Packers and Packing

8 January 2013

Packers and Packing

Game is about to start

On Sunday morning we were able to watch the Packers-Vikings game. Grace had found a sports bar down in Makati (the ritzy, business center) that said they would open up early to start showing the game. For the first hour, we sat in their outside seating area with one other chain-smoking Filipino. We watched the rest of the game inside on their big screen. A woman from Minnesota and a man from Atlanta joined us. They were both in town for just a week or two for business. About midway through the third quarter, two guys in their mid-30s came in to watch. One was from Wisconsin and the other had worked for a few years at Land’s End in Dodgeville. They were both in Manila for a few months while working for Philippines Airlines.

better viewing inside

            We’re probably going to miss the next game, though, because we’re heading off to Indonesia tomorrow. I’m attending a conference in Jakarta on the 9^th and the 10^th. One of our friends from Madison is actually going to be joining us for the whole trip. He’s in India now for a wedding but is flying to Jakarta a little after us. He and Grace will get to explore Jakarta for two days before I join them for a third. Next, we’ll be taking the train to Yogyakarta for a two-day stay there. We’ll be meeting up with three other Madison folks: an anthropology PhD student doing fieldwork in Yogya (this is her second year there), and a colleague of mine and his wife (he’s in his second year of doing fieldwork in Surabaya and she’s from central Java so they’re taking a trip over to see her family). Then we head off to Ubud, Bali, for three days. We just realized yesterday that our flight from Bali to Manila leaves at 1:10 AM, not 1:10 PM. There are only two flights a week from Denpasar to Manila so not much we can do about it. At least the traffic will be light when we get back. Not sure what our internet situation will be, so we may not be updated very much until January 21 or so.

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            Random photos: 

Here’s a shot of the fruit stand on our street where we get a lot of our produce. The plastic sheet is there for the sun. During the day, it goes down to about 2 feet off the ground. Along with fruit and vegetables, they sell lots of meat and fish (you can see some hanging on the right), raw and cooked eggs, noodles, seasoning, etc.

It's winter here now, which basically means that it's much drier than before. Even though the actual temperature isn’t much lower it really feels quite a bit cooler. Lots of the trees are losing their leaves, though. The acacias on Ateneo’s campus are starting to look a little bit more transparent with fewer leaves, which can be quite beautiful in the evening.