Surrendering My Soul to Singapore

In the Lonely Planet's Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, the section on Singapore begins as follows: "One of Southeast Asia's most remarkable success stories, immaculate Singapore confirms and undermines popular stereotypes in equal measure.  Yes, it's modern, clean and organized.  No, it's not stifling, strait-laced and dull.  What you have here is a dynamic 21st-century metropolis with a culture, history and cuisine that's remarkably rich for a place so small."  As it turns out, the LP and I have that attitude in common.  Yes, Singapore just might be my soul city-country.  No, I am not kidding.

I had a good feeling about this last stop on my itinerary before I got there, and I wasn't disappointed.  After arriving by bus from Melaka, Luna and I found the nearest metro station and hopped on the amazingly easy-to-navigate Singapore Mass Rapid Transit to head out to the friend's apartment where we would be staying.  I mean, what kind of city has a public transportation system whose acronym spells SMRT?  I liked this place already.  

Our first night in Singapore, we headed down to Little India where I proceeded to consume possibly the most amazing Indian meal of my life at a restaurant called Komala Vilas.  Luna, who studied abroad in India and had just returned from almost a month of travel there, admitted that this was maybe the best dosa she had ever had.  Actually, it was the best dosa she'd ever had.  Not that I needed any convincing, but Singapore's Little India went straight to the top of my List Of Places To Return To As Soon As Possible.  The next day we explored Chinatown, where I was introduced not only to pink bubble tea but also the most aesthetically beautiful, chicly hipster and if-I-had-a-million-bucks-I-would-buy-everything-in-this-bookstore-y bookstore, called BooksActually.  Even the name was chic and hip.  I walked inside and was drooling within 4 seconds.

With a superhuman display of self-restraint on my part, I managed to exit BooksActually having only purchased two items: an bilingual anthology of Malaysian/Singaporean poetry called Dari Jendela Zaman Ini/From the Window of this Epoch, and a vintage red and turquoise notebook -- but you can bet your behind that this little independent bookstore also shot straight to the top of my List Of Places To Return To As Soon As Possible and snuggled in up there with Little India.  I decided that if I ever live in Singapore, I will just go ahead and allot a portion of my monthly salary to my very own BooksActually fund.  It will be like taking out taxes, only I will be the one withdrawing the money, and it will come back to me in the form of books and extreme intellectual and aesthetic gratification.  [:: drools ::]  Later that afternoon, Luna and I took an excursion to the grocery store around the corner, where we discovered that, contrary to our experience in Indonesia, you can buy the following items at any old corner grocery store: real bread, blue cheese, mixed-berry jam, and red wine.  A veritable feast, and then two sulfite hangovers, ensued.  I love Indonesia, don't get me wrong, but if I expect to attain any sort of long-term happiness in my life, both wine and its immediate procurability are going to have to be in the picture.  

The next day -- and last day before heading back to reality -- was spent goggling at the shopping sights of Orchard Road, wandering through the Singapore Art Museum and gorging ourselves on incredible mexican food (one more prerequisite to my long-term happiness that is sadly missing in Yogya).  And though our flight was the next morning, I wasn't too bummed out.  I mean, it was love at first step-on-the-SMRT.  And though Singapore does have its potentially creepy idiosyncrasies (the signs on buses urging you not to pretend to be sleeping so you don't have to give your seat up to grandma, for example, or the lanes that separate walking traffic in the SMRT stations), it's all just part of the package, and I know I'll be back.  Come on, I have to be back -- the whole damn country's holding court at the top of my List Of Places To Return To As Soon As Possible.  And as anyone who knows me knows, I don't take lists lightly.  No siree.

Flying Solo

For those of you who follow the "Buku-Buku" section of this blog, you'll have noticed that the book I most recently read was called "A Woman Alone: Travel Tales from Around the Globe." The book, which was a gift from my aunt, was a collection of essays by women telling the stories of their solo travels. I read the whole thing cover-to-cover in just a few days, and was so inspired by some of these women's stories that I just couldn't wait to get out on the road, and face my fears about traveling alone.

And as it turns out, I've gotten my chance. I left Yogya last Friday, and spent the next four and a half days with my friends Aggi and Alex, who are teaching on PiA fellowships in Penang, Malaysia. After gorging myself on Chinese, Indian, Malay, and Thai food in Malaysia's veritable food capital, kicking it around Georgetown (the main city on the island of Penang), visiting some sweet temples (see a picture of Kek Lok Si to your right), hiking through a national park to go swimming on a deserted beach, and helping Aggi ring in year number twenty-three, I decided it was time to head out on my own. Aggi and Alex had gone back to work and I had seen (and eaten) the best of Penang, so it was time to move along.

With three open days before my scheduled reunion with Luna in Kuala Lumpur on the 15th, I hopped a bus to the Cameron Highlands (which lie roughly between Penang and the capital) to see what the mountainous tea plantantion towns had in store for me. I've traveled alone before, including in countries that are not my own, but this trip was different -- in the past, I've always had the phone number of at least one person with whom I could get in touch at my destination. When I took a solo weekend trip to Granada while I was studying abroad in Spain, for instance, I was able to meet up with the friends-of-a-friend, who took me out and showed me around town. But this time, I was completely on my own -- a woman alone, as it were. Oh goody.

When my bus pulled into the bus station in Tanah Rata, the main town in the Highlands, I disembarked without really knowing where I was going. I had called ahead to reserve a dorm bed in a guesthouse mentioned in the Lonely Planet, but I didn't really want to sleep in a dorm, so I was considering that my back-up plan. All the couples who had been on the bus quickly dispersed (obviously THEY knew where they were going), which left me and the only other lone traveler on that bus, a British girl who looked uncannily like a blonde Minne Driver. (I have since entertained the possibility that she actually IS Minnie Driver with a dye-job -- the resemblance is that uncanny.) Minne clearly didn't know where she was going either, so when a man approached us offering a free ride to a guesthouse called "Twin Pines" where we could check out the rooms, we both accepted. At Twin Pines, upon discovering that they were offering single rooms for 12 ringgit (which is about US $4) per night, I was sold. The rooms were basically closets in the attic, but I wasn't planning on spending too much time there -- and besides, it's cold in the Highlands. Like, actually cold. Is this still Southeast Asia? Will somebody please wake me up?

After parting ways with Minnie in the attic hallway and dropping my bag in my closet, I went back downstairs to head out for a walk, enjoy the cool air of the afternoon, and check out the town. While I was standing on the patio examining my map, someone with an American accent said, "So, what are you up to this afternoon?" I looked up to see a bald dude of ambiguous age, sitting at a table and smoking a cigarette. "I don't know," I said. "I just got here." Forty-five minutes later, I had learned that Ernie (not his real name -- gotta protect people's privacy dontchaknow), age 43 and hailing originally from Wisconsin, had already traveled around much of the world and was basically kicking it in Asia, waiting out the economic crisis in the States. Ernie is an ex-drug addict who first went to jail when he was 15, never got married or had kids, has bungee jumped in New Zealand, has touched a great white shark while scuba diving off the coast of South Africa, has taught English in China and has never had a beer in his life. If I had been heading out for my walk with someone else, we probably would have passed Ernie right by. Instead, I made a friend. Score one for Team Woman Alone.

I think that most people who have traveled alone agree that it can be by turns (and sometimes simultaneously) invigorating and exhausting. For example, when I had to use the bathroom in the bus station, I didn't have anyone with whom I could take turns watching the bags and going to pee, and when it came time to make decisions about accommodation, I only had Minnie for solidarity. On the other hand, no one complained when I chose to eat Indian food for all three of my meals today, and I didn't have to weigh the pros and cons with my travel companion of paying for a tour of the tea plantations -- I just decided to book the tour, and I booked it. (Which, by the way, was totally worth it -- not only did I get to tour a tea plantation, watch the tea being processed, sample some tea and buy oleh-oleh for my housemates back in Yogya, but I also got to visit a butterfly aviary, hold a scorpion the size of a bottle-opener, and eat fresh strawberries from a strawberry farm. Word.) I've taken a few walks, written 5 postcards, had coffee with Ernie twice, made friends with a Pakistani girl from Australia who has promised to add me as a friend on Facebook, and eaten every meal alone. It is sometimes lonely, but mostly fantastic.

That being said, I am more than looking forward to seeing Luna tomorrow. My few gorgeous days in the Cameron Highlands have been a super solo experience, but I'm ready to morph back into A Woman With Friend -- after all, it's nice to have someone to crack a beer with, say goodnight to, and ask to watch your stuff while you go to the bathroom in the bus station. Trying to maneuver into those tiny stalls and squat with a backpack on -- trust me, it just doesn't work.

A Report from the Future

One year ago today, I wrote in my journal: "First entry of 2009! Call me crazy, but this year feels like a good one. :-)" Then, near the end of the entry: "The cosmic energy is definitely here in 2009." So now, one year later, it feels appropriate to ask: was the cosmic energy here in 2009?

Let's take a little scamper down memory lane and check it out. I wrote a small book of poems -- my academic thesis -- and graduated from college. (Bachelor's degree: check.) I spent an amazing summer visiting friends and family all over the U.S., and packed all my worldly possessions into labeled boxes which are currently being stored in my mother's basement, waiting for whatever comes next. (Thinking ahead: check.) I bought a one-way plane ticket and moved to Indonesia to teach college students English. (Plunging headfirst into the great unknown, thereby throwing all forward-thinking out the window: check.) And what have I done since I moved to Indonesia?

I've learned a new language, eaten cobra, and sat through an all-night shadow puppet performance. I've been caught in tropical thunderstorms and swum in the Indian ocean. I've hiked the foothills of a volcano, watched the sun set over Bali, and received baby turtles as a thank-you gift. I've stood on the side of a dirt road while a man I've just met shimmies up a coconut tree, cuts off a young coconut, hacks off the top and hands it to me so I can drink the water straight out of the fruit. The cosmic energy, I think, was definitely there in 2009.

And while I won't pretend it doesn't make me a little sad to be celebrating the new year so far away from friends and family, can I really complain? (I mean, who else gets to drink fresh-blended mango juice on New Year's Day?) I'm having the adventure of my life, and I have no idea what's on tap for 2010. And I like it that way. Happy New Year to everyone from me and my mom (and our becak driver) in Indonesia -- here's to hoping the cosmic energy sticks around in 2010. And to all the Americans I love on the other side of the ocean who are reading this as they wake up hungover a couple hours from now, from where I'm sitting (12-15 hours in your future) -- the chances are looking pretty damn good.

A View on Valediction

I said goodbye to my two General English classes this week.  They turned in their final papers, gave their final presentations, lined up to have their picture taken with me on various cell phone cameras, and walked out of my classroom.  The last-class photo shoot was an interesting phenomenon: first there was the requisite full-class photo (in which I stood at the center in my marmy teacher outfit with my marmy teacher smile surrounded by my hip and end-of-semester-happy students), followed by a few "Fiona and the girls" pictures and "Fiona and the boys" pictures, and rounded off with a series of one-on-one shots creepily reminiscent of prom.  And for my students, of course, no photo was complete without the raising of their hands and the parting of their fingers into the indispensable and unmistakable shape of a V. It was a mystery to me what this V might mean -- Peace out?  Vacation?  Bunny ears?  

General English paparazzi notwithstanding, I was really sad to see my students go.  The truth is, I am pretty much madly in love with them.  Teaching EFL has its ups and downs and it's definitely not something I'd want to do forever, but my students themselves are perfect.  They have stolen my heart.  I kind of hope this isn't how teachers normally feel about every class of students they ever have, because if so, I'm not sure I'll make it through next semester.

The feeling, it seems, might be mutual.  In our second to last class, I had every student write me a letter reflecting on the following four questions:

As a student:

1. What do you think you did well this semester?

2. What do you think you could have done better?

As a teacher:

3. What do you think I did well this semester?

4. What do you think I could have done better?

You better believe I got some prize responses.  And since I haven't yet hunkered down to grade the stack of final papers I have waiting for me, I'm going to treat you to some excerpts from the most complimentary 35 letters I've ever received:

I think what did you do well in this semester was you make this class to be our favorite class ... :-)

Fiona, I think you're one of the best lecturer in my first semester.  It is so nice to be your student, I really mean that.

You passion when teach me.  You always give me smile and cheerful, and I like it.

I proud of you Fiona ... and if I can, I want to be like you.

Fiona, you are the best lecture in Atma Jaya.

I like you very much ... you are so beautiful ... hehehe.

First I saw in this class, I felt you looks like an actress, ha ... ha ... ha ... you doesn't look like a teacher but you can teach your student very well ... I think.

So, you must be yourself, because I like your style in teach me, and always keep your smile to me ... I love u, Fiona ... :-) 

I think you're the greatest teacher ever!!!

I'm not sure how legitimate the claim that I am "the greatest teacher ever" is (after all, this being only their first semester of college, I'm not really up against a whole lot of competition yet), but if the general flavor of these sentiments is any indication, I'd say we had a pretty good run.  They're always going to be my very first students, the ones who taught me how to teach, and I'm always going to be that crazy American teacher with the short hair they had their first semester, who made lots of bad jokes and drew smiley faces on the board.  This much is clear: we made an impression on each other.  We're not going to be easy to forget.

So in the spirit of ends and beginnings, I'm going to go ahead and say that those V's stand for victory.  We collectively made it through our first semester -- for them as university students, and for me as a university teacher -- and I think we did a pretty good job of it.  Here's to hoping it only gets better -- and in the meanwhile, peace out.

Great, Expectations, Thanks for Nothing (or: I'll Take it from Here)

One thing living abroad in Indonesia has taught me is that having expectations is a bad idea.  Entertaining expectations that aren't ultimately met usually leads to disappointment, and in Indonesia, the only thing you can safely expect is that your expectations for any given situation will be swiftly and thoroughly dismissed.  Luna has a nice way of describing this phenomenon, which relies upon the idea that there is not necessarily any relationship whatsoever between something that is promised to you in words or writing, and reality.  For example, if you are out to dinner and see a food item listed on the menu, that does not mean said food item is actually available -- it could just as easily mean that it is sometimes available, or that at one time in past it was available, or maybe that it might be available at some point in the future.  It is according to this logic that our favorite pizza joint has been all out of medium size pizzas every single time I've been there (except for one time, and I almost didn't know what to do with myself).  See, I would have thought that if you have the ingredients to make a large pizza, the same ingredients could be used to make a medium pizza -- but that is an expectation, and we all know how dangerous those can be.

Sometimes, though, I get too comfy and forget about the danger of expectations and start having them again -- but never for long, as there is always some totally unpredictable turn of events to shepherd me back to the real world. One such turn of events occurred last Saturday, when I was invited by one of the professors at my school to witness the preparatory activities for his son's wedding, which was to be held on Sunday.  He instructed me to show up at his house around 11 so as not to miss any of the important aspects of this pre-wedding gathering.  Directions to his house and a time to arrive was pretty much all the information I received, so it is truly unfathomable why, in my mind, I assumed the event would last only a few hours and I would be home by mid-afternoon in time to do some grading and peruse the New York Times before dinner.  Expectations!  I should have known.

I got a little lost on my way there, so I showed up late, around 11:20, sweating like I lived on the equator (oh wait ... I do) and worried I'd already missed something.  My lateness didn't seem to faze my host, however, who welcomed me into his home and proceeded to introduce me to 20 members of his extended family, who then all commenced to speak to me in rapid Indonesian, most of which went completely over my head.  Many of his female relatives were inside preparing baskets and baskets of produce and goods to bring the bride's family, a litany of gifts that included such far-flung items as clothes for the bride's mother, two huge sacks of rice, a complete set of pink lacy lingerie and a couple of live chickens.  Word.  After a tour of of the gift preparation, I made myself comfortable outside in the courtyard where a smattering of relatives were camped out with snacks, and waited for whatever was going to happen to happen. After about an hour of sitting around eating sticky rice cakes and mustering up my best Indonesian to chat with one of my host's relatives about a wide range of interesting and complicated topics, such as where I am from and what I am doing in Indonesia, I started to wonder what exactly was going on with this whole wedding preparation thing, since nothing really seemed to be happening at the hour was approaching 1 o'clock PM.  At that moment my host announced that we would be "leaving soon," whereupon I learned that the main event of the day actually involved the bearing of all of these gifts to the home of the bride, and that we would be back around 5 o'clock.  It was also at that moment that all the lessons I had learned about expectations came flooding back in, and I suddenly completely understood and accepted that I had signed up for an all-day activity -- on Java, how could it be otherwise? It couldn't. It really couldn't.

The day itself turned out to be quite lovely.  After a half hour drive that took us out of Yogya and east of the city through some rice paddies, we arrived at the bride's family's home and unloaded our booty.  I was given the honorable task of carrying the box that contained a gold lacy dress intended for the bride's mother, as we all processed down the driveway and into a covered courtyard that had been set up with a long table flanked on both sides by rows and rows of folding chairs.  I deposited my gift on the table and took up residence on the edge of the audience, which turned out to be a great vantage point from which to observe the events of the ceremony.  After many long speeches in Javanese from various old men whose relationships with the two families I couldn't decipher any better than the words they were saying, the preparatory ceremonies for the bride and groom finally began.  The ceremony for the bride was first and began indoors, where (as we could see on the TV monitor outside while the whole thing was being live recorded inside -- whacky) she knelt before each of her parents in turn and requested forgiveness for her wrongdoings against them. (I should note here that everything I'm about to say only represents my best interpretations of the events that transpired -- since they all took place in Javanese or Indonesian, their meanings were obviously not rendered completely transparent to poor English-speaking me.)  This proved to be an extremely tear-jerking phase of the ceremony, as all the old Javanese ladies sitting around me commenced to weep heartily into their sarongs. Forgiveness was seemingly bestowed, and then the whole party was relocated outside to an alcove off the courtyard, where the audience could now witness the goings-on in person.

  

The bride was seated on a low bench in front of a iron cauldron of cold water into which various and sundry items had been previously deposited, such as flower petals, banana leaves and one whole coconut.  As the bride sat, members of her extended family came up to dip a gourd into the cauldron and pour water over her head -- while she was still in full dress -- presumably in an act of cleansing. After the bride had been thoroughly soaked, a lock of her hair was snipped off and she was lead back inside by her parents, her father in front and her mother behind, in a kind of train-like procession reminiscent of a conga line.  The whole process was then repeated, of course, with the groom.

The most poignant part of these ceremonies, in my mind, was how much care was taken with probably one of the most scary and painful processes two parents have to undergo: the giving away of their child to another person; the relinquishment of their son or daughter to the care of someone else.  Past wrongs were forgiven and past mistakes washed away as two families readied their children for that great adventure of marriage -- a process that is scary and painful, ultimately, because of all the unknowns it comes up against.  As 5 o'clock approached, I finally realized that it wasn't just me who had had no idea what to expect at the beginning of the day -- no one really has any idea what to expect, in Indonesia or anywhere else.  Whether it's the day before your wedding or the year after you graduate from college or any old Saturday of any old month, you can never really know how it's going to go down until it goes down. One of the things that sometimes frustrates me about living abroad is this feeling of never knowing what to expect, but when I think about it, that was always true in my life -- and if I ever thought I knew what to expect, if I ever thought that I knew exactly what was going on, that was probably mostly an illusion of control that I didn't actually have.  The bride and groom at this wedding were getting ready to embark upon a completely unknown chapter of their lives, which -- if you'll pardon the cheese -- is really just a larger-scale version of what everyone does pretty much everyday when they get out of bed.

So what about expectations, then?  While they definitely help contribute to a feeling of safety and familiarity, I think that for me, as I learn to accept more and more how fast things can change and how unknown the future really is, I might as well just throw them out the window.  When you don't expect anything in particular to happen, anything can happen, right?  Alice Walker once wrote, "Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise" -- but I'd like to think that subsisting on the thrill of surprise wouldn't have to be frugal life at all, but rather could be -- can be -- a life full of abundance and bounty.  I mean, come on -- pizza is a case in point.  Who needs medium pizzas, anyway?  I'll take a large, thanks.  And hold the expectations.

All That Glitters

Last week in my General English classes, we did a lesson on metrosexuality.  This lesson was Unit 10 in the workbook I am required to teach out of, and needless to say was among the more interesting topics we've discussed this semester.  After three weeks of skits, presentations and writing assignments about global warming and alternative energies, I think everyone was ready for something a little ... spicier.  Having to interact with the word "sex" in any written or oral form already throws my students into mild hysterics, so I was pretty excited to see what came of this lesson.  After reading and discussing a brief text outlining the definition of metrosexuality and doing some vocabulary and grammar activities, I had my students write and perform short skits with the intention of exploring the definition of the quintessential "metrosexual man."  As I suspected might happen, many of the skits devolved quickly into parodies of queeny gay men, so I wrapped up the class with a serious discussion about the different meanings of the terms metrosexual, heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual, and about the significance of labeling people in general (gotta be responsible about terminology, dontchaknow).  

Wanting to milk this for all it was worth, however, for their short response assignment that week I asked them to write two paragraphs about whether they thought labeling people was a good thing or bad thing (and why?), as well as what label they would make up to describe their own lifestyle.  Obviously this assignment was crafted partially to give them a relevant venue in which to practice their written English skillz (which they get every week), and mostly to provide me with hilarious reading material (which I do not get every week).  Sadly for me, most of my students responded with some variation on the theme "I would label my lifestyle 'casual lifestyle' because I am casual, I just like to have fun."  (It seems my students are leading lives ALMOST as interesting as mine!)  However, there were a few gems scattered among the rest, which I will now share with you:

GENERAL ENGLISH GEMSTONES ROUND TWO

"If I had to make up a label in my own lifestyle, I will label myself is pinky girl, why?  Because as a girl I prefer pink color than other."

"And I think I don't have any label for my own lifestyle, because I'm very usual.  I like to go to the café and chat with my friends.  I'm not really care about style and fashion.  I like to read a book and doing a crazy thing when I got stress."

"If I have to make a label which is indicates my own style, maybe I will choose word 'UnManiac Heterosexual,' because I love opposite gender, but I'm not a maniac."

"Maybe my name's label is funcosexual, it is concise of funny and cool."

Don't you wish you, too, could have a funcosexual lifestyle?  I know I do.  And since I know that now I've piqued your appetites for General English Gemstones, fear not -- I'm giving them another chance to spin straw into gold with their final paper, the topic for which is "My Life in 20 Years."  I can't wait.

Time is Funny

Last Monday, November 16th, marked the day I would have left Spain, if this had been my study-abroad semester in Spain and not my work-abroad year in Indonesia.  That is to say, when I studied abroad in Madrid during the fall of my junior year at Princeton, I left the country 3 months and 14 days after I arrived -- and November 16th was the day that heralded the 3-month-and-14-day mark after I arrived in Indonesia.  That is to say, if this adventure abroad had been intended to last the same amount of time as that other adventure abroad, it would have been over 6 days ago.

What is interesting to me about this personal benchmark is how relative time becomes in the face of it.  Everything that Spain was to me -- all of the books and poems and friends and travels and hunks of cheese and bottles of wine -- happened within a span of time that then seemed so expansive, but now seems so short.  When I left Spain, looking back on everything I had learned and all the ways in which I had changed, I felt as if an entire lifetime had occurred within those three and a half months.  (This became complicated when I returned to Princeton for the spring semester, and couldn't figure out how it was somehow still the 2007-2008 school year.  Surely Europe did not exist in a time warp, and just as many years had passed back here in the United States?)  Now, however, looking back on these past three and half months in Indonesia, I feel like I'm still at the beginning -- or if not the beginning, at least still within sight of the starting line.  I'm still somehow fooling my students into believing I know what I'm doing at the front of the classroom.  My Indonesian is fledgling, at best.  While I'm definitely more skilled at The Art of Crossing the Street than I was in August, I have yet to master it -- a fact of which I, along with half the motorcyclists in Yogya, am more than well aware.

The obvious question thus arises: how can three and a half months both entirely encapsulate one life-changing experience, and constitute only the first few laps of another?  How can this fixed length of time have the ability to be both the whole of something, and just a piece of something else?  How, after living only this long in Spain, could I ever have been ready to leave?

Quite conveniently for the philosophers among you, there exists in Indonesia a concept known as jam karet -- literally, rubber time. Here, time is neither linear nor rigid.  Rather, it stretches and snaps with an elasticity that would make most Americans nervous, and I'm not just talking about the Type A ones.  Conversations initiated with the intention of obtaining one small piece of information can go on for hours; the act of stepping out to run a quick errand will inevitably become a meandering adventure that takes most of the day.  If someone tells you they will do something tomorrow, it might mean they will do it on the day that immediately follows this one, but it could just as easily mean that they will do it on any day that might follow this one at any point in the future.  It could also just as easily mean that they will never do it, ever.

Living in a society where time is likened more accurately to a rubber band than a ruler has the general effect of slowing one down.  If Time isn't in a rush to get on with its day, why should people be in a rush to get on with theirs? They shouldn't, of course -- and in Indonesia, they aren't.  The Art of Slowing Down is one that (like The Art of Crossing the Street) I have been practicing continuously since my arrival in Indonesia, but one particularly noteworthy example occurred earlier this week when, to fill our afternoon off, Luna and I decided to pay a visit to the Affandi Museum.  

Affandi, a famous West Javanese expressionist painter who died in 1990, lived in Yogya in a self-designed Gaudí-esque compound of buildings on the banks of the Gajah Wong river that now functions as a museum to display his paintings.  After touring the museum's three small galleries, admiring the three-dimensional paintings Affandi created by squeezing tubes of paint directly onto the canvas in a style he has acknowledged is "similar to Vincent Van Gogh" (thanks, Wikipedia), and exploring the grounds of Affandi's old digs, Luna and I found ourselves pretty much Affandi-ed out with the whole afternoon still ahead of us. 

What to do?  Seeing that the museum's cafe had a small collection of board games up for grabs, we decided it was time for some Snakes-and-Ladders.  We passed another happy half an hour thus, reliving the golden days climbing up ladders and sliding down snakes while being taught important moral lessons that all children should know, such as if you do something bad (we couldn't understand the Indonesian for this one) you will fall down the body of a snake to the sad world of a gameboard square where you do not have any friends ("Tak punya teman").  Tragic.

After I won the game and received my congratulatory pat on the back, Luna and I found ourselves pretty much Snakes-and-Ladders-ed out with the whole afternoon still still ahead of us.  What to do?  Hearing our tummies beginning to rumble, we decided it was time for some makan siang (lunch) and took our leave of the Affandi museum, heading over to an Acehnese restaurant that Luna knew about for some North Sumatran food.  While we were en route to lunch, it started to rain.  (It should be noted here that, since my last blog, rainy season seems to have arrived in Indonesia.  This means that it more or less monsoons every afternoon, giving me one more reason to arrive at any given location looking like I have recently exited a large body of water -- however, in this case, it is because I actually have.  The large body of water being, of course, the one that begins to fall from the sky everyday between noon and 3PM, and doesn't cease for several hours.)  Needless to say, we arrived at the restaurant a little worse for the wear, but figured we'd have time to dry off while we ate.  While we did indeed dry off (for the most part) while enjoying our duck curry and spicy beef noodles, however, the rain continued, and after finishing our meal Luna and I found ourselves pretty much makan siang-ed out with much of the afternoon, as well as the second half of a monsoon thunderstorm, still (still still) ahead of us.  What to do?  Well, wait.

Waiting for the rain is a phenomenon of jam karet (and of equatorial weather patterns) that might warrant its own blog, so suffice it to say that on our afternoon off, Luna and I made ample use of the rubberiness of time.  (For the record, there was still enough time later that day to sit around in the house for a good long while while, do an hour of yoga, go out to dinner, procure 3 delicious doughnuts from Dunkin Doughnuts, and spend a good 45 minutes singing along to Youtube music videos of Disney classics.)  Such is life in Indonesia.  

However, I'd like to think that there's more to jam karet than just making use of the stretching hours of the afternoon to fit in a game of Snakes-and-Ladders.  If time is flexible, maybe its expansions and contractions aren't just random -- after all, it didn't matter that Luna and I had to sit around for an extra 40 minutes to wait out the rain, because we didn't have anywhere to rush off to.  Maybe, as it turns out, time expands and contracts according to how we view our relationship with it -- maybe we're given exactly as much time as we need.  Or maybe, on the flip side, we unconsciously shape our expectations for our experiences based on the time we have available to us.  If that is the case, then it makes sense that three and a half months in Spain was enough for it to feel complete -- it had to be enough.  Three and a half months never would have been enough for me here, because I knew I could have more (and with jam karet, who even knows how much more).  The whole metaphorical afternoon, it seems, is still (still still still) ahead, which is fine by me.  As long as it includes at least one more game of Snakes-and-Ladders.  Or two.