I Feel Full

It's so easy to forget how limited our own life experience is. Which is why I love the internet, specifically blogs and social networking. Yes, most of what's on this interweb machine is twitterpation, mundane drivvel that probably doesn't need to be archived in the cloud of human history. But then so much of the beauty of life lies in the mundane. The extraordinary cyber art project "We Feel Fine" filters, molds and encapsulates the internet into the ultimate expression of humanity. I spent too much time today reading everything from a 19 year old anorexic who feels happy about her recovery to a 43 year old divorced male who still feels confused about his marriage. And, at the end of the day, instead of feeling like the internet robbed me of hours of my life with its flashy lights and irresistible links, I feel more connected to the human race than I have in months. 

Sheep sate and lontong rice for dinner helped too.

"Who are these neighbours?" asks Ms. Yeni as we sip our mango juice. "I never heard them. No music. No rooster."

I don't know but if I have to listen to Meatloaf one more time I'm going to punch someone in the face.

Bahasa Phrase of the Day: Aku mau ke mana ...= I am going to ...

Classic Rock Is Never a Good Idea

There are plenty of habits in Indonesian culture I find difficult to adjust to - their idea of what is personal, the nose picking and spitting- but above all they are early-ghastly o'clock in the morning early-risers and they are spontaneous singers. They love music here, largely 80's rock ballads circa Bryan Adams and Celine Dion, and they are not shy about randomly bursting into song, even in the middle of a conversation. This is awkward for me as I'm still not sure: Am I supposed to join in or just wait until they've finished? Am I expected to applaud at the end? Do I need to start carrying a lighter for a more authentic experience?

My neighbours are very Indonesian and, on top of inhaling the smoke from their garbage burning pile which gives me a persistently scratchy throat and watery eyes, I am woken every morning, if I manage to sleep through their rooster, from the squealing vibrations of Roxette's "Listen to Your Heart". It seems they've invested the money they save on garbage pick up in an ultra pumped extreme stereo system and the bass line pulsates through my reinforced, earthquake proof room shaking me awake at 6 am.

The house is a duplex and they live just on the other side of my wall. I would bang on the wall but it's made of cement and I don't own anything heavy enough to get my point across. Thankfully the music usually stops around 9 am when the hammering begins. The hammering on the other side of my bed. If I yell, in either English or Bahasa, the hammering just gets louder. The good news is it does stop...

At 10 am when the stereo gets turned on again so we can all enjoy a little Trooper at 25 million decibels.

Bahasa Word of the Day: diam = be quiet

All You Keep's The Getting There

"He says we are two adventurous sisters," Yeni glows and gives me a high five. "He" is the security guard at the resort who is surprised to see us and even more surprised that I want to go swimming in the rain but generously offers the use of his office as a locker room. To use the real change rooms the resort will charge us $10 USD so I'm fairly quick to agree. I grab my towel and head out in the rain towards the salty, warm Indian ocean, leaving Yeni under my puyang (umbrella) to tell him our story.

We left at 6:45 in the morning, hoping to catch the 7:30 ferry from Pungurri terminal. When we finally found the right bis (bus) it involved a transfer and a forty five minute bus ride through two outlying villages. A boy on the bus tells Yeni it is four hours to Lagoya Beach by ferry.

"Four hours?" I say doubtfully.

"Yes. Maybe we go to Pengyenget instead." She says, brow furrowing with worry.

I shrug. There's no beach there and I'm not keen on the plan but it might be the best option. "First, we will check at the ferry, yes? If it is four hours then we will go to Pengyenget."

At the ferry terminal they say it's only an hour via Unjur so we buy our tickets and board the ferry. Once we have seats Yeni giggles and tells me excitedly that a group of teachers had come to visit her the night before and asked her if we would join them on their trip to Bintan next week.

"But they are renting car and I say no, because this is no good. There is no adventure in this. I want adventure so we go. They say, You can't. But I said yes."

"Why did they say we can't?" I ask, hesitatingly, uncertain I want to know the answer.

"Oh there is no public transportation to there."

"Oh really?" I say suppressing a worried laugh.

The ferry ride is a short twenty minutes. When we arrive in Unjur Yeni confers with a man from the ferry, then tells me we need to wait on a corner for the bus. Half an hour later there is still no bus. A man offers us a cab ride, another offers unjet (motorbike cab) but I shake my head no. After half an hour a bus rumbles by but doesn't stop. After several more minutes I convince Yeni that the man from the ferry probably didn't know and we should walk a ways then ask again.

We pass a ring seller and, when I comment on how nice they are, Yeni says we should stop there and look while we wait. We examine every ring in the man's stock. He shows me beautiful opals and onyx, stones with interesting fossil imprints and shapes in the striations. There is one that looks like a map of the earth and I ask "Berapa?" (How much?)


Yeni tells me he says $2,000. She asks him if this is the boolay price and insists he barter with her. I feel kind of awkward about this as it's only $2 but she gets him down to $1500. When I hand him the money she says, "Oh no! Not 1500, one hundred and five." After much discussion I finally grasp that she is trying to say
 $150, 000 IDR ($15USD) so I put it back explaining that that's more than I paid in Canada for the ring I'm wearing, though I don't point out that the setting on the one I'm wearing is silver plated and not already rusting unlike his.

We continue walking and after several inquiries find the bus. We hop on and, despite being the only one's on it it sets off immediately. After two blocks it stutters to a stop and we wait. After ten minutes a man climbs on and tries to sell us on a tour, by car, for only $30 USD. We shake our heads. It's another fifteen minutes before the bus pulls out and heads out of town.

Yeni gives me a bahasa lesson on the way before we settle in to watch the inda (beautiful) scenery roll by. But clouds begin to darken the skies overhead and two minutes before our stop the thunder rolls in and the rains are unleashed on the red earth. We dash towards the nearest convenience store to wait out the rain and buy some snacks. Yeni buys some sort of fish cake with chili sauce.

"Have some," she insists.

"What's it made from?" I ask, pointing to the pita shaped crisps.

"Fish and powder," she says. "They're my favourite."

"Powder like tepung?"

"Yes, yes," she is pleased I understand.

"Tepung terigu (wheat flour) or tepung nasi (rice flour)?" I ask.

"Nasi," she says. So I try one. It tastes like fish with throw-me-down-and-choke-me hot chili paste. Fish not being my favourite flavour I wouldn't eat them by choice but, they are ubiquitous here and it's good to know that, if I'm in a pinch and need a snack, these are safe to eat.

When the rain eases and settles into a steady drizzle we head out in search of unjets for hire but because of the weather there are none. Yeni is becoming discouraged, certain that the day is ruined thanks to the rain. I point to a gathering of police men watching TV under a tent pitched on the boulevard across the street.

"Let's go talk to them," I say.

So we cross the road and Yeni asks them how we might get to Lagoya as there are no unjets about. They tell her to go to the gate and wait, we can hop a ride with one of the buses that will come through. But, when we get to the gate the security guards insist that we must take a cab for $7 USD.

"What do we do?" Yeni is near tears, though I don't quite understand why.

"Well, we either pay for the cab or we go back and talk to the police again."

But Yeni doesn't make a move. She just repeats the story and tells me how unfair it all is. Several times.

"Yeni," I finally say, "it's the boolay tax. If you want to travel with boolay get used to it. We have two choices. We can take the cab and I will pay or we go back to the police and ask sweetly again about this free ride."

She just stares at me. I grab her hand and we walk back to the police tent where she says something in Bahasa to the incredibly fit and handsome police man who greets us. He laughs and waves us into the tent where he parks me in front of the TV to watch "The Prestige".

"Hey, where's your husband?" A policeman playing a tile game in the corner of the tent calls out in English.

"No husband." I answer warily. I already know where this conversation is going, I have it dozens of times every day, but it still unnerves my sensibilities as being rude.

"How old are you?"

"34," I answer honestly.

"What religion are you?" Of all the questions this one bothers me the most, probably because I don't have a religion but the few times I have tried that answer I am greeted with uncomprehending stares so I've taken to saying, "Buddhist." Of course this isn't true. For me Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion. I don't have a clue what any of the Buddhist rituals are about and I could never prostrate myself or chant. I'm not wired for it. But secularism seems not to be an option here, pantheism too hard to explain, humanism more so, so I opt for the closest explanation they will understand all the while resisting the Western impulse to simply say, "It's none of your business."

"What?!?" He exclaims, shocked as everyone always is. "You are not Roman Catholic?"

"No." I say, then offer helpfully, "My parents are Christian. Protestant Christian."

This time he nods. This makes sense and is acceptable to him.

Yeni exchanges phone numbers with the gantung (handsome) police man who's been chatting her up while we wait and I will tease her mercilessly about this for the rest of the day. (She insists because he is not boolay he is not boolay she is not interested. I tell her she is barking mad pointing to the skinny, pasty pink Western boys who pass on the beach with their prim girlfriends and saying, "Really? You want that?" "They are like you" she says laughing. "Precisely," I answer triumphantly. Well, at least we know I'm not narcissistic). Eventually we are whisked into a land rover full of police men, including the gantung William who speaks impeccable English.

He asks a million questions too, though none of them are of the usual personal nature that makes a Western girl feel shocked by the impertinence.

"We will drop me off at my office and then my men will take you to the beach." He says, and when we drop him off he says, "I hope you will come again, please. Many times." I tell him I will try to come back again some day when the sun is shining.

And so we finally arrived at Lagoya by police escort and I am finally body surfing the waves as the tide rolls in. Later, Yeni and I explore the beach but what we really discover is that, besides adventurous spirits, we both are paralyzed by lost loves and restless souls and neither of us can keep track of our keys. We collect sand dollars and clams, navigate slippery rocks and climb trees in sheltered groves and, over the course of the afternoon, we become kas (sisters).

At 3 o'clock the security guard tells us we can get a free ride back to town if we go with him to the bus. On the way he tells me, through Yeni, that he hopes I will come back to stay at the resort. I tell him, through Yeni, that I don't think I can afford to stay at the resort. He tells me if I come back I can stay with his family and come to work with him and swim all day. I laugh and say that is very kind and maybe I will come back one day when it's sunny.

The staff -security, janitors, maids- all stare at me when they get on the bus. This makes Yeni laugh maniacally. "They are all so shocked to see boolay on their bus!" I just smile. At them and at her. Nothing about where I find myself in the course of a day surprises me anymore.

A Case of Kamu

In celebration of the holidays I bought a bottle of what passes for wine here. I bought it at the grocery store, but because Muslims don't drink my options were limited to well, this:

Like everything else here that isn't spicy, it's sweet. Very sweet. And bubbly. And Mr. Principal insisted on buying Ms. Yeni and me three more bottles. Which is probably a good thing because there's only 5% alcohol in it and so far I'm not feeling any effect. Ms. Yeni is Muslim and is afraid to drink it and so has left me here alone with four bottles. I can feel the ten pounds I've lost coming back already.

Bahasa Indonesia Word of the Day: kamu = you

Update: Ms. Yheni came over yesterday and tried some. She declared it was not sweet. She screwed up her face and saud, "Sour." We argued about that for ten minutes but she was quite adamant that it wsa sour and made her chest burn. Later she said, "It is like 7-Up." Yup, that's it exactly. Still she was adamant that 7-Up tastes sour.

Sak Ramu

I woke up yesterday with a throat so swollen I could neither swallow nor talk. Mr. and Mrs. Principal take me to the hospital with them when they take their son for a follow up appointment. There the doctor asks if I have a cough or sneeze. I shake my head no. After taking my temperature, blood pressure and using his stethoscope to listen to both my breasts and my stomach he concludes that I have an infection and writes me a prescription six prescriptions. At the pharmacy, I insist on buying just the "antibiotik" thus solidifying any lingering doubt that I am a crazy boolay.

I stay home in the afternoon and sleep.

In the evening I drag myself to the Lebaran celebration at school, which is basically the Muslim version of Christmas/ Neufeld gathering with a pageant and great big potluck after to celebrate the end of the fasting month.

I talk to Mr. Jay and his seemingly high maintenance wife (Ms. Winnipeg-seriously, no matter how far you roam you will meet a Winnipegger) for a while, excusing myself from talking too much because my throat is still sore though I can swallow again.

"So you've been to the Farmasi then?"

"Yup, and the hospital, the whole treatment."

"Oh, you don't need to see a doctor to get prescriptions here. I bet he wrote you six prescriptions, right?"

I nod wide-eyed. How do they know?

"Yeah, doctors here don't make any money from your visit only from how many prescriptions they write so they always write six or seven. The rest are all just pain killers and vitamins. Next time just go straight to the dealer with the active antibiotic that you want and they'll sell it to you for fifty cents."

The school pays for my medical expenses, so the $30 I spent isn't lost but still this is good to know, if I happen to be traveling and don't have my forms or time to waste. Jay also tells me where  I can find wine on this island before Mr. Principal drags me around to meet the school board members and owners who insist on foisting all manner (not necessarily gluten free) food on me. By the time I leave almost regret that Indonesian antibiotics were so effective in getting me swallowing in a few hours.

I am still feeling a little tired today but Ms. Yeni and I went to the traditional market by the astonishing albeit pungently odorous fishing village.

Kampong

Wandering through the market we stumble across a Buddhist shrine in a small temple. We are invited in and Ms. Yeni answers the keeper's of the shrine's curious questions about me. We are encouraged to check out everything, including the mausoleum, and are told where we can find the main Buddhist temple.

It turns out the main temple is bursting with my favourite laughing Buddha's (!), a buffet vegetarian restaurant for only 7,000 IDR (70 cents) a plate, and a curious fellow who Ms. Yeni says was trying to convert us to be followers in his temple. Strange. This made her uncomfortable so we left.

In the evening Ms. Kahlo invites Ms. Yeni and I out with her husband and daughter. We go to an "ankung" which is basically an outdoor restaurant, with mats on the ground and tables. The Baba there is a tall, kindly bespectacled man with an easy laugh. He restores antique bikes and his family runs the ankung. We drink ginger tea, and everyone laughs while I try to choke down a hard boiled baby bird's egg. When you have food allergies and have to decline so many things because they will make you sick it's hard to decline something because the thought of it makes you sick so I suck it up and chew. It's eggy. Hardboiled eggy. Ms. Yeni and Vanna (Ms. Kahlo's daughter) teach me an Indonesian board game, that involves moving seeds (or in our case pebbles) around a board shaped like a dragon. Over the course of the evening I learn other things too, like my favourite TV show, "Glee" is a huge hit here in Indonesia and if I say "sak ramu" to Baba he will laugh uproariously.

A simple evening spent in good company is by far the most amazing blessing a person can have in this life.

Bahasa Indonesia Word of the Day: Sak Ramu = whatever (considered rude)

Cock a Doodle Croak

The rooster crows every morning at 3:30. The wailing prayers begin shortly thereafter. Sometimes I can fall asleep again but usually not. Mostly I lie in bed listing the things that would be fun to throw at the damn cock if the banana tree wasn't in the way. Last Sunday however I slept until 10:00 am. Monday and Tuesday I almost missed work because I didn't wake up at all. I thought I must be getting used to it.

But, at 3:30 this morning I heard definitive rooster noises, though it was more of a croak than a crow. I guess he just had laryngitis and he's still not over it. I tried to imagine bludgeoning him to death, but honestly he sounded so pitiful, like even he didn't want to crowing and was cursing himself for tormenting his throat with his damn instinct, that I just felt sorry for him.

My own throat's been killing me for the last couple of days and at dinner tonight I had Ms. Yeni in stitches with my sick rooster imitation.

"Didn't that thing drive you crazy?" I ask. She lived in my room when she first arrived in Batam but was moved out when she was hospitalized indefinitely.

"No," she says still laughing, "no rooster when I was there."

"What?!?!?"

"No rooster then. This rooster is special for you. He love you. He sing song just for you."

"Great. My sayang, a noisy bird."

It seems likely though. If I'm going to have a lovestruck bird outside my window I'm not the sort who'd get a nice cooing type bird. No, I'm definitely the sort who gets a rooster in need of a tonsilectomy.

Bahasa Indonesian Word of the Day: sayang = sweetheart

Anniversaries

Yesterday marked a double anniversary for me, the fifth of one and the first of another.

The first is my Death date. I spent the last half of my twenties being ill and by the spring of my twenty ninth year I decided I'd had all I could take. The doctors didn't know or care to find out what was causing my suffering and I had calculated another fifty years of suffering if whatever it was didn't kill me. Worse than the aching body, the constant congestion, the persistent soar throat and crushing exhaustion was the measurable decline of my mind as it drifted farther into a swimming fog.

The words went first. While writing a paper on women in politics I spent twenty minutes trying desperately to remember how to spell the very common word "which". This is how the rapid descent began and in only a few short weeks I was fumbling around not just for spelling but for the words themselves. I started to have difficulty following conversations, first what other people were saying but soon I couldn't remember how I'd started a sentence by the time I got to the end of it which is actually a much more important skill than you might imagine.

I already had enough credits for a Bachelors degree so I checked out of University though all my courses had been Honours level. Completing the final term seemed hopelessly impossible. I developed strategies to cope with the encroaching fog but, being overwhelmingly exhausted most of the time my favourite strategy was just to avoid people and not have to communicate at all. If people couldn't be avoided I learned to just watch their faces. If they seemed happy I would try to force a smile back. If they seemed upset I would try to feign sympathy. And it was a feigned, this empathy, because most days the only thing I could think about was how exhausted I was.

Eventually, I stopped fighting and the fog enveloped me entirely and one day I realized I couldn't tell how the person in front of me felt. I couldn't remember what feelings were. Intellectually I was terrified, but within a few days the only thing I knew was that I was tired and in pain and the world bothered me and this was no way to live.


So I decided to die. Actually, I cursed up at the ceiling and dared there to be a g*d and I dared that g*d to make a miracle happen because eighteen doctors later I was all out of good options. Of course picking a good date to kill yourself isn't easy, at least if you want to be somewhat sensitive to people who might miss you.


Easter was only a few weeks away, along with my brother's birthday and I really didn't want my suicide dampening that day for him, so I thought about May. Nothing says, "Thanks for giving birth to me Mom," quite like killing yourself so I moved on to June. June, it turns out, is Father's day and my father's birthday, and July is my Mother's. Why not, I decided, have one last summer with the family, really push yourself, make the effort to enjoy it as much as is possible and end it, appropriately, in autumn. I settled on August 31st for a tidy finish.



Three days later I was so sick I went to the clinic. I knew it wouldn't help but I was in too much pain to do nothing. But, the doctor was away on vacation. So I walked home and called a friend to cancel our plans for the evening. "Again?" she said, disappointed. I always canceled plans. I was never up for going out. As we talked about my ailments for the hundredth time she suggested something that triggered a google search, which lead to a skeptical internet purchase, that saved my life.

By Easter, again appropriately, I was only a week into my self treatment but already the brain fog had lifted. I was beyond jubilant, beyond excited, I was ecstatic. By the time August 31st rolled around I was healthy. I was happy. I couldn't stop grinning. The world is a beautiful place. Life is a beautiful thing. To be given a chance to truly appreciate that like I have been is a blessing beyond words and I haven't been able to stop being grateful since. So I mark my death date anniversary every August 31 in my own way, often with others who have no clue what they're helping me celebrate, but it's important to me that I mark it.


But this year, the day also marks a year since I've been kissed. Which is sad, in a what kind of loser am I way, yes, absolutely but what worries me more is the thought that the last kiss I had might be the last kiss I ever have. It was not a good enough kiss to be the last one ever. It wasn't even good enough to be the second last. Even worse than this though, is the paralyzing fear I have, that I will be kissed again and it will be even worse than the last kiss, so maybe it's best to leave well enough alone...