talk about multitasking...

just a short one here:
tonight, after failing to do anything we had yesterday imagined for today (the heat's a real killer. makes you just want to hang out in the pool.), we went to see a wayang kulit performance. that's shadow puppetry here in yogyakarta, java, indonesia. did i mention we made it to java? i guess i didn't. we took a bus from ubud, bali (on which we had some pretty good buskers with a guitar and a carbuoy for a few minutes) to a ferry (on which people stood up and hocked bubble-blowing guns, undershirts, and backscratchers. also you could buy spongebob squarepants punching bags.), stayed the night in a place called banyuwangi (sounds a little like bangy-wangy) for kelly's birthday (they had karaoke there and i almost got surprised into giving a rendition of frank sinatra's "my way" but i managed to scoot out before i was heard (i think)). how's that for nested parentheses, eh? so yeah, next day we took a six hour train to surabaya, where we waited for an hour to take another six hour train. it was a long day, but made significantly better by our company and by our iRivers, into which we plugged a splitter (supplied by the illustrious tammy and kelly) and two sets of headphones. and then we sang along to everything that came on, from indigo girls (duh) to edie brickell to michael jackson. endless amusement. well, maybe not endless, but 4 hours or so. blah blah blah, the train was long, and then we were here in yogyakarta ("jogja"). so the puppetry: there's a big gamelan and a screen with a light behind it and a bunch of puppets lined up for possible use.
one guy (count 'em: one) sings along with the gamelan, speaks all the parts, controls the puppets (which don't move all THAT much), bangs a wooden thing in his left hand to punctuate sentences, and rings a bell with a string attached to his right foot to accentuate the action. pretty intense multitasking if you ask me. but it was slow and in another language altogether, so we stayed as long as we could and then left to come back here on one of the bicycle-driven becaks that flood this big city.

tomorrow nabia and i will be temporarily separating from tammy and kelly to go visit borobudur (biggest buddhist temple in the world?) and stay the night out there so as to maximize the sunset and sunrise viewing. don't worry though, we won't have lost them forever. at very least we'll be seeing them on our flight out of the country back to KL on the 25th. and then all night in the airport :).

ok. i'm gonna go and get some much-needed sleep and hope the bugs that bit me all over my right wrist, left shoulder, face, and neck decide that last night's feast was enough to last them a couple of days and leave me alone tonight. cuz i don't really like to think about things crawling on my face...

on that note,
'nite (or should i say "selamat malam"),
amy

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