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.