Thursday, June 08, 2006

Clemence


This is our friend, Clemence. I had to take this picture because she was making fun of my cellphone. It's true that my phone looks old and battered and dirty, and ever since I dropped it off the fourth-floor balcony I've had to use a rubber band to hold it together. But my phone takes pictures - great pictures such as this one - which means it's cool. End of story.

Like many of our new expat friends, Clemence is extremely smart and educated. She works for a major international agency, speaks 137 languages, and generally drafts at least one multinational declaration before breakfast. We met Clem online on the Jakarta Expat forum, and she gave us lots of tips on housing, etc. Then she showed us where the good bars are, so her friendship has been truly invaluable.

For expats, Jakarta can feel kind of like a big college dorm. The experience of being foreigners abroad tends to erase barriers, so it's easier to make friends than it is back home. You already have so many things in common. And if you run out of stuff to talk about, you can always trade horror stories about the traffic. I actually loved living in a dorm, so it all works for me. It's living in the" real" world that's always been a bit of a puzzle.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

plain curious, but Does your phone always take that sort of pictures (prior to the free fall crash test)?
Do you mean the blur is the cool bit?

I drop mine in a pool. the pictures are then blue, decidedly not cool.

Trish said...

Oh, I think blue is cool. I have a camera to take pictures, so I think phone pics should be unconventional. But I've only ever taken two pictures with my camera, so I can't say whether they're all blurry.

Unknown said...

don't worry at a glance, it looks very fashionable, the style.