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view from above

Here's some pictures of Jakarta, an airplane and the view looking out.


The view out my hotel room window. A Mosque, a tennis court and a garbage heap. It pretty much sums up what I'm seeing in the city, fun, exotic, history - culture and brutally gritty. It's the 9th largest city in the world with a metropolitan population of over 23 million people - 44,283 people per square mile. Amazing, beautiful people who smiled bigger than I ever imagined possible.


I had finally met my South East Asian match and it looked perfectly harmless. Out of all the funky stuff I've eaten for some reason I had a hard time getting the tube mussles down. I think it was a combination of beer, the rank smell of amonia cleaning products and fishy aroma's coming from all directions. I made it through the exotic skin on fish, chili crab ( and it's eggs served in the hollowed out shell. Very spicy! Very good! ) tore the head off the prawn to suck out the guts ( why just eat the tail and leave all the goodness in the rest? ) then finally made it to the mussels.


You eat them by prying them out of the shell and slurping down the whole thing. I've got a problem with mussels in general. I've had salt water aquariums for years and remember the taste / smell of sucking on a cleaning tube to get the vaccum going to suck fishy poop products off the bottom. Mussels are natures waste treatment plant and they taste pretty much the same. This sensation was compounded by having to crunch up the hard bits, guts and shell flap that makes up the whole of the beast. I was able to show respect and keep it down despite several attempts by my stomach to send it back up from whence it came. The taste of stomach acid and bile that usually clinches the deal and makes you open and puke was a welcome alternative to the actual mussel in my case and I was able to sutrvive the beer, chili, ammonia, fish smell, open to the street feast of the senses. I'm still to North American to fully enjoy the bounty of South East Asian seas...



Hurrah! Chili Crab! ( with it's eggs. )


My partner Dave in one of our flights.





After getting rheemed by Northwest Airlines so many times ( it just seems to be their customer servic policy initiated by the management itself ) I was very happy to experience free beer, wine and peanuts on Malasian airlines!






Nothing preps you for another leg of long flights like chili fries, a brat smothered in peppers and onions washed down with a nice tall beer. I guess I couldn't think of any more explosive and potentially hazardous in combination for a confined and regulated environment shared among hundreds of people. ( note: We actually only had a couple beers on the whole trip, there just happened to be cameras aruond when we did. )



San Francisco from my window - almost home.

posted by wes @ 1:56 PM