worst fears were realized–I came out with spiky gelled hair.  JM did a double-take, but we managed to fix it using some creative hand-mashing.  I felt bad saying, "hey, I don’t want you to do that," but I figured it was just easier.  Interestingly, I did learn that instead of referring to hair as "short" or "long" you refer to it as "thick" or "thin."  I guess everyone’s hair is "thick" in the US-sense here.

Here’s a question.  Does every Asian city have an area called "The Golden Triangle"?  Jakarta has one (we live in it), and Kuala Lumpur has one too, and we are sure that we’ve seen it some other places too.  Not to mention mainland Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle, the rugged opium-growing region where Laos, Thailand, and Burma meet.