All By Myself ... not quite... (P.Y.T.)

People always ask me if I live alone. Well, no. Without further ado, crediting Oliver Stone, Brian de Palma and of course Al Pacino,

"Say hello to my little friend!!!!"

A little blurry -- but check out the cammo skills..., and how do you know if you're dealing with x or y chromosomes here... I ask because...

I think this little fella had some high hopes hanging out by the bath...

"Say hello to my littler friend!" -- Tom

The UPI version of last Friday's "parade" described in pics below can be found at the following site:

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041024-070830-7165r.htm

Strange Fruit

As Academic Director of this new institution in Jakarta, it falls to me to produce or choose the essay topic for the composition portion of the placement test which goes a long way towards, well, placing incoming students in particular levels of classes. One of the more popular topics among my peers goes something like this:

"An overseas penpal has written to tell you he or she will be coming to visit your city, and would like to know what to expect. Write a letter to your friend welcoming him to your city, and advising him or her on up to three of its remarkable aspects."

It also falls to me to do much of the marking of these compositions. Generally, a composition of one sentence, even if perfectly formed, doesn't help the student place too far out of "Beginner" classes. Sadly, I landed today on a fine way to sum up all my observations preceding this post in just such a way:

Dear Friend,

What you should know about Indonesia: Here, oranges are green, but orange juice is orange juice.

Love (say the word... it's all you need),

Tom
(note to grader: please place me in 001 -- I'm just starting on this language)

Go Now!

And now complete with cinema verite pics... About Last Night (Friday).

Entertaining friends at home with curried prawn, barbecued chicken, (thanks, Murni) beer and tea... ending hell week with a first small but satisfying placement test for prospective students... music, laughter, a bad $2 movie with rather loud surround sound, especially with the distant air raid occupying a prominent spot high up on the decibel range at midnight.

But wait… volume dipped for a quiet scene and that distant air raid continued. A friend jumped to the window as if recognizing the footfalls of an unwanted guest coming up the steps, or perhaps, given the hour, like Cinderella knowing she’d missed her coach and it had already turned into a pumpkin. The guests all groaned.

It’s Ramadan, see. Midnight on a Friday, which made it national intimidating semi-violent parade day in neighborhoods with multiple nightspots. Out my window a river of SUVs moving down my street like an occupying army.



On the runners and back bumpers an infantry of immaculately white robed young men (peer through the tree).



Flanking the vehicles and filling the sidewalks a trotting foot cavalry of identically dressed vigilantes. On my side of the glass the exclamations of my guests (mostly Christian) revealed both fear and embarrassment. "Why do they do that?" "Those crazies." "I can’t go home now." "A taxi won’t come now."

With this description and the grainy pics snatched with flash while trying to keep a low profile on my fourth floor balcony, free associating with the KKK and cowering slave and former slave family minorities in recent US history is a piece of cake.



Come to think of it, I guess this police-supported (not to be confused with -controlled) operation explains why I saw a group of a couple hundred male worshipers on their mats in the middle of the street yesterday. Friday is the day only men visit mosques. It was packs of men "encouraging" everyone still in restaurants and cafes at midnight last night to go home. It also reminded me of the view from my tenth-floor balcony in Poland in February, 1989 when the police broke up a massive protest at the nearby technical college before it had even begun.

While if I’d been down there on the ground it would have felt seriously freaky, women in particular were fearful, and all were angry with the small mob. I don’t recall any real shoving, but given all the professions of peace about the religion, the intimidation tactics used could only be described as psychological violence. The mass parked itself at my intersection, and sent waves of white down the T-crossing street for fifteen minutes, before starting up again. They had done their job: the streets were dark when they left. As the police cars with their flashing lights passed my complex, signaling an end to my experience, they left behind them a small stationary force of non-white clad young men.



This is apparently a regular occurrence at this time of year, and felt a little like the accounts of far-right anti-abortion intimidation outside clinics in the US sound in US papers. I want to make it clear I don’t think anyone was at risk, despite the aura of menace about the whole thing. I was myself perfectly safe throughout, as my complex like all others is gated, locked, and staffed with several security guards, and I was up on the 4th floor. My guests were reacting to this scene in the end as if they were being kept inside by particularly nasty mosquitoes.

Given all this and the current bit of culture shock, I think I’m going to take Rio’s advice. The city goes completely dead and no one works or takes classes the week after Ramadan… so he told me to go to Bali, the one non-Muslim spot in the country, where the restaurants and resorts will all be open, and no Muslims will be there. Good dream for now.

Down in the Dump with the Blues

The dump aside...
News item from my two weeks in the Grand Kemang Hotel:
Several dozen Jakarta residents were hospitalized with servere gastro-intestinal problems within a week or so of each other. I believe fatalities were involved. The complaints were traced to meat served from many of the city's street vendors. It was rotten.

Among my first impressions of Jakarta were the flood of litter and garbage everywhere, the prevalent pungence of burning trash in the air, the mini-bonfires right by the side of insane city highways, and the fact that I hadn't seen one obvious garbage truck.

Well, a few days ago I saw the common model garbage truck. Hadn't noticed it before because it fit right in to the chaos of life systems everywhere here, but now that I'm looking, it's everywhere. A skinny human, usually barefoot, about 1.2 meters, open shirt and deeply soiled long shorts, yolked with a rubber hose around his chest, and a security rope of some sort nearer his neck, leans into a big metal bar in front of him, strapped on both sides to the cart behind him. The cart's longer than he is tall, and probably a little more than a meter deep, and it's piled way past overflowing with trash. He moves very slowly, but steadily, and the image I get is of Roman slave rowers on galleons in those 1950's Tony Curtis epics. Anyway I watched this guy haul his trash down the street past my apartment complex in this ritzy upscale shopping neighborhood, and I couldn't imagine to where he was headed. However, the mystery of where the trash goes was partially solved.

Apparently there are a few garbage trucks. I'll believe it when I see it, but for now I'll trust Rio. And it's these trucks that eventually unload the garbage at the dump, whereever that is. And the dump is forever smoldering, of course, but more than that... While Jakarta's population is impossible to estimate, 12 million is supposedly a reasonable guesstimate. 40 years ago it was under three million, or something like that. which explains two things: 1. why there is zero organization to any of the streets and living areas in the city; 2. why lots of people live in dyi shanties at the dump and scrape their living off its embers.

These folks thought manna was finally theirs one day when one truck rumbled their shanties and tumbled a mountain of pre-packaged meats from a large foreign import company onto their mountain. This company was following the rules and directly sending to the dump a shipment that had arrived spoiled due to faulty refrigeration on the sea transport. Didn't look too bad yet, though, so the dump-dwellers clambered around it, cleaned off the plastic wraps, and took the packages into the street vendors...

Now, I know what rotten (or even just nearly-rotten) meat smells like when cooked up, and I can't be in the same room with it. So that tells you, I guess, about the strength of the smell of both the spices used at your average Indonesian hot dog stand, and ... sadly... the air we breathe here, which I already hardly notice anymore, 'cept when I'm in Singapore. Street vendors sold the stuff, people ate the stuff, nearly a hundred were hospitalized, and some died...
end of the dump aside

A Bug's Life

Thursday night, Friday AM, October 21-22, 2005. After three days delivering sales pitches and attending curious meetings where mostly I continued an education in "Other perspectives on 'yes' and 'no'," by Wednesday evening I was wrung out, strung out, facing a business trip in the early AM, and as my boss wisely pointed out to me, right on schedule for a little culture shock. Passed a Dunkin' Donuts on the way home, remembered mornings in Virginia, picked out a half-dozen assortment to make the rise for the trip a little easier, but was denied, not really to my surprise, a large iced decaf to go. The weather was right for it, but like I said before, occasionally it may look like it, but we're not in Kansas anymore... Got home, set the carton by the microwave, slowly headed towards the above bed.... (fade to black)

A Day in the Life

(fade in) Woke up (at 5:00), got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head,

headed for the tea and donuts. Turned the oven on, opened the carton...

...were the donuts stirring 'neath their covers ("what covers?!"to greet me?

Without my lenses in, looked kinda like the the heads of Hydra in there. Looked like the swirly portal to a hell dimenion in there. Looked like an Bones McCoy finally realizing his worst nightmare -- an Enterprise transporter malfunctioning, caught in a materialization loop. Someone had (not) been sleeping in donuts last night. At least these little critters didn't fly... Apparently they are Indonesian ants. 4th day of the 4th week of my time here, and I really wasn't enjoying the place anymore. So all six of the donuts were covered in this psychedelic display, and I was having quite a trip. However, not one to go down without a fight, I washed these donuts like they were tomatoes. Can you imagine what the bottom of the box looked like? Thick with these sugar-high ants... talk about tripping...

Anyway, washed 'em off, threw 'em in the oven... and in DIE HARD mode, returned my attention to the box and sink with appropriate malice, no conscience, and a tall can of... well, dunno what it's called but there's a pic on it of a gross winged-monster asphyxiating in a thick grey cloud (why do they need a thick grey cloud in jakarta? ... No guilt that I felt a tremendous satisfaction, after my week of 'yes and no' maneuvering, when a short burst of thick chemical smog at the box, sink and counter resulted in an instantaneous return to stillness of my
cozy home. Trash can.

Shower. Tea, donuts, music. Taxi. Airport. Offensive airport tax to leave the country. Good coffee. Airplane. Friendly women on Indonesian budget airline in elegant uniforms with excellent breakfast wrapped in banana leaf (pic).


Take that, apple-bearing Southwest!

End of DIE HARD mode.
Motherless Brooklyn by Lethem: so far finest reading experience since Lahari's short stories. Out window before landing: green city brownie-cut into perfect squares.

Drizzle.
Sunglasses in shirt, umbrella in front hall at home.

Dratted cell phone pitches 2 Singapore money changers (how do they know!!!!!?????).

Torrents.


Outside
taxi stand luscious air. Actual moving traffic.

4 hours in Singapore: Singapore = shopping mall. Fine ale lunch :-).
New York big and tall; London orderly, clear pavements; new moon shiny.




Over time frightfully dull, sure. 4 hours mighty fine.

Home again, I draw up organizational plan for personnel in my company. Deep down, despite the culture shock, I'm mostly here for this cross-cultural experience. Time to do a little sharing of my own perspectives on 'yes' and 'no'. This is how it's gonna be.

That's Entertainment!

Saturday, October 16. Finally gave in and ate something non-Asian tonight.Took a friend to a place called Amigos, nestled well back of the main streets I live on, in a little high-end strip mall where a "cafe latte" maker sell for $100, displayed on a $300 solid mahogany coffee table (from guess whose disappearing rainforest, I'm sure) plunked down in the middle of a mass of large private homes. Not a bad imitation of Mexican, but it was easily the least memorable repast of the trip. But there were two things worth commenting on. The first is that each table had at least one white guy at it. Most had a couple of ‘em, and all but one had a local lady, too. Several had cute kids. Not cute: nearly all the guys were heavily into their beers and practicing leers. Kinda gross. But, the families were fun to watch, especially when the dancing started.

That’s the second thing worth commenting on, why the dancing started. I’ve now seen two bands playing in my neighborhood, and both of have been professional cover bands. The r&b/jazz band ten days ago was rock solid and often moving. This band tonight also fabulous in its own way. 4 gals and a guy rotated lead singer duties covering everything from Abba and the Bee Gees to Eminem and Beyonce in front of a steady rhythm section, and they all had MTV-worthy lungs, fab soul, and language and diction were so realistic the whole picture was downright surreal… So surprised to find myself enjoying this stuff. They played for nearly two hours without a break, got Mothers and fathers and children, lonely leering white guys, a couple of "seniors" on to the dance floor, sold every minute of it, looked like they never wanted to do anything else. A friend I was with told me they don’t speak any English at all; the sounds and music and movement are muscle memorized. And I thought, "how many hundreds of times do they hit the "previous track" button in front of a mirror, making hips, lips, and elbows be not quite their own? How much sweat (especially in THIS part of the world) do you pay out to take such ownership of something so completely not your own? Then I realized, more or less, that once upon a time I had dedicated myself to precisely that line of work. That’s what got me hooked on the study of how we learn what we learn…in one way that’s what learning is, right? Taking ownership of knowledge that previously wasn’t owned by the learner? Nuff.

At home in the Tower Of Babel

October 11 2005. Having the housekeeper here. Let me count the ways I'm blessed. I'm sitting here in the living room, typing this in anticipation of a modem being installed tomorrow morning (they didn't come as promised yesterday, more later), but why not hope for the best? Pot of tea, familiar classic tunes... Absent ironing board the maid's (Murni henceforth) sister was brought in to help Murni get ahead of things, and stands at my table with a mat ironing away, while Murni's in the kitchen (with Dino?) cooking... doorbell rings. Cable Guy. Over my shoulder I hear the loud "Blah blah blah jabber jabber jabber" of my Murni watching my back. Her sister got the door. This goes on for a bit, the building management guy chips in, too. This is how it went, me typing away with music going, nostrils and stomache awakened by the onions and chilis and garlic and other fun stuff coming their way soon (I get a week's home cooking for the price of one decent meal out...): "blah jabber bam blah jabber bam blah jabber bam... thank you" and two of them leave, and everything's going to be OK. Sorta like the Gary Larson Far Side cartoon where we hear what the dog, tail wagging throughout, hears: "Blah blah blah FOOD blah blah blah FIDO blah blah blah". I know from Poland that over time, with a little effort from me, the blah blah will form itself into meaningful soundwaves, but I'm enjoying the privacy in a crowd I get from only having a general idea of what's going on. Much more interesting being minimally aware of the sounds and tones of the language than maximally of the content of the words... do I really want to know what the housekeeper, her sister, and the cable guy are saying about the cable jack in my bedroom??? "blah jabber sis boom bah thank you" far richer melody. And tomorrow maybe I'll send this thing out as a result of that melody...

Seals and Crofts have it nearly right on my stereo: "Summer Breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the Jasmine in my mind". Except it's Darjeeling. But there has been a breeze for the last week, and "up on the roof" after dark (6:00 o'clock every day of the year) at the pool



(the only seductive one I've found here) it's a sweet breeze indeed to sweep away an hour with a good book. Brings in a bat or two, too, and they call up nights in a canoe on Tupper Lake many many moons ago. So I'm writing this and I'm making an island of calm around my chair in the middle of all this motion and noise. Apparently the locals thrive on noise and people (well, what else are they gonna do?), and never acquired a typical Westerner's appreciation of solitude. But clearly I have no legs on which to stand a complaint. I have this place, with its newly bargained for Persian carpets



and pics of loved ones missed back home (frames for the rest will soon appear),



to myself enough of the time. And while I started out sleeping like most folks here do:



I bailed quickly and went Western:

.

Sheesh, I've never owned bolsters before! New adventures in reading!

People Get Ready (Is a Change Gonna Come?/Walk this Way)
No question this lifestyle is easy to get used to. But there ARE a few things (like the sweat) that are gonna try me. Sweat's not a big deal, but... One of the big ones at this point is, well, the lesser of the big two is...

how can I put this tactfully?

I stand out in a crowd...
... I know a very little bit of what it feels like to be of color at a Springsteen concert (sad as that fact is), or in much of Concord NC. EVERYONE looks at me. There are a lot of people lounging about on or near the sidewalks without much else to do but stare. How much worse would it be as a woman? OK, so maybe I am more attractive and attracting than most of the dirt and rubble they would otherwise be looking at. Heck, the shopkeeper in the nearby "Oriental Rugs" shop (whence the carpets above) stared at me through his window while struggling to stay awake lying on the couch in his shop! His rugs are prettier than I am, I'm sure... but I stick out like a penguin in a flock of peacocks. Hey, I TRY to keep my head down, but there's only so much a guy can do. Walking through the University, all heads turn... these folks like to hang out in packs in common places and "blahjabber" and let their eyes wander. And no one's in a hurry (and no one sweats, either -- NOTE TO SELF: LEARN TO AMBLE...).

So I'm remembered. "Here comes funnylooking sweatyallatime allatimetrotting bigsmile guy again".

But that's where the similarity to racism American-style ends, of course. The rest of the experience is pretty much roughly the reverse. 95 percent of the time we all smile a lot (man am I getting a lot of practice at that), and it's nice and fun. But sometimes the eyes and faces don't smile and they are invariably weary, stained, tarnished, soiled and I wonder what they asociate me with. For folks who don't have a shot at making a go of it, even though most of them probably feel relatively lucky as heck to be living in Jakarta, even if they are literally at the dump (more later) than living most anywhere else in these parts, is it an envy or other negativity behind the stare, or just an emptiness and a disconnect, or a dispassionately thought-of meal ticket? I can't open the taxi window and give coins to every child that bangs a little percussion instrument at me... nor to the half-blind fathers that come with their children and sing at the window... nor the gangs of teens playing ukelele things in 8 lanes of stopped traffic downtown...

That's one of the things the traffic jams produce...

The Wild Ones (Kawasaki Let the Good Times Roll)
But what produces the traffic jams? Motorcycles. Like the flocks of pigeons taking aim in Trafalgar Square, like schools of sharks among the fishies, like something out of one of those midnight TV 70's b-movie hippie biker flicks, like schools of piranhas among the sharks, like those really annoying five-year old helmeted, stickless Austrian skikids who use your legs for slalom posts, these comprise the Mongol horde of Indonesian transportation, and they think they're riding Alexander's elephants.

Like dis: After 20 minutes in a single file line of cars waiting to go straight across a main street, your taxi reaches the interesection to see the hold up is a pack of bikers on the other side, momentarily prevented from turning right (British rules equivalent of a US left) across your lane. When the light turns red, they eventually stop flowing across the intersection, and the next batch filters to the front, readying the next pre-green charge, blocking oncoming traffic going straight. How brazen the gall! How wanton the temerity! And yes, how bronzed the gonads! No wonder there's such a business in self-employed traffic and parking assistants, the so-called "100 rupiah policemen" after the coin placed in their hands by drivers... With an arguable assist from a bewildering array of unsavory public transport options that seem to stop wherever and whenever any rider or hopeful rider wishes them too, these brigades ignore lights, traffic direction, pedestrians, the works... and EVERYONE HAS ONE.

Rio does business with Honda, and explained it to me. Honda alone sells 2 million a year from their one factory here, and they've been here four years, and the bikes last about five years. Honda's opening another one next year, and calculate they will have to open a new factory every four years to keep up with demand. The bikes cost a month's wages, while a car costs 2 years' wages (and let's not discuss a new car and its 200% luxury tax assessment). I've seen plenty of fathers driving PAIRS of preschool kids to school on them in this insanity... kids whose legs are too short to grip anything -- instead dad keeps them both between his knees... So do the math. Next year Honda puts 4 mil bikes into jakarta. And that's just Honda... It's a hopeless situation already... Half the bikers are taxi-drivers, too. On my five-minute walk to the Internet cafe, at least twice each way one of them shouts "hey!" to me, either from the street or having pulled onto the sidewalk to block my path... maybe one day. After all, they can't be beat, and you know what they say...

A Day at the Offices, w/ shopping digression

Mon. 10/11 Sitting in my office at 11:00. Let's start there, shall we? Actually, you can skip the first half of this post and go right to the charming and riotous photo montage below this post if you'd like. You can click on any pic in the tour for a much larger version. I hope the "desk" in what was to be my office (I have a different idea) was built by disgruntled workers during one of the colonial episodes of Indo's past... for a child. I know the wall "cabinetry" wasn't, because I can see through the paint. Moneyflow problems have held up the purchase of equipment, but not of signage, so aside from welcoming the occasional prospective student, there's little to be done in the office, except pay other people to paint after hours, which is a job I'd gladly have done myself, except it would have been rude of me to deprive someone else of earnings (very true). But today, I sat with my laptop at aforementioned desk for a bit, preparing a student registration form, and interrupting myself with the cursed cell phone, SMSing ( a cumbersome instant messaging system that's cheaper by far than speaking on the darned thing, so it's the way of Indonesians...) condolences to a radio staion manager who for sad reasons had to postpone an appointment, finding out where my office manager was (more on that later, perhaps), tracking down my ironing board -- kinda hard to lose one of those, but leave it to me...(in Rio's van). Mainly I was there to help our new front office assistant get used to me. This desk faces hers through a door directly, and everytime I look up, she jumps up. Then again, that's not at all uncommon around me in these parts -- be nice when I see less of that "whoopie cushion with a smile" on people's faces (more later) ... Business meetings in my apartment all weekend,

a shopping aside
(well except for Round 2 of Rio and Tom's shopping bonanza). It ain't Costco, but it's close, and one of them is just below the coolest mall full of tech stores. Every major tech company has it's own store, and then lots of private merchants are on the floor below. Like wall-to-wall Best Buys, but in a complex competion-cooperative relationship. Some take credit cards, some don't. The Creative Labs shop doesn't. So you go to the private guy next door/down the hall/downstairs. You go in, say "speakers", and they show you what they got. You say "Creative?" and they say "just a minute". Out comes a small catalogue. You point, "how much". They call next door/down the hall/upstairs. Of course, it helps if you let your Indonesian friend do the talking, because then it moves faster and the prices come down. You get a price, say "OK" eventually, after looking away, coughing, showing disinterest, and once in awhile getting lucky, then they *poof* vanish around the corner, down the hall, upstairs, whereever, for a few moments, *poof* materialize with what you're interested in. And charge it. Eventually you go home and plug in your 9100-song MP3 player and the world is perfect again... after blowing the main fuse in the apartment TWICE, that is... which costs you two more layers of sweat going to the mechanic's room... And uh, the movies are on the 5th floor of that mall. ALL the movies. AND all the TV. EVER. Digital Surround Sound, widescreen, as cheap as the water, literally. And it's not air conditioned up there, and by now we all know what that means.
more or less the end of shopping aside

And aside from me, who needs it? 30 or more of the cable channels are English. Bring the kids, folks. Or, "no matter where you think you're going, you've never really left America"... Nickleodeon, Cartoon Network, Disney, Disney Kids, 3 varieties of MTV, Discovery, Discovery Travel, Animal Planet, Nat'l Geographic, ESPN, Fox, CNBC, CNN, BBC, HBO, Cinemax...
end of shopping aside and subsequent diversion

So my executive colleagues suggested we have all our meetings at my place, and I was happy to agree. Fewer cabs, good music, no sweat, plenty of tea, and a table for six or eight... One day it might be terrific to go to the office... but as you will see in the mystery tour, it's a mixed bag at the moment.

Line up! Sign Up for the Mystery Tour!

Finally! Take the bus and walk down the road... This better be the building. What's that banner say?

Get a little closer and I see this is the place all, right. But it's an awfully big and open-air campus building...

Hmm, I think I'm supposed to enter this way...

No doubt about it! I'm in the right place to get a head start on quality English!

I don't think this student appreciates my committing to ones and zeros the poster over his right shoulder...

Where is George Mason? The elevator labels (extinct now) have proven popular among students. remember how street signs and license plates were the rage when YOU were in college?

Elevator opens on the 4th floor to this view on the left. Note the personal water tower, and a tiny piece of the skyline.

While look to the left over here and we've got the campus mosque. It's Friday afternoon, and note the sea of motorcycles calmly waiting for their riders to rise from their prayer mats...

And finally, into the office, where ideally we don't notice temporary cashflow problems, and instead as students we notice the wonderful Eva inviting us in (and a man known as "officeboy" thus far in our acquaintance). Did you look out the window?

Here on Eva's desk is (l. r.) what successful students walk away with at the end of term, and what we give them for handouts and their work at the beginning of the term.

From the back, over Eva's head into the interior office (where I'll invite Lily, our office manager, to recluse (?) ), it's impossible not to know I've only been here three weeks.

And here's the interior office -- look how much $$$ we've managed to untangle so far! Kim, there on the desk is the proof I appreciate your gifts...

Gee! The office is wired, too!

The classroom's not bad, however, but for awhile it'll be nice to work from home, where I can look up...

...and stare out my balcony at this...

You Can Hang Your Hat

"Just someone to keep my house clean, make the meals, and go away." -- A Man Needs a Maid, Neil Young

Friday 10/8 7:00 2nd morning awaken in new apartment a little giggly: I'm mighty pleased with it. In the end I went for location over air quality, being a new single carless foreigner, and dumb (as far as the local language goes, anyway). Check the hot water in the bathroom: yesterday's prompt repairs still in place; gone was yesterday morning's concern, as I stood in the shower like a parched crash survivor in the desert, looking up at the descending droplet, wondering if it would still be warm when it reached me, and knowing it wouldn't do the job regardless, and realizing that a hot bath wouldn't be full, and certainly not hot, before my Christmas flight.

Fill the new kettle with water from the new cooler. The vine, the palm, the cocunut, and the "what the heck is THAT?" had all survived their 2nd night in my living room. Turned on the Cards/Dodgers game currently in the 3rd, and headed for the shower. DVD/radio installed with decent home theater speakers. Only essential missing item: good speakers for my 9100-song mp3 player...


Thought back on the truly pleasant 12 bucks I spent last night with my guide and savior Rio and his wife on a couple of beers and a plate of Malaysian noodle seafood at a jazz and blues club half a block down the old dusty road,

and how I'd even fallen in love for a few minutes (no, really!) with the singer in the seven piece band (with kick ass horn section) as she nailed "To Love Somebody". Out of seven possible requests to choose from, and remembering the band on Gilligan's (Sepa) Island, I think the Bee Gees (originally from nearby Oz, let's not forget) were very big indeed in these here parts. At the club, loving the band with one eye, used the other to catch the repeat of the 12th inning of the classic Yanks/Mets matchup I'd had to abandon yesterday morning to chase down more credit for my hated but essential cell phone...

Speaking of "chase", a word (or three) about sweat at this point. By the time I'd returned to my apartment with the re"charged" phone at half past ten, I'd thoroughly fragranced my shirt four times (and hair and pants, for that matter). There was the trip downstairs to the building management to explain the plumbing (1), back to apartment for laptop, six minutes to the market for sim (cell phone) card (2), cool down waiting for it, two blocks to ATM, roast in enclosed booth, half a block to Internet cafe where I discover local radius server down (3 with an exclamation point), cross street to Starbucks, order Latte and Internet card, cool down. Same radius server serves that insultingly-priced Seattle coffee place. Walk home (4). It's only 10:30 AM. That's the life.

Earl Grey in nearly large enough sunny new teacup while shaving. Reflecting on the laundry I'd done yesterday, laid out on the drying rack now standing in the 2nd bath, and hung on every available door knob and chair back (tons and eight, respectively), looking at all the creases, remembering how in Poland I'd loved that ritual, and the copious mellowing ironing that followed, usually while watching the latest compelling "X-Files", and I sneak a little smile. The other teacher in our Institute, Keiyoung, (pic below) pulled up at 1:00 yesterday with a couple of boxes of kitchenware she didn't need, and I noted the absence of the dishwasher... Glancing down, these floors look wonderful -- two or three tones of ceramic tile throughout, shiny and glistening, but a minute barefoot and the soles of one's feet are dark as coal. In 48 hours Murni (pic below, on the right here with her sister, who's been here every day so far, and I can't tell you why...)starts her four half-days a week, and she'll take care of all that and try to make me fat, too. Located by the building management who have been wonderful to me, currently working for an Irishman nearby and previously for an American family in this complex, she nearly won (in a very big way) the bartering negotiation before I realized what was happening (maybe that's why she arrived for introductions yesterday 45 minutes early, at 7:45...) Later in the day I tracked her down by phone and got the price down to something manageable. Phew... live and learn. So, no more laundry or ironing or mopping or cooking here. Is this the beginning of a marvelous relationship (Bogart and Claude Rains (?) after the plane takes Grace Kelly away from Casablanca). And no, you neo-cons, or old-fashioned cons, she won't be living in!

Eating local corn flakes, which I think are put in the local box by the same folks that put 'em in the Kelloggs box, remembered looking out at this neighborhood from my balcony Wednesday night, the eve of my 2-week anniversary in this universe.

2 weeks! Is that all? Feels like sooooo much longer, in a good way. This place was weird weird weird (and maybe not in a good way) way back then, 2 Thursdays ago. But there on my balcony, with restaurants Italian, Indian, French, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, big English Language Bookstore (complete with Uncanny, but not Amazing (alas) XMen)and jazz club ALL within sight (and McDonald's, KFC, Wendy's, Starbucks and Pizza Hut blessedly just OUT of sight), and the traffic rampaging (well, motorcycles roaming at will while car drivers rampage on their horns, more later) it doesn't smell as bad, feel as hot, sound as loud, and hey, whatchagonnadoabout the dirt and dust anyway? Tracing the "sidewalk" from up here, I'd love it if people's footprints (car tire tracks, too) showed up under ultraviolet light; US cops would lock us up for strolling under the influence. Adaptation -- we humans... can do ... hey, we can be amazing x-people, too.

Murni and her sister, whose name I'll learn someday.

Keiyoung Kwak.

If a pic paints all those words, why are there so many here?

If a picture paints a clichéd number of words, this oughtta be brief. Because folks of all ages and assortments may read this, let me just say that before noon, on Saturday October 3rd, at noon, about snorkeling… well, I’d DONE it before, but, you know, never really DONE it… By noon that had changed, and 24 hours later, I’m a pro. After a speed boat trip that’s shorter than the drive from DC to the Shenandoahs, by 10:00 I’d seated myself in a deckchair to shoot a pic of my beachside bungalow

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from which I had this view:

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If you’re really clever you can figure out from which of the chairs in the 2nd I took the 1st photo. Now, despite appearances, the bungalow ain’t no 4-star affair, despite the hot and cold ALL THE TIME running water, and the toilet didn’t need flushing either, and no extra charge for the salt in the water … the distinct aroma upon entering could not be bought in stores, but disappeared upon opening the windows and running the AC…, the tall ostrich-like bird in a pen behind, the picnic table just to the right in front occupied non-stop by curious resort employees who gregariously demanded conversation on a weekend during which I was really looking for peace (need I add that to my mind my cell-phone has the same characteristic, though is not as gregarious?)…

But who needs four stars? There was also no extra charge for guests, and I admit my eyebrows raised at the sight of a second bed in the room, after rechecking myself and finding only one person. Now, my first DC apartment came with it’s own occasional black, hard, immortal, and multi-legged free companion, but after mailing chapter 2 I learned from Ron that the wall-walking lizard things referred to in it are the mass-marketing geniuses already known as gekkos… (“D’oh” moment conceded). Well, those open windows mentioned above… my partner for the night probably didn’t have this long a tail

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but I did camera- capture this guy on the beach in the AM, and just like those cockroaches of yore, every time I turned on the light in the bungalow, there was a jolting scurry from my lizard friend along the wall…

G. didn’t bother me much, and I confess seemed pretty friendly. Besides, the real key to the weekend (not the ongoing amazing food adventure) was what the snorkel yielded… I had no idea. I just had no idea. Even without a snorkel, in knee-deep water encircling this Gilligan’s-sized space, was coral of countless varieties and colors all looking like the mushrooms Alice saw after she passed through the looking glass…

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and it’s not even knee-deep. At this depth, and throughout my hours of snorkeling this weekend, there were black sea anemones with bright blue eye-like spots and 18-inch long needles all over nestled wherever there was room; teeming fish, some as thin as tissue paper, translucent, phosphorescent, dozens and dozens of types, including not at all most interestingly, but kinda memorably, a toy swordfish, maybe 3 inches tall and a quarter inch wide… with a nine inch nose that for some reason I just wanted to steer clear of – didn’t look like Pinocchio to me…

So all across the shallow beach area was this gorgeous mushroomy stuff, along with some fields of things that John Hurt and Sigourney Weaver would recognize from Alien… but go a little further and learn where the designers of the original Star Trek series got the idea for all those boulders that bounced down alien hillsides… as a matter of fact, I thought I was swimming over and through several of the alien topographies I’d seen on the show… and then looking out past those chairs the water changes color… and suddenly beneath the surface at the shelf of Jakarta Bay, 20-foot tall multi-colored towers with all sorts of life-like frozen clouds jutting out of them, really long-legged, always-blue starfish wrapped lazily across the agreeable coral. These towers against the deep blue sea backdrop underwater reminded me of nothing so much as the “birth of stars” photos that hit the papers the same day Sharon was assassinated (what a great little “did you know”).

Then exhale and let yourself drop off the shelf to enter this world, rather than gaze at it from above. While down that low, my imagination and body remembered a similar sensation when arriving in old Verona for the first time 10 years ago. The beauty is overwhelming and exhausting… and just for the record there was the moment I spied something REALLY BIG AND BLUE below me in my peripheral vision, shot 15 feet away into a massive fish school, looked behind me… (and spied my bright blue flipper keeping pace…) but off that shelf, those Disney fish musicals don’t seem quite so original, and it’s clear why Aquaman chose to rule below rather than above the waterline… Claude, I’ll be diving next time.

And the food! Were it not for the way too loud generic cover band (yes, if that guy at Duangrats in DC had had a backing band, he would have sounded the same). Then again, we all know I am the only one among us who could have identified the obscure Bee Gees cover played that night: Don’t Forget To Remember Me (yes, from the soundtrack to Cucumber Castle which I don’t think anybody ever saw…). Still, I didn’t want to hear it on my porch even after the five course buffet-style supper.

Just to sign off with a funny: from the minute I got to the island I was hounded, in Gilligan’s Island fashion, by a one-eyed native muttering the local dialect which has yet to materialize in my consciousness. No sooner was I seated in that deckchair with my novel (Lethem: Gun, With Occasional Music 3.5 stars) than he arrives, hovering… I smile, I’m gracious, I’m wondering “why me?”… I apologize… he wanders off. I get my first of three snorkeling epiphanies, return to my deckchair for twenty minutes before lunch and one-eye returns to gesture with hand to mouth that it’s lunchtime. Does anyone else see this man? Skipper? SKIPPPPPERRRR!!!!

I eat. 2 plates full. Four teas. Still wondering when a meal here would disappoint in either variety, repetition, or quantity… Talked with a 65-year-old Saskatchewan who chucked away a bitter 35-year marriage, got an ESL certificate and came over here for the warmth (and maybe something else but I can’t be sure)… returned to my deckchair passed a couple dozen Indonesian guests in a mammoth tug-of-war amid the palms… and here he comes again… SKIPPERRRRR! More persistent this time. Had in mind another snorkel anyway, so I try to smile him off with warm apologies, and head to the woods in search of hiding and another sea-route. Somehow, he’s in front of me, then behind me… can’t shake the guy. He cuts to the right without looking back so I go straight… a moment later I find new, pristine beach, look over my shoulder once and collapse in the sand. No people, no Cyclops, just little ol’ me and my snorkeling kit on this secluded little stretch of whiteness…

Not 5 minutes pass… and the splashing of the waves grows louder. Am I drifting into a lunchtime napping reverie, or drifting out to see? I raise my head a bit, crack an eyelid… Cyclops has a slave rowing a junk around the bend of the island in pursuit of me! His boat is right there, 15 feet from MY feet, at the edge of the water! I feign sleep quickly, praying he’ll just go away!!! The familiar circuitous padding of his feet. It’s 2:00? I leave in 24 hours! Where’s my peace???? “Skipppperrrr!!!! They’re cooooooming!” “OK, little buddy, you go this way and I’ll go that-a-way!” But he passes me by and the footfalls recede. Less than a commercial break later I crack an eyelid and register the junk (and I DO mean “junk”, sadly) still hovering, blocking my access to the treasured CORAL… I raise my head and am immediately assaulted from behind!!! I quickly smile and say “not yet” and plop my head back down as Cylops licks his chops with an “oh…”, neither of us really understanding the other for the most part…

But our last encounter tells me (Gilligan wouldn’t have got it) this thing ain’t gonna be resolved without a full-blown throwing down, me and this Cyclops, who hasn’t aged well since 2000 BC or whenever Odysseus last had at him) but boy has he aged! So I rise. Slave is shyly perched on a tree branch away to my left; junk due straight ahead, Cyclops shuffling in for the kill from 1 o’clock… more monster growls and groans that make no sense to me (few teeth, smoked a lot, never drank much milk (no one here can), but lived a long time… not scary, just unintelligible, and persistent: he’d have had a lesser opponent than me on his knees by now, and he knows it…). Cy had learned one word of English (does he know it’s English?), which he couldn’t say but he could scratch out in the sand… “T…O…U…R” … (Gilligan (aka Tom Hanks) wrote “H…E…L…P” in stones once), points to his junk, his slave, and some other little islands well within view but just the other side of some very dark blue water…

and I admit I thought about it…

so that’s what all this has been about… BUT WHY ME??? But, geez, I was tempted. Then again, I can see the headlines, or lack thereof: “..” nope, can’t see ‘em… but still. Maybe next time. So I grab my stuff, and head further away, hoping he’ll just give up and go for a tastier human, or just his usual lambs….and from the reef a ways off, I look back at where I’d been, and see the junk slowly heading away around a bend… it’s three o’clock

3 hours later I’m looking west from another deckchair at this, all in for $100:



And Ben, I took this stogie 11,000 miles from Amanda and John's... I think I'm doing it justice right here, even if I still can't pose for a photo...

"Toto, we're not in (Arlington) anymore"

It's Friday evening, Oct. 1, Friday AM your time. You know you're not in Kansas anymore when you rush back to your hotel room from an early breakfast to catch the election debate live. You also know you're not in Kansas when you're sitting in a comfy cozy wireless internet cafe in a city of 12 million insane drivers who pass on the left or right on a one-lane street, and you're looking out the window at light on a wall and it's not moths and cicadas scampering around it, but little lizard things with suction cups on their feet... Let's see, one also has to look at everything one puts in one's mouth with the chopsticks, as reading the NYTimes online and NOT looking at what one grabbed in one's wooden fingers will lead to a 4-alarm fire emergency; but with water at 50 cents and beer at $1.50 per glass, who's counting?

The other event of the day worthy of the books: I decided to make my introduction to the US Embassy today, and aside from the fact that it was a two-hour, cross-city thrill ride of a waste of time, my otherwise excellent taxi driver dropped me off at the closed end of the barbed-wired non-sidewalked two-block expanse that is Ft. US Embassy, Jakarta. After consulting with an immaculately dressed and noticeably well-armed policeman on the other side of the chest high iron gates of an adjoining fort (who suggested with his fingers that I compensate him for his time), I headed into a four-lane (many drivers clearly saw a minimum of two other lanes that escaped my vision) major artery for a two-block stroll to the beginning of the embassy's security maze. So there I was, thigh-high concrete topped by head-high barbed wire on my right, facing oncoming traffic of 1 to 6 wheels (and a weird pedestrian in my "lane" now that I think of it) here in the land where lane demarkation is as fluid and socially negotiated as democracy would be in an ideal world. Not to mention that until this experience I had only experienced the "you will never believe me unless you happen here to see for yourself" margin-for-error these guys use on the roads from INSIDE one of their missiles, and now it wasn't a missile but my left KNEE they were marginalizing... sigh... anyway, I digress...

I've been here 8 days and a few hours, and whew! what a week. I just finished a meeting in which I finalized the promotional materials for our new school. I spent all last weekend (my first, jet-lagged, hotel-room-bound "oh my God where am I and what have I gotten myself into please open a window no don't cause I can't live on gasoline fumes someone get me one of those cheap massages what time is it anyway" semi-awakening) redesigning a fine first effort from the team on the ground here to comply with George Mason's identity regulations. I'm amazed by what we've done already, and so is the team here. A great logo, a couple of posters, a gorgeous flyer with pricing inserts, a huge banner, bumper stickers, elevator and hallway signs, student folders, letterhead, envelopes, business cards... I really am getting the chance to build this baby from the ground up... will be ready Wednesday, ahead of an Oct. 22 placement test and Oct. 25 first day of classes. As long as you don't ask me what we're gonna use for textbooks on October 25, that spicy pepper invader I didn't see on the end of my chopsticks promises he won't come back...

Set up for next week I've also got meetings with a radio station, the Harvard of Indonesian universities, and the Regional English language Officer at the Embassy, while I move into fairly comfy digs (we hope) down the road from here, set up our offices and classrooms, etc. Not that I did all this myself, but so far the teamwork has been friggin' excellent. My primary cohort is a 60-year old gold mine owner (nearly ruined 20 years ago by a corruption scandal care of the Indonesian Gov't's gold-mining industry) The guy that started this is his brother-in-law, son of a diplomat, the former Ambassador to Ghana and Head of the Ministry of Education. Both of them are married to Univeristy lecturers, and there are other professors in the family. Despite all the familiarity and nepotism (it's how they protect themselves from the corruption), try as I might I can't feel anything but terrific vibes about this whole thing. Gold miner and I have just had a blast finalizing design ideas, etc., discovering very similar instincts and values regarding class and elegance... Anyway -- I still don't wanna believe this may all come true, but I've seen nothing to dissuade me from that view so far...

Anyway... tomorrow morning, day 9 or 1o and a Saturday, I'm off at 8:00 in a speedboat for a 90 minute ride to a beachside bungalow on a tiny island I've been promised is very quiet. Got my 30+ sunblock and mosquito spray, rainy season isn't quite here yet, and the snorkelling is fine and the beaches are white. I'll be back with panoramic pictures and a mild tan 30 hours later, and I plan to do a lot of stretching and deep breathing in-between times. Pictures in chapter 3.

Jakarta, Day 5, I think

September 30. Well, finally got my first cell phone today, and it's cheap as heck to do Short Message Service (roughly 6 cents anywhere in the world). So,if you can receive SMS, give me your number and I may surprise you one day soon...

I'm sitting in a wireless cafe across the street from my hotel Tuesday evening (Tuesday AM, about sunrise, where most of you are). It's very nice,very Asian, lots of red, plush furniture, strange still unrecognizable sounds coming out of people's mouths, tall leafy plants I don't remember seeing before all over the place. The pool table in another section of the room and the sound system playing modern jazz, blending with the dimmed lighting make this a familiar, living-roomish kind of place. Very comfortable. And the food is great, and would be even better were it not for the expected mild bout of Traveller's You-Know-What that arrived early this morning. Oh well, it's not much of a bother, really.

Went out looking for apartments this AM with a very friendly employee of the Indonesian side of this still-evolving joint venture. The neighborhood I'm in now, in fact the corner my hotel and this cafe is on, is supposedly the best in town for a single ex-pat: lots of greatfood, several of the bars and shops I'd read about before coming over within walking distance, safe streets due to all the businesses open long hours to cater to foreigners, a huge international foods supermarket right next to this cafe and the big English bookstore next door to the hotel. But walking here is truly unpleasant because of the mind-boggling traffic flow on this particular narrow street, and the constant hideous fumes. It's only good to be inside here...

There's a pretty nice ex-pat apartment complex two blocks from here that offered me a good deal, but we went driving into a couple ofother areas, and I discovered that there are parts of Jakarta that are cool in the morning, have *nearly* fresh air, and are only a little more expensive than the area I'm currently in and a buck or two further from my University by cab. So this evening I'm leaning towards a two-bedroom apartment in a gigantic gated community that has a nice pool and adequate fitness center and tons and tons of trees (oxygen) with virtually no traffic. Probably have to hire a maid, who will probably have to live in, but she'll shop, cook and clean and live a very easy life as I don't require much maintenance.

As for the people in general -- they remain nearly all very warm andbubbly, whether with each other or me, and whether they have a car and driver or make their living collecting rp. 100 (1 cent) from someone else's driver by blocking traffic so said driver can make a turn (it's the only way here)... I assume at least half the folks I'm looking at are Muslims, and it looks like they're doing fine with the other half of the people I'm looking at...

As for the pic -- I've only taken two so far, and this one was yesterday at the restaurant that probably gave me my unwelcome visitor this AM. The people around me are the joint-venturers, a driver, and a printer. We'd spent the morning finishing up the marketing materials I'd spent the WHOLE weekend reworking (GeorgeMason legal regs. and English language usage...), so they could go off to the printer... Coulda been a nice shot but the waitress taking the photo had never used a digital camera before, and I'm there gesticulating telling her to "hold the button DOWN"... Of course, I got back to my hotel room and read in my "Everyday Indonesian" book "Never point with the index finger, only the thumb..." so who knows what she thinks of me now...The adventure continues. One day I won't wake up at 4:30 after passing out around 10:00... that'll be chapter 2.