Six Weeks (Not that I’m counting)

Well, six weeks to go before the end of my teaching career (at least in this incarnation). Busy as usual and then, bing…another motorbike accident. This time I was returning home on a dangerous hill that separates us from the next village north. Late at night, I had a few too many wines probably and, as usual, I was driving probably too fast. I hit a big hole in the road and flipped the bike. Amazingly just a few cuts and scrapes on me and no damage on the bike although both mirrors came off the in collision with the road (and easily put back on later). One of these amazing road angels just happened to be passing by, and he pulled over, helped me disentangle the bike from the bush that it was caught in, and then followed me home. And then he was gone. It’s amazing how great Indonesians can be in a pinch. I really find that this is one of the wonderful things about living in Sumbawa. There’s almost no tourist industry here, and no one expects to guide you or sell you something.

Actually, Singaraja in Bali is like that, and that I suppose is why I like it so much. No one ever bothers me, and I know lots of folks so it’s just another friendly place.

I’ve been cleaning up today and came across some old photos on a cd that I was cleaning up to move. Today’s photo is one of me much younger down in Papua with a couple of little pythons that I was playing with. I love snakes, although I keep my distance from the poisonous ones.

40 more days. Not that I’m counting.

Food Riots and the Price of Rice

So yesterday I was complaining about the moving blues. I finished up the blog reminding myself how lucky I actually am compared to my neighbors. Over the past week, I have come across several articles about the food riots that are occurring around the world.

There was a story in the Wall Street Journal last week about food riots breaking out in various spots around the world since food prices have risen by 83% over the past three years. One of the more startling images was the one that came from reading about the head of the World Bank holding up a 2 kilogram bag of rice which he said would cost a poor family in Bangladesh half of their daily income. Startling to me because I live in a family that believes that if you haven’t had rice, you haven’t eaten. Figure that a poor family will eat rice, a few vegetables, and maybe a small bit of meat (maybe dried fish or some chicken) and that’s their diet. In our family of five we go through a 25 kg sack of rice per week or about 3.5 kilos per day. So for us, if we were poor, we’d spend almost all of our money just for rice. So what happens when someone needs medical care, or money for school books, or clothes? Where’s the margin for survival?

The World Bank President Robert Zoellick was quoted as saying that 33 countries were at risk of having social disturbances because of rising food prices, including Indonesia in the countries that he mentioned.

Those Moving Blues

My eldest daughter exclaimed yesterday, “Really, only seven more weeks until you move to Bali!” This is the girl who three weeks ago expressed almost the exact opposite sentiments, “Ten weeks is so long Daddy!”

OK, reality check time in the tropics. I can feel myself getting scattered as the time advances towards the end of paid employment. There is still this little thing of teaching everyday and being prepared for class and grading papers and dealing with all the confusion surrounding the merger of the two schools here. And the Bali eBook is stalled. I have two more sections to do and an update of the regions of Bali. One of the two sections requires some research, and even though I have the books here that I need, I’m finding too many distractions to get into the mindset that I need for research.

And then this little thing about our lands and houses here. I’m finding that we are too heavily invested here, and I would like to divest at this point, but I refuse to sell our houses for less than they are worth just because we’re going back to Bali. If it means that we are going to need to hold on to the land and property for a while, then that’s what we’re going to have to do. Life would be easier (for me) if we could just wrap everything up, but marriage to an Indonesian means waiting and waiting. My lovely wife just wants to wait until the day before we leave to try to sell the house or rent it out, and compulsive, Western me wanted to do it a year ago.

So there’s the rub of it – too many projects which all seem to be pulling us in too many directions right now. The easiest thing to do is to just focus on school and do what I can with the book and leave the house and land issues to my wife, but there’s this Western control freak lurking inside which keeps nagging me to get everything under control although I’m aware that that is something of an illusion.

It’s always good at times like these to remind myself that things could be much worse – we could have no land or houses to worry about and be worried instead about where to live and how to survive. I just need to look out across the road for the reality check to click in.

By the way, we had another big monitor lizard looking to eat our puppies yesterday. I love the tropics.

Tomorrow – food riots and the rising cost of food

8 Weeks to Go and Under Water

I was watching a Yankees-Orioles game today on ESPN and one of the announcers commented that the Yankees seemed to be playing underwater. Another moment of pre-retirement epiphany. That comment fairly accurately describes what I’m feeling like these days. The first two weeks back at school haven’t really had the rhythm that teachers always look for. We had Iowa tests and that always disrupts the schedule, and then a large portion of the dwindling population in the upper grades took off to Bali for a swim meet. Tuesday everyone is back and with the Iowa’s over, we should be able to find some rhythm again. Of course, with the changes coming with the merger of the national school and the international school, there is a fair amount of uncertainty about what we’re doing and when.

As I’m wrapping up five years of teaching here, we’re (the family) also in the process of wrapping up five years of living here. We paid a fairly substantial sum to get the legal title for some of the land that we own here, and we’re getting it completely legal so that we can sell it. Then we’re working on selling or renting the big house which may or may not work out as quickly as we’d like, but really we don’t have to do it right now. We don’t immediately need the cash, although it would be nice to have it in the bank. Selling land in Indonesia can be a time-consuming process because you want to make sure that everything is done by the book so there are no surprises later.

After all the research that I’ve done for the book on moving to Bali, I’m comfortable with the different types of land certificates and the process of obtaining them and buying and selling. So we’re going by the book unlike a number of expats that I know that try to shortcut the process and then find out that they have a worthless piece of paper or have land that has claims on it from other parties.

The Plan –

With 8 weeks to go, The Plan is to leave Sumbawa the day after school ends and take the bike to Bali and then fly to Singapore a few days later to get my retirement visa. That should take a day. Once that is finished, Mercedes and I will go back to Sumbawa to pack up all the things that we are moving with us to Bali and then take the car and a truck that we’ll hire back to Bali. Then we have to get the kids enrolled in new schools in Bali. Once all that is completed, I plan on doing some field work to finish the last sections of the Bali book. I need to get updated information on some of the areas of Bali that I haven’t been to for a few years.

The book will be in eBook format and I am planning on offering it for sale on a travel website that I occasionally write for. They sell eBooks there about expat life around the world. Once the Bali book is finished, I want to spend a few months finishing the book on international teaching. I hope to have that finished by October 1. That too will be in eBook format as it seems the most appropriate for the subject of the book.

Once that book is finished, I want to rewrite the novel that I’ve wrote many years ago and look at the possibilities of getting it published in paper format. Then, I’ll be doing research on the book on Islam.

During all this writing, I’ll be keeping the websites updated as well as the blogs, and then I’ll be working on the 41 things to do in retirement at the same time. Sounds like I should be busy enough for a while.

Ten Things Not to Do in the Tropics

1. Put your hand in a tree without first looking to see if a viper has made a home there – there’s nothing like a poisonous snake bite to put a damper on a good time.

2. Take that cute lost little goat home with you – it belongs to someone and they will come and make a fuss about your bad manners.

3. Walk barefoot in the grass – all sorts of little poisonous critters make their homes there if they don’t live in the trees.

4. Turn your back on the surf to admire the sunset – the sea is a wild beast and loves to claim the naïve and unsuspecting.

5. Snorkel without a shirt – your back is not submerged and you’ll spend several sleepless nights wondering how you could have been so stupid.

6. Wander around semi-naked – people in the tropics tend to be quite conservative about dress codes and will consider you to be a rude and uncultured tourist.

7. Drive your motorbike in shorts, flip-flops and a sleeveless shirt – when you fall (and you will), you are going to lose a lot of skin.

8. Drink that clear, cool water in the stream right down the road – your tummy will find out what invisible critters live there.

9. Tell everyone you meet that you don’t believe in magic and people that do lack the benefits of a Western scientific education – you’ll be amazed at all the bad things that will happen to you in the next few days.

10. Spin tall tales about all the strange food that you’ve eaten – your hosts will expect you to love the duck eggs with the half-formed duckling still inside.

The Bonus 11^th thing not to do –

11. Leave your hotel – you never know what’s lurking in the real world of the tropics.

Back in Sumbawa

Well, I’m back in Sumbawa one more time – well as a working teacher. I’ll be back once again after I head to Singapore for my new visa and then come back here to pack up.

The ride back from Bali was rough. The early morning ride from Singaraja to Padangbai was not bad, and I made it down there in a record 2:20 and then got on a ferry within a half hour so I was ahead of schedule and looking forward to the rest of the trip.

The ferry was one of the ones with a VIP section so for Rp.11,000 I had a wide comfy seat something like flying on business class in an airplane. If you live in Indonesia and have never taken a ferry, I strongly recommend it as a great way to meet Indonesian people and get a glimpse into Indonesian life and culture. There are so many people that travel by ferry, and it really is one of the prime Indonesian experiences. I even had a short nap this time because I was so comfortable, but once we arrived in Lombok it was pouring. We sat for an hour waiting to dock and then I had to battle pouring rain.

Once again, I took the wrong turn on my way to the road leading to the eastern part of the island and lost an hour messing around trying to figure out where I was going. I have the worst sense of directions.

I had a good trip back on the ferry to Sumbawa, but when I arrived in Sumbawa it was raining. The road is just absolutely terrible from Jereweh to Sekongkang and I had to battle it in the dark and the rain. This is one of the not fun things about living in a remote area.

I have work tomorrow.

Retirement, Writing , and the Flat World

 

Well, I’m in the last few days here in Bali before my final ten weeks in Sumbawa – as a teacher at least. It’s difficult to figure out just what I’m doing here; writing for sure, as I faithfully write at least 2,000 words a day and get to keep most of them,. But what else?

I definitely don’t want to go home to Sumbawa. I’m somewhere else now, and it certainly isn’t where I work, so that is going to be a push. I imagine that once I get back with my students it will be different, but for the first time in my life, I’m not looking forward to teaching. I’ll do it and do it as best I can, but something of the thrill is gone as BB King once said.

I’m ready to write, whether that means that I’ll make some money at it is a question that won’t be answered for a number of months, but it’s what I want to, what I’ve wanted to do for decades. There was always someone to feed or help or take care of and I couldn’t take the chance of not having the money available.

If you read the history of some of the greatest of our English language writers, they often spent years in poverty – some of them until they died. Ah, well art is great but I would rather deal with the people that I have responsibility for and then get on with what it is that I feel I have the need to do.

So the two weeks here are about up. I’m going to have to leave Mercedes to deal with things on her own for another ten weeks. But, all of this split family business ends in another ten weeks.

As I’ve written before, the situation that I find myself in is fairly common to Indonesians. Men and women both go overseas to look for work whether it is as a maid in Singapore, Malaysia or Saudi Arabia or as a driver in the same countries. It’s one of those unfortunate realities of developing countries – exporting their cheap labor to other countries. I’ve basically done it backwards – exporting a developed world worker to a developing country. The difference is that we command a large salary while our mirror world counterparts command something else.

This is one of the holes in Friedman’s Flat World. It’s flatter for the developed world than the developing world despite what he would like to claim. It’s easy to visit some high tech industries and find the workers that they are hiring (I’ve worked with them; they are the educated in a struggling economy), but visit the villages where people have no flat world skills and you get a Ridley Scott scenario for the future. These are the people who will be selling bakso and squid eyes in a damp strip mall under the glaze of neon lights.

I’ve been trying to get a take on Friedman’s book since I read it because as a tech person at an international school, I thought yes, maybe this will make my point with my boss and the board. But, there was something in that reptilian part of my brain that instinctively wanted to eat all of this new knowledge.

It’s easy to interview the winners; safer for sure (the losers can be somewhat cranky) and easier to fit into your point. I’m amazed at the number of educators that have bought into Friedman’s analysis of the world, but on second thought, not that amazed because we tend to teach the cream of the crop. The children of the people that run the world; the ones that will make the decisions on where the money goes, who gets prosecuted and who doesn’t, and what policies are going to be followed and what aren’t.

That’s the problem with the Flat World. It isn’t a flat world for the majority of the world’s population; for them the world is passing them by. They will continue in their usual way of making a dollar a day or less (for the less fortunate ones) and the armies of the future that Friedman champions will climb on their backs as the middle class has always done.

 

 

Little Adventures with a Big Daughter

Little Adventures with a Big Daughter

I came here, back to Bali, for two reasons: to deal with my immigration agent about my future status, and to see my daughter who has been living her by herself for the past nine months. We’ve returned every ten weeks to spend time with her, give her a break from being on her own, and generally just to be together as a family. This time the family couldn’t come so I came on my own as mentioned a few blogs ago.

I’ve been here for nine days now and have a week left before I return to Sumbawa for the last ten weeks of my teaching career (at least in this phase). In that time, Mercedes (my eldest daughter) and I have had a lot of father-daughter time – well at least as much as her busy schedule as a high school student allows. So what have I learned about my daughter –on – the-brink – of – becoming – a – woman?

• She’s pretty smart. Despite spending four years in a fairly remote area of Indonesia, she’s developed a pretty good educational foundation.
• She and I can sit and discuss the role of genetics in the development of a human being. She has a basic grasp of trigonometry.
• She’s quite good with her pencil sketches for art class.
• She has a decent grasp of where countries are in relationship to each other.
• She’s up on current events in Indonesia; but has a poor idea of what is happening in America or the rest of the world.
• She’s environmentally conscious and can discuss global warming and gasses from refrigerators, but she still doesn’t get the water crisis.
• She wants to grow up really quickly and get a job and get some money.
• She’s hanging tough, but obviously misses living with her family.
• She has a firm idea of what she wants to do in the future, but is concerned that my early retirement is going to put her in a financial bind.
• She wants to know more about her family in America, but doesn’t want to write because of her basic English skills.

So we’ve talked and talked and talked and cooked and cooked and cooked. The girl can eat like her mother and like her mother she doesn’t seem to gain any weight. I guess she’s just a teenager.

So why the title of this blog? The little adventures are the day-to-day things that people do. I’ve spent too many years defining adventures as the big things that I do like traipsing through the mountains of Papua, or hanging out with drug dealers in America, or living in Pakistan during the War in Afghanistan years. Those are all adventures, but the little things that we do every day, those are the adventures that really define who we are, that make us human, that give us some connection to the other creatures like us that share a space on the planet.

They’re not the things that most people want to hear. I remember sitting in a bar with some colleagues of my son telling stories of hanging out with guys who only wear a gourd on their penis and women who wear grass skirts, and being followed by some mysterious van in Pakistan during the danger days for foreigners. Those are the stories that people back home want to hear- those are the adventures. And they are adventures, but their really interludes in the little adventures that make our lives rich and full and keep us alive when we have mind-numbing jobs and deal with all the real issues of life like school and sickness and love and tragedy.

41 Activities for Early Retirement in the Tropics

41 Activities for Early Retirement in the Tropics

The issue of what I’m going to do after I stop teaching in June has become of some interest over the past few months to some friends and family. Despite the stereotype of the retired old guy sitting around the beach sipping fruity cocktails, I have a few other ideas in mind at the moment. As someone pointed out recently, the trick will be to carry them out.

 

A list of Things to Do in Retirement

1. Check email and respond on time
2. Read the news feeds from the internet
3. Work on cyberbali.com
4. Work on Sumbawa.org
5. Work on lifeinthetropics.wordpress.com
6. Work on theinternationalteacher.wordpress.com
7. Work on the podcast
8. Participate in the forum
9. Exercise
10. Wake the kids up for school
11. Take the kids to school
12. Pick the kids up from school
13. Clean the top two floors of the house
14. Repair the beach house
15. Finish the ebook on Bali
16. Finish the ebook on international teaching
17. Rewrite the novel
18. Read
19. Make notes for the book on Islam
20. Watch a lot of baseball
21. Visit friends
22. Shop with Su at the market once a week
23. Make dinner once a week
24. Work on learning how to do graphic art
25. Play computer games
26. Learn Balinese
27. Improve my Indonesian to college level
28. Take a marine biology class on the internet
29. Learn how to write Java
30. Learn Arabic
31. Help the kids with their homework
32. Spend more time with my wife
33. Make some videos
34. Write free lesson plans for teachers
35. Look for freelance jobs on the internet
36. Keep track of the budget
37. Get involved in one save the planet project
38.   Sleep
39. Remember how lucky I am to be here
40. Do research on different conceptions of time
41. Attend mosque regularly

Sumbawa to Singaraja on a Bike

Just back in Singaraja from Sumbawa. Another one of those long strange trips (what would we have done without the Dead?). 15.5 hours from Sumbawa to Singaraja on a 125 cc motorbike. My old Honda has taken a beating over the past five years in Sumbawa. I’ve run into a kampong dog and dumped the bike resulting in more injuries to me than to the bike; I took a broadside from a wild boar one night returning from a late school meeting; my teenage daughter had an over libidinous suitor smash into her while he was trying to show her his motorbike skills; and five years of rocky roads, pot holes, salt air corrosion and she’s still running.

My trip from Sumbawa to Singaraja on a motorbike has been a point of contention that has drawn in ex-wives, children, my wife (leading the “take the plane” group), and a few close friends. The pro-bike group included my colleague – the school driver – and my first wife and my first child. Everyone else was in the “you’re too old to be driving a motorbike across three islands alone”. My contrary nature has always led me to challenge anything that someone told me I couldn’t do. 35 years ago, one friend supported me when I decided to try to be a single parent, work a full time job, and go to school full time. I ended up with a Ph.D. and a son who is happily married and raising my new granddaughter. So driving a motorbike across three islands seemed like a piece of cake.

My plan was to leave my house in Sumbawa at 3:00 and arrive in my house at 18:00 so that I would miss the night traffic in Bali (I’m developing cataracts and the light from oncoming vehicles blinds me completely now). The night traffic in Sumbawa consists of water buffalo and horses out grazing and the occasional musang. I can deal with night traffic like that.

I spent a little longer than usual over coffee and cigarettes with my wife who was trying to delay my trip until sunrise, so I took off at 3:25. Despite driving slowly to negotiate the terrible roads in the south of Sumbawa, I made it to the harbor in Poto Tano in exactly 2 hours – only 20 minutes slower than usual. The harbor master waved me on the ferry that was just about to leave. I could see the lower deck filled with buses and trucks; the upper deck was filled with passengers checking out the final boarding. Just as I was about to enter, I noticed that the last truck was having some difficulty negotiating its entrance. I had to wait and wait and wait. The ferry crew was able to maneuver the truck in but I couldn’t get the bike in. The harbor master said that another ferry would be in in just a few minutes.

An hour later I was sitting up on the deck with Pak Hussan who works the ferries back and forth between Sumbawa and Lombok. He works and lives on the ferry; his wife and kids are back in Jakarta. “It’s not the best of lives”, he says, “but I make a living and my children will get though high school and inshallah college. What more can someone with a junior high education hope for. I’ve been working on ships since I was a boy. This is all I know.”

We sit and chat about Indonesia for a while until he goes off to work the snack bar. I sit and smoke and try to catch a bit of sleep. A few guys come up and slide in next to me on my perch on the back of the boat. I notice that they are checking out my rather used black Chinese slippers. “hey pak look at the bule. His shoes are worse than ours. He must be too poor to have some good shoes.” They enjoy a good laugh. Oh, I love this – just to be a little naughty as my daughter said. “Yah dong, pasti miskin sekali.” The folks sitting around us had a good laugh as the joker lost a little face.

I get off the ferry at 8:30 and take off across Lombok which has an incredible road that crosses the middle of the island. I do 90 on the desa sections and weave around the cidomos and bemos that clog up traffic in the village markets. I make the harbor in two hours – a record for me. I get directly on the ferry – a good piece of luck. We leave in 30 minutes but the ferry is almost full and I’m lucky to secure a seat on an uncomfortable wood bench on the back of the ferry. The currents are good and we make it to Bali in 3.5 hours and then wait for 1.5 hours to dock.

The ferry is full of people smsing about the arrival time. I haven’t slept yet and I’m looking at clouds over Bali. I don’t want to do the 3 hour drive in the rain. I’m feeling cranky and dirty and thinking for some reason about a chocolate malt from a little coffee shop in Chicago.

The police at Padang Bai almost always check your papers. Mine are in order and I take off wanting to make up a little lost time and get to Singaraja before nightfall. The road from Padang Bai up along the east coast has been repaired over the years and is an incredible piece of work. I do 90 easily until the road gives out and then I drop down to sixty.

I hit Tejakula and there’s a huge ceremony. We’re all backed up. How come my Hindu friends didn’t give me notice about this? They know I’m coming today. I hang around watching the ceremony pass by along with the inevitable van of tourists in ceremonial clothes snapping photos. I get through by walking my bike along the side of the road. I don’t want to bother anyone’s ceremony anymore than I want anyone to bother mine, but the reality is that I want to get home before dark and it’s getting dark. Heavy clouds but no rain yet.

I hit Bukti up farther north and have to wait for another ceremony. What did I miss here? Is this a Bali holy day? I wait and suddenly it’s dark. I take off the sunglasses and switch to nightglasses. The traffic is still relatively benign but it’s sundown and Balinese seem to enjoy wandering around the road after the afternoon mandi. I know this from years of taking the Denpasar-Singaraja road, but I hadn’t yet made a connection to it being an island wide cultural trait. Everyone seems to be out walking along the road just when my vision is at its worst.

Suddenly the sign for Kubutambahan looms up. What happened to Air Sanih? I realize that I’m sliding into the zone and pinch myself a few times. I glide though Kubutambahan and the sign for Singaraja pops up. Fifteen minutes more and I’m at home. So what’s the lesson here?

It ain’t over until the Fat Lady sings.