written October 20, 2012.

Where I am right now: 3pm on a Saturday, lying on a mat on my beloved covered porch in suburban Jogja as some of the season’s first rain comes in, Andrew Bird’s instrumentals playing quietly off my laptop, enjoying a clove. The rain falls in fat dollops on the dirt yard, catching light for a second or two before being absorbed into the dry earth, others falling where there hadn’t been water before, creating almost a light show if you watch it the right way.

I don’t know if I will ever have another year quite like this one. A year to relax, focus, concentrate on what is important to me and the communities I live and work in. Workdays supporting programs bring healthier living to millions, then extended afternoons like this one to breath and let my mind relax and feel creative. I am so grateful, and quietly incredulous at my luck at landing in this place, at this time.

I wonder, as I live out this experience — and it’s hard to avoid that a chapter of this is closing, or already closed — about the combination of place, culture, people, work, that have all mixed together into one of the most rewarding years of my life. In ten years can I come back here and feel the same peace? Or is it the combination of everything in their own proportions which has made this so potent? I can only classify it in one hybrid Indonesian word, Jogjaku, my Jogja, the pieces of my surroundings that together have directly impacted little insignificant me. It doesn’t really matter, and there is no point in mourning the closing of such a time period, since it has happened and one day it won’t be happening, and that’s it. For right now, three more hours of daylight, another clove, and a little more music till the sun sets.

Jogja, sunset.

Feminism, two exhibits

A) At a conference about women and household energy, a male lead from a major international development organization wanders over to a table where I am sitting with my female bosses and a female collaborator, each of whom have between 20-30 years of experience managing community development projects, and who had just finished laughing over the birth weights of their kids (10lbs!). Our collaborator has a notebook with a small “Women gave birth to the world” emblem at the bottom, a freebie from another conference. In front of us all, the male lead points at the notebook, raises his eyebrows, and audibly scoffs. Our collaborator looks at him and says, “What, you don’t think it’s true?” He flinches and looks to the rest of us for support: “Yes, but…”

But what?

B) I’m at a club in Jogja with some foreigners, friends of friends who I’d just met that night. One guy, who’s been fun and goofy and I have no problem joking around with, starts trying to guess what I’m doing here in Indonesia — though more specifically, he tries to guess what I’m studying. “Let me guess, you’re here to study Indonesian language.” “No, I have never studied Bahasa.” After a long pause, “You’re here to study… Indonesian dance? Culture?” “No, I do not study here.” “Well then, what do you do?” “…I work on renewable energy policy.”

I am not kidding you: he looked my body up and down. He said, “Well, one of us is lying. And I’ll tell you, it’s definitely not me.”

Seriously?

Laundry arithmetic

At the laundry, trying to pick up my clothes at 6pm on a Friday:

M: Hello Pak, I’m here to pick up my clothes.

Pak (smiling): I don’t have them. They will be ready tomorrow morning.

M: But Pak, they were supposed to be ready today.

Pak: No no, see, you asked for two-day service.

M: But I dropped the clothes off at 2pm on Wednesday…

Pak: Yes.

M: …and asked for two-day service…

Pak: Yes.

M: …and today is Friday…

Pak: Yes.

M: …so it has been two days…

Pak: Yes.

M: …but they will be ready on Saturday.

Pak: Yes.

M: But Pak, they’re not on time.

Pak: Of course they’re on time! They’re on time to be ready tomorrow morning.

…!

Mr. Good’s fried rice

Directly across the street from Jogja’s most popular expat bar is a Circle K that sells cheaper beer. The tourists drink inside the bar while the locals sit on the ground in front of Circle K, still hearing Friday’s house reggae band but saving their money for tomorrow. I was in that crowd and adjusting my knees on the concrete when I noticed a little boy sitting alone behind me, silent but clearly interested, playing with a lighter. It was 1am so people started asking him where his mother was, but he said he didn’t know and kept playing with the fire. He went inside and bought a small bag of Cheetos, then returned to his spot, eating half before folding the rest up carefully for later.

Over an hour he warmed up and revealed in shy Indonesian that he’s ten years old, doesn’t have any brothers or sisters, can’t read and doesn’t go to school, lives far away but walks a lot, and loves fried rice with chicken. I said okay, let’s go find some, so he and I went hunting for some street food. It wasn’t far, you can’t go ten feet in Jogja without finding nasi goreng or bakso. We ordered a heaping plate of fried rice and some lemon tea from the bapak, and sat together on a wooden bench while he ate.

The bapak asked the boy about his family in Javanese and translated for me; the boy answered that his parents don’t have food in the house, only cigarettes, and he didn’t want to go home because he didn’t want to see his mother. He wouldn’t talk more, only grinned shyly and ate, and tried to run away once he’d finished. We caught him and wrapped up the leftovers for him to eat tomorrow. I told him I was going home soon (2am!) and offered to take him to Circle K for some snacks for later; he smiled and picked out some cookies and orange juice, then left when I left. As he ran away, hands full and still so shy, I shouted after him for his name: Mas Bagus, Mr. Good!

Being in Abu Dhabi is completely confusing

At the Abu Dhabi airport, making my way back to Indonesia after a month’s vacation in the States.

Flying so far east is weird. You’re flying towards the sun, which inner night owls instinctively don’t like. You’re experiencing a 24-hour Saturday in half as many hours as the day seemingly doubles in length. You watch sunlight rise and fall over Europe in stop-motion time. The 14-hour flight serves two courses: Dinner and Dinner. There’s no biologically understandable time to sleep.

I’m flying Etihad, UAE’s official airline, which gave me my Dubai layover on the way in and this timezone confusion on the way back. They also, I think, have marked famous historical oceanic shipwrecks on their in-flight tracker. Odd.

My favorite time zone trick was flying from Bali to Jogja at 6am: there’s a one-hour time difference so you leave at dawn and arrive at dawn, with the sun in constant rise behind the plane. I hadn’t slept yet either, lending to a feeling of running away from a day trying to start. Then I arrived back in Java, finally stood still for the sun to come up, and was reminded why I love Java so much in the first place:

Just a few more hours till I’m in Indonesia again.

In the sandbox of the super-rich

I’m in Dubai.

What’s the least likely thing you could think of?

a) A ski slope in the desert.
b) A ski slope in a shopping mall.
c) A ski slope in a shopping mall in the desert.

Mais bon, la voilà…

Next few stops: the tallest building in the world, the largest mall in the world, breaking Ramadan fast, an RV tour of the Arabian desert, and… Chicago!

à

 

 

Still in Java, still happy

A Sunday afternoon Starbucks at Amplaz is still my favorite treat. I can’t believe I live in Java and still love carrying this ridiculously overpriced green-accented plastic cup around the mall so much, but there it is.

Surprise, surprise, I stopped writing in this a few months ago. I wonder what the average death rate is for overeager expat blogs. I’d tell you I’ll get back to it, that I’m sorry and hope to be better, but I might not, unless I change the types of things I talk about in here, which is still possible.

There’s probably a turning point living abroad, maybe 3-4 months in, where the everyday delights start being just that — everyday. You lose track of what’s interesting and what’s mundane, since everyday facts like food tents and motorbikes seem as interesting to talk about as any other meal or practice in any other city. I also don’t want to exotify the place I live now, cheapen it in any way, since Jogja feels as much like home as anywhere else I’ve lived and deserves more than being caricatured.

I can’t fully describe my life out here to you, but I can tell you that it’s wonderful. I can tell you, knocking on wood, that the year wrapping up right now will have been one of the best of my life. I’m lucky I landed in Java, especially Jogja. Every hour here is still a delight, displays of indirectness as occasions for wriggle room which leave both parties comfortable, deep breaths and leisure and smiles preferred above hurry and discomfort. It’s incredible to keep realizing how empty I had felt before coming to Indonesia, that shell of myself who lived in DC.

Heads up – I might move to Bali for work in October. They first mentioned this to me in January and at the time, I lost my mind. I was at the start of a fascinating relationship, picking up Indonesian as I went along, developing close friendships with several people, starting to feel part of a team at the office, falling in love with all things Java. I would ride my motorbike across the bridges at night and refuse to sleep since sleep meant fewer hours awake in Jogja. Now the relationship has run its natural course, my language is on its way to fluency, many friends I love are themselves leaving Indonesia, and I’ve had an incredibly productive few months at my NGO. I’d be starting over in Jogja anyway, so the transition process might as well move to Bali. Why not? Maybe I’ve always been destined to pull a Julia Roberts yoga’ing my way to self-discovery in Ubud.

I’ll be in the United States August 16 till Sept 13, then back to Indonesia. See you soon?

I’m in a movie trailer!

Back in November, I was an extra in a movie being filmed by Indonesia’s most famous and internationally acclaimed director, Garin Nugroho. They needed foreigners to play Dutch journalists in Soegija, a movie about Indonesia’s first Catholic bishop and the country’s war for independence. I spent two days on the movie set near Jogja, met a bunch of great people, was filmed in 4-5 scenes, and got paid almost as much as my monthly salary for just two days of work. Bagus!

As we were filming one of the bishop’s key political speeches, given in English, I noticed that the script needed some drastic editing. Realizing I was the only native English speaker in a room full of actors and production staff, I grabbed a pen and started marking up the board, but ended up having to rewrite the entire thing and rehearse it with the leading actor, a prominent Indonesian author in his own right. Quite the moment that was, holding up a complicated, 20+ actor scene and Garin Nugroho himself so I could piece together a speech good enough for such a filming! Anyway, they were two really long days but it was a blast seeing how a film is made, not to mention getting to watch such an accomplished director at work. Only wish I could’ve gotten a writing credit too 😉

The movie doesn’t come out until June, but in the meantime, the trailer has been released. I’m excited to report that if you’re not too dazzled by the handsome Dutch soldiers, you can see my face in the blurred-out foreground at exactly :53 of this YouTube video, and again at 1:11, wearing a fancy feathered hat. Check it out!

And here’s some more pictures I took at the set! No one told me I couldn’t take them, and I never signed any confidentiality statements, so if there’s any reason I shouldn’t publish these, the production companies are free to let me know and I’ll take them down. Terima kasih!

A Spaniard and an American: do we look Dutch?

How about now?

Makeup for the actual Dutch actors; naptime for the rest.

Set of what’s slated to be the movie’s opening scene.

The bishop himself, waiting.

More actors? No wait… those are actual Indonesian soldiers on our ride home.

Under the stars at Sundak Beach, Indonesia [in pictures]

Last Friday was Nyepi, a Balinese Hindu-oriented national holiday which Jogja doesn’t really celebrate, so I headed to Sundak beach on the south Java coast with Rachel, Hector, and twelve of Rachel’s students, all Indonesian boys around 19-24 years old.

The road conditions were four hours of this:

…for views like this:

…white sand made of buffed-up coral, like this:

…plus a sunset like this:

…all meticulously captured by twelve Indonesian smartphones:

The boys made a sandpit fire and cooked a full chicken, plus sambal and rice:

…and rooms at the beach’s inn were too expensive, so we rented large mats and planned to sleep on the sand. Once it began raining, we dragged everything under a bamboo shelter, the boys yelling “Abort! Abort!”. Everyone fell asleep playing with their own smartphones, a far cry from ghost stories by the campfire, though people believe very strongly in ghosts here so maybe that’s for the best.

I woke up at 4am and noticed the clouds had finally cleared enough for incredible stars — the Milky Way, first sighting in Indonesia. Two of the boys weren’t sleeping either, so we sat together and watched the sun rise over the Indian Ocean.

As if this wasn’t all enough fun, here’s what happened around 7am:

Happy Nyepi!

A swimming habit

After eating so much in Vietnam, it feels like time to shape up. My friend showed me a swimming pool north of my house where you can swim for 12,500 Rp a session ($1.36). There are cheaper pools in Jogja, but this is close to my work and home and doesn’t require navigating too much traffic, so I’m much more likely to go. It’s also not as populated as the others, making me feel like less of a spectacle as a single, swimming, female bule wearing something more revealing than the full-body wetsuits other women wear here. Definitely got a lot of stares in just a one-piece and shorts.

The pool is at a fancy sports/housing complex called Merapi View, so named because on a clear day like today, you have direct sight of its namesake:

Swimming pool today with the active volcano Mount Merapi in upper right, above the clouds.

At the pool today, I kept remembering a particular time swimming in DC when I dislocated my kneecap mid-breast stroke, since even such zero-impact exercise was too much for my soupy patellas. I don’t have the words yet to describe the impact of such chronic physical instability on your life, when you’re only 22 years old and can’t trust your joints to hold you up. Now after recovering from my May 2009 surgery, I never worry about my knees’ stability. That is a personal miracle. I would never have moved here or been able to do all the things I’m doing with the knee I had before.

This brings my Definitely Good Life Decisions total up to two, namely patellar realignment surgery and moving to Indonesia. And if you ever need a good knee surgeon, which I hope you never do, his name is Dr. Jack Andrish at the Cleveland Clinic.

Before: patellar subluxation, sunrise view

After: kneecap in place!

Success!