Well it has been a few weeks since we have written. Nothing too unusual has happened in the last while. We had back to school nights a week ago for middle school and elementary school. For the most part, we are impressed with the boys’ teachers this year. Heidi is the schedule coordinator for volunteers at the Cicak Corner (the student store at the elementary school). In addition to working there herself once or twice a week, Heidi spent a couple of weeks getting the schedule for all of the volunteers organized and now has things under control.
Heidi and the boys are now well into their usual routines for all of the activities they are involved in after school. Nash’s after-school activities are: track (3 days a week), drama club, model UN, and violin lessons. Grant is doing footie club (Australian rules football), violin lessons, piano lessons, and soccer (he is on Team Indonesia). Luke’s activities are magic club, cello lessons, piano lessons, and soccer (he is on Team Netherlands).
On Friday the boys had the day off school – it was a teacher development day. I heard they went to the water park by the mall, which wasn’t too crowded because the local Indonesian schools didn’t have a holiday. That afternoon/evening we were invited over to a friend’s home for dinner. The kids had a good time playing with their kids and enjoyed swimming in a different pool.
Both Grant and Luke had soccer games yesterday morning at 8:00 (they were happy that both of their teams won), then we came home for a swim to cool off. We then took the boys to get hair cuts then out to lunch at Anatolia’s, the Turkish restaurant. Grant went over to his friend Leonard’s house for a few hours that afternoon while Heidi, Nash, Luke, and I took care of a few errands
A couple of days ago Arti (our maid/nanny) came to Heidi with a frightened look on her face. She apologized profusely and then said that she had accidentally washed Nash’s mobile phone – she didn’t check Nash’s pockets before she put his shorts into the washing machine. Well, Nash’s phone is totally ruined. When she told Heidi, Heidi started to laugh. That made things worse, though, to Arti. She told Heidi that she should probably be fired. Heidi’s attitude was (and I agree) – it is not 100% Arti’s fault that it happened. Nash should take some responsibility for it because he is the one who left it in his pocket. Also, it could just as easily have happened to Heidi or me, had we been the ones doing the laundry instead of Arti. She insisted that we punish her for it, so we told Arti we’ll have to dock her pay by Rp 200,000 (about US $20) one month.
Things are going OK at work. I went to Pekanbaru last week for just an overnight trip – I went to present an award to our dealer in Pekanbaru for achieving a certain level of standard for service quality. Also, I have been spending some time with realtors looking at potential new office locations (the landlord at our current building told us they aren’t going to renew our lease when it expires at the end of the year). The market for office space in Jakarta is pretty tight right now and there isn’t much available, but luckily a couple of the spots on our short list are pretty close to our house. I would love it if I could reduce my daily commute time.
