Stasiun kerja

Head down in a logframe for most of the day. If you're unfamiliar with logframes, you're lucky. They are what conservationists haven't heard of until it's too late in their career to retrain. They don't tell you about logframes on university field trips to count puffins on Staffa or seaweed around the Menai Strait.

In Indonesia my work station has been consisting of a large empty glass of very sweet strong coffee, plates of gorengan showered down by colleagues, tissues to remove gorengan grease, water for hydration (tropics), minor electric shocks from the laptop I have to keep plugged in at all times because the battery has crashed and numerous restartings due to power cuts. There appears to be an infestation of house flies in the office and the mosquitoes always descend at dusk.

I don't know why but at about 4pm Silfi was to be found cooking up a huge vat of mushroom broth: 'Palembang food' (her hometown in southern Sumatra). Everyone assembled for a second lunch.

I was coerced into sloshing some into a bowl even though I wasn't remotely hungry.

'Mushroom is it? So is it vegetarian?'

Everyone: 'Yes. Vegetarian'

'Bagus. Oh, there is shrimp also?' (it was poking out from under a floppy mushroom)

'Yes. And with shrimp'