“The first occurrence of fluoridated drinking water on Earth was found in Germany’s Nazi prison camps. The Gestapo had little concern about fluoride’s supposed effect on children’s teeth; their alleged reason for mass-medicating water with sodium fluoride was to sterilize humans and force the people in their concentration camps into calm submission.”
~ (Ref. book – “The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben” by Joseph Borkin)

What can you do about it?  Well, first, throw away your fluoride toothpastes and rinses and get yourself a fluoride-free toothpaste like Dr. Kens.  Second, filter your drinking water with a Berkey water filter, which will also take out other toxins, heavy metals and chlorine.  Third, get educated on the Truth!

After much research and trying many, I repeat, many different natural soaps, shampoos, lotions, toothpastes and other things, our family has chosen our favorites.

• Bar Soap – Cal Ben – http://calbenpuresoap.com/beautybar.htm – We love this soap!  Smells really good!
• Shampoo – Cal Ben – http://calbenpuresoap.com/shampoo.htm – We love this shampoo, no conditioner required, leaves hair feeling silky smooth.
• Lotion – Cal Ben – http://calbenpuresoap.com/almond_hand.htm – We love this lotion, the scent is awesome and it makes skin feel like a newborn babies bottom (a clean bottom of course).
• Toothpaste, Fluoride-Free – Dr. Kens – http://www.drkens.net/products.asp – Killer fluoride free!  Works great and tastes good.
• Liquid Soap – http://calbenpuresoap.com/seafoam_finger_pump.htm – This one takes dirt away, amazing!

Another very important detail, The Cal Ben Company is located in the USA, San Jose California to be exact, family-owned and operated since 1947.

• Chickens like flies, they like to eat them.
• Rabbits, well, there were no flies near the rabbits due to their rabbit force field.
• Compost bin, hmmm, looks like a fly breeding ground, in fact whenever I open the lid I seem to inhale a few of them.
• Yak, the poor yak, they really annoy the yak and they are not in short supply.  I’ve got to do something about this.

What is the solution?  Well, I think I found it today from a company called The Beneficial Insect Company.  The Fly Parasite.  Fly Parasites are “PROGRAMMED TO KILL” all kinds of flies.  Newly hatched parasites feed on larvae destroying up to 95% of the immature flies.  In fact one study showed after 90 days all house flies and stable flies in a poultry barn had been completely eliminated.  Fly Parasite colonies can be ordered from:

http://thebeneficialinsectco.com/fly-predators.htm

VERTO is partnered with the following organizations:

Belle Jour – Event Planning, Catering, Flowers & More
Blink Source – Internet Marketing & Website Design Specialists
David Martschinske Photography – Amazing Photography
Focus Designs – The Electric Self Balancing Unicycle!
GeForce Technologies – Inspired Innovation, Product Development
RenewVis – Renewable Energy Solutions
rep – Repurposing Business, Transforming Society
The Institute – Serious Business Consulting
With more to come…

There appears to be, what I think is a promotional video for the Focus Designs / David Martschinske Photography booth at the fair.  It’s, well, very profession…, no that’s not the word, um, very, well, just watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXLMqhBpi_0

Hope to see you all there!

Highlights:

Heavy breathing massage.  Michelle treated a bunch of us to an Indonesian massage after dinner the other night.  Now I’m totally game for anything so I was in, the massage place was located in an Indonesian mall, with a very Indonesian name, “City Walk” – I know, I know, pretty tough to pronounce but that’s how things are here in Indonesia.  Ok, so we end up in these massage rooms right next to each other but separated by curtains.  I strip down and lay on the table, face down, and wait for my massage giver.  In less than a minute my massage begins… I start to notice that this girl is pushing pretty hard and breathing pretty heavy as she pushes and tries to break by limbs off, etc…  Finally I just had to see what this girls looked like, she was strong, so I lift my head and look – it’s a dude!  I’m thinking, no wonder “she’s” so strong.  Well at that point I just put my face in the hole in the table and tried to relax, the problem is, I just find it weird to be massaged by a guy.  I don’t know why, I really don’t – ok, I totally do, it’s just not right.  ;)  About an hour later the massage was done, and I did feel better.  We joined together outside the place and Katherine, who was right next to me, said “wow, you were breathing really loud!”  The thing is, it wasn’t me, it was my massage giver.  Ok, time to change subjects…

Killer Prawns!  During a client visit we took a break for lunch and headed off to a restaurant.  We ended up at some sort of Indonesian-Chinese-Japanese-Sea Food place, pretty nice looking place.  The client ordered the food for all of us and pretty soon after that food started to arrive.  At one point, the waiter brought a bowl of live prawns that were trying to jump out of the bowl and hurt us, I’m sure they were trying to get us so the waiter poured wine on them to confuse them and then lit the wine of fire.  He stirred and stirred until the wine was fully depleted and then we ate the prawns, which were absolutely amazing!

Eat everything – throw caution to the wind!  Coming to Indonesia we as expats are warned not to eat certain things, ice, vegetables that may have been washed in the water, anything raw, local stuff, etc.  At first I was really careful and I ate things that were definitely “not advisable”, and at one point eating what was supposed to be fish and chips, resembled something more like liquefied fish inside bread, I thought, hmmm, not a good idea.  But I finished it all and felt the battle in my belly.  That night quite a few people were sick from various foods and I wondered if I was going to be.  But I slept through the battle in my stomach and awoke to my native bacteria being victorious!  Since then I have thrown caution to the wind, a good idea, probably not, but I have really enjoyed myself here not living in fear of what not to eat.  (It’s highly possible that my next post is a story of buying adult diapers, but that’s part of the adventure.)  I have eaten a huge variety of things on this trip, here is a quick summary:  pizza hut, thai, indian, german, indonesia, japanese, chinese, hamburger, raw fish of many kinds, raw octopus, raw squid, swordfish, crab, goat, chicken feet, chicken brain, eyeballs, fish eggs, giant prawns, and other things that I’m not quite sure what they were.  The highlights were totally the octopus, squid, goat and chicken brain, all of which I enjoyed, although the chicken brain was a little too mushy / melt in your mouth for my taste.

By the way, Selim has left me, he has headed back to the USA.  Just in case you’re wondering why don’t I write about him anymore, no we did not break up, no he didn’t die, he just went home.

Ok, I’m off to another appointment… Will write more later.  So many stories to tell.  More corruption, kittens and weird looking cats everywhere, Christiana Aguilera songs, another massage, Topa love, the Christian-Muslim-Buddhist, ginger tea – wow!, God is speaking and we are hearing Him – seriously!  Until we meet again.

There are photos uploaded here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/repindonesia2009/pool/

Videos uploaded here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/VertoTheWorld

Updates from other team members here:

http://repurposing.biz/indonesia-june-2009-blitz/

Selamat malam everyone.  Well Selim is doing much better and was visited by a local Christian Indonesian doctor who looked like someone out of rock band, popped collar, long hair, tight jeans and very smooth.  He checked Selim out and declared “Selim will live”, which we are quite happy about.  This doctor was a friend of local rep consultants, he had great Presence and exuded genuine care for his patient, Selim.

Today was a good day, we went to an “international” church, jicf.org, which means a church that speaks English and is full of white people.  Selim and I like to count how many white people we can find,  In our 4 days so far we counted three, this church just ruined our white counting game, we’ll come up with another game… maybe counting scary skinny cats – now those we have seen a ton of.  Anyway, the church had about 100 people, we met in what appears to be a financial district highrise – pretty nice place with floor to ceiling marble in every room I saw.  The pastor is Aussie and taught an awesome message on pride – seriously great message, it really made me think about my life, my lifestyle, especially compared to the life of Indonesians.  Indonesians are a gentle and hard-working group of people, most native Indonesians are very poor and the gap between the middle-class and poor is shockingly huge.  It’s commonplace to see million dollar highrises next to villages made entirely of garbage, it’s a constant reminder of the rich getting richer and the poor barely making it.

We just got back from Dr. Suparno’s house where we had an AMAZING Indonesian dinner, fish, beef, shrimp, peanut sauce, fermented tapioca, crazy fruits I have never seen and amazing hospitality by the Suparno household.  It was a great time to get to know more loving Indonesian people.

I’m trying to upload videos but I’m having a hard time due to the slow and spotty internet access, there should be a couple more videos if you check the verto youtube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/VertoTheWorld

Selamat Tinggal!

Ok, this is going to be very condensed due to time constraints, here it goes. Yesterday Selim and I met with clients at the Bellagio Mall, we talked quite bit about the corruption, they were talking about how their business cannot survive without paying the local police, mafia, security, directors, etc. And they have a monthly budget of about $600 just to pay people off. Which in Indonesia is quite a bit of money considering the average employee is paid about $100 per month. A very common problem here is that if you do not pay, any number of individuals or groups will steal or destroy whatever it is that your company does. For example this company is in the top three internet service providers in Jakarta, they said that if they do not pay their, wires get cut, power to equipment gets cut, they are not offered access to their equipment, they will not be approved to install new services, etc. Corruption is the norm here, if you do not participate in it, you simply cannot do business. It’s easy for me to say to them, just stop paying and God will protect their business, but they then have to convince their employees, owners, etc of the same thing. This is quite a dilemma.  About half way through the meeting one of the clients turned and slapped Selim in the face, actually quite hard, he had a mosquito on him.  It was really funny and it made a loud slap sound – it makes me laugh just thinking about it.  Selim was quite grateful since he is getting eaten alive here by the mosquitos.

After meeting with the clients, who were very solid Christian men, we headed back to our hotel to change.  We then headed out to, what must be, the biggest mall in the world!  This mall was nine floors and it spanned like three blocks, it was amazing, kind of like Disneyland, with every part of the mall themed, from railroad, to jungle, India, New York, etc. – very impressive.  We ate, and walked quite a bit.  One interesting thing, the bathrooms just plain stink, this is the most upscale mall in Indonesia and the bathrooms stink like poo poo, but they hed a really cool theme, this one was like a bamboo hut and you turn this little handle and water came out of a piece of bamboo to wash your hands – that totally makes up for the poop smell.  Later we received a call that more consultants who had arrived from the US.  On the way back to the hotel was the most incredible traffic, huge numbers of motorbikes, cars and buses packed in and moving in a very slow motion forward.  The traffic here is awesome!  I know that sounds weird but it is so entertaining to watch, there are so many close calls and motorcycles clipping each other, buses almost smashing these little motorbikes, whole families on a cycle – like five people, yesterday we saw a guy with a rifle strapped to his chest riding a motorcycle.  I love watching the traffic.

We headed back to the hotel to met Paul and his wife Adrian and Catherine.  At this point poor Selim was not feeling well and went to bed.  Catherine and I walked around the city that evening, which feels like night since it gets dark around here at about 6pm, I was able to teach her how to cross the street.  I still find this to be so much fun, I am still hoping that someone doesn’t stop and I get to jump up on the hood, like you see in the movies – ok, just kidding, don’t worry Shirlene (I really do want to do this).  ;)  After this Catherine and I met up with all of the local rep Indonesia people at a very nice restaurant.  After that, it was late, we all returned to our rooms.  I checked on Selim, he was sleeping like a baby.

This morning I woke up and checked on Selim, who was not feeling well at all, kind of locked up in the fetal postion on his bed moaning.  We loaded him up with vitamins, herbs and a bunch of prayer.  He is doing better now, which is totally a praise for God.  Ate breakfast at the hotel, had a great talk with Catherine about international micro-finance and her experiences in Jordan and China.  This just sparks my interest even more internationally (meaning non-US).  I have such a desire to start and work with businesses internationally setting their foundations on the Bible, listening to God, discipling people and totally integrating businesses with their communities.  Indonesia makes me excited to see how much opportunity there is out there to bring Kingdom principles to international business.

Selim and I changed rooms today to make room for new consultants, then headed to lunch where I ordered my usual drink, “insert fruit name here” juice, at this restaurant it was strawberry juice, it is so good.  They take real fruit and blend it with ice, real fruit!  Not from concentrate, powder, or test tubes.  (Yes, I know I’m not supposed to drink the water or drink anything with ice, but it’s so good!  I’ll let you know if it causes any, well, you know.)  Ok, enough about that.  Then headed to the Walmart of Indonesia, it is crazy, and there was a bear in the store!  There is a video if you want to see it.

After that headed back to the hotel to check on Selim, who was doing much better after vomiting.  At first when I saw the metal bowl on his nightstand and thought he had made some soup, but the closer I looked, it didn’t look or taste like any soup I had ever seen.  Then I asked him, is this soup or vomit, and sure enough it was vomit.  Oh and by the way, I didn’t taste it, that was a close one.  I took a quick video of the hotel room and the vomit if you’d like to see.

Here are most of the videos taken so far, very random and un-editted:

http://www.youtube.com/VertoTheWorld

Love you all!

Traveling to our next client was crazy! We took a taxi to the nearest plaza were we waited for a couple of guys on motorcycles to pick us up, we got a couple of vanilla cones while waiting for 10 cents a peice. Finally this guy, which we didn’t know, said in Indonesian “fasd asfienfa fasjdfiewlfaksdf jfiasdflke afidfakj adosijeoima djfialkj” and motioned for us to come with him, so we followed. He showed us his motorcycle and we had no idea what he wanted us to do, he pointed and said “asd fasldkfaowe fasdpfmasiefm afmodsfmadimfa oafmdsfoiamd fad” and then pointed down the road. So, we waited a while looking at each other and waited some more, watched the traffic, and about 10 minutes later another motorcycle showed up. They pointed to the cycles I hopped on and asked him how to hold on and where to put my feet and all of a sudden he took off, so I put my feet wherever and held on to him like he was my man. About halfway through the ride I stopped praying to God “please let me live”, and started to enjoy weaving through traffic and almost getting crushed by cars about 30 times. After that we were at our location where we met with Gimon who owns a bunch of motorcycle accessory stores. After working with Gimon for a couple of hours we went to his house, waited for him to take a shower and change, road to dinner and listened to a presentation by Eroll (where Selim fell asleep). The end of day 2.

I uploaded a bunch of random videos that have not been edited in any way, have fun:
http://www.youtube.com/user/VertoTheWorld

We arrived in Taipai, Taiwan to a wall of hot wet air and lots of Chinese text surrounded by Pokemon-like cartoons on everything, from the fire alarm panels, change machines, security machines, to bathrooms – they love picachu!  We ate some food which, well, our bodies processed ok but didn’t quite hit the spot, but after that we had some Russian ice cream which was really good.  Off we went to Jakarta with a bunch of masked passengers.

We arrive in Jakarta, where we went through a 6-step entry process and finally made it through, to exchange money and to be hustled by a couple of locals.  No I’m not kidding, we got hustled the minute we stepped out of the airport.  We were supposed to be picked up by someone from rep, who we never saw, we attempted to call and didn’t get anyone that knew anything.  So, we thought we would take a cab, and of course I knew only take Blue Bird, and guess what these guys had very official looking ID badges and said “yes we are Blue Bird and we are cheaper”, I told Selim they’re liars and we should take a real cab but then felt I like this could be exciting and what’s the worst that could happen.  So, we got in the car and headed off to, what we hoped, was our destination, after quite some time trying to find the location and tell the driver who spoke no English, we found the apartment / hotel.  He dropped us off, Selim paid him and we arrived inside to find a few people from rep who were in communication with the guy that was supposed to pick us up that couldn’t find us.  So you’re probably wondering, what was the hustle?, well let’s just say we paid too much for the cab ride, tip, some simcards and a massage.  Ok, just kidding about the massage.

That’s all for now.  Oh, here’s a quick video from our hotel room, don’t worry other videos will be much more interesting, I promise: