Things Men are Afraid Of

I read a short article by David Zinczenko the other day on Yahoo about the things that men are afraid of. The article was one of those list articles that people love to read (and write). As I’ve written occasionally about issues surrounding being a man, the article gave me a good excuse for a mid-day laugh. There were a few points that resonated with me:

1. Her tears. Like a lot of men, I have difficulty with women crying, especially my wife or daughters, but also students, mothers and just the occasional distraught woman in an airport waiting room. Why? I guess it’s related to not being much of a crier myself, but perhaps even more because I’m never quite sure what to do – give the distressed lady a hug (ok for my wife and daughters, but generally not ok for the other women), get her to talk the problem out (I’m generally unsuccessful with this approach but occasionally it works), explain why their problem isn’t worth crying about). You can see why I fear this.

2. Not being a god to his kids. Eventually every dad gets to the point where his kids realize that dad is just a flawed human being like everyone else (maybe even more than everybody else). Zinczenko says that men get to the point where they don’t care what co-workers, friends, in-laws, strangers and everybody else thinks about them, but having your kids verbally recognize your flaws is an emotional killer. As I tell my students occasionally, I’ve reached that point where I’m comfortable enough with myself that the opinion of others is fairly irrelevant to me, but I dread the day when my young children get to where my adult son is and see me as just this flawed person that lives with them.

3. Not seeing his kids grow up. As I get closer to 60 and my body begins falling apart like an old and loved junk car, I worry that I won’t be around long enough to see the littlest reach adulthood and be there to help her navigate her way through all the complexities of modern life in Indonesia. With my one child who has already grown up, his career and my career work to keep us from seeing each other, and I’d love to have some time to sit down and see what he is like as an adult.

4. Living paycheck to paycheck. As I wind my career down, I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying if my savings will be enough to carry me and my family through my old age and their remaining childhood years. For someone who has been working since I was 10, the idea of having no money coming in is scary.

5. Public humiliation. I’ve made my share of really stupid mistakes in the past 57 years. The ones that were public have stayed with me and pop up occasionally in the late night hours. I keep hoping that I can get through the rest of my life without making any more public mistakes.

Zinczenko listed 10 other fears, but most of those have either passed me (a father’s death), or aren’t relevant to someone who lives in the jungle (Super Nanny, speedos). One fear that he didn’t list, but which has become an issue over the past few years is not being able to take care of myself. I’ve had a number of accidents since I’ve moved to Sumbawa which have disabled me for a certain amount of time, and I just hate being dependent on others. The idea that I may end up being too ill to function independently gives me the chills.

So one more blog about being a guy.

Macs and Windows

Last month I bought my first Mac in over 8 years. The switch from Macs to PCs was originally done because of the difficulty with getting Macs serviced in Bali, as well as the difficulty of buying software and connecting to the Internet. The Internet connection problem no longer is an issue in Bali, nor is getting the Mac repaired if need be. Software is still an issue, however, as I've yet to find Mac software in Bali.

But...I do love my new Mac. I purchased the 20 inch iMac, and it's great. It just seems to run much more smoothly than my PCs. Of course, I do still have the software problem, but I'll be in Bangkok next month so I'm hoping to find Mac software there.

Wiki link

This is the link to the wiki that we are playing with right now. We are just starting to play with a Sumbawa page.

Surgery in Bali

The first surgery on the swelling on my ankle didn't work in getting rid of it, so the doctor sent me out to Bali to have it looked at by an orthopedic surgeon. I ended up at Kasih Ibu hospital in Denpasar. The hospital is very modern and seems to be fairly complete. The doctor did some cutting and took a few cysts out of my ankle. I left the hospital as soon as I recovered from the anaesthetic. Right now I'm back in Sumbawa hobbling around but getting there. The stitches should be out in another ten days. So far, so good; but, I think that I'll be a little more careful when cutting the grass from now on.

Educational wiki use

My students started their first wiki work today. I found the wikiplaces wiki a week or so ago and have been thinking about how to use it, and which classes to use it with. If I remember correctly, I found the site by following a link from Susan Sedro's blog which is listed here in the links section.

We decided to go with the encyclopedia format and add some photos and text. I do have a question about photo use. The students are looking for photos that aren't copyrighted. I think that according to fair use, students can use photos if they give credit to the photographer. Anyone who can comment on that out there?

More on the wiki work later

Another One of Those Annoying Tropical Maladies

After five weeks of having a golf ball sized lump on my ankle after an encounter with a flying rock while cutting my lawn, the doctor here in townsite decided that it was time to do some cutting. So we’re waiting to see how things work out. Just one of those little things that happen when you live out in the jungle using less than safe equipment to do what is generally a routine job back in civilization.

So today I’ve been laying around the house resting the foot. Everyday now we go without electricity for at least a few hours, and often for most of the day. If there is no electricity then we also don’t have water because the town water system needs electricity for the pump to work.

With no computer access and no electricity to watch tv, I spent the day doing some reading. Today I went through the book, To the Spice Islands and Beyond. The book is a collection of excerpts from travel writings from the 16th century up through the 20th. I love historical travel writing partly because it gives the reader insight into some of the prevailing social and ethical values, as well as a take on what the culture was like at the time. Reading through each extract, I wanted to buy the books that they came from. I found an excerpt from a book that I read 18 years ago in Tembagapura, In the East My Pleasure Lies. That book was written by an English aristocrat who traveled around Indonesia in the 30’s. She was fairly unusual for the time – taking buses with the locals as well as hanging out with government officials, scientists, and other interesting characters. I always wanted to steal the book from the Tembagapura library as I figured that it wouldn’t be read much and the chances of me finding the book anywhere else would be slim. I let my moral scruples get the best of me though, and I didn’t steal it. Hopefully, I’ll find it around somewhere.

Driving in Bali

I just came across a new plan by the Bali police to get motorcycle drivers to use their headlights both during the day and the night. They are doing this in hopes of raising the safety consciousness of the driving population. In addition to the use of lights, the police are also planning on stressing the use of helmets, rear-view mirrors, and driving in the left lane.

I hope that this plan succeeds, but I have this feeling that it's going to be a long haul for the police when you consider that many drivers in Bali do not use lights even at night (for fear of depleating their battery).

Driving on the left lane? People in Bali driving on whatever side of the road is most convienent for them. So you often have cars or motorcycles coming at you from both the left and the right at the same time.

Mirrors. People rarely have mirrors on the bikes, but they do know what's going on behind them because they often drive forward while looking backwards at friends that they have just passed.

Helmets. If the police are around, people will throw a helmet on, or if they don't have one, they will pull off the road and wait for the police to go away, or just turn around and look for a road without a police presence.

What about driving licenses? How many drivers don't have licenses? How many kids (and I mean small kids)drive around regularly with the permission of their parents.

Well, good luck on the driving reform. If it succeeds, I may actually start driving again in Bali.

Back to Work, No Water Once Again

Well, back once again in Sumbawa for work. Most of my students arrived back on time which is somewhat unusual, and they are all smiling and ready to go.

We were welcomed back to Sumbawa by yet another water shortage. You really can tell that the climate is changing just by looking at the weather patterns here over the past four years. Each year we get less and less water. But, I'm sure that doesn't affect those countries and industries who continue to contribute to global warming. As I've said before, we (that is my family and I), at least, have an economic safety bubble around us. What happens to those folks who have none? How are they going to survive as the water gets harder and harder to come by?

New links to the blog

One of the great things about being on vacation is that I have time to surf the internet and find out what's going on in the blogging world. Living in the jungle with no phone means that I have to rush to put something on the blog while I am at school. Usually there just isn't enough time. But, I've come up with some interesting blogs that you'll see in the sidebar. Two of the new blogs are by teachers, Adventures in Educational Blogging, and Dreaming of Hanoi. The third blog is written by an Indonesian woman and is about Islam and other issues affecting Indonesia. It's called 100%INDONESIA. Lots of good stuff out there, but how do you keep up with everything?

Tech and Magic in Indonesia

An Adam Air flight went down on Monday somewhere around Sulawesi. The Indonesian authorities apparently lost the plane on their radar. Singapore and the US are assisting in the search, but so far nothing has been found. But, just to cover all the bases, this is what the Jakarta Post had to report today about the search.

Searchers slaughtered a buffalo in a traditional ceremony and consulted psychics Friday, the fourth day after an Adam Air jetliner went missing over Sulawesi.

It's nice to know that somebody is on the ball.

In additional Indonesian disaster news, the search for the missing passengers of a ferry that went down off Java has now been expanded to cover the waters around Bali. It seemss that we are in for another year of tragedy.

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.

Another Dog Down

This actually sounds something like the title of a Hollywood movie, or perhaps a novel. Actually, it was another sad day for us with a pet. May, our young guard dog, slipped out of the gate last night when my wife was off to take a friend home. A half-hour later some neighbors brought May home. She had been hit by one of the lunatics that life to drive at 80 kph through this small village filled with children, dogs, goats and chickens. May died about a half-hour after she was brought home.

While May was somewhat of a problem (she never really changed much from a semi-wild state) in that she killed 12 of our chickens and continually harrased and terrorized our geese, she was an excellent guard dog whose fierce demeanor and angry growl when a stranger approached the gate kept out unwanted visitors and probably scared away several potential burglars.

Dogs here in our area of Sumbawa generally run free just like in Bali. We make a point of keeping ours inside the walls that surround our house. May just happened to escape this time, and she unfortunately paid for it.

Another Trip - Visa Runs

A commonality among expats living in Southeast Asia is the dreaded (for most of us, most of the time) visa run. Check in on one of the numerous expat forums and it’s a certainty that you’ll find at least one thread about visa runs. For the expat who is living on a tourist visa this can mean going out of the country at least every one to three months. For expats with different types of visas, the time frame becomes considerably longer.

For those of us living on a limited budget, the visa run can be a financial hardship – one of those costs that we don’t always factor into our living expenses. Expats in Thailand can leave the country by land and therefore use a bus – generally the cheapest mode of transportation. For those of us in Indonesia, the visa run generally means leaving by plane; a relatively expensive experience even in these days of budget airlines.

Additional expenses are food, a hotel room if you need to be out of the country for at least a day, visa fees, and occasionally the gratuity (otherwise known as a bribe) for immigration officials.

Besides the financial burden, the visa run often is a physical/emotional trial. I’ve often had somewhat uncomfortable exchanges with immigration officials, and the memory of those times tends to stay with me so that I tense up anytime I have to come back into Indonesia.

I still vividly remember an encounter 8 years ago when immigration pulled my whole family into an office in the Ngurah Rai airport, told us that we were entering illegally (it was my first time in Indonesia without a KITAS and I wasn’t aware that I needed to have a return ticket out), and threatened to deport us immediately. I explained the situation as calmly as possible to the immigration official who was quite hostile while my wife and kids were in tears. After a bit of a discussion, I offered to immediately buy tickets out for the whole family, but at that point in the discussion, this was not acceptable to the immigration fellow. No, we were going to be sent out immediately. At this point, he stormed out of the room, and another official came in (the good cop, bad cop routine). He was friendly and sympathetic; he tried to calm down my wife and kids; he offered me a cigarette and some coffee. Once we were all relaxed somewhat, he told me that he’d love to help us since he was a family man himself, and if I could help him some, everything would be fine. When I inquired as to how much help he needed, he replied that the money in my wallet would be sufficient. We ended up settling on $250 (five of us at $50 each, much cheaper he assured me than buying some airline tickets and having to fly all the way back to Singapore. Well, I learned an expensive lesson about being prepared for immigration after that incident.

This trip everything was in order (as it always is now), and I breezed through immigration and customs.

In another few years when I am retired and no longer on a company’s employee list, I’ll have to go back to the dreaded visa runs on a regular basis. But there’s a new immigration law in Indonesia that may eventually benefit me so there’s always hope.

Rain

Finally, the rainy season appears to have come. We now have running water in the house. It's amazing how something that we take for granted in the States can be such an issue elsewhere in the world.

Traveling

My first trip overseas was 1987. My wife at the time was doing fieldwork in India, and I took my Christmas break to visit her. I purchased an inexpensive ticket from a travel agent on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. The result was one of the most intense travel experiences that I’ve had in 20 years of travel overseas. The flight left San Francisco and stopped first in Anchorage, Alaska. From there we went on to Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, and finally Bangkok where I spent two days waiting for a flight from Bangkok to Delhi.

Those were the good old days for smokers because you were still allowed to smoke freely in the back of the plane. That did a bit towards passing the time on the long-haul flights.

Two years after my first trip overseas, I moved to Indonesia and began a life that included international travel as one of the benefits/necessities. During my early years in Southeast Asia, I loved the traveling. Each trip was a chance to experience something new. Southeast Asia was experiencing tremendous growth then, and every trip to Kuala Lumpur or Singapore or Bangkok or Jakarta revealed new buildings, new restaurants, new bars – glimmering urban landscapes that always captivated me.

From 1989 to 1998, I was based in what was then called Irian Jaya on the island of New Guinea. In my early days there, the only way to get to Bali during my vacations was to take the milk run. We went from Timika in Irian to the island of Biak just off the coast of New Guinea, then on to Ambon in the Malukus and then Ujung Pandang (now Makassar). Finally, after a 45 minute stopover, we would leave for Bali. Merpati used the old Folker F-28. These planes were cramped, smoked-filled, and hot. Finding a seat was often problematic as it was generally first-come, first-served. I left the seat-grabbing to my wife after we married (before that I just let myself get pushed to the back of the line and take whatever was available).

Getting to Bali was always an adventure. We would get up at 2:30 and wake the kids up. At 3:00 in the morning we would line up to take the non-staff bus down the mountain to the airport in Timika. The bus had stiff plastic bucket seats and most of the passengers were chain-smoking Indonesian workers. After a three-hour drive down the winding mountain road, we’d arrive at the terminal which consisted of an insufficient number of hard seats and benches set in a fenced-in open-air room. We’d sit there with our small children until 12:30 when the flight left for Biak.

Compared to the Timika airport, Biak was spacious and comfortable. It was decorated with appropriate statuary from the tribes of Irian and, on occasion, you could get a cold beer from one of their small fridges. After a 45 minute wait, we’d shuffle the kids back on board and do a 90 minute flight to Ambon. The waiting room there was barebones in the early days but was upgraded the last time I was there in 1998. We’d do another 45 minutes there which was enough for the kids to get a snack, use the bathroom and then get back on board for the 90 minute flight to Ujung Pandang.

Arriving in UP was almost like being in paradise. The terminal was large, the toilets fairly clean, there was a lot of space for the kids to wander, and you’d see an occasional foreigner there. In the last few years that we were there, they had a little bakery and pizza as well. I actually spent a fair amount of time in Ujung Pandang over the years due to flight cancellations. UP was interesting, and you could never tell when the university students were going to go on a rampage over something so there was always a chance that something interesting would happen. An example would be the time we went to eat at a rooftop restaurant which just happened to have a brothel on the floor below. That was fairly amusing.

After another 45 minutes we would make the hour flight to Bali and then the long 2 hour ride back north to Singaraja. Nothing like the old days of travel.

Seminaring in Jakarta

It’s been ten years since my last trip to Jakarta. I can’t say that the last trip was filled with pleasant memories. The city seemed too large, unmanageable, dirty and one big traffic jam. I do remember the Borobudur Hotel and the Mandarin fondly, but that’s about all.

I’ve just returned from a short trip to Jakarta where I attended a technology seminar. The traffic seems to be as horrible as I remember it – 2 hours from the airport to my hotel with the taxi driver complaining the whole way. The city seems even larger than 10 years ago. The construction that has occurred is amazing. Jakarta seems much more like Bangkok now than it did before. Overall the trip was a very pleasant one.

The tech seminar was well worth the trip from Sumbawa. The speakers were generally quite good; the presentations were interesting; I met some friendly teachers from Bogor; and I got a look at what’s going on with technology and education in Indonesia.

It’s always good to talk to tech people from anywhere, but even better to talk to tech people from Indonesia. We generally have the same issues – money, connectivity, hardware and software problems – and one of the main benefits of seminars of this type is to see how other folks approach their problems.

As far as specifics go, I have another piece of hardware that I can lust after – Tablet PCs. They seem to have all the benefits of laptops with the cool added function of being able to write on the screen. What a great tool for students and teachers.

Microsoft Learning Gateway is another cool thing that I learned about. It seems to be an excellent platform for interactivity between teachers, students, and parents. Virtual Learning also appears to have these features. For large classes these platforms could make a huge difference. For a small school, the benefits might not be so great. Obviously the ability to work on assignments from school or home is one major benefit. Classroom collaboration would be another.

Blogs, wikis, websites, podcasts, IM are all tech tools that were mentioned, but I’ve already used all of them. I started playing with podcasts last spring and found them interesting, but they involve a lot of work without the cooperation of the classroom teacher. I also started working with blogs and they were very popular with students, but I didn’t have much of a plan on how to use them other than try to see how they would work. The interactivity is good, but there has to be more than that.

If we look at all of these platforms as being part of the constructivist approach, then it follow that they are relatively interchangeable with the exception that each platform and application has special features that make it more suitable for specific educational tasks than others.

During the early years of the educational use of the WWW, teachers were hungry for contact with other teachers who were using the Web. I’m at a loss right now to remember what the group was, but I believe that it still exists. I tried several joint projects and because of the connectivity problems during those early days of the Web the projects were never quite successful although we did end up collaborating with a zoo in St. Louis to make a video on the rainforest.

Now, despite the great advances in the infrastructure of the Internet as well as more advanced software, it seems that internet based projects are not quite the thing that they were years ago. But, maybe I’m just out of the loop on these sorts of projects.

I remain convinced that tech coordinators need to be relieved of most of their teaching duties so that they have time to work with teachers on setting up cooperative programs as well as working on professional development. They also need time to set up and maintain platforms like blogs, wikis, websites, and podcasts. Some schools have realized this, but, unfortunately, most have not yet.

Blog Indonesia

I'm having trouble getting this blog to show up on Blog Indonesia, so this is just a test. Tomorrow there'll be some thoughts on my recent trip to Jakarta.

Another list - food

More favorites today. I’m not a big food person. I eat to live not the other way around, but occasionally there have been meals that remain with me even today.

Here are some of my favorites. And like yesterday in no particular order.

1. A Chinese place on the edge of North Beach and China Town in San Francisco. They had incredible food that I still remember even though the last time that I was there was 1989. I was particularly fond of the prawns.
2. A place just off of Orchard Road in Singapore in an outdoor food court kind of setup. They had this prawn dish with greens and lots of chillis. It was wonderful. My wife makes an identical one now that I love just as much. More actually because I don’t have to go to Singapore to eat it.
3. A little Mexican grocery store across the street from my apartment on Armitage Avenue circa the mid-70s. They had these great burritos that were incredible and cheap. I’d have two every Saturday morning after my ex picked up my son for the weekend.
4. The Hungarian Goulash at the Red Baron in Chicago in the mid-70s.
5. The Chicago style hot dogs that I used to buy from a cart just off campus when I was a student at U of I.
6. Uno’s deep dish pizza – the original. There was nothing like it.
7. Any seafood dish that my wife makes. Her steak cutlets come right after that.
8. The Jambalaya at Bourbon Street Restaurant in Bangkok. Spicy and filling. They make a pretty good pizza as well.
9. The Chicken Tikka in the Diamond Market in Lahore, Pakistan. It would have been even better with a few cold beers. Mix the tikka with some nan and it was heaven.
10. Jimmy, my cook in Pakistans, spicy meatballs with nan. I had these once a week for the last year that I lived in Pakistan and I always looked forward to having it.
11. Novi’s beef sandwiches with green peppers. Slightly greasy and delicious. Novi’s was an Italian beef place that I worked at in the 60s.
12. White Castle hamburgers at 3:30 on a Sunday morning before I used to do my shift at the News Agency during my teen years.
13. The stir-fried shrimp from this sidewalk restaurant in Singapore just outside of Chinatown. Some of the most succulent that I’ve ever had.
14. The stir-fried shrimp from a Chinese restaurant across the road from Washington State University in Pullman. Enormous portions for almost nothing. Perfect with two ice cold beers.
15. My mother’s dumplings. Perfect. I could eat them for hours. Mixed with bacon and hot dogs.

Water

Water. The overwhelming importance of water really becomes clear at this time of the year. With the rainy season still to come here, we are going through another year of severe water shortages. We’ve been lucky to get a trickle inside the house most evenings over the past seven weeks. Several times we’ve gone two or three days with absolutely no water, and most of the time, we have to fill up pots and pans in the front yard and use them to fill up the bathtubs and sinks. My wife has been doing laundry in the river across the road. The floors haven’t been washed in weeks. I regularly go without a bath during the weekends so that the kids have enough water to wash before they go to school. I’ve gotten used to be grubby all weekend. The plants in our garden are beginning to die, and we struggle to keep our many animals supplied with water. With all this in mind, I just happened to catch an interview on Asia Talk with the rapper Jay-Z. He’s involved in working to be clean water to poor countries. It was interesting to hear him talk about the fundamental importance of water. As difficult as our water problems have made our lives over the past seven weeks, we’re fortunate enough to have the money to buy bottled water to drink. I can only imagine what it’s like for people who have our water problems and aren’t able to obtain drinking water.

I’m going to be doing some research on water over the next few weeks and see what I can come up with.

Lists- Favorite bars around the world

Lists of favorite things. Most people have them. This has been one of those periods in my life when I just start wondering about things in the past.

Here are some of my favorites. We’ll start with bars – in no particular order.

1. Billy Goat – when I drank there in the 70s it was just a little hole in the wall institution that was immortalized by John Belushi’s Saturday Night Live skits. Back then, it was just a place that Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times workers used as a place to have a few drinks at lunch or after a shift. It was unpretentious and quirky. I ate a lot of cheese and egg sandwiches there over the years.
2. Oxford Pub – a place on Lincoln Avenue that was popular with the artsy crowd during the 70s when I lived in Lincoln Park in Chicago. It was a fairly big place with decent food. It was a 4 am bar so when the 2 o’clock places closed, everyone gathered there.
3. The Red Baron – just a few doors up from Oxford’s. It was a smaller place run by a German, Herbie. It was my favorite place for years partly because I lived across the street, and partly because Herbie made this great Hungarian Goulash. It had an odd assortment of folks who hung out there.
4. Weiss’s – another Lincoln Avenue bar from the same period. It was right on the corner and fairly big. I used it as the place for a few hard-boiled egg breakfasts when I was working the night shift at the Tribune and going to U of I during the day.
5. Biu – a small open bar in the Lovina area of North Bali. The owner, Ngurah, was friendly and an excellent host. He’d get tourists together and have these impromptu parties. The only place in the north that had Bintang on tap. He kept a bottle of scotch hidden in the back for me.
6. A place on Orchard Road just south of the Hyatt. I never knew what it was called, and it was mostly a place to eat, but they had a bar where I’d sit and watch the folks walking down Orchard Road while listening to the Singlish of the staff.
7. The Timika Yacht and Swim Club – I was the Vice-President and spent a lot of time there during the years that I lived in Papua. It was in the jungle and that made it all worth it.
8. The old smoking bar in Don Muang International Airport in Bangkok. It was a haven for me during the years that I lived in Pakistan. I’d do a Saturday morning transit and sit there for an hour or so and suck up four double scotches at 7 in the morning while chain-smoking Marlboros before my flight back to Bali. I met some interesting folks there.
9. Larry Blakes on Telegraph in Berkeley, California. It had two floors; the ground floor was a restaurant and the bottom was the actual bar. I hung out there during my Berkeley days. There were many times when I stopped by for a hamburger, a beer and three or four shots of scotch before heading off to Anthro 240. I just checked the internet and found that it has been changed a bit from the old days, but then so is most everything.
10. Sri Homestay – actually a restaurant in Anturan, Bali. I drank there for years, occasionally having something to eat, under the watchful eyes of Ibu Sri. My drink of choice there was Three Star arak along with Bintang beer.