South East Asiafied...

There has been zero blogging from me for the last 6 months from my new home Jakarta. reasons...

1. Getting used to living in Indonesia was a total mind fuck and didn’t leave any room for wit or motivation.

2. All my cute little Indonesian students have added me on facebook. I wasn’t going to accept any at all. No exceptions. But then some girl I thought was really cool would add me and I’d want to say yes and then I’d feel like a dick not accepting their friends etc.. Until I found myself getting tagged in pictures of kittens and lolly pop s by people I seriously DON’T EVEN KNOW. So now 60 plus Hello Kitty loving, cupcake eating, pink mini skirt wearing, Justin Beiber loving, pig tail twiddling Indonesian twenteens are monitoring my every move, status update and photo tag. Needless to say there’s some stuff on this blog that would probably make them think a little differently about their favourite teacher (i.e. what a filthy, scumbag sinner bitch) so it’s for the best that I am no longer plugging the blog FB style.

3. Lastly, thinking about the general ethos of this blog, I tend to be mainly about slating everyone and thing that crosses my path, and how about this for a mood killer... I think Indonesia has actually made me a more tolerant and respectful person. The people here, although at times unbearably annoying, frustrating and gut wrenchingly shallow, are some of the nicest I’ve ever met in my life. They have a genuinely optimistic and sunny disposition (at least on the surface) which can be a whole sackfull of sugar down the throat sickening but is also pretty fucking impressive. They really do seem happier than people from London, and it’s rubbed off. It I might even say I’ve become a bit sweet sometimes – which I’m sure doesn’t make for good blogging. Now turn up Taylor Swift and pass me a fucking cupcake bitch!

Anyway I was just doing a bit of FB cruising and I came across the blog of a guy I know here who teaches also so I had a good backlog read about his Jakarta experiences and got inspired. So here I am, back on the blogging scene. It was funny reading Omar’s blog because he was talking a lot about some stuff that I’ve also noticed here; the gender divide, the bizarre money: looks ratio which seems to render girls here completely blind to anything apart from cash and the way women like to represent themselves in a manner which most men I have come across in the West would find pretty repulsive (i.e. acting like they are little girls in come kind of cutesy bubblegum world of pink puppies and BB messaging). But If I started talking about that I’d be here all day and I want to ease back into my blogging mojo so I won’t. But one of the things that has most surprised me about being here is how much of a WORLDY WOMAN I feel like, even talking to people twice my age. I swear sometimes I am in a room of 30 adults and am the only one who knows what a vibrator is. That’s a scary room to be in!

Anyway, South East Asia is mental. It’s changing me daily and although I love my job and have met some really amazing people, I’m looking forward to getting back to the West in 6 months. I don’t think my personality can take much more of this candy pink hue that seems to be imposing itself on me, I need to spend some time around AIDs jokes and vodka asap before I really go beyond the point of no return and start pretending I don’t poo and buying handbags in the shape of cartoon characters. Prey for me, but not to any particular God because that would fuck over my atheism, which I am hanging onto by a thread after months of incredulous interrogation from people who BARELY KNOW ME. It seems no topic is off limits here. ‘Why don’t you believe in god?’ ‘Where do you live?’ ‘Why aren’t you married?’ And most amusingly / massively depressingly ‘If you aren’t pregnant why is your body like that?’(Whilst madly gesticulating at my boobs and belly!) I have given up on personal space. I must admit, although Jakarta is proving to be an amazing experience I am certainly looking forward to getting back to London and being surrounded by people who are completely disinterested in my religious beliefs, my address, my marital status and my bra size. Well... maybe the last one is a bit ambitious…

On the plus side though, cigerettes are really fucking cheap here and I got a fake Hermes handbag for about £15. Score!

Half way house...

Since Christmas I've been living back in the motherland and the novelty of being unemployed and living with my mum has most definitely worn the fuck off now. I think the worst thing about being skint to the point of being housebound is a toss up between wearing a pink furry dressing gown day in, day out until you pick it up to put it on and wince at the smell and actually starting to give a shit about Coronation Street. And fuuuuccck have I drunk?! Poor mother has started buying bottles of whiskey just to keep my mood on the right side of bearable.

This time next week I will be spending my first night in Jakarta - capital of Indonesia, where I am beginning a teaching job. What on earth possessed me to leave all my family, friends and boyfriend to go to the other side of the world to do a job which I could have quite easily done here is beyond me. I honestly don’t have a clue why I made the decision to apply for the job, I must have been having a Destiny's Child 'girl I didn’t know you could get down like that' female empowerment moment. Or been really pissed off with someone. Or that kind of drunk where you don’t think you're drunk but then you wake up and you remember that you promised your boyfriend you'd wake him up with a blow job so you must have been drunk.

I thought I should blog at this pivotal stage in my life but I'm struggling to muster up anything interesting to say after a month and a half of absolutely fuck all happening to me with the exception of Christmas Dinner and loosing a hell of a lot of games of cards to my mother.

In conclusion, I'm feeling a confusing mixture of extreme boredom, scared shitless and added to that I have the prospect of year of celibacy stretching ahead of me. It's not a cocktail of emotion that I'd particularly recommend but hey, it's got to be better than another month of smoking my cigerettes in halves to save money, falling to sleep with a glass of whiskey in my hand and Dancing on Ice.