Iowa Trivia Over Christmas Tales

Congratulations, Iowa, on your 160th anniversary of joining the United States. Unfortunately, I am not up-to-date on Iowa’s main contributions to these fifty states, but I’m sure it’s out-of-this-world wonderful. It probably has to do with corn, not to mention a rather annoying song from the otherwise highly entertaining musical Music Man. Personally, I think the Dar Williams song, Iowa, is much better. I just read that President Hoover was from Iowa, and also Vice President Wallace (Franklin D. Roosevelt). If I’m remembering correctly, I think FDR decide NOT to run with Wallace for his fourth term because he had communist leanings, which eventually led to Truman becoming president. I think I saw that on television though, so don’t quote me on that.

Ok, so on to more recent events…Christmas in Indonesia. Bali was a very nice break from the otherwise bustling city of Bandung. The short story is that I went scuba diving, and spent a couple days on beautiful beaches, listened to my friend’s pop-rock concert, and visited a Hindu temple.

About the trip, I have the following five things to say:
1) Never trust Balinese hawkers when they give you the first 20 prices. The product is really worth about 15% of what they originally say.
2) It’s really easy to meet people in Bali, because everyone either wants you to have a good time because their economy depends on it, or they are on vacation too and want to share in their good time with everyone they meet.
3) Gede is a great name. In the Indonesian language, Gede can mean big, or large, or when in reference to the human body, it is a descriptive term for chunky-shaped. In Balinese, however, it means firstborn. Actually, the Balinese have standardized names for the first five children in the family. Now if you have more than five children, then the sixth child starts the whole cycle all over again. So that means that in my family, we’d have three kids named Gede: Dan, Dalinda, and Desmond. My friend Gede also gave me the nickname Dora, after the cartoon show, which I think I kind of like better than Sinda.
4) I think my favorite part of the trip was the concert. I got to sit on the stage. At first it was amusing to see the friend you remember as being somewhat shy, unabashedly singing in front of tons of people who afterwards want to get his autograph and take their picture with him, and then getting interviewed by the Indonesian Rolling Stone. But the group was great (the name is Letto if you want to find their music online), and it was even nicer catching up afterwards.
5) I love the fact that in Bali, you don’t actually have to know how to swim to learn to scuba dive. Non-swimmers are free to join in, because the vest with the tank also acts as a lifejacket, after all! Hmm…yes, I guess it’s safe enough. The next time I’m in Bali, I really want to go further north up the coast and try scuba diving in a sunken shipwreck site!

So, enough rambling and back to Christmas in Bandung. I exchanged presents with the family I’m living with, even though, as previously stated, they are God-fearing Muslims. For Christmas dinner, we made lasagna and salad and delicious chocolate brownies. Oh, the joys of Western food after a month of rice! Nothing against Indonesian food though. We also watched lots of Christmas movies and went to bed stuffed and exhausted. So, a pretty normal Christmas I think. That is, minus the traditional silly string fight and having tons people around each around two years apart in age. The day after Christmas, I woke up early and called my family in Kingston, where it was still Christmas day due to the easy-to-remember 12 hour time difference, and I actually got to speak to everybody that was there. So, all-in-all, a successful holiday, I think!