Adventure of the Komodo dragon
Once again, absouletely no connection but for you information
the Komodo dragon is the world's largest lizard species. It is found mainly on the Indonesian islands of Komodo, Rintja, Padar, and Flores. There are only an estimated 1,000 to 5,000 of these monitor lizards living today. Reaching lengths of up to 3 m or more, and weighing up to 126 kg, these reptiles are swift runners and climbers with great appetites for deer and wild boar. Although often regarded as pests, they are not a serious menace to humans. In order to protect the dragon, the Indonesian government has made the islands of Padar and Rintja into nature reserves for both the lizard and its prey. Commercial trade in specimens or skins is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Interesting isn´t it...
But yeah... life is so good... we are well on our way to finish national planning, I am in a football team and a squash team, I´ll move to a cheaper room next month, Chelsea players are doing great at the World Cup, perfect.
This weekend I´ll be playing football with the standard beer encounter afterwards, then on sunday I might be playing paint ball, we´ll see if that works out... so I am as happy as I have ever been, although I am missing all my friends and family from Iceland. But hey, I´ll be back next year with a whole year of an incredible experience in my luggage.
Have a nice weekend, don´t stay to nice.
African or European swallow?
So the weekend was quite interesting, friday night Mexico was playing and since Adrian was leaving on Sunday we had our little party with grilled chicken (the guy promised there was no bird flu in it, just before he picked it up from the street), Beers, chips, coke... it was awsome, to bad Mexico didn´t win, but hey... you can´t have everything.
On saturday my head was a tiny bit heavier than usual but that soon dissapeared when I remembered that we were playing football, and more importantly that I would have a hot shower afterwards. When we came to the pitch there were some other guys there so we decided to play them. So our team consisted of 40-59 years old (I asked who was the age president and it was a danish guy, 59 years old), ex-athletes that had drinken to much beer in the last 20 years of their lifes, so we stretched quite a bit our uniforms. The other team consisted of skinny and fit 16-18 years old Indonesians, so we were confident of success. After only 5 minutes I happened to score a goal, this stunned the Indonesians that expected an easy match, 2 minutes later we scored again, at half time I was substituted for a 45 year old spanish guy with 2 bad knees and excessive beer resources on his belly, I was not sure what to think about that, but I decided to take it as a praise. In the second half it showed that maybe our team didn´t quite have the stamina to play full 90 minutes against such a fit team, I came on again and had two assists but actually played quite horribly, I was getting tired so I kept fouling the other team, the good thing being that they became scared of me so I had more space. Still we won 5-2 (half time 3-0) and according to the guys this was the first time in more than 10 years that the Jakarta Vikings scored 5 goals in 1 match. Afterwards an amazing hot shower (you are having sexy mental images now, I know you are, yes, you too), then beers and some talks. I found out that one guy played in a squash team, and he invited me to play on monday.
On sunday Adrian left, it was weird I had been with him since the moment I came to Jakarta, we watched football together, went to the office, to the movies, always Adrian there, and now he´s gone... weird, weird... anyway...
On monday I went playing squash... ohhh what a nice feeling, it is amazing... now I just have to get my technique refreshed before the league starts in September.
now we are doing national planning in AIESEC so every day is really packed, that´s why I hadn´t posted anything, but now my lunch is over, so back to planning...
Talk to you guys later,
Go Chelsea players at the world cup!!!!1
Day of the yellow rat
So... friday´s here, what a quick week this was...
Yesterday we went to this place where they have created a map of indonesia in a lake and then along the lake there are areas dedicated for each part of Indonesia, with their style of buildings, music and crafts etc. It was really cool, especially when me and Ali went to this bikeboats in the shape of a swan and we started sailing into alot of Indonesian people which looked at us like we were mad (which we were9 then we were called in by the boring supervisors who don´t know how to have a little bit of fun.
But we spent the whole day there and in the night I want and had a dinner with 3 Germans, 1 Indian guy, 1 Dutch girl, 1 French guy and a Chilean girl, quite an international dinner and it was alot of fun making contacts with so many new people.
The world cup is going its course, of course Chelsea players are key players in every team, so it is a pure enjoyment watching.
Now I am sitting at the office not really wanting to any more work today, listening to Stevie Ray... what a nice life...
Yeah... about the title... there are always alot of rats on the road that have been squashed by cars, today I saw one that was kind of yellow... interesting isn´t it?
Day of the humping lizzards
Ok, ok, I have no idea where this title came from, maybe my sub-conscious mind has a fettish for lizzard porn, I don´t know... Although I have heard that it is a growing industry in Vietnam.
Anyways... These last couple of days have bee quite cool, on monday we lost the electricity 2 times so I had no internet most of the day, and my work is alot about sending e-mails, writing proposals with stuff I get from the internet, so it was not my most productive date but that was not what bothered me about the lack of electricity. The absolute horror of no electricity here is that the divine air condition simply refuses to run without electricity, even when I asked it really nicely... and not when after 30-40 minutes I started throwing things at it, in hope it would react with a blow of cold air. The office became this sauna chamber and even though I know how incredibly sexy my sweaty body is, then I would prefer avoiding this experience for a while...
So we left an hour early from the office and went to the cinema and watched Omen 666... Behind me sat a guy that was always kicking my seat, and finally after around 40 minutes of my godly patience I turned around to ask him to stop, but he was so focused on the screen that he didn´t see the bold white man turn around and staring at him, so I hit his legs which he had put on my seat, he was so shocked that I though he would start to cry, but for the rest of the movie he didn´t bother me.
I´m not going to talk about the movie since it would be waste of words, only that it has many scenes that make you jump in your seat, I liked that, and only that.
Yesterday was fine, my standard office day, episode of Lost, then I started translating page 2 og Harry Potter, I did in front of the TV to watch the football, and it took me 3 hours... that´s quite a while, but it felt so good afterwards, then I watched all the games, the last game finishes at 4 am (damn time differences)... so this morning wasn´t the freshest of all mornings, but due to my awsomely fresh personality I managed to drag my self to the office and with a big smile I bluffed everybody, I even had some comments on how happy and alive I looked. With my frosen colgate smile I laughed, but inside of me i snorred.
So tonight Germany is playing at 2am to 4 am so I have to wake again... but hey it´s football, and how could the World Cup proceed if I wouldn´t watch, the players would miss me to much...
So from the modest Icelander,
Cheers and beers,
Jakarta
So... what has your favorite Icelander... ok ok... amongst your favorite... ok ok... some Icelander with a big mouth, been doing in Jakarta for those 2 weeks?
Well it is a stupid question really, since I know the answer and not you. Why does people ask questions when they know the answers?? I should stop that, makes no sense.
So... First of all I can´t believe that it is already 2 weeks... simply amazing. But I have been realativetly busy, which is great. During the weekdays I am working in AIESEC from 9 or 10 untill around 6 pm. Then I get home, cook noodles, make some bread or a soup, something extremely simple. Then I watch one Lost show before I start reading some self development, project managment or change management books and taking notes. Afterwards I start translating Harry Potter, that´s alot of hard work since I have to look up every word. In the end it is some sit and push ups, shower and sleep. This has been every single work day for me those 2 weeks.
My first weekend I didn´t know what to do. It was quite weird not being busy like every weekend for the last 2 or 3 years. I had no one to go to and nothing to do... so I kind of did nothing for the whole saturday untill the evening I went with Adrian (Mexico) and Yousuf (India) to some bars and clubs, that was great, I even found Icelandic Ice Tea in one bar, I didn´t know that existed. In my joy I felt I had to share this amazing coincident with the bartender, but he had no idea what I was talking about, I guess he didn´t know Iceland is a country.
This weekend I went playing football with Adrian and the Jakarta Vikings, that is a really cool team that consists of 40-55 years old foreigners, mostly managers, lawyers, importers etc. We had an amazing time playing football where I showed them how football is played in Iceland, I had the most goals, but as well the dubious honor of fouling the oponent most often... It was quite funny tackling down a 50 years old CFO of Multi million dollars company, felt quite good actually. Afterwards they explained that the football was the secondary objective of meeting every saturday, the real reason was to drink beer together. We went to the club house where I had the first hot shower since I came here (so nice!!!!) and then we drank some beers before going to a bar to watch the world cup, there those guys kept buying huge ammounts of beer, so no matter how hard I tried to finish my glass it never got empty... on the other hand since I never emptied it I insist that I only had one beer that evening.
Otherwise not much to say, I found out that Sheva (my bathroom lizzard) has a brother, a bit smaller and darker version of Sheva, I think he was on a vacation when I arrived, but now he is always around. I haven´t given him a name yet, any suggestions?
Ahhh... yes, one thing... my Visa card got copied when I was somewhere and suddenly there started to be 300Euros withdrawal every day, always in a different country... And now I have to proof that I was not in these 9 countries on those 9 days. People who do such a thing should get their lazy ass up from their mothers bedroom, stop eating McDonalds and get them selfs a real job or burn in the everlasting flames of hell for doing such a thing to hard working (or in my case, not that hard working) people... at least I haven´t stolen anything!!!
So now I´ll return to my schedual, I put an objective to post 3 times a week now, lets see how that goes. Untill next time, try not to miss me so much, couple of tears are ok but be strong :)
With all my love (very platonic)
Tómas
Forget Asbos. Australia uses Barry Manilow
Just encountered this great news story... You just got to love the Australians, how on earth will you have a gang fight wile Copacabana is blasted??? It would just be silly :) brilliant idea
In Britain, the Asbo is wielded to curtail the antics of hooligans. In Australia they have a different, though not necessarily more humane, means of control: the music of Barry Manilow.
For the next six months the ears of the youth of Rockdale, a suburb south of Sydney, will be subjected to the sounds of the singer's back catalogue after the local council resolved to get tough on antisocial behaviour. Councillors hope piping Manilow hits such as Mandy and Copacabana through a loudspeaker into a car park troublespot will kill the atmosphere and force the youths to move on.
At long last
Finally, earth has shaken, continents have been crossed, internet access has been achieved, and now it is time for a blog (audience goes wild)
. I have not had any internet connection untill two days ago, and then I had a lot of stuff to do, then it took me a day to write this long list of bullshit, so please enjoy J I woke up at the day of departure with two guys in my bed... sounds bad... it is bad... no but seriously it was my friend Sindri and my cousin Gummi which had been helping me formatting my computer and re-arranging stuff on my external hard drive untill 6 in the morning. Well I woke up and went upstairs and decided it was about time to start packing, so I started packing all the stuff and soon I saw that I had to much stuff since the limit is only 20kg so the classical trick of putting everything heavy into the handluggage was used, and ohhh... my god... my hand luggage sure was heavy. I had a nice farwell lunch with my family at a local restaurant (for further details I had a pizza with chicken, onions and pepper cheese and black pepper). After saying goodbye to my family at the airport I walked around the duty free stores, bought some batteries and a one liter bottle of Black Death which I could fit with a big struggle in my overloaded hand luggage.
my CD´s were buried deep into the hand lugage so I knew that for the next 2-3 days I could only listen to one CD, luckely for me the CD was Tom Waits- Closing time, so I could enjoy listening to him around 50 times in a row.
In the airplane due to my late check-in I got an isle seat next to a guy around 40 which had wild gray hair, he looked like a mixture of a crazy scientist and a mad director of a symphony orchestra. The common denominator though is mad or crazy. We were seated next to an emergency exit so the stewardess, true Icelandic beauty, came and explained to us in english how we would open it in case of emergency, i made a couple of humourus comments about that, which she did not find funny at all, and she spent 10 minutes stressing that I was not allowed to open it if there was not an emergency.
After she had gone I asked the crasy gray haired guy where he was from, and he answered me in english, I am German but I have lived in Iceland for 12 year, and you, where are you from, Iceland I answered and after looking at each other uncomfortably for a minute we realized we had been talking english for no reason... all the stewardess fault, I would like to think that she thought the crasy composer was a foreigner not me.
Anway, so my last moments in Iceland were spent sitting next to a crasy German/Icelandic graphical designer. The perfect thing to say goodbye to my lovely rock in the atlantic ocean.
In London I arrived to Stansted airport in the evening and my first objective after getting my luggage was to find a bar... now now... calm down, not for the beer, but to see the final between Barcelona and Arsenal. I asked a guy how much was left and he told me, 15 minutes, so i ran to the bus ticket office and bought a ticket for a bus leaving in 25 minutes. I went and watched the game and right at the final I ran away to catch the bus, I had just witnessed Arsenal win the European championship 1-0. It was not untill a day later that I found out I had only seen the end of first half and that Barcelona had won.
So I took the bus to my lovely airport Gatwick, the memories that came over me when once again I came in there were lovely. I obviously knew my way around there but after a short trip around I took two chairs and created my lovely bed, listening to Tom Waits.
In the morning I woke up at five thirty and after a quick airport shower in a fortunatly wanker free bathroom I went to the Etihad ticket desk to see if I could go straigt to check in or if they needed to print my ticket.
When the answer was, I am sorry Mr. Kristjánsson you do not have a reserved seat on our flights today. My heart stopped, my blood pressure went up souple of knots but the irony of it all was to much so I started to laugh (isn´t that a sign of nervous breakdown?) i told her to wait a second while I would go downstairs to the internetbooth they have there to check my mail for the confirmation number. I opened my mail and there it was a confirmation, flight on the 18th in the morning to Dubai... I wrote down the confirmation number and just as I finished and was about to close the window I saw a minor detail, I was flying with Emirates, not Etihad.
I went upstairs, talked to the Etihad girl and apologized to her and went to the Emirates desk, there everything went smooth and I was on my way to Dubai, the flight over there was nice, half empty plane so I had 3 seats all for my self which is nice… watched couple of movies, played some chess in the in-flight entertainment system and watched Family guy. In Dubai I had over 10 hours wait, so the most natural thing for an Icelander is to search out a bar where he can hang out, so I did. Hidden in a far corner of the airport was an Irish Pub, god bless the Irish. I took over a corner and set up my little office, laptop and external hard drive, all the luggage around me, ordered some fish and chips and a beer. Anyway, I could not get the internet working because I needed to install drivers for my network card and the CD was deep in my hand luggage. So I started writing some stuff for my friend Woodsy, a little interruption to the story here, just want to say a couple of words about Woodsy, he is this jolly good Australian guy that has high ambition, is interested in the human mind and has a big passion for AIESEC, I have only spent 2 or 3 days with the guy but already I count him as a good friend and I know we will meet more than once more in our life, this is a proof of the amazing things AIESEC brings you, anyway after writing some 8 or 9 pages, having a couple of beers, I started to watch Contact. My friend and cousin Gummi had recommended me to watch it, and since I have a very similar taste of movies as he does (except for the movie Equilibrium, I will never accept that as a good movie) i decided to check it out, and yes, I admitt I was wrong (i had said it was not that good) it actually is a quite a good movie and the thought is quite cool. So as the end was coming a group of guys sat in my corner, i finished the movie and then started talking to them, it turned out that they were coming from Afghanistan and were in the Canadian army. After saying a couple of poor jokes about Canada I noticed that they didn´t like it so I said couple of worse jokes about Iceland, they loved it and we had a really nice conversation after that.
On my flight ticket it only said Dubai-Jakarta but in reality this plane went Dubai-Colombo (sri lanka)- Singapour-Jakarta. During the flight I had two guys sitting next to me. I had the window seat and the guy in the middle was from Sri Lanka (I think, at least he got out there) and on the leg over there he slept the whole time with his head on my shoulder (seriously, not almost on my shoulder, or on my side, nono... on my shoulder) I tried to push his head over to the other side but it always fell back on my shoulder... The other guy was from Saudi Arabia and spoke no English, I talked to him in sign language for a minute but then I gave up and watched some movies. When we were closing in on Jakarta we got some immigration stuff to fill out, the poor Saudi guy spoke no english and no Indonesian so he had no clue what to do, in the end he gave me the paper and his passport and I filled out everything I could fill out, and made some parts up... hope he didn´t get in trouble for that.
Well in Jakarta two lovely girls were waiting for me, Goody and Kenny, and they drove me to the guy where I spent the night, thanks Ara for that. In Jakarta there is a constant traffic jam where ever you go, for them an hour drive between places is short, for example the office is in south Jakarta and Ali lives in south Jakarta, it still takes him an hour to drive here.
Anyway the next morning he drove me to this bus company, or mini van company which would take me to Bandung where the national planning meeting was taking place. I was supposed to go with an Indian guy named Yousuf and I called him 20 minutes before departure and he said that he was coming. Then it was 9 o’clock and he ws not yet there, everybody else was in the car and they were trying to get me aboard so they could go, I tried my best to raise some trouble over the ticked succeeded to delay them for 5 minutes but then we went without Yousuf. When we had driven for 5-10 minutes we turned around and picket up Yousuf... Yousuf my man, what´s up with Indians and being not on time??? Anyway, we talked the whole way to Bandung and Yousuf which will be here until April next year as a trainee turned out to be a great guy. We arrived in Bandung, I lost my phone, and I had a doughnut with cheese!!! Weird thing, it really is weird…
We went to the conference and met all the amazing members, the spirit in the plenary was enough to lift up the house and move it to Iceland, but since that didn´t quite happen I was melting like mad, and when they told me Bandung was the cool city and Jakarta would be much hotter I almost fainted. After a great conference I stayed behind in Bandung to get to know the AIESEC people and the city. I stayed at Ferry´s place for a week; he and his family were very nice to me in all ways so big thanks goes to him. We went and saw some tourist places and some museums and I managed to spend some time with the AIESEC people, was present at the planning day for them and it is good to see the ambition and spirit they have, now it is just to turn that into action. While I was with them I tried chicken legs, and no I am not talking about the meaty leg sold at western restaurants, really the leg, the claw it self… that was an amazing experience.
On Monday I got back to Jakarta and stayed at Yousuf´s room for two nights before I got my room. My room is cool, has air condition and a mattress that´s about it, but that´s all I need. More interestingly the bathroom has a Chinese/Indonesian style toilet, so basically a hole in the ground J and no hot water and no shower, to shower I must pour cold water into a bucket, and splash it on my self… interesting, interesting… in the bathroom there are a lot of ants and flies as expected but what I love about it is that there is this little lizard who lives there, I am going to call him Sheva in honor of the excellent signing for Chelsea, Shevchenko. Sheva is a bit shy, he always runs into cracks in the wall when you enter the room, but the funny thing is if he is not close to any cracks he will freeze and be absolutely still until you exit, just hangs there on the wall trying to blend in with the wall… I like him.
Anyway, I will be writing more regularly now that I have internet access… Hip hip Hoorey!!!
Thanks for all the e-mails regarding the earthquake, and the conversations I have had with some of you on msn and Skype, I really enjoy staying in touch with you all.
