Jet Lagged in J-Town

It's 7.30AM, and I've already been awake for three hours. An upside to odd sleep patterns is an increase in productivity, which allowed me to shoot some photos from the roof of the five-star Hyatt hotel where I'll be staying for the next month (http://jakarta.aryaduta.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/index.jsp) and to edit some of the photos that I took during my trip over here. While this place is swank by any standards, it's a bit disconcerting to stare out 100 yards beyond where the hotel guests swim in a flawless chlorinated pool, to where some of Jakarta's 15 million locals bathe in a trash filled, shanty-lined river the color of unrefined oil.
The group here is pretty solid. There are three other men, one of whom is a geology masters student from Austin, Texas who will be stationed in Medan, Sumatra, where I spent a month last summer. The fourteen women are also, by and large, a very interesting and diverse group. The stories spun over dinner last night ranged from escaping genocide in the Bolivian Amazon to swimming at NCAA nationals.
Nelly, a forty-something year-old matronly Indonesian woman, will hold our hands here for the next month in Jakarta while we get settled. She arranged our flights and met us at the airport. We all have single rooms with queen-sized beds, and while the internet in the rooms is only a phone-connection, the business center downstairs has broadband for $12/hour - a little steep, but worth it to stay in touch.
Let me know what's going on in your part of the world!