The mildly attractive game

After a great deal of searching, I finally found a team for full field soccer. The league is made up of teams from all over the world, usually dominated by one nationality. The team I found is mostly Brits and Irishmen.

We played our first game on Saturday night under the lights in South Jakarta on one of the widest soccer fields I've ever played on. Our team is decent, but we were up against the team that one every game last year by several goals. Our opposition featured a few ex-professionals, several ex-semi-pros and even one guy who played for Cameroon in the 1990 World Cup. (Pic at left.)

It's a little sad when you say that 6-1 is respectable, but with that kind of opposition, I don't feel too disheartened by the loss.

Lombok

A friend of ours rented a villa on the island of Lombok for a month, so we went out there for a long weekend with a few other friends. The island is just east of Bali and everyone says it's a lot like Bali used to be before it became a tourist destination.

It's an amazingly beautiful island. We pretty much just hung out the whole time, cooking fish that we'd buy in the markets, relaxing in the pool, or playing bocce ball on the beach. We also made a trip to the south side of the island, which really hasn't had much tourist infrastructure develop, but has amazing beaches. While we were there, we hired a boat to take the six of us out into the bay. If there was anything you could say about the boat, seaworthy would be the right word.

The entire time we were there, we noticed a bar that advertised "Crazy Time" from 9:30-10:00 that included buy one get one free on all drinks. We had talked about going there the entire weekend, but since we were cooking big meals every night, it was hard to make it before 10:00. On our last night we succeeded by setting an alarm clock. We made it to "Crazy Time," and with four drinks in front of each one of us Hillary requested Country Roads by John Denver (a song that is infinitely more famous outside the U.S.). The best part was when the fiddle player asked Hill to play a solo in the middle of the song.