Photo shoot

On Friday, we had the opportunity to go to a professional photo shoot- our friend Dedi hooked us up. We headed to Seibu, a really nice department store in one of the many malls here. The shoot was done in the store because they are really fussy about letting any of their clothes leave the store!

The camera was linked up to the laptop, so we could see the results instantly and the photographer could work out what changes he needed to make.

There was a make-up artist there, and the clients came mid-shoot to see how it was progressing. We found it all really interesting and inspiring and we were very grateful for the opportunity.

Afterwards, Dedi took us to another mall - Pacific Place - where there was a temporary art exhibition. It was fascinating!

There were paintings, photos, sculptures and things that I'm not quite sure how to describe.



We've been having a great time here, and can't believe we only have one more week in Jakarta before we head off to Japan! We haven't been as consistent with our blogging - sorry about that - so it probably seems like we haven't done much here, but don't be fooled by appearances. While there may be many mentions of malls and good food, we have actually done some work!

Chinese food and farewell dinner

This week we've also been out to dinner with Evelyn's family again. We went to a fantastic Chinese restaurant called Nan Xiang, which has modern Chinese food and is quite different to what we have in Australia (much nicer and less fatty). It was in a mall called Senayan City, and it was very impressive!

We tried Xiao long pao. It's like a wonton, but filled with soup and chicken and prawn. You have to pierce it with your chopsticks and drink the soup before eating the rest- it was really yummy!


The table had a lazy susan on it, so we couldn't resist putting our camera on it and spinning it round to take a silly photo of ourselves :)

On Thursday night, there was a farewell for David and Judy Berry. They've been here for 7 weeks, teaching English, and everyone was very sad to see them go.

We had all sorts of interesting foods and drinks - this one is a mix of blue Pepsi and lemon cordial...it wasn't very nice!

Ben posing for a photo with Paul - he works for the church and is an amazing driver. Which is exactly what you want when you're in the middle of Jakarta with crazy traffic and no real rules as far as we can tell!

Us being silly again...

Farewell David and Judy!

Shooting for Oxfam

This week we have done some shooting for Oxfam. We've visited a few union groups, who are lobbying for better wages for the Nike and Adidas factory workers. At the moment, they earn about 900,000 Rp a month, which is about $113, and it doesn't even meet their basic living costs - they need double that amount just to survive.
After shooting at the first office, we had something called Gado Gado for lunch. It's satay sauce with different vegetables, rice and prawn crackers - very nice!

Wherever we go, we get photos taken of us, whether we want to or not, so it was no surprise when we had to put down our cameras and pose for a photo with the union members.

We're shooting for Oxfam again today (Saturday) - not sure exactly where or what, but maybe a rally? Maybe not though - we just rock up and then find out what's going on - Indonesian style.

Compassion

Last Tuesday, we started shooting for Compassion, and we had a very busy week. We have been at two projects and also visited six different children in their homes. It has been an amazing experience, one that is very difficult to describe. To see how these children live is extremely hard. It's heart-breaking. Hopefully these photos do a little better at showing what we've seen...

The little boy in the middle sitting down is sponsored through Compassion and this is his family home.

Wherever we go, we have a crowd of curious onlookers, you don't see foreigners in Jakarta very often, especially in the slum areas. This is one such crowd.

The second project we visited is right next to a rubbish tip, where many of the children and their parents work, collecting anything that can be cleaned and sold for recycling. When we visited the tip, many of the children that were hanging around us came along, and they loved having their photo taken.

This is one of the Compassion mums who works at the rubbish tip.


Goat fight at the tip.

Another Compassion mum with her children. She is in the Child Survival Program with her baby girl, and another one of her sons is sponsored too.

Bandung

Monday the 17th was Independence Day in Indonesia, so everyone had a holiday! We went to Bandung, which is about 2 hours from Jakarta - we left at 6.30 in the morning to try and avoid the traffic. Bandung is known for shopping and eating, and we did alot of both! There are so many factory outlets there, we managed to get to about 4 of them, and that was about all we could cope with. We also watched some of the games traditionally played on Independence Day - they looked like lots of fun!

We had lunch at a restaurant in the hills, in the middle of rice fields. We had our own little hut, where we all sat on the floor on cushions and the waiters brought everything out to us from the kitchens - it was great.

Bandung is also known for its brownies, believe it or not, and they are really good! Yum :) We had a very full day and arrived home just before midnight, shopped out and stuffed silly, but very happy.

Bandar Djakarta

That night, after our fish market ordeal, we went to an amazing seafood restaurant. Sarah and I are not big seafood people, but this rates as one of my top 5 meals of all time.....it was up there!

The restaurant was right on the water, it is the most popular seafood restaurant in town, I think they said there are 200 tables - the place was packed.

When you are arrive you go and pick out your meal for the night. Your meal being the fish swimming around in the tanks, or the live crabs with their claws tied up. Then you sit down and you have your meal all prepared,cooked and served to you in 20mins - it was so fresh, and tasted so good! This was the first time we had ever had crab, we also had squid, prawns, fish, chicken...



After dinner we went out for a quick ride on a boat, then went for a walk along Jakarta's one and only beach!

Habitat for Humanity

Hi blog world, it's Ben here. We do promise to blog more as we have a bit more internet access now. This post is from Thursday last week - so we have a bit of catching up to do....
We spent the day doing photography for the church's Habitat for Humanity project. We are making up a brochure here for the church to help them raise more funds to buy more land, to build more houses. We got up at 6.30 and drove to the block of land they are planning to purchase and took photos of that. Then on the way home we stopped by the local fish market to take some photos of it, but unfortunately it was all over by the time we got there. All that was left was a few fish lying around on the ground....(kind of disconcerting considering that we were going out for dinner to a seafood restaurant that night).


Then we went back in the afternoon to take photos of the people and houses at the current Habitat for Humanity site. On the way we stopped by the Plastic Recycling Centre which is run by some of the people living at Habitat. It gives them 'better' work than they originally had. They collect plastic bags, wash them, dry them out, bundle them up, and sell them to the recyclers.


The rest of these photos are from the Habitat project. We spent some time taking a lot of photos there, the houses only cost about US$1300 to build. Sarah took this first image!

These are some twins from the project.

Inside one of the homes.

Jakarta News

We don't have access to the internet where we are staying, so updating our blog has proved to be harder than we anticipated! We can walk over to the mall and get free wifi in some of the cafes, but today is the first time we've done it. We'll try and give a snapshot of what wev'e been up to in the last little while...When we arrived in Pontianak after our overnight coach trip, we waited out the hours til our flight to Jakarta in this little house on the river. It is very different to where we are staying now!

This is the apartment where we are currently staying. It is owned by Pastor Joshua and his wife Sannita. She does interior design (among other things) and this is a 'show apartment'. It is close to the church, and so it is often used by visiting pastors, and members of the church also pop in and out frequently. The contrast between the extravagant malls and apartments and the slums right next door is incredible - it's like two different worlds living side by side.


On Monday, we visited Evelyn's parent's bag shop/warehouse. They import bags from China and sell them wholesale to alot of retail shops in the area. They had just received a shipment before we arrived, so there was stock everywhere! They work extrememly hard and it was fascinating to see behind the scenes a little. I even got a free handbag from Evelyn's mum - and they also got us lunch from the local Soto shop - they are so generous and hospitable.


Evelyn's family also took us to one of the malls in Kelapa Gading (actually, it's 5 malls joined together). It was gigantic! There are malls everywhere - it's where everyone goes to hang out in Jakarta (there's not really much else to do, especially as it's so hot). We had Mixed Ice - which is like nothing we've ever had (or want to have again). It's shaved ice, mixed with all sorts of jellies, kidney beans, green beans, seaweed, coconut milk, brown sugar and more.

Afterwards, we went out to a noodle house (can't remember what it's called exactly) - the food was fantastic, I really love the noodles here. We also tried fish cakes, which were great as well. There are so many more flavours here than in Australia, and so many different fruits as well - I've never heard of half of them! We've tried lots of different drinks - the oddest one being avocado...it's blended up with condensed milk and chocolate syrup and actually tastes great (believe it or not).

We've also been to the Canon Service Centre to drop in one of our cameras which decided to break in Borneo. You take a number, just like in a deli, and then wait your turn. While it's not going to be cheap to repair, it's a LOT better than what it would've cost to fix in Australia, so God's timing is good!

This is a massive Reformed Presbyterian Church we passed on the way to Canon - Ben took the photo for his dad - thought he might be impressed!

Today we visited Rianno's printing shop. He is an elder from the church and runs a very successful printing business. He even printed out one of our photos for us on his new HP Indigo 5500 printer! Ben was very impressed and we've now got some ideas for things we can print out for our business while we're here...

The streets outside the shop were filled with cages - rabbits, guinea pigs, hawks, eagles, monkeys, snakes, lizards, owls...you name it. It was very sad to see. This photo was taken from the car, so it doesn't show much, but you can get the idea.

Anyway, that's officially way too much information, but it should keep everyone happy for a while! We are off to a media meeting at the church tonight and afterwards we are going to stay in another place, Taman Palem, for a few days. Tomorrow we are going to photograph some Habitat for Humanity houses and also the land they are purchasing to build more houses, so we are really looking forward to that!