What Does Retirement Mean?

That was what a former student of mine asked me the other day. Actually, she listed a number of definitions from the dictionary, and in her usual brash style, asked what it was that I didn’t understand about the definitions.

I have to admit that I have failed again in my second attempt at retirement. The first time that I retired – 10 years ago – it was just too early and my plan for a business here in Bali didn’t work out; I learned the valuable lesson that I’m not a businessman, better to stick with teaching since I’m fairly good at that. And this time?

Well, I actually planned for this one, and except for the little matter of the world financial crisis, I was ready. I could stay retired and hope for the best, but I hate the idea of leaving the kids and my wife with no money if I happen to die in the next few years. So I was toying with the idea of going back to work. It just happened that I received a call, right at that time, asking if I was interested in coming back to my old job for seven months until a replacement for me arrived. It was one of those serendipitous things – returning to work is good for the school and good for me as well. It gives them a known quantity, and it gives me a quick infusion of hard cash to make up for some of the losses in the stock market.

This retirement has been excellent, although I actually work almost more than I did when I was working. That is I write about six hours a day. I managed to finish the eBook on Bali, am halfway done with the international schools book, and have a start on the book on Islam that I want to do after the international schools book is finished. I’ve spent a lot of time snorkeling; I’ve gotten the kids on track with their new schools; my wife and I have made extensive repairs to the houses here (badly needed after five years of being empty); I went through the visa process so that I know I can do it again in another seven months; and I’ve had a lot of time to read and reflect.

I know now that I can handle retirement – often problematic for workaholics like me. In fact, I’ve only begun to do the things that I wanted to do when I was planning my retirement. I still have a lot lined up for the next time.

So, here I am working on getting ready mentally for a move back to Sumbawa for seven months. I’m not fond of the idea of leaving the family; I’m really going to miss being here with the kids and my wife everyday without the distraction of work, but I can rationalize this decision to temporarily return to work, by looking at it as just 25 weeks of work that will give us a little breathing room economically. Then back here in June again to start retirement all over.

The Ocean as a Garbage Dump

Another day out snorkeling today. It’s amazing the amount of junk in the sea around here. People in this neighborhood still throw trash in the ocean, and everyday the river that feeds into the sea from here brings in all sorts of garbage from the markets. Then you have the boats and ships that pass by here and throw their trash into the ocean. And some of the small hotels here dump sewage directly in the Bali Sea. And, that’s where all this garbage comes from.

A few years ago, I took a rubber dinghy along the north coast and down the west coast. While I was on this two day trip, I went past little islands of garbage floating in the water: bottles, plastic sandals, plastic bags filled with trash, old clothes, rubber pellets, and a mass of other odds and ends.

Yesterday, I came across a few articles on the internet about this terrible problem and what it is doing to our oceans. What do we do about this one?

The View of American Politics from an American Abroad

As the election for the next US president enters the final weeks and heats up, more and more American nutcases crawl out of their paranoid cocoons. As an American expatriate who spent the first forty years of my life at home, and the past nineteen over in Asia, I find all of this troubling, irritating, worrisome, and, somehow, vaguely hopeful.

I’ve been alternately amused and horrified by how McCain and Palin have responded to an economic crisis that is rapidly spreading outward from America to the rest of the world. Starting with McCain’s initial grandstanding (I’m suspending my campaign…) to Palin’s inability to demonstrate that she understands anything about the US economy or the rest of the world generally, they have tried to awaken and energize the worst in the American national character – racism, xenophobia, isolationism, and ethnocentrism in order to avoid addressing the most pressing problem throughout the world today. The images coming out of the Republican rallies are beginning to get frightening. That Americans are openly exhibiting this type of behavior publicly is worrisome. That supposedly responsible journalists and politicians continue to justify the McCain/Palin rhetoric that is bordering on the dangerous is irritating to say the least.

But, there are rays of hope in all this. The hope? The hope is that an African-American is so close to becoming the President of the United States. The country has come so far from my days as a Middle School student supporting JFK and then as a High School student working in the Civil Rights and anti-war movement. Will Barack Obama be the leader who can address the many problems still confronting American society? Maybe not (time will only tell), but he offers the hope that he can energize the young people in America to move from the culture of greed and individualism to the culture of service and participation.

I’ve watched the prestige of America drop precipitously over the past eight years as the Bush/Cheney administration has created a rift between America and most of the rest of the world. Even those countries that have traditionally had ties with us have moved away. Most of my colleagues during my years overseas have been non-Americans, and I have watched them take on anti-American attitudes as the US has pushed its own agenda on the rest of the world. Not surprisingly, they are almost completely pro-Obama because, in part, they see him as willing to develop an era of partnership with the rest of the world. I’ve already done my job and voted in this election. If you are an American overseas, make sure that you put your vote in as well. It’s our responsibility to the United States and the rest of the world.