Another link for new blog

This blog has now moved to wordpress. The new links are:

1. Podcast

2. Blog

Moving

The company that controls my life to a greater extent than I'd like to admit to has blocked all blogspot address so I will be moving to drbrucepk.wordpress.com for the time being. We'll see what happens in the future.

Migrations

It’s late October and we are at the end of the dry season. Next month should bring the start of the rains – I hope so anyway. My family is due to return home tomorrow. My eldest daughter has asked them to stay in Bali for a few more days. She’s grown up in an Indonesian culture and before she moved back to our house in Bali to attend high school there, she had never slept alone and was very much the homebody. Now she’s living basically alone, and it hasn’t been the easiest thing for her, but she’s done a good job so far.

I’ve been receiving a lot of emails recently (generally I receive quite a few, but over the last few months, I’ve received even more than usual) from people wanting to move to Bali either to retire or start a business. A lot of the traffic comes from some articles that I wrote several years ago; the minority comes from my blog or the cyberbali.com website. I certainly don’t mind responding to most (I don’t respond to the ones that give a few questions with no other text, such as “how much does it cost to live in Bali,” or “How do I get a job in Bali”). Fairly rude as I see it. I do respond to the emails that start out with a hello, or a I really liked your article. I’m even more inclined to respond if they give some background information like, “I’ve vacationed in Bali six times in the last…years”

But besides the response issue, there’s this nagging question about why so many people want to move to Bali. I’ve forgotten the stats on the number of legal resident foreigners in Bali, but it was fairly significant for such a small island. (Then there’s a whole other world of illegal resident foreigners – the idiots who don’t bother to keep their visas current or abide by the national laws on immigration and residency.) Maybe I should be put up a poll on my website about immigrating to Bali.

Animals

How many animals can you have? We have ducks, chickens, geese, birds, goats, dogs. I turned down an offer of buying baby sea turtles yesterday because they’re protected. It was one of those decisions of whether you buy them to protect them or not buy them to discourage people from selling them. I went with the not buying them.

A few years ago when I spent a lot of time swimming in the ocean here, I came across one territorial sea turtle who seemed to always be in the exact place on the beach where I wanted to swim. I’m someone who has a thing about sharks (think 10 years of living in northern California where you regularly get Great Whites who like to take chunks out of surfers), and I would think the turtle was a shark. Eventually we got used to each other, and (s)he would let me get within a fairly close distance and then swim away. It was one of those beautiful things about living out here in the “jungle” that you rarely get elsewhere.

I’m not sure how I’m going to get used to not having animals around when I retire to the house in Bali next year. The house is relatively small (compared to this one) and we have no extra land like we do here, and our neighbors in Bali are of the Muslim variety that think that dogs are haram. Dogs here aren’t haram; dogs in Pakistan aren’t haram – check out President Musharraf and his dogs.

One lovely story from the vacation in Bali. One of our neighbors is an excellent fisherman. He was out getting his boat ready to go out the next day and he saw a fin moving up close. He took it to be a shark at first glance and was about to spear it. Then he realized that it was a baby dolphin. He took the little guy up and put it in his boat and dropped it off 500 meters from shore because most fisherman in Bali won’t kill a dolphin. Why? Some interesting stories of dolphins saving guys who have been washed off their boats and have been saved by dolphins dragging them to shore.

Another Ramadan and the Joys of Life in the Tropics

The month of fasting for Muslims is over; today is Lebaran. It’s a day of celebration and visiting neighbors and eating sweets and various Indonesian delicacies. Women will spend weeks baking for today – my wife does – so that by Lebaran they have plenty of goodies to offer neighbors who come visiting. This is also a day of asking for forgiveness for any wrongs done intentionally or unintentionally to neighbors, family and friends.

My family is in Bali for Lebaran; I came back last week to begin work again. I could have tried to get home (the Bali home) to be with the family, but I’m bogged down with work and also don’t want to compete for space on transport with the hordes of folks on the move across the country at this time of the year. So I’m at home doing school work and trying to get started on some repairs to the house.

I woke up this morning put on the baseball game between the Red Sox and the Indians, fed the animals here, and made my first real breakfast in a month. Our puppy who grew quickly while I was in Bali has an enormous appetite; our oldest dog eats rather sparingly as he’s a finicky eater – he’s used to being spoiled by my wife with different food everyday. He’s been eating chicken for three weeks now and is bored so only eats when he’s starved. I had a large cup of Bali coffee for the first time in a month, and now, four hours later, I’m still buzzed by my first caffeine fix in a month.

I love (generally) having houses on two different islands. I call both home, but ultimately the house in Bali will be “home” because that is where my wife is from and the place the children consider to be home. So, as I’ve said before, we’re planning on selling or renting this house in Sumbawa. But, just as we are getting ready for that process – we were hit by an intense earthquake about ten days ago. The epicenter was apparently only about forty miles north of here, and the house suffered a few large cracks in a few walls which we are repairing – structurally the house is sound, but from reports from friends here the house swayed and thus we had some damage to the front end of the house. My gardener and I found the cracks in the wall and began repairing them, but we didn’t think about the roofing tiles.

Last night we had the first big rain which hopefully signaled the end of the dry season. The problem is that some of the roofing tiles in the front of the house shifted position and during the rain the roof in the front bedroom let in a torrent of water. Fortunately it missed the bed, but did get the electrical equipment that I had spread out on the floor where I charge batteries for my various cameras. The power shorted out when the voltage regulator made contact with water (fixed that), the long parangs that I keep under the bed in case of an intruder (different from story from a few years ago) were soaked (dried them out so that the won’t rust), and some clothes that I had laying on the floor (my bachelor routine) soaked up a lot of water (they’re out on the line in the backyard drying).

This morning I continued to work on fixing the door handle and lock that my gardener and I had to destroy when I arrived back from Bali. Why? My wife forgot to bring the keys for the bedroom to the airport when I left Bali for Sumbawa (she’s the Keeper of the Keys – I don’t take responsibility for that one) so I had to break the door down to get in when I made it back home. I’ve been working on repairing the door for a week and am just about finished.

So the lesson about this? Don’t complain about little things – I could have no houses (as I did once during my youth when I was one of the student poor) - ; keep your tools around where you can get at them (my drill is in Bali); work slowly and don’t give in to the guy response of force it; make sure that your wife and you are on the same page; make several sets of keys; get hi-tech and have retina identification installed in your house.

Leaving Bali and something from the News

This is my last day of being home in Bali; tomorrow I’ll be heading back to Sumbawa for another ten weeks. The two weeks were good. It was nice to have all of us together. Generally we almost never eat together, but because of Ramadan and with all of us fasting, we’ve been having two meals a day together which has been great, even if most of us are asleep for breakfast.

It’s evening, everyone has opened the fast, and the children are running up and down the streets yelling and screaming and tormenting each other as small children do. Dozens of small boats are out fishing, their lamps lighting up the horizon.

I was able to finish a lot of my work on the third floor – replaced everything that was rusted and fixed a few broken appliances. I even did a little work on the second floor – changed the door handles on one of the bedrooms and put a clothes hanger in the second floor bathroom. I finished all my lesson plans for the next term and loaded them on the school website. I had a few emails from old students from Pakistan and Sumbawa that I answered along with a few personal ones. I put up a facebook site (which I won’t be able to update until I get back to Bali in December as social networking sites are blocked at our school. I took a look at my eldest daughter’s school textbooks and found them challenging enough. I spent a lot of private time with her talking about how life can be expensive and the need for budgeting money. The other kids spent all of their time with their friends as they see me everyday in Sumbawa.

I was able to see my old friend a number of times, but didn’t get to visit other folks because fasting puts a lot of stress on my body when I’m in Bali. I’ll do that in December. I had a lot of time to check out what other international teachers are doing with their students in terms of technology. I was also able to do some emailing and petition signing about the military crackdown in Burma.

And then there were the things that I didn’t get around to that I wanted to – stripping the paint off the third floor windows, fixing the kids’ bathroom on the first floor, sending more personal emails, getting my daughter a different IP, taking more personal photos, and doing some podcasts from Bali. That’s what retirement is for I guess. After an intense ten weeks, I spend a week just keying down and then get around to doing some work.

Tomorrow is a day of moving again – moving from one reality to another. I’m ready to just work on one reality and maybe that is what retirement is.

A few clips from the news:

People who are conscientious and prone to "doing the right thing" are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease as they age

The Jakarta administration has allocated about US$219 million for the installment ceremony and other facilities for the governor-elect and the deputy governor

Technology Stuff

Some cool tech stuff today that I’ve started using.

1.SnapNDrag for Mac OS - lets you create an easy screen capture and just drag it to your desktop or wherever you want to put it.

2. Open Source Mac – a website not an app, but you can get some cool (like SnapNDrag above) and free apps for your Mac here.

3. iGoogle – I’ve just discovered the iGoogle homepage and all the things that you can do with it. I customized mine in about 15 minutes with half a dozen technology feeds (both Mac and Windows), a variety of baseball feeds, a half dozen different news feeds, This Day in History, clocks showing times around the world, bookmarks, Einstein quotes, a google map, and a number of other cool things. My iGoogle page is one of the first things that I bring up when I go on line now. How will my students respond to it? I’m not sure, but I’m gong to find out when we get back to class.

4. MyYahoo – same thing as above except that I like the layout more. Google does have a few more gadgets to add to your page than Yahoo does. I keep both open when surfing.

5. Bluetooth – Bluetooth came with my iMac but as I don’t have any other Bluetooth devices, I’ve never used it. My eldest daughter has a nifty little handphone that is Bluetooth enabled and we tried it out the other day. Cool. We quickly sent loads of photos and music back and forth. It was impressive. It almost makes me want to buy a new handphone.

6. A little Bluetooth device that plugs into your USB port that I found today at a local computer store. For 75,000 rupiah (about 8 dollars US), I just plugged it in, installed the software and had it up and running on my daughter’s laptop. Now she can easily transfer the photos that I send her to her handphone to show her friends.

7. Facebook. An old buddy is using Facebook to do a little log on where he is on his round the world trip following his retirement. I signed up and found two of my nieces on there. It’s fun and useful as well. I found all sorts of folks talking about Burma and was able to sign a lot of online petitions. This is one of the ways that folks can use the internet to support freedom fighters around the world.

8. RSS – I’m starting to get used to using RSS now to get feeds of things that I want to keep up with, and I think that I have gotten the hang of writing my own RSS code to update my cyberbali.com site.

With less than a week before I head back to Sumbawa for another 10 weeks, I’m regretting that I won’t be taking my iMac back with me. It’s just easier to leave it here so that I have a computer to use when I’m back for December break. I’ll just have to get used to using my Windows machine at home I guess.

The Junta Strikes Back

The military has decided to get really heavy handed in response to the rising protests. There are at least nine dead, and mostly likely many more. According to the headline in The Irrawaddy Rangoon is under siege. A quote from their lead story says: "Rangoon was covered with gunfire smoke on Thursday as security forces and armed military troops used an iron fist to disperse tens of thousands of demonstrators in the second day of the Burmese junta's crackdown on the largest democracy uprising in 20 years."

According to Mizzima News
troops from Central Burma are marching on Rangoon but it's not clear if they are coming to put down the protests or support them.

Here are some contacts if you are inclined to action:

GROUPS

AOTEAROA
New Zealand Burma Support Group,
14 Waitati Place, Mt Albert, Auckland. Tel: (64) 9828 4855

AUSTRALIA
Australia Burma Council, PO Box 2024, Queanbeyan NSW 2620.
Tel: (616) 297 7734
E-mail: azappia@spirit.com.au

CANADA
Canadian Friends of Burma,
145 Spruce Street, Suite 206, Ottawa, Ontario, K1R 6P1. Tel: (613) 237 8056 Fax: (613) 563 0017 E-mail: cfob@web.apc.org Web: http://www.cfob.org/

THAILAND
Burma Issues, PO Box 1076,
Silom Post Office, Bangkok 10504.
E-mail: durham@mozart.inet.co.th
Web: http://www.signposts.uts.edu.au/contacts/Burma/Media/491.html

UK
The Burma Campaign UK
Third Floor, Bickerton House
Bickerton Road
London, UK
N19 5JT7
Tel: (20) 7281 7377
Fax: (20) 7272 3559
Email: info@burmacampaign.org.uk
Website: www.burmacampaign.org.uk

US
Franklin Research and Development,
711 Atlantic Avenue, Boston, MA 02111.
Tel: (617) 423 6655 Fax: (617) 482 6179
E-mail: simon_billenness@cybercom.net
Human Rights Watch/Asia, 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor New York, NY 10118-3299 USA Tel: (1) 212 290-4700, Fax: (1) 212 736-1300 E-mail: hrwnyc@hrw.org Web: http://www.hrw.org/asia/index.php

INTERNATIONAL
Free Burma Coalition website (with links to other Free Burma websites) http://www.freeburmacoalition.org

Randomness

Random is a phrase that my students use all the time, especially the middle school students. More than a few times my homeroom will say to me “that was random” in response to some remark that intrudes upon my discussions of world economics or the wonders of algebra. “Random” is actually one of those remarks that they use that I actually like (unlike “sweet”) and use myself occasionally when one of the little darlings goes off on some tangent. So here are some random thoughts for the day.

Why is it that so many expat websites about Thailand use really garish colors on their sites? I’m thinking particularly of the ones with the black backgrounds and the electric blue (and unreadable) links and bright yellow fonts. Does it have something to do with them spending too much time in the bars of Soi Cowboy or Nana or Patpong?

If you live on the sea with a nice sea breeze constantly cooling you, you should put lots of paper down on the tiles if you’re outside on the balcony spray painting or rust proofing some fittings for your doors or windows (I didn’t and I have lots of outlines now on my balcony tiles of metal fittings.

Why is it that you can go just about anywhere in Southeast Asia and hear expats whine about the same things – the way we’re treated by locals, getting cheated by a girl/boyfriend/ wife or significant other, being made to feel unwelcome by the government, driving practices, and relatives? Are we the same? Are they the same?

Why is it that expats who have no understanding of and no interest in Islam move to countries that are predominately Muslim and then complain about it (almost always secretly) incessantly? I have a number of issues about the interpretation of the Qu’ran and the practices that are justified by referring to the Qu’ran, but I always make them publically.

Why don’t they sell Gouda cheese in Singaraja?

Beats, Bali, and Hallucinations

Another day of fasting. Went out today to buy some thingies for the windows because the original ones are rusted. It’s hotter here in Singaraja than it is in Sumbawa, and small as it is, Singaraja is still a city with noise and pollution. So I felt hotter than usual. I’m writing this as the sun prepares to disappear and I wait to open the fast and have dinner with the family, most of whom I haven’t seen today. Right, the time now. It’s that time in the fast when the mind and body begin to feel like they are in the midst of an lsd trip. Reality does get bent some – not totally distorted, but twisted just a bit, and the response time is slowed down – well enough that I don’t like having long conversations with people because I’m never quite sure what they’re saying.

I’d be sitting out on the balcony right now having my sundown scotch if it wasn’t Ramadan but instead I’m watching the sun through the window as it descends while I type this. I just finished reading an interesting piece on Kerouac and On the Road as this is the 50th anniversary of its publication. The piece is well written, and I take pleasure in reading it; it’s a sensuous pleasure as physical as if I could touch the text, smell the ink, feel the weight of the magazine in my hands, but I’m online and can’t, but I do nonetheless, and I wonder if it’s like the people that feel limbs that have been amputated. What will the sensuousness of reading exist as for a future generation that doesn’t have books or magazines?

Robert is coming over this evening for a few drinks after the fast is over. Putu will be here too although he rarely drinks. I’ll have some cigarettes tonight as well to celebrate On the Road.

I just took a look at the Kerouac piece again and notice something moving on the page. Hmm, a hallucination? No, the New Yorker has an animated cartoon. I take a look at the page again. I love the New Yorker.

retirement- revised

The issue of what someone needs to retire on and how much that might cost is always a topic of discussion on expat forums. So what is my ideal of the essentials?

Books (this is about one book per month) 180,000
Internet ( I’m estimating this, I hope it’s less) 300,000
Website Server 144,000
Indovision (satellite tv so I can watch baseball) 300,000
Tech Stuff (software, hardware, ink, etc.) 250,000
Car registration (due yearly, saved monthly) 120,000
Motorbike registration (same) 19,000
Motorbike 2 registration (same as car) 19,000
School fees (for the 4 kids) 400,000
Visa (my retirement visa) 500,000
Clothes (for the kids) 500,000
Phone (my phone that I use for the internet) 120,000
Medical (whole family) 900,000
Insurance (me) 1,000,000

All this totals to 4,932,000 per month. It’s not exactly living like a hermit, but it’s what I see as living a fairly conservative lifestyle. My 7th/8th grade Social Studies class is just finishing a unit about economics and creating a budget was one of their assignments. They found my budget fairly barebones.

I had a comment from Brandon of The Java Jive blog about a few of the figures in my retirement budget and, while meaning to get an answer out, I’ve gotten bogged down in the quarterly migration from Sumbawa to Bali. So here’s my clarification about the above.

Brandon noted that the budget for books seemed rather slim – he’s a big reader and according to my relatives so I am. While living in Sumbawa and teaching and tending to the kids and animals and doing house repairs, I tend to only read for about 15 minutes before bed so finishing a book takes forever. I know that I’m going to be reading a lot more when I’m retired, but I spend several hours a day sorting through the various feeds from wire services, newspapers, journals, websites, and blogs and all of that is free. During the early days of the web I used a little slogan at the end of my emails that read, “Information wants to be free” (it wasn’t my creation, I grabbed it from a number of people that were using it as well) and I’m still of the opinion that the real revolutionary function of the internet is to provide free information so that the playing field is somewhat leveled from what is was in the past. Well…

Travel. I was asked about this as well. I’m not planning on doing much travel other than some local travel around the island. I’ve never been a very good tourist. I know people who can (or believe they can) charactize an island or country after a few days or weeks. I can’t do that and if I can’t get at what life is life on a daily basis for people, travel is only marginally interesting. But I am interested in spending time in various parts of the island just for information purposes.

Food. Ah, we do need to eat, and anyone who lives with an Indonesian knows that a large part of their time is spent either discussing food, preparing it, or consuming it. Food falls under my wife’s budget that isn’t included here. I also don’t have electricity costs or water or land taxes down in my budget because my wife deals with those. She gets 11 million a month to pay for all of that that includes the kids jajan requests and all the miscellaneous stuff that I don’t want to deal with.

So we have a total budget that really equals about 16 million a month. This is a fairly conservative budget for an expat. Getting down to local realities, this is probably about 8 times what our neighbors have to spend (if not more). This is something that I regularly remind the kids of – we’re fairly lucky in that we have some money. Oh yeah, zakat isn’t included here – that comes out of my slush fund.

Back in Bali - Stage 2

Right. Back in Bali once again after the usual long trip except this time it was made longer and more difficult by the fact that all of us except our youngest, Meredith, were fasting. The trip was actually on the fast side as it took us 15 ½ hours to make it door to door from Sumbawa to Bali. My failing eyesight in my right eye makes driving at night a problem, but we made it through the usual mad traffic in Bali safely.

Mercedes was glad (to say the least) to see all of us – Rebecca even hugged Mercedes when we arrived which, considering how the two continually fight when they are together, was a nice touch. My friends, Robert and Putu, showed up to welcome us and Robert gave me a nice bottle of scotch as a welcome home present.

No one got to sleep before 12 and everyone was up at 3 to eat before another day of fasting. Su woke up at six to go to the market which left me alone for most of the day. I spent that time unpacking all the stuff that I brought with me as part of this phase for the big move next June when I quit working.

I began setting up my file cabinet to make it functional again after four plus years of serving as a storage device for miscellaneous junk. Then I spent hours on the computer setting up bookmarks on my iMac which I brought with me and which will stay here – I’ll use my windows machine in Sumbawa for the remainder of my time there.

Mercedes came up and spent a few hours just chatting about her life and helping me unpack – as well as helping herself to some of my office supplies. It was good to spend some time with her after the 10 weeks apart.

I brought a load of work with me which I’ll get to in a few days; right now I’m doing my retirement stuff which gives me a feeling that I’ll get there eventually. I have to write a report for the Board on primary computer use.

I uploaded the first of my attempts at doing digital 3d art with Bryce. I’ve introduced this to my students in 3rd – 8th grade and they love it. But I want to get a little beyond just having them make nice landscapes. I printed out the manual, and I’m going to work on developing my skills with this program. I’m also going to clean up the podcast page on cyberbali and do a few podcasts from here. The kids enjoy doing the podcasts, and they’re great to use with the students because they develop skills in a variety of areas: they had to write out scripts to use (no stream of consciousness stuff), sort through a mass of sound tracks to use as background music (this was optional – the younger guys had some trouble with that so we skipped it for them), then they had to record their program and edit it so that it sounds smooth when we broadcast it on Friday mornings before assemblies. If I was going to be around for a few more years, I’d do a lot more work with the podcasting, but as it is, we’ll do some basics for now.

Unfortunatley, the company that owns the school has blocked us uploading any multimedia files so we can’t put the podcasts online anymore. I’m going to do that from here if I can find all the work that the kids did.

I received some new photos of my cute granddaughter today which the family loves seeing. I have to print them out for all the kids to put in their rooms.

We opened the fast this evening with all of the family having dinner together which is something that we rarely do – generally everyone eats when they’re hungry so it was really enjoyable to have dinner together.

And that ends the first day back home.

(The photo is one of the papaya trees that I cut down last week. I couldn’t upload the photo to the blog because of the new restrictions on uploading graphics)

Hermits, Thoreau, Retirement and the Essentials of Life

I’ve been reading an interesting book called Hermits by Peter French. I’m at the section of the book about Thoreau. I haven’t read Walden since high school, but I’ve just dug a copy out in my library here in Sumbawa. I want to go back and read it again after I finish Hermits. French writes that Thoreau, “…distinguished between the activities necessary o maintain life and those on which a free individual would choose to spend his time. The former were drudgery, the latter worthwhile. The good life should be organized to maximize free time and minimize drudgery. In fact his declared aim was to reverse the biblical injunction and labour for one day only, saving the other six for ‘free time’.

Additionally, he notes that Thoreau followed Socrates in seeing how many things he could live without so that he would not become a slave to working in order to purchase things which were really luxuries and comforts that had become to be seen as necessities.

So the point of all this - it’s related to a degree to my planned retirement. I’ve been working on paring my life down to what I see as essentials for me. The idea is to spend time with my family, friends, and myself to rediscover who I am and be available for my children before they are grown and gone.

The issue of what someone needs to retire on and how much that might cost is always a topic of discussion on expat forums. So what is my ideal of the essentials?

Books (this is about one book per month) 180,000

Internet ( I’m estimating this, I hope it’s less) 300,000

Website Server 144,000

Indovision (satellite tv so I can watch baseball) 300,000

Tech Stuff (software, hardware, ink, etc.) 250,000

Car registration (due yearly, saved monthly) 120,000

Motorbike registration (same) 19,000

Motorbike 2 registration (same as car) 19,000

School fees (for the 4 kids) 400,000

Visa (my retirement visa) 500,000

Clothes (for the kids) 500,000

Phone (my phone that I use for the internet) 120,000

Medical (whole family) 900,000

Insurance (me) 1,000,000

All this totals to 4,932,000 per month. It’s not exactly living like a hermit, but it’s what I see as living a fairly conservative lifestyle. My 7^th/8^th grade Social Studies class are just finishing a unit about economics and creating a budget was one of their assignments. They found my budget fairly barebones. More on budgeting for expats later.

House repairs and things to do after retiremen

With less than a week to go before we leave for Bali (does it sound like I’m excited about going home to see my eldest daughter?), we are working on doing repairs to the house. We have a number of cracks in the walls from the numerous earthquakes over the past four years. We’re working on fixing them today as well as cutting down some papaya trees that have just grown up around the house by themselves. One of the interesting things about papaya trees is that they are amazingly easy to grow – just throw some seeds down and you have some trees. We have a number too close to the house and we’re worried about what the roots will do to the house and the little sidewalk that runs along the side of the house.

I cut down two papaya trees this morning while a couple of guys were working on repairing the wall. Why are we doing all of this now – we still have another eight months before I stop working? I’m somewhat compulsive, and I want to get the house in shape to be either sold or rented out. The first thing is to fix the cracks in the walls, and then we’ll work on changing many of the ceiling panels which are water stained. Of course, now that we have been fixing the cracks in the walls, we’ll need to paint them as well.

I do have a fascination with doing work on the house which I’ve noted before. Thoreau says, “I’ve never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house.” Hmm.

While I’m on Thoreau, he responded to friends who asked what he was going to do when he set off to live at Walden Pond, “Will it not be enough to watch the progress of the seasons?” Good enough. Being a bit compulsive, I’ve set a bit more of a program for myself. This is what I have for things to do in life after teaching.

1. Cook breakfast for the kids

2. Drive kids to school

3. Pick kids up from school.

4. Correspondence with family and friends

5. Reading online newspapers

6. General web surfing to see what is new on the internet.

7. Developing the cyberbali site to have more lessons that teachers can use with quick to use directions on how to use them.

8. Contributing to the forums that I belong to – expat forums, education forums, 3d forums.

9. Exercising daily – walking, swimming, lifting weights.

10. Cleaning the house.

11. Writing my blog daily.

12. Finishing the novel that I started 20 years ago.

13. Finishing the book on Islam and Hinduism that I started 10 years ago.

14. Reading.

15. Doing house repairs.

16. visiting friends.

17. Learning how to use 3D graphics programs.

18. Learning Balinese.

19. Learning Arabic.

20. Learning how to program in Java and setting up some easy lessons online for teachers.

21. Podcasting.

22. Go to Mecca.

23. Make a series of videos about Indonesia.

24. Take a biology class online.

Ramadan, Fasting, and Thinking of Bali

A Ramadan Saturday. We all woke up at 3:30 am to have breakfast and then went back to sleep. It’s one of those days when none of us have to work or go to school. Su and I got out of bed at 7 and I started watching the Yankees and Red Sox. It looked like the Yankees were going to go down, but the Yankees came back in the 8^th and took the lead. Mariano came in to work the 9^th and the leadoff hitter immediately got on base, but Mariano struck out the next batter and the fourth batter to end the inning and the game. Nice to see the Yankees beat the Red Sox. The game finished just at noon. What a monster – five hours. Fortunately I have nothing special to do today except fast and do a little school work. Sam and Rebecca are both fasting as well.

We’re all getting psyched up about going to Bali next Saturday, and Mercedes really misses being around her immediate family so it’s going to be great for all of us. The drive over should be interesting as we’ll all be fasting, but travelers get an exemption for the day of their trip which they can make up later. The kids will probably take it; I’m not sure about Su and me. Once we begin fasting, we like to keep it up rather than break the string for a special reason.

According to internet reports, there are supposed to be over 100 yachts anchored along the north coast next week. If so there will probably be a number just in front of our house – that should prove to be interesting. Other than that, I don’t think that there will be much going on while I’m in Bali. Mostly I’ll be working on the websites, getting photos taken for my visa next year, visiting a few friends, getting my Mac set up, fixing a few more windows on the third floor, and just hanging out seeing what Mercedes is doing. I want to get a look at her campus as well while I’m there.

Since Ramadan started every morning on my way to work, I pass groups of people out walking along the road on their way to the beach. Early morning exercise. I want to do that next year when I'm retired.

Ramadan

Ramadan started today in Indonesia. Su, the kids, and I were up at 3:30 to eat. I went back to sleep at 4, but did not have much luck in actually sleeping. I'm not one of those people who can go back to sleep easily so the period when Ramadan intersects with work is a bit of a stretch in terms of being tired - the actually fasting is pretty simple, especially if you think about why you are fasting and what it is supposed to represent.

The Dry Season

We’re deep in to the dry season and, once again, there’s no water. We’re doing a somewhat regular routine of two days of no running water and then two days of a little running water – just enough so that we can fill up jerry cans and tanks and tubs to last for the days of no water. The word is that the village is going to dig another well – I hope so.

Despite not having much water, our tomato crop is in, and we have hundreds of fresh tomatoes along with a few heads of cauliflower and some pumpkins. I’ve eaten the tomatoes and cauliflower – for some reason I didn’t get any of the pumpkins. I’m looking forward to mango season which should be here in a few months.

We have two more really hectic weeks before our two-week vacation. Vacation corresponds with part of Ramadan; so the two weeks that I’m going to be on vacation are two of the four weeks that I’ll be fasting. I’ll be in Bali for those two weeks to see Mercedes, my oldest daughter, and to take care of some of the business that needs to be done before retirement. On this trip, I’ll be getting photos ready for the retirement visa documents. I want all the paperwork prepared several months before I’ll need it, so this will be my key focus during this vacation. I’ll also do some school work as usual – lesson plans for the next term, some work on new tech things that I want to do, and some writing. When I’m fasting in Bali, I rarely leave the house for more than an hour or so as it’s just too hot usually.

We’ve had a few people contact us who are interested in buying the house. The question now is whether to sell it now or rent it out for a few years and then sell it later. That’s something that Su and I will probably be discussing for the next few months.

Grandparenthood

Well, my son and daughter-in-law had their first child - a girl. They're all fine, and I'm relieved as I hadn't heard anything for a while and was getting a bit concerned. So now I'm a grandfather. It's going to take some time to get used to this I think. More on this later as students are coming in really early to complete a social studies assignment that's due today.

The Last August

I’ve just finished my last August as a teacher so two months of working have now passed. I haven’t taken a look at my little retirement boat on the cyberbali.com site, but I know it is now in the 9 month period. As I continue to move towards retirement, the emotions swirling round the next stage of the life cycle become more heavily mixed than when I first decided that it was time to retire. I read an article the other day about retirement that quoted an academic who had been retired for a few years and compared the first year of retirement to the feeling of playing hooky from school. Just planning out today, I keep thinking that it would be nice if I had more time to get this and that done because two days is just not enough to do all the things that I would like to do, especially during baseball season when I put in a half-day of work every Saturday.

Mini book review

Book: Java: A Traveller’s Anthology

Compiled and introduced by James R. Rush, this anthology is part of the traveller’s series published by Oxford University Press. Java has 35 travel accounts by Westerners who landed in Java during the period 1330 through the 1980s. Some of these tales are intentionally quite humorous such as S.J Perelman’s account or the one titled, “John and Iris do Jogya;” others are unintentionally humorous such as Eliza Scidmore’s description of the Javanese as “…a little people, and one feels the same indulgent, protective sense as towards the Japanese.” Wow, talk about colonialism. This is one of those books for the specialist on Java or Indonesia.

Podcasting and other computer projects at our school

We completed our first podcast last week; it was in an interview between two eighth graders here. One is from the international school and the other is from the national school. I have the podcast up on my cyberbali.com site for now as we can’t access the server for our schoolweb site as we need to ftp files over 500K and the company won’t let us use ftp. I also put a link up on the Education Podcast Network. It seems like it works, but there’s something wrong with the rss feed – well, it works but it looks funny. As I’ve written other rss files that have worked, I must have done something wrong with it as it was the first xml file that I tried. I’ll try to clean it up in a week or two.

We played the podcast over the school emergency broadcast system, and other than trying to get the sound on the system right, it worked well and the students liked it. Every class is working on podcasting now. I have the first/second grade combination working on them as well. They are looking forward to hearing themselves on a Friday morning.

After we’re done with this project, I’m going to have students work on developing an internet presence where they can save websites that they need. I started working on delicious, and I’m going to look into working with that again. It was a bit complicated for some of the students, but I think that if I introduce it very slowly this time, the majority of them will be able to handle it.

The photo actually has nothing to do with this post. It's my second daughter dressing up for one of the independence day activities last week.

More on Daily Life in an Indonesian Village

We’re deep in the dry season and the weather has been clear and cool lately. Last night it was 64 degrees F, and even now at 7:30 in the morning it’s only 68. As usual during the dry season, water is at a premium, but it’s something that you get used to here in Sumbawa.

Despite the lack of rain and water, we have some crops growing: our cauliflower in the back is doing well as is some green, leafy vegetable that tastes like spinach. We also have hundreds of tomatoes, which are doing well, and dozens of cucumbers that we have already started eating. Five of the banana trees and five of the papaya trees are bearing fruit. It’s not mango season yet, but it will be soon.

We continue to have baby animals arriving here on the farm. Six baby ducks hatched last week – two mysteriously disappeared, so we have four left. We had to use one of our hens to hatch the duck eggs because the mother duck destroys her eggs after she lays them – we don’t know why she does this, but she always does. So, this time we placed her eggs with one of the chickens who sat on the eggs until they hatched. They follow her around (was it Lorenz who did that experiment with the baby ducks?) like she is their mother which she is in a way. She in turn protects them, but our two geese have entered the picture. They have adopted the baby ducks for some reason – they don’t adopt the baby chicks so somehow they sense some affinity with the ducklings. Having the geese protect them gives the ducklings a lot of security because all of the other animals are afraid of them including Dave the dog. Whenever Dave or the puppies get close to the ducklings, the geese attack. It’s quite humorous to watch.

On other local events:

Little League baseball started again yesterday. This will be my last time coaching a team after 30 years or so of doing this. Hmm…a part of retirement that I won’t particularly enjoy. We lost 19 -15. Not too bad. We had two innings of sloppy fielding, but otherwise did well. Anyway, it was fun to be out there.

Four more weeks until vacation and a chance to see my eldest daughter in Bali.

A Long Weekend

This is Indonesian Independence Day. It’s a national holiday, and I have the day off. The kids had to get up early for ceremonies at their schools, but then they were able to come home after that and take the rest of the day off. This is my only long weekend for the term so I’m intent on enjoying it. The only school work that I have for the weekend is grading some social studies exams, and setting up a hardware database for the merger of the international and national schools in January. Other than that I plan on enjoying myself, relaxing, playing with the puppies, and doing some cement work on the house.

Another Anniversary

This is also my 18th anniversary of living in Indonesia (I do have the four years that I lived in Pakistan during this 18 years, but the family was still here, and I thought of Bali as home so…). When I left San Francisco for Indonesia, I never thought that I was leaving for good; the move was pretty much a change of scenery for a year to clear my head and then get back to life in the Bay Area. I had everything I owned stored and fully expected to pick up where I left off. But, here I am 18 years, four kids, three houses, and a wife later. My life is one of those strange hybrids that you find over in Asia of the Western guy married to the Asian girl along with their kids and quite often some of her relatives somewhere around. I know guys who live basically an American life with their Asian wife in Asia; then I’ve met a few who have pretty much gone native, and then there’s the ones like me. I tend to by located on the gone native end of the continuum although just a little way over. Food is basically a fusion of the east and the west; entertainment is more or less the same – I like traditional dance and music here, but I also like Western movies and tv, and I read a lot which sets me off from most Indonesians that I know. Hmm…

Baseball

I’ve been a St. Louis Cardinals fan my whole life. As a kid, I also rooted for the Red Sox (Ted Williams was still playing then along with Jackie Jensen) and the Yankees (it was the era of the great Yankee teams of the 50s and early 60s with Mantle and Ford and Berra and Howard). For most of the last 18 years, I haven’t had much of a chance to follow baseball, but the last four years here in Sumbawa I’ve been able to watch games on the weekend on ESPN. As I’ve noted before most of the games are Yankee games so I’ve decided to make the Yankees my second team since they’re really the only team that I get to watch regularly, and I hate just watching baseball without supporting a team so I’m now a Yankee fan (St. Louis as well). And for my first day as a Yankee fan? They lost to the Tigers.

Independence activities

This is independence week in several countries – Indonesia is one of them. Independence week involves a variety of activities including a lot of marching. Go anywhere in Bali during the month before Independence Day and you’ll often be slowed down by kids and adults marching in columns along the road. The first few times you see this, it’s one of those scenic things about a foreign culture that you take a photo of and write about to your family and friends. After you lived in the country a few years, the traffic congestion that long lines of marchers cause gets to be irritating. But once you get around to having some children that grow up and start taking part in the week’s activities, you develop another perspective on the whole thing.

So this year, there have been a few events involving kids from the local schools. Today my son and the two daughters that are still here were involved in the annual march. I didn’t know that it was today, so it was kind of a pleasant surprise when I entered the village on my motorbike to see lines of kids and adults marching through the village. By the time I reached the house, my son and youngest daughter were already finished, but did get a chance to see my second oldest daughter march.

Last night Rebecca was in a dance competition along with some of her friends. As usual the plan was to start at 8 pm, so I drove my motorbike over to the community field where the dances were going to be held. The dances started at 8:45, but the delay gave me time to have a nice conversation with my daughter, Mercedes’, former math teacher. The actual performances only lasted about an hour. I filmed all the dances – some traditional, some Indonesian pop – with my mini dvd camera and found out that the camera actually works better in dark conditions if I’m farther away from the light source.

Events like those of the last two days provide some form of entertainment for folks living in remote villages.

Interesting News from around the Net

More on weird weather –

Salon’s How the World Works had some interesting facts on world weather:

Cyclone Gonu, the first documented cyclone in the Arabian Sea, landed in Oman on June 6 with maximum sustained winds of nearly 148km/h, affecting more than 20,000 people.

In east Asia, heavy rains in June ravaged southern China, where flooding affected more than 13.5m people; while in England and Wales the period from May to July was the wettest since records began in 1766.

Germany also saw its wettest May since countrywide observations started in 1901; in sharp contrast with the previous month, which was its driest April since 1901.

Further south, the worst flooding in six years hit Mozambique in February, while abnormally heavy and early rainfall in Sudan since the end of June has caused the Nile River and other seasonal rivers to overflow.

A series of large swell waves (3 meter-4.5 meters) swamped 68 islands in 16 atolls in the Maldives, while to the west, in Latin America, early May saw Uruguay's worst flooding since 1959.

The article also noted that global land temperatures reached their highest level since 1800. Hmm… does this bode well for future generations?

And more from HTWW about living the low-carbon life. For someone like me who is just discovering the discussion about carbon-credits and low-carbon like and such, this article was pretty informative. I did learn that calculating everything in your lifestyle to see how it balances out in the healthy planet balance sheet is becoming a popular parlour game (presumably among liberals as I know no one who does this – but that’s another issue).


Retirement update:

My impending retirement continues to draw a variety of comments most of which still favor the “you’ll be back working at another school within a year” opinion. Just a snippet from a conversation with a friend the other day got me thinking about the continuing to work elsewhere option when he said that he had to keep working for a number of reasons (he’s ten years younger than me for one) which included keeping up his lifestyle. I started thinking about that as soon as I got on my motorbike to drive home. Hmm…making my current income, we can buy pretty much what we want when we want it (and we’ve done so pretty much for the past 17 years) – the kids want ipods, my wife wants a new handphone, I want a new computer, we want to renovate one of the houses, someone needs an expensive medical procedure. It’s nice to be able to buy things when you want them, I have to admit. Not worrying about money is certainly enjoyable, but…is that really where I want to be at this point in my life?

The kids are going to continue to need money to continue their education, but I think that I have enough put away to cover all of them through college, and then they’re on their own. As for Su and me, well she generally doesn’t require much more than a present for her birthday; she takes care of her other needs out of the house money, and I don’t require much other than some tech toys to work with during my retirement and some book money. As for the other stuff, what’s the point? I’m perfectly happy wearing t-shirts and shorts with holes in them, I don’t like eating in restaurants, entertainment is watching tv a few hours a night. Being a consumer is like being a junkie. One more jones to get rid of. Add that to the smoking and drinking, and I have a few personal issues to work on during retirement. Should prove to be interesting, and as an old friend used to say, it will keep me off the streets.

Rural Life in Indonesia

Well, I’m just about over the nasty case of flu that I’ve had for the past four days. I actually took two days off work which is fairly unusual for me. Last time I took a day off work was in February after an operation on my ankle. I took two days off to recover from the surgery. Anyway, it’s nice to be able to breathe almost freely now.

I went over to the kebun with Su and the kids today for the first time in a week. The puppies are still hanging around and are still little chubby things so their mother is obviously still coming by to feed them at some point during the day or night. Bush, the daddy goat, saw a few young females pass by and he set about trying to destroy to fence so that he could get out and hang with the young ladies. It seems like Veronica, Bush’s mate, is pregnant again, and she’s keeping Bush away so he’s out looking for action. Hmm, goats remind me of some humans that I know.

So Sunday was pretty much of a garden day. I did correct some work that I had taken home when I thought that I might not be back in school for a day, but mostly I’ve been out in the garden across the road where we have the goats and the puppies and some of our fruit trees. All of us except for Rebecca went. Sam messed around with the puppies and built them a shelter; Meredith watched Sam for a while and then went in the bungalow and watched tv; Su started a number of fires as she likes to do; and I played with the puppies and searched the trees for snakes – there weren’t any.

Later in the day, Su and I went out and inspected the gardens in the backyard. We have a number of bananna trees which are producing fruit now; the problem will be to keep the monkeys away from the bananas until they are ripe enough for us to harvest them. Our cucumbers, greens and tomatoes are growing well, but again we need to keep the monkeys away.

The Environment and Global warming

Mercedes seems to be doing well in high school so far other than some problems with money because she has to buy books and new school uniforms, pay for school fees, and pay for additional lessons (known as les in Indonesia). We call her three or four times a day, and she calls us several times so there is a lot of communication going on. We’ll be going back to Bali in another seven weeks.

One of my more recent interests (as those who read this blog occasionally know) is the state of the worldwide water situation. Another one that I’m just developing is global warming. It’s fairly obvious that the weather has changed over the past 18 years here in Indonesia. Generally, environmental issues were never something that caught my interest (with the exception of rainforest destruction), but perhaps because I’m on the verge of retirement, new issues have entered my radar.

I was reading an article about the pollution of the atmosphere from air travel. I didn’t realize that there was so much activity around this area. I took a look at a carbon calculator to see what the cost would be in carbon emissions for a trip from Denpasar to Chicago and back. Well, I’m glad that I won’t be doing this much. Actually since I’ve moved to Sumbawa, I rarely fly: one overseas trip a year for the annual EARCOS conference, and occasionally, I take a short flight from Bali to Lombok, although usually we drive which is more environmentally friendly according to the article in Salon that I read.

The environment is becoming more of a political issue in Indonesia these days although public awareness still is fairly low. At my house in Bali, the neighbors still throw their trash in the sea; and here in Sumbawa, a neighbor still throws his trash in a patch of jungle in front of his house even though we mentioned it to him once. But, on the positive side, there are more public trash bins available, the cities have trash collection, and recycling has taken hold in some places in Indonesia. Eco-tourism is starting to develop as well. There is hope that environmental awareness will develop here. And just as I’m about to finish this, there’s a report that the Pope is committed to making the Vatican green. Good news from the Vatican and the Pope.

mileposts and new life

Last night was my last "Orientation" night as a teacher, as well as my last July workday. It was a quiet night as I am down to six students in my homeroom. Only three parent discussions. All in all, a nice way to end one part of the school year.

A feral dog decided to have her pups in our kebun. We have three cute little chubby puppies. My wife says that they have noses like hers. Now we just have to figure out what to do with them.

Computer classes and younger students

Computer classes for children in preschool and kindergarten is a topic that can raise some tempers in certain quarters. I have taught computer classes for children as young as 3 who would troop in to my computer lab twice a week for 45 minutes for …for what? The children were too small to see the screen properly without putting cushions on the chair. None of them could read or write. Why were they in computer classes? The answer is, of course, to give their teacher a prep period.

Students at preschool age should be working on a multitude of other tasks more appropriate for their age and developmental level than sitting in front of a computer monitor. I do think that small children should be introduced to computers, but by their parents in very short spurts. When my children were small, they would sit on my lap and listen to a Talking Book and then we’d go out and play.

As far as kindergarten students, computer use should be integrated in with other classroom activities, and should involve only short periods of time. Placing 15 or 20 or 30 students in a lab with one computer teacher for 45 minutes twice a week is basically a waste of time as the small ones will spend a significant part of each period waiting for help from the teacher when the computer freezes or they accidentally turn the program off or they get lost in their program. You know that a computer period is too long when students ask how much longer before the period is over. Activities need to be short and focused

When I was a classroom teacher and teaching second grade, my students loved going in to the lab to work because they were continuing on with something that they had started in the classroom. During those years, I had a rather large first grade class of students that would come in to the computer lab, but I loved having them there because their teacher had a plan for what he wanted them to accomplish, and he had done the groundwork so that I, as the computer teacher, wasn’t creating lessons unrelated to what they were doing in the classroom.

As more and more international schools insist that candidates for teaching positions be computer literate and familiar with integrating technology in to the regular curriculum, life will be easier for the computer teacher who has classes of younger students. The ideal situation, in my opinion, is to have mini-labs for primary students where the computer teacher goes in to the classroom and works with small groups of students on specific tasks with clear goals related to their daily activities. The computer teacher and the classroom teacher work together during this time rotating students using a center model for instruction. This would be a good time to bring in a parent volunteer or two to work with the students as well. In this type of collaborative activity, the kindergartner is developing computer skills while working on other areas of the curriculum.

I’d like to hear other opinions about this issue.

Slang words and the foreigner

I was scrolling through new entries in an expat forum that I follow recently and came across a thread called Gaijin, Farang, Gweilo along with a poll asking how expats felt about being called by one of these words. The poll which had 30 respondents showed that 63% didn’t mind being called by one of these words. However, on other forums, I’ve come across some rather nasty comments about our (we expats) local hosts who call us farangs or in Indonesia bule.

I first heard the word bule when I was living in Papua in Indonesia. Little Papuan kids would scream it as I drove through Timika (a town in the south of Papua). I always found it rather amusing, but I never heard an adult call me a bule until I moved to Sumbawa. Kids and adults both will occasionally refer to me as a bule. I generally take it in stride although as I’ve mentioned to some of my friends including ones who use the term that if I was to refer to them by their skin color they would probably be offended. The response is often what term would you use?

Hmm, I’m not really sure about that. I’ve heard Indonesians from Java and Bali (who can be just as racist as any other group of people) refer to Papuans as Orang Hitam (Black people) or Orang Primitif (primitive people) or Orang Desa (basically a hick, a rube, a farmer – to use some equivalent American terms).

In Bali, foreigners are usually referred to as tourists. These days if some Balinese refers to me as a tourist, I reply, “I’m not a tourist, I’m a bule.” That generally gets a laugh.

I don’t mind what people call me when it comes down to it. What I do mind is how they treat me, and I have to say that with the exception of some government officials, I’ve always been welcomed by people that I’ve met in Indonesia whether they’re rich or poor, young or old. And that is one of the reasons that I’m still here after 18 years.

Habits

Habits. We develop these habits as we age. When I quit drinking and smoking, I had to give up sitting on the veranda watching the sun set every evening because it was connected to scotch and Marlboros. Today my gardener asked why I haven’t been over to the garden – across the road from the house – since I came back from Bali. My reply was that my wife isn’t here. That habit of coming home every afternoon from school and going to check on the fruit trees and the goats is part of my non-smoking, non-drinking behavior. My wife isn't here so I am on a different system.

I did notice today that a number of ripe papayas had large holes in them. My first thought was that it was the monkeys. But, the gardener said that bat have been coming in at night and eating the papayas. For an old city boy, it’s an object lesson in the difficulties of having a farm – pests. The monkeys and the bats are our big problems, but they have to live as well, and the problem is coming to terms with them. Su won’t let me shot them because she’s absorbed a lot of the multiple religions that have crossed this island over the centuries. I regularly watch Indonesians shoot gorgeous parrots, hunt protected dolphins, capture protected birds of paradise, but she insists on not killing any living creatures even poisonous snakes and bugs and worms. We captured a millipede one day whose bit is excruciating and she insisted that I put in a bottle. She dumped it in the jungle across the road all the while speaking to it about how she spared its life and it should just go about its life and not bother us again. Sometimes I feel like Su is a hippy transplant.

Children leaving home

Dealing with kids leaving home. This is an issue that is going to be something that I’ll be dealing with probably until I’m dead. I made it through the first time when my eldest son left home although I could have dealt with it better. I’m trying to deal with things rationally and coolly this time around. It helps that I have a wife this time to talk about all of this with. The first time things were complicated by divorces and career issues; this time it’s a bit different – if for no other reason than that I’m almost twenty years older and a lot slower.

Mercedes is a first year student at SMA Lab in Singaraja. An Indonesian teacher friend here told me the other day that it was an outstanding school. Mercedes seems to like it from what she says on the handphone. She wants to be a doctor so she’s taking an extra biology class as an elective. I asked her the other day if she was making friends (knowing how important that is to kids around the world, but perhaps even more so for Indonesians who are constantly perplexed by the amount of time that I spend alone (more on that for another post). She said yes she was making friends including a few girls that she knew when she was in elementary school in Bali four years ago. Being perhaps an overly protective dad, I asked her if they were all girls, and she asked if it was ok is she had friends who were boys, but not boyfriends. Hmm, ok Dad how do you deal with that? I thought for a moment and replied that yes it was ok. But (ah, the Dad but), keep focused on your studies.

So she’s pretty much on her own. She lives in our townhouse in Singaraja. The house adjoins what we call the Beach House, and she has an aunt and uncle and three little rugrats living there, and she has another aunt and uncle just 50 meters away down the street. Still, it’s a big jump for an Indonesian kid from a fairly tightknit family. The sensitive one as my oldest sister would say.

So this year I’ll be living in three houses on two different islands – keeping an eye on the end of my teaching career and my family here in Sumbawa, and keeping an eye on my high school daughter in our houses in Bali as she starts off her higher ed career in Indonesia. Higher ed because graduation from high school is still not the norm in Indonesia – mandatory schooling here ends at the end of junior high (and many tragically don’t make it that far due to economics).

Next year, we’ll all be back in Bali; I’ll be able to keep an eye on the kids and help with their homework, and Su will be able to start her new business to keep her occupied once she no longer has to run a big house, a garden, and a crop of kids and animals.

Oh, animals. That’s been one of the questions about how I’m going to deal with moving to Bali. The townhouse is just that – it has about the same space as a small New York townhouse which means no ducks, chickens, geese, goats, and dogs. The plan (another one of those plans) is to get a baby python here and raise it (I’m assuming that it will respond to raising like my old boa constrictor did when I lived in Berkeley, California) and keep it in the small courtyard that we have in Bali.

Back in School

Just watching the Yankees get pounded by Tampa Bay. The Yankees always seem to be on ESPN over here (I’ve probably said this before), but it’s baseball anyway. If I had a chance to come back, it would definitely be as a ball player. One of the things that I am willing to pop for next year when we are living on a restricted retirement income is a subscription to Indovision or the new company that I came across in Bali a few weeks ago. The idea of being able to watch baseball every weekend without having to worry about getting papers graded sounds like heaven. And, with an internet connection, I can just get online to check on players’ stats when I need to. Yeah, definitely heaven.

So the first week of school has passed by somewhat quickly. It was good to see my homeroom class once again after the four week break. I’m going to miss teaching, but not the other stuff that goes along with being a teacher. It’s going to be an interesting year.

On the retirement front, I’m “running the numbers” (as I call my compulsive playing with my proposed retirement budget) again, and things look fairly good. I still have to make a major saving effort this last year of work, but if we can do it, we should be able to live fairly comfortably on the retirement money. My wife thinks that we can rent our house out in Sumbawa rather than sell it, and she’s pushing me to take that route. Financially it makes sense if we can get what she says we can because we can stretch out our first retirement fund from lasting two years to lasting three and a half which means that we can stretch the second retirement fund out to three years from the original plan of two years which means that we don’t have to use the third, and last fund, until I hit the age of 66 instead of 63 which means that by that time we could have reached the stage where our interest and my Social Security will be sufficient to last indefinitely. So this is what I spend my morning breakfast time doing everyday before I go to school. Of course, it would be easier if someone just gave me a couple of hundred grand, but it wouldn’t be as much fun.

There’s a lot of excitement about the “early” retirement – certainly from me, but from friends and family as well. On my part, I suppose that it is comparable to the feeling when I know that I’m leaving a job in one country and moving to another. The sense of the unknown with all the mystery, hope, fear, and risks jangling the nerves and heightening the senses. I can remember how keyed up I was before my first move overseas back in 1989, and then again in 1999 when I moved to Pakistan, and again in 2003 when I moved back to Indonesia, although that was a bit less because it was returning to “home.” This time, I’m as jacked as when I moved to Pakistan. Bali, where my other home is, seems just as exotic as Pakistan once did.

I spend a lot of daydreaming time doing the “next year at this time, I’ll be …” One of my friends replied the other day to my comment that I had so much to do in Bali during my three weeks there recently. He said, “Yeah, but you were there for three weeks, next year it will be forever.” Right, good point. I need to constantly keep that in mind, although my plan of announcing to the faculty and my students that I’m retiring is to put me in a box, so to speak, so that I can’t get cold feet at the last moment and back out thinking about the security of a nice salary and comfortable surroundings and doing what I love doing. I need some new challenge and some juice to get these old bones moving.

Playing with Feedburner and Settings

One of the great things about having a vacation at home in Bali is having access to the internet. So I found out about rss, podcasting (which I already knew about but had only tinkered with),feedburner, and xml. Now I think that I have things set up, but I'm not sure how long I will remember all this when I get back to work.

I'll be leaving tomorrow. In fact, by this time I'll already be in Lombok crossing the island with a view of Rinjani.

Still in Bali

I know that I said that I would write more about family today (and maybe I will), but the sunsets have been so spectacular lately, in addition to the weather. I do the sundowners thing every sunset these days. It's just so wonderful that I can't let it go by. I make an effort to be at home to see the sun set every afternoon. There's a scene in an 80s movie that I really liked about just thing. The movie is about Chicago as well which makes it even better. Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines are Chicago cops that want to retire and run a bar in Florida, and when they get there they're wandering around the pier and everybody is staring up at the sky and they ask what they're doing and the reply is watching the sunset. Yeah, precisely why I want to retire.

I just read some articles on the cnn online site about retirement for my generation, and I sure as hell don't want to work until I'm 75. The goal is get out before they carry me out. Jim Morrison said it as well as anybody – trade your time for a handful of dimes.

OK some family stuff. The photo is three of my children and two of my nieces and a cousin. The only one really smiling is daughter #2 who loves photos and attention and is the outgoing and troublesome child of the group. My wife and daughter #1 were out in Sumbawa getting my daughter's graduation certificate so she could register for high school here, and I was the cook and responsible adult so we went shopping. Since the car was in the south of the island, and I wouldn't let the unlicensed teens drive the motorbikes, we took a bemo (small public transportation), It was a lot of fun for everyone except for my son who found it somewhat embarrassing to be in a public bemo. The younger kids have never heard the stories about my somewhat tenuous financial situation when I was younger. So they got to hear it today. Ahh, getting old.

podcast test

This is a test to see if my podcast is working, and I can get a link to it from here.

Family in Indonesia

Well, the foot is better, and I can walk without much pain. So I decided to dig all of the weeds and dirt out of the ...hmm, not sure what to call it. It's this area around the balcony that acts kind of like a flower box, and for me, living in the kampung, it's as close as I'll get to my gardens back in Sumbawa. I dropped all the dirt off the third floor balcony down on to the little patio we have just off the kitchen. Su was rather irritated as it was mud and splashed all over the walls and windows. She calls it the landslide. I told her that I would clean it tomorrow when it dries. It was lots of fun.

Now a link to a blog a few days ago about family. As I was in the process of dropping big mud balls and weeds down to the ground, one of my brothers-in-law saw me mucking around and came up to see what I was doing.

“What are you doing?” he says somewhat obtusely.

“Cleaning the flower box.” (I know where this conversation is going.)

“OK, I'll help.” (He starts looking around for tools.)

“That's ok you don't really need to help.” (I'm hoping that he won't so I can slip into a work/meditation state.)

“Oh, I want to.” (Rude of me to tell him no.)

So he set off to find some tools (I was doing this with bare hands.) While he was gone, one of our neighbors from Sumbawa who dropped in on their way back to Sumbawa from a visit to his wife's parents in Java appeared suddenly from the stairway, and we went through the same conversation. So it ended up that the three of us were digging all the weeds and dirt and cigarette butts out of the flower box and dropping them downstairs.

So here's the point, and I'm writing this so that I remember it in the future when the family irritates me over one thing or the other. Family members and neighbors will drop what they're doing and come and help you if they see you starting in on a project. They don't make a big deal out of it, they just do it. Sometimes it's really hard, dirty work, but they cheerfully do it anyway. They don't expect something for it, it's just part of being a family member or a neighbor. I don't know how many times this has happened over the last 18 years. (There are good and bad points about this actually, but I'll get to them tomorrow.)

The main point today is to remind myself that when I do something like take all of them to the Treetop Adventure and pay for all of them and they don't thank me, it's just part of being a family member or a friend. They just expect me to pay because I have money and they don't. The reciprocity (that good old word from Anthro160 with Stevie Garbarino) is that they do stuff for me where they provide what they can – their labor or local knowledge (my brother-in-law from Denpasar who constantly drives me there from Singaraja) or their time (running to shops doing errands for me).

'Nuff said for today.

Family life in Kampung Bugis

So before I fell down the stairs, I had spent the entire day tearing apart the storeroom which was filled with rusty tools, broken toys, old newspapers, love letters from before Su and I were married, and assorted other junk. I enlisted all the little kids and they dragged all the detritus of 18 years in Indonesia and deposited them in the living room of the beach house (which badly needs repairs). Then I started on the library which was full of broken toys, 80 Asmat carvings, and a thousand books. I sprayed all of the statues and put them in the empty storeroom for later during retirement when I hope to sell a few on Ebay.

I cleaned all of the bookcase, put the books back in order, and then we started the hard work. We had to take the statue cases and get them down from the second floor library to the second floor of the beach house. A brother-in-law came by to see what I was doing and got involved. He called his son over, and another of my brothers-in-law and a neighbor. We put a rope around the bookcases that held the statues and lowered them down to the ground floor, then carried them around the block to the beach house entrance, and finally stored them outside the beach house until the second floor is cleared of junk so that we can stick them up there for Su to use next year when she opens another baking business.

It was after all this that I slipped on some oil and fell down the third floor stairs. So I have two badly swollen, cut and bruised feet. Why is it always my feet? Actually I’m fortunate that I wasn’t more seriously hurt; I could just as easily have broken my neck so I guess that it just isn’t time to go yet.

More later on family in Asia stuff.

some fourth of july lessons

July 4, 2007

Watching the sunset from the balcony this evening. A friend called to wish congratulations. I had a difficult time figuring out what the congrartulations were for. I got it eventually. Maybe I have been in Asia a long time. I remember shopping for my wife for some specialized medicine in Singapore 15 years ago or so. I can still remember the route from the hotel to the shop. But then again, I can still remember being at a Cubs game on the Fourth of July, so I guess the remembrance game washes out.

I’m kind of laid up today. I fell down the third floor stairs last night. Kind of embarrassing as I just told I friend who was commenting on the steepness of the stairs that I have never fallen down them in 9 years. Great. Now I have two feet that are somewhat the worse for wear. The lesson for today is not to spray antique carvings with insect repellent while you are walking down steep stairs.

A Teacher's Vacation

Yesterday was my birthday and today was Mercedes’. She turned 16 today. My god, how hard to believe that I have a 16 year old daughter and a soon-to-be 36 year old son and a grandchild on the way. Time turns quickly.

So sixteen is no the big birthday for girls here – 17 is and Mercedes is already coming up with wild plans for her 17th birthday. Today was fairly tame but highly enjoyed by all. I took the kids to the Bali Tree Top up in Bedugal. I’ve been there before when I brought my students on a field trip to Bali almost a year ago, and I figured that the kids would really enjoy climbing around. It turned out that they did, but not just them, six of the adults took part and they didn’t want to stop. It was a rather expensive afternoon, but the kids will remember this for a long time.

I spent all of the time filming or doing ground control work so I didn’t get a chance to do this again. Maybe next time.
So far this vacation is fairly on schedule for what we wanted to get done in a relatively short period of time. Things done: 1) We enrolled our eldest daughter in a good high school. If she does well, she should be able to get in a good college; 2) We got our second daughter a new American passport so she’s good now until she’s 18 and needs to decide on what citizenship she is going to take – Indonesian or American; 3) We bought the eldest daughter a new handphone so she can keep in touch with us, and perhaps more importantly, we can keep in touch with her; 4) We retiled the second floor bathroom and put in a new toilet; 5) We put a new toilet in the downstairs bathroom; 6) I fixed the phone connection on the third floor (after waiting six months for the family to get a repairman to do it); 7) I’ve finished updating half of the cyberbali site; 8) I answered a lot of back emails; 9) We showed our guest, friend, and handyman around part of Bali; 10) We had a birthday party for Mercedes and Rebecca; 11) I bought Sam a new handset for his PlayStation; 12) We bought Meredith some new Barbie things; 13) I managed to see my old friend once so far. Not bad for the first week.

We have another 12 days to try to finish up the rest which includes: 1) renewing and adding to our retirement time deposit account; 2) opening a bank account for Mercedes and getting her an ATM so we can keep her supplied with money; 3) fixing two windows in the bathrooms; 4) fixing a window on the third floor so that it doesn’t fall off during the rainy season; 5) opening a haj account for my wife; 6) opening student savings accounts for three of the kids; 7) talking to a visa agent about what my visa options are next year when I retire; 9) finishing the cyberbali update; 10) finishing some social studies lessons for next term; 11) reading the PEW study on American Muslims which I downloaded and printed; 12) rereading the Nine Parts of Desire and write a review; 13) learning about the physical requirements of setting up a network; 14) and there’s some more but I don’t have my plan book available at the time.

A New Site

There's a new site up by a friend of mine with some brilliant portraits of Indonesians. You might want to check out his work at the link on the side. It's called Faces of Indonesia.

Ceremonies and getting things done in Paradise

Living in Paradise. It ain’t that easy. Why? Because it takes forever to do small things that tourists think are easy everyday things to do. One example: I wanted the box on the wall that I plug the phone in to, to be changed so that I could have the phone and the computer plugged in at the same time. No one knew what I meant even though I thought that I explained it fairly clearly. I found the little box today down in the south of Bali in the first store that I entered. I can do the installation myself, but the whole issue of purchasing it has taken six months (well I’ve been gone for six months so maybe it’s only taken me a month.

It’s called wasting time in Paradise. I asked for some mosquito curtains and there’s a person that makes good ones, but she’s off to ceremonies. I forget about it and expect that when she returns in a few days she’ll give me a call or my wife will call her. Six months down the road, we still don’t have them because she forgot to call my wife and my wife forgot to call her because …there are always ceremonies, regardless of religion in Bali there are always ceremonies. The Hindus have theirs, the Muslims have theirs, the Buddhists have theirs, the Christians have theirs. When you add them all up, the island seems to be on holiday or preparing for a holiday almost all the time

Impressions and wandering identities

Impressions are not easy to gauge and usually we don’t want people to give us their real impressions of us. It’s one of the little joys of teaching Middle School students – they can be brutally honest if they like and trust you. And you can see how people can have wildly different impressions of you even though they may be interacting with you in the same environment.. So they are probably working with a different cognitive map. But we act differently depending on our environment as well. That’s probably pretty much accepted wisdom these days, but actually “getting” it isn’t always the easiest thing to do.

Case in point. Here I am in Bali now with a friend from Sumbawa who knows me only based on what he sees of me in Sumbawa. He came with us to Bali to check out a girl that he might be interested in, and he apparently (I say apparently because I am never sure what my wife is up to) agreed to come and do some remodeling work our house in exchange for a tv for the bungalow that he lives in that we own. (Lots of stuff here to digest for those who are only reading this blog because I mentioned sex and Indonesian women once in a title.)

So my friend says to me the other day that I’m different here than in Sumbawa. Hmm, I’m interested in this. Just what does he mean? He says that here there are masses (yes, there are masses) of people coming and going throughout the day – especially children as we live in a somewhat extended family situation here which means that we often have as many as 20 “children” (saying this as a 58 year old means that some of my children are actually adults in their early 20s) running around the house. Then there are the adults which sometimes number up to 15. So in this structure that we live in, we sometimes have from 30 – 40 people wandering around at various times throughout the day. (If we get a little more specific in an anthropological sense and ask who sleeps here – we have six adults and 11 children for the most part although sometimes it gets much more crowded.

In Sumbawa, I have a fairly large house which sleeps my wife, me and four kids (I’ll leave out the animals because they sleep outside.) During the day we may have a few more kids wandering through and maybe another six or so adults. Basically, it’s a small group if we compare it on a person per square meter basis.

In Sumbawa, I spend a lot of time on the computer doing school work so I have limited interaction with the people there. Here in Bali, I wander around, occasionally coming down my sanctuary on the third floor. The kids make little pilgrammages up to the third floor to ask for money so I can say, “What! Do I look like the Bank of America?”

So to get back to the main point. My friend sees me as a shy person who is somewhat reluctant to interact with people (somewhat similar to my own perception of who I am). But he was somewhat amused by all the interaction I have with people here and how I deal with all the comings and goings.

The big kids (10 -30) see me as a teddy bear with a big bark and a small bite. The little kids are afraid of me because I’m the American with the big voice and sarcastic deameanor who call them on their spoiled behavior (Indonesian kids tend to be terribly spoiled, but I think that American kids are spoiled too so this perception might be a function of age).

Umm, main point is that our identities are flexible to a degree (although diehard Freudian that I am), I think that the basics of our personality are formed as children and we only negotiate minor variations on the theme as we age.