Today is another holiday, one that I had not only no reasonable ability to foresee but also which I had never even heard of before. It’s Ascension Day, or as they say here, Kenaikan Isa Almasih. Ascension Day. I had to look that one up to make sure I was getting this right, but of course it’s not hard to figure out, it celebrates the ascension of Jesus into heaven forty days after Easter. According to Wikipedia, it is celebrated as a public holiday in Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Vanuatu…and the world’s largest Muslim country, Indonesia.

I’m not in principle opposed to holidays, but I do believe that two in the space of three weeks is too many. This has practical consequences, ranging from the slightly annoying to the truly inconvenient. Slightly annoying: no newspaper this morning, which forces me to read my pleasure book (Infinite Jest) over breakfast, which is only a problem in the sense that I don’t have much of it left and I’m trying to save enough to keep myself distracted on the plane rides home. Truly inconvenient: I have an interview way down in the southern outskirts of Jakarta today, in a satellite city known as Depok. Depok is far, far enough that when I go there I prefer to take a train rather than a cab (the cab’s just too expensive). But of course, on a public holiday like today the train schedules are totally unpredictable. So that will force me to take a cab anyway. But the real kicker, of course, is that since it’s a holiday the traffic will be in all likelihood pretty light, which means that the cab ride might not take nearly as long, and accordingly might not be quite so expensive.

More food pictures are available here. As always, click Next to get to the new ones. Today I bring you gurame goreng, ayam bakar, buntil, es alpukat, and some famous nasi goreng kambing.