Taking the Jakarta Jump

Full Moon over Puri Gajayan

2006-06-16T18:17:00.000+07:00

The dry season is here, just as I'm leaving. The nights are wondrously temperate. I like to think that this place I'm leaving, one of so many over the years, is one I'll be coming back to before too long. Top left, bottom right.

Leaving

2006-06-16T17:36:00.000+07:00

My Fellowship in Jogjakarta is rapidly approaching its end. It's been a breathtaking, eventful year, both professionally and personally, and I wouldn't have it any other way, though everyone here could have done without the earthquake and the volcano, and I wouldn't have minded forgoing the wart...

All the teachers I've been building with this year survived the quake, but only two-thirds of them managed to pull themselves back to the seriously damaged campus for the final, and extra week of classes they requested. Of these 15, at least four lost their homes, and for the most part their towns, 2 are fairly seriously injured, and as a group they eleted to have class in the lobby of our building, feeling too skittish to concentrate in a 2nd-floor classroom far from the doors and open skies. They are wonderful group, full of promise, and I will miss them.

The Circle Game

2006-06-14T13:27:00.000+07:00

I'm not in Gaza. I'm not in Israel. I'm certainly not in Iraq. Or New Orleans. But I was in DC on 9/11, and I watched the Pentagon burn for several nights, though I didn't know anyone who died. I only saw their families' and Government's reactions. And now I am in Jogjakarta, and I've finally seen the altered states we enter into when inexplicable pain transforms our relationship with our environment. Not to say I've never grieved or been close to grievers, but so many -- that's different and informative. Yuli tracked down a friend of hers from university, and found she'd lost her mother. An old woman wanted to take us to the spot where they buried her daughter-in-law carrying her first grandchild six months along. We begged out, but her son was nearby, asking someone, more than two weeks after the fact, "Where's Nia? When does she come back?" In the days after the quake he had seemed the most together of that area's victims. Another resident shows us where the earth opened up, swallowed a river, and ruined any hope their generations-old kampung now has of surviving on their homeland.

The convoy drives daily, and they see hundreds of victims everyday. The majority still smile, trying to shake off their personal disaster and 'soldier' on. They take the shovels and clear the homestead. They team with others and tear down walls anticipating rebuilding. They may complain about their invisible government, or how little their children now have, but they smile, and somehow I know their families will recover.

A significant percentage remain visibly stunned, but still functioning. They walk their children through the rubble, they sit on salvaged couches, beds and balays by the side of the road a few meters from their tents and uncleared land. They eat, they stare off into the distance, but they are there. They, too, may still find a path to recovery.

But the others. Grief and shock turning to rage and madness. In Allah and God a possible answer, and this can only be explained as an act of Allah and God. There is nothing acceptable on which to vent the grief and rage, of which there is so much. So I have to wonder what any humans think they can gain from committing acts that fuel such emotions? I used to hear modern poetry about ending the cycles of hatred and war… once in awhile a politician would actually make it into office having talked about these cycles. But it's been a long time since that happened anywhere. Instead we only hear reports of humans creating situations like the one I'm living now, and threats to make more of them. So much ignorance, all over the world.

Surreality 2

2006-06-10T22:34:00.000+07:00

Didn't really provide enough detail in the "surreality" post: at halftime an Indonesian cover band played a couple of reasonably pleasant cover tunes. After the match, the band came back, here between the earthquake and the volcano, and sang a few more songs. Right now, between the quake and 'no, seemingly with no thought to the physical context, what are they singing? "What a Wonderful World". What a wonderful people, I say...

World Cup '06: Surreality

2006-06-10T21:55:00.000+07:00

Today as many days this week, I've been sitting in a favorite resto of ours, updating the convoy blog, and catching up on itnernet-related work and communications. The connectivity here is the best I've found in Jogja, and it's free.

At about 7 PM, waiting for Yuli to get back from the hills, the Dixie Diner suddenly was overrun by Indo-style football hooligans, settling in for the England-Paraguay match, now almost over. Go England!

But here's the surreality bit: I'm an American, in a quiet ancient Javanese city, being attacked as I type by quakes from the south and a volcano from the north, surrounded by young Javenese men and women, rabidly involved in a match involving European and South American teams... As a matter of fact I'm finding myself pretty British, as I did over two World Cups in Europe (1990 London and 1994 Poznan). This time, however, four continents and two natural disasters are involved in this scene... and nearly everything stops for this tournament.

Quake survival portrait

2006-06-08T20:00:00.000+07:00

Another beauty from Yuli.

Quaketime

2006-06-08T19:42:00.000+07:00

Every disaster has a picture like this. It's a litle blurry, and it comes from Yuli's first tour, the Sunday after the quake. Time stopped at this home by a river at a few minutes after 6:00 the day before.

Yuli's Convoy

2006-06-06T18:08:00.000+07:00

I've started a new blog to document Yuli's Convoy, which has been running since shortly after the quake, reaching remote areas so far neglected by or inaccessible to the major relief agencies. From tomorrow morning it will be operating on donations from St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Brunswick, Maine (thanks, mom and Claude for leaping at this opportunity!), and hopefully more sources to be announced soon.

The Convoy's mission and a typical day in the life are up now at www.indoquake.blogspot.com

If anyone coming across this site wishes to contribute, please stay tuned for details.

Mountain of Love: The Gift of Giving

2006-06-01T12:36:00.000+07:00

May 15, two weeks and many centuries before the current nightmare, we watched the beautiful volcano across the sky from my balcony finally blow off some steam after a few nights spent sipping cocktails as bright orange tracers streamed down the blackness. We'd all been holding our breaths and blocking traffic on bridges hoping for a glimpse of something. The hotels in Kaliurang we'd visited just two weeks before were now closed until further notice, the towns around evacuated. The show was on.

2006-06-01T12:17:00.000+07:00

Becaue we knew that nearly everyone was out of harm's way , it was easy to just to marvel at the sight...

2006-05-31T15:57:00.000+07:00

There is what remains of a becak in the middle of this photo. A bicycle-carriage, this vehicle was undoubtedly the only means of transport for the family that lived in this house, by their ricefield, some 20 KM from Jogjakarta. The man in the family must have powered it into town nearly everyday, to the tourist centers or near the better restaurants or hotels, where he waited most of the day for the one, two, or three transport jobs he would get. The he would power it back home to his wife, and/or children, and/or grandchildren with the $1, $2, or $3 dollars his calves and hamstrings had earned him. Meanwhile his wife did what was necessary at home and in the fields, of which they were certainly tenant farmers, getting 25% of the harvest every three or six months. They wee not in evidence when Yuli caught this sight -- The question is only which bit of sky are they sheltering under nearby, and how many others are with them, in the same plight?

2006-05-31T15:41:00.000+07:00

Elsewhere, it was complete and utter devestation, with countless people on their sleeping mats, if they were lucky, or the wet ground or road, if they were not, awaiting tents, tarps, blankets, towels for baby blankets, any kind of nourishment, in ad-hoc homemade shelterless community "shelters". And this, on Day 4.

2006-05-31T15:30:00.000+07:00

Their house is rubble. Somehow their makeshift barnyard stands. Now, they live with their buffaloes. No motorcycles, strong children, food, or money.

2006-05-31T15:18:00.000+07:00

I find this the most harrowing of Yuli's pics. The reason you can barely make out the dwellings on the other side of this paddy is because they are not there. Yuli found this scene repeated throughout her drive yesterday. There are no dwellings, and the farmers here, tenant farmers, have no transport, and will be able to retain only 25% of this baby rice crop when it is harvested... in two months. The quake hit at the end of the month, which means they have no money. And no aid has found them thus far.

Pictures from Sat through Monday are below the narrative of the last few days, which is next.

Saturday: I feel the Earth Move

2006-05-31T14:33:00.000+07:00

Mom and Claude aren't even back in Maine yet, and boy have they missed some interesting times. Of course, it's easy to say that now, but I think I'm glad they weren't here to deal with the morning Yuli and I have just had.

We woke up in the same instant at about 6 AM, and even before our senses got the message through, we knew what was happening. Sort of. Aside from the feeling that heavy trucks were rumbling underneath us, outside the bedroom door we heard a hundred bells softly ringing, as if a troupe of collared cats were performing a ballet.

And it didn't stop. A scream outside our window. A few voices. It didn't feel like going anywhere (like outside) would do much good. I waited there, holding Julia, figuring if the ground was going to open up and take us, it would do it there, outside, or wherever it darned well chose, and so far the walls were fine and the ceiling wasn't crumbling. Later I would identify this thought process with the one I had as my car was spinning out of control in my one and only accident back in 1998, and with my attitude to terrorist attacks. Later still I would realize that we didn’t leap out of bed because I was identifying this terra indigestia as a less dangerous tremor associated with our pet volcano, Merapi. Of course, that’s what I was thinking. Yuli claims that I was comforting her with repeated “It’s gonna be okay”s, she was thinking, “I’m not dressed decently!”, and so we remained in bed.

Eventually, it did stop, but this was no small short thing. I don't know how long it lasted, or how strong it was, yet, but it was plenty strong enough. When it stopped we became aware that the electricity was off. We opened the bedroom door and found the pictures still on the walls, the chandelier now still and silent, but speakers on the floor and other pictures knocked over. Outside, there was no damage to be seen, and the neighbors were gathered nervously about. Upstairs from the balcony we could see a few broken windows across the street, and beyond them a much larger burst of gas and smoke cascading down Merapi... the Earth had burped.

I became conscious of running water, and wondered whose pipe had burst... it was mine. Miraculously, security came round on a bike at about the same time, and had a guy there to put a new spiggot on within fifteen minutes. Best service I've ever had here. He also told us of a house in the development with serious damage. We took a walk around, and I remembered coming up from the basement after tornadoes in Oklahoma City in 1969 or so. We found the house, and judging by the intactness of the houses and windows on either side of it, my guess is the owner will have some serious complaints to file with the building commission.

And then the fun really started. Got back to the house, hungry, and with the sweat just beginning to rise. No electricity, and the water break cost me the full tank of water above the house. No cell phone access, no way to know what was really happening. On top of that, there was gas for one pot of tea, and there would be no gas deliveries today, I was sure. But the phone lines were up, so we called the hotel, booked a room, and put a few things in some bags. I could go back later and collect the work for the weekend in a taxi. For now it was Yuli and me on her motorbike... which had very little gas.

Just before we left for the quick trip to the hotel, her sister called the home phone saying the beach area 20 km south of town had been hit by the quake and a Tsunami, and her family in that area was heading to town. A little panic in their voices, but a cousin in her house reminded them we are 300m above sea level here, so nothing too bad related to water can really happen. However, people here remember Aceh in their bones.

We pointed the bike towards the hotel and headed out of the development... Just before the gate, the family that runs the convenience shop ran out in a panic screaming "Air!" -- that's the word for "water". And you know what that means. We paused, but continued for the hotel, only to meet a mass evacuation heading the other way... and that was enough for Yuli, and she was driving. So there we were... caught up in the panic on a motorcycle with virtually no gas, and there was none to be found in the mass exodus. My laptop, scanner, music, camera, and phones were between my legs behind Yuli, and two of her bags were on her knees. We began twisting through a maze of thousands of twisting vehicles on narrow streets, heading for the hills... AND WHAT? … the active volcano spewing massive noxious 500 degree gas clouds and heavy lava floes. Nothing much made sense about that movement, and I felt pretty sure, despite the rumors of where the water was already, that this was just a panic... but nobody knew anything, and we couldn't go--

Ok -- I had to interrupt that sentence ... a big aftershock ran through us ... Everybody (but me) just fled the hotel, and Julia ran after them with a camera, but the tremor has passed. I'm not panicking, not even close, but I can tell you that I don't think you'll find me living in California anytime soon.

So I was saying, we couldn't move well against the flow of traffic, which was even going the wrong way on one-way streets with the encouragement of police, who also knew nothing about what was going on. (More than two hours later government spokespeople managed to tell everyone to turn around…)

Eventually, we didn't want to go any further without more gas, and we began to see one or two people coming the other direction saying the situation was safe, so we pulled over and watched the show. A couple of nice people came out of the house where we'd stopped and talked to us, and a couple of other motorcyclists pulled over and joined us. Soon just the cars were left pointing out of town, stuck and unable to turn around. The motorcycles had all poured back down the street. We realized we could coast most of the way down the street with the bike in neutral, and we did, and soon found a tiny gas station had opened and was doling out rations to bikes in need. We then braved the mess of traffic and police (and probably thieves), and finally gained the hotel at 9:30, 90 minutes of weirdness after leaving the house.

And that's been just the first 4 hours of this Saturday. Mom and Claude should be landing in Portland right about now... how wild the world.

Tried to send the above a couple of hours ago. Internet down, of course. Maybe it’s back up now. Waiting for our room to be cleaned before check-in, met a nice British Embassy couple who’d had a similar morning. Not taking the Tsunami thing seriously, but they hopped in someone else’s car and allowed themselves to be driven north to the nearest traffic jam as well.. you know the water was moving a lot faster than the jammed traffic… but you still had to be doing something while all around you beautiful barefoot people were panicking.

Now it’s far later, but most of you are still sleeping anyway. No taxis anywhere (those that weren’t digesting their personal damage had all gone to the nearest functioning airport, 30 km away in Solo, for the lucrative relief convoy runs), I found a becak (the bicycle coach) to run me home and back with the books and equipment I needed to prepare Monday’s workshop. 6.2… 1500 dead … two of Yuli’s family’s houses are gone (pictures sure to follow), processions to cemeteries. My house is in Northern Jogja. The earthquake epicenter was 15 miles south of where mom just bought all her batik. We were sooooo friggin’ lucky it ain’t funny.

Sunday: My City of Ruin

2006-05-31T14:30:00.000+07:00

By Sunday evening Yuli had finally broken down. It had to come. Amid sobs of “Why did this happen to my city?” and “I don’t want my city be like Aceh! The people have nothing now, and they are so poor!”, we digested our day, and the previous day, while we watched the death toll rise on TV.

We’d spent the day mostly apart. This weekend she was due to be supervising the packing of a shipment of fountains and lights, and their “stuffing” into a cargo container, but had been unable to get a response from her stoneworker, Roni, who lives in the South, all day Saturday. I’d had similar bad luck contacting Cahya, the Head Librarian responsible for my workshop Monday AM. The operator continued to return a “the number dialed is currently out of range.” Memories of riderless cellphones 9-11 and the Tsunami began to nag.

Over breakfast at the hotel I urged her to get on her bike and drive to him, and we stuffed a lot of fried chicken and bread from the buffet into a bag for her to drop with her family on the way. I got to work on my presentations, feeling naggingly cutoff from life like the journalists in the Hotel Saigon so long ago. My British Embassy friends were of like mind so we arranged a taxi to drive us into the trouble around 2:00. Meanwhile Julia text-messaged me the following: “I am at Roni house now. Poor Roni…” Left me wondering who was dead, what was standing.

She arrived back at the hotel just before Nick, Alex, Emma and I climbed into our taxi to go where she had just been. Yuli showed me pictures she had taken. Roni’s house was dust, the fountains that would have been safe if shipped a day earlier, destroyed, but his family intact. But she didn’t talk about it. Her face and body were still, very Javanese.

So Yuli stayed behind while the four of us headed by my University en route to the south. The campus is undergoing a thorough reconstruction, and several buildings had just been completed, but it was difficult to tell the new from the old, except for the fact that the older buildings were generally in better shape than the brand new ones. Mine, the Language Center, didn’t look too bad, and I looked forward to heading back and inside on Monday morning. Further south, the devastation began to get more prevalent. A new mall not open three months (and disgracefully misconceived anyway) would have to be leveled and rebuilt. An abandoned private Economics University leveled. Numerous one-room structures built between sturdier shops now spilled into the road.

We passed the café where Yuli and I met 7 months ago. Roni’s fountain lay collapsed in front of it, and then we hit the intersection marking the gateway to the sea, some ten km on. One lane each way, vehicles were at a standstill. One or two relief convoys and several ambulances sat stalled, lights flashing and sirens going, amid the flow of private cars and motorcycles carrying mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, and children loaded with boxes of noodles, powdered milk, water, and blankets to their kin. My embassy friends grew a little angry that the authorities themselves were doing little more than blowing whistles and chatting with voyeurs, rather than blocking all non-essentials from this road, one of only two connecting the stable north with the desperate south.

Not wanting to add our taxi to the blockage, we pulled over and walked a bit further. Soon it was impossible to make any more progress. Our imaginations filled in the blanks for what we couldn’t get to up ahead. My friends had enough info to update their office in Jakarta. On the way home we did see ONE store open for business, and undoubtedly doing very well. Guesses? Photo below.

Back at the hotel, Yuli and I reconnected for the meltdown. She’d been devastated by what she saw at Roni’s, and felt guilty that she hadn’t brought any food or drink with her when she went to find him. She looked at my photos, which stopped short of the total devastation she’d reached in less traffic on her motorbike earlier in the day. She saw the rain coming out the window, and told me that her family had moved to a leaky tarp on an adjacent football field for the night, because they were still afraid to sleep under their roof because the tremors, though weak, were still coming (My stack of books was now a heap in the hotel room). Yuli’s Jakarta-based kin had established contact, but had not yet offered shelter (as if anyone in her Jogja clan could get to J-town anyway).

As she sobbed, shivered, and shuddered in my arms, I began to realize that my spacious three-bedroom house, paid up through October, would inevitably become an oasis for a bundle of people we haven’t identified yet; the street outside the house is already clogged with the cars of similar refugees.

Later we went out to the poolside café and rendezvoused with the Brit-pack. Surreally, most of the cafe had been taken over by a 30-strong tour group of elderly Dutch tourists freshly arrived by plane and tour bus from Sumatra, on a two-week cruise through Indo. They’d been out to Borobodur Temple that morning! They drank, ate, smoked and talked loudly utterly disinterested in the disaster the rest of us were processing! It was truly offensive, especially because by the end of the evening, around 11 or so, the hotel had run out of beer and most of the appetizers and entrees on the menu. Thus, we began to remember reading about how the worst phase of a disaster tended to make itself apparent a few days after the disaster itself. Restaurants and nearly all stores had yet to reopen… and the supplies of the lucky were running very low.

Meanwhile I was still getting the same automatic response when I called Cahya, and I’d seen and heard enough to know that my normal work week, this one the busiest of my year here, would not go ahead as scheduled. So I used the last minutes of the hotel’s last wireless email voucher to cancel the morning’s workshop, even though I knew there was no need to make it official. Yuli and Emma, one of the Brit Embassy folk, made arrangements to head south in the morning for a survey with relief boxes on Yuli’s motorcycle.

Back in the room, Yuli was asleep in less than 2 minutes, and me very shortly after

Monday: Reason To Believe

2006-05-31T14:25:00.000+07:00

I called Cahyati again and got the same response. Yuli and Emma stuffed lunch sandwiches made from the buffet into Yuli’s bag, ate breakfast and headed south. I packed up the room, checked out of the hotel, and began the wait for a taxi, present now, but rare. I ran our stuff home, then went to the site of my workshop, intent on finding Cahyati (whose name means “the light”). At the seminar site, the American Corner of Gadja Made University (UGM), Indonesia’s largest and most famous, I met the Director of Libraries as he came out of the building. We had talked several times, and he and Cahya took me out to lunch recently as thanks for a year-long teacher training seminar series I’d volunteered to do for them at their library.

He glanced up at me and did not recognize me. When I offered a salutation to his hunched back, recognition dawned. He’d returned from Singapore on Saturday via Solo (it was a holiday weekend) and found his entire family on the street. His house was badly damaged, but still there with water wells functional and safe. Cahya was far less lucky. Her phone was destroyed by the roof and walls she dodged when she and her family fled their compound in the morning. But she and her family are alive, at least! He told me there was nothing left of the house, and she had been by his two hours before looking for food. Another of the library staff had still not been located, most of the Univerisity staff lived in the same area and were in similar straits, and he was extremely concerned. I left my number and a note for Cahya, and headed to my University, not far away.

There I found my office building in far worse shape than I’d expected, and learned that the jewels of the University, the mosque and Rectorate, had been condemned. However, only one of my colleagues had experienced significant damage to self or property. My office looks like it’s been searched by the ATF, and there are ominous cracks all over the place, but other than that… I’m only guessing now that all the planning we’ve been doing and locking into place will be postponed indefinitely…

Back in the taxi, I headed home with nagging concerns about Cahya and my lack of action on the relief front. Impulsively, I told the driver to head back to the UGM library. The librarian drew me a map that would lead to Cahya’s Kampung, adjacent to the nationally famous Jogja Silver Market. He said “next to the silver market look down a narrow alley where there are no houses left. She lives there.”

I found a few kilos of rice, a carton of cookies and drinking water, and headed to the Silver Market, past a couple of empty army personnel jeeps, and on to the most depressing sites I’ve yet witnessed with my own eyes. Dust clouds everywhere. Most everything devastated and nothing completely intact. We turned right at the market and, as per the map, looked for near-total destruction across the street. Sure enough, there it was…

I stopped the taxi, got out, and began looking for people at the scene. I passed a group of soldiers focused on clearing the debris in front of one and only one relatively undamaged home. “Hello, boss,” one of them said as I worked past them. How much had the homeowner paid them to do this? Not finding anyone, I turned down an alley showing nothing but rubble, and began making my way. Eventually I came into what was now a courtyard, but what two days ago had been the entryway to two homes on opposite sides of the street. The front walls and ceilings had crumbled and been somewhat cleared. Now there were sleeping mats laid out in the sun, and bits of brick everywhere. Up a little further, in a bit of house with a roof that still offered piecemeal shelter from sun and rain, an elderly couple and two grandchildren waited out the heat.

When they saw me they smiled and rose. Using body and Bahasa Indonesia, I apologized for my intrusion and their situation, and told them who I was looking for. By there response, I knew that this was they way everybody found each other here. They ran a few similar names by me, but they didn’t match. I told them where she worked and what she did there ( I HAVE learned a bit of the language after all!). By this time several other members of their Kampung had appeared, and a younger man told me he knew some UGM people lived closer to the Market.

There were so many smiles there. How quickly these people adapt to their condition. Like Yuli said yesterday, they have so little, and are so poor! They lose their homes, which they’ve been building piece by piece for generations. They lack secure access to water and food. And yet they smile because things aren’t worse than they are. Let that be a lesson to all of us.

I headed back down towards the market, and stumbled up two more alleys, reenacting the same encounters. Eventually someone I talked to knew exactly where to find Cahya’s dwelling. I looked where he was pointing and saw nothing. I stumbled on and made a right where he’d pointed, bowing to an old, gap-toothed couple on a makeshift swing swaying in the midst of debris piles, saw a door jammed shut on two-thirds of a wall, when a voice called from behind me.

“Tom?” And there she was. She led me back a ways and I realized I’d missed her and her sister and mom in their garden, such as it was. When there houses collapsed, Cahya’s family expanded instantly to include her walled-off neighbors on three sides. Now there were 75 of them, sharing tarpaulins, one or two intact toilets (without direct water supply), and a large, brand new courtyard where there had been rooms. The working cell phone belonged to her father. I stayed a few minutes, surveyed the damage, delivered the food, got a list of what they really needed (powdered milk for the children, rice, batteries, flashlights, candles, and sugar), took some pictures. Sure would be easier to be a child. They ran around, shouted, flirted with my camera (and my buleness). Cahya smiled, though she and her family were obviously exhausted, and said, quite sincerely, “at least we are alive.” Her father waved at the truly impressive bamboo and tarpaulin shelter they had lashed together and said “we will have to live like this for one or two months.” I looked around me and was thankful that, despite the occasional rain, the dry season had only just begun. They will need most of it to re-shelter themselves indoors.

Then I headed back north, much closer to the active volcano, to where it looks like nothing has happened. To my house, which I will soon figure out to whom to offer its shelter, where the burst water pipe has been repaired, where I have just finished off a second beer while writing this entry, where I have re-filled the water tank and used my washing machine to catch up on the laundry backlog (the housekeeper, understandably, has vanished), stopping off at the KFC for victuals for Yuli and me, and at the supermarket, where I located powdered milk, rice, and sugar to go with the flashlights I’ll donate to Cahya with Yuli later today.

I’m thinking about how fortunate I am. The biggest reason Yuli and I are better off than most here is that I’m American and earn nearly 30 times the average salary here. I can take one look at a townhouse in the suburbs, cough up $2500 for the year without blinking, and know not from what I am saving myself. I too, am grateful that things are not worse than they are. And I smile. And I understand that it’s gonna be a waste of time to be angry at the forces that prevent this government from reaching Cahya with rice and milk, which aren’t very different from the ones that prevented my government from reaching all the Cahyas in New Orleans.

Yuli’s Day 3

Meanwhile, Yuli took Brit Embassy rep Emma, to the epicenter, and located most of the remaining members of Yuli’s local family, and saw still more. Among the anecdotes I’ve heard…

Her family gave her and Emma bamboo bracelets to protect them from future earthquakes. Yuli delivered our stolen hotel towels to her family, and they immediately recognized them as baby blankets for this cold wet (it is raining heavily now) night.

One of her family members is a renowned shadow-puppeteer, and he has still not been heard from by anyone. One of the pictures she took today is of a destroyed family home, flattening its gamelan orchestra and shadow puppet stage.

Saturday morning, her cousin’s baby was saved by a chest of drawers that fell across her bed, stopping propped above her, and absorbing the wall that fell next. With some struggle, they could pull the baby free, unhurt.

Family at another destroyed home fed Yuli and Emma with the best of what they had: some turnip-like roots and tea; it would not have been proper to decline the offer.

Roni’s people set Emma straight on what his community had received, what they still needed, and what neighboring communities had yet to get; his neighbors had, I suppose understandably, made their own situation out to be far worse than it currently was, dire as it may have been. Unlike their own area, nearby, doctors and tents have yet to arrive.

Looking in her eyes, I see that she is relieved to have done as much good as she could today.

Settled Down Like Rain

2006-05-31T14:23:00.000+07:00

The situation is settling. My former radio show host, Orly, who lost a lot of her SMSed me that she was happy her family were alive, and that now they “just have to live without roofs”, as it would be impossible to rebuild it. How’s that for optimism?

My routine is to eat breakfast in the hotel and eavesdrop on the relief agencies’ talk of spreadsheets, written job descriptions, logistics needs, and introduce myself here and there where someone might decide I can offer something they understand that they need. I’ve met 5 big orgs thus far. Save the Children, finally, asked me to help them find some local sharp English speakers to help them set up their office and provide advice, translation, and logistics. I felt good to have them sorted out within the hour. Orly (above) and Sas (who helped me find my house way back when) were two of the three. It looks like Yuli’s cousin is the third.

Meanwhile, Yuli’s stories from last night include the following:

One village of rice farmers (most of the worst hit are rice farmers), had just finished a harvest, so they have rice. But their buildings fell down Saturday, and the pounding rains soaked their rice crop. They dried it in the hot baking sun today, cooked it, and ate it, and made themselves sick.

She saw a Kampung of wrecked homes backing on to a police station, and learned that no one from the station had offered any help. She passed a nearly empty tent provided by the government for a small village, and entered the next town nearby. When she told the homeless people in the fields of the next village to go to the tent, they said they were not allowed.

Two days before, Yuli’s brother Joko went south and eventually found a very young girl in a torn sleeveless top tugging at his pant leg. “Please I want my arms to be covered because I am cold.” And undoubtedly hungry. "Where is your mother," he asked. "She is dead." "Where is your father?" " I don't know. Somewhere in Saudi Arabia." Later in the evening, listening to the rain, he decided to go back to her village. The family convinced him to form a family motorcade with food and supplies today. Ten motorcycles circled the southern half of the worst hit area, dropping off noodles, rice, water, milk, blankets, and clothing, all stimulated by that one little girl, whom they never found. They found the local victims becoming desperate, aggressive, and threatening in the presence of food on motorcycles. But today they will cook all morning, and head out again in the afternoon.

It’s warming to know that they cannot be the only family making this kind of effort under these conditions.

2006-05-31T13:55:00.000+07:00

This is the shelter Roni's community built beside the fetid irrigation canal by one of the area rice fields. Both unable and unwilling to sleep under a roof, these people, four days and two torrential downpours later, are still waiting for a tent...

2006-05-31T13:47:00.000+07:00

because this is his home. Nothing to the left or right of it is up either.

2006-05-31T13:30:00.000+07:00

This is the new mall that opened just a few months ago, which should never have been built in the first place. It smelled troughout of multiple quick money-laundering schemes, and seeing as no one was hurt in its collapse, and no one could have been making a profit on their business within, I'm thrilled it now stands as a lesson to all concerned. Let's pray they learn.

2006-05-31T13:15:00.000+07:00

And then we gout to the edge of town

2006-05-31T13:09:00.000+07:00

Further into South Jogjakarta on Sunday, more and more of what we saw began to look like this.

2006-05-31T12:52:00.000+07:00

The day 2 traffic jam. Actually, everyday -- private aid -- noodles and water heading south so family and friends and refugees (some) can have supper. it's heartwarming and reassuring to know that I live in a place like this, but it also leads to the next picture...

2006-05-31T12:44:00.000+07:00

Leads to the stalled ambulance barely visible in the upper left corner... lights flashing and siren wailing all the same.

2006-05-31T12:39:00.000+07:00

Yes, this was the one shop open for business the day after the quake. Remember Eastwood in (I think) A Fistful of Dollars? It was just like that.

2006-05-31T11:51:00.000+07:00

In my search for Cahya, this view of near-nothingness on a Silver Market sidestreet...

2006-05-31T09:43:00.000+07:00

Led to this view of more nothing.

2006-05-31T09:31:00.000+07:00

This is Cahya, Head Librarian of the American Corner library at Universitas Gadja Mada. This was her home.

2006-05-31T09:27:00.000+07:00

Life goes on. The washing must be done. 75 people in Cahya's compound.

2006-05-31T09:22:00.000+07:00

Standing where Cahya's back wall was, looking across her home to her front door...

2006-05-31T09:17:00.000+07:00

This was the extent of a Relief Kitchen two days ago.

2006-05-31T09:01:00.000+07:00

As far as we know, the only member of Yuli's widespread family yet to be heard from is a renowned shadow puppeteer. This is one of Yuli's family homes, with a demolished uppet stage visible sticking out of the ruins.

2006-05-30T13:13:00.000+07:00

A grandfather without shelter diapers his grandson in plastic wrap.

2006-05-30T12:41:00.000+07:00

The old man emerging from behind the pole in the foreground has just bathed in the fetid canal at the bottom, and is returning to his wife by the blue tarp. They are in a ruined school's yard, and we know where the next stage of the disaster will come from now.

2006-05-30T11:40:00.000+07:00

Last but not least, back in town, Yuli found one of our favorite hang outs. we took the other Fellows here one night in November. It is (was) owned and run by a friend of hers and her ex-pat husband.

Under the Sea

2006-04-23T17:53:00.000+07:00

On nearly an impulse, upon the discovery of a surprise national four-day weekend (these appear unpredicably now and then), and with mom and Claude's visit next month, we decided to off to the sea and become divers...

So there we were a few days later on Lombok, the next-door polite and quiet neighbor to relatively raucous Bali. We'd spotted a just-about-right in all ways resort on the beach on the Internet, and Julia'd done her magic thing about the prices, and there it was, our bungalow for four nights...At the beachside front edge of this tranquil garden, with only the occasional hawker, a pack of beach dogs, and the crashing of the waves. We didn't see the sun for four days (will this rainy season EVER end?), but who's counting anymore now. It's absence didn't affect our adventure,
whose hosts we found right next door to our bungalow in the dining room.
Our plans now fixed (Julia did that magic thing with money again, and I played along), we went to the beach to learn about crashing Indian Ocean waves, currents, and crunchy sand in nasty places... Orange shirt courtesy of Hilton Head, NC, circa 1998.

2006-04-23T17:36:00.000+07:00

So the next day, after the swimming pool lessons it was on the kit,
Out to the beautiful blue Gilley islands,
Where there are no cars or roads...
Imagine what's going on down there, then go find out for ourselves with our instructor Pak Lulu...
2 dives later, a little euphoria, and after our exam the next morning, we're Open Water certified and ready to go diving with Claude next month...

Last Stop in Kaliurang: The Japanese Caves

2006-04-23T16:50:00.000+07:00

So we were heading back to Jogja in the car when Julia pointed to a sign that said "Japanese caves -->". Having just finished Neal Stephenson's fabulous Cryptonomicon, in which a great deal of the story hinges on Japanese caves buried in dense Philippines jungle, I couldn't resist. We were all a bit tired out after our morning hike, and needing to get home, but a quick stop seemed the thing to do.

The attendant assured us the caves were just a kilometre over that way, and yes, the walk was easy and sandals were fine... besides tickets were only a nickel apiece. Who could say no? We chuckled at the sign below, posted at the entrance to the park:

This sign is a joke. OK, it isn't really a joke... but yes it is, really a joke. It says "no litter here", and maybe but I don't remember for sure, MAYBE there really wasn't any litter right there. In it's larger context, however, it means "no litter in this area" which probably meant in the park area. I still haven't found a way to understand how such a huge percentage of a population can make such a dumping ground of their entire living space -- work and office areas, outdoor areas, gardens, driveways, streets... nothing is spared... That's why the walk in the jungle below and observing the "buffalo soldiers" and "sand haulers" working in their pristine habitat is so interesting... it's just the city and townfolk who befoul their space...why?

Anyway -- on with the the little cave excursion...

2006-04-23T16:42:00.000+07:00

Neal Stephenson knew what he was talking about. The trek to the caves was anything but a walk in the park. The three of us were getting pretty bitchy after about twenty minutes in fairly broiling sun sliding around in sandals. We'd already seen the views, after all, and this was just supposed to be a little hop over to some WWII relics to inform my imagination of scenes described in that fantastic novel...

So we took a seat at a thoughtfully-provided rest bench, and, if only she'd taken off her sunglasses, we had ourselves our first near-perfect pic.

Climax

2006-04-23T16:28:00.000+07:00

And at last, after nearly 30 minutes straight uphill in sandles, following our gruelling sweat-soaked morning hike, our "short stop" on the way back home delivered us here. We'd even stopped to ask a bunch of teenagers hanging out on the path if we'd lost the way, and they pointed us around the corner saying "just over there".

They were giggleing behind us as we trudged on. When we finally got to the three little holes in the mountainside, and that's all they were, I remembered the ticket seller in his booth by the smelly neglected pool at the bottom of the hill. It sure had seemed like a nickel wasn't much to support the upkeep of a local tourist sight.

And there is no support. Absolutely no information up here. No way to know the Japanese blasted these caves, or when. And the truth is, no one cares... here on this mountain of love... among the giggling teenagers as a middle-aged bule jumped the queue trailing two beautiful young Asian women... after taking flash photos in all 3 fully-occupied caves we were back out of there and heading down the hill in a hurry! I even tried to discourage one European family from continuing on their trek to where we had just been led. No success, I fear.

Ziggy

2006-04-23T16:24:00.000+07:00

This honestly real and as big as my hand tarantula watched the monkies' return engagement with us from our jungle box seats, and beat the scorpion in the Royal Palace in Ubud last year for creepiness.

To everything a season

2006-04-23T16:17:00.000+07:00

Can't begin to explain, but this IS seasonal coloring, or maybe this tree is just sick... but it's the only non-green I have seen in 20-odd months in Indo. And two weeks ago on our last visit it was green. On that seasonal note -- Julia brought a couple of plants onto my patio in December. Soon after that, they were just sticks in dirt, and I figured the leaves had been a tasty snack for our little lizard friends, or for our lizard friends' tasty snacks. But last month I saw leaves all over these two plants, and a week ago they sprouted honest-to-God roses! How cool is that??? Seasonal plants still know when it's supposed to be winter even when there is no winter!!! Do they teach that in grade school?

2006-04-23T16:10:00.000+07:00

On the return visit the weather was better and I expected a five o'clock monkey show, so I actually scored some almost OK pictures of the tribe that flies through the jungle and over our railing when we visit Kaliurang. This was a newbie, however, and one of a kind. I forget what the hotel staff called him, but the poor guy's a loner -- the only one of his species here (boy, does THAT sound familiar!), and is forever crashing through the trees and dropping to the jungle floor tagging along behind the resident "natives" -- who are much smaller but greater in number. The others are further along down the road...

Return to the Mountain of Love

2006-04-23T15:57:00.000+07:00

We had such rich weekend that we went back for more two weeaks later. Something ominous about all that smoke, dontcha think? Well, hiked up to the vest viewpoint again, and this time I bought one of the pics of the last time Merapi wasn't feeling too loving: here it is...

You know, it's hugely embarrassing to admit this, but I've had a spectacular view of Merapi from my balcony for the last seven months in this house, AND NEVER NOTICED! You think maybe I don't need two floors? Truth is, it's rarely visible because it's been rainy and cloudy nearly the whole time... but

The tigers and monkies and all the non-male, non-twenty-to-thirty something population of the mountain have fled their homes on Merapi, because she is apparently not feeling too happy. That lava-bed floor in the pics below will soon be covered with a fresh gift, and I may still be watching from my balcony. Here's hoping it all ends OK. More special sand and other gifts for the local industries...

Mountain of Love

2006-04-23T15:12:00.000+07:00

A weekend in Kaliurang, at the base of Mt. Merapi, one of Java's most active volcanoes. Much to learn here, about how many ways this mountain is loved, and loves in return. We watched tourists, mountain-dwellers, and wildlife interact with the smoking beast for a couple of wonderful days. It started here.

2006-04-23T15:08:00.000+07:00

The Mountain of Love says, "Hello, newcomer!"

2006-04-23T15:04:00.000+07:00

Love was everywhere... including right here at the front of the park, at the base of a tall falls... Somehoe I think it has ALWAYS been like this here.

2006-04-23T14:59:00.000+07:00

At first, quiet was difficult to find. The whole weekend proved to be a fascinating experience in observing two utterly separate cultures use the park, jungles, and the Mountain of Love, Merapi. Today was the day of the tourists... this gentleman was sure we were going to collapse at some point and he would then be able to feed his family for a week on the proceeds from the water sales he would score. We played hide and seek (actually, more like "red light, green light", but I eventually stopped and let him pass us so he would get the message. There wasn't much on this first hike that let us feel we were in the wild, but it was still an interesting walk, and we scored the guide for the next day's adventure during it.

2006-04-23T14:24:00.000+07:00

Once out of the park's main entry areas, it didn't take long for the paths to assume a remote feel... I believe this is the first time I've noticed what those famous jungle vines of cartoon and literary lore are actually made of...

2006-03-11T12:24:00.001+07:00

No wonder Johnny Weismuller, Christophe Lambert and the other Lords of Greystoke Manor never crashed... these "vines" which I always assumed were thin and stringy, if tough, are MASSIVE... can't even close my fist around it.

2006-03-11T12:24:00.000+07:00

2006-03-11T12:21:00.000+07:00

Hiding along the path among the Tarzan vines... every nook and cranny contained a couple like this -- some in full religiously mandated dress, others a little more liberal. Really reminded me of a certain nation's "parking" tradition... the Mountain of Love's Lover's Lane...

Welcome to the monkeyhouse...

2006-03-11T12:03:00.000+07:00

Don't forget to click...

Unlike the fun "monkey forest" in Ubud on Bali, there is nothing "staged" about the monkeys everywhere here in the forests and jungles on these mountains. These monkeys, hanging out around the paths to the mountaintops in the park, are not the same ones that treaterd us to spectacular performances in the jungle across from our phenomenal $30/night terrace seats... We watched them tiptoe through the treetops behind our hotel, over our heads, and across the ravine our room is perched on... we watched a mother WITH BABY just like the one in these pictures... launch herself Evel Knievel style over Snake River 20 meters from one flimsy branch to a flimsier one in another tree...looked like she was bungee jumping with her child in tow... Who needs movies and TVs? We got two shows on a giant screen with excellent surround sound, and beer, books, appetizers and each other that ran for over an hour each... utterly relaxing, fasinating, and entertaining...

2006-03-11T12:00:00.000+07:00

After the travelling monkey theater show had exited stage left the way they had come, the curtain came down, slowly but steadily, until the jungle stage was removed from our view. I took this shot right after the actors left. Not to worry, though, the curtain was back up by sunrise, and at noon just before checkout we caught a matinee performance from a different, much larger, monkey company...

2006-03-11T11:58:00.000+07:00

And here she is (why is she a "she")... our motivation for coming... what I discovered to be the mountain of love herself... the steaming, never dormant Mount Merapi!

2006-03-11T11:55:00.000+07:00

Another view of the Mountain of Love, the great giver...

2006-03-11T11:51:00.000+07:00

"I think I'm a train." Complete with amplified train noises one can hear from the mountaintops, like the mosques. Purpose the same, I guess: attract customers... Pity.

2006-03-10T23:26:00.000+07:00

Little White Riding Hood and the big red wolf guide?

2006-03-10T23:23:00.000+07:00

This jungle even featured a crawlspace tunnel in the mountainside that was none too short! No wonder I came home and got the wart excised!

2006-03-10T23:21:00.000+07:00

There's a dog on the waterworks, and a human dwafed by the size of the world that sustains her...

2006-03-10T23:20:00.000+07:00

Here's one of the folks who never litters... can you see her? She's bent over two-thirds of the way up the riverbank, collecting feed for her livestock, no doubt, and maybe for her family.

2006-03-10T23:18:00.000+07:00

Don't you just think King Kong and ther dinosaurs are gonna come stampeding around the bend? Better tell my friends to run for cover.

2006-03-10T23:17:00.000+07:00

Mother and child from who knows how far away, Sunday morning washing.

2006-03-10T23:15:00.000+07:00

More on this particular labor later, but that bushel of grass is as large as the man himself. So many people live off this volcano and jungle...

2006-03-10T23:13:00.000+07:00

I believe our guide told us this lava bed dates from the most recent eruption, six years ago. Gave me pause, for a bit, that did, what with the smoke billowing out of Merapi I'd just observed...

2006-03-10T23:12:00.000+07:00

From a distance and without squinting this looks like a pleasant if somehwat inclined Sunday morning strolling exercise group...

2006-03-10T23:11:00.000+07:00

Zoom in a little closer and we see bent bodies crawling up the steep slope under sandbags... Merapi's gift of excellent-grade concrete mix..

2006-03-10T18:35:00.000+07:00

Picture looks simple enough... it's 9:00 AM Sunday, and those little white dots are already filled with sand gifted to the people that live off the Mountain of Love. Each laborer can haul about 30 bags in a day, stage by stage, and each bag nets about 30 cents.

2006-03-10T18:31:00.001+07:00

Lava has never been better displayed, me thinks... and Julia too.

2006-03-10T18:31:00.000+07:00

Although this TOO is pretty impressive. We climbed up and around this wall -- trust me, we were tiny in comparison...

2006-03-10T18:29:00.000+07:00

Though mostly green, our guide pointed out a whole bunch of brightly-colored flora and vegetation he said was used for a great many malarial-like cures. He even ate some fruit... I've learned... I passed.

2006-03-10T18:28:00.000+07:00

A clash of civilizations: Our child of the jungle Guide, our javanese tourist, and a Sunday morning worker collecting food for the area water buffalo... he was one of the few men doing this work that we saw -- most were women, and they looked like they'd been spending Sunday mornings this way for a long time...

2006-03-10T18:26:00.000+07:00

Must end on a sad note. The last contact we had with the folks that live off the jungle, before rejoining the "litterati" tourist crowd under the mountain love: Sundays collecting water buffalo food begin very early in life. This boy isn't ten, and he isn't standing straight, and he isn't wearing shoes... and we wonder why some peole grow up to be short and bent...

Radio Days

2006-02-26T21:42:00.000+07:00

As always, I have SO much to update, but I'll try to go one story at a time. But first here's another story with a bad pic called "Radio Days". Finally got this part of my plan for the year off the ground. You can't tell much from this pic, but I'm guesting every week now on an English language radio show on a student-run radio station in Jogja, 95 Fm. I'm there for the whole hour, maybe 20 minutes of talk and call in and sms, broken up by songs and ads. Each week a different theme. Good fun gets me out to a wider audience so more folks out there can start to get the sense that folks of my sort ain't so bad after all.

2006-02-26T21:41:00.000+07:00

Last weekend Julia and I hit the mountains nearby for a spectacular hike through King Kong/Skull Island-type terrain. Hopefully some pics up later this week, but today's installment has to take precedence. There are monkeys in this pic... click for a better view.

2006-02-26T21:35:00.000+07:00

My little friend was six months old. I didn't even know I had the little friend until my cousin-in-law Patti told me it wasn't a callous but a wart while in Carolina for New Year's.It was already 4 months old by then. The standard Western treatments weren't gonna discourage it, though I tried them. Julia tried the traditional Indo home remedy a couple of times, but it just hurt a lot. If in the US, I would have been able to walk into a dermatologist's and frozen the bugger and watch it fall off in a week, but I delayed consulting a physician in Indo, because that's not what happens here.

2006-02-26T21:22:00.000+07:00

The pain got so bad on that mountain hike last week tthat I knew I was gonna have to bite the bullet… and today I very nearly bit one literally… herewith the story of our adventure in the (I kid you not) Happyland Medical Center. Pictures courtesy of my personal nurse Julia, except for this one… notice how much more reassuring and attractive she looks than the water stain by the lightbulb in the ceiling or in this next pic of the patient’s elevator – mind the bare brick. Yesterday we made the appointment for today’s fun and games in a fairly polished looking office staffed and frequented by very very conservatively dressed Indonesian women, and we know that means. Imagine the giggles from nurse Julia as I answered her question about the brightly backlit sign over the reception desk advertising a treatment partnership with the “LVR Institute” in Los Angeles… where the L stands for “Laser” and the R for “rejuventation” and the V for …well… not writing that here…

2006-02-26T21:20:00.000+07:00

Note the brick...

2006-02-26T21:19:00.000+07:00

The emergency room where the surgery took place was a different story, however, and I have to say everything went swimmingly despite some of the comments and pics you'll see here. We made sure the doc here knew I was developing education programs for the main Islamic University in town, after which I had to show him which toe housed my little friend-- which involved ME, from a prone position, manhandling the light so that it showed HIM, rather than ME, my well-lit foot. His nurse was too busy turning OFF the AC (see my study on AC below) to help improve on his lighting job. MY nurse had the AC back on in seconds!

2006-02-26T21:18:00.000+07:00

The first of the gross-out pictures. Julia was pretty grossed-out by the color of the covering on my foot. For someone who can�t watch Lord of the Rings by herself, she sure handled the needle better than me. This is the only thing that hurt, but gawdditithurt! This is the bite the bullet part, and HIS nurse knew it (see the restraining arms?). The volume of the anesthetic shoved in here was pretty much the volume of my toe, which was (as you will see later, if you�re still here) just about the volume of my little friend� That said I never moved or cried�

2006-02-26T21:17:00.000+07:00

The gross stuff here is blessedly obliterated, but I made sure I witnessed the sanitization process for those horrid tools, felt nothing other than a strong tugging sensation that instantly took me back to my wisdom teeth session about 20 years ago -- what a surprise memory THAT was!

2006-02-26T21:16:00.000+07:00

Speaking of wisdom teeth, look at the size of that thing! In my middle toe! John Hurt and Ridley Scott have some competition... Thank goodness Patti set me straight and told me my friend was not a callous. I just thought I was getting old... good to know I'm not ;-) So here's the thing itself...

2006-02-26T21:15:00.000+07:00

And here is the space it vacated� click for a more-detailed view�

2006-02-26T21:11:00.001+07:00

Doc might make a fine tailor�

2006-02-26T21:11:00.000+07:00

When he finished he counted my toes to make sure they were all still there, then I stood up on them� Joyce and Bob please note the shirt I�m wearing� Nurse and I went to the pool. Then the anesthetic wore off and I groaned and moaned and hobbled for an hour while the pain pill kicked in. Now it�s working like a dream. I can�t swim or wear shoes for ten days. The 85 registered participants in a big workshop I�ve been invited to run tomorrow an hour out of town will have to forgive me. As will the 40 on Tuesday and the thirty I get every day at the University� but me? I�ll be hiking that wonderful mountain pain-free in a couple of weeks. Pics to follow�

She

2006-02-02T18:47:00.000+07:00

Reasons why it’s great to have Julia… Salsa class partner, gardens my patio, interfaces with the housekeeper, occasional transport, wonderful cuddler...

Two Saturdays ago she asked me to teach her to dive, and Sunday in Kemang in a new bathing suit Mick brought her from Oz, she was busy showing off. Next she learned gin rummy, and now kicking my butt is just a matter of time. Then there’s her authentic Indonesian immensely painful method of wart removal (root by root, involving tweezers)… at least it doesn’t take months…

When we walk together in malls I have to block her view of the mirrors or it takes us twice as long to get anywhere (this is not an illness unique to Julia, more like a national pastime)…

and then I go to Jakarta for a week of 5-star hotels and intensive conferencing, she joins me for the end… the day we’re supposed to go back to Jogja I wake up a little crampy… by the evening, despite fun with Mick, I’m at the SOS clinic shaking uncontrollably with a 40 degree fever… and she’s right there massaging my feet and legs, adjusting the blanket and heat lamp as I sweat or chill, and watching me drift in and out for two hours while we wait for the test results. That night as I turn the bed into a salt water swimming pool she keeps pulling me onto dry land… in the moring I discover she slept on a 2 inch strip of dry bed, giving the rest of it to me. What a wonder!

Cross-cultural studies involving A/C

2006-02-02T18:40:00.000+07:00

Case Study the First

On a recent Friday night, in need of an air-conned, ex-pat break from the otherwise paradisiacal environment that is Jogja, I pointed a cab to the ritziest 5-star hotel in the town center. Once there I headed for the bar through the cooled foyer and shopping arcade. The spacious, plush bar had a stage at one end, pool table at another, horseshoe in the middle, and leather chairs, couches, and tables throughout… It was 9:00 on a Friday, I was the only one there… me and my John Lennon biography.

I ordered a beer… by the time it came I noticed the air felt a bit still and warm, like Jogja air nearly always does, and which I wanted to pay good money to escape this night. Looking past the waiter, I noticed the double door entrance to the patio was open.

I asked the waiter if there was AC. “Yes sir” laughing (laughing is usually a sign of embarrassment, or covering up non-comprehension).

“Oh. Is it on?” Laughing, “Yes Sir.”

I smiled warmly. I said, “It feels warm,” and pointed to a little moisture on my shirt.

“Ah.” Laughing. He points to the door. “The doors are open.”

We can both see them. “Oh really?”

“Yes sir.” No laughing (this is an indisputable fact, so no need for embarrassment or possibility of misunderstanding). He has clarified the situation.

“I see.” I’m still waiting for him to suggest closing the door, but I’ve been here long enough to know that’s not going to happen.

The humidity and staff hover near my table. My skin and shirt take on a glow as my beer glass slowly drains. Before it hits bottom, a female waitress pounces and asks if I’ll be wanting another. I surrender, and determine to reopen the a/c inquisition. By this time a pair of bules has entered and are drinking at the bar, also pawing over rock music books. So there are three of us, at 9:30 on a Friday night. Why is this huge place so dead? We wonder not.

She returns with the beer, and no joke, this is how the conversation starts:

I asked the waiter if there was AC. “Yes sir” laughing.

“Oh. Is it on?” Laughing, “Yes Sir.”

I smiled warmly. I said, “It feels warm,” and pointed to a lot of moisture on my shirt.

“Ah.” Laughing. She points to the door. “The doors are open.”

We can both see them. “Oh really?”

“Yes sir.” No laughing. She has clarified the situation.

“I see.” I’m still waiting for her to suggest closing the door, but I’ve been here long enough to know that’s not going to happen.

So I take the initiative. “Do you think if we close them it is cool?”

HUGE laughter and nodding, but no “yes.”

“Do you think you can close them? I’m very warm here.”

Still more loud laughter, but she nods and says “yes sir”. She is uncomfortable because she did not open the doors in the first place, and closing them will require that she assume responsibility for possibly going against another staff person’s desire, and causing loss of face.

Still, she closes them, 20 minutes later it starts to feel cooler, the other two bules and I make friends, play some pool, have a cigar, sing a song in memory of Wilson Pickett RIP who had died a few hours earlier, and have a great time.

Then we got the bill. A plate of calamari, 3 x $6 beers and a pitcher, for $50 bucks in a town where anywhere else the price would have been about a third of that, and we had to fight for the a/c. On this Friday night by 11:00 there had been a maximum of eight customers, and you wonder why.

Case Study the Second.

The next night I again want classy cool comforts, and Julia and I hop into a cab to find a couple of new places we’ve heard about for dinner. Bumbu Payon is the spot we settle on. Looks pretty nice, in the wide-open Jogja way. Several large rooms with big French doors opening onto cross-ventilated patios, and the outside temperature’s really OK, but I spot one big room at the back with several wall-mounted a/c units and settle on this room.

There are no other customers in this room, and only one other paying couple visible anywhere. The tables in my room are all set and waiting. I ask the waiter if he can turn on the A/C…

Laughter.

“This room is for big parties.”

“Oh. I see. Are you expecting a party tonight?”(it IS Saturday after all)

Laughter “There’s no reservation yet.”

“Oh, well, can we eat here, and we’ll move if a party comes?”

Laughter. “Of course sir.”

“Great. Could you please turn on the a/c?”

“There is a $2.50 charge for the a/c.”

Laughter. “No way.”

Laughter. “Yes sir.”

No laughter. “Crazy.” We took a table on one of the patios, had a pretty nice meal. The a/c would have amounted to a 25% surcharge…

Case Study the Third

Sunday afternoon, Julia and I went to a big franchise of pretty decent quality called Dixie Diner. 3 floors, 2^nd floor enclosed in glass and lined with a/c, all on, all the time. I/we’d been there several times before in my four months here in Jogja. The place is usually bustling with families and university students. Service is good and friendly, music unobstrusive except when the band is playing and then it’s gypsy kings style stuff and pretty darn good. We stayed there two hours, had a second round of iced coffees in our cool comfy cushy sofa, paid about $15, more than for dinner the previous night, and didn’t mind a bit. I’ll probably be back again next week.

Analysis

It just blows my mind sometimes. The staff at a massively overpriced hotel bar, potentially the most comfortable place for big-spending bules within a 40-minute driving radius, had trained potential customers not to come there for fear of the climate and the price-gouging. Local staff usually know no better than to keep themselves comfortable, and just don’t understand that they can drive away the best customers by doing that. They never see many customers in any decent restaurant in town, so they don’t expect any in their own joints. They DO get cold when the a/c is working and the doors are closed, and this tends to be frightening, but they are not the ones who pay to come through the doors…

The restaurant that charged for a/c? Do I need to say anything about how often I’ll go back there even though the food was fairly good?

Related Summary of Studies in Bar/Club Music

Elsewhere in Jogja, bar staff also control the music, and this usually makes the situation even worse, as their taste gravitates to current brainless heavy-beat electronica and drum stuff at impossible volumes that most bules run from. No conversation possible. Seems to be made for E…

So where’s the managerial oversight? These hands-off owners/managers who leave everything in the hands of their staff whom they pay insultingly and train not at all…are losing profits hand over fist…

Born in the USA and Proud of It

2006-02-02T18:18:00.000+07:00

Last weekend I got a taste of why I’m doing this kind of work. My supervisor, Regional English Language Officer (RELO) Damon Anderson, came to town and suggested I join him at a closing ceremony outside of town. A kampung with nothing but a mosque and an Islamic grade school had applied to (RELO) and the UN for funding for five networked PCs, dial-up internet access, and two years of English and technology classes for 60 teenagers in a bid to jump-start their economy and start the crawl out of dire poverty.

Here we're having tea with the Kampung officials before the ceremony. Note the shoeless professionalism of some of us.

The two years are up. The road to Pabelan is the busy, business-lined road to the tourist attraction of Mount Merapi, but make a left about 35 minutes out of town and the road virtually disappears as Pabelan’s huts hover in the green. There is nothing here, suddenly, and obviously no road out for anyone… until now.

Pabelan’s industry is crickets, frogs, and fish. The new English-speaking technologically literate teenagers have built websites for their family businesses, and they proudly showed us their first-ever orders for ongoing shipments of thousands of tons of crickets and frogs… the kind of bulk orders they now have to learn how to fill, but which represents an affluent, educated future for a village that had none. They have potential university students among them, and English teachers. They have turned their Internet station into a money-maker, and the village kids have a new hang-out, one that teaches a form of literacy just by being what it is. And yes, we Americans made it possible, so the beer on the beach with Damon was especially tasty after.

I’ve Had an Absolute *&^% of a Day

2006-02-02T18:09:00.000+07:00

The following happened awhile ago now, but it doesn’t matter. Could have happened on any day here.

Yesterday morning my day looked easy -- one intensive meeting for a couple of hours, and about an hour finishing some documents that had to hit the mail before the end of the day, a Friday.

The trouble with the day was that I had to print the documents and get them to a post office during the rainy season…

1. I never bought a printer for my laptop here because there's a good laser printer attached to my office computer. HOWEVER...

2. Anti-virus software can’t be updated here because it’s all pirated…One of the big new digital destroyers, Kangen, is Indonesian born and bred, and just like the Indo terrorists who kill mostly Indonesians, this one zapped my Indo office PC over the holidays.

3. The same guy whose failure to chase a fax came within two hours of costing me my Christmas holiday came to my office promptly upon my return and explained the problem he'd discovered ten days before (which I'd already figured out), but didn't explain why he’d waited until now to get my computer fixed... except to say the University doesn't have an official IT guy... everybody fends for themselves with no oversight... SO

4. I copied the files to my USB flashdrive and headed downstairs where there were four other computers and two more printers...and no oversight. I plugged the flashdrive into the fastest looking computer with a laser printer... and immediately three additional files showed up on my flash drive, all executable virus programs, and the laser printer jammed and flashed lightning bolts at me, literally: my flashdrive got infected...THUS

5. Went upstairs, deleted the files via my laptop, put fresh clean copies on the flashdrive and came down to try the other printer. Plugged in my flashdrive and waited ten minutes for the computer to log itself in... very old PC running newest version of pirated Windows XP. Gave up, plugged flashdrive into other PC... and the PC didn't know what had just been stuck into it... very old PC running very old version of Windows 98.

6. exclaimed and exclaimed... took flashdrive back to virus-filled PC, got my drive all sick again but forced the files through the laser printer (twice: 1st time paper of a size I'd never seen before (F4?) -- what do these people do all day???). Got snailmail envelopes from the office manager AND THEN

7. Discovered MY error: One crucial misspelling. With the Office manager sitting opposite me, I exclaimed to myself up and down and sideways and told her I'd be back in 10 minutes.

8. Went upstairs, edited the original files, then realized I would have to print again... and nearly cried. Plugged my office printer into my laptop, but my laptop didn't know what I was thinking. I went online to download a driver (wouldn't that be easy?), but the cellular connection kept crapping out on me...

9. 30 minutes into this operation the Office Manager comes to my office very troubled. "Meester, I feel not right. Yesterday before before downstairs I give you..." She was afraid I was upset at her, because I had shown so much anger downstairs in #7. So in the midst of my internal fuming I had to reassure her that I loved her and didn't have a problem with her...

10. "Oh, no no no! You're wonderful! Yes, I AM angry, and I am sorry. For three hours I try to print and mail 6 pages, and this MUST be in Jakarta and on the way to DC tomorrow, but I'm not angry with you! You're wonderful. Thank you so much for your help!" It should be noted that during this ordeal I've spoken to 7 people (and held my two-hour meeting) and not one of them thought it was any problem at all that all four computers and both printers in the Language Center are virtually unusable... that's just the way it is and they go on smiling and tapping into their cell phones...EVENTUALLY

11. She leaves happy and relieved. I take the flashdrive back to the virus-stricken and recently tricked-by-me laser printer, but it looked at it, chuckled, spat in my face, and proclaimed "Fool me once..." Thankfully the really slow computer had booted up and logged itself in, so I plugged into that one and...

12. Got jibberish out of the piece of crap 1990ies bubblejet printer. Removing and reinstalling the cartridge got a decent copy of the edited file that I needed. AND RIGHT THEN...

13. The daily torrential downpour began. I finished addressing the envelopes, the Office Manager was thrilled, and it was 2:45. Post office closed at 3:00 and the office boy wasn't thrilled about riding his motorbike in the downpour to catch the post office before closing for me... oh no sireebob...like it just couldn't be done because these motorcycles come with a warning: don't use in the rain...

14. And then friend, if you're still reading this, I got home at 4, stuck some beer in the freezer, plugged in my laptop on the patio to email copies of the documents to a few different places... and the power went off throughout the house, just as darkness was coming. Power's on next door. I check the fuses -- they're fine. Figures.

15. Two hours later Julia and I find a bill in the box under the meter warning that if I don't pay within a month of Jan. 11, they'll shut the power off. 2 days before. Then Julia sees a master switch under the meter. She flips it and the power comes back on. Some rear orifice from the power company, WHILE I WAS HOME, cut the power to get my attention, instead of ringing my doorbell and explaining the situation in a civilized fashion.

What a day of “Only in Indonesia”.

Baby better off is the search

2005-11-25T18:22:00.000+07:00

From "The Iceman", by Bruce

Gotta find a way to communicate just how funny the little things are here, and why absorbing them appropriately contributes so significantly to a rewarding life. I’ve got two little stories; maybe they’ll do the trick. I’ll stick a couple of last pics from the beach in here to break up the words for those readers with the shorter attention spans. The pics come from Kun's camera (she's in the middle below), but some people have told me they depict their vision of paradise. Can’t imagine why…

Drive

2005-11-25T18:14:00.000+07:00

The University has put a car and driver at my disposal since I got here. When a local staffer gets a bule to tend full-time, he must feel like those kids in The Night Before Christmas. On the other hand, when a bule gets a local staffer full-time, the question is always “How do I take care of this guy without losing my shirt?” And the game begins. There can be only one winner if everyone is to win.

Katy knows he can’t make anything above his $20 or $30 a month if he just drives me to and from work. I know he’s going to be grumpy and unreliable if that’s all we’re doing. So, from the beginning I’d get him to take me shopping on the way home, and compensate him for every hour of overtime. This often included picking up a pack of smokes for him at the cashier. No big deal. We’d drive around, he’d honk at the cute girls and buzz the weaving motorcycles, giving me the thumbs up as he did it. At the same time, I noticed I was getting hit for gas a couple of times every week, and he was using my water – extremey wastefully, I might add, to wash the car anytime he arrived early enough. No huge deal, but I discouraged him from the car wash thing.

This went on for a couple of weeks until one afternoon he tanked up on me at the end of the day… and tried to hit me for another tank first thing the next morning. What did he do, and how stupid did he think I was? Drive all over Java after he took me home? Unlikely. Odds will get you evens he took his free gas to his kampung (family village compound) and sold it to his cousins.

“Nga (pronounced ‘ng-ga!’) is the viscerally pleasing-sounding Indonesian slang word for “no”. Kinda like saying “not” when you mean “no, you twit.” That was my answer to Kati that morning. I followed it with, “I can always take a taxi to work. It’s a lot cheaper.” Which is true. Also, “Probably better to buy a motorcycle, really.” Which is also true.

The look of chagrin on Katy’s face was nearly comical. We got to the office and parted frostily (if frost is possible here) and I confirmed from my Indonesian rep at the University that the University would be happy to reimburse me for all gas bills. So I could relax. But I also couldn’t let Katy take me for it, regardless, or he’d win the game and everybody would lose: I’d drop him as a driver and he’d lose the care of a bule for the year.

When it was time to go home I learned that Katy had had to be reassigned, and they couldn’t get me a driver for the afternoon. Sadly, I’d already made plans with him to take my friends and me to the temple for the Ramayana ballet that evening. They’d call me in the AM if they’d worked something out. What this really means is that I had embarrassed Katy privately, and he could not show himself to me again. So much for the convenient ride to the ballet.

But later that evening I was messaged that he would pick me up in the morning. It seemed they’d worked something out with him. So I invited him immediately to come get my friends and I to the ballet that evening, and there he was. We didn’t talk much, but he did the job well. And I rewarded him fairly… and he was thrilled.

Since then I use him for airport runs, the beach run, and all that other stuff. Now he pops out of the car and negotiates me a filling and safe 50-cent breakfast at a market on the way to work. If I did it myself it would cost me three times that. He helps me haul the water jugs when they need replacing, and the shopping when there are two many bags. His young son was hit by a motorcycle ten days ago, and he’s missed a few days amid court appearances and insurance meetings… and I’ve made sure I’m using him enough to ease some of the worries that go with that.

So now he sees that he doesn’t have to try to rob me: if he takes care of me I’ll take care of him. He still won’t wear a seatbelt unless I tell him to, and will hit 100 km/hr on beach roads and bump motorcycles unless I get stern with him. That’s when he grins and laughs, and says “Yes, Mister,” and honks at the next babe on the back of a bike…

Cheeseburger in Paradise

2005-11-25T18:10:00.000+07:00

The 2^nd story – Had a great night’s sleep last night, and rewarded myself for the coming weekend with an amazing workout this afternoon… Leaving the gym I had an immediate desire to reward myself for the workout with a light meal and beer, but didn’t want to pay the prices at the hotel.

Went exploring, and quickly found a café called Oregano Steak and Ice Cream. Sounded about right. Sweating already (mostly from the workout, even after the shower), I ordered a cold beer and a menu and sat down. Lots of steak and burger choices on the menu at absolutely thrilling prices. Nothing more expensive than 70 cents. I settled on the “Smoked Burger”, for 60 cents, described as “smoked beef with mozzarella cheese in a bun. How could you go wrong?

Well… by not bringing my camera, for one. When it arrived, the bun looked great… but I couldn’t see the meat, and the lettuce was a strangely fresh-looking combination of green and black… I lifted the top of the bun. Getting a closer look at the lettuce, I looked away whilst removing it from the bun. That’s when I saw what must have been the burger, but I’m sure it’s what was left of the inside of a pair of red leather loafers I threw away last summer when preparing to move to Jakarta, which I was able to confirm when I tried to eat it. If the police did DNA tests on it, we would have matched. Wafer thin, curling on the sides, half the diameter of the bun in width and nearly equal in length, it refused to be chewed. It had, however, clearly been smoked.

The waitress endearingly disagreed with my analysis, confirming that yes, a smoked burger was on it’s plate in front of me. And who was I to argue? She worked there, and I’d never been there before. Well, what do you want for 60 cents, a burger? In consolation, I had correctly deduced the Indo for French fries, and they were almost OK. Fine, in fact, with a 2^nd beer.

And that’s why living here is such a hoot – you just never know when the ridiculous will produce the sublime. Usually, if you let the ridiculous do it’s work, it WILL come up with something sublime… In other words, my favorite thing in life, next to my own imagination, is my sense of humor, which lives right next door. Keep that healthy, and being alive can’t get much better than it is right now.

Prelude: Prodigal Pembantu

2005-11-23T12:24:00.001+07:00

Where pembantu means "helper" or "assistant". So the pembantu is the housekeeper, but the Pembantu Rektor is the Vice-rector ot the University.

Anyway -- he came back. The "fold clothes before ironing, can't really be bothered to change a light bulb or clean the tub" housekeeper I thought I'd fired ten days ago. The last time I saw him he showed up on yet another Saturday, and I politely dismissed him on the spot, having done all the mopping, laundry, and dishwashing Friday anyway. He stayed gone all week, and I did all the cleaning again (including the upstairs, ma) on Friday in preparation for my buddy Mick's overnight visit. Mick and I head to the airport around 12:00, I come back alone at about 5:00. And I notice one or two subtle changes. The two socks and 1 pair of underwear are no longer in the bucket by the washing machine. The blanket on my bed is folded, but the incense ash on the bedtable is still there, along with the belly-up roach by the closet.

The son-of-a-gun snuck in on a friggin' Saturday afternoon when he knew I wouldn't be home, and can now argue about having done some work (about two-lifted fingers' worth). Seems he refused to be fired, and will have no work to do (slightly less than he did before, I guess), as I'm doing it. Came home from the office early Monday so I could catch him in the house. Sat him down again, paid him for the extra sessions, relieved him of his keys... waved goodbye... then waited. All the cans and bottles of two months of living in my house had never made it to the trash or out. He'd hauled them all up and hid them under the water tank by the roof, until such time as he felt like pushing himself to take them to a store and collect on the change... He must have strapped 200 items to his bicycle as he left.

Looking Into the Sun

Finally got to the beach. There are three lovely beaches an hour or so to the south of Jogja -- got to the first of them yesterday. If I'd known that Blogger finally got a technology in place to insert pics into these text entries, I would have done that here. Instead -- they are laid out below like always. Next time, I guess.

2005-11-23T12:14:00.000+07:00

Yesterday a Jogja-area native who manages all of us Fellows came to town for a couple of meetings with me and my universities. Afternoon was free, so we took my driver and some friends and headed to the beach... The forty-minute drive to the south coast and Parangritis Beach yielded lots of views like this one... Does everything outside of the cities look like Bali? Vice versa? IS this whole area of the world this beautiful? I need to find out.

2005-11-23T12:11:00.000+07:00

Not time to sun-gaze just yet -- it's about 4:00 PM, and it's still too bright and strong....

2005-11-23T12:10:00.000+07:00

So we looked this way... yes, it's a huge and relatively pristine black-sand beach. That said, out of view up where the tide doesn't reach the beach is pretty much covered by the usual garbage, but it's not everywhere, at least. This is a gorgeous spot.

2005-11-23T12:09:00.000+07:00

A fair number of modestly-dressed folk played along the water's edge. I had my picture taken five times with cute high school girls (no boys -- go figure) AT THE REQUEST OF THEIR FULLY-COVERED MOTHERS... and every one of the girls grabbed my butt while they were posing with me...

2005-11-23T12:06:00.000+07:00

Transport heads down to the quietest regions of the coastline. A couple of bathers break the rules... the water may not look like it, but the rocks in the background collect 15-20 corpses every year...

2005-11-23T11:48:00.001+07:00

This is the view enjoyed...