Building as a Distraction

August 18, 2010

Building in Bali is a great way to distract yourself from other issues in life. We began construction on the house that we live in in 1996 and completed the house in 1998. So, our house is between 12 and 14 years old. Not very old in the real world, but in the tropics, especially along the seashore, things age quickly. One of the jokes about Bali is that it is the land of instant antiques. Leave a house alone for a few years, and it looks likes it’s been around forever.

In our kampung, roofs are the biggest problem that people have with their houses. People use two basic roofing materials: metal sheeting or terra cotta tiles. We’ve used the tiles along with wood, plastic and assorted materials on the borders, ceilings and gutters. Over the past few years, we’ve regularly had to repair our roof and ceilings after each rainy season ended. Besides the cost involved, we could count on having a leaky roof by the time we were midway through the rainy season. For someone like me who has a bedroom/office filled with electronic equipment, these leaks also meant worrying about wet floors and shorted out computers, scanners, printers and televisions. Then, too, there was the worry of parts of our roof flying off into space during a particularly bad storm and ended up on top of one of our neighbors. So, we finally decided on tearing the whole roof down and building a flat, concrete roof similar to the style common in India and Pakistan.

As I’ve been struggling over the past six weeks with recovering from dengue fever, it seemed like an ideal time to begin the construction of a new roof in order to forget about being ill. Life over the past few weeks has become an uninterrupted stream of workers trodding up and down the stairs to reach the third floor, building materials being hauled up and down via pulleys, cement dust floating through the air and settling on furniture, food and residents, and an ungodly din every day from 8 am until 5 pm.

The old roof is now gone and the cement has been laid. We still have a way to go before things are finished, but we’re getting there. The workers have all disappeared for a three-day break for ceremonies back in their village, so I took the opportunity to see what everything looks like from the top of the house. It hasn’t been cheap (it should pay for itself by 2020), but the new roof is going to be a pleasant place to get away from everything and enjoy the view of the city, the mountains and the sea.

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And Still Another Singapore Visa Run

June 24, 2010

Visa runs. When I take a look at my posts over the last few years, there have been more than a few on visa runs to Singapore. The ones that were company-sponsored were good because they were free. Ticket and hotel paid for, I had nothing to do except go and do some shopping and turn around and come back home. Now that I’m retired, I have to pay the bills for these trips although they have gotten cheaper with the advent of Air Asia and low-cost flights to Singapore.

Six months of a social budaya passed quickly and with problems converting it to a KITAS (and with an upcoming family trip to Singapore), I decided to leave for a day, return on a tourist visa for a week and then apply for a new social visa when I return next week. I managed to score a relatively low-cost flight and did the trip was just over $100. Just to get an idea of how low that fare is, I used to pay $250 to fly the seaplane from Sumbawa to Bali. I decided to pass on the hotel in Chinatown that I like and took a slightly less expensive place on Bencoolen Street. Still not cheap in comparison with Indonesian hotels, but my move was a test of options. I think that next time, I’ll go with the cheaper places in the red-light district of Singapore.

As I was cooling my heels at an airport cafe with a scotch on the way out, I kept thinking of a blog that I read just before I left the house about problems with Bali. It’s hardly the first that I’ve read over the past year as expats especially get frustrated with dealing with immigration, infrastructure problems, the high costs of imported goods and a seemingly endless series of changes or reinterpretations to existing rules and regulations regarding foreigners. Upon arrival in Singapore, a minute at the immigration counter rewarded me with a free 90-day visa. No hassles, no questions, no sly smiles and requests for gifts or presents. No $25 for a 30-day visa. And Singapore? I’m always amazed by the cleanliness and the appearance of order. You can smoke here, not there. You can use your car in this district, but you have to pay a fee if it’s during a certain time of the day.

I drove down to the airport with Daughter #2 and the ride was the usual death-defying experience of dodging trucks, lunatic teenagers without helmets, and government employees convinced that their special plates give them the right to drive like idiots. So, yes when faced with this reality, Singapore seems like a respite from reality.

All these issues – immigration, driving, corruption, sliding versions of the law – bounced around in my head for my 24 hours in the Lion City. Then back to reality once again. The friendly neighborhood immigration folks grabbed a kid in front of me because he didn’t have a ticket out. Expecting the worst, I received my tourist visa without comment in 170 seconds for my $25. OK, pricey for Asia, but quick and competent. I was impressed.

The whole family leaves in a few days for what will probably be our last big family trip. While, I’m looking forward to the trip as a whole, I keep worrying about any issues that may come up with immigration either on the way out or the way in. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live somewhere where there were actually laws that everyone followed?

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When the Indonesian Wife is Away, the Expat Husband Will…

May 5, 2010

do what?

Expats with Indonesian wives have to deal with ceremonies, family responsibilities, community and religious obligations and the miscellaneous demands on time and resources that, at times, can drive us to distraction. In my family, all of the above are liable to be in play at any one time. My wife and Daughter #1 just returned from a three day trip to Surabaya as part of my daughter’s pursuit of gaining acceptance into a university that will allow her to reach her goal of building a profession in the health services. So, the two of them went off to Surabaya for a university entrance exam. That left me, the expat husband, free for three days. Or, was I free? Actually, that left me with three of the kids, along with a monkey and a cat, to care for.

Occasionally I check the search terms for this blog and some interesting search words come up. Taking a look at them, I wonder what the searcher was thinking of when s/he put them into Google. Without detailing the terms, some of them lead me to think that there are a lot of wanabee expat guys who think that we, the expat guys, live the fantasy life of relaxing on a tropical beach with a lovely semi-dressed young Indonesian woman catering to all our needs and desires. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth – at least in my case.

So what did I do during those three days without my wife in the house? Got up every morning to get the kids ready for school, organized breakfast and made sure they had their school work, backpacks, snacks and some treat money. Once they were off to school, it was time to do the dishes, feed the animals, mop the floors and then kick back for a few hours to read emails and write an article or two. When the kids came home, it was time to make sure they had some lunch and were set for the afternoon. Then time to plan dinner, defrost some meat, prepare vegetables, make rice, chop up spices and finally feed the three of them as the sun set for another day.

I enjoyed doing all this – it’s the reason that I quit working, to spend some time with the family after being focused on a job for twenty years – but it’s far from the fantasies of the guy sitting in the UK, the US or Europe in some dingy flat with a nowhere job. The reality for me, and I think many of us who live here, is that paradise is just another place to work out our lives, raise our kids, and deal with the mundane affairs of life. Of course, there are the sunsets…

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Magic in Bali?

April 23, 2010

Magic in Bali has been a source of fascination for foreigners since the days of Dutch colonialism. Many visitors to Bali have been introduced to the subject through Miguel Covarrubias’ book, Island of Bali, published in 1937. Foreign residents of the island tend to be somewhat reticient about publically talking about magic or witchcraft lest they be considered non compos mentis. However, from time to time, the issue surfaces and is somewhat gingerly discussed.

Personally, I tend to be a skeptic being trained in the Western scientific tradition, although I remember once sitting in a graduate seminar at Berkeley and listening to an African anthropologist tell us not to be too quick to discount local beliefs in magic. So, while skeptical, I work on keeping on open mind, after all, that’s what science is supposed to be about. Where is this leading?

Last night, we had one of those strange occurrences that are usually attributed to magic at work. I was up watching one of my favorite tv shows, Bones (a forensic anthropologist working with the FBI), when my son burst into my room to notify me that there was a huge snake downstairs. I followed Sam downstairs and heard shouts and screams coming up from the kitchen on the first floor. The kitchen was crowed with my immediate family and my sister-in-law’s family that live in the adjoining house. Two neighbors were out in the small courtyard that serves as a garden and has a small outdoor kitchen that my wife uses for grilling food. The neighbors, armed with bamboo poles and a broom, were trying to flush the snake out from behind my wife’s small two-burner stove.

They finally got it out from behind the stove, and I had a chance to see it. (My family had locked the kitchen door so that I couldn’t get out to assist in the capture or killing of the snake.) My wife said that it was an ular sendok (also known as a cobra here – scientific name naja sputatrix). It was a nice specimen, just over a meter and considering all the beating with bamboo poles and the broom, quite placid in behavior. I finally got out of the house by going around through the front door so that I could see the creature close up, but by that time it was dead. I ran off to get my camera, but by the time I made it back downstairs, the snake and the guys who killed it were gone.

On to the magic part of the story which came this morning at breakfast with Daughter no. 1 and my wife. The two of them were having a rapid discussion about the snake and its meaning. I had to slow them down a bit so I could get the whole story, but just as I guessed last night after the snake incident, the appearance of the snake was being attributed to magic. How? Lots of ways according to the local sources; the way being something of a guessing game until consulting with a dukun or kyai. The why is what interests me usually in these matters. In this case, it may be related to two things according to my wife and some other local sources. One, a recently divorced woman has found some interest in me – most likely because I’m perceived as wealthy, it can’t be my looks at 61- and my wife is clearly in the way of her desires. Thus, the snake. Supporting this is that the snake was found in one of my wife’s favorite cooking spots, and was waiting for her at the kitchen door when she opened it to get something out of the kitchen. My wife slammed the door before it could strike, although it was raised and ready to attack, unusual for cobras which generally only attack when bothered. The second reason is only peripherally related to me: that is iri hati, or envy. This is related to us being perceived as the wealthiest family in the neighborhood – quite probably true as this is a very poor kampung. The snake is supposed to, in this instance, not kill my wife, but introduce marital discord. The symbolism of the snake in this situation being similar to snake symbolism found in several monotheistic religions. However, snakes are symbolic of bravery, strength and wisdom in other cultures and religions (just saying as I like snakes and don’t want to give the impression that they are universally related to evil and cunning).

So, next come the countermeasures. My wife rushed off this morning to get five kilos of salt. I have to watch the countermeasure stage closely as I want to see how this all works out.

As for believing that mr. cobra showed up as the messenger of bad magic, I told my eldest daughter that if another one appears in the next few days, I’ll be that much closer to believing the magic explanation for his appearance.

Bali always has something interesting to offer just when I was thinking that retirement was going to be a one sedate lifestyle.

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Expat Life in Bali, Part 2: The Multi-Lingual Expat

February 26, 2010

Expats can be incredibly difficult people to deal with. I say this after almost 20 years of expat life, and I include myself as someone that can be difficult at times even though I generally make an effort not to be difficult. The internet has made expat life even more bizarre than it has historically been because now expats can act out in public for large (or small) groups of strangers without taking even the least bit of responsibility for their weirdness.

What brought this topic up? A few paragraphs in Paul Theroux’s latest travel book about his meeting with some expats in Thailand and the recent shenanigans over at an expat forum. So what about expats? Here are a few observations that I’ve made over the years, and for those who know me you’ll see that I include a number of my own habits and foibles in these comments.

The Multi-lingual Expat

Living in a foreign country can mean the learning of a new language. This can be especially troublesome for the linguistically challenged expat including the elderly, the neo-colonialist or the lazy. The linguistically challenged expat is forced to find a friend or, better yet, a spouse to act as a cultural gatekeeper and translator.
The Multi-lingual Expat loves to speak Indonesian, or better yet, Balinese in front of his/her expat friends, but only if they know less than the Multi-lingual Expat. The linguistic gymnastics that the Multi-lingual Expat performs dazzle the less able Expat and leads to comments like, “Oh, Barry is really just like a Balinese, you should hear him use Bahasa with the locals.”

This linguistic ability enables the Multi-lingual Expat to lay claim to secret local knowledge available only to expert speakers of Indonesian or Balinese. The Multi-lingual Expat can end all arguments about local issues simply by saying, “Well, if you could speak Indonesian/Balinese, you’d be able to see that you really don’t have a grasp on the situation as locals see it.” Accordingly, the Balinese speaking Multi-lingual Expat has the final say in all arguments, and can increase his/her status by chiding the Indonesian only speaking Multi-lingual Expat for not knowing Balinese.

However, there is some danger attached to using this ploy in mixed gatherings as the Multi-lingual Expat may be challenged by an impudent local child who will loudly proclaim, “You’re not saying that word right.” In this type of situation, the Multi-lingual Expat can minimize status damage by patting the child, smiling condescendingly and then completely ignoring the comment.

For Part I of the series, click here.

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