SON, INDONESIA IS THE PLACE YOU OUGHTA BE!

Dearest Friends,

So, just when John makes up his mind that we'll be in Midland indefinitely, we hear a disturbing rumor.  It seemed Mobil was beginning to sell off most of their domestic gas plants.  That was pretty bad news, if one's job was to maintain the equipment in those plants.  John's boss, who had really taken my hubby under his wing, pulled him aside and planted a bug in his ear.  He said "Son, here's what we need to do.  We need to get you out of the domestic division and into International.  What would you say to a stint in Indonesia?"  John probably thought it was a great idea, but he's a very smart guy, so he told his boss "I'd better run that one past my wife first."

The Company Compound

I think my first reaction was probably "With kids? Are you nuts?"  But then he reminded me that this was Mobil we were talking about, not B&R, and they took much better care of their people.  Also, we knew several couples who were already over there, including our friends the Reehs.  I remember sitting at a burger place one day while my kids, who were five and eight by then, romped on the playground.  My mind was a whirling dervish of questions I needed answers to before making this move.  Lacking any stationary, I whipped the paper liner off our tray, flipped it over, and started a letter to Danny and Peggy right then and there.

Within a few weeks I had my answers.  They assured me that the company compound in the Aceh province of Sumatra was a perfectly safe place to bring kids.  In fact, it was more like living in a small town back in the good ol' days, when kids could run around outside and ride their bikes wherever they wanted.  There was a wonderful British doctor on staff, and a small hospital, but if he even suspected anything serious was wrong, he'd have you on the company jet headed for Singapore in a matter of minutes.  The school was fantastic, with a first rate facility and all the best equipment, a top notch staff, and a student to teacher ratio of about 6:1.

The International School of Lhokseumawe

There were two kinds of housing, depending on whether you lived on the Mobil side of the compound, or were secunded to P.T. Arun (which John would be), but both were quite nice and spacious.  There was also a great golf course, an olympic-sized swimming pool, a club house/restaurant/pool-side snack bar, tennis courts, and a nice little super market right there on the compound, all within walking distance.  Holy Smokes!  John wasn't kidding when he said Mobil took better care of their people.  This would be more like living in a Club Med resort!  The Reehs closed their letter by saying "It was really good to hear from you Becky, and I hope we'll be seeing you soon, but did you really have to write your letter on the back of a giant photo of a mouth-watering Whopper?  That was just plain cruel!"

So, we loaded up our trunks and we moved to In-do-nee!  (zhuh, that is)