Visiting soul mates

My computer is still dead, which explains why I can not have fresh photos from the topics I am talking about. I pick photos from friend's facebook sites - such this one! We are having chicken and rice meal at Texas chicken here in Padang near my hotel.


Road to Andalas University is beautiful, from my hotel, passing parts of the Dutch built area of town, with decorated old buildings and balconies. Some of the wood carvings above the windows reminded me of the carvings in Russian wooden houses. All these wooden buildings have gone through the gempa (earthquake) tests, still standing firmly, even the paint has peeled off over the years. I saw one building had the date 1918. Dutch era finished when Indonesia declared independence in 1947. Yesterday there was a special day for a British hero whose actions helped to overcome Japanese in Surabaya (after the second world war, there was a period of few years of Japaneses rule.

Not only the road, but the view from Andalas is beautiful, far away at the horizon you barely see where the sea blue changes into the skyblue. A lot of palm trees on the hill. The green view is interfered by silos of Padang cemen factory, and long time cement maker and an important player in the construction here.

Soul mates - I met witha class of Andalas students of communication, and shared about the trends of crisis communication development in Europe, and shared about our project here in Padang. They were very interested, and asked many questions. I encouraged them to continue media research locally, even have a study conducted in Mentawai's unique situation now that the disaster there is still so recent. Some of them were very interested. One of my research assistants shared about his experience on the field. It is important to have local people go and interview village leaders.