Eye Tests Jakarta

Eye tests are free in Indonesia. Free if you trust some guy or gal using an eye test machine who completes the eyes tests in a little under 15 minutes and then give you a result which can change your sight forever should you wish to act on it which I did.

My test result came back at 1.25. Which means I need reading glasses as I spend too long in front of screens, books, phones reading things in different fonts and degrees of brightness. I have have had 2 such tests in 2 different glasses or Optik stores each one stating the same thing and almost the same result. The first test was a month ago and we thanked the staff and left. The tests was on Good Friday, where we paid and then thanked the staff and left.

So, I have decided that after 42 years, well almost 43 I need some kind of visual apparatus to help my sight and reduce some headaches and help me focus quicker on words so I purchased some glasses.  I am now the proud owner of a pair of reading glasses which magnify everything close so I can see it properly or rather clearer and anything far away is a blur. And I now to have to put them on, take them off etc to do different things. Best buy some string, and have that tied around my neck so it will be easier to take my glasses with me. Joy.

Oh and here is a panoramic view of the postcards in my office, which ones (if any) did you send or make?

Post cards always welcome. Address on request. Thanks

Sick not sick

 About a month ago I was diagnosed with Typhoid/Typhus/Tipes and a host of other same sounding names which pretty much all mean the same term. Happily since then I have been given the all clear of Typhus which is good but still I am not 100% right after all this time.

We did eventually go back to the hospital and I had another blood test and was declared free of Typhus and because I was still displaying symptons on the said illness the doctor rather worryingly prescribed me some Immodium just in case and some vitamins. I took the vitamins. There were useful. The Immodium is still in its shiny packaging and probably will never be taken.

You have to love taking tablets out here

Then last week I went back to the doctor as things are still not correct and luckily for me the doctor not only did not want to give me another blood test but he spoke nigh on perfect English and so I could tell him whats going on rather through my wife. And happily again he prescribed some more antibiotics to help clear everything up but with the information that I need to eat no vegetables or fruit or juice or coffee or fried stuff but to eat rice and meat and oats. What an exciting palette that leaves me to savour.
Since the advice I have had to have some coffee, because I need to start work early in the week and meat comes in burger buns and fries are never optional. Orange juice I could stop drinking though. Its not real orange juice but some manufactured crap full of water and sugar but its nice with digestive biscuits.

I turned the bed rest down what with one thing and another happening in and around my life and so I have been instructed to stop going to work so early, rest on the weekends and slow down a lot. I am sleeping as much as I can but if we take this week so far from Monday then its hard to see how I will be able to sleep much more.

Sunday night slept at 11pm and woke at 5 for work. Home by 8pm and bed by 10.30. This morning Jeremy is emptying his toys over my head at 5am and wont let me sleep any more  for the day. I will get home at 9.30 tonight (I started work at 11.30 today) and will be up again at 5am for more early classes. Who said anything about living the dream?

Due to this prolonged illness and fatigue I constantly have I missed a chance to take a weekend off and ride out with some colleagues to the west cost of Java some 300km round trip. That bit is disappointing but I do know it would not have helped me much with things and the last thing I want is more discomfort.  But I am sure there will be another time.

Finally time to moan about the traffic and the headache it is now causing me and will continue to do for at least the rest of the year. There is new elevated road being constructed on my way to work which will end on the main non tollway road from east Jakarta. This road is far too busy without any need for roadworks, so the fact the road has been reduced from 4 to 2 lanes in places (which includes a dedicated bus lane) and the police stand about and watch and are not seeming to do anything to divert traffic it is adding an extra 15 minutes to my journey. Now, I could ignore that and take the other main route to work but as there is an MRT being built and part of the same elevated road the traffic there is even worse. Add to it the fact that people are also looking to find less chaos on their way to work means the roads all around the area I live in are constant gridlock from 5am to 10pm.

Sort of stuff I ride in everday and its gets frustrating

Friday night there was a huge rain storm over the city which lasted a good few hours and this meant that my journey home time on a bike was 1.5 hours as every road I could take home was closed due to floods or traffic so I ended going way out of the way to get home, only to discover the street outside my house was full of broken down bikes which had failed to get through the 60cm floods all around my house. As much as I loathe to say it, roll on the dry season!!!

Jeremy at 22 Months

In 2 months time Jeremy will be 2. That has come round so quickly and everything has been now, thinking back, a blur.
In those 22 months he has grown and changed everyday and continues to delight and amaze me with his ability to learn, his activity and energy and his interest in everything.

 He has probably all his teeth. He likes to show me when he has finished eating by opening his mouth to tell me its empty. He tells me when he wants more, when there is something on the floor or an ant or something. He gets tissues and phones when asked and asks for water or milk.

He can sit still and watch TV for up to 10 minutes at a time before moving or running about and asks for Charlie and Lola on Cbeebies. He knows and can say some of the words to 'Steal My girl' by One direction (although that has nothing to do with me). He knows animals and which ones are scary, he growls, which ones are birds or cats, fish, dogs, bugs etc. Owls, Cats, Dogs, Bugs, Birds, Deer, Cow, Pigs, he can call by name or by sound.
Apples and bananas he can ask for.

He likes to scribble over everything. He can play with toy cars and make the noises. He fetches, he carries and he behaves most of the time.  For me all this is awesome and great to watch. He also loves buses, big and small. Toy or real and those really sad bus videos on You Tube when he will watch them and shout 'bus' at every moment a bus goes by. Buses are a big deal

He is past his allergy of lactose, he will eat almost anything. He will drink and eat almost everything he is given and will say no if he does not like it or want it.

Jeremy is now 14.4kg a little more than he was in October and is around 90cm a fair few centimeters taller than October and is fit and healthy. We had to take him to the Dr on Saturday because he had a week long cough and it was down to the common cold or flu virus and so medicine soon sorted that out. Carrying him around in the hospital he would point at the mothers with babies and say 'baybi' to them. Standing next to other little children he would touch their face but no in a bad way but it would be a little worrying for me. I have not seen him interact with other children and I really do not know how he behaves around them. He still has a long way to go before sharing with others really comes into his mind and he can rationalise things like that but I will teach best I can.

We now have TV downstairs and now he looks at the TV when it is on and expects it to be put on then and happily will get bored of it and go and do something and then go back to it if there something he likes. Baby TV and Cbeebies, Oggy and the Cockroaches and slowly but surely Gumball are his favourites and so I now know about Numtums, Charlie and Lola, Dinopaws, Sarah and Duck, etc The things you learn.

Our next adventure will be a train trip with him, a tricycle and having encouraging to speak more and make more sense.

His birthday will also be fantastic, and thats not long either.

Typhoid

Since January I have been having stomach and digestion problems and spent many an hour on the toilet wishing for a smell free day. Me being me, I considered it just a bout of food poisoning which is common here due to the lax hygiene routines in food preparation and really bad local toilets and dirty tap waterand oft badly stored but not cooked food. So I let things rumble on despite warnings from the wife that I should see a doctor and get it sorted out.

So on valentines day I decided to take my wife out for the evening to the hospital where we could while away the hours waiting to see a doctor. We went to the nearest one, which is Tria Dipa about 1km from my house and it is a good hospital and is well respected even if it does need a lick of paint.

The doctor I saw, seemed to know his stuff. I have met him before and he treated me for my back pains. You should know there are no GPs but doctors that you can see, therefore no real records or history of patients unless you keep returning to the same place. So to see the same doctor twice is a good thing I guess here.

I was told to go and have a blood test which was a first for me because I have never had a blood test before and after a syringe load of blood was removed, I had to wait 20 minutes while it was tested for the chance of Typhoid Fever or Tyhoid. One is never quite sure what it is out here but to mention you have 'Tipes' or Typhoid and you are instantly considered ill and wished a speedy recovery. There was also a chance that I would be admitted to hospital which I was not too impressed with, Yovita even less so and with having to stump up a large deposit first to get a bed I was not looking forward at all to that prospect.

1 form does it all for the tests in hospital

Back to the doctor for the result and I was told, it was Typhoid and I needed to rest not eat fried food and drink as much water as I humanly could before saying everything was OK and goodbye.

This ones says TY-O is + positive rather than negative

We were given a big bag of antibiotics and a letter declaring I needed 5 days bed rest. Bed rest being made to rest in a bed and off home we went.

Bed rest is boring and almost impossible with my son who is  not sick and wants to play and jump and crawl and play more with me all the time I was at home. So I spent my rest with him taking life easy resting at home and sleeping more when he slept so much so by the following weekend I felt so so much better. The drugs worked, the water worked and the rest definitely was a good thing.

Jeremy behaving while I was resting

Ironically, the doctor said that Typhoid was common for westerners to catch in Indonesia and looked a little lost when he was told I have been here for 8 years and only had the flu a few times and some back problems. But then he said my blood pressure was good for my age and my heart was strong so that was good.

So what is Typhoid?

Wikipedia describes it like this

"Typhoid fever — also known simply as typhoid^[1] — is a common worldwide bacterial disease transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica, serovar Typhi."

So now you know. Happily the antibiotics kicked in and cleared it up and I am back at work and the world continues to revolve. And just maybe I will go to the doctors next time a little sooner!!!!

Happy Birthday EF

Somedays its hard to imagine that EF English First is 50 years old and that it was created a Swedish man with a vision and who saw a gap in the then developing tourist market and exploited it to the max.

 

But EF (Education First and its other familiar name English First) is 50. And last Tuesday we had a party.

This is I think, the only corporate birthday I have ever attended. A global party for all employees to attend and all at the same time. I imagine non Islamic countries enjoyed sparkling wine and champagne as the toast. I enjoyed the grape juice. Our party was for all the staff who work in the building for EF, which meant all teachers and staff and the administration people who live upstairs.

Decked out in our very best EF t-shirts, we listened to a short welcome and then watched a few videos about EF and its history plus how the organisation got into the Guinness book of records for the most people who participated in a dance world wide.

Cake and lunch then followed by the inevitable round of photos.

Somedays its good to belong to something.

The video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mramrpw7A4A#t=111

Floods in Jakarta

Well after 2 months of threatening the city with floods of near biblical proportions it finally happened. The city has in some places been flooding in areas since Christmas but this week with a high tide from the north,  heavy rains in the mountains in the south and torrential rain in the city, Jakarta in places finally became overloaded and the place flooded and ground to a standstill. It should be noted that this happens pretty much every year, and more than once. However, it being the rainy season the expectation is that the rain is worse, the floods bigger and the chaos more than the rest of the year and this year for some it has been.

The rains started over the weekend and on the Monday I had to be at school by 6am to go into the city for my school classes. It rained all the way from home to EF and then carried on into the morning at St.Ursula. There was a power cut for a while and then after around 9am the rain began to fall at a rate which you realise is going cause problems for people.
At 11am, parents were picking up there children from the school to get them home and the school itself started to flood. By 12 noon, my classes were cancelled and I was free to go (where?) back to EF for the day. Happily I work with another teacher whose classes were also cancelled so we waded out of the school without shoes and socks to Dunkin Doughnuts to wait for the driver who did arrive around 1.5 hours later. While waiting we watched the rain and floods rise.

My bike in the rain

The gloomy skies out side my school at 6am

St.Ursula in the rain

The floods starting inside the school

Leaving the school

The floods outside the school

Getting Deeper

The trip to EF was on clear roads but I had 3 teachers unable to come into the school on the Monday due to the weather. On the way home from EF I encountered the biggest floods I have ridden through ever and that was exciting but happily I made it. It was hard to do as the water was higher than my front wheel. But other than that, the traffic was very light.

The view from one my teachers houses

One of my teachers took this while trying to get to EF

Another view

The rain calmed down on Tuesday and I only had 2 teachers absent due to floods but they returned on Wednesday. The city itself got back to normal from Tuesday night and since then there has been no real heavy rain but there are many people claiming the rain will return this weekend or in the next week or so.  Lets see.

This was a 1km away from where I work

The city itself was stuck. The buses, trains and taxis stopped running. Large parts of the city was under 50-80cm of water and these are government areas, business areas as well as residential areas. Still it happens every year and every year nothing really changes, it just continues to rain and the floods come and go.

And some endearing photos of why I like Jakarta. People never give up.

From voanews,com

from floodlist.com

from thewatchers.adorraeli.com