The Jalan Jalan

My favorite Indonesian word has to be “Jalan Jalan.” Pronounced just as it reads, it has quite the presence as it comes off the tongue when you tell people where you are going. A single Jalan in Indonesian means walk, walkway, or road. However, when you put two of them together you get the magical jalan jalan, which I would define as “to walk around without purpose and rhyme of reason.” I am quite the jalan jalan-er and I love to walk around the streets of Ubud on a daily occurrence. One of the nice things about Bali is that there is a lot of time to jalan jalan and have conversation with other people and see the sights. I jalan jalan before I eat. I jalan jalan usually after a large meal. I take the long way to jalan jalan to the pastry kitchen. I jalan jalan when I have to think about administrative things I am doing for work. I jalan jalan whenever possible. Quite simply, I like to take the long way in Bali. I think that a lot of other people do as well, because if you ask them where they are going they will usually say “jalan jalan” because they do not know themselves.

One of my favorite jalan jalans involves walking all the way from my room in the heart of Ubud to one of the outer hotels that has a ridge walk. The first part of the jalan is very pleasant as there are a lot of street vendors and tourists walking around to people watch. As you move towards the end of the first half of the jalan I also walk through the Ubud Market that always has interesting merchandise to ogle. If you get really lucky you will also stumble into the middle of a ceremony procession where the villagers are all clad in white, a Balinese barong dance with children trying to raise money by dressing up as a hairy dragon/monster with a gong, or something else that that when you see it you think to yourself “only in Bali.”

The second half of the jalan is a beautiful ridge walk on the outskirts of town. The elevation of the ridge climbs about 1500 feet and is on the top of a mountain with two rivers on either side. At some points the width of the mountain at the top is only about 5 yards across. The trial is about 1 mile long and finishes in another village. The most amazing thing about the entire trip is that the whole path has been paved by god only knows who.

The jalan takes about an hour and never gets old. I guess that’s the beauty of a jalan jalan in Bali, you always see something differently when you don’t have anywhere to be. See the pictures below.

Pastry: Week 1

For the past week I have been working the morning shift in the pastry kitchen of one of the restaurants. The rationale behind me starting in pastry is that it is a good introduction to the kitchens as well as being a very compartmentalized portion of cooking and food service. The hours are also a lot better as we start in the morning and keep going until the work is done. This is allowing me to still recover from the mammoth catering job that we just finished and work on some of the administrative and organizational work that I am also implementing for the group. It is also allowing me to spend some time to get to know Bali a lot better and make some friends.

There is something terribly rewarding about baking your own bread and pastry that I felt was missing from my life before I started doing it. Not to sound too philosophical, but baking is difficult and time consuming so it seems like the first thing that we can eliminate from daily routines and outsource to the supermarket. I have found that the experience for waiting for dough to rise, whisking egg whites for a cake (and the pleasure of being able to hold a bowl upside down and not have them fall out), and rolling your own pasta to be extremely rewarding and truly makes your appreciate the effort that goes into such products. The quality of the goods is almost unparalleled as well; handmade spinach pasta, sweet potato gnocchi, in-house fermented sourdough are all some of the finest I have ever had. Knowing that I made them myself is even better.

My teacher goes by the name of Guskartika. Although he speaks very little English (and I very little Indonesian) we get along great and he is patient enough to allow me to make mistakes. He has no problem watching me struggle to separate 20 egg yolks from their whites or how to properly roll the delicate gnocchi into the correct shape using a fork. Apparently, all things considered, I am quite the bagus (good) latihan (student) of the pastry and I am moving along very well. Although I have barely scratched the surface, I am lucky enough to be working in a kitchen that services 5 restaurants and has a very diverse menu of breads, pastry, and desserts. Everyday after I finish my shift I write down pages of notes and diagrams of what I learned so that I am able to have a detailed overview of what I have done for when I try to do it myself.

Finished Catering!

After 34 Days, and over 6,000 meals and snack service for 250 pax a day, we just finished catering a Hollywood blockbuster with 4 Academy Award Winners. I just got back from the exec. producers office and had him sign off on the final paperwork. I cannot even tell you what I have learned, it will take days to digest.

I am spent. I am going to disappear in the mountains for a few day and will emerge with wonderful content to blog.

I start pastry on Monday.

BGF United

BGF (the company I am cooking for) has over 255 employees in a portfolio of restaurants in Bali. One of the coolest things that I have seen to date is the fact that they have a company soccer team that competes in a league and is named "BGF United." The team plays twice a week in an organized league that consists of about 20 other teams and is a full blown Indonesian soccer league that even has a cash prize (100,000 Rupiah per player for the winners). My hosts and I went to the game to support the team and it was a great time. When we showed up we were the only two white people in the area, but the staff were ecstatic to see us there to support the team. The soccer field was in the middle of a residential section of Ubud and there were about 120 locals lining the field to watch the match. The field was dug below ground level and surrounded by stone wall with about 7 cigarette banners advertising their brands and the value of sport (great combo). The game was the same as any other soccer match as you would see anywhere in the world, but in Bali you also had to deal with children running around and playing instruments to cheer the team on, chickens interfering with play, and throngs of young women laughing at whenever one of the players made and error or missed a shot.

One insight that I had that my host found that was very interesting was the team's uniforms. The league was just assembled and this was one of the first games, but even so, the stylin' BGF United team had some of the best uniforms that I have seen for soccer teams. All of the team had nice blue spandex shirts and shorts that had BGF embroidered in on them with the players names on the back of the jersey. The detail that took the cake was that they had embroidered socks that has "BGF United" sewed into them. My question to my host was "How on earth are they able to throw together uniforms like this in two days, but it takes them over a week to organize anything else work related?" She was also dumbfounded.

There was also an announcer that vividly depicted every play of the game with a hilarious tone. I did not understand what he was saying (due to my inability to speak Indonesian) but my host explained that he was using words such as "epic struggle" and "good prevailing over evil." She also said that he quoted some of the Hindu epics to draw comparisons in announcing the events of the soccer match.

The result was indeed tragic. BGF United lost to Gado Gado, 3-0.

The Brutally Honest Balinese

Over the past month we have had a series of house guests staying with my host. All of them are longtime friends that have a pretty long history in Bali and lived here for over 2 years in their lives. With that being said, it is obvious that they made some Balinese friends that they have not seen in a long time. One of my causal observations from living here now is that the Balinese are notorious for not having any social grace in their culture and they are brutally honest. As us Americans have a "filter" or like to talk behind other people's backs, the Balinese will just tell you something to your face not in the tone of an insult, but more as a causal observation that by western standards should be kept to yourself.

A few examples:

• Andrew walks in to meet a brother of the family he has not seen since 2004. "Oh, Andrew, great to see you! You got fat! What have you been eating?"

• Vicki walks in to meet a wood carver friend from one of the villages from 10+ years ago. "Oh Vicki, you got ugly and old. How have you been?"

• And to me from the catering manager. "Sam, have you been riding the motorcycle around alot? You have a lot of pimples on your forehead now."

Keep in mind that these are also regarded as some of the friendliest and most hospitable people on the planet!

In other news:

• Almost done with this movie catering. It has been very busy.

• Check out how big this Banyan Tree is!!!
• I was at the BGF Farm and asked for a coconut to drink (which is very healthy). The farmer climbed this tree in less than 30 seconds. I was impressed.