I'm English!!

There's an old fella in the dorm here. WHen I first saw him he was wearing a wrap worn traditionally by the men around here and in Sumatra. Bit of a nutter I figured.

Later I found out he's beein living in Indonesia for thirty years 4 kids, 14 grand kids and so on. He was in Malaysia for visa requirements, every 6 months because a foreign wife can get citizenship but not a foreign hubby. "But the women are working on that" he says because some lady with a dutch husband just got elected.

He was an odd fellow. He would say things that sounded like a joke but when you tried to follow with one of your own, he either wouldn't note it as a joke or ignore it completely. The best though was when some other guy said "So you speak Bahasa then?" Bahasa being the language of Indonesia and Malaysia.
"I do not!" engraged. "I'm an Englishman!" Of course you are I thought because all englishmen wear pink and yellow cotton wraps and live in the mountains of Sumatra. AH well. They come in all sorts.

At some point I mentioned my impending trip to Java. "Why would you want to go there?" he said.
"To see it"
"You know it's the densest place in the world, just passed Belgium." I assumed he meant population. He then went on to attempt to explain that if Geography teachers taugh Geography and weren't specialists we would all know this about Java and we'd steer clear. I nodded and smiled, then went to have another shower to cool off.

At least the only bad things he said about Java were the sheer numbers of people. It's only 2 weeks that I'm there, so I can handle madness for that long. And Jakarta, I've heard before but int he course of conversations with him and others, is not a pleasant city. 11million plus people and it just keeps spreading and spreading and spreading. I'm going to try to get out of the city the night I land, and only return just in time for my flight. Hopefully all will go according to plan, I'll visit Java now and never have to return. Hooray!