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.

A slice of life after Christmas

I’m alone, sitting in our hammock drinking coffeemix while the cats hunt each gecko in our dirt yard. Chrissy and Rachel both left this morning after a few days of extra Indo holiday bonding in Jogja and Solo (a 50-km train ride away). I spent Christmas in Solo with Rachel pillaging the box my amazing mother UPS’ed me for its hot chocolate, marshmallows, pancake batter and candy canes. Later we got hungry again and went to Pizza Hut for a 7-cheese, stuffed crust, unmistakably American pizza pie. Chrissy arrived the next day from Jakarta and we walked around Solo together sampling roadside food carts, eventually treating ourselves to holiday creambaths and facials at the spa ($4!). Then a train to Jogja, fermented tapioca drinks at Milas and late night hanging out on the sidewalk mats near Jogja’s train station to talk and drink kopi jos, “strong” coffee brewed with charcoal, plus warm ginger milk and fried tempeh.

I’m sitting alone with the cats on this rarely cool afternoon and enjoying how quiet our neighborhood has been today, though broken now as each of the five mosques nearby takes its turn to call our neighbors to prayer. I’ve heard bule claim they hate the sound of the call to prayer but I can’t see why; besides being useful for telling time, it’s a peaceful, periodic reminder to take a moment for yourself, like this one. The prettiest call I’ve heard yet was from the mosque near Rachel’s house the morning after Christmas, when I was awake enough to hear the day’s first call at 4am. He let each line’s last syllable close quietly, gently, avoiding the mechanical drone that the other broadcasted voices can have, as if he was singing to himself in an empty room, bored, tired, maybe sad. It pulled me out of sleep but lulled me right back into it, an Arabic lullaby on Christmas night.

Though lacking a Christian majority, Vietnam and Kuala Lumpur were Christmas-crazy: garland, trees, Santas, reindeer, strings of lights, music in the stores. It was retail-oriented, hollow but familiar signals that you need to be shopping and you need to do it now! I don’t miss this American-style obsession with consumption, every inch of our sight and second of our attention being pulled away from these precious internal thoughts to convince us that we should be buying something, anything, to make our day better, when how much does it ever improve? Indonesia’s (or at least Jogja/Solo’s) version of Christmas was more relaxed, some Christmas music in the grocery store to hum along to and a tree or two at the mall, which still seems like a lot in an area that’s 90+% Muslim. I was happy to pass the time with close friends plus enough wireless internet to dial into the real festivities at my family’s Christmases in Chicago and Utah, enough video power to experience my awesome nieces and nephews so excited about their presents, family company and Christmas treats. I miss you guys.

Scenes from an Indo Christmas:

Rainbows and rice fields on the drive to Solo.

Thanks mom!

Team Indo, one becek: bisa.

Srabi: hot, squishy, coconutty bread with a jackfruit topping — only in Solo.

Durian + chocolate juice, Solo

Street corner serenades at kopi jos, Jogjakarta.

Just for fun, Christmas elsewhere in Asia:

Greeting Seasons!

Sidewalks and storefronts in Vietnam’s big cities.

Mixed Chinese and Christmas goodies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

A Very Retail Christmas in Kuala Lumpur – overload! Look how small those people are!

Things Vietnam has which Indonesia doesn’t really [in pictures]

Pho.

Pastries (Hanoi), and this is killing me a little bit. Not pictured on the shelf beneath: real baguettes, thanks to France.

Wide, tree-lined boulevards and sidewalks (Ho Chi Minh City) (again, thank you France).

Public parks (Ho Chi Minh City), and/or places to sit quietly in public in general, and/or a climate conducive to spending the afternoon outside.

Jameson Irish whiskey.

Ridiculous Christmas decorations.

Offerings quietly stuffed next to an electrical pole…

….or a bridge.

Guys who try to glue your friend’s shoes back together when you’re not looking.

Kids who sit on chairs propped on their parents’ motorbike.

Stylish but ridiculously unprotective motorbike helmets.

Chinese-style emperor tombs (Hue – this was worth a blog post all to itself…).

Trees that look like this (emperor’s tombs, Hue).

Winter coats (it’s so cold here! Or have I been living on the equator too long?)

Salted coffee (Hue): A layer of thick syrupy coffee, condensed milk, and salt, which you mix together once the coffee drips and serve on ice.

Mi opla (Hue): Eggs cooked on a hot plate beneath a thin layer of a tomato cream, onions, cilantro, stuffed into a baguette and eaten like a sandwich.

Pork!!

Shark meat (Phu Quoc Island). (Yes, i tried it, but i still hate seafood.) (Those who love it still couldn’t swallow the shark liver.)

Egg coffee (Hanoi): Thick, syrupy coffee served beneath a super-whipped layer of eggs. And for that matter, backdrops to enjoying egg coffee which look like this:

I don’t remember what this is called (Hanoi): Crispy egg omelette with pork inside, which you roll up with greens in rice paper and eat like a spring roll.

Public parks, certainly with pagodas in the middle (Hanoi).

Old men who wear berets and sit in the park to contemplate (I love them!).

Toddlers playing tug-of-war in said public parks. Well OK, Indo has toddlers, but still — tug at my heartstrings a little more, Vietnam.

And till December 17…. me!

Jazz in the ancient city

You might know how much I love live music, and it’s one thing I really miss. Bands in the bars here play the same 10 reggae and classic rock songs, and we have discotheques in Jogja, but they seem to be for for underage kids existing outside a culture of alcohol who drink way too much and fistpump to uber-masculine brostep. When my friend invited me to go to the Jogja Jazz festival (http://www.ngayogjazz.com/) this weekend, I was also skeptical. How many other ways can I be reminded that I won’t have a satisfying live music experience for a year or two?

Again: wrong! Welcome to nine hours and seven stages of improvisational jazz in Kotagede, the ancient capital of the pre-colonial Sultanate of Mataram. The stages were nestled throughout Kotagede’s ancient market and mosque, with my favorite under the hundreds-years-old banyan tree at the city center (which I don’t have a picture of – sorry!). We grabbed a table with a view at a nearby warung (small restaurant) and watched music from there while friends came and went, sipping coffee and hot orange juice till after sunset when we walked around to the other stages. Only one thing felt off: no one danced. During one set in particular with as much energy as any ‘jamband’ concert I’ve been to, I barely saw a head bob.

Listening to this music played out loud in Indonesia made me feel like I was hearing it for the first time in the 1950s — good old transgressive American-style music where maybe it’s never been played before, in the conservative context of Java’s ancient capital. That’s not to say that such cultural displays are “disapproved” of here, or that it feels counter-cultural, threatening, revolutionary to be present, not at all: people from all over the region came with their families to enjoy the music and festival in Saturday’s nice weather. It’s only that sometimes, the great cultural mix of Indonesia makes you do a double take.

Adjusting + Jogja’s 255th Birthday

Adjusting happens in big ways and small ways. The big, immediate adjustments happen through food, health, language, and company. Over your first two months, you figure out how to get around autonomously, start to make new friends, and slowly acclimate your intestinal track to Southeast Asian spices and water (beware iced fruit drinks… though don’t let fear stop you because they are delicious). The small adjustments happen just when you’re starting to feel comfortable with the big ones; two months in, you realize you don’t know where to buy an extension cord when your old one breaks, learn that wearing flipflops everywhere the way you have been is actually considered sort of rude, and can’t even piece together the meaning of a local newspaper article about Steve Jobs dying, though you think it has something vaguely to do with his turtleneck. Enter Phase II of the “Culture Shock” cycle: when everything you thought you were used to is all of a sudden intensely foreign again.

Maybe the keyword for preparation is keeping momentum; for acclimation, curiosity and humility; and for long-term happiness, patience. For example, making friends takes time and you can’t learn a whole language in two months. These are facts. Once you come to terms with how long adjusting actually takes, you can either start moping or start coping. My (superficial) coping methods this week have involved eating ice cream and peanut butter & jelly when I feel like I need it, frequenting a nice cafe down the street where I can go to sit and write alone, finding a pool suitable for exercise, and planning a short weekend vacation with new friends to one of the most beautiful places in the world. Keep stimulating yourself with new things while comforting yourself with some pieces of familiarity, as available. It’s not so bad, and thousands of people go through the same process all the time, all over the world. Taking care of yourself means you’ll have the energy and continued interest to confront much harder questions to come.

Our two VIA coordinators visited Jogja this week, and brought with them two fellow VIA volunteers for hanging out, site visits and meetings, and a nice group dinner. Around midnight on Thursday, one of the volunteers and I were walking around downtown Jogja and stumbled on the city’s 255th birthday celebration: six-hundred-plus Jogjakartans bicycling around the downtown area together and singing, “Happy birthday, Jogja – AYO, AYO!” This city is seriously charming. It reminds me of Baltimore with all its quirk and creativity. Here’s a small video – I absolutely love this city – all of the twinkling bells that you hear are hundreds of bicycle bells being rung at once:

How many people does it take to get a bule to the Ramayana Ballet?

Question: How many people does it take to get a bule to the Ramayana Ballet?

Answer: Seven.

1. One stranger who picks the walking bule up on the street and drives her to the bus stop on a motorbike, saving the bule a 20 minute walk when she was already late (jam karat), and also invites the bule to visit her NGO sometime, a German development organization not far from where the bule lives. Networking!

2. One stranger on the bus who distracts the bule with an invitation to speak at the senior high school where she is a Sociology teacher, enough that the bule misses the Terminal bus line transfer point. (“So do any of your students speak English?” “……No, not really.” Uh oh.)

3. Another stranger to help the bule navigate a brand-new bus line, resulting in bule missing the chance to grab a ride on a friend’s motorbike, but that’s okay, the new bus “goes straight to Prambanan Temple!”

4-5. Once at “Prambanan,” two British tourists who allow bule to walk along with them on the dark street to the Ramayana Ballet. Bule had assumed that the “Prambanan” bus stop meant really, truly Prambanan, the same way the DC metro stop Chinatown really, truly means Chinatown. Rookie mistake! Luckily the British four-day tourists know their way around Jogja better than the bule.

6-7. Two wonderful French students who invited the bule to the ballet with them in the first place, arranged a ticket sale in advance, and provided good company and a motor ride back home after the public buses stopped running at 10pm.

Key vocab: Bule (“boo-lay”) is the Indonesian word for “albino,” and has come to be an unoffensive word for any white person, or any foreigner I think. e.g.: There were a whole lot of bules at the Ramayana ballet tonight.

Verdict: Beautiful Javanese dancing and gamelan music outdoors at the base of a must-see 7th century Hindu temple, unexpected networking opportunities, Bahasa Indonesia AND French practice, and the chance to make new friends — yes, please!

Going to the movies

I went to the movies tonight with Andre. The cinema was extremely nice, more updated than many I’ve been to in the states. Tickets were Rp. 35,000 (~$4, expensive!), and the cinema seemed to offer only Hollywood blockbusters: Transformers, Planet of the Apes, Final Destination 5 (really?), and Captain America, which we saw. The films are shown in English with Indonesian subtitles.

Since we’re in Java, the theater offered both sweet and salty popcorn. Salty was habis (run out) by the time we got to the register – devastating! – so I ordered sweet popcorn, asked for extra butter and some salt anyway, plus a fountain coke. Perfect.

It was a little awkward watching filmed American military propaganda in a foreign country, no matter how light hearted or Hollywoodesque, but all the explosions and Tommy Lee Jones mumbling a lot made up for it. I ended up falling asleep because the seats were so comfortable, missed the bad guy getting killed (Hugo Weaving!), and woke up to Samuel L. Jackson in a leather trenchcoat and eyepatch standing in the middle of Times Square, telling the protagonist he had slept for 70 years and was now in the year 2011. When exactly did I leave Indonesia?

By the way, when you buy your movie ticket at the box office here, you also pick your seat in the theater on a screen, the exact same way you would pick an airplane seat in advance online. Andre noticed how ridiculously confused I was by this and asked whether we do the same in the U.S., which of course we absolutely do not. This is about the conversation that followed:

Andre: Then how do you make sure you do not have the front-row seat?

Maura: You have to get there early to pick good seats, otherwise you may have to sit in the front.

Andre: But that sounds so stressful – you’re supposed to go to the movies to get away from stress! How do you make sure everyone you’re with can sit together?

Maura: Most of the time, you can save seats for friends, but sometimes that becomes difficult with very crowded movies. [Quick shout-out to Tara, Sarah et al in DC for our last experience with this at Bridesmaids in Chinatown!]

Andre: So you don’t pick your seat in advance? It’s just whoever gets there first, gets the better seat?

Maura: Yes, exactly!

Andre: ……..I don’t understand.

So I’ve weathered delicate political discussions, concern about the health of my freckles, confusion about the nature of American smalltalk, bizarre bathroom habits, and conversations consisting of nothing but misunderstandings, yet here is the first cultural barrier we simply couldn’t cross: Indonesia cannot fathom how backwards the US must be if you can’t reserve your movie seat and row in advance…!