Indo Stories

A Walk in the Woods

2010-05-15T03:09:00.000-07:00

Yeah. Serious spider. Big as my hand. Should've put my hand near it for scale but...that would mean putting my hand near it. Found along a trail in the mountains near Chiang Mai. After settling in for an extended stay in the old walled city of northern Thailand, we embarked on a three-day guided trek through scrubby, late dry-season terrain. It was a blast. The trails followed the tops of long ridges and dropped down into valleys that were a bit more leafy and cool.

And we faced other monsters along the way.

Yeah. Cone-making wasps. They didn't bother us, but they did all kinds of freaking me out.

This is not a monster, it's our guide July. Not his real name, surely - and I think our other guide Jungle Man was using a pseudonym, too. He's doing a magic trick with that plant that didn't really get captured in the pic. It's a latex-producing plant that you can break the stem and blow on - to make bubbles. Totally cool trail entertainment.

July later got really drunk on rice whiskey and talked about how he worked for the Thai army killing drug dealers along the border with Burma.

The Rebel Camp

2010-05-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

So the International Crisis Group says Bangkok is on the brink of an “undeclared civil war,” but the opposition Red Shirt camp in the middle of town seems more like a festive bazaar than the epicenter of a movement. Street vendors are hawking fatty fried stuff on sticks, festoons of flowers, and tee shirts (almost exclusively red), which swing in the breeze from makeshift stalls. A weary crowd sits on the blockaded street in front of a mainstage with loudspeakers as though it were any old summer folk festival. At least that was the vibe on Friday when we strolled through it. People were friendly. They wanted their picture taken.

The last outbreak of violence had been two days before, when protesters blocked train tracks. A police officer shot another police officer by accident in a skirmish over it. Taxi drivers are mad at the Red Shirts – at least the few that we spoke to. I think drivers are universally against any movement that blocks traffic.

The barricades of tires and sharpened bamboo are intimidating, but also strangely artistic, like post-apocalyptic setpieces for a budget science fiction flick. In any case, it just doesn’t feel like a place that’s about to erupt.

Then again, I’m really no seismologist.

Friends in the Right Places

2010-04-28T03:06:00.000-07:00

Want to know the best first stop on a tour of Southeast Asia? Here’s what you do. Find some foodies with a famous blog, and befriend them. Then, show up on their doorstep in Malaysia and be like “we’re just blowing through, so don’t go out of your way to entertain us.” Then they will go out of their way to entertain you. They will feed you the maximum amount of street treats and culinary treasures in the shortest amount of time.

You will be exposed to 16 implausibly tasty items in 48 hours. Here are some of those flavors, scantily described:

Tuesday

Steamed Beef and Rice Meal

Chicken Chop in Gravy

Fish and Pork Fried Thing

Roti Chani with Dal

Fried Savory Donut Hole

Hokien Fish Two Ways

Rice Noodly Wafers in Dark Sauce

Durian Cream Puff

Wednesday

Wild Boar Curry

Sour Fish Soup

Fiddleheads in Maybe Sesame Oil

Bean Porridge with Coconut Milk

Fishy Thing and Shredded Jicama Lettuce Wraps

Unripe Fruit in Dark Fishy Sauce

Chinese Pork Sausage Fried in Tofu Skins

Nutmeg Fruit Drink

If you play it right, the bloggers on which you have imposed might also send you on your way with a long list of other treats to try in the region. Seriously, if you don’t have foodie friends, make them now before it’s too late.

Oh yeah, here's Robyn and Dave's awesome blog:

http://eatingasia.typepad.com/

Fire On The Belly

2008-03-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

Here I am on fire. It's called 'fire therapy' and it feels good. We went to a nearby acupuncture clinic to check out some of the strange and shocking treatments they offer. First, they rubbed an herbal salve on my bare belly, then they covered it in these damp red towels and soaked them with alcohol. Then they lit my stomach on fire with one of those long barbecue lighters. They repeated the process three times, snuffing out the flame when the towel started to singe. By the third time, the heat from the flame had penetrated all the liquids, and it was very warm - enough to redden the exposed skin. It felt really great, but mostly because I was getting over the trauma of my previous treatment, which is called electro acupuncture. But that's another post...

"Excuse me, could you take our picture in front of this dormant volcano?"

2007-11-13T02:12:00.001-08:00

Know-It-All's Guide to Krakatau

2007-11-13T01:24:00.000-08:00

1. Bioluminescence: what, why, and how?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence

What: Based on Richard's sating they were a plankton, I'm thinking the ones we saw were probably Dinoflagellate, which sounds to me like the Latin word for "dinosaur fart". Check out the wiki picture above of these guys in a breaking wave!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinoflagellate

Why: There are four main accepted theories for the evolution of bioluminescent traits: Attraction, Repulsion, Communication and Illumination.

How: Has something to do with "Quorum sensing", which I would have guessed is something City Councils do. Actually, if I'm reading the science-speak right, it's a way for the critters to control their population density.

The glowing blue light is a result of a "luciferase" enzyme, which I would like to suggest from now on we call "Satan's Spit".

Cool bonus fact #1: All cells, including human, emit some kind of bioluminescence, but the wavelengths are more often outside the visible light spectrum. That's cool. That means we glow in the dark, you just can't see it.

Cool bonus fact #2: You might remember Alba The Glow-Bunny in "news of the weird" headlines a few years ago. An artist named Eduardo Kac paid to have Alba's DNA spliced with some "Satan's Spit" -generating DNA from a jellyfish. Here's a sort of obituary for Alba, whose existence "highlighted" all sorts of ethical issues.

2. Effervescence, on the other hand, is a real word that means "the escape of gas from an aqueous solution". Schweppervescence is a marketing campaign for ginger ale and tonic water invented in 1946.

Superfluous chemical reaction example to make me seem more smarter: H2CO3 -> H2O + CO2

Cool bonus fact #1: This guy suggests another definition for Schweppervescence - "thousands of tiny bubbles that last the whole drink through."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ri56-pkeU

Cool bonus fact #2: Schweppervescence is also the name of a race horse:

http://www.pedigreequery.com/schweppervescence

3. Whirlwinds - what are they?

During the trip I suggested they might be like tornadoes that rotated in the opposite direction. Wrong.

A whirlwind is a class of atmospheric event that includes tornadoes, water spouts and land spouts. Also includes those little harmless spinning wind vortexes popularized in the film "American Beauty". As far as I can tell, only Indonesia's state-run news agency Antara reported the story about the one in Bali over the weekend. Here's what I think happened: Antara often uses strange vocabulary for things, probably because they use an automatic text translator like toggletext. So they called it a whirlwind instead of a tornado. Possible conspiracy theory: they said 'whirlwind' because it doesn't sound as bad as 'tornado'.

http://www.antara.co.id/en/arc/2007/11/12/president-inspects-whirlwind-victims-in-bali/

Cool bonus fact #1: What's a "land spout", you ask? WHy, it's a slang-term coined by meteorologist Howard B. Bluestein in the early 1980s for a kind of tornado not associated with the mesocyclone of a thunderstorm.

Cool bonus fact #2: There's a supervillain named Whirlwind. Last we knew, he was an active member of the Masters of Evil formed by Baron Zemo.

5. Sea Angels. On the way back to the boat from the reef on Sunday, I found myself surrounded by these little translucent thingies with maroon and purple insides and cool little wingey things. They have some at the Singapore Underwater World that are from the Arctic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_angel

Sea angels are small pteropod mollusks of the suborder Gymnosomata. Their feet have developed into wing-like appendages (parapodia) and their shells have been lost, both adaptations made to suit their free-swimming oceanic lives. These adaptations also explain the common name sea angel and the New Latin name of the order; from gymnos meaning "naked" and soma meaning "body." Within the order are approximately eight families and 17 genera.

Cool bonus fact #1:

Another large polar species of sea angel, Clione antarctica, defends itself from predators by synthesizing a previously unknown molecule, named pteroenone. As predators will not eat the sea angel some animals, such as amphipods, take up home inside them. Local population density of Clione antarctica may reach claustrophobic levels; up to 300 animals per cubic metre have been recorded.

Cool bonus fact #2:

The IPCC reports that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing acidification of the oceans which could eliminate pteropods from the Southern Ocean and cause serious repercussions through the food chain.

6. Jellyfish and Pee: Really? Does it work?

Someone filed a story about the whole urine-on-stings idea. Conclusion: not helpful, sort of silly. Go with vinegar. In fact, Wikipedia says "Rubbing the wound, or using alcohol, spirits, ammonia, or urine will encourage the release of venom and should be avoided."

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2283933

And how do jellyfish stings work?

Nematocysts; generally, each nematocyst has a "trigger" (cnidocil) paired with a capsule containing a coiled stinging filament, as well as barbs on the exterior. Upon contact, the filament rapidly unwinds, launches into the target, and injects toxins. It can then pull the victim into its mouth, if appropriate."

Most stings are not deadly.

Here’s a bit from a site called “Jellies Zone”…

“Jellyfish toxins include a poorly understood array of complex chemicals, many of which are proteinaceous. Many have deleterious effects on cell membranes and cause them to rupture. This may, for example, lead to the breaking up of red blood cells, certainly not a desirable response to a sting. Other toxins have disruptive effects on the action of nerve and muscle cell membranes and impair their normal function. Throw in toxins that degrade collagen, break down proteins and lipids, and disrupt cellular influx of ions like calcium, and you can see why jellyfish mean business.“

Cool bonus fact #1: A group of jellyfish is often called a "smuck". Seriously.

Cool bonus fact #2:

Chinese and “other Asians” eat jellyfish. Only jellyfish belonging to the Order Rhizostomeae are harvested for food. The rhizostomes are favored because they are typically larger and have more rigid bodies than other scyphozoan orders. Traditional processing methods involve a multi-phase processing procedure using a mixture of table salt and alum, and then desalting. Processing makes the jellyfish drier and more acidic, producing a "crunchy and crispy texture." Nutritionally, jellyfish prepared this way are roughly 95% water and 4-5% protein, making it a relatively low calorie food.

Cool bonus fact #3: Factoid warning: "sources specualte" that some jellyfish stings have a "Viagra" affect...http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/21/jellyfish-toxin-prod.html

7. What's up with pumice? Chris gave us a good overview. Here's more...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumice

"It forms when gases exsolving from viscous magma nucleate bubbles which cannot readily decouple from the viscous magma prior to chilling to glass. Pumice is a common product of explosive eruptions (plinian and ignimbrite-forming) and commonly forms zones in upper parts of silicic lavas. Pumice has an average porosity of 90%, and initially floats on water." Yup. Sure does.

Cool bonus fact #1: Pumice is considered a glass because it does not have a crystal structure.

Cool bonus fact #2: (actually this is more of a 'smuck' of facts)

After the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa, rafts of pumice drifted through the Pacific Ocean for up to 20 years, with tree trunks floating among them. In fact, pumice rafts disperse and support several marine species. In 1979, 1984 and 2006, underwater volcanic eruptions near Tonga created large pumice rafts, some as large as 30 km that floated hundreds of miles to Fiji.

8. This is just a really cool site:

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Products/Pglossary/pglossary.html

9: Poop in the sky…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppis

9: The Crown Of Thorns Starfish, and the cross it must bear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown-of-thorns_starfish

The cut-and-paste of it:

The starfish is a coral reef predator and preys on the coral polyps by climbing onto them, extruding its stomach over them, and releasing digestive enzymes to then absorb the liquified tissue. They feed alone at night, maintaining a constant distance between themselves and other crown-of-thorns starfish. During times of food shortage, these creatures can live on their energy reserves for over six months.

Notable predators of Ancanthaster planci include the Giant Triton (Charonia tritonis), a species of shrimp, a species of worm, and various reef fish (especially the Humphead wrasse) which feed on larvae or small adults. It is quite likely that the decline of these predators (through overharvesting, pollution, etc.) has been a factor that led to the rise in the population of the starfish, making outbreaks more likely to occur.

Cool bonus fact #1: They're called corallivores because, well, they eat coral.

Cool bonus fact #2: Outbreaks of huge numbers of these starfish are believed to be caused by agricultural runoff which causes algal blooms.

A Tsunami of Stuff

2007-09-13T01:16:00.000-07:00

Dear Clutter Wrangler,

I and my partner are radio reporters in a developing country. Last night, there was a series of earthquakes near here, the kind that spurs people in our kind of work into action. Okay, I don’t at all mean to diminish the struggle of people in the disaster zone today, but I have to say the real disaster for me was right here in my home office.

When something like this happens, a lot of people start yodeling for our attention.

We got a stampede of assignments and deadlines and equipment to manage, but we have about the same organizational skills as a saguaro cactus. We end up running around like wild horses in a telephone booth.

We have this one little cubby where we throw our cords. Mic cords, USB cords, power cords, adapters – they’re all tangled in there like a pile of lassos at a roping convention.

O Clutter Wrangler, can you help us rein in the mess?

-Hog Tied in Jakarta

The Year in Pictures 6

2007-06-18T23:23:00.000-07:00

The man on the left is giving us a tour of his village, which was completely flattened in the quake.

After the interview, he apologized for wearing a helmet on his head. He’d been wearing it for several days to cover a really nasty open head wound he got from a falling door jamb as he was carrying his children out of the building. He hadn’t received any medical treatment.

Picture taken May 30^th 2006. Earthquake struck on May 27^th. It lasted less than a minute.

The Year in Pictures 5

2007-06-18T22:39:00.000-07:00

For a story about the one-year anniversary of the Yogyakarta earthquake, I visited farms in the area that were affected by the quake.

The public relations office of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) set up an interview with the woman in pink on the right. Her farm missed two planting cycles, and the FAO helped her (along with 132 other farming communities) because most laborers were busy surviving after the earthquake or rebuilding their lives. In this fertile climate, the fields quickly grew over with weeds and it took months to get them ready to plant again. In Javanese rice farming, women provide 60 percent of the field labor.

The funny thing about this photo is that the woman showed up for the interview dressed in her best clothes. I asked if there was someone who could show me how the work in the field is done (I wanted to record the splishy sound of rice paddy tending), she immediately took of her shoes, rolled up her pants, and jumped in. Note the muddy feet.

Picture taken May 2007.

The Year in Pictures 4

2007-06-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

Hours after Garuda flight 200 crashed on March 7th, the woman on the right waits with her sister at the Jakarta airport to hear whether her husband was on board.

The Year in Pictuers 3

2007-06-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

Me interviewing volunteers during a huge cleanup operation following a flood which covered 70 percent of Jakarta in February 2007. Our apartment in the Pejompongan district of central
Jakarta was high enough to escape flooding, but the neighborhood was surrounded by water in each direction for a few days.

The Year in Pictures 2

2007-06-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

Trish knee deep (and sinking!) in silt, interviewing fishermen at the mouth of a river where the sludge run-off has killed off most fish stocks. The mud was also full of little pinching crabs. Taken in March 2007.

The Year In Pictures 1

2007-06-18T09:29:00.000-07:00

Me in a tippy wooden canoe floating through the remains of a town that was inundated by toxic mud from a botched mining operation. The man in the front, a construction worker named Untung, is showing me the house he built and lived in for 15 years. Taken in March 2007.

Climb On

2007-06-17T22:38:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm climbing again.

This was taken a couple of weeks ago at a spot near Bandung, about a three hour drive from the capital. The rock is a cool mix of limestone and marble. You can see on the right a cave feature which, if I'm not mistaken, was transformed into marble by intense pressure. It's really great rock to climb - I've never felt anything like it - but it's a bit slippery and tiring for the hands if you have to pinch. This route is called "Ani", and it's rated as a "5.10c". That's hard. None of us got to the top of the route, but we had a blast trying.

There's sort of a loose but growing group of foreign and Indonesian climbers in Jakarta, led by our guru Panji, pictured below on the far right.

From left to right: Troy, Chad, John (back), Christian (back), Dave, Panji. Taking the picture is Boi, who is the best climber of the group after Panji. Panji, by the way, is a professional climber and has competed in the X-games. He's really a rock celebrity and we all owe him a lot for giving us his time and expert coaching.

Here’s a good shot of the valley and John taking a big swing over it. I met John before coming to Indonesia because of a question we posted on the expat forum about climbing in Jakarta. It took us just about a year to actually start climbing, but in the meantime he’s become one of our best friends here. You can see that the marble in this area has attracted some industry. The factory below makes marble tiles, and you can see some excavation in the distance where a "v" notch has been cut into the mountain.

If you get a chance, you should also check out Mr. John's blog, linked on the right of this page.

Land of Cheese

2007-06-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

Indonesians sometimes say white people smell like cheese.

I’ve asked around.

It’s true that I find Indonesians rarely have any detectable body odor. Every once in a while, I’ve observed, an unfortunate individual smells really, really bad. A good portion of that population have been in uniforms, and I think it might have to do with wearing the thick polyester sometimes used for official Busway costumes or similar positions. Leather jackets sometimes produce the same effect.

In any case, I can’t say I find foreigners smell particularly worse than Indonesians. I’ve had plenty of time standing elbow to elbow on crowded buses to collect data.

So I wonder of there’s something genetic at work here, or perhaps there’s a key dietary difference. Indonesians don’t eat much cheese. In fact, it’s pretty hard to get here. Maybe there are smell-producing hormones in the vegan-bane agent called renit?

Maybe we sweat more before we’ve acclimated to the heat?

I’ve had one Indonesia friend suggest that the PH level in our skin is more acidic.

Maybe they’re just being mean.

I’ve also heard that Japanese people say white people smell like rotting meat. At least here we smell like something palatable. I've dispatched a correspondent, Nick B., to investigate these claims. He'll be spending a month teaching English and polling Tokyo about his olfactory effect.

I’m wide open to suggestions and amateur research projects on this.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to the trip home. It’ll be nice to be in the land where everyone smells like cheese.

Errand Epics

2007-06-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

Okay folks, I’m going to post a few entries before I head to Maine with one goal in mind: to head off any whinging about my lack of posts.

So I’d like to start with a short language misadventure story from last week. As luck would have it, my Indonesian visa ran out just five days before our flight to the US. So I had to schedule a quick round-trip to Singapore to extend my stay through next week. We have a favorite travel agency at Plaza Semanggi (or “Planggi” if you’re trying to conserve syllables) one of the more Indonesian-style malls. They’re pretty good, but they don’t speak English. Herein sets the stage for my language adventure.

After some clumsy negotiating, I find a flight for Friday, the last day of my valid visa. The young agent asks in slang-y Indonesian when I would like to return: “blah mau blah kembali blah kepan?” Oh, I say, return the same day; “Hari sama.” Ok, says she, blah blah blah blah Friday? Um, says I, yes. Hari sama. I want to come back in the evening of the same day if possible.

Well, it turns out that I had confirmed a return flight for the next Friday. Apparently “same day” only refers to a day with the same name, not necessarily the same place in time.

That itinerary would put me in Singapore for more than a week. In fact, it would mean that I’d have to miss my flight to Boston.

How does it end? Well I’m back in Jakarta and getting ready to leave on Wednesday. The travel agent changed my flight while I was on my way to Singapore for no extra charge. I had a nice Indian vegetarian lunch at my favorite Changi airport restaurant, and got back to Jakarta in the evening.

There have been so many little errand-gone bad adventures over the last year. It’s a funny class of travel story, because they’re sort of hard to tell. The best travel stories have some kind of real disaster or unintended hardship, but they’ve got to be big enough to bother mentioning. In Jakarta among other expat friends, the errand-gone-bad story has a big market. We swap them all the time. Scary motorcycle taxi rides, accidentally ordering food you don’t want, getting stuck in a traffic jam for four hours in the rain.

“Today I tried to go see a movie but there were no English subtitles. You should have seen the drama that ensued when we walked out and asked to see another movie instead.”

That’s a true story. Happened to our friends. The manager called a meeting and blamed the poor couple for failing to realize their error before the movie started. It ends as well as many such stories do. Instead of a French art film , they saw Spiderman III.

It’s not a Joseph Conrad narrative, but those moments can feel just as alienating and desperate and even exotic. They’re hard. Little punctuated moments in the story arc of our adjustment.

Sometime, I’ll tell you the one about my trip to the post office where I had to check in at seven different desks to mail a letter.

Curiouser

2006-11-23T07:32:00.000-08:00

“In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.” - Lewis Carroll

For every story I’ve worked on in Indonesia, there’s a moment when I feel like I’m plummeting down a rabbit hole.

“The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well.” - Lewis Carroll

Whether I’m covering something by phone for a quick correspondent report, or getting on a plane to unknown worlds, I often feel that ground rush one feels when one’s ass is about to go over one's teakettle.

“Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next.” - Lewis Carroll

For the last couple of months, I’ve been working on one particularly elusive story.

“There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.” - Lewis Carroll

Each dead end seems to give way at just the right moment. In time to tempt me with more doors. Doors which lead inevitably to a set of dead ends. If there weren’t so many little “eat me” cakes and “drink me” bottles along the way, I would probably have surrendered the story by now. But instead I find myself staring up at the underside of a glass table.

So that’s how it’s been for a couple of months. I’ve been working on other projects in the meantime, trying to outrun the white rabbit all the while. That’s at least part of why I’ve become quiet again.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bali Break

2006-09-23T03:59:00.000-07:00

Hello, friends. Back from vacation. I took surf lessons, see? Or falling into the water lessons, anyway.

For those who found me because of my reports on bird flu, my apologies for taking a step back. I’ve done just a little reporting about bird flu over the last couple of weeks, but I’m afraid the demand for updates from the international news marked has certainly slowed. The rate of human infections, however, is still steady.

Anyhow, many of you have posted questions, and I mean to get to them – please check comments from previous posts for follow ups.

And to the rest of you - mostly friends and family - it's been a busy time and going to Bali was restorative. Coming in to Kuta beach from the airport, our first view of the ocean brought a somewhat unexpected wave of relief. I have missed the salt.

Bird Flu Interview Extras

2006-08-29T08:58:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of clips from my interview with John Weaver from the Food and Agriculture Organization.

In this clip, he tells me what makes it particularly difficult to contain the virus in Indonesia.

In this clip, I’d asked if culling is an effective strategy for containing the disease in Indonesia.

Click here to listen to a clip from Georg Petersen, the World Health Organization's representative in Indonesia. I had asked him first if Indonesia's political environment makes it a more likely candidate to spawn a pandemic strain, and then asked if the recent decentralization of power from Jakarta to the provincial govenment made it harder to contain the disease.

Bird Flu Radio Story

2006-08-26T00:55:00.000-07:00

I have filed a story on bird flu with a PRI radio program called The World, which is produced at WBUR in Boston. This is the story which took me to Medan, to Kaben Jahe, and to Sumbul for a look at the culling and bird flu containment operations there. I’ll let the story speak for itself – please let me know what you think!

Click Here to listen.

Please feel free to ask questions.

The Message

2006-08-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

I talked today with the people who will be producing Indonesia’s bird flu PSA’s. I’ll let you know when I have more details, but they plan to roll them out September first. My friend Jason has made an appeal to his multi-media blog fans for help in designing the message.

The UNICEF group will start shooting in two locations on Thursday. They plan to put out at least one in a local dialect.

Here are the four main messages they want to convey:
1. Wash: do not let your family handle sick or dying birds; if you do handle a sick bird, wash your hands and report to local authorities.
2. Separate: Cage your birds and separate all new flocks for two weeks.
3. Report: If you have a fever with flu-like symptoms and have had contact with sick or dying birds, go immediately to a health centre.
4. Cook: prepare and cook all poultry and eggs well and wash hands and utensils.
What do you make of that?
Pictured above: health workers look for a goose which escaped into the woods during a cull in Kaben Jahe, North Sumatra.

A Proposal

2006-08-20T21:03:00.000-07:00

DH, I really like your suggestion for a poster campaign. Having a picture of a father carrying his dead child may be problematic for a couple of reasons here though. First, I think it would offend the sensitivity of those who have lost children to the disease. In Tanah Karo, I could see those posters potentially exacerbating resentments. I agree the message has to clearly demonstrate what's at stake, though. And I would suspect that the messages from the U.N. are going to err on the side of square and bland. I hope not, but their role is already so cautious that I don't imagine they'll take many marketing risks.

The campaign to get people to report outbreaks via SMS is really smart. Cell phones are as ubiquitous as backyard chickens here.

I was brainstorming with my girlfriend a couple of days ago about the media campaign.

We thought there must be a way to take advantage of the widespread animist beliefs and myths without offending the local culture.

Certainly it would be inappropriate to actually try to convince people that sick or dying chickens are possessed by demons or haunted by spirits. But you can bet if that were the case, children would stay away.

So there's this television phenomenon here called Sinetron. It's a huge industry of cheesy action soap operas that often include sorcerers and (badly animated) giant snakes and often end with traditional Muslim morality messages. They're widely popular, but they're not taken too seriously.

We would like to see a Sinetron version of a PSA for bird flu. I think it would get people's attention.

Perhaps some children are wandering in the village, and they see a sick bird. One reaches out to touch it, but a giant ghost zombie scorpion rises out of it, and
traps the children with its tail. It breathes green fire that's full of angry monkeys. The children scream for help. A band of villagers rush out with torches, but can't manage to kill the beast. Then a magic Islamic elder emerges, and conjures a Javanese warrior. He drives the scorpion away with his flaming kris and martial arts skills (and maybe some soap and water).

Then a short message about why we don't touch sick chickens, and how we wash our hands around birds. The bird flu monster must be defeated. Only you can help.

Doing The Math

2006-08-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

Al, Neil Ferguson’s work with predictive models for disease outbreaks looks very interesting. My understanding of mathematical modeling is really pretty weak, but I understand the models must work by taking into account a set of variables that affect a disease’s potential to spread. Some of those factors must come from the disease itself, and some must come from social conditions of its hosts. His quote from a Guardian article:

"Indonesia is one of the more worrying areas of the world," Prof Ferguson said. "The education of the population is not high.
"Along with sub-Saharan Africa, it is one of the areas of the world to be worried about ... much more so than the occasional case in Europe. Here, we will deal with any outbreak effectively. In Africa, there is almost no control, and there is no monitoring."

I’m going to try to contact him by email and ask some questions about the work.

Here are some factors I’m seeing in Indonesia that may set it apart. I wonder if they can be quantified at all. If they can, are they already part of the modeling?

1. Bird owner’s reluctance to report symptoms among their flock.
2. Higher rates of contact between birds and children. (50 percent of victims so far are children)
3. Central government’s weak or restrained influence on regional government’s policy.
4. Misreporting of the number of destroyed birds in an area due to corruption.
5. Inconsistency in the kind of vaccine used.
6. Black-market sale of ineffective or false vaccine.
7. Lack of funding for public education, compensation, and vaccines.
8. International reluctance to give Indonesia money due to concern about corruption.
9. The deferential role of international agencies such as the WHO and FAO in Indonesia.
10. Strength of a region’s cultural identity and independence from central government.
11. Local bird owner’s distrust of both local and centralized government due to a history of corruption.
12. A lack of observance of standards for the handling of birds during culls.
13. Widespread unregulated trade of birds over long distances – racing pigeons, fighting cocks, and circulation of eating birds as currency.
14. Lack of both perceived and real threat to the population.
15. Lack of general medical care and health maintenance (screening, check ups, entry points for health education)
16. Backyard chickens in an urban megacity environment.

On the question of public education…

2006-08-19T07:55:00.000-07:00

I’ve seen exactly one bird flu awareness advertisement on television here, and it was from a cable station that I think originated from Singapore. Jackie Chan was folding paper cranes and playing with some children. He tells them it’s okay to play with toy birds, but it’s never okay to touch a sick or dead bird.

The campaign is from Hong Kong, and it was in English. As far as I know there is nothing to match it yet in Indonesia.

But I have been told by the United Nations PR machine that there will be a big public awareness media blitz rolled out in September. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

A reader has asked me what kind of media access the villagers in Karo have.

I didn’t see many satellite dishes, but there are televisions in the houses and warungs. Mountain communities often don’t have much broadcast reception, and cable in remote areas is not likely. Metro TV is the nation’s favorite local news source, and I know that they have access to it.

There are plenty of newspapers and lots of coverage of the bird flu outbreaks. I honestly don’t know the literacy rate, but I would guess that there are enough readers in families, especially young people, for such information to get around. People talk about the news a lot there – more than in many western countries I’ve visited.

As for public education materials like signs or pamphlets, I only saw a few scattered examples. Even in hospitals, I found the presence of bird flu awareness posters rare. There was one in a corridor at the Adam Malik hospital in Medan, and one at the main health department office in Kaben Jahe.

Getting safety messages out about bird flu to stick may be even harder than with other diseases. Keep backyard chicken coops free of feces, stay away from sick chickens, report chicken deaths to the police, wash your hands when you’re around birds – that’s not very practical advice for most fowl owners. Raising birds is full of potential infection risks, and they’ve been doing it the same way for thousands of years.

And really, they don’t have a lot to gain from changing their behavior. The percentage of those who get infected is so small that it doesn’t seem like much of a looming threat. But at this point they have a lot to loose by reporting chicken sickness to police. They could loose their birds. A lot of people use chickens as liquid assets to pay for things like medical care or school fees for children. And they could trigger such a panic that the whole local agriculture industry could take a nosedive.

What’s at stake is pretty abstract for them, really. The negative consequences of cooperating are much higher than the perceived benefit. At this point, it’s hard to say how the real benefits of cooperating could overshadow the hardships.

It’s an interesting message to deliver. How would you wage this public information campaign? What would the poster captions read?

Human to Human Transmission

2006-08-18T18:38:00.000-07:00

Fantastic. I’m going to address some questions (or implied questions) from readers right away. Michele, Al – you raise some really important topics.

Al asks how many cases of human to human transmission there have been here. The answer is seven – sort of. Samples from Jones and six of his family members revealed they’d contracted a mutated version of the virus, which they caught from each other rather than directly from the chicken. Samples were not taken from an eighth victim, Jones sister, who was buried before investigators arrived in the district. She is generally included in this “Karo cluster” of cases, but only those who were tested are officially counted.

They are the only confirmed cases of human to human transmission in the world, and the mutated strain is considered to have died out with its last victim.

And yes, scientists are saying passage from family member to family member is not surprising, and may indicate a genetic disposition that matched that particular mutation.

I should add that the sickness spread during a family feast where other family members and outsiders were present. Jones wife and two children, for example, had close contact with the virus, but remained healthy – not even carriers.

I was at a conference on bird flu in Indonesia this summer when those results (from the WHO labs) were released. There was a lot of information at the time, and I have to admit the epidemiologists played down the presence of the mutation to such a degree that I missed the biggest news lead of the day. I eventually changed my story – not the facts, but the angle - based on other media reports. The AP has a very good reporter who is assigned to cover bird flu all over the globe, and she led with the mutation story. As I only had one story to file, I decided “Indonesia’s Bird Flu Reporting Network Needs Help” wasn’t as pressing.

Here’s the story I filed for VOA that day. NOTE: some of the information is outdated. The bird flu death toll in Indonesia, for example, is now 45, not 39.

The Karo mutation is not considered to be significant by WHO scientists, and I’m sure they were disappointed to see it was the lead in most media reports (even mine) coming out of that conference.

I asked Dr. Keiji Fukuda, co-ordinator of the WHO's global influenza program, if H5N1 would continue to produce different, more potent versions of itself.

His answer: “It’s a virus. That’s what viruses do.”

The Game of Risk

2006-08-18T09:36:00.000-07:00

I’m very glad to see so many comments from around the world. It’s clear to me that there’s a lot of anxiety about the potential for a pandemic bird flu strain, and that there’s a lot of conflicting information. Media reports about the risk are certainly running hot and cold.

I’m afraid those temperatures are subject to the hokus-meteorology of news markets. The answer to the question “what’s the risk for a pandemic?” truly depends on who you ask. I’ve talked to a lot of experts, and there just isn’t a lot of agreement. Today I talked with a H5N1 advisor for the Food and Agriculture Organization – he downplayed the risk and called himself an optimist. Others are trying to support Indonesia’s case for more funding from international donors, so you can hear them playing up the risk. The country is dancing with the World Bank right now about…well…money. It’s a complicated and clumsy dance – one is doing the Cha-Cha and one is counting T-A-N-G-O.

I think I can’t really comment on the risk level, but I can say that Indonesia does not have its prevention program together. Vaccination, public education, and culling are really the only tools for mitigating the risk. As far as I can tell, none of those are working here.

I should reiterate that bird flu is still extremely hard for humans to get, and still seems to require prolonged, high risk exposure. There is a pandemic in birds, however, so exposure will continue.

There is an investigation right now into another possible case of human to human transmission. Today epidemiologists clarified that it’s not a ‘cluster’ they’re looking at – because the infections come from five different district in Java.

In any case, I’d like to make an appeal for more questions. I may be in a position to ask the right person as I continue reporting on the disease. There are obviously some people out there following media chatter on this, and I say we work together to figure out where the information gaps are.

Jeruk

2006-08-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

This is a warehouse full of oranges that can’t be sold. The woman, like most of the people in Sumbul, survives by selling fruit grown in the fertile mountain soil in the area around Lake Toba. The cool nights with no frost and warm days make for very sweet produce.

But the buying price for vegetables and fruits from this district has dropped 80 percent over the last month, from about 30 cents a kilo to about six cents. No one will buy fruit from Karo because they are afraid of bird flu, she tells me.

The price is so low that they refuse to sell. It’s not worth paying for transportation or for the market sellers’ fees. The barn already smells fermented like old orange juice. Even so, I try one of the oranges being passed around to the army and police. It's like a little bag of orange sugar.

The drop in prices has created an economic disaster that they won’t be able to recover from until the next crop - next year.

Here she desperately shows me the storage barn and her crop. She guided me around, firmly pulling at my elbow. I have told the villagers I’m working for American radio. They ask me if I can do anything to help, if I can get money for them to live. Like most people I’ve met in rural communities, they assume I have connections to the World Bank or an NGO that can provide assistance. I try to explain that’s not really how it works, but I can tell I’m not getting through.

Today they took all my chickens, she says. About a hundred of them.

In economic terms, that’s about a hundred and fifty dollars. Not counting the eggs.

I tell them I’ll tell people in America what’s happening here, how ignorance about bird flu is destroying their town. They’re full of hope when I say that.

Flu Burung

2006-08-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

First, I want to address a couple of safety concerns. I’m back in Jakarta now, but it’s true that I was deep inside an area with a history of H5N1 infection among birds and humans for the story. It’s also true that this is still a very rare disease among humans, and that when it is transmitted from birds to humans, it’s through close contact with sick birds. People who have contracted the virus have done so largely through handling them or being in an environment where their blood or dander can get into the respiratory system. I was very careful not to get too close to birds, and I wore an antibiotic mask and took other sanitation measures to keep myself from dangerous contact.

It’s also true that Jones Ginting is part of a cluster of people who contracted a mutated version of the virus from contact with each other. This is an extremely rare case, and scientists think genetic disposition in that family in combination with the mutation may have enabled the unusual vector. Ginting is not considered to be contagious, and the mutated version of the virus is considered to have died out with its last victim.

I understand some of the concerns I’m hearing from my family, and I just want to let everyone know I wasn’t reckless about exposure.

Having said that, I also have to add that I saw some frighteningly inefficient and unsanitary (not to mention inhumane) practices in the handling of the birds during mass culls, and it raises a lot of questions for me about the effectiveness of this strategy. But I’m ahead of myself.

Terus.

The first night I arrived in Kaben Jahe, rumors were circulating that lab tests from five chickens in the area had come back positive for the H5N1 virus. When I arrived at the local health department command post, it was teeming with Indonesian soldiers, police and brown-uniformed medical staff. The driver I had hired from Medan slipped his black Toyota SUV into a parked convoy of military and government vehicles. We waited in the car for an hour while the police and soldiers mustered in formation, passing out protective masks and gloves.

Finally, the group spread out into five teams to cover the five affected areas. Their orders were to kill and collect every domestic bird in a one kilometer radius around the five positive test sites across the district. The birds were killed in the streets in front of their owners. It was brutal, inefficient, and unsanitary in my opinion. Children gathered to watch in curiosity, and came well within the risk area from what I saw. The whole affair was a real nightmare.

Jones

2006-08-13T07:25:00.000-07:00

This is Jones Ginting. He lives in a village near Kaben Jahe, North Sumatra with his wife and two kids. They’re really nice people.

Last April, Jones (it’s pronounced “yoh’-nahs”) was at a backyard barbeque with his family, when his sister started feeling sick. Over the next two days, she was struck with a terrible fever and died. Then his father himself, and five other family members started having stabbing pains and aches in their limbs. Everyone but Jones died in the hospital. Later tests revealed that they’d contracted a new strain of the H5N1 avian influenza virus. One that is able to be transmitted from human to human.

A journalist I met from Indonesian Metro TV brought me to Jones’ house, and when we arrived, he was sleeping. His wife laid out a mat on the tile floor for us to sit and wait while Jonas slept. I offered to come back later, but she said “But he’s always sleeping. If you go away, he’ll just get up and go back to sleep by the time you return.”

That’s a Megadeath tee-shirt he’s wearing. He’s got some serious ink on his arms and legs – most of it fantasy and religious symbols you’d expect to see on metal jacket covers.

Jones is a very soft spoken guy, and doesn’t have a lot to say about the ordeal. He wants to move on, to raise his two sons, and to take on the responsibilities of the family’s orange grove. For right now, he’s focused on gaining back the 22 pounds he lost during his fever.

Birds Have Two Hearts

2006-08-10T21:50:00.000-07:00

I’m deep in the heart of bird flu territory now, navigating its convoluted double-circulatory ventricles. Just want to keep the inertia going here – I’ll elaborate when there’s some slack in the trip.

I’ve been to Medan and then to Kabenjahe, close to where the cluster of human cases essentially wiped out an entire family in May. I’m trying to contact the lone survivor, whose story illustrates what seems to be widespread distrust of the government among villagers.

Last night I witnessed what is called a “mass culling” of foul in a one kilometer radius surrounding a positive test for bird flu in a chicken. In a sort of “shock and awe” raid, dozens of police and army soldiers went into people’s homes and yards, took all of the birds they could find (including caged songbirds), and cut their throats in the streets. The villagers were generally compliant, but I saw several people pulling carcases out of the writhing piles of burlap bags and spiriting them away to be eaten later on. The whole macabre scene was witnessed by a growing parade of curious children –some were crying, some were laughing, and the youngest seemed to me to be hypnotized in horror.

Five hours later, I also saw the mass burning of more than 3000 carcasses. I will refrain from putting all the terrible details in this post, but I want to mention that at least half of the birds were still alive, and their destruction was miles away from efficient.

Most of my time here has been spent trying to get through the resistant beurocracy, finding people who will talk, and arranging ways to meet with the people who will give me permission to speak with the people who I want to speak with.

More later – thanks for the comments, folks. Amazed and a little guilty that you’ve been checking witout reward for so long.

Okay, all Folks - I'm Back.

2006-08-06T22:22:00.000-07:00

If you’re still checking this site for new material, it probably means you’re a serious hardcore fan (read “family member”). Well, thanks for hanging in there. It’s been a dense couple of months, but I’ll do my best to catch up.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

Here’s me in my makeshift recording booth at the home office. I use cushions from our couch – two on the sides and one on top – to absorb outside sound and reduce room echo. The little blanket curtain pads some of the echo coming in from directly behind. The backs of the blue chairs are propping up the cushions. It’s very unstable and almost always collapses on me. I only seem to think about redesigning it when I’m under a tight deadline. Someday soon, I’ll invent a better solution.

So what you see is what most of my reporting experience has looked like this summer. I’ve been mainly in the home office in Jakarta, establishing relationships with the radio strings. There have been a number of disasters here over the last few weeks – it certainly seems like the tectonic plates underneath us are spinning. Political developments in Timor Leste also provided some work, and bird flu fears have heated up again, now that Indonesia is tied for first place in the global bird flu fatality count.

I’m about to take a trip to North Sumatra to follow up on the avian influenza developments. I’ll be talking to public health workers who are trying to convince villagers that sick and dying chickens are dangerous. For those of you in Maine, you might imagine that would be like trying to start a “don’t eat or sell lobsters or seafood” campaign. People depend on their backyard chickens here, and they’ve been doing it for thousands of years. Now 42 out of 200 million people have died from this bird flu here. So you can imagine the local villagers’ reaction when Jakarta suddenly shows up and says “we gotta kill all the chickens in a 5k radius”. Or when the health workers try to convince people they should call their health department if one of their ducks looks woozy.

Anyhow, the trip provides a good excuse for me to start up the live journal again. I hope to be posting about that and more in the coming weeks.

2006-05-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

Good morning, America (and all expats, live journal junkies, and new Indonesian friends), how are you?

I’m running a blog now that’s just about the Merapi eruption. I suspect I’ll take a break from this page and pour my energy into…

http://mountmerapi.blogspot.com

Thanks for hanging in there, and feel free to distribute the address to everyone you think might be interested. It’s been a crazy ride.

24

2006-04-29T05:45:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been asked by a few readers to log a single 24 hours here, and I thought it’d be fun to pick my 35th birthday. Not really a typical slice of life, but I’m afraid ‘typical’ doesn’t describe many of my days here.

7:47
I woke up disoriented, with only one earplug in. I was also groggy from an underfed slumber. Just as we nodded off around the midnight preceding, a guy with lots of luggage turned the latch to our room and swung it open wide. ‘HEY! HEY! HEY!” Trish screamed. The guy fumbled and trembled as he reached in to close the door. I think he was concerned Trish might chop his hand off, or maybe even bite it. We laughed through the ensuing adrenaline spike, but a party of Indonesians followed the first guy up the stairs in what seemed an epic parade of flips and flops. They were noisy all night, and I was forced to resort to earplugs. I had one in each ear when I fell asleep.

8:30
Groped down a can of kopi su su, and got to my feet. Ate an apple. Ate a half bag of sweet spicy crunchy soy thingies. Don’t know what they’re called. Started up my laptop and read through a tape log for a story we’ve been working on about Merapi. Pulled some quotes to work with, and started working on an outline and an introduction.
10:00 Went out to the Indomart to get water, another kopi su su, and some chicken flavored potato chips. Chitato. We love Chitato. Also had a fried tofu square with rice from a kaki lima. We love the name kaki lima, because it means five feet. The first three are on the cart, and the other two are on the people that push them. Went back to the hotel to write some more and take a mandi down the hall. That’s like a shower where your pour water over yourself with a scoop from a little cistern in the bathroom. Water goes everywhere, so we’ve gotten used to walking into a bathroom that’s wet all over. It’s best not to wear just socks when you’re going to the bathroom here.

12:00
Packed up a load of our belongings, and walked them to our new apartment. Our landlord Ari was there, and he helped me get the bags up to the fourth floor. Then he asked me what I was going to do next(that’s the kind of question Indonesians ask you all the time) so I said I was going to eat lunch. He wanted to join me, so we went across the street to a sate warung under a tarp. I had ten sticks of chicken sate grilled over burning coconut husk coals, and drenched in a spicy sweet peanut sauce. For the first time, I ordered a kind of rice that’s compressed and boiled in banana leaves. It comes in a cylinder that’s dyed green from the leaf. It sort of looks like a tamale, but it’s chopped into medallions like a cucumber into the sate sauce. So good. Ari paid for the meal in spite of my protest. Costs about a dollar.

1:00
Went back to the hotel to get the remaining bags, and trundled them down the street to our new place. Bules carrying their own bags are a bit of a spectacle here. No one understands it when you want to walk somewhere, but if you’re carrying something, it’s much worse. I got more than a dozen offers for a taxi or other transport on my way around the corner. It’s like that all the time here.

1:30
Moving into the new place released a blossom of satisfaction that I didn’t really expect. We’ve been living in hotels for almost two months, and had a full measure of frustration with their managers. It felt like taking control of my life again. Having a place to leave things behind is easy to take for granted. I walked the perimeter of our place and took deep breaths several times before I could start unpacking. It’s so great to be home.

2:00
Went down to the street to find an ojek (motorcycle taxi) to an internet café, but ran into a friendly guy who wanted to know all about this new neighbor. He introduced me to an older guy named Robi, who he later said was the leader of our neighborhood. We’ll let you know when we figure out what that means. For now, we’ve been calling him The King Of The Town. That’s a Home Star Runner reference, for those of you who love obscure internet animation references. The first guy gave me a ride to the internet place (called ”Snappy”), and refused to take my money when he dropped me off. Then he said I would have to talk to Robi later. To ”register”.

At the Snappy, I got a rejection for one of my story pitches. Bummer. Have to find another place to sell it. Trish was online at work, so we chatted about a few things, and she comforted me about the pitch. She lost her cell phone, so we talked about what to do about it. Answered the rest of my email and went back Home, but not before I drowned my sorrows in a kopi su su and a piece of skinny Indonesian fried chicken (ayam goring).

4:00
More writing, more logging of tape on the laptop.

5:00
Watched sunset from the roof of our building. It’s an amazing place up there. Everything looks green and the city looks quiet. The sun sets fast, and left me on my own in the dark to climb down the narrow ladder. The Indonesian word for the Sun, by the way, is Mata Hari. It means ”the eye of the day”.

6:30
Trish came home and cried a little about our new apartment. I knew how she felt.Ari was in the bathroom installing our toilet paper dispenser. I’m not sure he knew how we felt, but we thanked him anyway.

7:00
Took a cab to Plaza Senayan to celebrate my 35th. It’s an upscale mall, and we thought it might have a martini place. First we ate at the food court. It’s a crazy place, and nearly impossible to find a table. I once walked around for half an hour before I decided to set my tray on a trash can and eat standing up. A woman sitting with two kids at a table for ten told me the seats were reserved. I nearly wept. But this time we found a table. I had Fanta Su Su – strawberry soda with condensed milk in it. Yeah. It’s a crazy Indonesian phenomenon, with which I’ve formed a bit of a habit. I also had a two dollar ”pepper steak” from an Australian chain. I’m pretty sure it was pork. Tasted every bit as good as airline food though. Trish had a Japanese noodle bowl with duck and beef streamers. That was really good.

8:00
We searched for a new place called Red Square which advertises vodka specialties. We found it, but it had been booked for the evening by a private party. Music was thumpy and lights were a swanky shade of violet. Trish edited an annoying review of it last week, so it’s clearly an expat invention. Maybe we’ll go there the next time we want to feel affluent.

Then we found a Gelato Bar (world class ice cream with style!). Trish had a sweet green and red thing called a shady lady, and I had a Lycheetini. Weak, but excellent. Happy birthday to me.

10:00
Returned Home and settled in to bed. We watched an episode of ”Lost” on my computer. The one where the castaways find out a stranger who wasn’t on the plane has infiltrated the group.

And that's how I became 35.

2006-04-28T00:49:00.000-07:00

Okay this live journal needs a mood lightener. So for all of those who’ve been pleading for more primate pictures, here’s a simian. This is a photo of Trish interviewing one of the ring-tailed lemurs at the Singapore Zoo. Please click on the link to hear the recording. This is a good way to hear just how well our Bhasa language study is going. You might notice one of the side effects of Jakarta’s smog – it’s changed our voices just a little. She sounds a little like, I don’t know, an Indonesian version of SpongeBob Squarepants.

Click here for Trish's interview with a lemur

In Memoriam

2006-04-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

A friend and co-worker from WFIU died in a plane crash on Friday. Robert Samels was hired at the station as an announcer just a few weeks after I started there. We spent a lot of early mornings together during the years that followed. He’s received a lot of recognition for being a prolific composer and musician. Memorial messages are celebrating his talent, his creative fire, and his bottomless well of energy. While that’s all true, I got to know him first as an ally at the station, and then as a friend. He was a blast to work with, even at 4:30 in the morning. He’s actually the one who suggested I do a Pig Latin newscast years ago. We’d goof around and roll our eyes about some of the NPR stories, but when it was time to turn on the mike, Robert was an unshakable professional. He’s the guy you wanted to have at the helm when things got crazy. He could handle school closings during a snowstorm, a satellite failure, and correct my news copy spelling errors all at once. Recently, I felt like we really got to get to know each other. I didn’t have a sense of his musical gifts until I saw the production of his opera Pilatus, based of the life of Pontius Pilate. It was theater magic. I’m glad I was able to get to know all of those Roberts. My heart is with the WFIU community and Robert’s family as we mourn. Robert, thanks.

The Haunting of Merapi

2006-04-15T07:46:00.000-07:00

Well, I sold my first spot for NPR yesterday. I’m sorry to say I don’t know when it might play (likely already), and it won’t be archived. If anyone out there heard it, please let me know. It was a 35 second reader (no recorded quote from a source) about a huge volcano about 300 miles east of here that’s about to blow. I’ve been asked to contact them again if the story develops, so I’ll post a warning on this site if anything happens. For those with parental concerns about a potential eruption, let me add that Jakarta is a safe distance away, even if it pulls a Mt. St. Helens. Feels good to make a little money. I’m following plenty of other story threads at the moment that I also hope to spin into gold.

I've also included another sound postcard. It’s a “live mix” of motorcycle, bajaj, and the call to prayer. It was recorded in the evening after coming out of a movie theater at an arts center in Jakarta. I think it's a good fit with the photo of Mt. Merapi. Ancient Javanese legends say there's a kingdom at its summit.

Click here to hear an urban call to prayer.

The winning collective noun entry for lemurs, by the way, is "A haunting of lemurs". Thank you to Nick, who writes "...lemur comes from the Latin lemures, meaning 'ghosts.'"

Monkeys are Funny

2006-04-15T03:54:00.000-07:00

Here are some monkeys. Monkeys are funny, and I love them. They live in a rare patch of green between a busy port and a highway. We discovered their little habitat by accident. It was as though we’d discovered some lost world, a phantom of Jakarta’s primordial past.

We wanted to find some big cargo ships, maybe some harbor traffic to watch, maybe an ocean breeze to clear our sooted lungs. Unfortunately, we ended up taking a little truck-taxi (“angkot”) into a traffic jam and stewed in the blue of the motorbike smoke for more than a half hour. I thought I might pass out from asphyxiation. I have a special fascination for the architecture of maritime industry, but by the time we arrived at the pier, the last thing I wanted to see was an industrial landscape. On our way out, we stumbled on an abandoned military training camp, the sole guardian of which was a blackened dummy holding a paper attack rifle.

Jakarta harbors one of the oldest working wooden schooner fleets in the world, called Sunda Kalapa. We toured the pier, but were horrified to find a pod of naked boys jumping into the murky blue-grey water. It was a slow day at the port. A tour guide said the fleet had been grounded because of some legal battle over logging in Kalimantan. I’m afraid we felt not so much moved by the port’s 800 year history as we felt unmoved. It was hot, and the pier didn’t afford a view of the open water as we’d hoped.

Discouraged but determined, we got into a cab. Not a proper salve for either condition. For the next hour, we drove onto the toll road, then off the toll road, back along a parallel service road, up a canal road, and back onto another highway. The young driver didn’t know where we were going, and neither did we. We kept pointing to a postage stamp of green near the water on the map. Jakarta cabbies, and we’ve heard Indonesians in general, don’t know how to read a map. “Dekat air besar.” I thought I was saying: “Close to the big water”. He didn’t seem to think I was saying that. We drove around and around until we finally just told the guy “okay, stop here”. “Ma’af,” he said again and again, apologizing, clearly embarrassed. He let us out next to an enormous guarded gate of a marina for the implausibly wealthy. We asked the armed security guys if we could walk around inside. I also asked if we could just go down to the big water. They laughed us away, pointing toward the road. Hilarious. I thought. Lost bules are funny.

It turns out, as we found out later in bhasa class from our teacher, that although “Air besar” literally means ‘big water”, it’s used commonly to mean a movement of the bowels.

By that point in the day, we’d both earned ourselves a formidable smog headache. Walking and hazy along the busy highway, we found a path that led into a low forest. “Maybe we can just get away from the road in here,” I said.

The path turned into a rotting bridge over a vegetated swamp, crowned by a canopy of green. We totally bathed ourselves in the smell of forest air. Then I found myself nearly eye to eye with a huge male monkey. It took me more than a moment to name the thing in front of me. At first my head saw a dog or a raccoon. He squatted on a railing, politely waiting for the humans to pass. Then a second, skinnier and bolder monkey jumped up to the railing too.

As we scrambled to get the camera out of the bag, a whole tribe of a dozen or more passed over the bridge, two of them carrying babies. We spend a long time there, watching them swing around in the trees, scavenge for fruit, and wrestle among themselves.

I think I have found my favorite place in Jakarta.

Uniquely Singapore

2006-04-14T07:34:00.000-07:00

It’s been just over a month now, which is surprising in a lot of ways. I’m surprised that time has gone by so quickly. I’m also surprised that only a month has passed. I’ve managed to adapt to heat, crowds, bad air, language barriers, and life in a hotel. I’m surprised to find myself in reasonably good health, even though I’ve been eating street food every day. I’m surprised that my spirits are so buoyant in spite of bearing witness to constant poverty, terrible sanitation, and constant smog. Surprised that we have a house, that Trish has a job, and that we’re winning an ever expanding circle of friends. It seems like I should have lived out a whole incarnation by now. Still, in some ways, I had planned to be further along by this point.

On that note, I'd like to post the audio for my Pig Latin newscast for WFIU. It's at the end of the feature. Just about 5:45 into the file, but I'd like to encourage you to listen to the whole thing.

http://wfiu.indiana.edu/sat_feature/040106-sf.ram

So the one month mark means we’ve had to make what expats call “The Singapore Rush”. A tourist visa only lasts for 30 days here, so you have to get out of the country and come back in order to renew the permit. Singapore is the closest and cheapest foreign destination, so it’s become very common for expats working under the Indonesian radar to make a frantic round trip just to keep our paperwork current. Trish will get a work visa in a couple of months as part of the Jakarta Post job, but I’ll have to figure out an alternative. The round trip to S’pore isn’t cheap. When you add up hotel, taxi, airplane ticket, visa fees and Indonesia’s unique but charming “exit tax”, the bill adds up quickly. Especially if you decide to spend the day at the zoo, miss your plane in the evening, and spend another night in town, only to buy an expensive new plane ticket the next morning. Our trip was an exhausting and costly comedy of errors – one that’s not really funny “ha-ha”. The kind that would give my Hobbitty father some dark and troubling travel nightmares.

We loved the zoo though, and our day there provided a much needed and literal breath of fresh air. The contrast couldn’t have been more stark. I found myself at times more fascinated with the air quality than I was with the animals. The smell of waterfalls, rich soil, respiring tropical greens, and even exotic poop seemed like aromatherapy after a month of Jakarta’s grey and leaded atmosphere. Still, it’s a really great zoo. It’s set up like the one in Ashboro, NC, for those of you who’ve been there. Open exhibits with moats instead of cages, and sometimes several species mixed in a single habitat. The most impressive exhibit had a pod of ring-tailed lemurs (someone find me the plural noun for lemur!), colorful birds of paradise, flying foxes (bats so big we thought they were winged monkeys!), and a kajillion exotic butterflies.

The bats and lemurs came within just a few feet of the us, and Trish had some trouble shedding a mane of butterflies from her pink shirt. One of the lemurs bit chubby Chinese visitor while we were there, and we’re glad. She was teasing them with a map and deserved even worse.

The zoo brags that it has the largest collection of primates in the world. Primates are my favorite. Monkeys are funny. We accidentally discovered a few wild ones in Jakarta, but I’ll save that story for another time. The zoo’s monkeys, chimps, orangutans, and baboons are worth a whole day by themselves. I can imagine going to the Singapore zoo each time I have to make the “Singapore Rush”. If only to breathe its funky but refreshing air.

I think we’ve been undergoing a shift from first impressions and culture shock to a life more grounded. I’d hoped for the live journal to be a kind of shoebox for all the things I’ve seen with new eyes. After a whole month here, I’m afraid there are a lot things I’ve already gotten used to, and that I might be overlooking. So I’d like to ask readers to tell me the kinds of details they’d like to hear about. I’ve still got a growing cache of stories that I haven’t posted yet, plenty to write about, and more pictures and audio in the wings, but I’m looking for a few good prompts.

Things that no longer make me blink:
Avocado juice drinks
Riding on the back of a motorcycle in a traffic jam (“ojeks”)
Fried fish heads
Distain for Chinese Indonesians
Monkeys along the side of the road
Cats without tails
Sesame ice cream
Dizzying class disparity
Magic ninja soap operas
Haunted houses
Getting lost in a cab
Shoe shiners in restaurants
Endless ads for “whitening” cream on MTV
“Mister! Where are you going?”
Indonesian punk bands
Eating with a spoon in the right hand and a fork in the right
Head scarf fashion
Umbrella boys

Jakarta Concert

2006-04-03T00:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.archive.org/download/monkeymix/monkeyMixdown.mp3

Here’s my first attempt at posting sound on the live journal.

What you’ll hear is a group of musicians who were traveling around the Pejompongan neighborhood, performing with a trained monkey. They were like Pied Pipers, followed by a band of giggling kids. There’s no picture to go with the sound, because we would have been obligated to give them money if we’d taken a picture. In fact this sound is tragic to me. The monkey had a thick chain around its neck, and was frantically performing little acts on cardboard props like tricycles, wheel barrows, and plows. At one point, he was dressed in a Mexican bandolier and sombrero outfit, and walked around with a cardboard pistol. He didn’t look happy. So we didn’t take the picture. The sound, however, is too haunting to dismiss. You’ll also notice the accompanying whine of a skill saw in the background. This is one of those precious recordings that I like to call a “live mix”. Two overlapping sounds which compose a dialogue, in a real setting in real time. A monkey band and a construction site. What could be more Jakarta?

As it happens, the whole thing was recorded in front of one of our top housing choices. There are four apartments in the building, one to a floor. It’d be a little less immersed that other places in the area, but it’s got a great view. You could be hearing the sound of a saw cutting trim for our mandi-to-be. The music you hear may be the theme song to our new apartment. And who doesn’t feel a little like a monkey on a chain from time to time?

Rootlets

2006-04-02T06:01:00.000-07:00

The hotel life is getting stale. Stale as square white bread. That's what comes as a courtesy breakfast at Hotel Karya. We’re ready to put the single room, the leaking toilet, the blank walls, the Dutch toast, and the tourist slum behind us. Yesterday, we returned to a promising neighborhood to look around some more.

Last weekend, someone we met at the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents’ Club invited us to take a look at the house he’s moving out of. AP Chris also showed us around the Pejompongan area, which means “a rallying place”, though it’s sleepy and green by Jakarta standards. The way one hunts for a house here, according to AP Chris, is one finds someone and ask them. Imagine that. “Everyone’s a real estate agent.” Apartment finders get some kind of commission on the deal, so the incentive to help you out is pretty strong. Chris just pulled his car over the the side of the narrow road and asked a group under an umbrella if there’s any houses for rent. In no time, we were led through a warren of apartments - some horrifyingly dark and grubby, but a few really great living spaces. Landlords generally want one or two years of rent up front though, which is a little tough to commit to when we’re still unsure about income.

The gem of our hunt, found at the bottom of a dead end, was Ibu Amin, a 78 year old Pakistani immigrant who radiated grandmotherly charm. “I can’t sleep in a messy house,” she said. She reminded me, with a pang of heartache, of my own Memere. She actually offered to move out of her own house if we wanted to rent it instead of the one next door. I think she just wanted to show us the sheen of her mandi tile. Her pride in bathroom cleanliness lit her face, as did glow of pride in her five sons and 17 grandchildren. Though her Bahasa was well enunciated, it was clear she wasn’t going to slow down for beginners. I can imagine having many long, misunderstood conversations with her in the late afternoon sun. Could be charming, but could be a serious liability.

The apartment she’s renting is painted in a dizzying combination of blues, and includes two stained glass windows. The generous downstairs has two bedrooms and a large open living room with plenty of light. On a second floor, up an impossibly narrow spiral staircase, there’s a whole other apartment, with a small kitchen, another mandi, and a windowless bedroom. It’s probably designed to house a live-in maid, which is depressing. The most attractive part of the house is an open upstairs patio with a calming view of the neighborhood’s orange roofs and mango treetops. It’s funny how this city, from the right angle, can seem like a paradise. From an altitude of just five meters, all the garbage and rats and traffic and dilapidation disappears under a bed of greens.

She’s a beautiful woman, but it’s worth being cautious about grandmothers next door. She clearly has a standard of tidy we’d never be able to equal, and there’s no telling what kind of offenses we might accidentally commit against a Muslim neighbor with nothing but time on her hands to editorialize about the young bule couple.

For the same amount of money we spent for a windowless basement in Bloomington, we can get a really nice two or three bedroom house or apartment with balconies and office space, and probably hire someone to help us keep it clean. The hiring of help is an issue we have yet to wrestle with. Most expats here eventually hire a “helper”, and I feel like we’re already getting used to the idea. It takes a certain standard of cleaning to keep the critters out of one’s home, and Trish and I are…not used to keeping a place up to that standard, shall we say. There’s still something that feels a little colonial about hiring “helpers”, but I suppose that’s all in how the business relationship plays out.

I have to say, overall, I feel encouraged. Now that we’ve dipped in to the word of mouth network and have begun to make friends and contacts, this whole move seems to make a little more sense and it all seems a bit more manageable. Some days are really hard. You have to exert a full measure of effort to appreciate this city, and the foul breath of despair is always warms the shoulders. The dirt and the garbage and the noise and the traffic can catch up with you when your defenses are down. Today, however, I think I love it here.

Technomare

2006-03-31T03:57:00.000-08:00

We're past the second week of our Jakarta life, and it just barely feels like we live here. We’ve been living and working out of a hotel in Jalan Jaksa, which is a seedy little street that caters to backpackers. The only work we’ve actually produced here has been voice-over.

Recording tracks has been a plague of unfortunate events. Over the course of one oddysseian 24 hours period last week, we tried to read an assignment that should have taken us just a few hours. At first, a yappy little dog outside our window seemed to cleverly interrupt only our good takes. That, on top of hotel staff shouting to each other and sometimes even singing pop songs loudly in the hall. Other soundtracks include the call to prayer, which go on for 20 minutes - longer if the callers are particularly inspired – and the bawl of unmuffled two-stroke engines.

As if combustion thunder claps weren’t enough, a monsoon shut us down in the middle of production. Rainfall drummed so loudly on the roof that we couldn’t even hear each other, and the wall of noise was punctuated by a booming sky. When it stopped, workers arrived with tin and ladders to bang out a kluge for the leaking roof.

I’ll post our recording of the ceiling torrent when I can figure out how to post MP3s.

On top of that, we had to navigate a seemingly endless shoal of technical problems. Two computers, but only one working sound card, one working Adobe Audition program, one file sharing device, and not a cord or magic trick to “in the darkness bind them”. It also seemed to take about a half hour to post each sound file over the dopey Wartel internet connection.

(Note to blogreading employers – we seem to have the tech issues worked out. This is not a backdoor complaint to management. Please keep sending us lots of American dollars.)

So work comes with a set of challenges that we’re learning to weather. Finding unexpected factors has always been our expectation.

Speaking of weird assignments, I recorded a newscast in pig latin for WFIU that will air (In shalah) tomorrow morning. If you listen very closely, you’ll probably be able to hear the call to prayer in the background. My life seems to be heading in some strange directions, lately.

You Are Living New Word Disorder

2006-03-30T06:24:00.000-08:00

Local marketing’s a major moniker minefield. Indonesian branding is both unappealing and irresistible. For example, the title of this post is an actual tee-shirt slogan spotted in Bloc M, a South Jakarta mega market. I’ll just post a list of other shirt slogans we’ve seen, because they speak for themselves. I’m sure you’ll see more on this website. I love them dearly.

120% Bastard. - Help, don’t treat like that.

Surferer

Router Generation

A great party in Sunday evening I can give you some present and I think you will be surprise then you’ll know how much.

That’s why people pick up collections - will help make them more energetic.

Other side in very a night life grasp.

Skill of releasing real culture linked with evolved from exist of the globe.

We’ve also caught some unfortunate language on snack packages. “Oops” brand chicken flavored crackers are actually pretty tasty. I’m not sure I want to know what they think went wrong. Chitato, on the other hand, is a pretty clever name for chicken flavored potato chips. Durian flavored candy isn’t so much a bad name as it is a bad product. Sand Pie isn’t as gritty as it sounds, but it’s dangerously flaky.

In China, expats call such verbadelic translations “Chinglish”. I suppose the local variant might be called “Inglish”, but that would only work on paper. Okay, blog readers, I’d like to open the floor for discussion. Indolish? Bhasa Anglonesia?

More Jakarta Sound

2006-03-26T22:20:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, we went out to a kind of battle of the bands in South Jakarta billed as “A Night in Hell”. The invite came by text message from an Australian guy we met a few months ago on the expat forum. The venue was called “Intro”, though John told us it was called “Options”, so we had some misadventures finding it – it seemed like we might as well been looking for Narnia.

The club was not much more than a two storey box with a small stage and a picketed balcony. The front spilled over onto a teeming patio. Inside, clove smoke choked the room. Cloudy and packed, the place reminded me of a dive I knew in Maine fifteen years ago and eight thousand miles away. John wasn’t hard to find. Self-described as the “tall white guy in a yellow t-shirt”, we found John standing a full foot above the swaying mob.

We saw four bands play. The first group emulated Bright Eyes, and tried to bring a sensitive indie rock sound. The lead singer of Come On Lennon performed one song while laying on his back, knees akimbo. It gave me a false impression we might be in for a sleepy night.

Then the boys from Noxa charged onto the stage, and in their wake a darker crowd. I saw more than one “Slayer” tee-shirt among them. “Well nourished,” said John, describing the players. They certainly were thick people, heavy enough to pound out some convincing death metal. The lead singer growled his Lemmy best in between energetic head thrashing seizures. Totally entertaining. I’d see them again in a second.

The charismatic Brandals opened with a couple of catchy pop songs that I think must have been their own. Those were the best of their set. They followed with a bundle of 60s tired covers like Johnny B. Good. Still, they’re a group with personality, and are well known here. I saw a Brandals sweatshirt at Bloc M later in the week, hanging next to No Fear and No FX apparel.

My favorite of the night would have to be Getah, a tight indie metal group whose influences were refreshingly difficult to track. My 80’s music catalogue would put them between Fugazi and the Chilli Peppers. Crunchy guitar god stuff. They finished with a slamming cover of The Wall. That was a weird moment, singing along with a crowd of Indonesians to a song I once adopted as an anti-third-grade anthem.

John seems to have be a good hall monitor for the Jakarta music scene. With no English language weekly for event listings, the SMS network he’s plugged into may be the best way to find out about gigs in the city. His review is encouraging. He says with the exception of Japan, Indonesia may have the best music scene in Asia.

The club reminded me in one other way of The Penny Post back in Old Town. I had to put my clothes in a plastic bag at the end of the evening. A little reek of brimstone is part of the admission price, I suppose, for a Night in Hell.

Balance

2006-03-26T22:14:00.000-08:00

An inventory of the senses has got to include something about equilibrium; usually neglected in a list if the top five or six. Jakarta more than anywhere else reminds me that bipedal walking is actually a series of little interrupted falls. Tottering along Jakarta’s crowded roads and sidewalks, interruptions come mid-step. In daytime, the curb becomes a tented alley. People cook, sell, wash, squat, eat, sleep, and otherwise carve out their livelihood. Every stride has to account for a dozen or more competing vectors. Chances are good for a collision or an awkward impasse. The concrete slabs are uneven, broken, slippery and yawn without warning into open sewers below. Jostled, tripping, dithered steps, off-plumb all the while. Walking along the street, obstacles are fewer, but velocities much higher. This is not a walker’s city. Crossing traffic is a sport. There only seems to be one law: fall into the empty space.

Feel

2006-03-26T22:08:00.000-08:00

After more than a week submerged in Jakarta’s hot smog, I’m actually beginning to feel better about our new climate. Seven years in North Carolina is pretty good preparation for Indonesia’s heat. Some days have been gentler than others. Cloudy days with a morning rain are best – the air quality always seems better after a scrub. I remember sitting on the steps of my old farm shack in Durham, praying for an afternoon thunderstorm. On clear days like today, the sun chafes angrily, and the air is smothered with soot. I endured plenty of days like that back in NC, working on hot top roofs and flirting with heat stroke. The air was cleaner on the farm, of course. Chili paste, which comes with everything here, opens the pores and cools the skin. There I used a little green watering can to douse myself several times a day, much like traditional mandi bathing with a scoop. But here it will always be August, and rain dances will only be answered for half of the year.

Sounds

2006-03-19T21:13:00.000-08:00

The city’s vast fleet of three-wheeled bajaj (bahj’-eye) and motorbikes goes largely unmuffled. The effect is a constant and undulating thunder. The sound reminds me most of a go-cart track. Last August, my friend and I went to a bike path outside of Bloomington to see if we could catch some of St. (x’s) shooting stars. The nearby race track was so loud that night we could barely hear each other call out sightings. The contrast between flatulent stock car and calm summer sky was dizzying. Here there’s no contrast at all. You just have to thrum along. I wonder when and if I’ll get used to the rumble.

I’m fascinated by the sounds of the ubiquitous vendor carts around the city. I’m told each kind of cart has its own sound so people can tell what kind of food or service may be passing by. I think we’ll collect recordings and make a soundscape of them at some point. Yesterday we collected the eerie electronic song of the ice cream cart. We’ve also heard a high wooden block sound from some kind of food cart. A cart covered with sloshing buckets made a short little howl – maybe from a wooden whistle?

I love the call to prayer. The distant, lonely sound stirs me the same as a train whistle. In Jakarta, the song comes from all directions in a kind of round. It’s most melancholic at dawn, when a single bay rises out of the dark, followed by a chorus of distant answers. The call makes me feel all at once like an insider and an outsider. There’s something about sound I understand – something desperate that moves me to tears if I’m alone. On the other hand, it underscores my separateness. This is not my culture. Not my language. This song, which is an invitation for most people here, is not meant for me.

Smells

2006-03-19T21:11:00.000-08:00

They are as eccentric as colors smeared on an oil painter’s palette. Clove cigarette and diesel smoke: a dry-brushed rusty grey. The broken stone sidewalks waft a landscape; staccato curls of lemon grass, dabs of coffee, points of frying fish, and a spongy batik of burning coconut husks. Fermenting garbage, old urine, sate smoke and incense are applied with a knife.

First meals

2006-03-16T18:35:00.000-08:00

Some readers have asked for food adventure details, so here goes…

Pictured above: A fruit that seems to be in season, sold on every corner. They look like potatoes, feel like figs, and taste like very sweet grapfruit. I'll find out the name and post it soon.

We’ve had two very good meals so far, and the remainder were unremarkable.

Last night, we walked down the street from our hotel to Jalan Jaksa, an infamous backpacker area. There we found a restaurant from the guidebook - Pappa’s. We each ordered an Indonesian curry and chased it with a sips of Binteng beer. I had a yellow curry with hunks of chicken on the bone. The coconut and lemongrass stew wore potatoes, green beans, and small, sweet onions. Served over a cake of white rice. The most notable flavor was the lemongrass, which has high, complex notes when it’s really fresh.

The restaurant was more like a large covered patio in front of a bar with colorful blue and red walls. Two huge speakers blared out four of the same Indo pop techno songs during our ninety minute visit.

This morning we wandered around looking for breakfast and obsessed in our search for kopi su su. After getting lost and passing through some fascinating but unappetizing alleys, we discovered a boxy little place on a corner advertising the milky nectar. We shared a small glass of the stuff, which swam with grounds and condensed milk. Geckos crawled along the walls surreptitiously. A plastic bowl of greens and yellow broth steamed in front of Trish, and she ordered a portion over rice, adding fingers of tempeh on top. I ordered a boiled egg stewed in red sauce and sautéed eggplant over rice, with a smear of the best chili paste I think I’ve ever had. The whole effect was intoxicating, spicy and flavorful. We watched the owners make tofu stew, egg rolls, and other tempting treats. I think we’ll be going back.

It’s the best meal we’ve had since our arrival.

First Impressions

2006-03-15T17:25:00.000-08:00

The landscape at first reminded me of Florida – flat and bepalmed. But en route to the Arcadia Hotel, we passed men under makeshift muslin tents fishing in the brown-green canals. I wonder about the mutations that might lurk below. We passed scores of skinny miniature goats gamboling uncomfortably close to the road. Medians covered in fountain grasses and white alien flowers rocked from the traffic’s constant tumult. Light posts are covered to the hilt in a sheath of tangled ivies. Collecting toll tickets, paying the cab driver in unrecognizable currency. The grey-brown air already burned my throat. And then the highway rose up out of the jungle plain, offering a view of the sprawling city ahead. Corrugated rusted tin and blue plastic roofed shacks flanked the huge pink Hotel Ciputra as we careened off the highway and onto Jakarta’s chaotic streets. Short, white onion-domed towers sprout out of the landscape like capped lactaria mushrooms.

This is no Florida, no Bloomington, not even Shanghai. We look at each other as the car pulls up to the hotel.

“Whoa,” I say, “we live here.”

Space Travel

2006-03-15T16:13:00.000-08:00

From the air, the rice patties along the north coast of Java decorate the landscape with wet, irregular trapezoids. And over the land mass below, the sky seems to boil into a froth of towering thunderheads. The whole scene is infused with grey haze. It looks hot.

A thirty-four hour air voyage isn’t nearly as bad as I expected. I slept for eight hours of the trip, and waking hours were full of distractions like bad snacks and bad movies. One forgets after a few hours that there’s thirty thousand feet of atmosphere underneath the seats, and that the world’s mightiest ocean lies below that. We had central aisle seats for the longest leg of the trip from San Francisco to Taipei, and couldn’t see the full moon as we chased it across the globe. Knew it was there all the while, though.

Inflight movie ‘Prime” seemed to take up at least 6 hours of the flight. The chemistry between Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep is…inert.

The hardest part of the trip was facing the dozens of cart porters and taxi agents at the airport. They’re aggressive, and our defenses were down. We got to a Blue Bird taxi and all the way to our hotel nonetheless.

Will have to post pics later- dial-up internet cafe won't cooperate. Stay tuned.

Good Stay

2006-03-13T18:15:00.000-08:00

(Written during flight to Dallas en route to Jakarta)

In Indonesian, the way to say goodbye is dialectical. A person wishing someone a good trip would say “selamat jalan”. But in response, the person who’s leaving says “selamat tinggal”, which means: good stay. It’s funny there’s not such an easy way to wish someone well in their life at home in English.

I spent my last Bloomintonian morning walking around in the pouring rain. It’s been a wet couple of weeks, and even when the sky dried up, grassy areas squished like soaked washcloths underfoot.

Having packed until about two o’clock last night, I found myself walking from our apartment to the Hotel 6 we’d reserved. The air was warm and breezy around “Lake Fernandez” in Millers-Showers Park. I used to live across from the park, which is really a broad median between one-way arteries at the town’s north gate. In fact, the building is called “Park View”. I used to laugh with my roommate Collin at the irony; the city clear-cut the park and turned it into a muddy wasteland during the year we lived there. Now it’s lovely, with reflecting pools, bridges, waterfalls, and walkways. But the landscape still bears the scars of newly cleared land, and it’ll be 10 years before it outgrows its architect-model sheen.

There was something magic about the walk, though. Last night’s mild spell seemed to inspire hundreds of the city’s songbirds to stay up late. I heard familiar songs whose authors I couldn’t name, and the affect was stirring.

So I’ll say goodbye to clean air for a while. And to vacant streets in the middle of the night. So long to Roots, The Bakehouse, Little Tibet, Plan 9, easements, the Jordan, and the tracks north of town. I’ll miss the sound of Westminster Chimes in the morning, and the howl of the train at night.

And to the people I’m leaving on the ground today, and you know who you are…

Selamat Tinggal.

Shedding

2006-03-12T18:25:00.000-08:00

We donated our bikes to the Bloomington Bicycle Project this evening. The people in the busy little brick shop all smiled warmly when we wheeled our old friends inside. That’s a lovely feeling. We’ve given an arresting amount of our stuff to Goodwill over the last couple of months. It certainly feels good to know we’re helping a little, but the employees don’t advertise their gratitude like they did at the BBP. I also gave them a box of old cassette tapes; they’d posted a request for music on their wish list white board. Music to listen to while they tinker, I suppose. Chili Peppers, Hal Wilner, Bauhaus, Michael Hedges, No Means No, Angelo Badalamenti. I told them it was all the music I liked in 1992. It makes me happy to think my old soundtrack will keep playing in Bloomington, staying behind to help fix up old bikes. Tomorrow we’ll give our cell phones to the Women’s shelter.

I wish there was a place to donate juggling pins.

final countdown

2006-03-12T18:23:00.000-08:00

It feels like I’m going into space. I think preparing for a 34-hour flight is probably something like what an astronaut goes though during their final days on Earth. How many times did, say, Michael Collins – before the launch of Apollo 11 - check his space toiletries bag for dental floss? How many psychic breakdowns did Neil have on the morning of July 16th, 1969? “Where are the tickets again?”, “I thought I put my passport in the top pocket of my space duffel, but it’s gone. Who moved my passport?!” I imagine even Laika must have chewed at the base of her tail during the moments before Sputnik II launched.

Actually, I’m happy to report a relative sense of calm. The last few days have undulated over high peaks of action and fleeting troughs of self-satisfaction. Mainly before and after something else goes out the door. Anxiety has been almost entirely about what’s left to do here, not about the chaos waiting for me on the far side of the international dateline.

One more day. One more peak. One more baby step for mankind. I think I’ll go out and look at the waxing gibbous moon.

Immune

2006-02-15T21:48:00.000-08:00

Today I got my last round of shots. I’m done with injections of hepatitis A and hepatitis B, Polio and Japanese Encephalitis. The latter is my favorite. Before I went to the vaccination clinic last time, I was coming down with an unmistakable ick. I had a sore throat, a tight chest, and felt like I was encased in antique glass. I asked the clinician if she thought it would be a problem for the vaccination if I was already ill. No, she said, these bugs are pretty strong. She shook the little bottle next to her ear. Maybe she hears them say things sometimes.

Anyhow, I walked out of the clinic and did a few bank errands – on the edge of what I expected to be a blossoming head and chest cold. After a couple of hours though, all at once, my symptoms cleared up.

I think Japanese Encephalitis kicked the butt of my puny little Midwestern cold.

In Between

2006-02-14T19:07:00.000-08:00

One month from now, I will be in flight. The 14th of March will put me in between worlds. I’ll be perched on the border between countries, dates, times, and lives. I expect to feel like no less (and no more) than an astronaut. 36 hours is a serious long time to be in space without leg room or proper lumbar support.

But right now I feel fully supported. I’m sleeping on an inflatable mattress in a bomb-proof basement apartment dug out of the planet Earth amid amber waves of Midwestern grain. I don’t think I imagined it would be this hard to leave Bloomington. It’s a thing I think about all the time.