The Last Weekend

I’m already on the last weekend of my vacation. Four weeks is far from long enough for a summer vacation. If you happen to be a teacher and have a chance to work at a school that does the ten on, four off, ten on, two off rotation, I’d advise you not to take the position. I’ve never liked this schedule.

Today I went out fishing with my two oldest daughters and my second son. Sam goes out fishing everyday with his buddies and occasionally with me. The girls have never gone fishing, but they wanted to try it. We were out for five minutes in gentle swells with a light breeze when the girls told me they were seasick. Sam caught a fish within minutes, and I had quite a few bites. When the girls put their heads down on the boat, I knew it was time to come home so we went back. Sam threw his fish back in the sea. And that was the end of the fishing trip.

sam's fish

I’d go out fishing everyday, but I still have to get the trick to tying the boat up correctly. I’m getting the technique down of paddling without going in circles, but I have to admit that I’m far from the most efficient paddler. But, the main thing is that I have fun, and I get to spend time with the kids.

Hmm. Just one more week, and I make the long drive back across Bali and Lombok and then down to the west coast to my apartment in Sumbawa. I’m not looking forward to being back at work, but I am looking forward to taking my bike out for the long ride and doing a little exploring of Sumbawa. When I lived in Sumbawa on my first tour there, I spent the weekends at home with the family. Now that I am living alone there, I’m going to do something more interesting than just sitting around my apartment every weekend working and watching tv.

The main thing for me to do over this last week in Bali is to remember not to get so depressed about going back to work that I get irritated with the family. That’s going to be a trick because that’s my behavioral pattern, and I can be predictable.

A Few Rambling Thoughts on Changes

I haven’t done much snorkeling thus far on this vacation due to the reconstruction of the area around the harbor. The stone walls are being replaced because of damage done during the last rainy season. Each day I can hear the heavy equipment operating at the harbor, which is just 100 meters down the road from us. And, we have been doing some reconstruction of our own – thankfully nothing major with the house, but our large tree on the sea wall needed to be cut down. The roots have gotten so large that they were ripping up the small street that skirts the sea and runs through our neighborhood and the adjoining one. While nothing major, still another change. The benefit of cutting the tree down is that it gives me a clearer view of the sea from the balcony.

harbor construction

My second daughter, Rebecca, is struggling with finding a high school. She ended her national exams with strong scores, but there appears to be a lack of decent high schools in Singaraja. My wife spent the morning trying to get her enrolled in three schools, but they are already at their quota. We have to wait until Friday to see if a place falls open at one of the two. This is a major problem because I want my children to attend college, if they choose to do so, and they won’t be able to if they can’t get into a good high school. This is a major problem for Indonesia – to provide a decent education for any child that wants it. More on this later.

Another decade is about to pass for me. I turn 60. I’m working on mentally adjusting to that. I come from the generation that had the slogans like “don’t trust anyone over 30,” “ I hope I die before I get old,” “Die young and leave a good looking corpse.” Once many, many years ago during my SDS days back in Chicago, I was part of a group of kids working in the National Office on Madison who called ourselves the 18 caucus. We didn’t trust anyone over 21. I still have vivid memories of things that I did and said when I was a kid still in Junior High; so it seems rather…what’s the correct word? Maybe, unbelievable? Bernard Baruch said, “To me old age is always 15 years older than I am.” That pretty much says it.
Of course, people live longer now so my view of 60 is still based on my perceptions from my youth when 60 was the time to get ready to go. Many of my students have grandparents or great grandparents in their 70s and 80s, so it’s no unimaginable that I could live for another decade or even two. But the issue isn’t with dying – I’m OK with that – it’s getting old and feeble. A friend of mine wrote a blog recently about his 10 greatest fears, my major one is being demented or physically incapacitated and thus being a burden on the family.

One of my favorite poems when I was a young man studying literature at the University of Illinois was Elliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
I grow old…I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers
rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to
eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and
walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each
to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.

The Family Goes Tourist

There’s a forum about Bali that I often read because I like to see what foreigners (especially Australians) think about Bali. One of the favorites of the forum is JBRs (Just Back Reports). I’ve never done one before so here is my first one.

The kids have been asking me for quite some time to take them on a vacation somewhere. They would prefer to go to Singapore, America, or Australia, but when I explained that we had no where near enough money to take the whole family overseas, they settled for something closer – Waterbom down in Tuban.

As the tourist season is getting underway now in Bali, I guessed that we would need to be there close to opening if we wanted to rent a gazebo so that we would have a base for the day. With that in mind, I decided that we would drive down to Kuta, have a half day for shopping, then get to the park at opening time and spend the whole day there so as to get the most for the price that Waterbom charges.

My usual hotel in Kuta was full, so we stayed in a small place in Legian that was almost full with mostly Malaysian tourists as well as some Chinese-Indonesian domestic tourists from Jakarta. The rooms were small, but sufficient, and the hotel had a small pool. We spent three hours wandering around Discovery Mall buying clothes and a few other things. The kids were like small town kids in America visiting the big city. We had lunch at the Mall and then headed back to the hotel for a rest and a swim for some of the kids.

Dinner our first night was at a place not far from the hotel that served Indonesian/Western food. The kids didn’t care for the Nasi Goreng, but I loved the steak sandwich. After dinner, we went to a little supermarket and bought some snacks for the night. Then back to the hotel to watch TV and get some rest for the big day coming up.

dinner in Legian

The next morning, we waited for a table to clear so we could have breakfast at the hotel, but after 90 minutes of waiting, we decided to eat at Waterbom so that we could get there right when it opened. We were the second family there and by the time the park opened right at 9:00, there were already 20 people lined up waiting to get in. We were able to get a discounted price because the kids are Indonesian citizens and I have a KITAS. That saved us about $40. We rented a family gazebo and the kids immediately took off for the slides. My wife and I sat around for a few hours taking photos and talking.

Eventually Su changed into her swimming suit and went off with the kids to do a few slides. I settled back with a new book and a few Bintangs and held the fort. Eventually, I joined in and did a few slides and spent some time in the pool with Su. The staff at Waterbom is incredibly friendly and polite. We all had a great time.
We spent most of the evening at the hotel and returned home the next morning. It was great to get back on the road home.

Life in Kampung Bugis, Singaraja

The first week of vacation has just zipped by. My second daughter received the preliminary results of her national exams. She passed! A sigh of relief from all of us. This was a point of contention when we were moving from Sumbawa back to Bali. My wife and daughter believed that Rebecca would have difficulty passing the exams if she moved to Bali for her last year of junior high. Here in Bali, the schools use the most recent national curriculum; in Sumbawa, they were using an older curriculum. Well, she passed so now we are waiting to see what high school she will get in to. We should have some news on that in the next few days.

Yesterday, Sam and I took his sampan (a small boat) out to do some fishing. This was the first time that we were out in the boat. We don’t have a motor for it, so it’s movement by paddle. Good exercise for me. We have to get another paddle made so that both of us can paddle at the same time. We were out for several hours along with one of Sam’s friends. We caught one fish that we lost when it slipped out of my hands while I was trying to get it off the hook. Just as well, as it was really too small to eat, and it was so beautiful that I hated to keep it. I did get sunburned, and I’m paying for that now.

Our house from the Bali Sea

I have a new granddaughter. I don’t know much other than that her name is Brynn, and she’s pretty big and healthy. It would be really nice to be able to meet my granddaughters some day. You never know what will happen when you live in Bali.

Another Lovely Day in Paradise

I started writing a new post yesterday, but got sidetracked by my first attempt at using stop motion technology. It turned out not too bad, and I posted it on YouTube. I tried catching the sunrise today, but for some reason the camera stopped. Here’s the video.

So, a few days ago, I took my new bike out for a ride to the west to get comfortable with the new gear pattern, the new seat, and sitting higher up than I’m used to. I quickly got the gear pattern down, but the seat is less comfortable than my old Kharisma, but it should be ok for the two to three hour drives that I will be doing on my way back to Sumbawa next month. I love the extra power for quick acceleration that you often need in Indonesia to get out of some of the bizarre situations that drivers often encounter.

Yamaha Vixion

I mentioned a few days ago that I would have some more to say about my conversation with my old friend who sold me my new bike. He a few years younger than me and has two kids are just a little older than my kids here in Bali. Our conversation was pretty wide-ranging as it lasted over several hours, but one of the main themes was the change in Indonesia and Bali over the past twenty years – not an uncommon theme anywhere in the world for people our age. After all, we do tend to look back on the past with at least a tinge of sentimentality. So, what was the main change? The increasing lack of tolerance among many of the religions here and the quickness that some folks have to demonize the other.

We both agreed that generally kids here still have respect for their parents and elders and that they see one of their responsibilities when they become adults as taking care of their parents – that’s something that my kids often bring up.

Life is lovely here.

Back in the Land of the Sane

My first full day of vacation after one of the longest ten-week periods in my life. Life at school was better than a soap opera, even the Indonesian ones which are as over the top as any that I’ve seen. We’ve had affairs, scandals, religious bigotry, hysterics, confusion, depressions, and more. Bali has never seemed so wonderful and peaceful. You never do appreciate home more than when you’ve been away in the land of the mad. I’m just working on putting in the past for the next few weeks and living.

This first day has been busier than most of my returns. The kids all received their school report cards – mixed results with everyone moving on to the next level, but the difference in their grades from the first semester when I was living with them for most of the time was noticeable, particularly in my areas of specialization – math, technology and English. Well, English isn’t a specialty of mine for certain, but the kids do better when I’m around to help with the homework. Anyway, they all did better in some subjects, but fell in the ones that I mentioned. The good news about this is that it proves the point that I was trying to make to my wife that I do have some function other than just providing financial support for the family. And, it makes me absolutely certain now that the next six months of teaching will be my last.

So after getting the reports, and doing my bit of congratulating them on the good work, and reminding them that they need to work harder in other areas, Su and I went out shopping for my new motorcycle. The dealer that we ended up going with is an old friend from 20 years ago whom I haven’t seen in the last ten years. (The Pakistan years, as I call them now, were significant in many ways, including in the realignment of friendships here in Bali.) After a lot of catching up and a few beers, I bought a Yamaha Vixion. It’s been a long time since I’ve driven a clutch bike so I did a lot of sputtering and lurching on the way home while I tried to figure out the gears.

I took a nice nap when I got home, then fixed a broken computer, cleaned another one and took a look at the new baby kittens.

More on the bike and my conversation with my old friend tomorrow.

When We Do What We Have to Do

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. There has just been so much going on here that I haven’t had much time to myself for myself – reports, meetings, my work on creating PD for some of the staff, and the on-again off-again saga of what I was going to do in terms of staying here for another six months or going home and finally retiring once and for all.

So now things have been finalized in my mind, which is the most important thing. I had to get feedback from everyone involved – wife, kids, friends, and colleagues and then decide what to do. It’s clear to me now that some things may change here, but most probably won’t. The Executive Principal convinced me that I had a role to play here in the changes coming up and some of the possibilities are exciting and will challenge me. My wife convinced me that she would be more comfortable with having more money available for the kids’ university accounts. The kids convinced me that they were not really happy with me staying longer, but were ok with that because they understand about the money for the future. Some of my colleagues are interested in moving the school forward technologically. So after weighing all of the above, I’ve decided to stay until December.

I feel better now that I have mentally locked myself in to a plan for the next six months. I can look at this as another 22 weeks of work with some decent compensation that will put my family in a better position economically.
I’ve also decided that in order to deal with the pressures and frustrations here, I need to have some outlet other than spending my weekends inside the apartment working or watching tv. So I’ve decided to buy a new motorcycle and drive it back here in July after the month break coming up. My old motorbike, a Honda Kharisma, took a lot of beatings over the six years that I’ve owned it. I had three or four accidents here including being hit by a wild boar one night, hitting a dog in the road one morning, and slamming into a massive pothole one night coming home from a party that resulted in the bike flipping over and my flying off the bike and onto the road. My wife sold the Kharisma, and next month I’ll buy a Yamaha Vixion: a 150cc machine with some pretty good stats in terms of power and reliability.

yamaha vixion

Having the bike will enable me to get out of the apartment on the weekends and drive down to the beach for a swim on Saturday mornings, as well as take a few drives up along the coast road north and up to Sumbawa Besar for a few of the long weekends that we will have next semester. Just being able to get out and around will be a big change for me – I love driving bikes and just clearing my head on the weekends should make life more bearable for the next semester.

End of Days

What a long, strange trip it’s been to quote Robert Hunter. Time, loyalties, responsibilities, adventure, professional pride, desires and fun all mesh together sometimes when a person is attempting to make a decision about a major event in their life. I’ve been struggling with this for the past six months ever since I agreed to come out of retirement to teach again and take over my old position as technology coordinator at an international school. When I made the decision to come back to work, the economic future of the world looked bleak; fortunately things have improved over the past six months.

I was enjoying my life in retirement (what an understatement that is), and the decision to go back to work was not easy, but the necessities of caring for a family in uncertain economic times were very persuasive in guiding me in my deliberations.

Not long after I returned, I was asked to extend my contract for an extra six months, and after a lot of thought, I agreed, only to change my mind a few weeks later. Just to demonstrate that the universe does, indeed, have a sense of humor, I discovered a growth that was initially diagnosed as potentially cancerous. I offered to extend my contract and the executive principal graciously agreed.

To be honest, I was less than enthused about the extension but it seemed to be a win/win situation for both the school and myself: they got an experienced expat teacher which they needed, and I got an extra six months of insurance which I needed.

Then I became involved in doing some professional development work both in the school and in the community, and I was quite suddenly re-energized. Lots of opportunities emerged to carry on with my ideas about technology integration that I have been working for over the past fourteen years.

But, the school that I work in is quite dysfunctional. Those of us of the staff who are actually concerned about this state have been working to change this, but only minimally. It’s really easier to whine about it and just carry on taking care of our class and ignoring the rest of the growing wasteland that threatens to engulf us all.

In a school of just over 200 we have five administrators – fairly overstaffed with administrators based on most international schools. In Pakistan we had three for four hundred plus students. But the school runs on the principle that paper is more important than people so as long as the school continues to be nominally functional, everyone ignores the sleeping tiger in the corner of the room.

Well, all of this is just another story of an expat in the tropics. There’s no telling what the next few months will bring.

Tech Seminar in Mataram

It’s been a busy week. I started out last Saturday taking the ferry over to Lombok and then taking a 2 hour car trip across the island to Mataram where I checked in to a hotel across from the Mataram Mall. That’s when I started working.

I was over in Lombok to be the main speaker at a seminar on using technology in education. One of our teachers, Pak Habib, arranged the whole seminar along with a committee from the pesantren where the seminar was being held. I spent hours Saturday night running a test on the computer, the presentation software, the sound system, and talking with the head of the pesantren, the head of the committee and Pak Habib. I didn’t get to bed until midnight.

The next morning I was up early to drive back to the town, Kediri, where the pesantren is located. The committee had put up a large banner welcoming me which was pretty cool. Like most things in Indonesia, the conference started late as people didn’t really begin arriving until 9 which is when the seminar was supposed to begin.

About 80 people showed up: teachers, principals, and university students. I did two 30 minutes talks – one on concepts and one on applications – and there were two question and answer periods. One of our teachers, Habibi, showed a cool presentation, and Habib did a little warmer up before the second session. All in all, it went well, so all of my anxieties were for nothing.

One of the benefits of the seminar for me was that it got me excited about education again, and particularly about working to help change education in Indonesia. We’ll see how that works out.

How Hard Can It Be to Retire?

Regular readers of this blog or my cyberbali.com website know that I retired from teaching last June. My retirement lasted until November when I returned to teach for what was planned to be seven months. I was asked to extend my contract not long after I returned, but I eventually decided that I was going to stick with plans for retirement.

I’m undergoing some tests for a few health issues, and I’ve decided that it would probably be a good idea to stay employed, and thus insured, for a while longer. Health insurance for expats my age can be expensive. Right now I’m covered by my employer. So, it looks like I will be working another six-month contract. But, it will depend on if the school has sufficient funds to retain me for that period, and whether or not they decide to accept my offer of a six-month contract instead of the standard one year contract.

The question that I keep coming up against is why do I keep doing this to myself?