Szoboszupdate ;)

Great week =)

- Thursday was the Greenship NC (New Construction) launch. An exciting event with great lunch (especially the asparagus soup). Everyone had obviously worked very hard to get to this point, and that could be seen by the bloodshot eyes surrounding me. With a great turnout and a speech from Von Kok Leong - the Malaysian GBC president - it was definitely a success. Congratulations on all your hard work everyone!

- Thursday night we celebrated Michael's 25th birthday at our favourite spot in Kemang, called Bremer. A great turnout with all sorts of people we have met including some new faces from CouchSurfing! Thanks for coming out everyone.

- Friday was recovery time. Movies and sleep = awesome.

- Saturday Pak Tiyok was kind enough to pick us up and drive us around downtown Jakarta. We walked around Monas, took a tour of the large mosque called Masjid Istiqlal and the catholic church Kathedral. He took us to his childhood ice cream store near the presidential palace called Ragusa where we had a banana split followed by satee (chicken grilled on a skewer with peanut sauce) and fish paste. Interesting combination.

- At night I went to Plaza Semangi to join a CouchSurfing gathering. The theme was Language Swap and it was nice to meet all kinds of new people and hear their stories.

- Sunday Laszlo was sick, once again :P All morning my stomach was burning from the previous night of Padang food. I was determined to get over it because it was an exciting day! I met up with Alfi at Kota where the old dutch city is located. We saw the Batavia festival (Batavia was the name of Jakarta during Dutch rule) and saw two museums. I had a crazy tour guide for one of them, who was really obsessed with thinking Toronto was a country, that I was a "diamond heart" and that Karma apparently works in my favour. It was interesting hearing his stories, but he was definitely a little crazy :P

- Alfi took me on a tour of the China town here in Jakarta... I really enjoyed seeing the traditional narrow streets where all the fruits and fish are sold and prepared. It felt like I was back in Hong Kong. She taught me about the red envelopes used in China and we also checked out the massive pirated DVD stores. I bought my sister a new camera charger. (Which later blew up in my room and electrocuted my arm pretty bad. Sorry Erika, you still don't have a charger.. haha)

- We then went to the Jakarta International Fair which was CRAZY busy. You know you are in Asia when you can barely move. It seemed like I was the only Bule so that felt a little funny too haha. It was a really neat event with lots of vendors and attractions. We had a great time there =)

- After getting Alfi home, I got pretty lost :P After finally finding Monas (National Monument) and taking a couple of pictures I got home in one piece =)