I've been an avid reader since I was a child. One of my favorite events as a child was shopping for books that my parents would buy me for Christmas. Years later as a high school student, I discovered the great little, Barbara's Bookstore, in the Old Town neighborhood in Chicago, and Kroch's and Brentano's in downtown Chicago. Generally, I am not a shopper, but put me in a bookstore, and I can spend hours shopping for books.
One of the pleasures of my four years in Lahore, Pakistan, was shopping for books. The selection was somewhat limited, but there were still enough books that interested me that I could spend several hundred dollars each time I entered one of Lahore's bookstores. One of my main regrets about leaving Lahore was that I never did make it to the used bookstores tucked away there that were rumored to have a stash of old and rare books left over from the days of the Raj.
During my Lahore years, I spent a fair amount of time in Bangkok as I needed to overnight there in order to catch the flight to Lahore the next day. I became familiar with Asia Books on Sukhumvit. Wandering up and down between the floors, I would always end up with more books than I had planned on buying. I particularly enjoyed searching for new books on the Southeast Asian region.
Life on a remote island has many pleasures, as well as a number of drawbacks. One of the main drawbacks for me is the lack of bookstores. The closest bookstore is on the neighboring island of Lombok, and that bookstore has a very limited selection of books in English. That leaves three options: 1) purchasing books during my annual teacher's conference when I get to travel to one of the ASEAN capital cities; 2) purchasing books in Bali during one of my two annual trips there; and 3) ordering books online. The first option is great, but I'm limited to ten books or so, by the luggage allowance. The second option has possibilities, but I've yet to find a good bookstore in Bali that is comparable to Asia Books in Bangkok, or the Times Bookstore in Singapore. The third option offers the widest selection of books, but has the drawbacks of paying a significant shipping cost, as well as the possibility that at some point during the four month journey, the books will disappear. I've only tried the Amazon option once, and I was very happy to receive my books intact after four months.
I recently finished an excellent book on the Silk Road which, while somewhat dense, was filled with fascinating information about the history of the Silk Road. Last night I completed William Gibson's book, Count Zero. While Count Zero is not Gibson's best work, it was nonetheless a joy for a techie like me to read. I'm about to start on several Graham Greene novels that I bought a few months ago in Manila.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Monday, May 29, 2006
Development in Sumbawa
This was one of those good weeks when we ended p with a three-day weekend. Having Friday off, I decided to drive up to Maluk (the next village north of here) to get my motorbike serviced. On the way home, I noticed a large billboard announcing a new hotel called Supersucks (after the famous surfing spot). Driving down a long, narrow rocky road (one of the worst roads that I have ever been on in Indonesia or anywhere else), I came upon the hotel which is under construction just off the beach.
Two of the owners where there, and I had a chance to talk to them about their plans for the hotel. It seems fairly amazing to me that some Americans would end up building a hotel in what's basically the middle of nowhere (although not exactly nowhere if you're a surfer). It was interesting to have a long discussion about the future of tourism in Sumbawa, land prices, construction issues, and cultural differences between Bali and Sumbawa.
The hotel should be up and running in a few months. I'll add some more information on my Sumbawa website as it becomes available. Best of luck to Matt and John on their venture.
My deepest condolences to the victims of this weekend's earthquake in Jogja.
Two of the owners where there, and I had a chance to talk to them about their plans for the hotel. It seems fairly amazing to me that some Americans would end up building a hotel in what's basically the middle of nowhere (although not exactly nowhere if you're a surfer). It was interesting to have a long discussion about the future of tourism in Sumbawa, land prices, construction issues, and cultural differences between Bali and Sumbawa.
The hotel should be up and running in a few months. I'll add some more information on my Sumbawa website as it becomes available. Best of luck to Matt and John on their venture.
My deepest condolences to the victims of this weekend's earthquake in Jogja.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Technology Blues
After doing a fair amount of research in order to complete my article on overseas workers, I put the whole thing on my flash drive and brought it to school so that I could upload it to this blog. I ran out of time and figured that I would do it the next day - what's one day after all? On my way home, the drive fell out of my pocket, and there's goes four days of research. I have to get into saving these articles in other places than just the flash drive.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Overseas Workers
The Philippines are known for their overseas workers. For those of you who have spent some time in the Middle East or even within Southeast Asia, you’ve almost certainly come across a Filipino band, a nanny pushing her small charge down Singapore’s Orchard Road in a stroller, or a Filipino cabbie in the UAE. The Los Angles Times online edition recently ran a story called The Overseas Class about the exodus from the Phillipines in search of employment at a decent wage. The article noted that almost 12% of the GDP in the Phillipines is accounted for by workers abroad.
Those of us who follow the local Indonesian news have become used to reading stories about young Indonesian women being beaten or sexually abused by their employers whether in Singapore, Hong Kong or Saudi Arabia. Most of us know at least one Indonesia who has spent at least part of their life working overseas. In my small kampung in north Bali, there are three men who have worked overseas in one capacity or another – most of them in manual labor positions. I know of two expat men in Sumbawa who met their wives (from the same village, but apparently not known to each other) while they were working overseas.
A brother and sister-in-law of mine have worked in Saudi: the brother-in-law as a driver and the sister-in-law as a seamstress. The money that they made enabled them to open a small business when they came back to Bali. While they were working in Saudi, their children’s grandparents and my wife and I raised their children. A fairly common scenario. I spent four years working in Pakistan while my wife and children stayed behind in Indonesia living on the money that I sent each month. So where is this going? Check back on Monday for the conclusion.
Those of us who follow the local Indonesian news have become used to reading stories about young Indonesian women being beaten or sexually abused by their employers whether in Singapore, Hong Kong or Saudi Arabia. Most of us know at least one Indonesia who has spent at least part of their life working overseas. In my small kampung in north Bali, there are three men who have worked overseas in one capacity or another – most of them in manual labor positions. I know of two expat men in Sumbawa who met their wives (from the same village, but apparently not known to each other) while they were working overseas.
A brother and sister-in-law of mine have worked in Saudi: the brother-in-law as a driver and the sister-in-law as a seamstress. The money that they made enabled them to open a small business when they came back to Bali. While they were working in Saudi, their children’s grandparents and my wife and I raised their children. A fairly common scenario. I spent four years working in Pakistan while my wife and children stayed behind in Indonesia living on the money that I sent each month. So where is this going? Check back on Monday for the conclusion.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Anti-Americanism in Indonesia?
I’m occasionally asked about anti-Americanism by readers of my travel articles or websites. The questions come from Americans who are considering visiting Indonesia, or increasingly, planning on moving to Bali for retirement. For those of us who live in Indonesia, life here doesn’t seem very dangerous, but apparently the press coverage from America paints a different picture of Indonesia.
Unfortunately, too many people (including some clueless expats who reside in Bali) section off Indonesia into Hindu Bali and the rest of the country which is filled with Muslim terrorists or sympathizers. Fortunately for those of us who reside outside of Bali, the reality is somewhat different. While there is what appears to be an increase in Indonesia in the activity of what we can call “fundamentalist” Muslims, the majority of the folks here are more interested in making a living and raising their families than in trying to establish a state based on Shariah. I’ll leave the discussion of this issue for another post. What I want to address here is the perception that there is a tide of anti-Americanism among the common people.
Sumbawa is an island that is overwhelmingly Muslim, far from the urban centers of Java, and populated mainly by people who work the land in one way or another. The level of education is not very high; in the area where we live most of the adult women wear a jilbab when they are outside of their home. It would seem that this would be an ideal place for an anti-Americanism to develop, but in fact residents are very welcoming of all foreigners, and as the resident American, neither I nor my children have ever been involved in any incidents where our nationality became an issue. Similar to my experiences with Pakistanis when I lived in Pakistan, local residents dislike President Bush and his policies, but have favorable feelings about American citizens. We are often given gifts from our less fortunate community members such as goats, bushels of fruit, etc. The few expats whom I know that live in Sumbawa report similar interactions with their neighbors. The bottom-line: folks in Sumbawa are a friendly and warm as any that you’ll find in Indonesia.
Unfortunately, too many people (including some clueless expats who reside in Bali) section off Indonesia into Hindu Bali and the rest of the country which is filled with Muslim terrorists or sympathizers. Fortunately for those of us who reside outside of Bali, the reality is somewhat different. While there is what appears to be an increase in Indonesia in the activity of what we can call “fundamentalist” Muslims, the majority of the folks here are more interested in making a living and raising their families than in trying to establish a state based on Shariah. I’ll leave the discussion of this issue for another post. What I want to address here is the perception that there is a tide of anti-Americanism among the common people.
Sumbawa is an island that is overwhelmingly Muslim, far from the urban centers of Java, and populated mainly by people who work the land in one way or another. The level of education is not very high; in the area where we live most of the adult women wear a jilbab when they are outside of their home. It would seem that this would be an ideal place for an anti-Americanism to develop, but in fact residents are very welcoming of all foreigners, and as the resident American, neither I nor my children have ever been involved in any incidents where our nationality became an issue. Similar to my experiences with Pakistanis when I lived in Pakistan, local residents dislike President Bush and his policies, but have favorable feelings about American citizens. We are often given gifts from our less fortunate community members such as goats, bushels of fruit, etc. The few expats whom I know that live in Sumbawa report similar interactions with their neighbors. The bottom-line: folks in Sumbawa are a friendly and warm as any that you’ll find in Indonesia.
Monday, May 15, 2006
The Guru Goes to The Farm
For someone who was raised in an urban/suburban environment to enter the intellectual sector, life in Sumbawa has been one continual round of revelations, frustrations, and discoveries.
A three-day weekend is a good chance to catch up on some school work as well as see what work has been done around The Farm. We recently purchased a 30 are plot of land just across the road from our house for investment purposes (and because my wife liked the fruit trees growing on it). While we were checking out the orange, mango, and coconut trees on the new land, I realized that I hadn’t checked our back yard recently to see what our new gardener had done to it. Besides cutting all the grass on the 65 are, he’s planted 16 banana, 15 papaya, and 12 coconut trees.
For someone who grew up in Chicago, all of this green is quite enticing. We added another dog over the past week as well. Our animal count is now up to 2 dogs, 2 geese, 9 chickens, two birds, and 2 goats. As Su and I were sitting on the veranda last night discussing plans for The Farm, our noisy neighbors, the monkeys, showed up in the jungle. Now before I moved to Sumbawa I loved monkeys. When I lived in Pakistan, I had two rather large ones as companions. I had one for years in my house in Bali and she was a lovely pet. These monkeys are loud, irritating, nasty and dangerous. You’re your worst nightmare of the bad neighbor. Nothing like living in the jungle.
A three-day weekend is a good chance to catch up on some school work as well as see what work has been done around The Farm. We recently purchased a 30 are plot of land just across the road from our house for investment purposes (and because my wife liked the fruit trees growing on it). While we were checking out the orange, mango, and coconut trees on the new land, I realized that I hadn’t checked our back yard recently to see what our new gardener had done to it. Besides cutting all the grass on the 65 are, he’s planted 16 banana, 15 papaya, and 12 coconut trees.
For someone who grew up in Chicago, all of this green is quite enticing. We added another dog over the past week as well. Our animal count is now up to 2 dogs, 2 geese, 9 chickens, two birds, and 2 goats. As Su and I were sitting on the veranda last night discussing plans for The Farm, our noisy neighbors, the monkeys, showed up in the jungle. Now before I moved to Sumbawa I loved monkeys. When I lived in Pakistan, I had two rather large ones as companions. I had one for years in my house in Bali and she was a lovely pet. These monkeys are loud, irritating, nasty and dangerous. You’re your worst nightmare of the bad neighbor. Nothing like living in the jungle.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Birthday Parties in Indonesia
This past weekend we had our 39 birthday party for our children. That’s the total for all four of our children here (not counting my son from my first wife who lives in the States). Forty-three birthday parties. That’s quite a few. If I average out the cost at about two million rupiahs per party, that amounts to a staggering 79,000,000 rupiahs over the past 15 years. In dollar terms we can say that it’s about nine thousand dollars. When I attempt to figure out where the money has gone over the past 16 years of marriage, parties are one thing that I never thought of.
When Su started having birthday parties for the kids (our eldest daughter, Mercedes, had the first one when she turned one), they were fairly small events – a few friends and all the relatives (a sizeable group in itself). Somewhere along the line just about everyone in the neighborhood turned up being invited along with all the relatives, and as the kids entered school, their classmates. As the number of guests increased, the venue moved from inside to outside. As our Bali houses are on a small amount of land (200 sq. meters), we had to hold the parties out in the street.
We live in a small, fairly self-contained Muslim neighborhood in the north of Bali. I don’t know much about the actual logistics of how my wife goes at getting the street closed (it’s not really a unique event as most folks in the neighborhood do the same when they have a wedding), but she does it and ends up with a tent placed over the street to keep out the sun or rain. Chairs are set up, food is cooked, decorations are placed everywhere. In the early days of the street parties, the festivities were restricted to a few party games, a cutting of the cake, a few prayers, and then a distribution of food at the end. The kids would take their food home to eat – something common in Indonesia. However, at some point, Su started providing entertainment – Balinese dancers, Javanese dancers, Balinese clowns.
I still haven’t figured out this party thing although Su’s example began to be followed by other mothers in the neighborhood, although not quite as extravagantly as our parties. Just one more slice of paradise.
When Su started having birthday parties for the kids (our eldest daughter, Mercedes, had the first one when she turned one), they were fairly small events – a few friends and all the relatives (a sizeable group in itself). Somewhere along the line just about everyone in the neighborhood turned up being invited along with all the relatives, and as the kids entered school, their classmates. As the number of guests increased, the venue moved from inside to outside. As our Bali houses are on a small amount of land (200 sq. meters), we had to hold the parties out in the street.
We live in a small, fairly self-contained Muslim neighborhood in the north of Bali. I don’t know much about the actual logistics of how my wife goes at getting the street closed (it’s not really a unique event as most folks in the neighborhood do the same when they have a wedding), but she does it and ends up with a tent placed over the street to keep out the sun or rain. Chairs are set up, food is cooked, decorations are placed everywhere. In the early days of the street parties, the festivities were restricted to a few party games, a cutting of the cake, a few prayers, and then a distribution of food at the end. The kids would take their food home to eat – something common in Indonesia. However, at some point, Su started providing entertainment – Balinese dancers, Javanese dancers, Balinese clowns.
I still haven’t figured out this party thing although Su’s example began to be followed by other mothers in the neighborhood, although not quite as extravagantly as our parties. Just one more slice of paradise.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Hazards of Life in the Jungle
Hazards of Life in the Jungle
I’ve developed a fondness for saying that I live in the jungle even though that statement is only partially true. It probably is more accurate to say that I live in a small village that skirts the sea and is surrounded by forest or bush (depending on where in the world you hail from). Whatever term is used, life here in Sumbawa is somewhat different from life in Jakarta, Surabaya, or Bali. A few examples might illuminate the realities of everyday life. The examples today are drawn from what my homeroom students call my “near-death experiences.”
Example 1: When we first built our house here, the local power company (PLN) wanted 35 million rupiahs to hook our house up to the grid. We opted to buy a 10,000 watt generator. At the time, it seemed like a good move financially: 11 million for a generator versus the 35 million to get hooked up to a supply of electricity that was, at the best, sporadic in terms of delivery. The generator became a source of daily jokes at school as it broke down almost daily. One evening, just as the sun was setting over the ocean, we switched the generator on and a belt snapped on the flywheel. In order to get a new belt on, the wheel had to be taken off the generator which involved a long, tiring process which required the work of several men. Living in the jungle means that you can’t call a local electrician – we had one electrician in the village even though several other men like to claim electrical knowledge. We set out in the dark to find the electrician. After 30 minutes we found him at a friend’s house. From there we picked up three more men to assist him in changing the belts. By 10 p.m we had the belts off and replaced, and had changed the batteries on the two flashlights twice. I was covered in mosquito bites hoping that they were malarial mosquitoes. We gathered around the generator while the electrician cranked it up. A loud pop and something whizzed past my eyes. The electrician shut off the generator, and we focused our flashlight on a piece of the flywheel embedded in the concrete wall. A few more inches and it would have been embedded in my forehead.
Example 2: With the generator on the blink, our electrician ran a line from the hotel next door into our son’s bedroom. That connection somehow gave us enough electricity to power a few lights and a fan so that we had some semblance of power during the warm nights. One evening all the power in the neighborhood shut down. I went to disconnect our hotel hookup so that we wouldn’t get a spike when the power went on. Just as I grabbed the cable, the power went back on. The surge shot me backwards across the room with the cartoon-like frizzing of hair. It would have been a good experience if I had been in cardiac arrest.
Example 3: The generator (once again). I went out one night to check the generator and noticed that water was leaking from the exit pipe. I climbed up on the platform where we had our water cooling system, and despite my wife’s urgings, I tried to tighten the pipe while the generator was running. End result – the pipe broke loose and I was showered with boiling water. The force of it knocked me off the platform and on to the ground. The boiling water burned all of the skin on the right side of my face and my right arm, missing my right eye by 2 millimeters. The doctor later said that I would have been blinded if I hadn’t fallen backwards on impact. My children called my the monster for the next week as the skin on my face and arm blackened and then fell off.
Example 4: Driving to work down a gravel road a few days ago, a dog sitting in the middle of the road suddenly ran in front of my motorbike. I hit the brakes in an attempt to avoid hitting him, lost control of the bike and bounced off the dog. As I lay on the road bleeding, a car which was driving too fast behind me just missed running over my head. The driver was nice enough to stop, ask if I was ok, and then get in his car and drive off to work leaving me bleeding on the road.
I’m leaving out encounters with mad monkeys the size of dogs, cobras and vipers, scorpions (I’ve only been stung once, but it was an experience I’ll remember forever), and a month long water outage. But, hey, it’s paradise the rest of the time.
I’ve developed a fondness for saying that I live in the jungle even though that statement is only partially true. It probably is more accurate to say that I live in a small village that skirts the sea and is surrounded by forest or bush (depending on where in the world you hail from). Whatever term is used, life here in Sumbawa is somewhat different from life in Jakarta, Surabaya, or Bali. A few examples might illuminate the realities of everyday life. The examples today are drawn from what my homeroom students call my “near-death experiences.”
Example 1: When we first built our house here, the local power company (PLN) wanted 35 million rupiahs to hook our house up to the grid. We opted to buy a 10,000 watt generator. At the time, it seemed like a good move financially: 11 million for a generator versus the 35 million to get hooked up to a supply of electricity that was, at the best, sporadic in terms of delivery. The generator became a source of daily jokes at school as it broke down almost daily. One evening, just as the sun was setting over the ocean, we switched the generator on and a belt snapped on the flywheel. In order to get a new belt on, the wheel had to be taken off the generator which involved a long, tiring process which required the work of several men. Living in the jungle means that you can’t call a local electrician – we had one electrician in the village even though several other men like to claim electrical knowledge. We set out in the dark to find the electrician. After 30 minutes we found him at a friend’s house. From there we picked up three more men to assist him in changing the belts. By 10 p.m we had the belts off and replaced, and had changed the batteries on the two flashlights twice. I was covered in mosquito bites hoping that they were malarial mosquitoes. We gathered around the generator while the electrician cranked it up. A loud pop and something whizzed past my eyes. The electrician shut off the generator, and we focused our flashlight on a piece of the flywheel embedded in the concrete wall. A few more inches and it would have been embedded in my forehead.
Example 2: With the generator on the blink, our electrician ran a line from the hotel next door into our son’s bedroom. That connection somehow gave us enough electricity to power a few lights and a fan so that we had some semblance of power during the warm nights. One evening all the power in the neighborhood shut down. I went to disconnect our hotel hookup so that we wouldn’t get a spike when the power went on. Just as I grabbed the cable, the power went back on. The surge shot me backwards across the room with the cartoon-like frizzing of hair. It would have been a good experience if I had been in cardiac arrest.
Example 3: The generator (once again). I went out one night to check the generator and noticed that water was leaking from the exit pipe. I climbed up on the platform where we had our water cooling system, and despite my wife’s urgings, I tried to tighten the pipe while the generator was running. End result – the pipe broke loose and I was showered with boiling water. The force of it knocked me off the platform and on to the ground. The boiling water burned all of the skin on the right side of my face and my right arm, missing my right eye by 2 millimeters. The doctor later said that I would have been blinded if I hadn’t fallen backwards on impact. My children called my the monster for the next week as the skin on my face and arm blackened and then fell off.
Example 4: Driving to work down a gravel road a few days ago, a dog sitting in the middle of the road suddenly ran in front of my motorbike. I hit the brakes in an attempt to avoid hitting him, lost control of the bike and bounced off the dog. As I lay on the road bleeding, a car which was driving too fast behind me just missed running over my head. The driver was nice enough to stop, ask if I was ok, and then get in his car and drive off to work leaving me bleeding on the road.
I’m leaving out encounters with mad monkeys the size of dogs, cobras and vipers, scorpions (I’ve only been stung once, but it was an experience I’ll remember forever), and a month long water outage. But, hey, it’s paradise the rest of the time.
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