A new home in the stars

Moved into the new house ten days ago, my fourth house since I got to Indonesia. After that first sleep-deprived week in Jogja, my laptop crashed and nearly died the morning of the move. Between work, setting up the house, and exploring, it took more than a week to get communications back up and running. But anyway, here’s the house:

I guess this is what Americans would call townhouse, but the nice thing is the houses in this development aren�t cookie-cutter; they�re all different, and differently quirky. -- master bedroom on the right, beside the door. 2 beds and a �bath� upstairs. Only been up there twice - to open windows and put sheets on the guest bed for guests soon to come. Upstairs is primarily for sucking up the warm air and spitting it out the windows. The house is nearly ideally temperate when the doors and windows are open. . The bedrooms are big, with a nice tall wardrobe and AC or ceiling fans, and I sleep like a baby. It�s a cool house, and oh so cheap. It will easily sleep six more people, so come on over!

a quiet planning morning, working from home until the car gets here.

the surprisingly attractive and friendly back patio, seen from the �servants� wing. The mattress is really for guests: my local friends often prefer the floor, and the outdoors. That said, I�ve fallen asleep on it myself. The staircase leads to an outdoor laundry area.

Unlike Jakarta, Jogja cools off beautifully in the evenings, but it�s a good 7 or 8 degrees hotter during the day, and I�ve decided to forgo the t-shirt, dress shirt and tie in favor of the ligheter and airier Batik dress clothes that Jogja is famous for. Heck if the country�s President wears silk batik for formal ceremonies, I can use them as dresswear on university campuses! So here�s one of them, just home from work listening to the rain thundering down�

�and checking out the drainage system - this plant (and others which may line the patio wall) has it very good, catching the rain pouring off the roof.

self-evident, but family can see they travel with me everywhere�

that�s the kitchen way over there. It also opens onto the servant�s wing and patio, so the feeling of the place really is like luxurious camping�

which means it�s a good thing I�ve gotten over the creature-issue.

Since fumigating the place, the cockroaches haven�t reappeared for 5 days, except to roll over and die.

But I have seen significantly-sized centipedes, 1 small brunette rodent (in and out of the house), and several flies, all of whom feel as free and at home here as I do. It�s kinda cute.

Except for the flies.

the �camping� concept extends to the bathrooms.

This is the master bathroom, ensuite with the master bedroom. AFTER improvements. Note that the shower head is now positioned over the bathtub. This is one of the improvements. The hot water tank is now electric, which means I�m able to mix the cold water in with it. The previous gas heater shut off when trying to mix cold water - so one could scald oneself or chill oneself. That�s the other improvement. There won�t be anymore.

This is the 2nd best bathroom. It�s not getting any improvements.

Begin at the very beginning

Yesterday I did something that might have gotten me deported from other Moslem nations. I was teaching a class for a lecturer that couldn’t make it, and was guiding a female student towards solving a problem by herself, and eureka she got it. And in that moment she beamed, I was pleased for her, and I ever so barely poked her fully covered upper arm with my index finger in a congratulatory “you got it!” move. Even as my finger headed in the direction of that arm, something cultural was slowing it down, like there was a “stop” sign just my side of her. But it didn’t come to a full stop until a moment after it breached the intersection. We both pulled away a hair, she giggled and I blinked, and we went on about our business. But I spent the next ten minutes with a slight shiver…

The work, for better or worse, is going to be fascinating this year. It looks like I’ve been summoned here to fill grandly conceived new buildings with quality education infrastructure. I’ve been asked to make sure the big new language (English and Arabic), culture, and religion building is stocked with the right technology, furniture, rooms, etc. to outfit at least the English and Arabic language portion. I’ve been asked to identify a core group of decentish teachers and turn them into people capable of training future teachers in sound language-teaching practice. Additionally, I’ve been asked to design curricula for both the soon-to-be-born English teacher training college in the Education Department, AND for a sustainable English language program that includes the requirements of the national curriculum.

And that’s just here at the university. I’ve also got responsibilities in the city itself, designing outreach programs and seminars for language teachers all over, as well as the two American mentees I mentioned before. That’s quite a handful, especially after what I’ve seen this week. Teacher tardiness is apparently chronic throughout these institutions. Not one afternoon class this week began within twenty minutes of the official start-time (this in a city where the traffic provides no excuse). Students were dozing waiting for their teachers, and teachers never apologized. Only one teacher prepared or thought at all about the lesson before stepping into the classroom, and I witnessed reading classes in which no student practiced reading, and listening classes where no student had to listen, and where the teacher took class time to figure out how to use a tape recorder, and in the end failed to figure it out. I saw a writing class in which students listened for an hour to a lecturer describe the steps in writing an essay… and yet the students never practiced any of it. There are no materials to speak of, and no plan.

Where do I begin?

A rose by any other name

The new house will do, and is great in many ways… and is just a little bit different in a few ways… The particulars: 2 stories, 3 bedrooms, proper kitchen, servant’s quarters, large patio with no garden but a couple of plants and a nice wall, 3 bathrooms, two generously long and fat legs l-shaped for a living area downstairs, and a big “bonus room” upstairs.

Sounds great, and it is, mostly, especially for the price (which I daren’t mention here, but John and Amanda told me the year I’m paying for would cover a month’s mortgage on the house they hope to buy), but here’s the stuff that makes this Indonesia. The house has been somewhat westernized… but those three bathrooms include three western toilets, 2 ceramic 4-foot high fresh water tanks with faucets, 1 bathtub, no place for a shower curtain and rods, one shower head which is aimed between the toilet and bathtub, hot water only for the “shower” and NO SINKS. In other words, when you walk into the bathroom, you’re standing IN the sink. At least there are mirrors in two of them. Gonna take a little getting used to. Might keep some bathroom stuff by the kitchen sink.

The aircon situation isn’t much better; it’s only in the master bedroom (ground floor), but it’s a very tall house, so heat rises, and with patio and upstairs windows open, the place is quite cool and breezy. Of course, that means the mosquitos will get in, but they should be minimal, and as I wrote earlier, somehow the bugs love me as much as ever, but they don’t bother me nearly as much after a year…The other two bedrooms have powerful ceiling fans. I’ll keep a mattress tastefully covered in the living area as a third couch close to the ground; I know people who prefer lounging on the floor. The whole was repainted this week (without my consultation): bedrooms are all pink, the rest is green like my living room in Poland… keeps temps cooler….

The neighborhood is very quiet – pretty much a typical suburban development. I live next door to an American journalist. I’ll have to get to know that neighbor. All streets into it are secured. And the nearest religious establishment is almost completely out of earshot.

Stranger in a Strange Land

I’ve been househunting with Tia and Toto after work the last two days, and have wound up having supper in a very nice hotel poolside bar-resto in an upscale hotel just down the road from the neighborhood I’ll be livingin come Saturday, hallelujah. The hotel also houses a solid fitness center (with whirlpool!) that I will join on Sunday.. so given the gym, the pool, the bar/resto, and my love of reading by the pool, I know how Sunday’s going to go already. The housing find’s making my last two nights of horrific 4AM Arabic alarm clocks a tolerable concept. And I got home tonight to a couple of curiosities.

So the post below this describes the culture clash that IS sitting on my porch with a beer and some music, with all the neighborhood folks heading to and from the mosque at the end of the street… Well, I noticed from the beginning of my week here an office of some sort directly across the street from my carport. It’s got a big sign on it reading “Sekratariat something or other”, and I’ve been meaning to pull out my kamus (dictionary) and figure out just what piece of officialdom it is. I can’t see it from the porch, as the carport blocks the view across the narrow street. So tonight I pull up in front of my house in a cab a little after seven. The whole ride back from the hotel we’d been passing mosque after mushollah (prayer room) after mosque filled with fully-covered white-clothed men or women frozen in the same direction. Occasionally the streets would burst with the same folks unfrozen, apparently having attended a briefer service. I get out of the taxi in front of the carport, and am two metres from the Sekratariat place… through the building’s window I see a heap of frozen men… and I flash back to my last post… had these same men been the ones I’d thought had been coming from their homes down the road past this shirtless beer-swilling rock-loving infidel, and in reality they’d been emptying out from across the street following a prayer service? Needless to say, tonight I type on my porch as a shirted beer-swilling infidel with quiet music wrapping around my patio door into my ear. Meanwhile, the mood’s more playful tonight. Impeccably dressed small children are running up and down the street, a community sits inside across the street somewhere laugh frequently laughing at and applauding something I can’t see… This certainly feels like a warm community I’ve been transported into, but I can’t imagine ever not wanting to be beamed back up to the starship after a short stay. Beam me up Saturday, Scotty (ahh, Jimmy Doohan, R.I.P).

Stranger in a Strange Land

Most if not all of the bars and clubs have been closed since Saturday night, I haven’t ventured out into the Jogja evening yet, but fasting and all that does not begin until tomorrow. The last two mornings I have been awoken irredeemably at 4 AM, which will happen every day that I remain in this house. But this afternoon returning from work I met the wall I cannot climb. Celebratory music which means nothing to me blasted from the speakers in the pics further down this page, into my home less than a hundred meters away. Quite literally, I could neither think nor focus for the noise. My driver walked a water cooler, a gallon jug, a mirror, and a rack to hold glasses (minus the glasses) into my house and set them up. I pointed out the leaking faucet, the toilet that floods the bathroom floor constantly (not so bad as it’s from the cistern and it’s a bathroom where the shower floods everything anyway), and he promised to have someone do something about it tomorrow. He left, confirming an 8 o’clock pick up in the AM. I put the glass rack in the back yard.

I closed the porch, carport, and backyard doors I had opened to let out the day’s heat, but that of course did nothing to diminish the ‘music’, because in the absence of a/c except for the bedroom, every wall of the house has windows covered only by screens. I went into the cool bedroom and stripped off the day’s 19-times sweated- through clothes, for a pair of light long Hawaii-patterned shorts. I turned on some music of my own. That helped. I reopened the doors. I cracked a beer. That helped. I sat in my “living room” chair and finished up some work. The mosque music switched to a prayer call. I turned up the rock’n’roll. That helped more. The mosque music died. It was about 5 o’clock. I turned my music down, took my beer, phone, and Pelacanos’s SHOEDOG out on to the front porch with me. The woman in the pic below was just passing my porch, heading her heavy load. Does she live on my street? “Moondance” came on. I read about Constantine remembering his youth as he revisits Northwest DC near Military, drunk and stoned, and can’t remember the names of his childhood baseball-team friends, as a slow parade of neighbors walked up my street away from the mosque. When a trio of under-10 fully covered girls walked by, I mentally re-registered my Hawaiian shorts, beer on the arm of the chair, and pleasant but quiet rock music. I looked up. Their heads were turned in my direction as they strolled by. Before they had passed, one of them looked over her shoulder back down the street, took her friends’ hands, and ran away up the street with them. I went back inside, turned the music down still further, put on my last remaining relatively clean short-sleeved shirt – a traditional, ceremonial, lined silk Batik number. I leave it unbuttoned, and grab another beer.

The prayer call erupts again. I turn up the music. Mustang Sally. Palm trees and sailboats on my shorts. Beer can to my right, chest and stomach exposed under the burgundy and gold Batik. A breeze wafts through, but I’m still perspiring a little as the light begins to fade. A group of boys walk by, staring. The mosque-call stops. I turn my music down, and take my laptop out to the porch. Ten minutes later, darkness coming, a man in a loose long white shirt, sarong, and skull cap walks in the other direction, carrying a prayer rug. He’s heading for the next-door mosque that called him and wakes me against my needs every morning. He does not look at me, but he must have heard my music. Soon after, a parade of similarly attired males follows him to the mosque. No women. I continue to write. After fifteen minutes, the same men head back up the road past my porch. Most look at me, now well-lit by porchlight against the complete darkness: beer, skin, Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” audible but not obtrusive, flashy clothes, computer.

In the last fifteen minutes, only one kid on a bike distracts me from this story. One porch other than mine is lit, but all the homes within sight are dark. It’s me. I feel obtrusive. Nearly every aspect of the culture in which I’m living has confronted me in the last two hours, and I feel I should not live here in this community. As much as that community, through no deliberateness of it’s own, makes my life largely intolerable, my only escape from it here (music, beer, shorts, shirtlessness) disturbs the community at it’s most sacred time of year.

And yet, through it all, I remember the names of nearly everyone on my childhood soccer team at Greenhill in Dallas, Texas: Matt Manna, Keith Money, Jeff Summers, Dan Burton, Keith Goodnight, Mike Weinberg, James and Michael Masters (the Brits), even Michael La Rue… Simon's "Mother and Child Reunion" just kicked on. Time to wrap this up.

As I've been uploading, the music segueed into Tiny Dancer, and the mosque replied. Now families are heading down the street in the dark. Time to turn the music up and say goodnight. "Caroline, Why?" and "Get Up Stand Up"

This is my neighbor, "heading" down my street.

Took a class of lecturers this afternoon, mostly to introduce myself to them. Looks like I've been brought here to advise on construction of a four-floor language, culture, and religion building, and to design the curriculum for the English Teacher Training program, set to start next year, as well as the program and standardized methodology of the English Language Center here. More later, I'm sure.

Looking for the heart of Saturday night

Saturday AM, Oct. 1
From the Jakarta airport via my new cellular wireless USB modem – speeds beat the local cable modem service, and it works in all the major populated areas of Indo, and all of Java and Bali… which means crucially it even works when your car doesn’t in traffic jams.

At the airport because this is the day, finally, that I open a second homebase in Jogjakarta (Jogja for short), a 50 minute flight from Jakarta. I’m going there because the US Government, through its English Fellows program, asked me to go to one of Indonesia’s largest and newest Islamic universities because the University had requested qualified expert assistance in the development of its English Language programs. I will be training and mentoring professors and students (pre-service and in-service) in the Education and Languages departments there, as well as undertaking many initiatives elsewhere in the city and region. Some of those responsibilities are already established, and others will be of my own making. For example, The Fullbright Foundation sent US Teaching assistants to many public schools throughout Indo, and I’ve been assigned to mentor two of them, only one of whom is in Jogja. I’ve also been asked to find a way to bring the English and Education departments of the major Islamic and Christian universities in Jogja to the table for shared training and exchanges of views. They’ve never talked before. And so on and so on. It’s a good gig, runs 10 months, and is renewable either there or elsewhere in Indo or the world. So I can add this option to the list for year three. Those options include several for returning to Jakarta, a couple for returning home to the US, and a couple for traveling elsewhere. It pays much better than the Mason job did, and the work I can do is much more interesting.

Strangely enough, in this instance the US Gov’t and I see largely eye-to-eye. Up to the last link in the thought process, the logic of my agenda here in Indo is quite similar to the USG’s. Mine ends at “Critical Thinking Skills” – I want at the teachers whose responsibilities are the youngsters in primary and secondary schools, because currently the minds of those youngsters are being slaughtered throughout the public and Islamic school systems, at a very early age. The result is graduates and University students have no thinking skills, imagination, or learning strategies… which explains a lot of Indo’s current problems. Where the USG and I differ is only that the USG believes by extension that when the kids and adults can think critically, they’ll stop blowing themselves up, will look favorably on the US, and in general improve the US’s standing in world opinion. Perhaps, but it’s neither here nor there for me.

Jogja is by all accounts a gorgeous city with copious spectacular places to visit both within and without. Apparently, I’ll be up on an elephant very soon for a trek to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Performing arts, fashion, etc. abound. Traffic flows. The job comes with a 2-bed house with a garden. Reports on that later. I expect I will have a renewed enthusiasm for my blog and camera. Much as I came to love Jakarta, there’s not much more there to capture to the blog, and I stopped trying to get out of town as the fun picked up over the summer.

I’ve been based in Jakarta a year and a week, and absolutely love it now. I remember how shocked I was by Jakarta when I first arrived – how the stench, the heat, the sweating, the traffic, the driving, the language and the revenges of Montezuma had me convinced I’d be back in the US in no time. I also thought getting out of Jakarta every month was essential for my sanity… so I expect I will love “the Cracow of Indonesia”, even though there is a part of me that’s very sorry to have to call a temporary halt to my proceedings in my hometown. But my housemates Mick and Herb are letting me keep my room in the spacious villa, my framed photos and pool speakers remain there, and I hope to fly back to play with them for a weekend each month. I leave many projects, of both personal and professional sorts, in different stages of development there… Many of my friends have invited themselves to come see me (amazing how many of these guys and gals, both foreign and native) never get out of town, and several of them saw me off in warm heroic fashion last night – many hugs and kisses, and I was finally allowed to go home for a nap at 3 AM. It’s been a fascinating year. Thanks for the next pic, Herb.

I confess to being somewhat homesick for the play in Jakarta on a Saturday night. That's Mick, getting ready for the 2nd semi "monthly" bajaj races near a favorite watering hole. Owners and passengers swap seats for six laps around the block, the police assist by closing the streets for a brief while, the owners make more in 30 minutes than they do in a day, and the passengers play NASCAR... sigh...

Wonderwall

Sunday PM, Oct. 2
I am psyched as heck to spend nine months checking out the city and surroundings, and have wasted no time in beginning. Today, the day after Bali bombings take 2, my new first friends in Jogja and I took off on the road to Solo, reportedly home to the densest concentration of Islamic fundamentalists on Java, stopping thirty kilometers from that town at one of two ancient wonders of the world within an hour of Jogja.

Built from the 8th to the 10th centuries, the Prambanan temple complex is the best remaining example of Java’s Hindu cultural development. In the 9th century AD, Java's Buddhist South and Hindu North were united by marriage, and evidence of both faiths remains in these temples built for the Hindu trinity of Shiva (the destroyer), flanked by Brahma and Vishnu, (creator and preserver) and their transportion -- swan, eagle, and elephant (?).. The complex was destroyed by earthquake in the 16th century, and, amazingly, has been largely reassembled over the last two hundred years.

The legend is far more interesting than the established history. Legend has it, loosely, that the princess to be married to unite Java wasn’t thrilled with her Southern suitor, and required that he build nine hundred temples to the Hindu deities in the night before the wedding, or she would have to deem him unworthy. He loved the princess, called on the Hindu gods to assist him, and lo and behold he was getting there. The rapid assembly scared the princess, and she called on everyone in her kingdom to light bonfires in the night as the prince and gods neared completion, thereby tricking all the roosters and chickens and other fowl into thinking morning had arrived. They made their morning noises, and scared off the Hindu supernaturals, and the princess was saved, at least temporarily. The pics should give you some sense of the prince’s amazing dedication to his unrequited love.

See? I was there. And no, I'm no heavier or less trim than I was last week, month, or year... that's my camera pouch, and a sweat stain or five.

The major temples, with ongoing restoration projects in the foreground. Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu, with smaller temples for their steeds.

Shiva's temple in the foreground, Vishnu's behind..

In a chamber up the steps on one face of Shiva's temple lurks this deity, one of Shiva's allies.

The Vishnu temple, isolated.

Some sense of the scale of this 1300-year old structure...

How anyone put this massive jigsaw puzzle of a complex, right down to the ornate hindi-buddhist storytelling on display here and throughout, baffles the imagination.

Sunday morning coming down (Bye bye, Johnny)

Well now, 36 hours in Jogjakarta, and what have I to say for myself? Let’s look at the plusses. As my new friend Sas (short for Dionysius Sasmoyo Hermawan) said earlier today, the only thing that distinguishes Jogja from Bali is the architecture, and the architecture here is charming and tasteful, even the new stuff keeping to Javanese traditional styles. The joglo I staid in on Bali was shipped there from Central Java, and here in Jogja I’ve seen the same construction principles everywhere. Outside the city itself, clear roads wind through lush countryside rolling towards nearby mountains. I had the same impression even before Sas managed to find my new home, when I got off the airplane. Small airport, collect the bags, stroll out into … fresh air and clear skies! Felt like Bali… what a refreshing change from Jakarta. And the best change of all: In a car for the better part of 4 hours today, on a motorbike yesterday evening for a couple… and never hit a traffic jam. Everything in the area is accessible at 40 or more kilometers an hour. Why? No public transportation (minivans and buses) that stop anywhere they damn well please, almost everyone driving motorcycles instead of cars, and a ring road (beltway). So much for the Jakarta days of reading in the back of taxis for an hour en route to the office. Have to find someplace else to read.

But… the Islamic University has very kindly provided me with a…reasonably… adequate 2 bedroom condo as part of its cost-sharing agreement with the USG. 2 bedrooms (though only one bed so far), a/c, though only in my bedroom (they’ve agreed to supply a standing fan or two for the living area and the 2nd bedroom…and a 2nd bed). Fridge (2 shelves and the freezer door broken) Minimalist furniture, standard Indo water system – cold water only in the kitchen and bathroom sinks, but hot water conceded for the shower… which, Indo style sprays onto the floor, toilet, and open cistern (which leaks) must be careful not to soak the TP,which only us silly westerners use anyway. Nowhere to put anything: food, shoes, books, folders, toiletries. The “dining” table is the medicine cabinet… no mirror or reflective surface anywhere: shaving blind, and putting lenses in the car window this AM… what do I look like? … no drinking water (again, they’ve agreed to provide a cooler)… no washing machine or laundrette/dry cleaner anywhere within site and the clock is ticking on the underwear and clothes; with minimal a/c, let’s say I’ve returned to sweating through my wardrobe three times a day. They’ve said they’ll provide a washing machine, too, but I’ll pray to Mecca if that happens.

I’ve got a lead on a housekeeper who can make the laundry and cooking issues go away, but there remains one insurmountable problem with my home, speaking of Mecca… looking out my back door, across an interesting little garden with lovely murals, chipped a bit, painted on the garden wall, looms the turret of a mosque that I can quite literally hit with a baseball thrown by my 41-year-old arm. Looking out my front door yesterday and today, I did not see one woman’s hair… After buying a map this afternoon, I discovered I’ve been placed in a neighborhood (Timoho) so quiet and isolated that its streets are not labeled, let alone drawn on, the official maps of Jogja. Taxi’s won’t find the street. Most problematically, the mosque’s speakers are pointed directly at us, which is fine and necessary for everyone but me. For me, in the evening they drown out my speakers (which must be kept extremely quiet due the close proximity of neighbors and the open doors and windows everywhere) , and, let’s remember, Moslems are called to pray at 4:00 in the AM. I was wary of the issue last night, so fell asleep with earplugs in and managed to miss the prayer session, but I can’t do that during the week, lest I sleep through the 6:30 alarm. I called Mick (playing pool in D’s Kemang with my friends, sigh) at the 7:00 pm prayer call… it is truly remarkable just how loud that call is, and I have to get out of here. This would be an adventure for a week or two…but… The University has no money, and they are doing the best they can, and bending over backwards to do more (it’s far better than what communist Poland often provided me with, that’s for sure), but I don’t think I can handle the isolation and amplification for nine months. Sas, his wife Tia, and their friend Toto (hold the line!) are on it. We figure there’s a more western-style house much closer to the cosmopolitan city-center to be had for three or four thousand for the year, and the University has provided me with a driver to and from work…It’s up to me to ease out of here without offending anyone. Meanwhile, Sas and Tia ahave been building a house that they are now ready to move into. Set near the neighboring mountains, cool breezes blow across the tobacco fields surrounding their land, and it adjoins houses built over several decades and utilizing several generations of plumbing and power.

My house from the front. Quite appealing, really.

The boy in hte house on the corner of my street. Check out his tongue: I don't think either one of us knew what to make of each other...

My street. Middle-class suburban and all the women are covered...

Sas and Toto perched under a tree in the front yard where a garden will eventually bloom.

Tia at her new front door. She and Sas can't move in until after Ramadan, which began today, something about too much movement and activity or somesuch... Pity that she and Sas are Christians...

Before Sunrise

Fell asleep about midnight… woke up on the ceiling at 4:00 thinking people were chanting in my living room. There is no way to keep the Imams out of my home, as many of the windows lack panes for ventilation purposes… I nearly dozed off again, but the Imam returned to say a brief GOODBYE at 4:20, and that was that. I was awake for good. This can’t go on.

Went in to the University and found my office preferable to my home. AC, new fully-loaded computer with internet and printer, whiteboard, and it’s nearly as big as my living area. I observed four lecturers, met with the director, and will sit down with the Rektor of the University tomorrow. The work could be thrilling. Sas has access to the entire EFL network in Jogja’s school system and private schools, and I have access to the Rektors of most of the major universities, in this, Indonesia’s and Java’s educational and cultural hub. Very very early days, but much to be excited about. Now I’m going to call a taxi and discover whether it can find me here, and go off to try to find a restaurant and a bar that are open on Ramadan. I may fail in that endeavor. Wish me luck.

The view over my muralled garden wall with barbed wire... Two houses away towers the problem...

And zoom in on my 4:00 AM wake up call. Suddenly I believe in firearms.

Part of my office, bigger, quieter, and more comfortable than my current "home".