Jakarta, Tuesday, 1997-03-18
Hello, My Love,
I'm really sleeping a lot, just got up from another 12 hour sleep. My body doesn't want to switch time zones.
The big excitement here was that there was an earthquake yesterday afternoon. I had just climbed into bed and was beginning to doze off when I thought I felt the bed move, then the building definitely started swaying. By the time I got to the window to open the blinds, the building was making a jiggling noise. I'm on the 12th floor, so I figured there wasn't any point in trying to leave, there wouldn't be time. I got the blinds open just in time to see people streaming from this and adjacent buildings.
While I've been aware since I was a child of the advice to stay away from windows in an earthquake, I've always let my curiosity override that advice when in an earthquake and in a tall building.
Things calmed down quickly. The whole things lasted maybe 45 seconds, and there were no after shocks that I could feel. As I was standing at the window watching the people below, the midafternoon prayer call started. Superstitous folk that they are, the Indonesians will probably take the earthquake as a sign that Allah is really urging them to prayer call. <g>
I haven't yet been able to make contact with “Papa Don”. He's the guy in charge of operations here. I probably won't get to see him until my first flight, which will probably be tomorrow. The rumor is that he can get round trip tickets for $250 from Los Angeles. That seems a little too good to be true. The other price I've heard is $750 if you just go to any travel agency here and buy one. I'll try to verify that sometime today.
I walked over to the sports stadium at 05:30 yesterday and plan on doing the same today. It's a nice morning ritual. There are groups around the stadium doing what might be described as low-activity calisthenics—more stretching than vigorous exercise. Apparently anybody can join in. There's a dirt track the other side of the stadium, and I actually ran—slowly—around it once. My knee felt fine. Maybe I'll go twice around this morning.
Breakfast followed at 06:30, and it was there I picked up on what was happening. At the moment we have only three airplanes here. The other three won't arrive until April 1st. The flyinging now is on-demand. The scheduled flying won't start until the 1st.
We have enough crews here for six airplanes, so those who were wanting to make money are unhappy. I'm neutral. At least this time they have a system set up to even out the flying. Last year there was a lot of favoritism, negotiating, etc. This year it's strictly first-in, first-out. Every pilot has a big name tag that's pinned to a bulletin board. There are three columns: captain, first officer, and flight engineer. As pilots depart, their name is moved to the bottom of their respective list. At any time you can go down and see where you are.
Why didn't they leave some of us at home until later? Who knows, except that it really doesn't cost Tower anything to keep extra crews here. Garuda pays for the hotel and crew expenses.
Everybody is wondering what's going to happen after the Hajj. Believe it or not, there's a rumor that there will be an April class of nine, both first officers and engineers. At the moment, however, Tower's regularly scheduled flying has been severely restricted to free up the nine airplanes—six for Garuda, three for Saudi—needed for the Hajj. Apparently all Oakland flights have been cancelled and many of both Miami and Los Angeles. That's not the way to build customer satisfaction.
This is a big hotel I don't know how many restaurants there are. There's three fitness center, three swimming pools, and a mini-mart as well as numerous shops—all hgih priced of course. I took a full walking tour of the place after breakfast, then napped a while, then went and laid in the sun for an hour. To show you the pollution level, that hour in the sun—at high noon, the sun directly overhead—produced no feeling of warmth on my skin.
I'm going to try and be productive today. I need to work on weight & balance.
I love you so much...Terry