Yesterday evening we went to the locall mall, Pondok Indah Mall. It's our standard destination for getting out of the house, doing a little window shopping, letting the girls play on the various jungle-gyms, and eating at some of the 30+ restaurants and stalls in the food court.
As we wandered around the mall, there's always lots of opportunity for people watching. Ladies dressed in jillbobs and long draping Muslim garments, teens dressed in skimpy Western style clothes, spoiled toddler ever shadowed by an attending Nanny, and of course plenty of Expat and Indonesian families out for their evening stroll. (Remember- there are NO parks here in Jakarta)
We tried an Asian (Japanese/Chinese/Indonesian??) restaurant where the chef prepared our meal right in front of us. I was thinking it might be a "Benny Hannaah" style, but of course Indonesia loves to twist and turn anything they copy-cat from the West and we ended up a very entertaining interpretation of Benny Hannaah. The poor chef knew how to slide food around with his two little spatulas but that was about it. Definitely no eggs tossed in the air to be deftly cracked on a spatula edge. The meat was so tough he had trouble cutting it up, his hot metal cook top was barely lukewarm so he covered everything with a lid to get it to cook, and he used the same sauce for every dish- chicken, beef, shrimp, seafood and something else we couldn't exactly identify. My favorite was the tortured cringed face he made whenever steam rose from his cooking. :-)
Needless to say, the end product was barely edible but at least Tia and Sara had fun watching.
Later in the Mall, I was approached by four very polite and conservatively dressed teenage girls. They shyly asked if I was from an English speaking country and if they may interview me as part of their English homework assignment. I cautiously agreed and they proceeded to introduce themselves as students from a local Islamic High School and took turns reading some simple English questions they'd written on a student notebook. "How old are you?, What's your favorite type of music? Do you think Indonesia is a beautiful country", etc. Cute experience and another one to add to our list.
I almost forgot to mention one of my favorite sights showing how Indonesia likes to take foods from other country and add their own little twist. America has hot-dogs, and Japan has sushi, so why not sushi rolls with hot-dogs in the middle Sushi Dog! A booth at the grocery store I frequent has a booth advertising Sushi Dogs though I've yet to see anyone eating there. Gotta love Indonesia. :-) Paula
No comments:
Post a Comment