Mon. night Sept. 13

I just went out on the balcony to enjoy a gentle, Oregon-style rain - good to know they get that kind here too.Unfortunately, it also means the air has not cooled down much. Since I've been out in that heat since early afternoon, I soon decided to retreat into my AC room.I noticed many people at the homes we visited today were wiping their faces repeatedly, and Herizal's son nearly fainted toward the end despite drinking soda after soda.

Today I went along with Herizal, his wife, and their youngest two to a small university class reunion of about a dozen of his good friends ( including my Indonesian teacher ), which included visits to two homes and a brief photo-opp sunset visit to a very crowded park ( multiple thousands within my sight ) stretching all along the Musi River next to the Ampera Bridge.

The feeling today was quite different from my other home visits, since most of the people hadn't seen each other for 20 years, and in between taking photos they naturally wanted to spend all their time 'catching up'.I just stayed in the background along with several spouses and kids.It was an even split between men and women and clearly they all still felt very comfortable with each other after so many years.One woman - a Catholic, I discovered later - looked and acted totally Western.The other women wore head scarves and traditional tops but some had jeans/slacks underneath; two excused themselves to pray at two prayer times.One of the guys was named Herman ( also a Christian, I guess ) - I told him that's my dad's name and we joked about it.

In the first house ( very middle-middle class, by US standards at least, with a treadmill, karaoke set-up, etc. ) we sat in a circle on carpets, men on one side, women on the other.The mood ranged from beyond boisterous ( the volume of laughter/loud talking must have reached 100 decibels at times) to almost somber, with some nearly instant switches - very interesting to watch even if I had no idea what they were talking about.My Indonesian teacher said all the talk was in bahasa Palembang, not Indonesian.I had more pempek and a chicken dumpling soup with a peppery broth, plus the traditional Lebaran cakes including the one that everyone proudly stresses must be steamed for 8 hours ( home kitchens have no ovens here, in fact - usually just a 2-burner hot plate ).

The second house we visited belonged to one of the women at the reunion, and involved a long confusing twisty-turny drive in the dark over increasingly narrow and bumpy roads out into the country.She and her husband obviously have 'made it' - and I think wanted everyone to see that.She bragged to Herizal's wife that they got a lot of land around the house cheap and now it's worth 20 times as much.But even though the house had vast expanses of intricate woodcarving and lavish displays of antique ceramics, handwoven traditional fabrics with elaborate designs, an indoor fish pond, big-screen TV, etc. etc. it lacked basic ventilation and AC, so even with the doors open and fans going all around it absolutely felt like being in a giant oven; no one seemed able to relax.That's where Herizal's son almost fainted.

After hours of slogging through my phrasebook yesterday and today, I ventured to use a bit more Indonesian today, but still mainly to be polite or ask for some semantic clarification. I had no English conversation at either house except for a few polite questions from people and a bit of 'side conversation' with Raidul, my Indonesian teacher - who seemed to 'hang back' a bit himself though everything he did say had people laughing.He told me that he wants to take me to local karaoke places since he loves to sing all the old favorites by the Beatles, the Eagles, and other 60s/70s groups.He also wants to show me how to use the local busses ( great! ) starting with taking one with me and Herizal to have lunch at a local-favorite restaurant on the river.

Until it got dark ( which happens incredibly fast here ) all the driving-around was very interesting. We passed a strung-out, packed-out lakeside park with hundreds of smoky barbeque mini-grills going, as well as some of the major 'venues' for next year's SEA Games ( sort of an Asian mini-Olympics and a VERY big deal here ).We passed areas of crude slapped-together shacks on stilts over swampy areas, very reminiscent of Thailand, and then brand new suburban 'instant neighborhoods' of identical houses ranging from quite modest to boxy 2-story behemoths, all packed close as in the US. How could anyone want to live in such a situation - especially people with a fair bit of money and hence other choices?