Week 3 -- Part 1

I’ve been away from the office for the last two days with a little sniffle and a sore throat. Nothing to get worried about and I think the folks at the office were more concerned with me being contagious than being too sick to work. Combined with the Buddhist Day of Enlightenment on Tuesday, it has been a slow week. The Buddhist Day of Enlightenment is a national holiday, so even though there are no Buddhists in the office, to the best of my knowledge, we all took the day off. I explained to them that just like on St. Patrick’s Day in North America when we are all Irish, on Tuesday we were all Buddhist. I went to the new Star Wars movie with Pagitta, the secretary at LATIN, and let my geekdom shine through the veneer of cool for one day.

Even though it’s been a slow work week I’ve been thinking a lot about work lately. I really want to get things going here but it just hasn’t been working. I’ve been able to do work on my own such as pitching stories about LATIN to various publications, but I realize it will take time to see results from that stuff. But other stuff, like editing the translated copy for the website and leaflet is work I could be doing now and using in my PR work. Unfortunately I’m waiting on someone else to do the initial translation which leaves me with little to do after sending out e-mail queries all morning. I’m trying not to get frustrated, but it’s hard when my time here is limited. It’s already been three weeks and I feel as though I’ve accomplished very little. So far all I have to show for my time here is an agreement to write two stories, one for the oMega and one for the Kamloops Daily News.

I had a meeting today with Arif, my supervisor, and Nana, the GIS guy here. We were making a plan for the re-working of the website. I’ve made a few design suggestions that we’ve decided to go ahead with. Nana designed the original website using Photoshop then translating the Photoshop file into HTML and somehow getting it published from that. I have no idea exactly what he did, so I suggested getting Dreamweaver for this new work I’ll be doing. They will try to get Dreamweaver on my computer and then I will essentially re-create the whole website using Dreamweaver. To get Dreamweaver they have to unplug my computer from where it is and take the hard drive downstairs to somewhere we can plug in to the Internet, so we can download Dreamweaver from the Net. I hope it all works out. Nana will provide me with as many of the original files as he can so I don’t have to start from scratch. Since I always thought this website was going to be my main project I am excited to be starting it. The design won’t be anything amazing since someone will have to take over the maintenance when I leave.

I don’t feel downtrodden though; there is still a lot of time to get stuff done. And when I think of all the publications out there to approach I know that I’ll get some interest. I’ve started at the top with publications like National Geographic, the Globe & Mail and the New York Times and will slowly work my way down the ladder. I think that LATIN and the issues they work on are very interesting and worthy of a story or two. Natural resource management is becoming an international issue because the environment doesn’t separate itself along national borders. First World nations that have the privilege to be able to care about conservation of the environment need to help developing nations ensure that they plan for a sustainable future as they race to catch up with us. Too often consideration for the environment and infrastructure, such as clean drinking water, is ignored in the interests of profit and investment. LATIN is definitely on the right track when they talk about starting partnerships with international organizations to share knowledge and experience so that we can all work more effectively in our own countries and areas of interest.

On a personal note I am learning exactly how big a role religion plays in the lives of Indonesians. It seems that people are praying all around me, all the time. My Muslim friends and co-workers are stopping to pray at the appropriate times and one day the girl that works at the computer next to me just started praying away right next to me while I continued to work. Even my Catholic home stay family is very devout. At first I thought they would be a little more laid back, but I was wrong. I went to a birthday party for one of their relatives the other night and they stated the whole thing by praying for a bit before breaking into a round of “Happy Birthday.” I was so glad when they started singing something that I could join in on without feeling as though I was disrespecting their religion. And Uti has essentially demanded that I go to church with her on Saturday night. Despite my lame excuses about not having been to church since I was very young and the fact that I’m not even Catholic, she still wants me to go. I’m still trying to think of a way out of it, but I may have to resign myself to sitting through a sermon in a language I don’t understand. I can only hope that the pews are cushioned.

I’ve also been having some interesting discussions with Mickey, Uti’s youngest son. He is in his mid-thirties and works as a freelance translator. We’ve talked a lot about books and culture in general. He was an activist when he was a student and even spent a few days in jail after being arrested for protesting against former president Suharto. It was inevitable that we started discussing politics and religion. The most interesting thing I’ve found out so far is that when the Catholic community grows and wants to build a new church they get denied by the Muslim majority. Even though Catholicism is one of the approved religions in Indonesia, they don’t have the freedom to build a new church when they want, they must ask for approval from the local government, which is dominated by Muslims. On a side note, the Catholics also share their church with the local Protestants. So Saturday night is Catholic mass and Monday morning is for the Protestant sermon.

We also talked about how it is illegal to marry outside your religion. Mickey didn’t go so far as to say that he thought it was wrong, but he did acknowledge that when he was younger he had fallen for Muslim girls, but the relationship never went anywhere because of their different religious beliefs.

I’m starting to think that Uti may be trying to set me up. We talked last night about what kind of women I am attracted to; I told her tall with pretty eyes. She told me that Indonesians consider lighter skin to be more attractive, so light skinned Indonesians and foreigners are considered to be more attractive. I assumed that the language barrier was keeping us from communicating too effectively and I chose to ignore the racist implications of what she was saying.

I’m starting to think that even in three months I’ll never be able to figure out all the subtleties of Indonesian culture. All I can do is keep smiling when they smile and laughing when they laugh.

2nd Weekend -- New Digs with Charlie, Zoey and Uncle Henry

This post could also have been titled "The Honeymoon is Over." I think I've hit the point where the initial excitement and energy of being in a new place has passed and I am now dealng with the reality of having to live and work here for three months. For the last two weeks I've been content to spend whole days just staring out the windows and sitting on benches watching the Indonesian world flow past, but that is not so exciting anymore and I'm ready to start expanding the boundaries of my comfort zone. My comfort zone being the route from work to home and back.

I'm getting comfortable with using angkuts (mini-buses) and ojeks (motorcycle taxis), although I still have no idea how the fare system works and nobody has been able to explain it to me. It's based on the distance you travel and everybody seems to know how much a trip costs, but when I ask them to explain how many rupiahs correspond to a set distance they can't give me an answer. I've resigned myself to overpaying for now, until I can communicate well enough with the drivers to work out the correct price.

I moved into my new place on Friday after work. It is a room in the house of one of my co-workers grandmother, who is now my grandmother. I call her Uti which is the Indonesian word for grandmother. Her youngest son, Mickey and his wife Tree, also live in the house. We are one big happy family. The house is in a quiet neighbourhood near the Air Force base and I've taken to going for short jogs in the mornings before it gets too hot. Although on Saturday when I went for my first run I was more concerned about keeping a slow pace so as not to overexert myself that I didn't pay close attention to where I was going. Pretty soon I was too tired to keep running, had no money, no idea of what my new address was and no way of asking someone how to get home. I was a little worried, but I just turned around and backtracked my way home. For today's run I chose a shorter distance and essentially did a circle so that I would end up in the same place as where I started. I always hear the locals talking as I run by and although I can't be sure I would bet that they are saying "What is that crazy foreigner running for?" Indonesians don't see the point in walking or running anywhere because there are so many angkuts around and ojeks on every corner that you don't really need to walk anywhere. My co-workers are surprised that I don't mind walking the last stretch to the office, which is really about the same as walking from one of the outer parking lots at TRU to Old Main.

My room has a private bathroom, or water closet as they are refered to here. It comes complete with traditional Indonesian squat toilet and bak mandi, which is a water resevoir used to scoop out water for a bath. What I've always called a good old bucket shower. The WC also has three resident geckos that sun themselves in the window all day. The first I noticed was quite small and I called him Charlie, then later I noticed two other larger geckos who I have named Zoey and Uncle Henry. Charlie never leaves the WC, but Zoey and Uncle Henry can be seen commuting back and forth to the kitchen throughout the day. After my first shower I saw the biggest bug I've seen in Indionesia so far scurry out of the WC into my room and under my cupboards. I couldn't be sure if it was a cockroach since it wasn't hissing, I'm certainly not in Madagascar and Joe Rogan wasn't there to try and get me to eat it. I found out later from Mickey that it was a cockroach and I have been on the hunt for it ever since. But they are crafty little buggers, crafty I tell you.

Speaking of reality TV, they have Indonesian versions of Idol and Fear Factor here as well. The Fear Factor show is called Radical and the Idol show is pretty much the same as the American and Canadian versions. I watched Indonesian Idol with Uti last night and she was quite touched when the contestant started crying after being eliminated. I did my best not to laugh out loud.

I've also got a kick-ass mosquito net over my bed that gives me the feeling of sleeping in a tent. The whole household gathered to watch me put it up and were quite amazed. Last night I had the best sleep yet since I had confidence in my mosquito net to protect me from the malaria-carrying pests. And as a side effect of my malaria pills (Malarone for all you chemists) I've been having especially vivid dreams. Last night I dreamt I was staying in a haunted condo with a bunch of people before catching a flight the next day. I had watched a show on MTV earlier in the day that dealt with a similar story except it was travel show about models going to India and visiting a haunted temple or castle or something. There were also endless commercials for that movie, House of Wax,
on TV throughout the day and I guess they all contributed to the content of my dreams. The vividness of my dreams has been neat, but I wasn't so happy when I dreamt that my girlfriend cheated on me. I was in a bad mood for a while over that one.

Tomorrow is the Buddhist Day of Enlightenment and a national holiday. I may come into the office anyways to do personal stuff on the computer. I think everyone is getting warmed up for the holiday today, since hardly anyone is in the office. I'm surprised since I didn't know that anyone in the office was Buddhist, in fact I know that most of them are Muslim.

Later today I am going to the bank to get rent for Uti before she starts to think I am a freeloader and I may buy a cellphone too. I've been told it's cheap and everyone has one. Even people in villages with no cellular service have cellphones just so they can complete the look. I also think it's time to spread my wings, as they say, and head to Jakarta next weekend. I want to see the new Star Wars movie and I'm sure there will be lots of other stuff to do as well. I just need to make it through another week in the office first.