Ubud, Bali

Megan and I were in Ubud, Bali from 24-28 Dec. We had a lot of fun.

We rented a motor scooter for two days so we could get around town a little faster. The hotel we stayed at wasn't in the middle of all the action but rather located near a farm and it was very peaceful. December to March is the rainy season in Bali and so we weren't surprised that it rained a lot of the time we were there. We bought some ponchos, took a cooking class, and stayed out of the rain pretty well.

Here we are with our ponchos near a canyon that was terraced to grow rice...


Twice during our stay in Ubud we went to the monkey forest. This is a small piece of land that is set aside for a monkeys and a temple. It was a lot of fun to visit. One thing about monkeys, they don't like it when you stare at them too long...


They do like it when you give them bananas...


We had a lot of fun hanging around the monkeys. Several times Megan had monkeys crawling all over her, I believe she said it was a childhood dream. One of them thought my beard was fruit, so he cautiously climbed up my leg and sat on my shoulder for a few minutes. Then when he thought he had gained my trust he pulled it pretty hard and then jumped off. It didn't hurt too bad but it sure did startle me. Here is a pic of Meg with a monkey...


Behind her is a very old temple you can see a monkey in the foreground...


There were also cute baby monkeys...


A tail is as good as a leash...


We also went on a long walk and got really muddy...


But we saw some beautiful rice terraces...


To get out of the rain we also took a cooking class. It was really more of an eating class as we didn't do much of the cooking but we did do a LOT of eating...


We had a wonderful time in Ubud...

Kebun Indah

Our favorite hotel in Bali was Kebun Indah in Ubud. We stayed there four nights. The room was about $20 a night and that included breakfast and a complimentary pickup service. This allowed us to walk around and explore Ubud then call the hotel and someone would come pick us up. We used this on several occasions. We spent Christmas morning at this hotel and opened presents in our room. At around 1000 a hotel employee came to our room and gave us Christmas presents. Megan got a silky scarf and I got a candle, I guess Megan got two presents.

The breakfast that we got was incredible...


We each got fresh fruit with either yogurt or muesli or both, toast or a croissant, a fresh fruit drink, tea or coffee, and a main course. The main course was either a fresh fruit pancake with honey and coconut or a jaffle. A jaffle is a lot like a grilled cheese sandwich, it had either just cheese or cheese, tomato and avocado. Yikes! That alone was worth $20 a day!

Another neat thing about our room was the door, it was beautiful...


Here is a pic of the bed. We needed that mosquito net...

Bali is CHEAP!

This morning I went to a few Internet cafes to try to find one that has Skype. Once I found one I decided to go inside and check my email. I read and sent some emails, checked the news and read some blogs. All told I spent about twenty minutes. The clerk said that I owed 3000 rupiah for my time. I pointed to a sign that said 4000 rupiah per hour. He replied saying that I didn't use the full hour. Yes, I said so I shouldn't have to pay 4000 rupiah. He looked kind of frustrated and said 2000 rupiah. I paid him and went on my way.

On my way back to the hotel I realized that I had saved myself about 10¢.

1 US$ = 9434 Rupiah

This can be very confusing when purchasing things. There are a lot of zeros after merchandise. Megan would usually put her finger over the last two digits to find the price in dollars. One our first day we walked by a McDonald's with a sign for 1534 rupiah ice cream. I said to Megan "Is that 15¢ or $1.50?" It was of course 15¢ (17 after tax).

When we first arrived in Bali we went to the ATM to get some money. I withdrew 2,500,000 rupiah. This was giving to us in 50,000 rupiah bills. That makes 50 bills, that fills up your wallet really fast. At first I thought this was good because then we wouldn't have to worry about breaking a big bill. It turns out that 50,000 is a big bill. The first thing we tried to buy in Bali was a large bottle of water (1.5 L). It was 2500 rupiah, I handed the clerk a 50,000 bill and he didn't have change. Also, he was by himself so he couldn't get change. We went to another store where they asked us for something smaller and when we said that was all we had they looked around and one of the clerks ended getting enough change but we had to buy 3 bottles.

Here are some of the highlights of cheap stuff:
McDonald's ice cream 1700
Bootlegged DVD's 10,000 (Buy 10 get 4 free!)
One Hour massage 50,000
Motor scooter rental 25,000
One Liter Petrol 4500 (3.8 Liters in a gallon that makes a gallon of gas 17100 Rp or $1.81)

Kuta, Bali

Megan and I had a full day today. This morning at 0900 a driver came pick us up so we could go parasailing. So far every thing in Bali has been very inexpensive. For us to go parasailing, including pick and drop off from our hotel and a half hour transport, was $15 total. Once we arrived we went out on the boat with a few other groups of tourists. There was us, some other Indonesians, and some Japanese. It was interesting to hear one of the employees of the parasailing place speak with all the different tourists in their native language. He would seamlessly switch from English to Japanese to Bahasa (Indonesian) to Balinese. His English was far from perfect but he could definitely communicate very well. Para sailing itself was fun. I thought it would be a little scary but you ascend and descend very slowly so its actually very peaceful.

There were a lot of boats on the water that day...


In the afternoon we each rented a motor scooter and went to find a temple. Riding a motor scooter in Bali is a very interesting experience. First of all Balinese drivers drive on the left side of the road. This is not a problem most of the time however because there are many one way streets and also most of the streets are very busy so you can just be a cow and follow the herd. The problem starts when you are on a rural road. There were several times when I turned right from the left lane then went into the right lane. One time I did this there was oncoming traffic we each went the right (from my perspective) until I went into the gutter. Oh well, it's only a rental!

After an hour or so of motoring we did find the temple. It was busy place...


and there was a beautiful sunset...


Here we are on our hogs...


Random pic: Here we are in from of surfing Santa!

Welcome to Bali!

Megan and I arrived at Ngurah Rai Airport in Bali, Indonesia at around 2200 on 20 Dec 2007. We stayed in Kuta which is a resort town a few miles south of Denpasar, the largest city in Bali. There is a large beach (our hotel was about 1/2 a mile away) with nice waves and every kind of restaurant you could imagine, from Mexican to sushi, Italian to McDonalds. The streets are small and congested and we saw people from all over the world.

Everything in Kuta revolves around getting money out of tourists pockets (obviously this is an overstatement but you'd be hard pressed to prove me wrong). Early on the 21st we went outside before breakfast to get an idea of our surroundings and as soon as we walked out of our hotel we hear

"Yes, please come to my shop. I give you nice price."

A little further.

"Yes, Hello I give you morning price. Please look here."

"Transport?"

People were selling goods like bootlegged DVDs, paintings and other artsy stuff, and fake brand name merchandise ( watches, clothes, sunglasses...etc). There were also selling services like guiding, transporting, and massages.

We were able to amuse ourselves at there cleverness and joked back with them frequently. One thing I found worked particularly well was to just repeat everything they said. This usually frustrated them, made them think you were an idiot, or made them think you didn't speak English and then they would leave you alone.

There are many "real" stores in Kuta also. When I say real I mean they had name brand stuff and real prices.

Here is a picture of Kuta Square...


The other thing we noticed was the prevalence of motor scooters. I use the term motor scooter and not motorcycle or scooter because they look like a scooter but are fairly fast like a motorcycle. Most had 100-125cc engines and could comfortably carry 2 (or more in some cases) people around the mountainous island. We figured there there were about 5 motor scooters for every 1 car. There are many advantages to having a motor scooter on a small island in the tropics. They are able to go around cars when the traffic backs up, get 100+ miles per gallon, take up very little space in parking lots, and are very inexpensive (new ones are $1100-$1600). Since the weather isn't cold the only disadvantage is having to ride in the rain from time to time. Most people were traveling by themselves but we saw up to 4 people traveling on one a few times and 3 traveling many times. Motor scooters are much better than a public transit system due to their compact nature, efficiency and independence.

Besides the motor scooters and the barrage of sales people we noticed a lot of offerings that are put up in front of peoples shops, houses, and everywhere in between. These add a very nice touch to everything. The offerings were very different in type, size and color. The most typical ones were about 4 inches square made of some type of palm leaf. On the leaf was a few different flowers, some rice, a cookie, and some burning incense. Usually I don't like the smell of incense but I discovered that when it is outside incense is much more tolerable, even pleasant.

Why the quadratic formula?

At the community college I attended and the state university I graduated from most students were only required to take one 100 level or higher math class. This usually meant they took College Algebra. The most challenging thing for students in college algebra I would say is the quadratic formula although this is only my opinion.

Why is this? There are much more useful things to learn in mathematics that don't have to do with the quadratic formula at all. Things such as geometry, trig, probability, comby, vectors or even the ability solve many different kinds of problems in my opinion are more useful than the quadratic formula.

Granted the the road that leads to the quadratic formula may help develop a students analytical abilities. And they don't ONLY learn the quadratic formula. But even so in general just solving equations is really boring and really uninteresting to teach.

I don't understand why being able to solve a polynomial of degree 2 is the pinnacle of mathematics for non-science and non-engineering college students. What do you think?

Please comment with any input you might have.

Moses?

Recently I took Oliver for a walk in the afternoon. I stopped for an ice cream cone and someone made a comment then laughed. I didn't understand him but wanted to be in on the joke so I asked him what he said and he replied.

"I didn't know Moses ate ice cream."

We both laughed. I suppose he was referring to my facial hair and the fact that I walk around with an 8 foot stick.

P.S. I carry the stick to protect Oliver from the many dogs that attack him.

Merry Christmas!

On Friday, December 7th, I came home from school to a wonderful surprise from Andrew. He dug me a Christmas tree. He actually went out with our little trowel, dug up a papaya tree (a little taller than me), and potted it. Then he decorated it with various lights (the colored ones aren't working in this picture), construction paper chain, and some ornaments he borrowed from our friends a week before. There were even presents underneath! He also had Christmas music playing and everything was clean. The whole thing sure made me happy. I had been a little bummed that we wouldn't have a tree. It seemed silly to buy an artificial tree, since we wouldn't be around to enjoy it for Christmas.
The next day, the tree was completely wilted, but our stick is still standing with all it's decorations.

I heard a funny story about why there are no real (non-artificial) Christmas trees for sale here. A few years ago, some stores tried to import some trees. The shipment arrived late... too late... after Christmas. So the stores had some firewood and a large bill. No one has tried since.


Now, some dog pictures: Oliver likes to bite my leg.
He looks and acts a little goofy at times.

Rocky, the neighbors' dog, gets into a lot of fights. Here he is pathetically nursing his wounds.
Moments after this picture was taken, he heard some dogs fighting, and darted over to join the action.

Grades

Well the semester is finally over. Here are the grades for the classes that I taught.

Business Math; these students where fairly advanced and none of them was in there first year.

a	6
b	9
c	7
d	2
f	3
w	2

Developmental Algebra; begining students with little motivation.

a	2
b	1
c	2
d	1
f	4
w	0

Note that none of the algebra students withdrew, contrary to their instructors advice. I filled out and signed three drop slips to three students who received f's and gave them to the students on the last day to withdraw.

The night that wouldn't end

Megan and I had been getting up pretty early maybe around 0530. I suppose this is due to the end of the semester and also we like to walk Oliver while it's still cool. So one recent evening I went to bed around 2030.We have been having mosquito problems in our house so before I went to bed I lit a mosquito coil. We usually talk about our day and drift to sleep around 2200 or so. This particular evening my night ended at around 0130. As usual the neighborhood dogs got pretty riled up due to a female. And the barking ensued. Usually this goes on for 10-15 minutes, which can seem like forever in the middle of the night, but this particular time it seemed to last quite a while. After 40 minutes of barking I went outside to scare off some dogs (I actually went out side with a big stick and a lot of anger to hurt some dogs). The dogs however weren't anywhere near our yard they were at the house behind us. I threw a few rocks hoping to break up the pack and retreated. I lay awake for another 30-40 minutes and then drifted back to sleep.

At around 0300 I heard an interesting noise. I wasn't sure what it was only that it probably needed my attention. Upon gaining my coherence I realized that Oliver was making a sound that indicated that he would soon vomit. I hustled to get him out of the house but I was too late.

Lights on. Put Oliver outside. Clean up vomit. Let Oliver in. Lights off. Stare at ceiling.

Once again I tried to regain my slumber.

The next incident occurred at around 0430. The mosquito coil only lasts for eight hours so I was awaken by a very loud buzzing in my ear. I dragged myself back to usefulness, turned on the fan and lay back down only to realize I had a half dozen mosquito bites on my back.

I usually sleep later than Megan and she does her best to let me sleep. She must have done so because I was awaken by a rooster at around 0630. After a little bit of yelling I went outside thinking that a chicken breakfast would be nice. The first thing I saw was the neighbors dog so I threw a rock at it. I then found the rooster and chucked a large rock at it. I missed. I'm going to look into getting a pellet gun.

Creating a Camp 2

Megan and I once again went to the island of Mawnd to clear out some of the jungle. Not much to report but I though I'd share some pictures with you.

The boat was supposed to leave at 0800 so when Megan and I showed up at 0815 and no one was there we thought that we were too late or that the work day had been canceled. Here is a shot of the lagoon from the boat dock...


In true Micronesian fashion the rest of the work crew arrived at around 0840 and the boat arrived at around 0900. At around 0930 we departed for Mawnd. This time Oliver accompanied us. He didn't want to get on the boat though so I had to carry him on. While we were there we worked mostly on cutting down small trees and large bamboo shoots. FYI, a recently cut bamboo shoot is very sharp. I got a small cut on my finger and it bled profusely, kind of like a cut from glass.

Here is a picture of the cleared jungle. The smoke is from the piles of refuse...


We also worked on making a path. This involved moving a lot of rocks and a lot of pinching of fingers. Unfortunately Megan's wedding ring got a little misshapen...


Here is a shot of Oliver on the boat...


Here is an upclose shot of Oliver and Megan...