The End of Ramadan
Well, the long month of Ramadan officially ended here in Indonesia tonight, much to my (and many others’ relief). The first and last weeks are always the hardest for me. The first week is difficult because I need to get in the rhythm of waking and eating and then sleeping and waking and then sleeping and waking again. All this because of the kids’ school schedules. Indonesia is a multi-cultural, multi-religious nation, but depending on where you live, customs and school schedules can be quite different.
When we lived in Sumbawa which is almost completely Muslim, the kids were given most of the month of Ramadan off for vacation. Here in Bali where most of the population is Hindu, the kids get a couple of days off for Ramadan while their main vacations are planned around the major Hindu religious holidays. And with four children in three different schools, schedules vary from day to day. One child has PE on Tuesdays and needs to get up at 5 AM, another two have PE on Wednesdays and needs to get up early that day, but the other two can sleep until 5:30, and the last has her PE day on Thursdays. Anyway, I think you get the point.
So tonight is Takbiran (the last night of the fasting month) and everyone in the kampung is driving around in vehicles celebrating. I’m on the third floor, as usual, writing. No getting up at 3:15 tomorrow morning. A relief.
The point, though, as I have mentioned before is to control our desires and needs and to remember the less fortunate. In this small kampung where so many exist on a subsistence level, it is impossible to forget the less fortunate. All I need to do is look next door where my neighbor still has half of his roof missing from the storms last January because he doesn’t have the money to replace the tiles. Or a glance at the neighbor to the west, who has a house with the thinnest plywood serving as the walls for his dwelling. The old Christian saying often goes through my mind, there but for the grace of God…
Controlling the desires and needs is something else. That is a lot more difficult. I am a smoker – I’ve quit many times only to begin again once I hit a period of stress. For me, Ramadan is a powerful reminder that I can control those needs and desires if only I have the resolve. Unfortunately, outside of Ramadan, the pleasures of smoking outweigh just about everything else.
Tomorrow morning is the day of community prayers that take place here in Singaraja in the large field just down the street from the police headquarters. Tomorrow, I’ll finish up the month of blogs and videos on Ramadan
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Ten Points of (semi) Randomness in Bali
1. I’ve uploaded two videos to YouTube after watching an interesting video done by an American anthropologist and his students who are doing participant observation on virtual communities. I’m watching to see what happens there.
2. The YouTube videos are, as I’ve said on the videos, another medium to work with in writing about life over here. It’s nice to get beyond written language for a while.
3. Now that my children have access to the internet, it’s fascinating to see how quickly they have adapted it to their personal interests. My second daughter is on to the social network scene; my second son uses it to search for science information. Two points to back up my long held belief that if children want to learn, they will figure out ways to do it by themselves if there is no one there to interfere with them. There’s an interesting TED talk about this which I will be reviewing in a few days.
4. It’s gotten hot here in Singaraja. I forgot about how hot it can actually be here, as June, July and August are nice and cool here on the coast.
5. I love the freedom that retirement has given me to do things when I want to do them.
6. I miss teaching and doing something that I’m fairly good at.
7. Politeness is a trait that isn’t given enough value these days. I’m amazed at how rude people can be on the internet. What happened to civility? One of the things that I love to hear from folks that visit here is how polite my children are.
8. Why do people build houses with pools when they have a house on the ocean? It seems to be one of the negative things that Westerners bring here. Quite anti-social. Swimming in the ocean with the neighbors is a great way to develop social interaction.
9. Why do foreigners want to come here and live in these foreigner only gated communities? What’s the point of living in Bali if you’re not involved in the Balinese community?
10. What do old men see in really young women? OK, beyond the obvious? And please, for the sake of the rest of us, don’t wander around the supermarket groping each other.
2. The YouTube videos are, as I’ve said on the videos, another medium to work with in writing about life over here. It’s nice to get beyond written language for a while.
3. Now that my children have access to the internet, it’s fascinating to see how quickly they have adapted it to their personal interests. My second daughter is on to the social network scene; my second son uses it to search for science information. Two points to back up my long held belief that if children want to learn, they will figure out ways to do it by themselves if there is no one there to interfere with them. There’s an interesting TED talk about this which I will be reviewing in a few days.
4. It’s gotten hot here in Singaraja. I forgot about how hot it can actually be here, as June, July and August are nice and cool here on the coast.
5. I love the freedom that retirement has given me to do things when I want to do them.
6. I miss teaching and doing something that I’m fairly good at.
7. Politeness is a trait that isn’t given enough value these days. I’m amazed at how rude people can be on the internet. What happened to civility? One of the things that I love to hear from folks that visit here is how polite my children are.
8. Why do people build houses with pools when they have a house on the ocean? It seems to be one of the negative things that Westerners bring here. Quite anti-social. Swimming in the ocean with the neighbors is a great way to develop social interaction.
9. Why do foreigners want to come here and live in these foreigner only gated communities? What’s the point of living in Bali if you’re not involved in the Balinese community?
10. What do old men see in really young women? OK, beyond the obvious? And please, for the sake of the rest of us, don’t wander around the supermarket groping each other.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Life in Bali – Why do I Stay in Bali?
Life in Bali isn’t all that you would want; for some people it’s more, and for others it’s a string of one disappointment after another. The last post explained why I came here. Why do I stay in Bali?
Once, years ago during my first attempt at retirement, I fell into just what I said that I wouldn’t – hanging out with expats, most of whom had one story of disappointment or another: older men with younger wives who found that their true love had a Balinese guy on the side, older women with younger men who found out the same thing, entrepreneurs who wanted to open the latest nightlife spot, guys who wanted to trade stocks on the internet for a living, the occasional lowlife who preyed on anyone who might come up with a buck or two. Why did I do this? Well, it tends to be our nature to want, at some point, to hang out with those who are like us.
Hmmm. What does that mean? We want to speak English or French or Spanish, we want someone who can connect with our stories, we want someone who understands our references and jokes and little pleasures and pains.
Moving between two cultures, as I had for many years, I wasn’t prepared (although I was sure that I was both by training and inclination) to live completely inside an Indonesian culture. “Going native” was how anthropologists used to put it, sniffing a bit and looking down their noses at the anthropologist who fell prey to the temptations of living locally on a full time basis. I was sure that I would never do this.
So, like so many others before me, I began hanging out with the local expat crowd. Of course, that included drinks before noon, a few mindless beach games, and a lot of gossip about whomever wasn’t at the bar or restaurant where we happened to meet that day.
I lasted all of six months before I crashed and burned and was looking for any way out of Bali. I found it when a job offer came out of the blue. It took me nine more years of wandering around the world before I was ready to get back to it.
The Balinese have this wonderful philosophy that centers on balance. I needed a little of that in my life which has moved wildly from one extreme to another.
So I wake up in the morning; the sunrise comes through my east windows and wakes me on those mornings when I’m not up before sunrise to wake my children and prepare them for another school day. On school days, I’m up at 5:30 when there is only a glimmer of purple on the eastern horizon. I climb down the steep stairs from the third floor to wake the children who are sleeping on the second floor; then I continue on to the first floor to wake the other children who are sleeping on the first floor.
As they queue up at the bathrooms for their morning ablutions, I gaze out at the sun slowing climbing up through the eastern sky – just a little glint of red now mixed in with the purple. The sounds of water running and mandiing being done.
My wife and I put out bowls of cereal, glasses of juice, plates of toasts for the children to choose from for breakfast. Like a lot of children around the world, there is always at least one who rises late, and still full from a late night snack sneaked from the refrigerator, doesn’t want breakfast. She can buy something to eat at one of the small warungs outside the school grounds.
My wife and I split the children up and drive them to school on our motorbikes. As I leave the kampung (neighborhood), I nod to the traffic cop on the corner. We weave our way through the Singaraja morning traffic as my daughter calls out to classmates, “Aku duluang.”
I return home and check email, then sweep and dust and mop the third floor while my wife makes breakfast for the two of us. We eat together and discuss what we have planned for the day. It’s rarely the same plan; she has her routines located in a lifetime of living in this small, poor neighborhood in North Bali, I have mine based on the internet and my writing. At some point in the day though, we manage to do something together despite our different schedules.
The children return home hot and sweaty and hungry. They’re fed by my wife while I ask about homework and how school went. The Mom and the Teacher- we’ve lived these roles for so long that they fit like a comfortable skin that we wear on top of our core selves.
In the afternoon, everyone naps at some point. It’s a lovely point of living in the tropics for those of us who aren’t constrained by the rigors of everyday work. Later as the sun goes down, we all meet again for dinner and a little talk about the day. As we finish the dinner dishes, kids wander off to visit friends or finish up homework. I climb the stairs one more time to do some evening writing, my wife moves outside to chat with friends.
Why do I stay in Bali?
Once, years ago during my first attempt at retirement, I fell into just what I said that I wouldn’t – hanging out with expats, most of whom had one story of disappointment or another: older men with younger wives who found that their true love had a Balinese guy on the side, older women with younger men who found out the same thing, entrepreneurs who wanted to open the latest nightlife spot, guys who wanted to trade stocks on the internet for a living, the occasional lowlife who preyed on anyone who might come up with a buck or two. Why did I do this? Well, it tends to be our nature to want, at some point, to hang out with those who are like us.
Hmmm. What does that mean? We want to speak English or French or Spanish, we want someone who can connect with our stories, we want someone who understands our references and jokes and little pleasures and pains.
Moving between two cultures, as I had for many years, I wasn’t prepared (although I was sure that I was both by training and inclination) to live completely inside an Indonesian culture. “Going native” was how anthropologists used to put it, sniffing a bit and looking down their noses at the anthropologist who fell prey to the temptations of living locally on a full time basis. I was sure that I would never do this.
So, like so many others before me, I began hanging out with the local expat crowd. Of course, that included drinks before noon, a few mindless beach games, and a lot of gossip about whomever wasn’t at the bar or restaurant where we happened to meet that day.
I lasted all of six months before I crashed and burned and was looking for any way out of Bali. I found it when a job offer came out of the blue. It took me nine more years of wandering around the world before I was ready to get back to it.
The Balinese have this wonderful philosophy that centers on balance. I needed a little of that in my life which has moved wildly from one extreme to another.
So I wake up in the morning; the sunrise comes through my east windows and wakes me on those mornings when I’m not up before sunrise to wake my children and prepare them for another school day. On school days, I’m up at 5:30 when there is only a glimmer of purple on the eastern horizon. I climb down the steep stairs from the third floor to wake the children who are sleeping on the second floor; then I continue on to the first floor to wake the other children who are sleeping on the first floor.
As they queue up at the bathrooms for their morning ablutions, I gaze out at the sun slowing climbing up through the eastern sky – just a little glint of red now mixed in with the purple. The sounds of water running and mandiing being done.
My wife and I put out bowls of cereal, glasses of juice, plates of toasts for the children to choose from for breakfast. Like a lot of children around the world, there is always at least one who rises late, and still full from a late night snack sneaked from the refrigerator, doesn’t want breakfast. She can buy something to eat at one of the small warungs outside the school grounds.
My wife and I split the children up and drive them to school on our motorbikes. As I leave the kampung (neighborhood), I nod to the traffic cop on the corner. We weave our way through the Singaraja morning traffic as my daughter calls out to classmates, “Aku duluang.”
I return home and check email, then sweep and dust and mop the third floor while my wife makes breakfast for the two of us. We eat together and discuss what we have planned for the day. It’s rarely the same plan; she has her routines located in a lifetime of living in this small, poor neighborhood in North Bali, I have mine based on the internet and my writing. At some point in the day though, we manage to do something together despite our different schedules.
The children return home hot and sweaty and hungry. They’re fed by my wife while I ask about homework and how school went. The Mom and the Teacher- we’ve lived these roles for so long that they fit like a comfortable skin that we wear on top of our core selves.
In the afternoon, everyone naps at some point. It’s a lovely point of living in the tropics for those of us who aren’t constrained by the rigors of everyday work. Later as the sun goes down, we all meet again for dinner and a little talk about the day. As we finish the dinner dishes, kids wander off to visit friends or finish up homework. I climb the stairs one more time to do some evening writing, my wife moves outside to chat with friends.
Why do I stay in Bali?
Saturday, September 06, 2008
How Did I End Up in Bali?
I recently celebrated the 19th anniversary of my move to Indonesia. I always tend to do a little reflection as the years pass, and I continue to be amazed that I am still here after 19 years. An old friend whom I haven’t talked to in close to 40 years got in touch with me the other day, and the big question was how did I end up in Bali? How indeed.. I’ve just finished my first ebook, and despite what I once said about never writing a book about Bali, I ended up doing just that.
How did I get here, and why did I stay?
I came to Bali on my first vacation when I was teaching in Papua, then called Irian Jaya. Bali was relatively close, the island had anthropological connections for me because of Mead and Bateson and Geertz, and I was just looking for some place to have a peaceful vacation and recharge after my first four months of working overseas. I actually didn’t plan on staying in Bali for the whole vacation, I was planning a few weeks here and then a week in Thailand and a few days in Jakarta.
Like many tourists, I ended up in Kuta as my point of entry. Why Kuta? It was close to the airport, and it seemed to be the place where there were a lot of things for a single guy to do. The Merpati plane from Timika landed just as the sun was setting. I wandered around outside the small domestic terminal until I found a taxi and made my way to Bakungsari Cottages in Kuta which is the first place that I stayed in Bali. After a week of wandering around Denpasar, Kuta, and Legian, I made my way up north via bus.
I boarded the wrong bus and ended up going up north on a beautiful road through Pupan, rather than through the middle of the island through Bedugal like I had planned. By the time that I figured out where I was, I was almost out of the Lovina strip. I jumped off the bus just down the road from the Bali Taman in Anturan. I ended up moving a few days later to a small homestay in Kalibukbuk for the grand price of $2 a day. After a week in Kalibukbuk and Anturan, I cancelled my plans for Thailand and Jakarta. I spent the rest of my time in the north of Bali hanging out with my new Balinese friends.
From there, I was just taken, like so many are for some reason that is actually quite hard to explain completely rationally, with Bali and knew that I wanted to live there on a full-time basis at some point in my life.
The rest of the story follows fairly quickly from there; I built my first house, met the woman whom I married a year later, built another house, started having children, built another house, changed jobs a few times, moved to another island, built another two houses, retired and moved the family back here. That sums up as neatly as possible the past 19 years.
Why am I still here? That’s a good question. Just today one of my correspondents said, “oh, you’re still in Bali, you must really love it.”
I replied, “Yes, I do,” But as I think about this reply. I keep wondering why.
Find out what my answer is in the next post.
How did I get here, and why did I stay?
I came to Bali on my first vacation when I was teaching in Papua, then called Irian Jaya. Bali was relatively close, the island had anthropological connections for me because of Mead and Bateson and Geertz, and I was just looking for some place to have a peaceful vacation and recharge after my first four months of working overseas. I actually didn’t plan on staying in Bali for the whole vacation, I was planning a few weeks here and then a week in Thailand and a few days in Jakarta.
Like many tourists, I ended up in Kuta as my point of entry. Why Kuta? It was close to the airport, and it seemed to be the place where there were a lot of things for a single guy to do. The Merpati plane from Timika landed just as the sun was setting. I wandered around outside the small domestic terminal until I found a taxi and made my way to Bakungsari Cottages in Kuta which is the first place that I stayed in Bali. After a week of wandering around Denpasar, Kuta, and Legian, I made my way up north via bus.
I boarded the wrong bus and ended up going up north on a beautiful road through Pupan, rather than through the middle of the island through Bedugal like I had planned. By the time that I figured out where I was, I was almost out of the Lovina strip. I jumped off the bus just down the road from the Bali Taman in Anturan. I ended up moving a few days later to a small homestay in Kalibukbuk for the grand price of $2 a day. After a week in Kalibukbuk and Anturan, I cancelled my plans for Thailand and Jakarta. I spent the rest of my time in the north of Bali hanging out with my new Balinese friends.
From there, I was just taken, like so many are for some reason that is actually quite hard to explain completely rationally, with Bali and knew that I wanted to live there on a full-time basis at some point in my life.
The rest of the story follows fairly quickly from there; I built my first house, met the woman whom I married a year later, built another house, started having children, built another house, changed jobs a few times, moved to another island, built another two houses, retired and moved the family back here. That sums up as neatly as possible the past 19 years.
Why am I still here? That’s a good question. Just today one of my correspondents said, “oh, you’re still in Bali, you must really love it.”
I replied, “Yes, I do,” But as I think about this reply. I keep wondering why.
Find out what my answer is in the next post.
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