Bogor
West Java
May 14, 2005
Salamat Malam,
Years ago, in Boston, my colleague Paul used a favorite expression when I made an error in judgment. With a smile, and a slightly affected tone, he would pronounce, "Well...That... Was... Stuuuuupid."
Bandung
West Java
May 17, 2005
Salamat Malam,
At 7:00pm, the North Sea Bar was dead. Except for Evert, a smiling Dutchman, 54, enjoying his tall green Heineken.
Evert has a business in Holland and lives with his twenty-seven year old girlfriend in Bandung. Soon to be married. (Where have I heard that one before?)
We chatted for an hour; I ordered some chicken fried rice. He asked me if I would like to meet his girlfriend's girlfriend. Era arrived quickly. And quickly we decided that we were compatible.
We decided that the next day we would hire a taxi for a drive to Tangkuban Prahu - The "Overturned Volcano" crater 30km north of Bandung.
Bandung West Java
Indonesia
May 18, 2005
Loyal Family
Esteemed Friends
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In 1955, for one week in April, Indonesia hosted the Asian-African Conference in Bandung. It was the "first intercontinental gathering of coloured peoples in the history of mankind."
Yogyakarta
Central Java
May 22, 2005
Dear Family and Friends,
I had to leave Bandung. I wanted to stay a day or two longer. I was enjoying the sights and my new friends. But my chest was heaving, my eyeballs burning, my whole system in rebellion. The pollution so intense.
Amber
Rajasthan,
India
February 23, 2007
Dear Family and Friends,
It just keeps getting better!
"The magnificent delicate-pink, fort palace of Amber (pronounced Amer), a beautiful, ethereal example of Rajput architecture, rises from a rocky mountainside about 11km north of Jaipur." [*]
As Adit and I drive into Amber, the walls and the towers, more golden than pink, sit high and imposing on the mountains to my left.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
May 22, 2009
Dear Family and Friends,
Now here's a delightful stroll:
The broad, shady walkways around Independence Park are lined with university halls, government buildings, flower gardens and rose bushes. A statue of Marx has been replaced by a suitably patriotic statue of Amir Timur on horseback. At Independence Square, the new senate building is guarded by a tall gate with good-luck pelicans at the top. Near the gate, Lenin gave way to a large statue of a seated Uzbek woman gazing into the eyes of her infant child.
At the far side of the park is another woman, The Crying Mother Monument. The monument was built in 1999 to honor the four hundred thousand Uzbek soldiers who died fighting for The Soviet Union in World War II. In front of the statue is an eternal flame. *
The names of the fallen soldiers are engraved on brass plaques that swing like pages of a book. Many, many books. These books of the dead are attached to the walls of two parallel arcades. The Crying Mother cannot bear to face these pages...
