The ridiculous thing is that the government, in introducing the 300% duty on booze, now has a new problem on their hands - black market alcohol.  So they are losing out on their "legitimate" excise to the bootleggers!  And to make it cheap and up their profits, the black market spirits are doctored.  Yup ... those industrious little indos are now producing bootleg spirits that "smell like" the real thing if you have already had a few, but are dangerously laced with methanol.  Speculation is any day now an expat or young Indo who dares to imbibe will die from this and only then will the government do something about the new problem.  Thankfuly they aren't tampering with wine!!

Our guard told us about 3 months ago he could get some things on the black market (at that stage we were oblivious to the methanol addition) so hubby  ordered a bottle each of Jack Daniels and Scoth.  As he sipped the first JD and coke, he said "This tastes wrong - could it be off?"  I had a smell and immediately detected what I though was pure alcohol in it - what we now know is methanol!!  How scary.  And yep, we binned the bootleg booze that night and warned our guard and his friends not to drink it lest they wish to be poisoned!

Imported food is starting to reappear on the shelves and we don't have to go to the "secret room" to find things not on the shelves, such as brown or caster sugar, or imported breakfast cereal.  But a box of Special K still costs around au$10 and weetbix are not much less for a large packet.  One thing unchanged is cheese - I bought a packet of Bega extra tasty 250gm the other day and it worked out at about au$7.20!!!

The Indonesians counter the expat food shortage complaints with "Well, you are living here so buy Indonesian produced food".  Most of us would be happy to, but some things you can't subsitute in recipees and there are no locally produced equivalents.  Well, they produce "caster sugar" but it is actualy what Aussies call icing sugar - try making chocolate brownies with that!  Or putting what Indonesians call brown sugar (similar to raw sugar) on the kids' porridge of a morning .... just won't cut it!

So for now we just sit tight and wait patiently ... and continue paying stupendous prices for some luxuries we can't live without 

Expats are now all discussing who is going to get the axe as the economic crisis casts it's shadow across the world, but the ridiculously funny thing about this country is that, thanks to the extremely high levels of corruption and dirty money being laundered, it will probably be minimally affected by the worlds downward spiralling financial woes!

So my Minti friends, if I don't reply to mesages for a while, that is why.  Bali has dodgy internet connections in many places (although ti gets better each visit) and I don't use email much there.

Stay safe, don't let your kids drive you nuts and I will be back about 22 Jan.

Sharon

I went to no trouble with Christmas lunch again this year as one with the higher cost of imported food items over the past few months, and lack of availability of a lot of things, it was easier to go to the Ritz Carlton for Christmas lunch. 

They have a Sunday Brunch buffett every week that is the largest selection of cuisine in a Jakarta hotel.  The go a bit further with it for special occasions such as Christmas, New Year, Easter, Mothers/Fathers' Day.  It is a veritable foodies' paradise and they have almost anything you want - Indonesian, Chinese, Japanese (including beautiful fresh sushi and sashimi), Korean, a huge range of fresh seafood and not just a dessert table, but a whole corner section is dedicated to everything sweet - the centrepiece of which is a huge chocolate fountin replete with strawberries, marshmallows and lollies on sticks just waiting to be swiped through the warm chocolate! 

I was expecting arguments from the kids about having to eat healthy stuff before they could hit the chocolate fountain, but this year, not a peep!  Amazing!  It was the lure of the new wii and WarHammer kits that made them not want chocolate.  They scoffed down their food in half an hour and said "Ok, Can Pak Usup drive us home now, we are finished and bored" and off they went

Easy peasy.  Messaged the driver to pick them up at the front door then sat back and enjoyed a nice leisurely lunch with hubby and a friend from Australia.  Actually, I didn't even eat much because the time was spent talking, laughing and drinking.  Oh, did I emntion that this wonderful buffett comes with "free flow" of wine, champagne or beer?  LOL For those of you wo have read my previous blogs, you will understand that it is REALLY the drinks that hook me in now that acohol is so damned expensive here!! 

All in all a great Christmas Day, followed on at home by more wine and laughter.  It's a good thing none of us had to drive!!

I made it to the DF wine store this morning.  After ringing them yesterday to see when was the best time to visit, and avoid bumping into the customs inspectors, the woman whispered into the phone "You coming around 9-10am, no problem".  I asked if I "made a donation" could I exceed the 3 bottle limit, and she said yes.  Unreal!  So excited (sad, I know).

Got there and bloody customs were there, so the very proper sales attendant checked my KITAS and passport and said in a loud voice "OK, KITAS 3 bottle limit".  I quietly explained that I had called yesterday and been told that for a "special administration fee" of rp50k I could buy a case or two of wine.  He said "Oh, ok, how many you want?"   I replied "At least 12 bottles".  "Ok, special administration fee now rp100k".  Of course it is!

Driver came in with me and pushed trolley around while I wandered through my idea of heaven - a fully stocked wine store - and salivated over such a choice of wine. 

The funny thing is that at home when you buy in bulk, you usually get a discount.  Here I had to "pay" to buy in bulk.  Too bad, don't care.  Christmas is nearly here and I now have 18 bottles of wine and champagne.  much better prices than the retail stores - Margaret River classic white cost me around au$18 which is pretty good.  Although I am now sick of it and didn't buy any more, the Lindemans chardonnay I had previously bought retails here for about au$27 and was in todays' store for about au$17 so quite a huge difference. 

LOL  I know where I will be shopping from now on!  And yep, this will be my last wine whine on ehre   ..... that is, unless the "good" wine store burns down (god forbid)

She is verrrry cute!  About 6 weeks old, white with grey patches and a grey striped tail.  Yesterday she was snuggled up in her basket and I was playing with her.  She rolled over and was actually pulling my hand down with her paws, getting em to scratch her tummy!  Soooo cute!!!  I thought cats didn't really like their tummies scratched.

We thought we had a home for it with a friend of my sons'.  but his Mum said e can't take it.  No idea what I am going to do as many expats have left or are leaving town for Christmas, so the verbal messages can't get passed along.

And the funniest thing is our cats' reaction to her.  As I said in another blog, there are heaps of stray cats here because most people are too poor to afford desexing.  Sometimes a stray (we have about 4 regulars who pop in when our backs are turned) will wander in and eat our cats' food.  She often just sits on the floor watching them, but really doesn't seem offended or worried about it.

The kitten arrived and our cat is soooo angry.  She won't even stay in the same room with it and the minute she sees it she hisses, her fur stands on end and she growls like a tiger!  Weird.  It's so tiny and the others who actually dare to eat her food get no reaction at all.

I always knew cats were strange!

Seriously, they carry everything on their bikes here as many people cannot afford a car.  It is not strange to see whole families of Mum, Dad and up to 4 children riding along, or two gardeners - one riding and one holding a lawnmower hanging off one side and an edge trimmer off the other, and all their brooms and tools tied on wherever they will fit.  A few weeks ago I even saw 3 guys on a bike and the two passengers were each carrying a large sheet of glass - no O'Briens trucks with glass racks here!

God, I just realised almost every blog I've done on here is about food or wine.  Must come up with some new ideas LOL

I was sick of turning up at the Duty Free stores, KITAS and passport at the ready only to find them closed because they had already sold their "quota" for the day or had changed the rules on who could buy (one day anyone with any pas can buy, although KITAS holders like me have a 3 bottle limit, then the next day if customs officials are in attendance, only Diplomatic pass holders can buy alcohol, and they don't have a 3 bottle limit .... sooo unfair!!) 

It was Friday, so I finally gave in and paid ridiculously high retail cost for 3 bottles of wine and a bottle of vodka.  Seems as stocks start to run out and each store knows they have us bule against a wall, the prices rise again and again. 

I managed to find a bottle of Smirnoff for only rp475,000 - which made it about au$55 but as I am not taking the money from my Australian bank account I didn't care.  i haven't had vodka since August and desperate times call for desperate measures!!

I did stop short at paying rp750,000 (about au$90) for a bottle of Jack Daniels for hubby though - he likes Bintang beer anyway, so is happy with that.

I still got hammered with the wine price though and took Jacobs Creek and Lindemans chardonnay which were about au$33 each (I know, that's just shocking, but better than the other wines that were about au$50> a bottle).  No idea why, but savignon blanc is a very rare find here and I prefer that to chardonnay.

Got  Mariyahlt to put one straight in the freezer, and drank most of it over the course of the afternoon whilst supervising dinner preps and chatting to a girlfriend in Sydney on Skype - it almost felt like a regular Friday at home when we would get together and have a chat about the week over a few drinks.

Then got an invite to a local bar where hubby was with some consultants from his job - all fellow Aussies and as someone else was sponsoring the drinks on their company account, 3 of us drank wine.   Oooooh, sucha  luxury.

Moved on after that to another expat hangout called Eastern Promise - kind of like an english pub, full of expats and south Jakarta locals.  They serve pretty ordinary Indian food, but surprisingly the tandoori chicken wasn't bad last night.  Shame we didn't ask the friends to meet us at the first bar instead though, as it has  an Indian restaurant upstairs and the food is about the same cost, but far nicer.  Oh well, drink more wine and forget about it!!

It's funny, but the topic of imported food and alsohol shortage is the main line of conversation with most people, from the Aussie headmaster at my sons' school, to the Indonesian wife of our Australian friend last night.  I guess it could be worse.  The upside is that hydroponic and organic vegiesare reasonably priced, imported meat is about the same cost as Australian supermarkets and they Indonesians have mastered the art of making good baguettes!

Ahhh, will survive another weekend  LOL

So after hubby was dropped at work, I told driver to be on standby so take me wine shopping, settled sick son into my bed so he could watch cable tv and excitedly got ready to meet some friends at the DF store where we would buy wine and then go somewhere for lunch.

Not to be was it?  Arrived, walked in, saw sea of wine just waiting to be bought and lovingly carried home to my fridge.  Then ... STOP!  3 store employees almost ran over to us and said "Sorry, customs officials doing audit.  Do you have Diplomatic pass or KITAS?"  Two of us responded that we had KITAS, the other has none as she is an Indonesian married to an Aussie.  In hushed tones they told us to ring in 2-3 days and handed us their business card as they ushered us back out the door.  Despite offering a donation, we were still turned away this time.

DAMN!  What is wrong with this country???  I complained to my friend (Jokingly)  "What the hell is wrong here?  Doesn't your country want to make money of those of us who drink?"  She said "They don't want us all getting drunk".  "But I'm not Muslim and I might want to get drunk every now and then"  I replied.  We all laughed and decided to go to a restaurant in a nearby hotel so we could at least share a bottle of wine there.  Arrived and sign in capital letters on door said "Due to the shortage of alcohol and exhorbitant prices, we have a limited range of wine available".  We asked to see the wine and after discussing the fact that (a) it was an awefully strange colour for chardonnay and (b) none of us had ever heard of it, there was no way we were spending about au$65 on it just in case it was crap!

So, another night without wine and can't face another beer (yep, got desperate for a drink on Saturday and dove into Bintangs over a BBQ).  I guess at this rate I will not have put on any weight once Christmas has passed.  Will have to save wine drinking for whilst I am in Bali and sniff out the local wine with fingers crossed and a peg on my nose LOL

And no, despite my rantings here, I am not a desperate wine-o!  I think the fact that I haven't hd any for so long is just making me crave it more and more each week.  Oooohhh, I envy those friends who are going home to Australia for Christmas and are already excited about buying cheap wine without making a half day mission out of it!!

As of last week it was estimated that there are up to 90 containers of imported food and alcohol sitting in the tropical heat and humidity on the docks in Tanjung Priok.  Why?  Locals will have us believe that it is becvause Indonesia wants to cut back on imported foodstuffs that are bought mainly by expats and wealthy Indonesians, and concentrate on convincing us to buy similar products produced nationally.  BUT those in the know (helped along in verification of this) say it is because the elections are coming up in March and customs are revenue raising.  

What can't be stolen and resold, is attracting an increase of 300% duty or will not be cleared and delivered to the companies who have paid to import it!  300%!!!!   That now means something bought and imported for a cost of $10 will not retail for under about $40.

The buggars have even been raiding businesses that sell imported goods, food and alcohol, confiscating everything they can, then selling it on the black market to distribute the funds to political parties to bolster their election funds.  A new Apple shop opened not long after the iPhone lauch, and about 3 weeks later the "officials" arrived one afternoon and cleaned it out.  There is no recourse for the business owners to file a complaint as the police turn a blind eye (probably for a kick back) and the government is no help.  Crazy place!

In June I was ecstatic when I wandered into a supply of Dairy Farmers fresh thickened cream.  Pinched myself, decided I had dies and gone to heaven and promptly rang a couple of friends to share the exciting news.  I bought several and the girls came around and picked them up.  thinking it would continue to be available as it sold and was replenished so quickly, I became complacent and then it disappeared.  I now crave fresh cream - the UHT stuff just IS NOT the same when you want fresh cream on something, although it's ok for cooking with.

Today I lashed out and bought a tub each of Weiss passionfruit and cream ice cream, and Mango Sorbet - but it cost about au$35!!  It was damned decadent, I know, but I hadn't bought it once in 18 months, so felt I owed it to myself.  Bugger it, the duty free stores were closed so I couldn't buy any over priced wine and it's Saturday night, so after dinner I will eat ice cream instead  LOL  At this rate though, it would have been worth investing in an ice cream and sorbet machine last time I was home - at around au$300, that is only the same cost as about 10 tubs of ice cream!

To give an idea of costs rising - in mid August I bought a bottle of Absolute vodka for about us$20 (rp200,000).  A few days before the fasting month of Ramadan started the price was us$30, and now it is us$40 - all this in the space of about 2 mnths.  My one luxury here is being able to buy a couple of bottles of wine a week as I don't really enjoy beer.  All wine was about double what we would pay in Australia and even that  has skyrocketed.  We paid about au$15 for a bottle of Lindeman chardonay 3 months ago and now it is about au$30.  I was already dirty at paying $15 for it when I know on special you can pick it up for about au$9 at home.  Although, I don't drink that one at home as we have so much great variety.  My favourite wines at home were Oyster Bay and Margaret river Sauv Blanc and if I bought those on special I would be lucky to get them for about $16-$21.   They are now about  au$40-$60 depending on which store you buy them from. 

As foreigners, we are able to purchase from Duty Free alcohol stores, but we must show our KITAS (visa) with photo ID, and we are only allowed to buy a maximum of 3 bottles in each purchase.  One purchase per day, per person.  The way around this is to ask in a whisper if you can "make a donation" and increase your 3 bottle limit.  If the sales person is a happy camper they will accept the donation and if a customs inspector is on duty, chances are they will not - unless HE gets a "donation" too.  This is a good way to buy though, as the equivalent of about au$12 to two people means you can buy 6-8 bottles of wine or whatever.  Periodically the government changes this "show visa, 3 bottle limit" tule, and we are taken by surprise when we arrive  and are told only foreigners with diplomatic passes are allowed to buy alcohol. 

Oh, to be able to make a spur of the moment detour to vintage Cellars or Liquorland on my way home of an afternoon!!!!

It's funny what really erks you when you have taken so much for granted and moving to third world coutnries every few years always sees me return home with a new and great appreciation of the great country I come from!  I can't wait to move home again!!!

the upside though, is we can always slip ourselves onto a plane for a quick flight to Bali and the fares are only about au$150 each .... I guess that's the yin yang of things

We think she is also pregnant.  Went through all the possibilities many times ... had she been hit by a car or one of the dozens of small motor bikes that use our street each day?  Had she fallen into a hole she couldn't get out of (there are a few construction sites nearby)?  Had she gone somewhere to have kittens?  Had someone hurt her? 

I felt helpless as I don't speak enough Indonesian to talk to the neighbours or anyone in the street; most of whom don't speak english.  Thankfully we have staff who love Chiko.

Our night guard canvassed the nocturnal locals on Tuesday night when there was no sign of her for dinner.  No one had seen anything.  Our maids walked the local streets for an hour yesterday and asked everyone they knew if they'd seen her.  Our driver did the same and went into the local kampung (traditional village settlement) near our house.  A neighbour said she was playing with another cat in his yard late on Tuesday night, but other than that no one had seen her.  There are a lot of stray cats around and you can't get within 5ft of them before they scarper, so we thought maybe someone had cat-napped her for themselves.

The kids were quite worried too of course and so I thought the best possible explanations to give them were "Gone off to have kittens, in which case she will probably move them home n a few days" or "Has been accidentally locked in a house somewhere nearby and hopefully will eventually escape".

She is a special cat to us because we found her when she was only about 3 weeks old - wandering around on the road at the end of our street, crying, lost and hungry.  My daughter came home and begged to keep her if we couldn't find her owners.   Given that there are so many wild and stray cats in jakarta, I think she was probably just born in a ditch or bushes someone and may have wandered away from her mother and siblings.  She was so little she was still a bit wobbly on her legs, but that was also probably because she was so hungry.  We trekked off to one of the many local pet stores and found orphaned kitten formula and special kitten feeding bottles and she ate hungrily and grew quickly.

The kids donated her a stuffed toy monkey they'd had since a visit to Taronga Zoo years ago and he became her comfort toy.  She would hop into her basket and suckle the monkey as if it was her mother (and she still does this as even though I have taken it away several times, someone inevitably gives it back to her).

I was watching her curled up on my bed purring like a small speedboat (which she RARELY does) and was wondering where she had been.  Obviously she was very happy to be home in her safety zone, but if only she could talk and tell us what had happened!!

So all in all a happy day and I can't wait for the kids to come home this afternoon and see their Chiko Cat is home  

I am madly working on my web site and sharing my time between researching and writing articles for the SBI! expert who is helping me and writing content for my site.  It's wired wtiting articles advocating concealed gun licenses as I am quite anti personal weapons and Australia is generally - but these are for an American website.  Something new to get my head around.

In the past few months I have written on all manner of topics - trophies, holiday desinations, back problems, travelling to different cities, dinging out around the world, product reviews for iPods and MP3 Players, wine tasting, pregnancy, STDs and adult topics, medical science ..... I guess it's all good for the writing skills and some are really easy but some take loads of research and are difficult to write.  Am happy with feedback and ongoing offers to write though and it's better than sitting here doing nothing but watching tv, "doing lunch" with other bored wives, or scouring yet another new shopping mall!

The anticipation for us is not the executions themselves, but the reprisals afterwards.  Most speculate and I tend to agree, that they won't carry out anything immediately, rather let the general public be lulled into a sense of false security then strike.

So we wait and we wait.  Meantime I have countless hours on the internet to fill each day.  Poor Minti ppl will be sick of me in a few weeks LOL