DAY 492: "We can't go to Bandung," Henricus, my friend and host in Jakarta told me. "I have work to do now."

We had toyed with the idea of taking a drive down to Henricus' and Linda's hometown two hours away, but after the freelance meeting the night before, Henricus had to get a presentation all set for the brochure design of an Islamic university in town. "We'll just go the next time you visit."

"That's okay," I told him. "I have work to do too."

I was behind on the Blog as always and desperately wanted to catch up. However, like in 1980's The Shining, when Jack Nicholson tries to sit down and write only to be distracted by demons calling him to write nothing but "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," I was distracted by my own demons calling me to pick up the PS2 game controller and play Metal Gear Solid 3. I compromised with my demons and did a little of both to keep my day from being too dull, while Henricus slaved away on his PowerBook in the corner (picture above).

"See you later," Linda said as she left the house after serving me breakfast. As Henricus' freelance project manager, she went to the office at Artnivora to make some calls since her regular phone wasn't working. She had waken up that morning early, showered and got dressed for the day way before her husband rolled out of bed and moseyed over to his computer with his sleeping shorts on to work.

"So this is a regular day for you?" I asked him.

"Yeah. I stay in while my wife goes out and works."

"It's a good life, huh?"

I managed to get another entry up before the demons called me to pick up the game controller again. Henricus finished his work by early afternoon, got off his ass and hopped in the shower. He was to have a meeting with the ad agency managing the Islamic university, after lunch at Plaza Indonesia: padang, a on-the-table buffet of many Indonesian dishes, including cow brain in coconut milk and dried cow lung. (The former was tastier than the latter.) Linda dropped Henricus at the ad agency for his meeting, leaving the rest of the day to wander around Jakarta with me.

"You want to go to the mall?" she asked me as I sat in the front passenger seat on the left side of the car.

Great, another mall, I thought. Malls are starting to become routine, almost like going to a work office. And all work and no play makes Erik a dull boy. Red rum, red rum. For a change of scenery and postponement of the "dull," I suggested going elsewhere, even though I would have been perfectly content on just going back to the apartment to play Metal Gear Solid 3 like my demons were telling me.

"Let's see what my guidebook says," I said, pulling out from my pocket the pages torn out from the inside of my Let's Go. All the museums had closed by early afternoon, but one place mentioned caught my attention. "Can we go to Sunda Kelapa?" It was the old Dutch harbor area in the northern part of the city, where it was rumored schooners would be around. Schooners mean pirates and the opportunity "play pirate" by going around talking like one. "Yaaar! Shiver me timbers! Walk de plank, ye landlubber! Yaaaarrrrr!"

I didn't mention the pirate idea but Linda entertained my suggestion to go to Sunda Kelapa anyway, even though she had never been there before. In fact, she wasn't exactly sure where it was -- as a resident of Jakarta, she didn't know any of the touristy parts -- and had to ask for directions three times. It turned out Sunda Kelapa was sort of out of the way -- even more so when Linda accidentally took a wrong turn and ended up on a tolled highway that led us out of town. There wasn't an opportunity for a U-turn for quite a while and by the time we were able to turn back the other way we came, the traffic had already started building up for the early evening rush hour. If Henricus called for a pick-up, we'd be hours away from him if we lingered around that area.

"I think it's better if we just go back and go to the mall [near the ad agency]," Linda said.

"Yeah, okay. Whatever's easier."

We pulled into yet another one of Jakarta's gaudy shopping malls, Taman Anggrek, a big place with exhibition space for a car show, many chic stores, and even an ice rink. I wandered the mall's multiple floors while Linda went off to a salon to get her hair done. Then I sat down at a Starbucks to work again on Blog duties with a pen and the new notebook I bought at a stationery store. It was pretty dull, but what I saw next wasn't.

"Wow, very nice," I complimented Linda when she showed off her new do.

"[It looks like] Betty Boop," Henricus teased her when we picked him up later that evening, after his long and tiring meeting with clients. "I work hard and my wife goes to the salon," Henricus said, sitting in the back seat of his car for the first time. "Don't get married, Erik," he joked in front of Linda.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES HENRICUS A DULL BOY, and with no pressing work to do, it was all play for the rest of the night. Henricus called up his friend to go out with us, Ian, a Dutch-born Indonesian who had lived in the California bay area before relocating to Jakarta to settle down and start a family. "It's the next phase of life. Having kids and getting fat," he said in his Bay Area accent.

"I'm just getting fat," I said.

Linda called up her friend and neighbor Astrid who lived on the 23rd floor of their building, who helped them out at Artnivora. Later that evening we were joined by their Indonesian friend Stella who was in town on business from her life and job in K.L.

Playtime that evening involved going out for Chinese and then drinking Indonesian Bintang beers and Long Island Ice Teas at several bars in town. Ultimately, we ended up not at the Hard Rock Cafe Jakarta but two bars down at the newly-opened f-bar, as in the Fashion Bar, the international chain affiliated with Fashion TV -- coincidentally on the eve of FTV's International Fashion Awards in Jakarta.

At the end of the day, it hadn't been such a dull day at all with our balancing acts of work and play. Of course, before hitting the sack that night I tipped the scales in play's favor with some Metal Gear Solid 3 action, but that should probably go without say.

Red rum, red rum...

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