Unang Araw- 18 days to go

Today, I officially start my countdown before I become jobless once again.
You see, as early as 2nd quarter of this year, I opted not to renew my contract. I have several reasons as to why I do not want to stay in this city but I'd rather not enumerate them. Instead, I will focus on what's interesting about the biggest metropolitan area in Southeast Asia.

Let me start today with a little bit of their culture:

Indonesia has biggest population of Muslems in the entire world: roughly 205 million Muslims! That's a lot of masjids or mosques.

When you visit this country, you will have to get used to the 5 times a day prayer call from the imam. The earliest would probably be at 4am. You're lucky if you're like a mantika when you sleep but if not, you'll definitely wake up to the sound of the first call to prayer.

Indonesians are very nice people. Although sometimes, they become snobbish or shy especially if they can't communicate to you in English. That's why expats here are forced to learn Bahasa Indonesia. (Bahasa means language so it's not right to call the language bahasa). Don't be surprised to see caucasians fluent in bahasa indonesia because their companies sent them to indonesian language classes.

As for me, I learned my indonesian thru friends, the dictionary and by watching english shows with indonesian subtitles.

Indonesian food is quite spicy. A local dish won't be complete without sambal or chili. Even their fried rice or nasi goreng has pedas. My favorite Indonesian dish is definitely the nasi padang: rice with beef or chicken, nangka, singkong leaves and the sauce is Indonesian curry. They love to put coconut milk in their dishes and that makes their food yummy. The food that I don't like the most is the tempe or dried soya. I hate its taste. I also don't like their soto ayam. But you'll be surprised that I like their soto ceker. (ceker is chicken feet). I love its taste especially when mixed with the soup. Oh pork is also available in certain supermarkets but very limited unlike in non-Muslim countries.

Although Indonesia is 90% Muslim, it is pretty tolerant of other religions like Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism. Unlike in Saudi Arabia or other Muslim states in the Middle East, we are free to practice our Christian faith in this country. In fact, Filipinos are very active in the Catholic Church here.

Indonesia is very rich in tradition. A lot of things can still be written about it but for now, eto na lang muna.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from Sinyal Bagus XL, Nyambung Teruuusss...!