"You've never been on a plane." "I know, but the joke's better if I tell it in the first person."

As an intro to this post, I was all psyched to rag on the one person I know who is actually half-Indonesian. Then I realized 1) I don't know any Asian jokes and 2) he doesn't read this blog -- but will change that...Krishna will get the link later today. This means, however, that we are "formerly" opening up this sucker to a male audience. Not like I'm good at editing myself anyway, but this might mean less tampon talk and more poop stories (more on poop later). Anyway, despite the plethora of jokes I know about women, Jews and Michael Jackson, there are only two jokes I know about Asian people; neither of them are mine and neither make sense coming from me...but doesn't mean they aren't funny.

1. "What's better than sex with a 6-year-old Vietnamese boy?" "Nothing." (courtesy of WWJDD)
2. Once you go yellow, you basically go back to whatever it is you had before (stolen from GR's buddy in L.A., who actually did stand-up for awhile and was excellent NYE entertainment)

Aight, back to the Indonesians. I think I might have written a post on this before, but I can't find the search function to check and I'm too lazy to go back and do it manually. As many of you know, I like telling the same stories over and over and over...and over again anyway, so if you aren't used to it by now, tough.

Post our mini-bender, work buddy #1 met up with another work buddy who was in town with a couple of friends and I took them to the much acclaimed (by me) Indonesian Rijsttafel. (Any time people come to visit and ask about trying Dutch cuisine, I take them to Indo food b/c Dutch food is either a) nasty, b) fried or c) fishy.) Rijsttafel is literally "rice table" in Dutch and is a reiteration of Indonesian food that one cannot actually get in Indonesia -- it's the Dutch way of eating Indo (kinda like how Tikka Masala would not exist in Indian cuisine if some British dude didn't freak out about the spice and drop a bunch of coconut milk into some dish. Goooooo imperialism!). For anyone who doesn't know their Dutch history, Indonesia was a long-held Netherlands colony and played a big role in the Dutch East Indies Trading Company.

Needless to say, we johnblazed, then walked over to a spot I know, where I made a poor attempt at explaining what the hell we would be eating. The concept is something akin to tapas, except you don't choose only a couple and they come when they are ready like en España, but rather they lay it alllllll out in front of you on plate warmers in one big flourish. And it's a MASSIVE amount of food -- they bring out anywhere from 12-20 plates, a couple things of rice and some prawn crackers to help you shovel the food into your mouth.

Indo food in The Netherlands is great -- for anyone who hasn't had it, think IndianThaiVietnamese-esque flavors, with lots of coconut milk and peanut sauce. Indo food in Indonesia, however, I must say is kinda boring -- maybe that's just because I don't get the over-easy egg thing. Why the hell would I want a fried egg on top of my noodles? (other cultures put fried eggs in weird places too -- in Peru they put them on hamburgers, y'know, just in case your arteries weren't going to get clogged enough). And maybe b/c half the dishes I like here are beef and there wasn't a whole lot of that on the Hindu islands.

So we wolf it all down and my buddy JZ was finally satiated after doubting my food-choice skills (please, eating is one thing I know how to do...perhaps too well). Then we go off for a tour of the red light district and quickly go our separate ways due to food coma.

Now, like Indian food, Indonesian food uses a lot of different ingredients that the average white-devil stomach is not familiar with. I hear from JZ and buddies a few days later and they had a little Montezuma's Revenge (or Suharto's Revenge?) and he proceeded to make fart noises to illustrate his point (by the way -- this gives me hope. Good to know it is still okay to make immature sounds in your mid-30s). Okay, not a great poop story, but I don't have babies or students who piss on floors, so give me a break.