Some Quiet in Ubud

I didn't realize how long it has been since I've been to Ubud until I look at this blog – six months. So, I decided to get out on the road since the weather seems to have turned and the dry season is peaking out from behind the masses of rain clouds that have filled the skies of Bali for so long. It was during this trip that I realized one of the major reasons that I love spending a night or two down in Ubud: it's quiet. Really quiet. Life in Kampung Bugis is a never-ending stream of auditory assaults from chickens, motorcycles, hordes of children, trucks, cars, neighbors, the local mosques and puras and the occasional plane or helicopter buzzing overhead.

I was sitting on the little veranda outside my room at my favorite homestay in Ubud reading a little book about Rimbaud in Java while enjoying the quiet and peace when an American tourist came by to look at the room next door. I overheard him unsuccessfully trying to bargain down the price of the room. He asked if he could bother me for a moment and inquired about “that sound.” I asked him what sound, and he replied “that buzzing, is it a saw or insects?” Oh, that sound. Insects. Nature. Life in the tropics. “I guess we could live with that,” he muttered. Probably not though as he didn't come back.

 I stayed an extra day this trip and wandered down Monkey Forest Road to see if it had changed as much as the main road which is definitely more upscale these days than it was back when I first started staying in Ubud. Surprisingly, it's not all that different – just a little more crowded with cars, buses, motorbikes and tourists. A stroll along Monkey Forest Road can get hot with all the exhaust from the stream of vehicles, so I stopped at a little cafe to have a few cold Bintangs and watch the tourists passing by. I noticed that they have a determined little march, not looking left or right, charging on ahead to their destinations, generally ignoring the calls of transport from the line of guys sitting along the road trying to drum up some business. The eat, pray and love ladies with their flowing white dresses or baggy hippy pants, however, tend to float dreamily like eagles scouring the landscape for some tasty prey. The new additions to the hodgepodge of shops along the road were the aromatherapy shops and the spas that offer a variety of massages, tonics and pampering. I glimpsed two of the ladies in white blissfully exit an upscale-looking spa and enter the hot noon sun and chaos of the road still under the trance of their retreat into the world of alternative therapies and escape from the stresses of the mundane world.

For me, the trip was a chance to talk to some old friends and meet two new ones, as well as travel the road to Kintamani that passes through some of the most magnificent of Bali's natural beauty. And, of course, there's always that thrill of riding a fine motorcycle around the island.

Weirdness within Weirdness within Weirdness

I’m writing this from my hospital bed in Mt. Elizabeth’s in Singapore. From the window of my shared room, I can see a canyon of walls in this massive complex. Nothing to gaze out at and conversely nothing to gaze in. Restricted to my bed because of regulations, I pee in a cup. I’m on a fast due to testing coming up sometime this morning, and it’s been 20 hours since I’ve had a cigarette. As you can see, this is not my normal life; how did I arrive at this situation where I have assigned the right to direct my actions to others, and in this case, specifically to a group of others whom I’ve never met.

So back to the past – in this case back 33 hours ago. While watching television and talking to my children on the hand phone, I suddenly lost the feeling on the left side of my body. There was some accompanying discomfort in that I was finding it quite difficult to keep track of what the children were saying, that is make sense out of their words, and at the same time verbalize some response to them. I managed to end the conversation without alarming the children, and as I rose from my chair to get some water, I stumbled. 15 minutes later the episode passed, and except for continued numbness in my left arm, I was well enough to go to bed.

The next morning I went to work as usual, but after doing a quick search on the internet, I discovered that I may have had a tia (transient ischemic attack) – basically a mini-stroke. So after teaching my first period Social Studies class, I made an appointment at the clinic in townsite with the expat doctor. After an examination where the doc noticed that I am pretty fit for a 60 year old, he said that I should have immediately reported the episode right when it happened and that we would need to do some follow up work including CAT and MRI scans.

Now this is one of those stories that can go on interminably, so I’ll present a shortened version as I’m probably the only one who would find the long version of any interest whatsoever.

In a quite short amount of time, the doctor in Sumbawa arranged to have be flown from Sumbawa to Bali to Singapore and checked in to a hospital for a series of test in order to discover why or how, I went through my 15 minutes of confusion. I’ll leave out the hospital weirdness for another blog and focus the rest of this account on strange travel arrangements.

People that have strokes, or at least this person who had a stroke, are treated like they are made of glass. My colleagues at school wanted to drive me home and to the clinic, no riding my motorcycle. Once I made it to the clinic, I was told to stay in bed and rest, no work. Actually, that was quite helpful because I was exhausted from the night before and immediately fell asleep.

Going from the clinic in townsite to the airport/seaport in Benete, I had to lie down in the ambulance. I had a doctor from townsite accompany me from there to Bali where he handed me off to another doctor who would be accompanying me to the hospital in Singapore. There was an ambulance waiting to get me when we arrived in Bali, and it took me to the international section of the airport where I waited in the ambulance until one of the SOS people from Bali had finished arranging my ticket and checking me in. While I waited in the ambulance, I sat on the bed with the backdoor opened and watching all the tourists arriving at the airport making their way back home after a lovely vacation in Bali. Most of them looked quite happy and satisfied. Some pointedly ignored staring at the ambulance sitting in front of the departure terminal, while others stared at me sitting there (thinking by the way, who can I trick or kill to get a cigarette?) looking as bewildered as they appeared looking at me.

Eventually, I was put in a wheelchair and rolled into and through the airport with stops at various locations (ticket counter, immigration, etc) until we made it to the premier lounge where I was actually allowed to walk around by myself and pick little morsels of food and drink. It was lovely. The lounge was quite empty most of the time and very quiet. I tried the internet but it was incredibly slow. We sat around for several hours in the lounge until it was time for the flight.

I was put in a wheelchair again and wheeled through the airport to the boarding lounge where I waited with what seemed to be a full flight. Bali does not seem to be suffering from any effects of the bombings last week in Jakarta. When the boarding announcement was made, one of the Singapore Airlines staff held up a card with a wheelchair. It was quite strange to see all of these people who just minutes earlier had surged around me so as to queue up to be one of the first in the plane, quickly part like the Red Sea to let my wheelchair through.

As an long-time expat in Asia, I’m used to being something of a curiosity and someone to be stared at, but this situation was more intense than normal: a closed space, a large crowd of people who were all about to share an even smaller, more enclosed space with a stranger being pushed around in a wheelchair who looked (or so I suppose) seemingly normal – no obvious injuries or disabilities, no mask over the face, nothing that stood out as an explanation for the wheelchair.

The flight to Singapore was comfortable, but uneventful. Once we arrived in Singapore, I had to wait for a wheelchair to take me through the airport and to a waiting ambulance. Finally off to the hospital where I’ve been since Friday night.

The End of the Year in Bali

It’s the last day of 2008 and, as usual, we have all sorts of stuff going on here in our house in Kampung Bugis. Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of my marriage to my wife and today I had to pay my annual marriage tax. My wife asked for a new refrigerator and considering that we have had this one for 10 years, I considered a new fridge to be a good gift. We went over to our usual electronics’ supplier and after a lot of looking and measuring and pricing, bought a LG that is a little larger than our old model. So that was one thing that we did today.

My wife is having the beach house renovated slowly using money that she saves from her annual house budget. So the old fridge was moved to the beach house, and while I was watching the move, I noticed new tiles on the stairs to the second floor, a new window in the kitchen, another small fridge that I didn’t know that we had (I rarely go into the beach house), and new fittings on the windows (for those that might think that we have some luxury villa, our houses here in Kampung Bugis are very basic – a fair amount of space but basic in terms of building materials and design. We definitely won’t win any Bali design awards or end up in one of the coffee table books that highlight Western buildings in Bali, but our houses are functional and comfortable. We have seven children and four adults living in these two houses along with the children’s friends, a pembantu, and the rest of our family that lives in the kampung and they all tend to hang out here.

So we have the new fridge, and then we’ve been cleaning up from yesterday’s big storm. I won’t let anyone change the third floor which is where I live most of the time, and as it’s open, when we get big storms water flows down from the third floor to the second floor and then down to the first floor. It only happens when we have really big storms and yesterday we had one.

I wandered around the Beach House looking at old photos of Su and me when we married, and some of the kids when they were small and my adult son the last time that he was here visiting us. I did get a flash of “my god, I looked so young then.”

And now, another 6 hours before 2009, all the women in the family are in the Beach House kitchen cooking up a feast for the end of the year, the men are moving refrigerators and fixing holes in the roof, the kids are playing , and I’m writing and watching the kittens.

Happy New Year to all.

Time Passes Too Fast in Paradise

It’s Sunday already, and time has eaten up 15 vacation days. I’m just hanging around working on my new ebook, doing some reading, and checking up on the kids. Right now, I have this feeling of incredible laziness – not wanting to do anything in particular which I notice happens sometimes when I spend too much time writing and not enough getting out and around. And distractedness. It is so easy to get distracted here – I start one thing, someone comes and wants something, and I end up forgetting about what I had originally started.

I reviewed two international schools today and sent out a few emails. I upgraded some software on both Macs. I started a few letters and spent a lot of time keeping on eye on the new kittens that still look like oversized baby rats. I need to start working on my new lesson plans for next term, but I’m waiting until next week when I’ll start feeling more urgency to getting it done.

My two eldest daughters took off yesterday to go down to Denpasar to visit family there and for “refreshing” as my oldest daughter calls it. In the meantime, I’m spending time outside on the balcony writing on the MacBook. I love having the ocean breeze to cool me while I sit here writing rather than the fan when I’m inside working on the iMac.

A few folks bought my Retiring in Bali eBook today, and it’s always nice to have a sale or two while I sit here writing another book. , as well as working on some updates for the Bali book.

The photo today is the balcony where I’ve started doing most of my writing. I can gaze at the sea when I’m at a loss for words, although the afternoon sun can get a little intense. Kind of like being an old hippie sitting out here writing, having a few beers, and listening to the Greatful Dead. Plus, I’ve figured out that my cable will reach through the window so I can get internet access out here, and connect to a power cable as well when I need one. Time for retirement again, I think. This setup is better than it was before.

I stopped by the local mini-market to buy some beer and hotdogs, and there was an expat there that I think that I know, but I couldn’t quite make out where I knew him from so I didn’t say anything – I hate the memory loss that seems to be accompanying my advancing age. So far it seems selective though; my long-term memory is fine, I just can’t seem to remember who people are. This could be a problem when I forget my wife and kids.

I bought a new battery today for my handphone, as cell phones are called here in Indonesia. After 5 ½ years, the battery kept dying on me at very inconvenient times like when my wife is trying to figure out where I am. Hmm, makes it seem like I’m trying to hide, or that I am up to something fishy.

I’ll get around to the ghost thing in a day or two when I get most of it sussed out.

The Election of Barrack Obama and the Bali Bombings

It’s been an intense week here in Bali and around the world. First, of course, was the result of the election in the US. We now have an African-American president and hopes of moving forward with fixing the mess that the world is in these days. And, the world has responded in the same spirit of hope and optimism that has been seen in the US.

Then, last night, the Bali Bombers were finally executed. This drama has been played out nationally and internationally for the six years since the bombers murdered hundreds of foreigners and Indonesians. Personally, I’m opposed to the death penalty so I didn’t get any personal satisfaction from their execution, although I know that many Australians and Indonesians did. I would rather have seen them rot in jail for the rest of their lives where they would not have become martyrs for that tiny minority of Indonesians who support their perverted view of Islam.

Reza Aslan makes an excellent argument in his book, No god but God, that the terrorism that is going on in the world is not against non-Muslims, but, rather, is against Muslims. He says:

“The tragic events of September 11, 2001, may have fueled the clash-of-monotheisms mentality among those Muslims, Christians, and Jews who seem so often to mistake religion for faith and scripture for God. But it also initiated a vibrant discourse among Muslims about the meaning and message of Islam in the twenty-first century. What has occurred since that fateful day amounts to nothing short of another Muslim civil war – a fitnah – which, like the contest to define Islam after the Prophet’s death, is tearing the Muslim community into opposing factions.”

The death of the Bali Bombers gives Muslims in Indonesian a chance to move forward the discourse about the nature of Islam and the role that it plays in our lives and how it will fit in the world community.

I just finished doing an interview this morning on ABC radio in Darwin on these topics. If you want to listen to it, I'll add a link once it is posted on the ABC website.

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?

A Return to Blogspot

Well, it seems that, despite the fact that I haven't posted here in quite some time due to not being able to use blogger from school when I was working there, there is still traffic coming in here. So, I will be posting here as well as to my other blogs. Look for something new tomorrow.

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

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.

In Bali once again

We’ve been in Bali for almost a week now with just a week left to go before we have to head back to Sumbawa for work and regular living. We’re working on getting the kids Indonesian citizenship. That’s one of the major things for this trip. We went down to the American consulate yesterday, and the officer, Josh, was really helpful and quite friendly. I had to have certified photocopies of the kids’s passports and mine made for the Indonesian government. It was rather costly – over $300, but in the long run it will be worth it.

Then we went over to an Indonesian office to find out what all we needed. The lady, Ibu Desa, was helpful, but not very friendly. So we found out what we needed, stopped at McDonalds because that’s where all the kids wanted to go for lunch, and finally we headed home.

The chance for the kids to have dual citizenship is something that we’ve been waiting for for years. It means, among other things, that we won’t have to pay for a KITAS (a document that lets them stay in the country) for each of them every year. We’ve probably paid over $15,000 over the past 8 years for all of their documents. So that’s the first issue. Second, the kids will be able to inherit their mother’s property which is where a large part of our money is. Third, they won’t be in danger of being deported because of some foul-up on our part or our agent’s part, or just a change in the government. Fourth, the kids will be eligible to pay local fees when they enter college which will save us a lot of money when I’m on a limited budget due to retirement.

Today, Su went out getting documents photocopied, and arranging things with local authorities. I stayed home and ftp’d some stuff for the school website, and then tore apart the second floor bathroom. That was good. It will save us a little money with the guys who will put in the new floor and fix the shower. Plus, there’s nothing like some manual labor. I spend too much time on the computer, and I need to know what it is that I’m asking someone else to do for me. In this case, ripping up all the ceramic tile on the floor and the rotted-out vanity, the work was considerable; it took me and one of my brothers-in-law four hours to complete it.

Tomorrow, I’m going to take out all the fixtures on the windows on the third floor. They’ve all rusted and need to be replaced. People think that living on the ocean is really cool, but keeping up a house on the ocean requires a lot of work because everything gets corroded eventually from the salt air.

The other big event, as of today, is that I bought a new computer; my first Mac since 1998. This is a killer machine: an IMac5.1 with a 20 inch screen and 1 gb ram and 250GB hard drive. When my son first saw it, he kept looking for the cpu. I said that it’s all in the monitor, but he couldn’t believe it.

Only problem- getting Mac software over here.