Weird guy at the club or interpretative dance?

Admittedly, I'm not the foremost authority on the "finer" arts. Sidney Pollack's work looks like blood spatters from a violent crime. In a German art museum, they hung a 12 ft by 18 ft white painting. I thought it was a blank canvas. Nope, someone had put on a coat of white paint. They were selling it for $45,000. I still don't get it.

My evaluating skills are no better at dance. I know what I find entertaining, but ask me to explain the difference between a "grande jete" and a "plie" and you'll find me running for wikipedia. I've been to a few ballet's in my day - more than ten, less than twenty. I fall asleep during half of them.

On Saturday night, my wife and I, along with two other expat couples, attended a ballet performance that included our daughter's teacher. There were three "movements". The first one left all of us asking ourselves if we had made a mistake.

In the first movement, a solitary male - the choreographer for the evening - spasmodically jerked, alternated between fear and curiosity, and really just looked like the weird guy at the dance club who believes he is a really good dancer but is really providing comedic material for the rest of the club goers. From the brief article I read about the ballet prior to attending, and my ever improving Indonesian, I understood he was playing the part of a schizophrenic. It was a bad "interpretation". I don't know what he was trying to accomplish, so he may have succeeded - as long as entertaining the audience wasn't his goal. There was little more than polite applause when he finished.

The second movement was better, enjoyable even, though the constant giggling induced an urge to throw something. I'm glad I didn't have any fruit - or a Nerf ball. Two dancers, young lovers. He wanted sex, she wanted to wait. Frustration, anger, convulsions, crying, further rebukes, and finally, reconciliation, played out on the stage with fluidity and grace. If they eliminated at least half of the giggling, I probably would not have had a bad word to say about it. Our daughter's instructor gave an excellent performance.

At intermission - after the second movement - we half seriously, half jokingly, discussed leaving. We'd seen the person we came to see and we weren't terribly entertained. If we had left, we would have missed an excellent third movement.

The premise of the third movement - again, based on my limited Indonesian and how I interpreted the dance - was mortals versus gods. The main character asked his lover to choose between himself and Arjuna, an incarnation in Hindu mysticism. There was a young version and an old version of his lover and I never did quite determine the significance.

To start the third movement the main character and his young lover performed a very erotic dance in the shower. Had I been falling asleep, this dance would have woken me. No nudity, but the woman's costume did an excellent job inferring the idea of nudity. Later, either Arjuna himself, or a chief warrior in his entourage battled the main character in a very compelling battle dance. The movement ended with the demons of hell consuming both versions of the female - the younger one being blindfolded.

Though I would recommend the ballet, I'd advise people to arrive late. Only one member of our party fell asleep - and it wasn't me.

After the ballet we went for drinks at Sky, a bar up the street from our house in Kemang. Sky is on the top floor of an all-glass building and has an outdoor patio with an excellent view of the city. The band for the evening was "Flying Syrup", a British Pop band. They covered several Oasis, Beatles and U2 songs, and did so quite well.

Spending an evening out, with other adults and no kids is a rare treat for us. I hope we'll do it again soon.

Busy Week

What a busy week for the family! The week was full of events - summer school, ballet lessons, birthday parties and a visit to an amusement park. It's amazing we're not all exhausted.

First, a quick trip back to our daughter's birthday. We had celebrated with friends the Saturday before her birthday. The day of - which was a Thursday - we did a private celebration at home and gave her our gift. She absolutely loves the movie "The Wizard of Oz". When I arrived home from work, I took her to the park while mom busied herself with laying down the yellow brick road she had created. It was a path around the house, with a visit with each character along the way, all of whom had a small gift to give. Even the wicked witch got in on the action, though she tried to deceive the birthday girl. The end of the yellow brick road was not Oz, but, instead, her gift from us.



The following Saturday was a birthday party for her friend at Kemang Club Villas (KCV). Like all children's birthday parties here, this one was big. There was a candy hunt around the grounds, a water balloon toss, and they had horse-drawn cart to give everyone rides. Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of the event.

Our daughter has been out of school for just a few weeks and we noticed she was already getting bored. We have trouble keeping her busy enough to keep her mind and body active. When she is not active, she gets fussy. Speaking with some of the mothers at the birthday party, we decided to enroll her in Summer School at Tutor time. Right now she goes twice per week for a half day, though we are likely to increase this to three times a week. One day, when picking her up from school, my wife learned that some of the other girls were taking a ballet class after school. The school usually offers it, but there isn't enough enrollment during the summers. So the teacher offered to teach it at someone's home if they could get at least a few kids involved. We decided to have our daughter try it, though we were unsure what to expect. As you can see from the pictures, she had a great time.





Saturday was quite the busy day. We had a birthday party to attend in the late afternoon, my wife and I had plans to have dinner with another couple in the evening (without the kids), and we decided to have some family time before the evening activities. We all went to a local miniature golf course. Our daughter started out enthusiastic but got bored after just three holes and from then on asked if the next hole was the last one. At the end she was able to enjoy riding a motorized bike around a little track.





After mini-golf, we prepared for the birthday party. This time it was for a classmate of our daughter's when she attended the Montessori school. Like all parties, this one was lavish. The front yard had a jumper with balls and a slide as well as a portable mini-bowling. They had built the backyard into a spa and all the 3-year-old girls (and the mom's) who were interested received a pedicure and manicure (the father, a Frenchman, works for a cosmetic company). Our daughter enjoyed the pampering very much and, when the therapist was finishing her hands, our daughter made sure she knew to "do my feet next". Finally, the cake was probably the largest we've seen so far.








In the evening, our pembantu came for a rare Saturday work schedule to babysit while my wife and I went to dinner. We didn't go far - just to Toscano's, the small, Italian restaurant near our home. We chuckled to ourselves when we heard they had made reservations. The two times we had been there we either had the place to ourselves or were one of three tables. This time, the place was packed with not a free seat anywhere. We were glad they had the wisdom to make reservations. We met this couple through our kids - they went to the same school. He is a pharmaceuticals distributor. They are both from Geneva, the she is originally from the Ukraine. We have a very global group of friends these days. The meal was good, the conversation was great, and we had a wonderful time. After our last dinner out with our daughter, we decided we would start having nights out alone and with other couples from now on.

For Father's Day, I decided I wanted to take the family to Indonesia's Sea World. Yes, that is the name. No, it has no affiliation. It also isn't nearly as entertaining, though we had a good time. Sea World Indonesia is really just a bunch of aquariums and a few petting pools where you can interact with turtles, rays a few sharks and some eels. It does have a water tunnel to walk through, and the tanks are impressive. There are no shows like one would think of with SeaWorld in the US. Below are two pictures. The first is my daughter and I standing by the largest fresh water ray in the world. My halo is the result of the shiny white cap I received for Father's Day reflecting the light. The second is my wife and daughter by the shark tank.





We finished the day by going to one of the local malls for lunch. I've mentioned before how enormous the malls here are. Below are pictures of two malls. The first is Senayan City, which is one of the newer malls. I believe it has 9 floors with about 40 shops per floor. The bottom two floors are a number of restaurants and a grocery store. It even has a spa with "fish treatment" - the one where little fish eat the dead skin off your feet. The second picture is where we at for Father's Day - Pacific Place. They have decorated the sixth floor like a mini harbor complete with boats, a lighthouse and a sea.