Katie: Hi KT, welcome back to our interview.
KT: Yes Katie, I apologize for the delay. It is very hard to coordinate our schedules.
Katie: So we actually received a few questions from our readers while you have been gone.
KT: Oh really?
Katie: Well, actually it is the same question asked by a couple of people, so I guess that is a good place to start.
Q. What is a typical day for you?
A. That is actually a really hard question to answer, it would be better to answer it with a flow chart, but this blog doesn’t support flow charts. The answers depend on where I am and what type of data I need to collect that day. The one consistency is that I usually wake up at about 4am and I am in bed (usually reading) by 8pm. Besides that, I try to keep a 4:1 schedule, which means four forest days and one data day. Many people would mistake my one data day as a day off; however, I often spend 10-14 hours on those days entering data, cleaning data, and writing reports (besides the necessary bucket washing of clothes). For forest days, I have three different types of days: phenology days, census days, and bekantan behavior days. On phenology days, we go to one of the four transect (scientific word for path in the forest) and record what the trees are doing. They are often dancing and having lots of sex…you know, being crazy and throwing poop at researchers… wait that doesn’t seem right, these are trees not monkeys. Really, we record if the tree is fruiting, flowering, or has new leaves. I use this data to figure out what foods are available for the monkeys to eat; it also allows me to monitor if the loggers have cut down any of my trees. On census days, we walk the same transects, but instead of looking at trees, we look at monkeys and other mammals. This data will let us determine the densities of both the proboscis monkeys and other animals in the area. On behavior days, we spend a lot of time looking for monkeys in the boat. When we find them, we keep them as long as we can. These activities all take place in the morning from about 5:30am to about 10:30-11am. We then usually have a break, eat lunch, and then at about 3:30-4pm we head out to collect sleep site data. Anytime between 6-7pm we return to our selected sleep site of the night, eat, bath, and go to sleep.
Q. What do you usually wear in the forest?
I am the height of fashion in the forest. My favorite pair of field pants is pair of old camouflaged military issue pants. If we are going to walk in the forest, I wear my giant camouflaged rubber boats (they are of course a different pattern than my pants), however if we are staying in the boat, I often go barefoot. On top, I usually wear a wicking t-shirt, with a long sleeved shirt over that (I have a blue one, a coral one, and a beige one… they all match great with my pants). Although it is often 90 degrees, it is important to wear long pants and shirts for sun and bug protection. I accessorize my outfit with my binoculars, my giant green hat or fun colored bandana (depending if we are walking in the forest or on the boat) and my pink cut off angel rainbow gloves (I have scars on my hands from the sunburn I got on my hands the first month- I guess SPF 75 sometimes just isn’t strong enough). This field season, I have switched from my backpack to a fanny pack. Besides trying to bring back the 80’s, the fanny pack is much cooler (temperature and style wise), and also I don’t get neck strain when looking up into the canopy. I am really waiting for Jungle Chic (what I like to call my style) to pick up in the Jakarta Clubs.
Q. What are the things that you miss the most?
A. Besides my family and friends, I miss cheese the most. There is absolutely no cheese in my town, only really bad processed cheese (so processed it doesn’t need to be refrigerated) in Ketapang (1.5 hour bus ride away), and bad expensive cheese in Pontianak (8 hour ferry ride away). In regards to other food, I also miss bread, and related bread products. I especially miss the coffee house snacks, and lab mate’s and office mates’ bakery goods. Finally, I miss intellectual thought. As you can tell from this self interview, I talk to myself a lot. However, it would be nice to have someone else’s ideas every once in awhile.
Q. You have had 2 sets of visitors now, are there any observations they made about your life that you didn’t pick up on?
A. First, my visitors said they would write a guest blog (hint hint), so I am sure they will share with you all their insights. However, the one thing that both sets of visitors noticed was that I have nothing soft (or remotely comfortable) to sit on. On my boat, I sit on hard wood planks, in my house, I sit on the concrete floor (even when eating dinner), and in the forest I sit on logs. After they mentioned it, I remember being slightly in pain when I arrived, but I guess I have just developed butt pads (does this make me now a monkey and no longer an ape?). Also, I have forgotten that in America, we only eat certain foods at certain times of the day. For example, it would be strange to have fish in a curry sauce for breakfast in America. However, here we eat the same thing three times a day.
