The island trip was great. Caught a taxi to Ancol Marina. Now some of my scariest moments in life have been spent in a taxi en-route to Ancol, the experience defying description, so this time I waved down a Blue Bird (Blue Bird only, we have been told) and got in. ‘Slowly slowly!’ I said to the very friendly driver who spoke very basic, broken English in a very charming way. So he motored along gingerly, slowly slowly, peering at me in the not so busy traffic on the motor way. Eventually he could not resist anymore and asked ‘Slowly slowly?’ very carefully. ‘Ok, go’ I said and he took off like a horse who had just bolted from the starting gate a few seconds behind the others and had to catch up, actually nope, he drove very well. The Marina is a collection of piers where boats launch for many of the Thousand Islands just north of Jakarta, about and hour to two hours away by mostly very fast boats. It’s a little mini economy of it’s own. Jakarta has a lot of sadness in it, very poor areas that we flashed by, it’s a mix of poverty and wealth, lie a lot of the developing countries in Africa.

The island accommodation was rustic but nice in a bit of a back to nature way. There was aircon, but not very good shower water, but this is about getting away and that it sure is. Just loafing and idling around the small island, then floating in the crystal clear water with lovely coral reefs all around, burning to smithereens which I did. Being in the tropics the water is perfect. Cape Town’s water is freezing polar stuff so I loved this stuff. There was a group of three sub-thirty English school teachers and we hired a boat to go exploring, the boatman being the most charming local I have met called Man who spoke good English. His old grand father seemed to be the marketing man and collected us, extremely sweet. The boat ride was lovely, cruising slowly past little islets, drifting around some of them snorkeling over the coral, doing a bit of fishing and just exploring, ultimate relaxation stuff. Two of the girls had taught in Korea too, small world.

Back at the office things were busy, we have been working quite late, by Western standards, 8, 9, 10 o’ clockish and then from our apartments too as we are in the same building with network connections to the office, how convenient. We socialise together after work and during lunch, some nice eating places being in the vicinity. After the company drought in Korea that’s the part I enjoy the most. We are spoilt for choice of places.

On the evening of the big earth quake in Indonesia this week I was sleeping and got this 1 am worried phone call from my wife to check if I was ok. We never felt it as it was too far away. As it happened before I had gone to bed I was reading a little booklet on our building and it stated that the building was designed for a 5 to 6 scale earth quake and the quake in Sumatra, another large island quite far away, was 8.7, makes one think, keep in mind our office is on the 21^st floor and apartment on the 35^th! I don’t think anyone who has not experienced a quake like this has an idea of the terror involved. I have heard some of the stories and they are bone chilling.

Now we are going off to do some shopping. We have a driver for the group called Tigor, cool guy, and we are going off to some shopping centre in Jakarta where there’s a Carrefour among others. I miss my skiing and skiing buddies and walking in Seoul, need to get more exercise here, perhaps play some golf tomorrow, I have said that every weekend I have been here, lazy, lazshy as Chi Ho would have said it.

This is a bit of a quick entry. I’m waiting for a taxi to take me to Ancol  Marina where I’m going to catch a boat to an island in the Thousand Islands group just north of Jakarta for the weekend. It’s Easter and time for a relax and reflection and some swimming, snorkeling and sunning, after minus whatever is Seoul. I actually miss the Seoul winter, it was great, the cold, wrap around scarves and jackets, walking to and from the subway, the ski slopes, of course. It made the loneliness easier.

Here we have been busy. We have had a big public project launch in a big fancy hall made up like a big fancy computer show in a big fancy school nearby. It was hectic and busy but good fun. It’s quite weird to have a bunch of English people around me, two Texans, two other South Africans and a bunch of  Indonesians who speak very good English along with a person from vanilla Manilla in the Philipines.

I must run, just an update, will try to post some pics and a better update when back again.

So now I am an Indonesian. My Korean life feels like a dream. Strange how one packs up your life and you walk through a curtain into another life. The trip was uneventful, got on the very comfortable Incheon airport bus at most probably -2C, went through all the airport motions and got off at Jakarta in 30C temperatures, beautiful lush green tropical landscape. Korea is all a bit stark clinical efficiency versus Indonesian friendly chaos, it might take you a bit longer to get there but it’s done with lot of smiling and laughter and friendly babble. Tigor, the driver, was there to pick me up in a brand new Toyota van, wow, not a Hyundai or Kia, and driving on the ‘right’ side of the road, left, we bustled through the Jakarta traffic, more like organised chaos, millions of vehicles and motor bikes all milling in more or less the same direction, quite often not, eeek, stomp on the brakes. Seeing shacks always has a comforting, welcoming influence on me. ‘This reminds me of Maputo’ I said to Tigor, he’s a nice friendly guy who speaks quite good English, wanted to know if I played basket ball, Richard, a South African friend on the project had said I looked like one. Our apartments are in the same building as the office, offices up to 23^rd floor and apartments on the 35^th, nice brief commute. The block has a Bollywood ring about it, very flashy and colourful entrance, the apartments quite nice roomy 2 bedroom stuff.

I found my object of desire too, and no, it’s not a local Indonesian beauty although you could call it that. On previous visits it’s been very smoggy (that’s where the smogga comes from) and all you see is flat Jakarta landscape. Being the rainy season with more wind perhaps it was partly cloudy but very clear when I arrived and there, poking through the low clouds at me from my 35^th floor lounge window was the peak of a volcano, extinct I hope as he’s a bit too damn close for comfort if not, most probably fifty to a seventy kilometers away, sweet. So the place is not all flat, wonder if any of them are high enough to be above the snow line?

Differences between countries always fascinate me. In Korea the floors are heated wood or soft plastic style for walking on in socks and sleeping on, here ceramic or carpeted.  The hotwater geysers are minute, like not five minutes of showering capacity, no hot water tap in the kitchen, no toaster, electric kettle or microwave either, otherwise quite functional. But there is a water cooler/heater type goodie you find in offices.  Indonesians don’t use table knives either but forks, spoons and/or chopsticks, moi being a subject expert on chop sticks by now, but from my previous visit I know it’s impossible to buy table knives, like I could not find a milk jug in Korea. The food is pleasantly South East Asian and with my kimchi purgatory experience I seem to manage most foods here and enjoy them a lot, today was Pad Thai, a nice spicy stirfry with some meat. Yesterday was a nice satay kebab style meal with fine noodles and a nearly bulgogi type meat. One thing I know is that their fried rice does not stack up to the Korean stuff with its overdose of delicious blackbean sauce, it’s called nasi goring here, nasi is rice, me thinks. Give me the good old pokumpap any day. TV is a mix of local Indonesian Bahasi language and the range of Western news, movie and documetry channels, lots of soccer and some good rugby because of the proximity to Australia/New Zeeland.

The 15th was my birthday too, 50 is starting to call me, damn, that’s bloomin old! Richard is on the 16th and we had a celebrately meal last night and a party at work, nice. A year ago exactly I left Cape Town for Korea, what a year, interesting, foreign, weird, traumatic, educational, etc, and another birthday on my own….

Today is bye-bye Seoul day, yesterday was bye-bye company-project day. Done` left last night amidst a flurry of packing and juggling weight as she had too much stuff, little bits and pieces, what are little girls made of? I said good bye to the office, a bit of an anti-climax, some last checks on the system, quick good byes and before I knew it I was out on the street heading back to Yeouido and then to get Done` to the airport. It was weird being alone again, was so great to have her around, I am endlessly restless on my own, always rummaging around. Headed or my last Outback meal in Itaewon. We had packed through the week so most stuff was done, just last minute goodies. Two girls from the office are coming just now to collect our left over furnishings and appliances, one year’s worth of it.

It’s freezing cold again, as if Seoul is taunting me one last time, ‘let’s go skiing!’. There was so much I enjoyed here and so many nice people I met but I’m in a bit in shock over the way the corporates drive their staff, I’m not sure at the moment if I want to come back, to see friends, yes, to work, I’m not sure. In the spirit of bali-bali everything is under planned and under-timed but a deadline is just that, you will die but you will get it in on time. I don’t feel like observing that again but I have learnt from the experience. I also think the forty plus generation of corporate managers needs to retire or something, there is a new breed of younger guys, more open, less neurotic about their image but stifled by the old. I observed what was for me the most touching moment of my year in Korea. The boss was raging and screaming at Han Yeol because we had to bring the system down for an emergency and he just stood there in shock gazing back and when the boss eventually walked off, snorting and burping, Han Yeol sat down in a daze and the people who stood around came over and comforted him, like a child being abused by a parent is comforted by it’s brothers and sisters, they cluster together for comfort. I am ashamed of my age group in Korea. My immediate emotion was to tell him to ‘fcuk off!, the boss.

So that’s how I remember Seoul a bit, sad, but I will gaze fondly at my photographs of the snow slopes, the islands, the Han, Namsan and try to erase that memory.

I’m sitting at the office waiting for a big job to finish. I came in at 2300 as it was supposed to be quiet then, to my dismay it looked like a normal day with many people still working. Every one is in a state of exhaustion, except me, I don’t speak the lingo, cannot understand what’s going on most of the times, just make sure the stuff I look after works. JM, one of the guys, asked me about something yesterday and while I was explaining he just fell asleep on me for a while, I waited, then continued when he woke up, flee asleep again, dozing in and out, I nearly cried, it just broke my heart. The last time I saw that was when we were on holiday in Mocambique, Southern Africa, and a little black guy about 13 or so was guiding us to the mouth of the Limpopo river and was forever falling asleep against my arm because he had sleeping sickness which I think you get from testse fly.

I have never seen anything like it and I find it difficult to handle, on the projects I have worked on in the West we work late when we go live but there are limits, bosses chase you off to sleep when they see you have hit the stops. There are no stops here, only stop is when your job is done, hard as rocks.  Chi Ho and his wife were going for a meal with me and Done` tonight but he cancelled because he was too exhausted and wanted to leave ‘early’ at 2100 to go and sleep, he was still here when I came in, looking like a ghost. JM was sitting in a meeting with his boss and some other people, fast asleep.

I feel guilty that I went off and skied this weekend. It was a great finale to the ski season and one I will fondly remember. We did some great skiing, pushing the limits just a little every time. I had two memorable collisions with snow boarders, both times hit by a totally out of control bullet that sent me flying with legs, arms skis and poles departing to all four corners of the earth. The second time I decided to use the snow boarder as a shock absorber and just grabbed hold of him and fell on top of him, he just groaned as we slid along the snow. Tom and I migrated to the advanced slopes, they are just steeper so once you have an idea how to stop they can be traversed. I had silly falls, stopping to have a look at the scenery and falling over my own feet or a noteworthy tumble off the ski lift at dismount right in front of all my compadres. There were five of us, Canadian David, Irish Tom, English Richard, Katherine from South Africa and meself. When we said good bye David said ‘This is good bye!’ like it had really struck him that he would not see me again, a poignant moment, I will miss you Dave, wish I could take you along and make you marry my oldest!

On Friday night David and Richard and myself met up and proceeded to the Outsider for a last drink there. They will take over the Western representation from me, I think, as they liked the place. Many of the bar tenders I knew have left and there were lots of new faces, even Sung Hui who spoke English is gone.

On Thursday night Done` and I caught the subway to Dongdaemun and explored a bit. There are a number of department stores with sound stages outside where they have musicians playing which are quite often recorded for TV, very flashy and noisy. Korea is the mecca of the electronic world, every fancy flashing object imaginable is found here. Taxi dashboards are adorned with these devices, as if the more electronic you appear to be the better the taxi service. We had a really good sandwich and coffee in one of the food courts on the top floor of one of the stores. Goods are not that cheap but it’s interesting to wander from floor to floor to see what’s in the stores. There was some lovely traditional Korean dresses in one store, for the one year old birthday parties, me thinks, that being more important here than the actual wedding of the sibling’s parents.

This week we have started packing and preparing to leave. I have mixed feelings about that now. It’s strange to think I have been here for a year, in that time I have learnt so much, seen so many new places and faces, made many new friends, Asian and Western, inflicted unimaginable shock on my taste buds, survived the kimchi onslaught, tasted foods I would not have believed could possibly be classified as cuisine and yet grown to like some of them, been targeted by snow boards as if I was the American Air Force One plane taking off from Baghdad with George Bush on board and every single Iraqi insurgent was lying behind a bush with a Stinger missile rocket waiting for me, etc, etc. One expats because it’s a job but also because you have this crazy urge to see what lies behind the next hill, to see if that yonder horizon holds something of interest, boy oh boy, it sometimes does. I know I will get to Indonesia and miss a lot of stuff in Korea, specially people and also the easy transport, safety, cooler weather, interesting places, totally different atmosphere this place has, etc. My apartment has also been nice and comfortable and modern although not really located in an expat-friendly area. And the Han, without it Seoul would be soulless, Seoul-less, it’s like a life-carrying aorta that winds through this crazy, busy, full city and brings fresh blood to it’s inhabitants, many of whom are rearing to line its banks when Spring sets in as its threatening to do now, resplendent in their fresh mountain climbing gear, the winter gear having been safely stashed away for next winter, if it’s still in fashion. I’m joking but the Korean passion for the outdoors is amazing, they love it and soak it up, I’ve seen little old people walking around the walking paths in the gardens of apartment blocks at all times of the night, swinging their arms, wriggling their backsides on the exercise machines you find everywhere, doing exercises all the time.

This is chronologically back to front but this is the last week, a bit hectic and nostalgic.