All good things shall come to an end, and over the next three days I will be wrapping up my visit to beautiful Indonesia and travel half across the world to get back home and my day job.
For starters I had to say goodbye to my friend and trusty travel companion, Irvan. He has been a delight to travel with, and I feel that being a young geologist he has learnt a lot from this old dog. Here is photo of the two of us at Batur caldera; we are standing on the 1963 basaltic andesite lava flow, and I finally got him to smile for a selfie (doesn't he look uncanningly similar to that beloved Mexican actor, Cantinflas?). He has been my voice over the last three weeks, learning to anticipate my wishes and caring for me as if I were his very own grandfather. If you think about it, if her graduate advisor Gayatri is my Research Granddaughter, then Irvan is my Research Great-grandson!
I see great potential in him as an Applied Geologist, have introduced him to the friends at BMKG as a potential future employee, and will keep reminding them that here is a good man who they should snatch while he is still available. Friends for life!
A quick morning flight brought me back from Bali to Jakarta, where the pollution haze is as bad as it can get. Poor Jakarta. Being a coastal city it should get the ocean breeze to clean up its air from time to time, but it certainly is not happening during the summer. Ah, for the clean air of Sumatra, Yogyakarta in Central Java, or Bali. However, what is bad pollution for the Jakartans might be a research project for one of my students, because I believe there is an AERONET sun photometer here and in three other locations in Indonesia.
Fakhry picked me up at the airport, as on the first day, and was in charge of babysitting me until 2 pm, when I could check in at my hotel. Where shall we go? I wanted to see something of the old Batavia (the name of Jakarta during the Dutch colonial times) so we went to Old City, where the Dutch Government House and other public buildings are located. They are nicely kept in whitewash, and there is any number of museums in them, including a history museum full of old massive furniture, a modern art museum with funky paintings and sculptures, and my very favorite, the Wayang Museum, which contains a priceless collection of the puppets that are such an art form in Indonesia (you might have seen them as shadow puppets). Malaysia and Vietnam also use this type of puppetry, and there have been near wars between the three countries to see who can claim the origin of the puppet theater. I was told by Fakhry that Indonesia has won its claim in International Court (probably at the same time that Peru won the claim to inventing Pisco Sour). Regardless of who gets the original credit, Indonesian puppets are exquisite not only in their workmanship, but also in their variety and richness of theatrical stories (a QR code lets you read the plot associated with each group). It is now lost in time, but the comedic aspect of some of the puppets suggests that they were used as a venue for political and social cartooning. It must have been a riot being in the main plaza, listening to the puppeteer lampoon the politicians and issues of the day.
From there Fakhry humored me by first having a lunch of Kerak Telor (a rice-coconut omelette that was very tasty), and then driving to a crafts market for me to see the crafts of the country. Turned out that my humble crafts market was in a fancy mall, where the artistic jewels of the country could be had for millions of rupiah at a time (a good thing in the end, because of course I wanted to buy it all). I thought long and hard about buying a jeweled kriss knife, a lethal-looking parang machete, a beautiful weave of Indonesian puppets (only 10 million rupiah), and a real puppet that was maybe half a meter high. The most fun I have had window shopping in a very long time :)
Finally we came to the hotel, and Fakhry promised he would be back at 6:15 pm to take me to the restaurant to have a business dinner with Prof. Rita (the Big Boss), and the top brass of BMKG. Twenty minutes later I was on the street, anxious to spread my wings by looking at the daily life of the people. It is a lively city, and I am glad folks here have the same obsession with food that we have in Mexico. Speaking of food, lunch was a few hours back, so as a true Indonesian I stopped at a hole in the wall for a quick bowl of indome (instant noodles with a fried egg on top), had no problem communicating with the patrón, and once again felt like I belonged in this vibrant country.
Dinner was a joyful semi-official event, with much laughter about the stories I had to tell about my lightning trip through the country. Rita did me the honor of serving my dish, and then we set down to discuss future directions. I want to keep the relation with the STMKG educational branch of BMKG, so Dr. Suko invited me to plan a guest lecture (via Zoom) at least once a semester. Rita was very agreeable to my idea of creating a BMKG Open-File Report series, and we will give it a try with a report on the West Sumatran fault (edited by Suaidi, and hopefully with the participation of Irvan as a junior consultant) and selected calderas of Indonesia (edited by yours truly).
Finally, I got to discuss the plan of creating a book about current seismic hazard management practices in Indonesia, which has kept my friend Bob chomping at the bit. Rita would like it to be in Indonesian (with a possible translation into English), probably as an e-book with a limited printed run, and would like to have Suaidi, Daryono, and Dimas be the Indonesian editors, and Bob be the American editor. I will follow up with introductory emails next week. After business were completed we moved to the gift exchange part of the proceedings. They got from me a box of Coffee Luwak Cookies (remember, the ones in which the friendly luwak eats the coffee beans and ferments them in its gut before further processing) and a sack of Snake Fruit (I told them the airport would not allow me to bring Red Durians on board and we all had a good laugh). I got some books to whet my appetite for a future visit, and a large print of the Indonesia Geologic Map "for Mr. Bob".
The invitation to come in a couple of years to the Celebes and West Papua, and tour them with Dr. Suko, still stands!
Well, that is it. All that is left is for me to go on my crazy route back from Jakarta to Doha in Qatar (8 hours and 15 minutes flight), a 2 and a half hour layover, Doha to New York (14 hours and 15 minutes), a 9 hour layover, New York to San Francisco (6 hours and a half), and a 2 hour trip via BART and Fabymobile back home. Let's see, that adds up to 42 hours of travel. I am sure you don't want to hear me bellyache about it, so I will bring this story to a close here, while I am rested and cheerful.
Goodbye Indonesia. Terima kasih to a beautiful country and its beautiful friendly people.
Finis
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