Burma

Go the people of Burma! The fact that this time the revered monks in Burma started the protests will hopefully ensure something actually changes. Lots of blood will be shed in the process no doubt. Sitting here in Jakarta, watching snippets on television in the comfort of a luxurious air-conditioned apartment, I wish there was something I could do. Short of marching on the streets and getting shot, there’s nothing probably. The same old question keeps arising in the minds of people who really have no power to change anything. How can we keep living the way we do when so many people in the world have nothing and not even simple rights such as access to safe drinking water? We ordinary and insignificant people living in comfort are pathetic really, but it’s the people who do hold the power and have the influence and the money who are far worse. They could actually make a difference - but they don’t. They don’t even have a mindset, which considers or comprehends what it must mean to live in such a place and deal with the repressive, violent regime that controls the lives of people in Burma. They may pretend to care and pay lip service to what needs to be done, but when it comes to action, nothing will be done. It’s been a strange time in Jakarta this time for me. The visa application has not been done in the five days it took last time. I had a strange phone call on Wednesday about it with lots of questions from the woman at the Australian embassy. She seemed to be suggesting that a multiple entry visa was going to be more applicable to my needs but with them who knows what is going on. From past experience I have usually found from them that no news is usually bad news. Monday I will check the website again and see. Had two diamond rings stolen from me on Friday night but given what I’ve said above - it’s so unimportant that I should let it go. But I won’t. It deserves a separate blog sometime more appropriate.

Jakarta Again

Yay! In Jakarta again for a two week holiday. Being here is like an adventure. I love Jakarta but hate it too. Left home at 6 am on Saturday and was in Jakarta at 10 am this time. Was quite a quick trip as we got an earlier flight than the one we were booked on originally. Am staying in the same apartment as last time. It’s very central and was quite a bit cheaper this time too. Found a duty free shop that has thousands of wines and cask wine - so stocked up on some good bottles and a few casks. On Monday I did Oliver's visa application for our trip to Tasmania at Christmas time. It should be quite straightforward this time as he has been granted a visa once before. Am doing lots of big city stuff. Cruising bookshops, looking for CD's, drinking coffee in malls and people watching. I plan to do lots of walking to take pictures in parts of the city I haven’t been to, take lots of faces for my Faces Of Indonesian blog, (http://facesofindonesia.blogspot.com/) read lots, meet some of the guys I have contacted for casual sex, swim and use the gym in the apartment complex and eat sushi! Jakarta seems quite stinky and polluted this time. When we arrived there was a distinct sulphurous haze of smog. The traffic is always bad and I am always flummoxed by how the very rich can live the way they do right next to the slums that pepper every corner of this, the fourth largest city in the world.

The Things We Do For Love Or Because Our Penis Controls Our Brain

I have experienced revenge before. My present partner and I have an agreement where we can both have sex with other people. There are some rules, which I agreed to but didn’t actually devise. He has for more than a year chosen not to exercise his right to have casual sex. I have exercised my right and I have broken some of the rules. He knows that. Last Thursday he chose to have a threesome with two Australian guys and I am really upset by it. I shouldn’t be. I have done the same thing. I think what upset me about it that he has said for a year he didn’t want or need to. Then suddenly out of the blue he does. When I ask him why he has changed his mind he goes on about how I have broken the rules. I then say to him that it sounds like he is paying me back for what he perceives I have done to him. I know maybe I should not have behaved as I did but I didn’t do anything to him really. The things I have done don’t change the way I feel about him. I have given him my heart and no one else will get that. Why doesn’t he understand that? I can’t explain why it bothered me so much though. It’s because he has decided to do this for revenge. He said yes he had when I kept pressing the issue. He feels I have hurt him by what I have done. It has nothing to do with him. I am fulfilling a basic drive. I don’t even really like the people I have had sex with. Back to revenge though. I do know about it. Michael, took the ultimate revenge on me by hanging himself. He left a note to make sure I knew that’s what he was doing. This month is the 11th anniversary of his death and I know as he intended what he did that Sunday night in our garage will never ever go from me. My thoughts are for all the families who lost loved ones on this day in the USA too. This blog is a bit of a rant………….maybe on later re-reading I need to delete it.

Swimming

Another week has whizzed past. Two more weeks and I will be on holiday. I can't wait. Oliver and I will spend the two weeks in Jakarta. I will apply for another visa to take him to Australia again for Christmas. My partner also wants to visit Tasmania for Christmas too. So we will try and get his visa in the second week. I am right into my exercise program and I feel great. I love it when you actually get into the habit and it's like a drug - you get high on the adrenaline rush or something from when your body is exercised and you have to do it. I am swimming three times a week and doing the gym twice. I want to do some sort of aerobic workout but there seems to nothing on. That's ok. I have taken to dancing and doing step routines I can remember from my days in Tasmania when I used to religiously go to classes three times a week. I leap about to the music I have on my iPod and headphones, while I do the weights in the small gym next to the school. There is no one else there so I don't care what I look like. It's nice to swim too. I am up to fourteen laps of the pool. It must only be fifteen metres long though, but you have to start somewhere! It feels good to be getting fit.

Too Hard Sometimes

I have tried to blog regularly but it's so hard. I have kept up my promise to upload photographs of Indonesian faces for my other blog http://facesofindonesia.blogspot.com and it has become an obsession which I actually enjoy feeding. I must have a bank of photographs so I don't suddenly one day see there are none to upload. I enjoy taking and adding to the pile I have already taken. To date I have 288 faces! The key to blogging everyday or regularly is to just type in your thoughts that day - like one would in a diary. Pity it has taken me so long to figure that out. I was trying to write about things from too far back - and who cares anyway. No one reads this. So I can say what I like. I will make a resolution again and now to blog every few days and just let the thoughts pour out. I am exercising again and I feel great. At the moment I am having lots of casual sex too. I have a little army of men who I can call on now at almost anytime. They come late in the evening and we do it and then they go. I pay some of them........ that's cool. They have not much and I can afford to. Life is very good at the moment.