Eyrealm: Jakarta Friends and Kids' Fun

We went to a lovely dinner last night with our hosts and some of the magazine people that we met with yesterday. We went to a restaurant with fabulous Indonesian food whick was owned by the people whose house we are using in Bali. The chairman of our event owns all the taxis in town (14,000 of the 18,000). Seventy eight year old founder Pia in the lavender shirt on the right. She is a very pizzazy, founder of the first magazine in Indonesia many years ago. Now that have a magazine empire!

Cute magazine lady on the left, Taxi owner and our hostess, Noni, on the right. She told us at the end of the evening about being at the Marriott for lunch on the day of the bombing there in Jakarta about 5 years ago. They were having a company lunch and she just had a feeling that she should move to the back of the restaurant instead of returning to her chair after she picked up her food at a buffet. Just then the bomb hit and the place where she was sitting was destroyed with glass. She ran through the lobby where beams were falling and bloodied people were running around in wild panic. When she got out the door she saw the six drivers and the cars who had brought them all completely burned to a crisp. She attended all the funerals and had a crazy experience trying to get through it all. The guy she was with had thrown himself over her to protect her and she decided to marry him after that. In addition, because of that life threatening experience, he decided to become religious. They are both now Muslim and have a very cute, precocious little girl Amanda, who is creating her own line of children's clothing.

Amanda and her step-dad (first marriage was arranged because her mom's younger sister wanted to get married and she couldn't get married until the older sister was married). She thought it was perfectly fine to just have an arranged marriage and not have to worry about choosing someone. Sadly, it didn't work out but this is the great guy (Redmer...originally from Holland) who threw himself on Noni (above) in the bombing who she married right after that.

Last night on our way to dinner, they were having a birthday party for any little girl to die for at the Four Seasons. There must have been at least fifty little girls dressed to the hilt!

There was also a huge wedding reception at the hotel last night. The tradition is to on wedding receptions is to send send a huge poster with fresh flowers attached to congratulate the bride and groom. There must have been at least 50 of these, stretching all the way out into the road.

The YPO Chapter that we spoke to yesterday and today brought in their kids at the end of the day and we did a "Nurturing" Session with them. We forgot to take pictures but many went to a wild and wonderful place afterward at the most enormous mall you've ever seen called Kidzania. Such a fun place where kids can earn money to buy things by "doing business". They could do everything from working as a rescue team in an amulance to being a dental assistant to working in a nursery. It's so fun for the kids to get their own money out of the closest ATM and then to spend money and earn more money which they deposit in the bank for the next time they come. The kids were having a ball!