|
|
|
January 19th Sonja is back in the Netherlands. Toroa and Tama's time in Jakarta. I arrived back on the morning of January 19th. Sen and the boys had been home a week and had spent a week in Jakarta on the way back. Toroa had left Salty behind in the hotel there so the poor toy has been thrown out or is learning Indonesian :) Toroa didn't seem to worried about losing his favourite soft toy. Tama told me that he cut his foot three times on glass in this swimming pool and he still went back for more. <-- Tama and Toroa in the hotel pool in Jakarta. |
There was so much rubbish and cans in the water that the boats floated on this instead.
|
They went for a ride in a boat to look at boats. |
The water was so black and dirty that Papa forbad me to stick my hand in it. 
|
I found a menu titled "Tama's expensive restuarant" and where everything cost 1000's, including the option of having a cushion to sit on at the table while ordering your tea or hamburger, but the currency was omitted. I asked him "A 1000 what?" thinking he was making fun of the fact that we now have Euros instead of guilders and then he told me about the Indonesian currency. Where a 1000 meant less than a Dutch cent, according to Tama. <- Tama's bug. He watched a BBC program one morning and then made this bug. It has a marble inside which works like a moving weight making the toy flip down a steep slope. |
|
Then a few hours after my arrival we all headed off on the bicycles to a high school open day. From 10 to 12 hundreds of adults and children walked around looking into classrooms -sitting in on classes (We sat in on a maths and a latin class), and talking to teachers. It was exhausting but that was probably because I had slept so little on the plane or perhaps coming back from the east was harder on me. Anyway I then went straight to bed and slept. For the next week, I woke early and went to bed early, feeling rather spaced out. I felt as if my memories were spinning and out of place. I'm not sure if the jetlag was harder than usual or that the warmth and sun in New Zealand kept getting in the way of my sensations of the day to day here -back at home. 
The Euro tree on new year's night 2002 next to the Maastricht Town Hall.
It also took me a while to get used to a new currency.
It felt as if my memories of northland and Auckland were burned into my brain. I read a series of short stories, partly, because I couldn't read any technical books (my usual reading material) and partly as a way of working with my feelings. I also wrote down my thoughts and feelings, thinking, perhaps I could use them creatively oneday. On my second day at work, my bicycle was gone. So I walked home in the rain, trying to work out whether I should make more of this than just being a stroke of bad luck. A day later Sen took me to city bicycle dump shed in the hope that they had taken my bicycle. In the morning I'd rung them and had been informed by a very friendly voice that there had been a cleanup around the station and about 200 bicycles had been removed. Just before we got there, Sen swerved on the bicycle and my leg hit a parked |
I spent the rest of the week working on a new game for teleacnot. Things float in the water and the child is asked to drag what doesn't belong in the water to the rubbish container. 
Here the items that were dragged to the rubbish container are labelled as being "wrong" or "right". The items left in the water have a blue wavy animated line under them if they belong there and a box with a red cross if they do not. 
Tama and Toroa suggested the light bulb, and the bicycle. Tama also drew a factory for me (the rectanglur form). They also corrected the mistakes I made in the dutch and tested the game for me. You can play it on this page. |
|
car. It was extremely painful and my whole leg hurt from the impact. Fortunately, my bicycle was there! I was so happy and at the same time still in pain. I was amazed that there was no lecture (about tying my bicycle to a fence), no fine, no fee for processing or for collecting. It seemed so un-Dutch. I was suspicious as I signed and gave my address, thinking, ah there'll be some 'exception' with bill arriving in the mail. But there wasn't.
|
|
Then I was sick with the flu for the next week and that was January over and done with. Tama is always trying to out smart us about one thing or another. This time when he wrote his sentences for me, he did his very best to make them as uncreative as possible. They were, and so I said, "OK" make a drawing of your face by looking in the mirror. Note the parted hair. He often wets his hair and then combs it in the mornings like this. <-- Selfportrait by Tama on January 29th. Choose another month |
A drawing by Toroa about his class trip to the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam.
|