Finally, another Friday. I’ve never been a TGIF person, but my situation here in Sumbawa has led me to focus on Fridays as the goal for the week. Why? It’s one week finished in this rapidly disintegrating school, and one more week closer to getting back home and out of here.

Over the years, I’ve had many different jobs: some of them I loved, some of them I liked, some of them I disliked. I’ve only had one job before this one that I really despised. This school is the poster child for dysfunctional schools. Leaders that show up on the clock instead of early to inspire and check out the troops; a board that is incompetent and has no idea of what education should be; teachers that are demoralized and unsure of where their place in the future of the school is; a lack of vision when vision is sorely needed.

Well, I could go on, but this school will be just a bad memory in a few months.

I have a few days to work on tweeking the school blogs so that they are more user friendly, and I have the weekend to work on finishing my book about international education, which will be on sale soon here and on my other blogs and websites.

Who says life in the tropics is always fun?

I just finished reading a biography of George Washington (Patriarch), the first president of the United States. Washington’s retirement was a period of his life that is especially interesting for me as I am coming up to that period in my life once again.

Besides worry about finances, Washington had numerous relatives that he assisted in one way or another – often financially even though he was relatively strapped for cash, but also with the advice that those of us who reach old age are apt to give quite freely.

To his grandson, a young man who was less than energetic in advancing himself, Washington wrote, “System in all things should be aimed at, for in execution it renders everything more easy.” After some specific advice on how to deal with his days, Washington concluded his letter by noting, “Time disposed of in this manner makes ample provision for exercise and every useful or necessary recreation.; at the same time that the hours allotted for study, if really applied to it instead of running up and down stairs and wasted in conversation with anyone who will talk with you, will enable you to make considerable progress in whatever line is marked out for you…”

Right, schedules, plans and organization. It seems to me, just from the short periods that I have been retired during my several attempts at such a life, that it is exactly this organization that is needed in order to stay happy, alert and productive once the routines and adventures of employment are passed. I’ve been working on a new set of routines myself over the past two weeks of my last vacation before retirement.

I’ve had a number of conversations with other expats who are reaching, or have already reached, retirement about how to adjust to this new stage of life. When I retired last year, I made a long list – about 41 points, if I remember correctly – of projects that I wanted to work on during my retirement. Similar to my approach to teaching – always better to over plan than under plan – there was no way that I was going to get to all of the activities that I had planned, but I was never going to be at a loss for something productive to engage my somewhat restless nature.

So, what are the routines that I’ve come up with? Here’s a look at the schedule that I’ve worked out.

5:00 – Wake my wife who then makes breakfast for the kids and gets them off to school. I go back to sleep for two hours.
7:00 – I wake up, open all the windows to my office/bedroom, put the bedding and pillows out on the balcony to air out, and check email and websites. If the sea is good, I go snorkeling for an hour.
8:00 – My wife and I have breakfast together and discuss what needs to be done for the day.
9:00 – I go upstairs to clean the third floor and then work on whatever writing project I have.
11:00 – I watch the news for an hour while answering correspondence.
13:00 – My wife and I go out and do whatever errands we have for the day such as going to the bank, shopping, or whatever else there is for the two of us to do.
14:00 – I read for an hour.
15:00 – I take an hour nap.
16:00 – I work on my writing projects again.
17:30 – The children usually come up to the third floor to watch the sunset and talk.
18:30 – Family dinner
19:30 – I retire upstairs to watch TV and edit whatever I have written during the day.
21:00 – I get all the children ready for bed, check on what they have planned for the next day, and then watch TV or read.
24:00 – I go down to the family room to wake up my wife who has already been asleep there for several hours and we go upstairs to sleep.

This is the basic structure of a regular day. Sundays are somewhat different as the kids don’t have school, and I often go fishing with Sam in our little sampan, or we go snorkeling together. On Sunday evenings, the kids come up to the third floor and we watch a movie together.

I’ve found that the days are most satisfying when organized in this way: I’m engaged and generally happy because I’m happiest when I’ve felt that I’ve accomplished something and there is some order in the world.

Do other retired expats have schedules that they adhere to? Let me know.

I’ve been back now for 9 days, and I’ve been busy with all sorts of activities. I spent the first few days here recovering from the trip over and the bad sunburn that I acquired on the ferry from Lombok to Bali. There were a few days left of fasting and then Lebaran. This year the weather held up (no rain like we always seem to have when we’re planning on praying outside), and the family piled into the car and went off to pray. The kids love Lebaran – it’s the closest thing to Christmas that I can think of for Muslim kids. We had lots of guests and everybody was happy that another Ramadan was completed successfully.

ramadan in singaraja

The Bali Sea hasn’t been all that hospitable for snorkeling and fishing so I haven’t been out yet. Sam and I were going to go fishing today, but the sea is a bit too choppy, and I know that Sam would be seasick within minutes of getting out on the sea. I hope to get at least a few days snorkeling before I go back to Sumbawa.
I’ve been thinking, too, about a few folks that I know who insist that they could never retire because they wouldn’t have anything to do, or to use that word that I tell my students never to use, because they would be bored.

I’ve been looking around for the list I did last year about what I was going to do when I retired. Well, it’s somewhere around here, but I never even got started on what I wanted to do in the five months that I was retired. I can’t wait to get back to working on doing the things on that list again. Ah, retirement.

In the last post, I wrote about leaving for home; I’ve been home now for three days resting up from the trip over from Sumbawa. This time it took me 15 hours and 45 minutes to make the 300 km drive that includes two ferry crossings. I left the apartment in Sumbawa at 2:15 A.M. and arrived at the house in Singaraja at 6:00 P.M.

bali from the ferry

Apparently the ferry that I took is one of the new ones so there was a group of important people around the harbor along with a television crew. I managed to get a seat in an air-conditioned cabin, but it was filled with screaming children and lots of adults throwing up. The “important people” took a tour of the ferry and ended up in the air-conditioned cabin. One person, who was obviously the most important, noted to a reporter that the cabin would be very popular with “bules” (the somewhat controversial term that many Indonesians now use for Westerners). He missed the fact that there were 16 foreigners on the ferry and only one opted for the cabin; the rest sat outside. It’s a common mistake for Indonesians to assume that foreigners will take an a.c. room even though it had two drawbacks for many foreigners – it was too crowded, and the sound level of the television was incredibly high and irritating.

As I was fasting, the smell of people throwing up was getting to me so I opted to look for a seat outside. Wrong decision. There were many empty benches outside, but they were all in the sun, and I ended up with a bad case of sunburn. (Note to myself: bring some sunscreen on the trip back to Sumbawa.) When we arrived at the harbor in Bali, we ended up waiting for an hour to dock. That wait is always difficult because everyone wants to get off the ferry and continue on with his or her journey.

The trip along the east coast road was easy as usual, and I made it in a fast two hours. The family was waiting at home for hugs and kisses, and at 60 years old, I’ve made my second trip across the islands.

I’m sitting in my little living room watching tv and waiting to hit the road. This is the start of the Ramadan traveling time when millions of Indonesians hit the road to go back to their villages for the Lebaran celebrations. I’m going to be one of them. I’ve decided to take off in the middle of the night so that I might avoid a crowded ferry on the first leg of the journey. This will also allow me to spend most of the trip in the daylight since I have some problems with night driving. The trip up the coast to the harbor in north Sumbawa is a bit of a pain as part of the highway is a mess of holes, so I plan on taking my time.

I’m going to try to get a few hours of sleep before I leave. If the ferry from Lombok to Bali isn’t too crowded, and I get on first, I should be able to rent a cabin and get a few hours of sleep on the way over to Bali.

Can’t wait to go.

As I started this post, I checked back on what I wrote on the last post, and I saw that I’m supposed to write about guy stuff. Maybe next time, I have other things on my mind right now.

I’ll be home in Bali in another 13 days. My does that sound good. This ten week period has been a long stretch with one medical problem after the next. After I recovered from the mini-stroke, I picked up the flu that has been raging through Indonesia, and I’ve been battling that for the past three weeks. This week I went in and taught all my classes and then went home thanks to my understanding principal and went to sleep. Actually, I don’t get sick all that often, but this term has been the exception. It could be age, but thinking back on it, I do have a hard time getting rid of the flu when I do get it, so maybe it’s just the luck of the draw. I have missed more school this term than I have in the past two years combined.

But then these problems could be related to the intense longing that I have to return home and get on with my life there. I miss the kids and my wife. I miss the house and the Bali Sea. I miss the little funky neighborhood that I call home. I miss my library and my afternoon naps. I miss my wife’s cooking. I miss the kids coming up to the third floor to watch the sun set with me while they yell at their friends down below in the kampung. I miss the howling kittens that are now probably cats. I miss the daily drive on my motorcycle with my wife to the local food shop to by the few imported foodstuffs that I treat myself with like cheese and olives. I miss living in a place where people are more concerned about life’s necessities than they are about the behavior of their neighbors.

This is my first Ramadan inside townsite –that strange mutilation of an allegedly multicultural town that’s been carved out the jungle here in Sumbawa. I’ve been a Muslim for ten years now, and Ramadan, for me, has always been a time of joy, joking, reflection, humility and learning. I spent my first four Ramadans in Pakistan where I was working when I became a Muslim. The school population was predominately Muslim with a few Christians –Pakistani and expat – but Ramadan was a time when the Muslims would talk about religion, about life, about what fasting meant to us, but without impacting the portion of the school population that was non-Muslim. The cafeteria stayed open during Ramadan, and Muslim teachers did cafeteria duty. Some of the Muslim kids ate lunch – most of the primary students and even some of the secondary students and teachers. It was never an issue. No one complained that they couldn’t fast because others were eating, and the part of the school population that ate did so as usual.
At our school here, the teachers that eat (Christians and others) are consigned to a tiny room at the back of the school where they huddle to eat their snacks and lunch. The students have to eat in a little area in the front of the school that is surrounded by a cloth banner so that the Muslim students won’t see them eating.

I don’t really understand this segregation. Muslims are supposed to be demonstrating discipline and self-restraint by fasting. Aren’t we strong enough to keep our fast even if someone else is eating. In my Muslim kampung in Bali, women spend the day cooking for the evening meal. Smells of roasting meat, baking cakes and sweets fill the air; everyone keeps their fast.

Ramadan should be a celebration, not an occasion to separate people.

I finally made it through a full workweek in my new grade level. I’m teaching 6th grade now. When I came back to this school out of retirement, I was teaching 7th grade. After six months of that, I moved to 8th grade along with my 2 expat students. They left a few weeks ago, and I moved over to one of the 6th grade classes that has three expats. I have 13 weeks left on my contract, but it’s anybody’s guess as to whether my expat students will stay here that long. They’ve told me that they are leaving in December when I leave, but you can never tell here. Isn’t this paradise?

So I teach the three expat kids Social Studies, Math, Library, Art, and English. I also teach my homeroom class of expat and national students English. Besides that, I’m the technology coordinator. In that role, I work on helping teachers work with technology. I also teach a class for teachers once a week on using technology. Actually, it’s a class where they are supposed to be learning English and technology. They are learning technology; I’m not sure how much English they are learning. I’ve become the utility guy to use a baseball term. I play a little bit of just about everything.

Our elementary principal left last week after ten years on the job here. I’m teaching her classes; her principal’s job will be filled by one of the four teachers who applied for it. A number of Indonesian teachers and staff asked me to apply for it – I think because they feel that I’ll be more amenable to their needs, but the last thing that I want is to be a principal here. Too much aggravation and too little power to affect any real changes.

I do enjoy my homeroom class, and I enjoy working with my Indonesian counterpart, but I can’t help having this feeling that I’m just temporarily filling a hole to keep the rain out.

On a personal level, I’m doing my daily countdown until retirement. I haven’t fallen prey to STD (short timers disease) yet, but I do want to go home. I miss the kids and my wife and my life in Kampung Bugis with snorkeling everyday and writing and just hanging around with the family. 13 more weeks. It all seems like a dream.

I’m taking a blood thinner because of my mini-stroke last month, and I’ve started having nose bleeds. Wonderful. So I have a lot of bloody sheets. I’m not sure what this means, but I suppose I should go see the doctor about it. How did I get to this place?

And then there’s Ramadan which started last week. I actually love Ramadan and fasting. I get a sense of clarity when I’m fasting, but I’ve had to forgo a few days because I had the flu when Ramadan started, and it seems that the flu is back again. I’m a guy so…Wait, this is the next post.

We are now entering the seventh week of the first term of the 2009-2010 academic year. The school is clearly not an international school any more; it may be a national plus school, but it’s still seeking some direction as it meanders through its second year of existence.

Our expat population is down to somewhere around 20 from a high of 70 a few years ago. The expat elementary principal just left for Australia as she resigned after 10 years at the school. She took her two children with her, both of whom were my students.

Out of the first six weeks of the term, I’ve actually only taught about three weeks. We’ve had three three-day weekends this term, plus I missed six days due to a minor stroke, and then almost a week due to a bad case of the flu that has been going around the community.

Tomorrow, I start my third position in the 8 months that I have been working at this school. I’ll be teaching math, social studies, art, and library for 3 expats, and English for 12 expats and Indonesians together. Plus, I do 6th grade homeroom twice a day.

Then there is the tech stuff, but I’ll leave that for another day.

Only 14 weeks to go before the next retirement.

As I mentioned in the last post, I’m here in Lombok to relax – well, mostly I’m here because I wanted to drive my motorcycle fast and Lombok has an excellent road where I can drive fast, but the second reason was to get away from townsite and relax.

It is nice to be somewhere other than townsite in my apartment that has been for the past seven months my home. I can sit here on the small veranda of my bamboo bungalow and read and think without the interruptions that would occur if I were to sit outside my apartment in townsite with students passing by. As much as I love my students, I need the weekends to recharge and reflect and have time for myself.

Being here in Lombok allows me time to be completely with myself, but if I’m not happy with where I am, then what does that time give me?

So today, I got up and showered and had a small breakfast and wrote a blog while I had a cup of coffee. Then I read my book on Marco Polo for a while and had a short nap. After that I visited Stephen, Jan and Olvier in their hotel. From there I went to central Senggigi and had lunch at a small place in Senggigi Square. I went back to the hotel where I read more of my book and then took another nap.

The power just went out here, and I’m supposed to go out for dinner, but I’m being attacked by little insects drawn to the light on my computer screen in the darkness that surrounds me. Am I relaxed?

John Hughes, the American film director/writer/producer died Thursday of a heart attack while taking a walk in New York City. He was 59 years old.

OK, so another death, another RIP post, what’s the point with Hughes?

Hughes was best known for his ‘80s movies about teen life in suburban America. While Hughes was my age (a year younger), his films hit the movie theaters just as my oldest son was entering his teen years, so I watched a number of the Hughes films, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, with Aaron.

The films seemed at the time to resonate with my son, but they did with me as well. Hughes, who spent part of his youth in the Chicago suburbs, as did I, set most of his movies in the Chicago area. Despite not having lived in Chicago since 1979, I still have an intensely romantic image of the city that I carry with me throughout my travels in Asia. And, even though Hughes’ films mirrored the realities of ‘80s teen angst, I could see a lot of my own ‘60s angst there (not surprising as Hughes attended school at the same time as me, and in somewhat similar sociocultural settings).

As someone who has just gone through a stroke, I’m at the stage where I notice the deaths of my peers. Hughes created some memories for me, and for that I’ll remember him and his work. Looking around the internet, there are dozens of tributes to Hughes on You Tube. He obviously affected a lot of folks. Here’s one of the tributes.