street artistry

Having been recently in the capital city of Kalimantan and the 'equatorial city' the following description of the monument of the same name caught my eye in the Lonely Planet:

"The official monument marking the equator was originally erected in 1928 as a simple obelisk mounted with a metallic arrow. In 1930 a circle was welded to the arrow, in 1938 another cirlcle was added in the other direction and its subsequent incarnation is unintentionally funny, looking like a giant gyroscope on a pillar."

Sorry to say, I never made it to the monument.

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One unremarkably hot afternoon I found myself squatting on the sidewalk in Yogya, while the motor of the Vespa sat in pieces, splitting time between a cardboard box and a particularly radiant patch pavement. Across the street there was a bus depot where one side of the gate had fallen over. Bus depots are a really hive of activity, in spite of the fact that they are often just dusty lots ringed by corrugated tin roofed stalls.


Anyhow, when the time came to close up the gate, only one side could swing in to close. Undoubtedly this presents a problem in that anyone (without even dismounting from their Shogun motor bike) could gain access to the one of our most precious resources: the vacant lot. Thankfully Indonesia is in possesion of yet another precious resource, a ready supply of completely unengaged men on every street.


In this case about eight men picked up the gate and angled it against the other. String was procured and used to lash them together with what appeared to be the Chateau D'If of knots. 10 minutes later they returned from around the block, rolling a semi-conical piece of the road that had been torn up along a crooked path. Positioning it under the highest point of the A-frame; you could tell these guys were security experts. Shorly thereafter someone showed up with a metal pipe, which was wedged, through some team effort, into this piece of concrete. A few minutes more yielded a piece of bamboo that, after a few trial runs, was revealed to fit inside the pipe. More string was brought (a different color, undoubtedly someone had sprung for the variety pack) and tied to the top of the bamboo. Apparently it must have looked a little bit lonely because the redoubtable group returned in another 10 minutes with the garnish: a plastic shopping bag tied to the string. Eveyone looked around contentedly and then returned to their spots in the shade for a well deserved cigarette.

Leo for Peace!

Of all the people I have met in Indonesia, next to none of them have been to the United States. Unto itself, this is unremarkable, given the simple economic prerequisites for such a trip. Moreover, many of the people that you meet daily would not know what to do if dropped in the middle of Jakarta, let alone the United States. The truly stunning thing is how many students, professionals, artists, and intellectuals have been rejected outright, and literally told, ‘you do not have a good enough reason to come to America.’

In fact, to date, I have yet to meet a single Indonesian not married to an American national (I maintain that these do not count) who has actually set foot inside the United States. As one would expect this has mostly permeated popular consciousness: more often than not when I encourage people to come to America—to see the museums, the wide open sky, and especially the freeing nature of social plurality—they automatically indicate that they would rather save the time, seeing as how they could never get a visa anyways.

I often have to check my instincts, as this reponse sounds simplistic and largely indolent, but, to the contrary, they truly never could get a visa.

If rhetorical devices of the type were not fustian in their insouciance, one might be tempted (and many have so yielded) to point out that 9/11 was even more tragic in that its perpetrators not only lived in the United States beforehand but were able to exploit the freedoms which they sought to make war upon to carry on relatively unadulterated existences. How close we might have come to avoiding such tragedy seems heart wrenching impetus to redouble our guard.
Undoubtedly there are people who wish to injure Americans and for whom conventional deterrence does not exist. It is more than likely that some of such people are Indonesians. Jemiiah Islamyiah (JI) has proved to be an intractable force in Indonesian religious society and the utter inhumanity of the two Bali bombings congeals any doubts of their fanaticism and wholesale brutality.

In light of this however, it seems to me a bit shortsighted to impose a policy that results in the near complete denial of visas to the citizens of a country that represents not only the world’s largest Islamic country, but undoubtedly its largest citizenship of moderate Muslims as well. Indonesia’s Muslims, on the whole, are of a remarkably non-extremist faith. At a point when the United States not only desperately needs positive publicity within the Muslim world but Islamic cultural allies (or, short of that, dialogue participants) of any stripe, that we should forgo our most powerful tool of education about the authentic American ideals of pluralism and freedom—showing them to our guests—strikes me as a miscalculation. American isolationism is not and never has been the solution for what ails the world. Inevitably there are military and security trade-offs involved that have no easy answer. However, I think a reevaluation of this calculus makes sense. If not, people will continue to become experts on America through the less optimal avenues of Hulk Hogan’s reality TV show, Titanic, or, perhaps more dangerously, radical imams.

'timber!'

Among the first fellings of coming to Sukadana, general impracticalities about the rainforest were the first to fall. All prior experiences with the rainforest—through Lisa Frank’s line of school supplies, television documentaries, and the café of the same name—presented a magical place where an absolute menagerie of exotic flora and fauna wanted to be your friend. In reality though, what the rainforest really wants, is to kill you.

To be precise, and to avoid pithiness, the rainforest does not really want anything (and that might get more at its essence than anything else) but its sheer ruthlessness in the face of modernity (which in most places has succeeded in subduing nature) seems to invoke this sort personification on its own. I suppose this sort of thing occurs to you when you live in the midst of what is basically a giant organism naturally engineered to devour and absorb everything in its path (except the chainsaw). After all, it is difficult to do much of anything without encountering an unending cabaret of insects, vines, weather (apparently it creates its own), lizards, or microbes that seem, if not hell bent on your destruction, certainly unfazed by your presence. The adventures only begin with trips to the bathroom.

More often than not, I cannot help wondering how exactly people, or, to be more precise, any sort of modern, semi-permanent means of social organization have any business being here. In terms of this competition, it is pretty clear that human beings have the means to destroy anything they put their full powers of indifference to, but as for life in Kalimantan, it certainly seems to be contested to the point that you wonder under what terms people deserve to be here in the first place.

Certainly, people who come from a stock that has lived here for hundreds of years have some sort of claim to being here, but when you walk through the jungle you realize that everything in it is rare. It is a place utterly devoid of ‘niche-ism’ in a way that I have never before experienced.

For instance, while walking along, I started counting fungi. While there was certainly plenty to see (I probably tallied 20 different sightings in an hour), the remarkable thing was that I did not see the same type of fungi twice. This struck me as utterly incredible and, what is more, this holds for virtually everything else, from flowers to birds. As this dawned upon me, the ensuing realization that a single organism should not only raze but even strive to domesticate what literally amounts to thousands upon thousands left me feeling something rather far out of place.

Kalimantan

Of late things have been a bit listless for me. Indonesia, even in the most important cities (Jakarta excluded) can be an achingly provincial place. Outside of a few places where economy or natural catastrophe has provided some sort of impetus, there is not a ton going on for foreigners. Indonesia is much more of a backwater than I expected and once outside the larger regional cities you completely fall off the map.

Yogyakarta, the city in Central Java where I have thus far spent most of my time, is advertised as the (in addition to ‘the soul of Java,’ which is probably true, but sometimes even souls prefer to spend their days smoking and sleeping) ‘student’s city’ of Indonesia (which is also probably true) and home of its most prestigious university, but scholarship is a relative term. The city is filled with German exchange students (attending this university: UGM), some of whom I am friendly with. Few attend class and some don’t even speak Indonesian (notable because they take half of their classes in Indonesian). Mostly they do their part to contribute to Yogya’s diminutive club scene, and surround themselves with Indonesians who rarely cease talking about their intention to ‘open a bottle’ later that night at the ‘theque du jour. This is not to say that there are not serious young Indonesian academics, but many of them seem to prefer computer games.

As usual, this sounds critical, but the important point is that thus far I have had trouble finding my way. In the midst of this I have been able to accomplish only because of my relative linguistic ineptitude upon arrival, something that I have been making real progress with. However, knowing that it was time to move forward, I have been casting about for something to do. The feasibility of my Rockefeller proposal is something that I have been coming to terms with: it is very difficult to just show up in a village to ‘study’ without arousing massive amounts of suspicion (popular as well as governmental). I have reached out to a few contacts in organizations like the World Bank that run the fisheries projects in Indonesia, but I do not see any action before the first of the year.

However, last week a fellow American that I overlapped with for a week at my language school and is presently working in an NGO is Kalimantan called me up, opening with, ‘Matt, we need you.’ He is presently working for an NGO that works to preserve Orangutan habitat basically by bribing the villagers with free health care to not log the jungle. Illegal logging (as well as lawful) is a huge problem in Indonesia and Kalimantan is pretty much the last, though rapidly vanishing, stronghold of untouched rainforest in Southeast Asia.

It turns out that this NGO is shorthanded for a few weeks and is looking for someone who can help keep books, teach English, write grants, and brainstorm how to start playing the carbon credit market. I, actually, can do many of these things. It is nice for me because I only have to make a short commitment since I do not think I want to spend the next 6 months in the jungle. I am also piqued by the opportunity to see first hand what I think of as the humanist-environmentalist tension inherent in any type of conservation. Too many westerners want to just ‘save the rainforest,’ without acknowledging that this means the people that actually live there will not be able to survive. Often, the destruction of forest is an economic decision made at the individual level, not by nefarious suits in shadowy boardrooms. Plus, I will get the chance to live, quite literally, in the jungle and, more importantly, live in a place where virtually no English is spoken. I think this will be great for both my Indonesian as well as my desire to experience a breadth of Indonesian life. Moreover, if I can acquit myself well, hopefully I will acquire some sort of reference from someone in the Indonesian research/NGO community (the person who runs this one is a Yale PhD candidate, probably in health policy or something).

Anyhow, I head out on Wednesday, to a place called Sukadana (its near Ketapang) in West Kalimantan. Moving closer to the equator, I will not quite yet escape the Southern Hemisphere. It is a bit off the beaten path and my technological connectivity is going to be limited. I am told there is internet two hours away by jeep and that my cell phone will work. (The number, by the way, is +62 0859 207 17599) So, if I am not as prolific in this space, I have explained myself. I imagine that I will have a whole host of stories and impressions from this new experience, and I will try to remain disciplined about putting them down.

honkyTV

As is too often endemic to the human condition, Indonesians love watching television.

Evenings in the alleyways are bathed by the familiar blue glow of pixels whirring and winding their way through the spectral decrescendos of gratification. Come dusk it spills out of windows agape, bounces off murky mirrors, and slinks out under sentinel doors. Ceiling fan blades, mired in perpetualilty, bat it askance; everything from Champion’s League soccer to Hulk Hogan’s reality TV show to combination soap opera/ karaoke programs are cast out, anonymous velocity and terminal identity, into the tropical night’s hazy blue entropy.

My new favorite program on Indonesian TV is a garden variety, Animal Planet, crocodile hunting program. As you might expect it features nerdy, honky, biologist types wearing khaki zip-off shorts (I have been toying with the idea of dedicating an entire entry to the affinity of the white male to these, a highly disturbing trend: stay tuned) rochambeauxing around bodies of water in the dark and subsequently getting overexcited at 15 foot long reptiles.

I can not imagine what it must feel like to be the crocodile in this case: big meal, ensuing food coma, just relaxin’ at the top of the food chain and all of a sudden here comes a bunch of twiggy guys with a bright light and a cable loop attached to a pole. It makes you think twice before you again think that alien abductions are fabricated. I imagine all the crocs hanging out on the muddy shore, chomping game, and working to slap some ladies probably think ‘this guy’ is pretty crazy too.

Anyhow, the saving grace of this particular program is that it is dubbed. Indonesian programming is kind of a mixed bag: Scooby Doo is dubbed, whereas Eddie Murphy movies only have subtitles. In this case though, the dubbing is the main attraction. Crocs thrash about, our intrepid explorers jump in and out of danger’s clamp, hot and bothered biologists detonate the fourth wall with excited explanations, and all the while a breathless Asian voice tries to keep up with the action. Like watching a Kung Fu movie in inverse, it marks one of my giddiest half hours.

mobile party

Yesterday, I saw a cake, of the cheap, grocery store, impending icing stomach ache, sheet cake iteration that occupied (in all three dimensions) the entire bed of a pickup truck. This left me incredibly excited:

1. Probably the largest cake I have ever seen

2. A pretty novel way to transport a cake

3. Something about the fact that you can back up to the house, drop the tailgate, and instantly have a party really thrills me

4. Still only four corner pieces

5. This is ouuuurrr country?

the 72 people that you meet in heaven

The girl, aged about fourteen years and still sporting the ruddy plump of youth, pads past meekly, unconvinced and reticent to accept the power of which biology is the sole guarantor. Her footfalls are ones of reticence, covering a distance laterally that is nearly as far as locomotive, as she tip toes down the sunny neighborhood alleyway. Youth is universal, she sporting a vertically striped polo shirt both distressed and cut (less than generous to the implacable holdout of a tummy) in the style that is just as popular with western ‘tweens.’ That is, until she shuffles and the unprepared observer notices, nestled into the nebula of pink stars between her shoulder blades: ‘virgin.’

Obviously, the social politics of sexuality in Indonesia are a bit of a departure from what many infidels in the West might be accustomed to. Yet the expectation of some code of higher morality that basically extols that endemic to Islam also seriously misses on reality. Certainly, in a cultural and religious (both Indonesian and Islamic, though it should be mentioned that Indonesian Christianity is no different) milieu where morality is paramount, it is inevitable that virginity is thoroughly prized and fortified by the community.

Yet, consider an oft-run television ad that begins with a shot of a young girl in her bedroom boxing up, among other artifacts of childhood, her teddy bear. An older female figure then hands her another box which contains the product in question, skin whitening body lotion which she applies and becomes, through the slow fill television effect, of even fairer complexion. The spot ends with this young girl walking down the street exuding radiance and soft light to the open mouthed astonishment of the boys along the route.

Save the explication, as one does not need to yank the tarpaulin off the Marshall McLuhan excavator to get a handle on this type of imagery. This is not meant as an ad hominine attack on Islam, nor a pronunciation on all Moslems, but in a great number of instances the battle of conservative ethics against modernity in adapting to modern medias and mores has done little more than synthesize and validate the cultural fetishization of adolescent purity and innocence. While this is not necessarily a wholly Islamic tendency, it is most often couched in Islamic terms and symbolism, and, after all, Indonesia is a country where headscarf sporting women appear in TV public service announcements encouraging you to call these numbers and advocate for further censorship of media (of which there is already plenty). Shakespeare in Love was on TV the other night and the whole screening took about forty minutes. The end result is such repression of sexuality that this chastity in itself becomes the fixation, often in crude and bizarre ways.

If nothing else this sort of reactionary conservatism ensconces nothing more than a slavering male vantage with purity and youth (not to mention women) as base sexual objects. Not just objects—when you first realize that yes, strangely, many young women choose to ride around on the backs’ of motor bikes sidesaddle—but virginity transporters. Not only disconcerting, but begs the question if traditional Islamic values and modernity (not to mention women’s issues) are mutually destructive. Where is the line between fetish and moral symbolism and when does the former begin to supersede the other?

Inasfar as fiefdom, I think you bad crook

Apologies for not writing of late, but I have spent the last few days camping with three friends (my buddy, his girlfriend, and her friend) on an uninhabited island in the Java Sea about 80km north of anything. It certainly was interesting, but the shores were so strewn with human artifacts, from water bottles to flip flops to bottles of male virility elixirs, that it felt a bit inauthentic. All in all an interesting trip, from which I take some lessons learned.

First, when signing up to be abandoned on an island for any appreciable length of time, choose your companions wisely. Potentially mentally unstable Japanese girls are generally not a good idea. Nor are people who cannot swim, people who are afraid of the dark and doubly afraid of lightning in the dark, or people who ‘just don’t trust’ the tidal process and therefore need to keep watch through an open tent flap all night with a flashlight trained on the waves. People who will become upset to the point of biting another human being and then go on hunger strike (deep irony in there, no doubt) in part because you spend your days sleeping and reading instead of smoking and talking in Japanese about your ex-boyfriends should also be avoided. Anyone who when angry speaks in the third person and brandishes an empty two liter water bottle at any stray flora or fauna within reach.

Second, reconsider when a suggestion that more than 8 liters of water is brought for four people over four days is met with ‘We can’t because whatever we do she will get mad at me.’ Or, ‘Don’t worry, we can definitely rely on my solar powered cell phone charger.’

Third, in terms of culinary pursuits, instant noodles three meals a day is not nearly as terrible as it sounds. If you manage to offend someone by eating the salt with rice that they have prepared before they mold it into balls with their hands because, ‘it is not the same dish,’ begin weighing your strengths as a swimmer.

Fourth, when a suicidal salamander dashes itself into your cooking fire and your companion looks at you pleadingly and says, ‘Please don’t say anything. If the girls hear you they will be so angry at us,’ do not think, just swim.

honky tv

As is too often endemic to the human condition, Indonesians love watching television.

Evenings in the alleyways are bathed by the familiar blue glow of pixels whirring and winding their way through the spectral decrescendos of gratification. Come dusk it spills out of windows agape, bounces off murky mirrors, and slinks out under sentinel doors. Ceiling fan blades, mired in perpetualilty, bat it askance; everything from Champion’s League soccer to Hulk Hogan’s reality TV show to combination soap opera/ karaoke programs are cast out, anonymous velocity and terminal identity, into the tropical night’s hazy blue entropy.

My new favorite program on Indonesian TV is a garden variety, Animal Planet, crocodile hunting program. As you might expect it features nerdy, honky, biologist types wearing khaki zip-off shorts (I have been toying with the idea of dedicating an entire entry to the affinity of the white male to these, a highly disturbing trend: stay tuned) rochambeauxing around bodies of water in the dark and subsequently getting overexcited at 15 foot long reptiles.

I can not imagine what it must feel like to be the crocodile in this case: big meal, ensuing food coma, just relaxin’ at the top of the food chain and all of a sudden here comes a bunch of twiggy guys with a bright light and a cable loop attached to a pole. It makes you think twice before you again think that alien abductions are fabricated. I imagine all the crocs hanging out on the muddy shore, chomping game, and working to slap some ladies probably think ‘this guy’ is pretty crazy too.

Anyhow, the saving grace of this particular program is that it is dubbed. Indonesian programming is kind of a mixed bag: Scooby Doo is dubbed, whereas Eddie Murphy movies only have subtitles. In this case though, the dubbing is the main attraction. Crocs thrash about, our intrepid explorers jump in and out of danger’s clamp, hot and bothered biologists detonate the fourth wall with excited explanations, and all the while a breathless Asian voice tries to keep up with the action. Like watching a Kung Fu movie in inverse, it marks one of my giddiest half hours.

the italian bird

After some well-documented complaining, I have finally joined the a-motoring masses of the Indonesian road. However, before you think, ‘my, how quickly mas matt chucks his principles once he has already exploited an idea for its yield of sardonic observations,’ in my defense, I have done so on my own terms.

I am now the sometimes proud owner of 150cc of Italian engineered stylishness, a black 1962 Vespa scooter. It is both classic and sometimes practical. More importantly, it gives me an infusion of mobility and autonomy that has made me pretty happy. It is true that you cannot recapture your youth, but you can move to the developing world and buy a sexy scooter.
Aside from the fact that I now own something, in a foreign country no less, that requires maintenance (something that escaped my figuring at first), I am quite pleased by the whole operation. It runs well, still has plenty of power, and is completely original (although the speedometer has long ceased to work, a common affliction).

Buying the scooter was an interesting operation, because most bules that come looking for well preserved classic scooters do so only to turn around and export them and sell them to private collectors in the west for a tidy profit. Many people were completely against selling me a scooter of any vintage, and the good fortune of running into someone who really needed some cash (the owner’s teenage son looked completely despondent throughout the entire transaction and generally avoids me on the street) along with being friends with a few Vespa-owning Indonesians helped me pull it off. Those that would have dealt with me wanted a price three times greater than what an Indonesian might pay, largely because they were afraid that it would be one less scooter for Indonesians to enjoy in the future.

It is an interesting predicament to think about: Westerners who have both the purchasing power and hobbyism basically using the developing world as a salvage yard and in the process strip it of all the classic scooters, a stock that is, as funny as it sounds, highly important to the Indonesian Vespa aficionados that I know. Though, I must confess that I get a mildly perverse pleasure out of pulling into a nighttime scooter hangout and soaking up the looks of utter incredulity: ‘Seriously! Who the hell sold that one to whitey?’

I have become accustomed to the rules of the road here, in that there seems to be a set of general precepts, but adherence to them occurs on a purely voluntary basis. In that it is tough to really do anything wrong on the road, it is easier to feel up to speed with traffic norms than it is in the states. By far the craziest nuance is that the convention of right of way is completely inverted: the slower vehicle in front has the right of way. Therefore, when changing lanes no one looks first, and other vehicles simply adjust. If you can’t find a break to cross traffic when making a right hand turn, it is perfectly acceptable to drive up the wrong side of the road next to the curb until an opening presents itself. What is more, no one seems overly perturbed if some honky’s antique motor bike dies at an intersection. Whereas this might paralyze traffic in the states, everyone just kind of makes there way around the snarl and putters off on their way.

yogyakarta drift

For those of you that know me, no wind, rain, or Muslim country can keep me from my personal water of life. This verve salve that I am referring to is, of course, none other than the distilled thunderclap of Jimmy Beam.

Club Caesar, in this case was in a shuttered and predictably asian shopping palace; nothing gets you in the mood to club like driving out to the airport, into a below ground parking garage, and poking around for an elevator. Once engaged it opened onto a tube of neon lights at the end of which an unmanned metal detector guarded the club. Every person in my party set it off, but, as is the case at most airports in Indonesia, this proves scant reason to disrupt the flow of the line.
Perhaps owing to the abusive strobe (never have I felt so thankful at not being a small Japanese schoolchild—thanks, mom and dad) the bottle appeared before me on the black onyx pedestal masquerading as a table. I knew its boxy frame in an instant, and when I checked for the indispensably obliging signature (after all, by none other), I knew this was the genuine object, as pure as the dew on a Kentucky mare’s haunches.

I have never seen Jim Beam come to your table in a box, but I imagine my companions had never seen someone so enthusiastically dram it, and not yet interred by three inches of life-snuffing cola-colored earth to boot.

The house band—drummer, bassist, lead, and somewhere around four vocalists—entertained with medleys of hip hop covers from a stage worthy of prince at the super bowl while young dancers tentatively stalking the chrome pole placed in the midst of a grassland of glowing opaque plastic. An English girl hopped up on stage and gave it a decent twice over, most likely further confirming the ‘all western women are prostitutes’ stereotype held here, but she disappeared with a grizzled octogenarian, most likely to be plied with descriptions of ‘charming and picturesque’ East Millinockett.

ah, the birr of arrendments

Indonesian class has led me to conclude that America suffers from a catastrophic image problem. Now, before I come across as both oblivious and hackneyed, I fully expected this. However, I expected it to be couched in a general anti-imperialistic, pro-Palestine, anti- unilateralism, home of the stupid and obese rhetoric.

There is all of this, but what has shocked me the most is how little people know about the things that I identify as uniquely American. Every day I field a question from one of my teachers, educated people, along the lines of: ‘What is the state religion of America?’ or ‘What is this green statue doing in the middle of New York’ or ‘Which newspaper is the government newspaper?’ Stunned, and often on the urge of blurting out something along the lines of, ‘That is kind of the point of America;’ I find myself rattling on about the Bill of Rights (except for the second amendment; most of the world seems well informed of our national tradition of gun ownership) so often that I wish someone had made me take a refresher in civics with Mr. Flynn, his wife’s English, you know, before I left.

(It occurs to me that no one reading this blog will get that joke. I will leave it in.)

I just did not expect people to know absolutely nothing about all of the things that makes the American experiment so exceptional and the guiding principles that make it ultimately (as being away is helping me come to terms with) a force for good in the world. All of the freedoms that America embodies, and the core idea, one that at some point in history has touched every citizen, that anyone can make an American, are virtually unknown to everyone I meet here. Who knows how to fix this, but I cannot conceive of sprucing up our image around the world without addressing it.

keeping up relations with the community

Recently I have learned to drive a fully manual motor scooter (this will make sense at some future point in blogtime). Not an operation that is particularly difficult, the machinations of gas in the right grip, four gears in the left, and clutch on the left fingertips (not to mention brake with your right foot and hand), takes a little getting used to.

As with most things that I do, the scene created by the lanky, blond honky learning to drive a scooter provided plenty of entertainment for the neighborhood. Once I finally managed to start the thing, it took another 10 minutes for me to successfully put it into first gear with out stalling, and then a few more to get moving, accomplished by gunning the engine, letting out all the clutch, taking off at a sprint.

Finally, having bucked my way methodically down this checklist, I was so tired of everyone on the sidewalk laughing at me, that I decided to take a triumphant spin around the city center, rather than going down to the end of the street and turning around. Moderation is for pussies.

It was late at night, so the streets were largely empty, positive considering that it took me a little while to check my habit of drifting over to the right side of the road. I finished every turn with a wobble in the middle of the street fit for the forcible reverse birth of 7 years of traffic laws. Naturally I managed to stall the bike going over a speed bump at the furthest point on my circuit; it took me about 5 minutes to get it started again.

Returning to the neighborhood, I slipped a gear while coasting into the sidewalk. I must have been a frightening sight—clutch open, machine rearing and shuddering, not to mention bule—to the prostitutes sitting on a rug on the sidewalk (I live on the edge of the red light district), because they certainly scattered with a hustle that I did not think their plump middle-aged frames possessed. Crisis was averted (the prostitutes no longer proposition me anymore, we just wave and laugh) and as I stood around looking shamefaced, a guy about my age walked over to me and said in declarative but clearly excited English, ‘You…scared the ladies.’

Indeed.

love in the afternoon

Indonesians love soccer—unfortunately, they do not happen to be any good at it. It is quite the unfortunate case, especially as the sport verges on national obsession.

There is a national semi-pro league and every day around late afternoon you can turn on the television and find a football match. That is if the television is not already turned to the football and surrounded by chain-smoking, occupation-less men, as it usually is.

The game is a veritable zeitgeist object in that it is a frenetic, often out of control, clutching game that involves profuse sweating. All aspects of the league are heavily tied in with cigarette advertising (big business in Indonesia) and I am told that the players make, not only by Indonesian standards, a handsome living. I imagine that this accounts for the ‘Emersons,’ ‘Silvestros,’ or ‘Robertos,’ that every team seems to have a few of, what I imagine to be the football equivalent of the most miserable exile (a potentially smarmy book idea for anyone who knows more about the sport), resulting in hilarious after-match interviews when African-born players an Indonesian commentators try to cobble together some common ground in English.

For me, what Indonesian football lacks in polish, talent, or professionalism it more than makes up for in comedy. If you feel low in the afternoon, it is always there for a quick and easy laugh. However, my favorite thing about Indonesian football is watching it with Indonesians as the catch-all Indonesian word for basically anything good happening is sukses (sounds a bit like success). At the slightest provoking development they can be counted on to murmur, ‘sukses!’ which for some unknown reason delights me.

A few days ago, while watching a match after school, I saw a game stopped for fifteen minutes while the justice of a late second half penalty kick was pleaded, a scene that included the goalie running down from the opposite end of the field and repeatedly trying to give the referee the old high-school-locker-room-nut-tap-move until he was eventually restrained. Not only was the call in his team’s favor, but no cards were awarded.

When order was finally restored and the penalty struck the home team down a goal, the stands began to empty while the chain link fence around the pitch began to fill up with fans threatening to storm the field. Understandably, the officiating pulled a quick about face and the home team scored in the 107^th minute (another first for me) to tie the match. Sukses!

indigestion

The other night, my friend from Jakarta, the lady who essentially appointed herself responsible for shepherding me around during my first week in Indonesia, happened to be down in Yogyakarta. She gathered a sundry group of her friends, family, and me together and took us out to dinner.

I of course, managed to provide a rather bland occasion with some notable dinner entertainment. We went to a fish barbecue place where your plate is a banana leaf and most people forgo utensils. Basically the meal involved a table full of dishes and a big basket of rice (Indonesians believe that what constitutes a meal is rice, everything without is a snack), a family style affair.

With so much food before me and having lived with unusual moderation of late (more out of reality than choice), I had already decided to put down some food. When I started eating with my hands, the other people at the table looked bemused, when I started piling on the sambal (sauce made from stone crushed red chilies), they looked anxious, when I clumped the rice like the Javanese do, they looked admiringly, and when I kept moving for the rice basket after everyone else had pushed back from the table, a young waitress walked up to me and blurted out ‘I like the way that you eat.’

my personal savant

I looked up from my breakfast table the other morning as the everyman of my losmen (hostel-ish place that I live in) sat down to join me. The steam curling around his face alerted me to something out of the ordinary, and I looked down to see what he was packing.+

It turns out that he had brought breakfast with him, in this case a bowl of clear broth with the head and two feet of an unfortunately bisected chicken. Actually, in the employ of linguistic precision, one might never know for certain if you bought the matching and complete set, but I imagine you get the idea.

Seeing someone lay into a chicken’s foot before finishing the day’s first cup of coffee, let me inform you, is actually the preferred approach when you run afowl of such a situation, but nonetheless a generally unpleasant operation.

This struck me as worthy of your time not because I wanted to mention all the ‘totally gross’ (as the over-demanding Skeletor from Los Angeles staying in the losmen who asked me if she could drink the water from the tap might say) things that come with living here—the rats that look and, perhaps more disconcertingly, saunter like pensioners top the list—but because of an unusual confluence.

You see my friend, like a criminally over-serialized self improvement book, quite simply, drops the wisdom on you.

In a nearly unbroken and constantly reversing slipstream of Indonesian and English that apparently only I can understand (other guests and Indonesians remark that they find him unintelligible; flout the theory of me, muse), he will talk for an hour without interruption about the spiritual symbolism of batik color motifs or population economics in Singapore. Often, I cannot shake the vibe that all of these things are occurring to him for the first time, like I am living with a street corner savant.

I could not help asking, ‘what happened to the rest of the chicken?’

Last night, over tea in the street, he went thirty minutes on the etymological roots of the phrase ‘Yo, bro,’ a subject on which I would pay good rupiah to see him go the distance with one Michael Padgett.

my blue raincoat

Part of the rainy season is buying a raincoat and an umbrella. As you might imagine, when the changing of the seasons is marked by something as definitive as rain and then later it ceasing to rain for eight months, it is tough to fake it. Since it is difficult to either put your poncho into mothballs or recall exactly which stowage seemed most fitting for your umbrella to winter, everyone has to come by these necessities again, either by hook or by crook.

As the saying goes, there are two modes of acquisition, either schlep to the store like most god-fearing (from what I can gather a slightly less mellow and less personal god than we westerners might be familiar with) folk or steal it from the well meaning (and dashing) honky that lives in your alleyway.

Needless to say, as I was drying my raincoat across the handlebars of my bicycle (truly more of a tangle of sharp metal resembling a bicycle) my raincoat found a new home. I was able to find this new home almost as quickly as it disappeared, in large part because my poncho did not have to make a long trip.

Two days later—days, coincidentally, where I weighed and considered the rain like the miniature golf ball courts the windmill—I noticed on my way to school a rain coat about 25 meters down the alleyway that looked strikingly, down to the bicycle rust stains, like my recently departed one.

That afternoon, after spending an entire hour practicing and learning necessary vocabulary to dispute the ownership of a raincoat (yet to be covered in my studies, though the vocabulary necessary to set up a small business that makes banana chips—check) I set out for home on my bicycle full of resolve.

Indonesian language is basically organized entirely in the passive tense, so as to avoid saying anything outright and thereby never cause offense. Therefore, key sentences included: ‘My raincoat is no longer on top of my bicycle,’ ‘My raincoat looks similar to this raincoat,’ and ‘This raincoat, might it be from that house?’ It is the type of language where when someone stands on your foot in the bus, the proper thing to say is ‘My foot is being stood on.’ Anyhow, my teacher implored me to just forget about the raincoat, cut my losses, and call off the recovery mission: you cannot do this sort of thing here, people will not understand. I, muttering something about subsidizing raincoats for the whole neighborhood, refused to demure.

I managed to make it about halfway home before the windmill blade descended like a thunderclap (in actuality, with a thunderclap) and the rain opened up. You have scant seen rain come on with such alacrity and sheer power until you have experienced the monsoon. Water pours from the sky and the streets become sluices; this happens every day, seemingly without fatigue. With the élan that only a twenty-year-old bicycle built for someone about a foot shorter than me can emboss, I clattered off the road and under the awning of a roadside shop and, as the rain poured down, knew that I had been defeated. I fished through my pockets, bought another (identical, or soon to acquire the requisite rust stains) raincoat, and pedaled home, fully aware of Indnoesia's coquettish laughter all around.

very superstitious

As some of you may have heard, Indonesia has a few volcanoes. Sometimes, when mingled with Gods gone crazy you sometimes end up with a precarious cocktail. At press time, three volcanoes are stirring: one in Sulawesi, Kracatau—the super volcano between Sumatra and Jawa that supposedly produced the loudest sound ever heard on earth when it erupted in the 1800s,—and one in East Jawa, Mt. Kelud—the most impending of the group.

I got to thinking about volcanoes for a few reasons. The first is that I want to let it be known that I live no where near any of these volcanoes. If one of them erupts in the near future, please do not worry. True, there is a volcano about 30km from where I live, however it is the type of volcano that behaves more like your garden variety baking soda and vinegar science project volcano than the volcanoes you see on the History Channel. If something happens, either there or farther a field, my present residence is metaphorically quite far from the kitchen floor.

Secondly, I saw an interesting article in the Jakarta Post last week covering local soothsayers’ predictions for the eruption of Kelud. Basically, vulcanologists could not narrow down a date and so the paper consulted the people who live near the volcano and communicate with it by bringing it rice and chickens and whatnot. I mention this because the piece was not, as it might be in the Western media, a weekend edition type fluff piece.

This case—of an ostensibly western media outlet reporting on a very traditional but very mainstream belief—illuminates the dissonance that comes with living in Indonesia. On the one hand, Indonesian life bears many of the offspring of modernity, and yet it is a culture that is widely influenced by what a westerner would call ‘superstition.’ People are aware of and understand, in a word, science but, where important and immovable things are concerned, believe that bringing a cauldron of molten earth rice in exchange for its secrets is not only a perfectly reasonable, but most likely better, method.

Indonesians keep up a near constant cohabitation with spirits (the soothsayers, by the way, agreed on the verdict of within a week). Part of the reason I find it so strange that radical Islam has gained even its meager foothold here is because Indonesians of all stripes believe in a vague and pervasive mysticism that can overpower human beings. From time to time you hear about robberies of wealthy homes where the housekeeper claims that someone came to the gate and cast a spell that compelled them to open the house. Most people accept this as an unexplainable but completely reasonable occurrence. Many Indonesians would never dream of going out at night alone for fear of being waylaid by a ambling spirit.

A few evenings ago I met, as I often do, one of the employees (and one of my closest Indonesian friends) from my losmen on the street. He exhorted me to join him for tea at a roadside cart, as he loves practicing his English with me (he really is quite the street corner philosopher) and I, with nowhere to go and Indonesian to practice, sat down. We wandered onto the topic of violence in Indonesia and began talking about the Madurese people.

The Madurese, depending on how you look at it, either incite or happen to be on the victimized end of most intra-ethnic conflicts in Indonesia. Hailing from the island of Madura off the East Coast of Jawa, Madurese are nearly universally noted for, among other things, their sate and pugilism.

Anyhow, my friend mentioned how the Madurese never bother Javanese people because they know from sampling their blood what they are up against. Now, there actually have been well documented cases of Madurese people (and Dayak, an ethnicity from Borneo) drinking the blood of adversaries that they have killed. However, that you can divine the soul of a people and therein sense them whenever you meet them thereafter by developing an ethnically diversified palate for blood, struck me as far more powerful. At this point my friend, someone who is fairly modern, city bred, and not outwardly cowed by any sort of mysticism, basically told me, you may not think so, but this is completely true. And as the cart’s gas lantern whispered to no one in particular except the glowing charcoal beneath the kettles, it was plain that he truly believed it.

pastiche

To say nothing of its placid lanes, devout populace, and proximity to public transportation, the private sector of the quarter of P--- was wholly devoted to its children. Sometime between the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions endemic to the neighborhood, two separate vendors peddling mobile children's attractions chose to pedal their businesses up and down its moderately shaded streets. None of the residents could pin down the why or the when of the phenomenon and, as a general rule, inquiries of any sort were regarded with the same air of the heaping helpings of rice chips that the locality's other capitalists, the food stall tenders, piled onto plates of lotek or soto every lunch hour.

The first, a mustachioed man with a near perfect half circle void rotted between his two upper front teeth, spent his days steering, from underneath a greasy baseball cap, a mobile version of the sinusoidal ridable animal attraction such as one might see in a shopping mall arcade. His contraption had two sets of pedals, one that drove the whole mechanism and another set that could be engaged to set its mighty team alee. These pedals also provided the power for a small speaker that played a small catalog of 'children's favorites,' musical accompaniment that during the height of the day's heat often cracked and hiccuped for want of power as the legs of it enterprising operator struggled to keep up with its greedy demands. By many impartial accounts, this was more of an attraction for adults than children. The casual passerby, non-indigenous to P---, might note the concerned and in some cases terrified look of the treated tots, but the music always clutched to a halt, like a phonograph going quite reluctantly over a cliff, money was exchanged and all parties moved on their way.

The second, a mustachioed man with a voracious appetite for dark clove cigarettes, had somehow come into possession of a pastel steel half-cart with benches, such as one might be in during the visit to the amusement park when first realizing dirt's capacity to transcend the visible light spectrum. The operator sat at the front of the cart on a pedaled contraption that was retrofitted to resemble a locomotive. The whole mechanism had been rechristened 'Fantasi Train' and its main attraction was the deluxe car alarm wired to its roof. The 'train' would creep through the streets (owing to the immense weight attached to the pedals) blaring a loop of the car alarm's greatest hits at 83 decibels (a short debate had erupted when the local Muslim Homeowner's Association (PIsCO) had claimed the decibel scale in the name of the holy and this value was a compromise, whereas the mosque was allowed to continue operations at the round number of 85) and make a round of the neighborhood before depositing its cargo of concerned looking youngsters back at their homes.

It was a truly lovely little place to live and an even better place to bring up children. What no one could ever explain was the near spontaneous appearance as well as equally mysterious withdrawal of the tallest child anyone had ever seen--actually, owing to the bright sun, no one ever got an honest look at him--standing in the lane asking quietly to ride the 'fantasi train.' Most people are sure he did not exist, but a few contend that his inability to roll his 'r's was unmistakable, irrefutable evidence to some sort of durability.

november the 1st and its raining...culture!

My plan was to avoid making snide cultural observations that delight in the misappropriation of Anglo-American artifacts. After all, gleeful reportage along the lines of ‘look at this hilarious grammar!,’ or ‘every handshake finishes with a somewhat ungainly gang-inspired clasping and rocking that expires so aimlessly it feels entropic’ is both fairly uninspired and well-worn territory as well as the further perpetration of a cultural urbanity that most Americans would be well off to outgrow.

Lofty sentiment, but things changed this afternoon. I came home to the losmen where I am presently living (a losmen is basically an inn, but with minimal facilities), a place that serves in some ways as the de facto art command post for the quarter. The owner of the place is a painter (the entire place is decorated with his pleasing, albeit very heavy on psychedelia and Eden-esque themes, paintings) and the place is the most westernized losmen in the neighborhood. Sometimes there are batik painting courses held here for whiteys who happen to be passing through.

Batik painting is a very Javanese technique that involves painting on cloth with different colors of heated color wax. The wax congeals and between each color application the piece is washed, leaving a colorfast cloth with an interesting and aged quality. It is a huge industry in Yogya and the people here are very proud of it (admittedly, it can be very beautiful); it is nearly impossible to walk down a street without being showered with invitations to batik galleries (and special one day, once in a lifetime sales). One of my favorite ruses is to offer tourists a ridiculously cheap flat fee to hire a becak for an hour long tour of the city and then take them to all the batik galleries that offer commission, where the owners are predictably good at laying down the hard sell.

Anyhow, the soundtrack of choice for the Javanese batik guru was ‘November Rain’ by Guns’n’Roses. Not that there is a problem with Axl and the boys, but I must say I was expecting something a bit more in the vein of traditional gamelan music (or at least IndoPop).

Besides the surreal qualities of the whole scene, it got me thinking what determines this crapshoot of cultural diffusion. What determines the sundry cultural bric-a-brac that makes it to the developed world? Is the fact that everyone responds to my saying I lived in Boston by inquiring if I know the New Kids on the Block or that people casually ask me how many ‘Twisters’ I have lived through (in reference to the highly realistic film of the name and a question often punctuated by ‘bccccssh’ and ‘boooms’ that celebrate its destructive faculties) completely haphazard?

Since I cannot believe that Indonesians love the saccharine melodies of NKOTB, but feel like Too Live Crew just really is not their style, there must be something more. ‘Twister’ was great, but I thought ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ was a tired rehash of that same old apocalyptic blockbuster. Seriously, who is in charge here? If we are going to act as cultural imperialists should not we at least set up some sort of vetting committee to disseminate an accurate portrait of American life? You know, one where we all settle our scores with automatic weapons and pursue our maidens through lush jungle foliage.

orange crush

Americans may get a bad rap the world over, but lately I think this reflects the difficulties of the superpower rather than its uncouth children. My losmen is consistently filled with Germans and especially Dutch people and much of their time is spent to enumerate their complaints: no one speaks English, no one possesses the ‘skills’ or ‘abilities’ to help them, its ridiculous that you can’t travel smoothly and with total convenience, people on the street never have the right information on plane departures or bus fares. It seems as if these people feel genuinely inconvenienced that such a country is not set up for their leisure and comfort—and they sulk accordingly.

Just last night this fellow was absolutely abusing one of the employees of the losmen where I live with condescension because the airline had lost his bag, whereas the staff member had merely generously offered to liaise with the airline (because, of course, this fellow does not speak a whit of Indonesian).
I hold my tongue, but I often want to pipe in to point out that they are choosing to come to someone else’s country where they do not speak the language (and do not go out of their way to try) and where time, culture, and custom move differently than in Europe. These things happen when one signs up to travel in the developing world, after all.

In fact, they just whined, ‘Next time we should just go to Germany.’

Now I know that perhaps I have a bit of a non representative sample on my hands here, however, all of the Americans (and the number is few) that I have met here have without dispute been the most upbeat, flexible, friendly, open-minded, and most willing to try to insinuate themselves into the local rhythms. Truly, this was one of the last things I expected.

What is more, I have never seen such an unflattering portrait of Dutch people and I cannot help but wonder if this is rooted in the colonial experience. As an American, I have quite a different bent on colonial heritage, and one that is substantially less contemporary. The Dutch, on the other hand, were fighting to remain here as recently as 1945 and really only capitulated when the UN pretty much dictated their marching orders to them. Say what you will about imperialism, unilateralism, and proxyism but the fact that America stands essentially alone in the developed world (callously overlooking our neighbors to the north, I know) unstained by the legacy of colonial patronage truly resonates.

It is one thing to complain about the vagaries of travel, but quite another to go to a country that, by the way, your country exploited its natural resources and culture (as an aside, Dutch colonialism is fascinating: they basically bought off the local royalty, setting up a complex patronage system that ultimately buckled under its own weight after a downright impressive run) for 350 years and once there act superior and gruff about the absence of European style efficiency and the fact that no one speaks a language you understand.
Strange days.

hujan

If language is any guide than Indonesia is a starkly bipolar place. Two words, sudah and belum, ‘already’ and ‘not yet,’ dominate conversation, and to a greater extent, how Indonesians digest life. It is an equally beautiful and frustrating delineation of life here.

When asked if you have been married, instead of answering with the simple negation, one answers ‘belum’—not yet. When unable to shake a hawker, a simple ‘sudah’ is often the most effective retort. Our well worn yeses and nos are relegated to bit parts.

Daily conversation is practically built around this partition; whenever you meet someone they can be expected to ask, ‘Have you eaten?,’ ‘Do you smoke?,’ ‘Have you been?’ and you to answer, instead of yes or no, ‘sudah, belum, belum.’

It gets a little absurd when asked things like, ‘Are you in the army?’ or ‘Do you have children?’ or ‘Have you ever lost a limb?’ and my Indonesian teachers can always be counted on to firmly remind me, ‘mas matt. Belum.’ Nearly always, your response ‘belum’ will be sparingly and precisely repeated, rolled back to you, remphasized, by one’s conversational counterpart, as the word itself might fit through a pinhole: in Jawa one shrinks to stare down the infinity of possibility alone, and learns to live with it knocking about in the night.

* * *

The rainy season has been a bit tardy coming to Yogya, and the past week has been marked by the further condensation of collective apprehension (heed, for Jawa) as each day passed without rain. Each day the question, ‘hujan’ (‘rain?’) became a bit more frequent and the answer ‘belum,’ often accompanied by a glance at the canopy, a bit more emphatic. When you only experience two seasons, and this specific changing of the guard is so palpable and—it rains—cathartic, the tension (sparing you the implicit survey of Javanese sexual psychology) gets a bit onerous.

Its funny and a bit unexplainable, because this friction becomes almost communal; I found myself on edge over the status of the rain, mystified by its absence, when rain really only meant buying an umbrella, getting muddy, staring down yet more cockroaches, and looking out for passing buses. Every day ‘sudah’ rolls across Jawa and into the ear of someone you meet: it rained in Jakarta, and heavy rain in Cental Jawa, the volcano had rain last night. In Yogya: still, no, not yet.

* * *

Today, it rained, and it was pure anticlimax. Yet, I could not help enjoy the Javanese accounting implicit in its passage: the sliding of the counter from one column to another, the removal of the blockage, Jawa's metaphysical divide; in an instant ‘belum’ becomes ‘sudah.’

circuses

After mocking Leo Dicaprio in my last post I realized that poor Leo's really just collateral damage to something much more symptomatic of western society. I do not want to apologize (love, after all, is never having to say you're sorry--thank you, Harvard), but instead think about the relative divergence of cross-national issues like global warming.

One of the things that has most surprised me during my time here is that almost every Indonesian accepts global warming. This in itself is unremarkable, and could be dismissed as simply another way to be anti-American, but you see palpable results throughout society.

For instance, every single lightbulb in Indonesia is one of the new wave, long lasting, high efficiency type. Honestly, I have yet to see an incadescent lightbulb in my time here and have slept in rooms that cost $2/night that have them. For a country that is by no means modern this is incredible when compared with how most Americans could not be bothered to change a lightbulb. I understand that if you view conservation as a good, those who can most afford the luxury will be the last to change their behavior, but you would think that in the most developed country in the world we could perhaps count on some non-economic behavior. Moreover, in my short time here, the most popular and public activism and education on global warming has come from the Muslim student organizations, something that I find highly interesting.

It is true that in America a majority of people are convinced that global warming exists, but it does not change daily life at all. People can neither be bothered to change a lightbulb (or buy an efficient car) nor get out in the streets, something far less educated and advantaged people around the world do every day. Instead, glossy magazines offer up glowing profiles of Leo, Robert Redford, and various 'mogul[s] on a mission' to build every more expensive eco-hotels or designer clothes. In short (and I am not the first to say this, as I read somewhere that the figure is near $1 billion/year), global warming is an industry. Dispense the gaudy with one hand, if only to keep people from realizing how little the other hand is doing.

cross national ombudsman

I edged closer to the West yesterday via a surprise one-day return to Jakarta to take care of a few appointments. The trip has been filled with unexpected surprises and I realize how far afield from the West central Java truly is. It was a bit shocking to see the first English newspaper in over three weeks (this is not entirely true, as on the ferry back from Lombok someone tried to sell me a Jakarta Post for 20,000 rupiah, giving me the 'local's price.' When I pointed out that the cover of the paper said its price was 5,000 rupiah he screamed at me in Javanese? Madurese? Sasak? and skulked off) and realize how little I knew about world news.

For instance, I had no idea that Pete Doherty has vowed to kick drugs, that my country is inching ever closer to going to war with Iran, that wildfires in SoCal threaten the homes of not one, but two, members of Megadeath (who played JKT on Thursday night), and that today is the 15 year anniversary of the passing of Vincent Price (why the JP gave almost 20 inches to this is beyond me).

The truth is Indonesia is neither a modern nor developed (sometimes I think -ing) country. I never realized how deeply I take The Enlightenment for granted until this past month. I am fairly certain that people who believe Indonesia is a modern place have a. only come here for a week b. made a great deal of money here c. never left Jakarta (b and c often go together).

Its a strange window through which to glimpse back to the west, and realize things like, yes, that Vanity Fair cover does in fact picture a parka clad, crampon shod, Leo Dicaprio standing atop a slushy iceberg with a forlorn-looking polar bear cub at his side.

Sometimes home even looks a little preposterous.

sailing the high seas

During my holiday travels both to and from the island (I suppose somewhat redundant to point out) of Lombok, I was treated to the Indonesian ferry experience. Yes, for about 5 hours each way, I bathed in the democracy that few things in life can produce.

As you might imagine, ferries are an important means of transportation in the archipelago. As I do not have my figures in front of me at the present time, I can not really qualify (by means of quantification) that statement, but the fact that the route I took had a ferry running every hour and a half, day and night, resonated at the time.

As I have previously mentioned, but for my fair-weather audience, the past week and a half has been Idul Fitri, the end of the Islamic holy month and basically the holidays in Indonesia. By way of comparison, envision a major airport during the Christian holidays, and then put all of those people on ferries, buses, diesel ten-seat minibuses, flat bed trucks, and motor bikes. Multiply the number of motor bikes by some whole number greater than two. Also, I should mention that the average motor bike is carrying husband, wife, two small children, and (choose one) sack of rice, bushel of jackfruit, or live rooster.

Anyways, getting on the ferry is a randomly disjointed succession of pushing, standing, pushing, sweating, and standing under the cloud of hundreds of idling dual stroke engines. When you finally get on the ferry people go in every direction to stake out their claims. You choose between an AC cabin (about 15 Celsius) and the deck (probably around 35 Celsius). I, being a whiner, am really disinclined towards both of these temperatures.

Anyways, afraid of contracting a sinus infection, I choose the deck, hoping for a breeze offshore (Lombok is about 70km from Bali). Once you get on the boat you will not be leaving for about an hour and a half so you get comfortable and sharpen up both your skills of bargaining and rebuffing the hundreds of hawkers who swarm the ship selling everything from bottled water, to pockets of rice, to cigarettes. The first time I took the ferry I was stumped when everyone around me started purchasing newspapers. It was like I was commuting to New York City—there is no way this many people are going to read the paper on the trip to Lombok. My wonder was dispelled when the boat got under way and everyone laid out their papers (people are literally covering every square foot of this boat, not only the seats) and went to sleep. Unable to resist the subtle alternating rolling and gurgling, as the screws rise up out of the water and then back down to catch, I laid down on the floor (sans newspaper) and went to sleep.

When you get to your destination you are not really at your destination because the harbor only has one dock and the outgoing boat at it will not be done loading for an hour. However, this does not stop all the Indonesians from rushing downstairs to fire up their motor bikes (thanks to the credit boom of a few years ago, there are few things the people of this nation love more than the egalitarian activity of idling their motor bikes). There is literally a crush of humanity going down the stairs and for the next hour the whiteys on deck stare at each other with incredulity, serenaded by the near constant revving of motor bikes and bathed in the vapors (along with clove cigarette smoke a near constant smell in Indonesia; at a traffic light, both), while the boat bobs pacifically in the harbor.

airplanes!

A brief chronicle of my return to Yogyakarta from Denpassar (Bali)-

To begin, I was greeted--quite literally--at the Bali airport by day of the week welcome mats guarding the entrance to the bathrooms (because everything in Indonesia is tiled there are mats at pretty much every threshold). This one said "Kamis/ Thursday" and it was right. I really couldn't contain myself thinking about the possibilities: who changes the mats? where is the room where they keep all the mats on their off-days? do they ever use them to disorient beleaguered business travelers? were the ones featuring the Japanese anime characters more expensive?

I didn't have much time to ponder beyond this because I was almost instantly greeted by the fact that the men's bathrooms have tropical fish tanks over the urinals. Its like bathrooms where they have the running water/continuous fountain/white noise contraption, but waaaay better.

This trip was also auspicious because it was my first experience with an Indonesian low-cost airline. Let me tell you, nothing instills confidence in a passenger quite like walking across the tarmac to the plane on which the motto "Fly is cheap" is emblazoned to the fuselage: you're ready to strap yourself in and get down to business.

The flight was pretty uneventful except (as is always the case) for the landing. In order to land from the west (Denpassar is due east of Yogya) the plane has to meander its way around the airport and back. Our pilot accomplished this by performing a series of exceptionally slow banks, the type where you can't help but wonder if the limp sensation halfway through has something to do with the engines being on idle. This suspicion is confirmed when he conspicuously guns the engines just as you are pretty sure the bank is really more of a spiral. This happened several times. The great compounding factor is that the runway in Yogya is one of the shortest I have ever seen and so you have to come in pretty low (and get down on the pavement pretty shortly after it starts). So, we hit the runway, the whole apparatus takes a breath, and then you hear the complaints of fatigued steel cables pressed into action. The plane goes bumping down the runway and comes to a stop much quicker than you could imagine. All in all the fun is over much too fast.

transport? young girls?

The first and final legs of my holiday in Lombok were flights between Yogyakarta and Denpassar (the airport in Bali). Because I had a night flight on my way out and a morning flight on my way home I got stuck stay two separate nights in Kuta Beach, Bali.

I knew that Kuta Beach was sort of the hub of the island in the sense that Bali is sometimes treated by visitors like a playground for adults, but I was not quite prepared for an experience that left me hoping it was my first and last trip there.

(Some of you may recall that Kuta Beach was the scene of the last two Bali bombings.)
I should have been tipped off on the plane by the presence of a few (loud—but I think we can chalk that up to national disposition) sweaty middle aged Australian men talking quite casually and graphically about all the drinking and whoring they were going to do in Kuta.

For those of you not aware, this past month has been Ramadan, Islam’s holiest month. The end of Ramadan, Idul Fitri, is like the holiday season in Indonesia; everyone takes off and travels back to their ancestral homes. The plane was literally filled with Muslims (most devout based on the presence of headscarves) and all of them traveling with children. These three guys talking loud enough so the entire plane could hear them was more than a bit uncomfortable.

Kuta is basically a flashy strip of beach—stuffed with expensive nightclubs and overpriced hotels—crawling with drunk Caucasian and Japanese people falling down in the street. All the locals are there hawking ‘transport,’ rides on motor bikes for inebriated tourists. Once you decline they inevitably regroup: 'maybe, my friend, we find some girls?' Stopped again, they inevitably lean in close and ask in a hush, 'ok, listen, maybe young girls?'

It was really disappointing and kind of disgusting. Coupled with the fact that everything was twice as expensive there than the rest of Indonesia, I was ready to move on.

Pancasila

Indonesia has a national ideology, Pancasila, five principles that Sukarno, the first president of Indonesia, instituted as an ideological impetus for the existence of a single and independent Indonesia comprised of parts so geographically, culturally, and (not the least) religiously diverse.

The five principles, which remain, in spite of many years of co-option by Suharto and discourse amongst the people, part of the Indonesian national identity, include: belief in God, just and civilized humanity, ‘Indonesian democracy’ (scare quotes mine) through consultation and consensus, social justice, and national unity.

After spending a little bit of time in Indonesia I believe that Pancasila is not yet complete and needs yet another principle to truly embody this muddle of an archipelago: a firm reverence for the solute/solvent relationship.

My explanation is quite simple: Indonesians have a torrid romance with the concept of dissolving things in other things and then consuming the creation. It is a veritable nation of latent chemists. Literally, any time you can drink something that is made by dissolving something else, that makes it all the better.

For this reason not only do they have and venerate Nescafe (in fact, I often have to specify when I order coffee that I want coffee and not Nescafe, after all I both come from the land where it comes out of water fountains and most certainly would like to partake of the pinnacle of deliciousness) but at least three imitations thereof. When you get on an Indonesian ferry (an experience so rich I will probably follow with an entry on it) every family pulls out a large bottle of water, pours off a draught (onto the floor, certainly not into their small child’s mouth), pulls out a small brown glass bottle, and pours its contents into the water. The result is often the color of what CandyLand characters might piss, but it doesn’t seem to bother anyone. At any roadside stand there are at least fifteen types of individually wrapped packets you can buy and add to water. Drinks that have gelatin like components are hugely popular, I imagine because you combine two iterations of the process: powder into water to make the gelatin, then gelatin into drink. In fact, I predict that the high school students of Indonesia will make the great patriot who figures out how to sequester helium inside the gelatin bits that goes in the drinks (triple iteration!!) a very wealthy man.

Vive Pancasila

taliwang

Indonesian lessons have been going rather well; almost every day it seems as if my language skills improve. Being able to affect basic strains of communication has helped me feel more confident going about my daily routine as I see fit. Inevitably, however, this overconfidence sometimes results in me getting in a bit over my head.

For instance, returning from my holiday on Tuesday night I was in Lombok waiting to catch a ferry to Bali where I would then fly back to my present home base of Yogyakarta. I had heard that Lombok is famous for the Taliwang style of cooking, involving a dipping sauce made from limes, chilies, and shrimp paste. I went out and found a place and ordered, to looks of incredulity, grilled chicken taliwang. Walking into the warung, I should have noticed the stacks of chickens—twisted and folded such that they would fit rightly in a cigar box—on paint stirrers, but I was too preoccupied with the Indonesian soap opera playing on the TV. My first realization came when a bowl of rice and a bowl (about the volume of a cigar box) of fowl were place in front of me. Having never eaten a whole chicken, I fretted over both my options and the mechanics of the task literally before me.

Thankfully in Indonesia is it completely appropriate to eat with your hands (in fact, at breakfast earlier that day I had delighted the assembled crowd by eating my breakfast of rice and lamb marrow ‘Lombok-style’—ie with my hands) and, taking liberal use of the finger bowl, I managed to claw and tear my way through the meal.

As I was paring through the last of this chaotic web of twisted claws and wings (I didn’t go anywhere near the head) an advertisement came on the TV for a spray on deodorant. The mis en scene is a teenage girl’s bedroom where three girls in boy shorts and tank tops set up a web-cam (the camera’s perspective is that of the web-came, slightly grainy) in front of which they cavort to the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe”. Predictably the fun (and voyeurism) can not last forever; one of the lasses raises her arms above her head (I seem to recall this concept done before, except with Michael Strahan in lieu of pubescent girls—tomato, tomatoe; potato, potatoe) and the other two capitulate under the odor (represented by shocks of green).

Of course, when the Spice Girls came on everyone in the warung turns to look at me, elbow deep (later, before I left, the proprietors suggested I use their sink) in my chicken on a paint stirrer, and laugh uproariously. That this advertisement was a commercial during a soap opera in which all of the female characters wore full head scarves brings me to what I originally wanted to write—that this country is a muddle. It is too bad such great literature has already exploited the term.

sweetwater

So, if the fulcrum of society pivots on shower facilities (and I could make an empassioned argument to that effect right now), today I crawled back into the light.

This morning I left Gili Trawangan (also known as Sandals Asia, a full report to come later) and came to Mataram, the administrative capital of Western Nsua Tunggal (and the island of Lombok). I spent 5 days there reading on the beach, drinking local gin, doing some breathtaking snorkeling (I saw 3 turtles and shark), and, most of all, taking 2 salt water showers per day.
The most exciting thing about returning to Mataram (where I am stranded by my crap airline for a day) was knowing that there was a fresh water shower awaiting me, somewhere, somehow.

It occurs to me that many of you might not know what an Indonesian bathroom looks like and that this is the opportunity to introduce them. Basically the bathroom is a tiled square (often baby blue tiles, probably little on this later but interesting nonetheless) with a squat toilet on the floor. The nicer of these have footpads with some degree of relief (for traction, I imagine). Next to the toilet is what is called a mandi, basically a tiled tank about waist high that comes with a spigot and plasitc scoop. The plastic scoop is key. It is with this that you flush (scooping water into the toilet), paper (left hand rule), and bathe (upend overhead). Today I was so thrilled to be fresh water showering that I stood in this bastion of squalor long after I was clean and gleefully dumped scoop after scoop of water on my head. All this for only $3 per night (breakfast included).

Vacation (from vacation)

Thursday marks the beginning of Idul Fitri (the end of the Islamic fasting month) and its a big holiday here in Indonesia. As you can imagine, if God woke you up at 3am every morning for a month with a loudspeaker and then wouldn't let you eat or drink (or smoke) thereafter until 5:30pm, you too might need a couple days off as well. Prices on everything are slashed--as my Indonesian teacher pointed out to me today, "to children Idul Fitri means 'time for new clothes'"--and everyone packs up the kids and heads back to their villages. This being Asia, such an event understandably creates mass chaos and great transportation bottlenecks. As it turns out, a good deal of people are from the part of Java where I presently reside. Moreover, my Indonesian school will be closed down for a week.

So, with nothing to occupy me, I have decided to head to Lombok, the island immediately east of Bali, with a nice Californian lad that I met at my language school (he is using the trip as a stopover on the way to Kalimantan where he will work for an Orangutan NGO). We will be going to the Gilli Islands, a spot noted for its beaches and diving (as well as a nifty right hander that works on high tides and supposedly breaks year round) for a little bit of R&R. A genuinely nice kid, he lacks that jaded and biting sense of irony and comes toting a suitcase filled with John Grisham books. In all seriousness though, I think we will make a pretty good traveling pair, especially because his Indonesian is a bit more polished than mine (and he likes borrowing my ipod). Hopefully there will be gin.

So, if I don't make my wan appearances in this space for a few days, don't worry, I will return, surely with some further droll observations (and self-flattery) with which to fill up the page.

hey mister!

Today, Sunday, is my day off from saying things that make my Indonesian tutors blush. So, in celebration, and after deciding that I could not stay in bed all day, I cracked open the Lonely Planet, found a place called 'The Ministry of Coffee' and headed out.
For the price of four cups of delicious coffee--one of the big perks for me in Indonesia--I spent the entire afternoon poking around their library (The Complete Works of David Lodge!--what heights!) serenaded by the interplay between the smooth sounds of Kenny G. and the lobotomic rythyms of Dutch house. There were a few other honkys there, and a few of them kept making progressively further elaborate laps around the minstry to go by my table. I wanted to say hello, but I felt a bit guilty starting a conversation under the auspices of 'I couldn't help notice your dermis,--we must have so much in common--let's chat.'
There is a great deal of pollution here in Yogya, and while it fails to create dramatic sunsets, the hour or so of slow sinking has a wonderful ambiance which I took in through a second floor glass wall, despite the disorientation of seeing the sun set in the north.
Possibly the most enjoyable aspect of the day was making my way to and from the ministry which I did by way of 'becak.' Becaks are basically a beach cruiser bicycle in the rear (broad cushioned seat, low slung frame) with a one-and-a-half person bucket/bench seat (complete with a retractable sun canopy that, like most things in Indonesia, is built for someone about 6 inches shorter than me) on the front. While they may masquerade as a form of transportation, becaks really exist as a means for literally scores of grown men (purportedly the 'operator' of the becak) to spend their day napping on the side of the road. The best part is if they are awake and manage to see you (the westerner unaware) coming, they quickly try and straighten up in the basket--where they are invariably horizontally coiled, often smoking--and, using the one English cattcall they know, attract what looks like an easily exploited fare. It reminds me of teenagers in the basement trying to give off the impression they were not only vertical, but at opposite ends of the couch when a parent wanders down.
Its hilarious.
Not only that, its a fun way to travel if you don't have anywhere to go (I don't), get a kick out of hard bargaining, and it gives me a chance to practice my Indonesian.

mothering irony

Tonight, after returning from a surreptitious information gathering mission concerning new places to live, my host mother gave me a tin of dutch butter cookies the size of a cement bag (and of similar mass) with the advice: "Here. Maybe you eat these for breakfast."
Not only can this 5'1" Indonesian woman read minds, she knows how to buy off dissent.

Yogya

I have finally landed where I will be studying Bahasa Indonesia for the next trace of time, Yogyakarta, the city of Javanese culture.
I have moved into a room in a boarding house just down the block from my language school on a quiet little street near the city center. Its fine, but I think the 'homestay' that the language school advertised it as is a bit of a reach. My room has an especially virile air conditioner (Christian name, 'ionizer'), a physiological diagram of the ear, three triangles of suspiciously aged watermelon, and a series of scrawlings on the mirror and desk ("'runaway' from home!" and "take chanses [sic]!" being two of my favorites) done in white out pen that have led me to conclude the room was once inhabited by a teenager. The lady that does the cleaning sports an orange t-shirt that says 'Smile if your horny,' (is it suffocatingly smarmy to use [sic] twice in the same post?) further contributing to my legend as the severe foreigner.

what i am reading

in case any one is curious (and because I always appreciate recommendations from others)

Ada or Ardor, V. Nabokov
American Pastoral, P. Roth
In God's Name- an investigation into the murder of Pope John Paul I, D. Yallop
American Studies, L. Menand
One Hundred Years of Solitude, G. Garcia Marquez

Thanks be to Time Life (as seen on TV)

boI spent a few days battling (warrior imagery, trans-continental variety) my stomach ailment in a house outside Yogyakarta that belongs to friends. However, with these friends back in Jakarta, it was just me and the house staff (its kind of a big house) and, needless to say, we can't communicate much more than me saying 'thank you' and 'good morning'. The rest of the day is pretty much filled with smiles and giggles on both sides.
Anyways, I spent most of my time reading between taking meals alone and sleeping. Dinner would be especially eerie because everyone would be out and about in the village after breaking the fast. I would be sitting at the end of a long table eating soup and papaya (enforced as my diet when I was sick). Anyways, last night, I was so touched by the lady who cooked for me (and calls me 'mister'), coming into the house and putting on some American music while I dined--one of those gestures that anywhere else would seem unremarkable. The collection was called 'Sweet Memories, Vol 6' and, as the staccato electronic exhortations from the mosque tumbled across the hard tiles of the house, its saccharine melody carried on:
"There's a kind of hush--all over the world, tonight, all over the world..."

everybody's got something to hide (except me and my monkey)

In Indonesia, a culture of devout smokers (making Ramhadan all the more of a sacrifice--a subject for another post), the government recently made it illegal for cigarette advertisements to contain their product. This results in a pretty interesting culture (the wrong word, but I am running out of cash at the internet cafe) of cigarette advertisements. They have become one of my newest hobbies.
I want to introduce a few of my favorites:

the cleverest, with nothing more to say-
a brand called cappuccino, an ad that consists of a tower of those squat cups (the bottom two in the pillar being sand colored) crowned with a delicate curl of steam off the top. Belissimo.

the newport award for excellence in the use of white people to sell cigarettes to brown people-
a white man in cut offs with various virile looking animals around him (a tiger, monkey, a falcon perched on his shoulder), with the text (translated, by me, so proceed at your own risk): 'a man's taste'

tell the interns to bring pillows and cots to the office, we're issuing a fatwa-
a large table decked out with all sort of sumptuous food, text reading (translated by Rety, so breathe easy--and tar free): 'fast all day, party all night.'

no pain, no gain

I have been sick for the past few days (nothing to worry about; I have been lucky to weather it with a western style bathroom) but it has kept me away from internet for a few days. That in itself has been a truly strange and somewhat terrifying sensation, much more so than trying to figure if my fever, body ache, headache, diahrrea corresponded with the fever, body ache...of malaria or perhaps the fever, body ache...of dengue or simply traveler's sickness. Ive decided on the latter.
Anyways, digressions cast off, more than anything being sick has highlighted the need for me to start learning Bahasa Indonesia:
Consider, when the grandmotherly Javanese housekeeper of my friend's house found out I was sick, her course of action. Before I knew what was happening my shirt was under my chin and my belly was being rubbed with a camphor-like cream. Perfectly pleasant. I relaxed, closed my eyes, and reclined. In the next moment, I am jarred awake by something scrapping down my neck. It turns out that the Javanese (from what I can understand) get colds out by rubbing this cream on the neck and then scrapping, quite vigorously, up and down the neck with the edge of a coin. Unable to stop the whole process, and held down by her surprisingly firm grip, I now sport a necklace of a dozen vertical raspberry-like burns. The seasons hottest accessory, or the byproducts of an unsuccessful hanging. I tried telling them it was only catnip. But, alas, my linguistic shortcomings reared their hydraheads again.

credit where its due

Blog titles, the failed, funny, and downright terrible:

INDONESIA, THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID - E. Hanlon

HimDontNeedYa - M. Padgett

Indosplosion

Mellownesia - M. Padgett

The Year of Living Safely (a nod to my parents)

Ramhadan

Its 3:30am, my first morning in Indonesia, and I am awake. Jet lag. Dead awake; draped with moonlight lathed into a crisp shaft by the lattice above the window. I roll around, thinking that I will fight my way back into sleep. And then, with a conspicuous click-pop-fizz, the morning call to prayer begins. It starts out with a lone tremulous voice but shortly, as soggy eyed devoted one by one put finger to button (most mosques have entered the electronic age, and I wonder if the imams ever thought to unionize), one mosque becomes many, turning my ears on end and the valley of Cinere into a buzzing bellows of sound--punctuated by the shrieks of rush hour in the tropical forest. The fact that I know all the sounds I am hearing are electric does not faze me, at this point scuttling around the house trying to pinpoint the source(s) of all the vibrations washing over the house. Finally, I decide, with firm certainty, that the sound is coming at me from all directions. Right.
Wild eyed, as the voices drop out as the came in and the jungle freeway settles down to a regular flow, I walk outside for my first cup of Indonesian coffee, a cup unusually spiced by the peppery waft of gunpowder from Muslim children's bamboo bombs.

useless (and dangerous) things I brought (a running list)

1. Nalgenes (2)- The uses for Nalgenes in a country where you can't drink the water are severely limited. Oh, maybe I will buy water and pour it from its container into this bestickered plastic container! At least they pack well! Send gin.
2. Slippers- I doubt I much need to elaborate on how LL Bean Shearling Slippers (a product I wholeheartedly endorse, by the way) function in the tropics.
3. The Doors Books- Actually these currently reside (finished on the plane) where they belong, metaphysically: LA. Apparently Jim Morrison was an alcoholic.
4. 'Ada or Ardor', V. Nabokov- Indonesia has very strict anti-pornography laws, and as one Serena Keith can attest, has been known to take a firm line, seriously under valuing the artistic merits of perfect prose, against covers with naked females. In this case I managed to beat the rap, especially thankfully with Ada that most customs officials don't read much Nabokov. I might have been deported on the spot. 'Howl' has yet to see the light of day.

so hard to get through to you

traffic. its insane. and impossible to avoid. everywhere. cars, motorbikes, so many motorbikes, three wheeled taxi like contraptions, mini buses, buses of the full size persuasion from boulevard (JK really only has a few) to little two lane streets that write and thump through the city (many more of these). you know its bad when the feral cats will actually cross to the middle of the street, turn to look the proper direction (british feral cats, no less), wait for their opening, and dash the rest of the way. traffic.
all you do is slow me down and i got better things on the other side of town.

first impressions--can they be undone?

The first thing I saw in Indonesia, seen while walking through the airport--a note on the architecture of Soeharto-Hatta Airport. The airport is basically a brown tiled glass hallway at ground level. Individual gates are individual pagoda-like structures that you walk up (or down, depending) stairs to. It is truly bizzare to be walking through an airport and, glancing to your left, see someone mowing the lawn--was "Welcome to Indonesia!/Death to Drug Traffickers."

Vegas it is not.

tallyho

In the Pacific, albeit an opposite end, lolling up against the city of Chandler, the trip begins.
The cold ocean rolls were good for the airplane funk, better for the session directly prior, and an impromptu canvas for the two body-surfing geniuses in their midst.
Reaching the terminus of the Great American Century, both spatially and temporally, California, somehow fits. I have no idea what is ahead of me and the ardent desire to redefine what is behind me (strictly spatial this time).

squinting out to the ocean, an archipelego,
'dude, this one wants tooo parrty'

flip. rinse. once more?

a word on the word

'bule' n.
After a few days of agonizing through the birthing of my far- and oft-promised blog, today I finally found a name. 'Bule' is the Bahasa Indonesian slang for foreigner, as far as I can tell the way that they say 'honky' (I think it translates to albino, something that by relativism, I have suddenly become), introduced to me by a group of pointing Indonesian children. Truly, it is relieving to finally be able to pack in and away the vinyl pool that has been in my hosts living room since Tuesday and, with the first of many crude quips, launch my journal. All you need to do is remember 'bule' and you will always be able to find your way back, as the web address (http://www.butunfortunatelylessexotic.blogspot.com/) fits into a useful acronym.