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.
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