Village Life Again

Living in a village – that is, really living in a village not visiting one for a few days or weeks as a tourist – is a source of constant amusement, wonder, and irritation. Let me explain. Last weekend I’ve had a three-day weekend, and so I decided to cut the grass over at the 30 are garden that we have across the road from our house. To do that, I had to walk about 30 meters down the main road to the path that leads back to our garden. Walking over there on Friday morning, I came across a few of my neighbors sitting around at the local motorcycle repair shop. Like always in Indonesia, I was asked the usual question, “where are you going?” However, this time, I had my lawn cutter strapped on my back. I replied that I was going to cut the grass. That response was met with a lot of laughter. A little while later, a few neighbors wandered over to my garden to watch me cutting the grass – we make our own entertainment in the village. I sat down for a bit to chat.

Ali, the bengkel owner, announced to the little gathering, “Mommy (what my wife is called in the village) is really clever – she has a bule (white person) who gets paid in dollars (a reference to my job as a teacher) as her gardener and all she has to do is pay him at night with a little madu (honey).” That bawdy comment brought peals of laughter from my neighbors. With the humor over and done, my neighbors wandered back to the bengkel to wile away the afternoon.

After completing my grass cutting for the day, I returned home to correct some papers and work on the cyberbali website. Later in the day, a friend stopped by the give me a foot massage to try to fix the damage to my ankle from getting hit by a rock once again. Amazingly, the massage is working; after two days my foot is half the size it normally is when swollen.

So for a three-day weekend: I did a lot of grass cutting, spent some time every day bottle-feeding our smallest baby goat who is very friendly with humans unlike her siblings, helped my children with math, spent some time photographing and staring at a snake (which I think is a viper) in our mango tree, did quite a bit of work on my websites, graded a lot of papers, and finally got around to doing my US tax return. A good weekend. Was there a downside – yes, I’ve gotten back to the mental space where I don’t want to sell the Sekongkang property and house. We have a three-day weekend again in two weeks time. I plan on going over to our property on the Newmont road and doing some cutting there to see just what it is that we have.

vipers and testing photo links

I keep forgetting to bring in new blogs from home - it's one of the problems of not having a phone at home. Monday I will upload something more substantial. In the meantime, I'm working on a better way to post photos here to complement articles, and I would like to use up some of the space that I am paying for at my webhosting service. Here's a beautiful small viper that we found in our mango tree a few days ago. He/she seems to be quite comfortable in the tree and just moves daily from branch to branch.

Googling

I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about the importance of googling well. Some of the more interesting points of the article were: 80% of recruiters said that they used search engines to find more information about candidates for employment. 40% of individuals use search engines to look up friends and acquaintances that they’ve lost touch with. Since having a high position on a search engine has become important for careers, prospective parents think about search engine placement when naming their child.

The article got me to thinking that this is something that I’ve never discussed with my students when working on websites, blogs, wikis and podcasts. I did think about search engine placement when I created my first domain, cyberbali.com. When doing a search using the key word Bali on Google, I gave up trying to find cyberbali after looking at 200 results. Obviously cyberbali is fairly far down the list. However, when I did a search for my site Sumbawa.org using the keyword Sumbawa, my website came up ranked #2 both on Google and Yahoo. So one site seems well placed on the main search engine. What about my name? When I googled my name, I came up with an email to a forum written 11 years ago. This is a good lesson for our students about what kinds of tracks a person leaves when they use the internet. Despite this interesting find, there were a lot of articles that I have written on the internet that didn’t appear. But, if someone was looking for me, it would be easy to find me.

Next I checked on my site stats over at cyberbali. The most popular page was the employment page, followed by the papua page, the home page, and then Sumbawa. Some surprises were Islam and Pakistan in the top 20.

So what are some more lessons that I can draw from this little exercise other than be thoughtful when you create a domain name, and think before you publish on the internet, you can never tell when something you wrote may come back to haunt you.

A Birthday Weekend

This weekend we had a birthday party for my second son, Sam. He turned 11 this weekend. We had about thirty-five kids here. I had to work (on a Sunday morning!), but when I got home, I did a quick run to Maluk to buy some balloons for the party and searched around for some party hats, but Maluk isn’t exactly brimming with party shops.

I did the usual this weekend – cut the grass, raked up some of it, corrected math papers, spent some time working out how to get around the company’s blocking of websites until I can get us on an independent provider.

We had some visitors from Bali today (adult children of neighbors), and they did a tour of the area. They were going on about how beautiful the beaches are here. They sure are, and it’s a shame that I rarely get out to them anymore. One of the things that I’m going to do during my last year here is spend some time at the beach because what’s the point of living on a remote island if you don’t spend time at the beach.

Overseas Workers in Southeast Asia

I read an item in the Jakarta Post yesterday about an Indian migrant worker who was tortured and eventually died from his mistreatment by this employers and their son. This happened in Malaysia, something that happens all too frequently there. The article noted that around 1.8 million foreigner workers are legally employed in Malaysia. This does not include the many illegal migrants mainly from Indonesia.

I’ve written about this issue before. It’s one of those issues that interest me because it affects my family here in Indonesia. A brother and sister-in-law have both worked in Saudi Arabia, and had less than wonderful experiences there, but they put up with the indignities because they wanted the money to start a small business and put their children through school. Unfortunately the economy in Indonesia isn’t sufficiently developed to provide sufficient employment for its citizens (but that’s another topic).

I’m in the process of reading a book about Indonesia overseas workers, Dreamseekers. It’s a detailed piece of journalism written by a veteran Indonesian journalist. The book fills out much of the background data on Indonesian women as domestic workers, as well as offering some case studies. This is an excellent reference if you’re interested in this issue.

Another Physical Weekend

One of the realities of having a lot of land is having to take care of it. Because we don’t have a gardener anymore, and because I need to have regular exercise for health purposes, I’m regularly doing yard work every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Fridays, I spend an hour cutting grass when I get home from work. Saturdays and Sundays I spend about an hour and a half cutting the grass and another hour raking up the cuttings. Good exercise and it gets me out of the house and away from the computer.

Physical labor is special because of the internal space that opens up during the act of engaging in something that is mechanically demanding, but intellectually effortless. Somewhat like the internal space that is opens as part of long distance running, routinized manual labor seems to alter the brain chemistry in a similar way so that it’s possible to exist on several planes at once. Well, enough for the mystical aspects of physical labor.

While I was doing this, my wife was working on one of her egg trees for the second anniversary of the creation of West Sumbawa as an administrative entity. The camat, the administrative head of our area, stopped by to ask us to take part in the regional ceremonies in Taliwang, about 45 minutes from here. Because my ankle is still not healed properly, walking around for a long ceremony was not the best idea so my wife volunteered to make an egg tree. She spent Friday and Saturday doing that while I was out doing the yard work.

The kids spent the weekend doing homework and hanging around generally. Mercedes spent part of Sunday helping me with the yard work.

Another nice normal weekend in Sumbawa.

Hyper stores in Bali

Carrefour opened in Bali yesterday, and a number of expat sites were gushing over the opening - how great the store is, all the things to be bought, etc. Great for the expats and wealthy Indonesians, but as yesterday was Labor Day what about the workers? As these giant stores are built which cater basically to the tourist/expat/wealthy Indonesian population what happens to the local stores that just squeek by? I just happen to be old enough to remember the mom and pop corner stores in Chicago when I was a kid. They were great because of the personal relationship that existed between the shopper and the owner. If you didn't have enough money to pay for something, you'd be carried over until tomorrow. Want something special. They'd do their best to have it for you.

No, I'm not thrilled about this recent development. I see it as another step on the road to the depersonalization of Bali.

Why I Love Village Life Part 2

This is a continuation of the last blog about why I love village living.

The first reason that I love living in the village (the one that I mentioned last week ) is the opportunity to have animals. I love animals, and I especially love having enough space so that they can roam around freely.

The second reason is mornings. I love mornings in the village. Folks wake up early and are out getting a quick start on the day. The village kids are in their school uniforms, hair still wet from their mandi; goats and water buffalo are beginning their grazing rounds for the day; everything smells fresh and the air is still cool. As I drive the kids to school, folks from the village smile and wave; occasionally a small child will jump up and down shouting bule! bule! This is the beauty of all small towns – the closeness of the community. Everyone knows everyone and everyone has their place and role in the community.

Space for me and the kids and Su is another reason that I love village life. In Bali, we have our townhouse – shopping is easy because we’re five minutes from “downtown” Singaraja, but the walls of our house are a foot away from our neighbor’s house, and any argument that we might have is heard by all of our neighbors. Our house in the village is large, the yard is huge (57 are), and thus we have the space to do what we want and live how we want.

The fourth reason is physical labor. I spent almost twenty years doing physical labor while I was a student. I miss that, and I need exercise because of the high cholesterol and the prediabetes. I found exercise rather boring, but if I can exercise while I’m getting something done like cutting the grass or raking the cuttings or digging holes, well then I can enjoy exercising. I’ve spent the past weekend cutting over 3000 square meters of land, and that’s been a big job, but really satisfying.

More about village life later.

Life on the farm, or why I love village life

I was out getting ready to cut the grass in the back yard (a major undertaking) for the first time since I was hit by the rock while cutting the grass which led to the two operations on my ankle when I noticed that we have some new little chicks (10, and how is this for a convoluted sentence). Since our dog, May, died the animals around here have been much safer. Dave, the dog that we have now, likes to chase and bite the chickens and geese and ducks and rabbits, but he doesn’t have the killer instinct that May had. So I’m hoping that the chicks can survive until they are large enough and fast enough to avoid Dave when he’s in his playful mode. As I was examining the chicks, Su pointed out that our female duck has laid eggs. This is the first time that we are going to have baby ducks so we’re all excited to see them hatch.

We’ve decided to sell the goats. They’re just too much trouble to take care of the way that we want to. Most people around here just let them wander around the village grazing here and there. We’ve always keep ours in the back yard (moved now over to the garden across the road) which has meant that we have to get food for them everyday. We’ve also usually had a gardener to take care of this. Now that they boy we were paying to do this has gone back to Bali, I’ve decided that we need to sell the goats just to give us less to do on a daily basis. Su says she agrees, but I know from past experience just how hard it is getting here to sell something of ours. We’ll just have to see how that goes. I’m going over to the garden to check on them today.

So the title is why I love village life; the animals are one of the main reasons. Tomorrow a few more.

Health, smoking, irritability, and all those other annoying things

I’m off on another (and I hope last) attempt at stopping smoking. This time the attempt is the result of a recent visit to the Bumrungrad Hospital International Center for a complete physical. The good results were that I don’t have skin cancer; the bad results were that I’m pre-diabetic, am developing a cataract in my right eye, have high cholesterol, and may develop gallstones over the next few years. So the doctor told me to stop smoking, quit drinking alcohol, go on a diet for prediabetics, and get regular exercise.

For those of us who live in isolated places with limited access to resources like doctors and bookstores, the internet is a vital resource. I’ve been doing research on everything listed above. I’ve been able to track down diets, exercises, research, tips for living with diabetes – just about everything that I need to deal with my new health situation.

From my research, there is one factor that connects all of my health issues – smoking. So it seemed fairly obvious that I needed to stop smoking. As my eldest daughter put it, “if you want to see Meredith grow up, you better stop smoking.” So I’m on my seventh day now. It’s somehow easier (although it isn’t easy by any means) than before; perhaps because there is some concrete reason now to stop whereas before it was some abstract (to me anyway) threat of a future problem.

Irritability – my homeroom students (Grades 7 and 8) asked me the other day why I was so crabby. I replied that I didn’t think that I was any crabbier than usual, and they commented that it wasn’t just my usual old man crabbiness, but something special. So I let them know what was going on. Surprisingly they were surprised that I smoked, and all were glad that I was quitting. As I told them about the diagnosis of being prediabetic, they’ve been quite helpful with not offering me sweets like they often do, as well as reminding me not to eat sweets when they see me with a pack of Oreos.

The health issues are one of the main reasons that we are trying to sell the house here in Sumbawa. Once I retire, I won’t be able to access Newmont’s clinic which means that I’ll be at the mercy of the very minimal medical facilities available here. For anything major, I’ll need to go to Mataram (over on the next island) as the closest (a 7 hour car and ferry trip). It makes more sense for us to move to the house on Bali for that reason alone. There are other reasons for the sale as well, but more on that later.

Electronic Portfolios

Here's another set of notes from the EARCOS conference.

Electronic Portfolios

They are a collection of student work that includes reading, writing, listening, and speaking abilities. They can be contained on a CD, a Flash Drive, or a Network.

They also include documented reflections on student work. The work included is not necessarily the best work. It should show the learning process. Students can put the work in by themselves. They put work in that they consider significant.

(note: Student folders on the Network can be reorganized to do this)

Train the students how to do it. Start out with two documents for the first year, 3 for the second, four for the third. Remind students to put work in their portfolios as they often forget to do it.

Formatting can be in doc, pdf, jpg, powerpoint, mp3, quicktime video.

Why use them?

For placement in a class.
For academics: prior knowledge, strengths and weaknesses, continuation and transistion.

How to do it?

Provide students with format for reflection and rubric. Provide classroom instruction on the electronic component

Assessment

Collect student portfolios and assess using the rubric.
Have students do peer-review using the same rubric.

Notes from EARCOS

Spotty as they are, I'm posting my notes from workshops at the EARCOS conference. The first entry is from a talk that Ian Jukes gave. Jukes was probably the key presenter. Unfortunately, I can access Jukes' blog because the company that controls our internet access has his site blocked for some reason.

Ian Jukes

From Gutenberg to Gates to Google (and beyond)

People don’t need four year degrees anymore.

People have filters and hear what they want. Many in education think that they are immune to change.

It’s hard to think how inventions will change things. The applications go beyond the original plan. The power of Gutenberg’s press came from the impact it had on the transfer of information.

Gates revolution happened in fast forward. Things are happening even much more quickly now. Change is going on at an exponential rate.

By 2012 information will double every 72 hours. We have to prepare our students to be flexible and creative.

Look up Epaper and see how that works.

Look up Google language tools

The singularity is near. (He has an image of the Borg on screen.)

See his blogs and websites at The Committed Sardine: thecommittedsardine.net or ianjukes.com

The message that Jukes gave us was one that has been going around for a while in various forms. Are teachers ready for change?

Back from Earcos and off to work again

The two week spring break has just ended and it's back to work again. I spent almost a week of the break in Bangkok for the annual EARCOS conference. The conference was excellent as usual, especially for a technology teacher; there were so many tech oriented workshops that I really had to work to decide which ones to attend and which ones to skip.

As I'm updating this page, I'm also noticing what I wrote here in December when I came back from a tech seminar in Jakarta. The message was pretty much the same in both Bangkok and Jakarta, although the depth was better in Bangkok. As I wrote in December: Blogs, wikis, websites, podcast, IM are all tech tools that were mentioned, but I've already used all of them.

During the last term, I started having my students work on this wiki (www.wikiplaces.wetpaint.com) for students to post pictures and text about Indonesia, especially the islands that we spend time on. We're going to continue working on this project over the next term in addition to several other web-based projects which I'm still working on.

As usual, the EARCOS conference encouraged me to keep on working in the direction that I've been moving over the past decade with some upgrades in thought and direction. Ian Jukes was one of the main keynoters at the conference, and I have to say he was impressive. I've heard a lot of what he said before, but it was great to hear it again. He has a very engaging speaking style. Wish I could do that.

We are going to place more student work on our school website, but after some suggestions from colleagues in Bangkok, we will password protect the student work.

I want to do some more podcasting work this term as well as finishing up the movies that we started last term. Our major problem with making movies is that our hardware is too outdated to perform the tasks that we want it to perform. We did buy two iMacs for movie work and the students love them. We're thinking about moving to a Mac base (specifically laptops) in the near future, but we have a lot of selling to do before that large jump becomes reality.

On another track, I did a check on the search terms used for this site and came up with some interesting stats. The overwhelming keyword was "Sumbawa" versus a year ago when the number one term was "Papua." More than half the keywords involved job searches for various schools in Asia. There were a number of keywords relating to math as well. And for the main surprise, there were six searches for my name. Hmm, I wonder who's looking for me.

On yet another track, I'm creating a new page for the Sumbawa.org site for selling our house in Sumbawa. The kids have made it clear that they want to move back to Bali once I've finished teaching here. As much as I love our house in Sekongkang, and as much as I love this village, we just won't be able to afford keeping four houses going during my retirement. So if you want to move to a lovely, somewhat remote island in Indonesia, check out the new page(www.sumbawa.org/houseforsale). We're looking at a sale date of June 2008.

Vacation

This is the last of the blogs that I didn't have an opportunity to post while I was on vacation. Tomorrow back to the present.

Today is the first official day of vacation for spring term. This year, like most years, I’ll be spending about half of that time at the EARCOS conference in Bangkok. EARCOS is an organization for international teachers working in Asia. The conference last four days and is filled with workshops, lectures, speeches, and a few parties. It’s a venue for teachers to do some professional development, as well as catch up with old friends and colleagues. For some teachers who are planning to move to another school, it’s a time for networking. For administrators, it’s a chance to find some potential new faculty members. For me these days, I spend most of my time in the tech workshops, although occasionally I go to one of the math ones.

Last year’s conference was in Manila; the year before it was in Ho Chi Minh City. As it’s in Bangkok this year, I have made some plans besides just attending the conference since I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Bangkok over the past 17 years. I have a complete physical scheduled, as well as a visit to my dentist whom I greatly prefer over the dentists in Bali. There’s also some shopping, of course, for the family and myself. Being in Bangkok gives me a chance to visit Asia Books and stock up on books for another year. I’m also hoping to find some software for my iMac.

While I’m looking forward to the conference, I’m not looking forward to the travel to get there. I really enjoy living on a remote tropical island for the most part, but getting from one place to the other is not one of the benefits of living in Sumbawa. The itinerary for this year is: 6 am leave for the airport; 7 am take off for Mataram (the next island over) and wait for a 9 am flight to Bali: 9:30 arrive in Bali and hang around Kuta and Legian until 2:30 pm when I can check in for the flight to Bangkok; 5 pm leave for Bangkok; 8 pm arrive in Bangkok; 9 pm arrive at the hotel. So the whole trip will take15 hours. But, as many people have said to me over the years, including my teacher friends back in the States, what’s wrong with that, it sounds cool that you get to go to Bangkok for a conference and have most of it paid for by the school. And really that’s just really true. The whinging just means that I’ve gotten jaded a bit being over here, and that I’m getting old and tired of traveling. Well, this kind of traveling anyway. I actually still like the long, 15 hour drive from here to Bali when we have enough time to go. I think partially because I’m doing something for a lot of the time (with the exception of the five hour ferry to Bali), and I’m with my family and the kids’ excitement gets me jazzed up for the trip.

The key to the trip over to Bangkok will be occupying myself during the wait time. While I’m waiting at the company airport here in Sumbawa, I’ll have a few smokes and read a paper on archaeology. I’ll have about 90 minutes in Mataram which I’ll spend on the computer if no one is on it (the lounge only has one). When I get to Bali, I’ll stow my suitcase and take a taxi in to Kuta where I’ll go hang out at an internet café for a while and then probably stroll over to the Matahari department store to see what they have there now as it’s been a few years since I’ve been there. If I get really ambitious, I might go to the Ace Hardware store and check out what hardware I can buy in June when I’ll be in Bali for a few weeks when the kids and I have a vacation that coincides. I’ll check in at about 2:30 and buy a book and have a few drinks while waiting for the plane.

I’m staying at my old hotel from the Pakistan days – Tai Pan. It’s close to my dentist, the Asia Books outlet that I like, and the Robinson’s department store that I also like. Plus, I’m within walking distance of two restaurants that I like. I will be across town from the conference, but I can take the skytrain and take some photos of Bangkok. I’ve managed to lose all of my Bangkok photos over the years just like I lost a lot of my ones of Pakistan and India.

As I write all of this sitting here at my new iMac in what is commonly referred to as “The Big House”, it really is clear that the 18 years of teaching overseas has been good to me: a wonderful (well mostly) wife, four great kids, a few houses, a bunch of electronic toys, animals, an eclectic collection of friends (most of whom I rarely get to see unfortunately), a chance to live in Indonesia and Pakistan, and an interesting and generally gratifying career where I’ve been able to teach a wide variety of subjects: 2nd grade, computers, math, social studies, pe, high school anthropology, as well as spending almost four years being a principal.

There have been downsides as well, but that’s for another post.

And it’s a lovely day in paradise.

Living in and writing about another culture

I was skimming a blog written by an American living in Vietnam who was addressing the question of how much a Westerner can know about an Asian culture. This got me thinking about my own blog and websites. I wonder just how authoritive I end up sounding. After almost 18 years of living overseas – all but four of them in Indonesia – I should know something about this culture, but something always pops up that reminds me how much I really don’t know.

So something new popped up a few days ago. When I returned home from school, my eldest daughter was waiting with two pieces of news. She gave me the bad news first: our dog had killed one of our rabbits while playing with him. He apparently decided that it was like his stuffed rabbit, and he decided to throw it around for a while. We buried the rabbit out in the back next to our two dogs who are no longer with us – one poisoned, the other hit by a car.

The second piece of news was “happy” as Mercedes informed me. She said that we had adopted a baby. Imagine my surprise.

Sure enough, there was a little fellow in the kitchen being played with by my children. He’s a cute little guy. I have a hard time remembering his name, but he’s cheerful and receptive. It’s been a while since I’ve had a baby around, and it was kind of nice to hold one again, although being as we were only “temporary” parents, I was as worried about breaking him as I am when I borrow someone’s car or motorbike.

So what is the new cultural knowledge? I’m still processing this because I just found out that one of my kids was in the same situation once. According to my wife and children and some Indonesian colleagues, this is a common practice on a number of islands – just one of those things that I’ve missed while I’ve been obsessed with a career and keeping bread on the table.

The child that I “adopted” was given to us by a village family because the baby boy looked a lot like his father. This can cause conflicts between the two as the child grows up (I’m not sure what the theory is behind this- I’ll do some checking later), so the family gives the child to another family to temporarily adopt (the time frame seems to be fairly flexible according to the people that I’ve talked to). Eventually after the time period is finished, the adopting parents take the child to the natural parents and offer to let them adopt their (the adopting parents) baby. The natural parents adopt the child and everything is ok.

I find this practice immensely fascinating and plan on looking more it, but my baby “son” was here today and he kept everyone busy.

Besides mentioning some new cultural practice that I was unaware of, the main point here is that no matter how long a foreigner lives in another culture, they will always be a foreigner, and there will always be things to learn.

World Water Day

World Water Day was March 25. As those of you who regularly drop by here know, the water issue is near and dear to my daily life. (I’m posting this on April 9th because I’m on vacation and don’t have a phone at home.)

Water here in Southwest Sumbawa is an issue because we routinely have problems with access to water. Our village pump regularly breaks, and thus we don’t have running water until it’s fixed. Digging wells helps some of the villagers, but in our case, our land is situated where the water table is so low that digging a well has proven extremely difficult, and the workers that we hired for our two attempts quit after getting down 25 meters and finding no water.

At one point two years ago, we went five weeks without running water. Because the mining company that’s located next to our village has a tap outside their gates where the local community can access clean water, everyone in the village was able to have water for bathing and doing laundry and dishes, as well as for sanitation. We did have to drive the 15 minutes to the tap and fill up all of our containers and get them home everyday. If we hadn’t had the mine’s facility available to us, I’m not sure what we would have done. It was during that time, that I really first started thinking about the water crisis for a large part of the world population.

I read a statistic the other day that an estimated 1.5 million children a year die from diarrhea which is associated with a lack of water for drinking and sanitation.

Here’s an excerpt from a Salon.com article on water:

Here is a description by Caryn Boddie, an American writer who traveled to Kaikungu, Kenya to assess water-treatment issues and found that local women regularly walked 11 hours to fetch water for their families: "...during the dry season, the women have had to wake up at 2 A.M. on many mornings, leave their husbands and children still sleeping in bed, and go off to fetch water in the dark. They have walked to the Watumba River or have gone to buy from others who have wells. After they access the water, they carry it home, not returning home until 1 P.M. When the women complete the journey, they are too tired to do anything else in their homes or on their shambas (farms). Sometimes, they have walked to get water and back without any breakfast or lunch."

It's not just a matter of sheer neglect that has kept so many families without safe water, but also the fact that many water projects -- spearheaded by governments and non-profit groups -- don't work for the communities they are supposed to serve. (Sometimes wells are drilled but not outfitted with pumps, or wells which would require residents to pay for water are drilled close to a natural (and free) water spring and end up endangering it.) Women continue to travel to ensure their families' supplies, and water engineering has become an explicit feminist issue.

With retirement looming on the near horizon, I’m looking at ways that I can get involved in the movement to develop solutions for the water problem both in Indonesia and in other developing countries.

Road Trips

I'm in the middle of a week road trip to Bangkok, and am sitting at a broadband computer in the Emporium on Sukhumvit. What an incredible experience to be able to ask for a website and then receive it almost instantly.

I just finished a three day EARCOS conference and will post my notes on the workshops for those who are interested. (I have to write them up anyway for work.)Friday I went and had a laser tooth cleaning done at my dentist in Bangkok. It's been hard for me to see much of a difference, but when I showed up at the conference the day after, my colleagues noticed. So that has been nice. Unfortunately I have four cavities which need to be filled Monday night. Monday during the day, I have my first complete physical in many years; I want to see how the old body is doing, and the visit will give me a chance to get my ankle checked since it still isn't right.

Time to get out and eat and finish up the days work. I'm planning on spending a quiet evening in the hotel tonight eating, reading, writing and watching tv.

Earthquakes and the Ring of Fire

Over the past four days we have had three earthquakes here in Sekongkang. They've been relatively mild, but we certainly felt them and they stirred up a lot of talk among my students. Indonesia is located in the Ring of Fire which is an area that frequently has earthquakes and volcanic activity. We found a cool website that my students had a great time with - www.iris.edu/seismon. More on earthquakes in Indonesia later.

One More Time

I have just finished my first week back at school after the second operation on my ankle in the past month. This time I followed everyone's advice and bought a cane in Bali which I have been using fairly religiously until today. The ankle looks good, but as the doctor here said, it looked good last time until the stitches were taken out. I'll see how things go on Monday when the stitches are taken out.

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.