On Swimming and Ceremonies- Sat 11/29/08

Dear Everyone,

I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgiving dinners. I certainly did. I spent it with a group of teachers and former teachers who used to work at a school for rich westerners kids but are now creatively unemployed. We have become friends and they invited me to their house for a big feast at the end of what turned out to be a really emotional and awesome day.

The day began at the restaurant working with Eti, one of my favorite cooks. In between chopping and prepping for the day we began talking about the beach and swimming. Eti told me that she didn't know how to swim.

"How come?" I asked.
"No time." she replied.
It seemed like a simple question, but so many simple things here hide unexpected reservoirs of truth. Since she is the third woman I have spoken to that doesn't know how to swim, and since we live on an island, I felt compelled to press on.
"You never have time to go to the beach? What about your days off?"
"Always have ceremony."
"Never ever ever?? Even as a kid?" Apparently the concept of never going to the beach was having a hard time sinking in.
"Always busy with ceremony."

So I asked all the guy cooks if they knew how to swim. Every single one of them did. It turns out that even though guys have huge ceremonial responsibilities, women have more. It seems that many women almost never do anything that doesn't involve a ceremony or their family, while men have fewer social constraints. I got even bolder, asking questions that I knew I would regret later but feeling somehow compelled to do so.

"Eti, how much of your salary goes to paying for ceremonies?"
"All."

Her one word answer was like a gong going off in my mind. In my disbelief I went to Ketut, my friend and go-to guy who quickly corroborated her story. He said that very few people have enough money to pay for everything they need and that any extra they do have is quickly eaten up by ceremonial responsibilities. Because of these responsibilities, Ketut and his wife (a teacher who earns $30 per month) can't afford a second child and live in a storage room. The banjar, or community center, seems to be much like the Church but instead of tithing 10% of earnings, the banjar just takes it all.

One of the managers pointed out that some banjars are more understanding, taking less and giving more. Other banjars are in richer areas and pass the savings on to their members. Still, many are corrupt and poorly led, making things even more difficult.

I had thought the complete opposite. I had thought that while poor, nearly everyone had enough to get by. Did I expect that there was only la la happiness and simple coconut laden joy in the third world? No, of course not. But I didn't realize exactly how much difficulty the people I work with have to bear to survive. It turns out that almost every Balinese person I know is in debt, and gets deeper in debt every month. Their religion -the soul and center of their lives, the thing that unites them and makes them a part of something greater- is bleeding them dry and shackling them all in bamboo handcuffs.

When we finished preparations and the restaurant was slow, Eti and the other cooks helped me cook Balinese dishes for the thanksgiving party I was going to. We made awesome food and I learned more about cooking that day than on any other day since I arrived. It was exhilarating and satisfying and a complete turn-around from the sinking realizations that occupied the first half of the day.

Later, as I took a third helping of dinner, and toasted all the fine food and friends, it occurred to me that I might be getting too good at compartmentalizing my life.

Hugs,
Alex

god likes to smoke- Wed 11/26/08

Dear Peeps,

Every day, it is the responsibility of the waitresses to purify the restaurant and leave offerings all over the place. Much of the first half of their day is devoted to this activity. They go around laying out little leafy baskets full of different items for the gods, spirits and whatever else happens to be flitting about all around us. It's a Bali thing and happens not just in the restaurant but all over. As I type this, the lady at the front desk of the internet place is going around and putting baskets of flower petals, fern tips and a cracker on all the computers. She is also burning some foul kind of incense.

It is fun to arrive at the restaurant in the morning and have to step over a half-moon of Frangipani flowers set by the entrance. It is not fun to reach for something on a high shelf and accidentally grab an old, ant filled offering that had been forgotten about. It cracks me up that though we spend a good amount of time cleaning the kitchen, we then invite creatures inside by leaving little bits of food and rice out in the open for days and days.

Often, while trying to cook, a waitress will barge past with a pile of incense that she will then place nearly everywhere there is a nook or flat surface throughout the entire kitchen. The air then fills with smoke for a while and everyone either pretends that it isn't awful or is so used to it they don't think twice about it. We even have an offering basket placed between the burners on the stove every day. I can't imagine how it hasn't burst into flames yet.

These little leafy baskets usually contain flowers, rice, some kind of cracker or food item. Sometimes, they have special additions though. Occasionally they give the gods some wine or moonshine(Arak) but yesterday a waitress took me off the stove for a minute and used the burner to light literally forty or fifty cigarettes, which she then added to the pile of baskets she was about to place all around. Apparently the gods like to smoke from time to time. I guess that though the Balinese believe that ice-water makes you fat, the dangers of second hand smoke have yet to reach these shores.

Speaking of cigarettes, they are endemic. Everyone and their monkey's uncle smokes here. Consequently, smoking is prohibited in only one or two places, such as big westernized supermarkets. It was such a shock to me when, while typing one of my first emails from Bali, the guy next to me lit up and started puffing large clouds of smoke pretty much directly in my face.

For the first month I was repulsed by this and tried hard to get away. Recently though, it hasn't been bothering me all that much. The island is conspiring to get me addicted to nicotine. Two weeks ago, I saw a baby monkey pick up a discarded cigarette and though it was unlit, he started pretending to smoke it. I caught myself thinking "awww, isn't that cute?" failing to snap a photo in time. Then I realized what I was looking at and felt weird.

I talked to one Balinese guy at his tooth-filing ceremony and he had an interesting theory about the importance of smoke to the Balinese. He said that smoke is used to send messages to the gods. This is why incense is so widely used and also why Hindus are cremated. With incense, the prayer is sent up to the gods on fragrant clouds of smoke. In a cremation, the smoke allows the soul to rise up to the heavens. I'm not sure where cigarettes fit into this except that they emit smoke and the waitresses assure me that this pleases the gods. I wonder what prayer they are sending up with the cigarette. "Please god, give me cancer and make Alex have strange cravings for a Marlboro."

I guess the gods answer prayers after all.

Love,
Alex

Eluh and her offerings. (FYI-She is 22 or 24 years old)

The Secret to Happiness- Wed 11/19/08

Dear People,

Among my nearly daily realizations about Balinese life is one belief that I have held for a long, long time. Here it is: Breakfast food is highly overrated.

I can already hear the collective roar of outrage of a large number of you as you rush to defend your omelets, pancakes, benedicts and home fries. You should stop right now. You are not defending breakfast, you are defending brunch. This is silly really because since it is served at around lunchtime and is only a once-a-week thing, it qualifies more as a holiday meal and as such is subject to different rules. Plus, most of you die-hard brunchers out there are also guilty of slinging back a liter of coffee and a poptart as you rush to work in the morning. Can we really call that breakfast or even food?

(I would also like to add that crepes and smoked salmon, two of the most blessed foods in existence, are not really breakfast food, despite being served at breakfast time a lot. In reality, they are only served at breakfast time because if there is to be any order and reason in the universe, these items must be available at any time of the day)

In Bali, there is no such thing as breakfast food. There is just...food.

No matter what time of the day or night, the things a Balinese person eats are basically the same. There is always a mound of rice and there is always something fried('Goreng' in Indonesian). Most of the time there is nothing but fried food with rice. The standard Bali meal is Nasi Champur, which is basically said pile of steamed rice with a combination of other items such as little bits of fried chicken on the bone, a fried piece of sausage, some fried noodles perhaps, a vegetable (maybe long beans) fried with spices, and some sambal, also fried in oil. If there does happen to be something not fried, it is nearly always full of sugar. A good amount of the time, it is both fried and sweet.

Each morning the restaurant staff roll in with their little wax paper packages of nasi champur. They then buy some extras from the guy on the street who comes to the restaurant every day with a basket of food balanced on his head. He sells little baggies of fried banana coated in coconut, fried banana fritters, sweet little baby jackfruit, rice flour goo with fried coconut and palm sugar, and a number of other items that I have yet to sample.

At lunch or dinner time, the staff meal is usually delicious and again, always goreng! We have tasty vegetables in a variety of shapes and flavors. There is Urap (sectioned long bean with a spice mixture), Cap Cay (a chinese dish with any vegetables on hand and a sweetish sauce), and some others without names of their own. These dishes are wok fried but I'm not counting that as fried because it doesn't count if it hasn't been completely submerged in reused oil.

Then there are the main dishes. Fried chicken is a standard. They use all the parts of the bird that haven't been saved for guests. Obviously this is cheap, but also it has more nooks and crannies for hot oil retention. Then there is the fried, salted sardine dish, the fried pork bits dish, the battered and fried shrimp dish, and the ever healthy tofu and tempe deep fried to within an inch of recognition. Not to mention the sambals and sauces which are also generally, you guessed it, fried.

I can't tell why they do this. Is it laziness? Is it that they would really love to bake but the oven is broken? My host says that part of the reason the Balinese fry so much of their food is that this partially preserves it by removing a lot of the water content. This way they can leave it out in the heat for hours and not worry to much about food poisoning. That is generally what happens to the staff meal anyway. It is left in a bowl or two on the counter and whenever the mood strikes, the staff can scoop some rice and some grub and have at it. There is not a lot of ceremony when it comes to eating. The food is wolfed down as fast as possible and sometimes in really awkward positions. I have come across staff members horking down food while perched amongst the trash cans in the back, sitting on the empty kerosene tank, and one cook keeps squatting in a corner facing a sink.

The other day they made pepis for the staff meal. Pepis are a typical example of Balinese food. Chunks of fish are mixed with a spicy and complex paste and then enclosed in a banana leaf. Clearly this would be a good time to steam, bake or grill (in fact, the pepis we serve the customers are grilled). The bartender heard we were having pepis and sent me to tell the cooks not to fry them. I arrived just as they were emerging from the bubbling oil. Not only that, but the paste is made by grinding and then sauteing ingredients with a half cup of oil!

Sometimes you just want something different, something not fried. That is when I go to Ibu Oka's restaurant and have an order of, reportedly, the best suckling pig in the world. This is such a refreshing change from all the goreng, goreng, goreng! Six or seven pieces of the most delicious, fat jacketed pork is served on a bed of steamed rice, with some Balinese vegetables and topped with a nice healthy slab of the sweet, crispy pig skin. I tuck in and thank shiva that I have been given a brief respite from all that unhealthy fried food.

To save my arteries, I have taken to doing the following things. 1) I eat one major meal a day in the restaurant. Amazingly unhealthy fried deliciousness. 2) Outside the restaurant I have a diet that consists almost entirely of fruit, with the odd beer thrown in. Let me tell you, when you are living off fruit and water half the time, one beer goes a long way! 3) I exercise. I have been going running through the rice fields in the mornings or at sunset. The farmers are so friendly once they recover from the shock of a sweaty, brightly clad white dude tearing at them through the tall grass (I think that basically they would be less surprised if a stegosaurus happened to lumber by. I'm not going to say I don't enjoy the attention. It is great to experience being a minority without ever having to deal with racism in the host country. All the Balinese do is try to charge us too much, but far be it from me to begrudge them this. We can usually afford it.). I've also been playing soccer once a week in the neighboring village.

My meal/exercise plan provides me with good health in the midst of a potential arterial time bomb, (Don't worry Mom, I haven't lost too much weight) but it also provides me with direct knowledge of the secret to happiness. Eat fat-laden fried food in moderation and lots of natural sugar! 2.5 million smiling Balinese can't be wrong...can they?

Take care,
Alex

Breakfast in Bali. Just look at that beautiful grease.

What we should have learned in kindergarten- Fri 11/14/08

Dear All,

I have to apologize for making it seem like the purification ceremony at my host's compound was a big event. I have since been to the mountaintop and seen what is, by far, the most elaborate ceremony I will ever hope to see that doesn't involve royalty or a parade of elephants.

I was randomly invited to this ceremony by one of the managers of the restaurant. He sent me out to get all dressed up, Bali style, and we attended on a day that about a thousand people were milling about in the enormous compound of another big-shot family. I ate a lot and met a visiting American named Steve who knew the wife of the guy who was responsible for the whole thing. I did not, however, realize what I was missing in my rush to the food line and my assumption that one temple event is very much like any other.

This realization hit me a few days later when Steve invited me back to the event, ostensibly to eat some more. We met in the restaurant next door to the compound and I met his friend who is like a mirror image of my host, just less interesting. She too had married a savvy Balinese guy and they had built up their restaurant and crafts empire into a respectable cash cow. That money, was now being poured, literally, into a huge re-dedication ceremony for the family shrine which had been completely torn down and rebuilt.

The wife took us on a tour of the shrine area, which was bigger by far than I had realized. Forty by forty feet square, it was so festooned with offerings that the twelve tall pagodas inside were practically buried. The bits of the shrines that were visible were elaborately carved with myriad religious symbolism. Huge bas reliefs completely covered in gold leaf. Over the whole of it was a temporary bamboo roof 25 feet in the air. Lights had been hung from it so that the ceremony could run late into the night for the two weeks it had already been going on. Thousands upon thousands of people were regularly visiting the enormous compound and getting fed great food, entertained by three gamelan and the same number of traditional dance troupes, and generally having a nice social experience. That was impressive, but I was more in awe of all the stuff.

The real stars of the show were the offerings. The fruit was piled four feet high and balanced like Chikita Banana's headdress (actually they are headdresses in a way, since women carry them to the ceremonies on their heads in long, colorful processionals). Like the ceremony at my host's house, there were both live and dead offering, animate and inanimate. There were no dead puppies this time (Thank God), but there was a dead sheep as well as an entire slaughtered water buffalo that was starting to stink. There were chicks and ducks in bamboo cages, still alive and sort of scattered about here and there. There was an entire dragon made out of, I assume, paper mache with it's skin completely covered in a kaleidoscope of raw beans and rice. Despite being so ornate, it immediately made me think of kindergarten when our teachers would have us make mother's day cards by pasting dried beans down in the shape of their names. It is now clear to me that they wanted us to achieve far more impressive levels of artistic expression. Our mother's must have been so secretly disappointed that all they got was one chintzy little card when what they really hoped for was a three-dimensional mosaic model of the Guggenheim done in the style of Gaudi. Sorry mom.

There were also huge statues made of various substances. They were made to look like small temples, ornately decorated as though carved, and terraced. Most were made out of dyed rice flour but one scary looking one was made entirely out of meat. There was a severed pig head at the base of that one, made to look like a dragon with spiky triangles of fat used for teeth. It had googly eyes, also made out of rounds of fat, with something raw forming the irises. All the way up that meat statue were intricate Balinese designs formed somehow from pressed organs and chuck. It was really quite fascinating, if you could get past the stench. Contributing to the various odors, was a smoky fire that had to be maintained for the duration of the two-week long event. Combined with the sticky sweet incense, it filled the oppressively humid, stagnant air around us with a putrid haze that complemented the rotting animal carcasses and meat statues oh so well.

I couldn't really stand to be there any more after that. We were excited about the food that was to come but by 10:30pm the priests had only just begun their incantations, and they hadn't even gotten to the part where the gilded urns containing the ashes of the family ancestors were taken out and paraded around the compound as part of their ten year exercise program. So we bailed and went to my restaurant, although frankly, I didn't feel much like a meal after that meat statue.

All this just to point out the incredible effort and expense contracted for in the name of religion. I feel I will have to return to this subject again and again because it is such an crucial piece of understanding what makes Bali tick. The center of all Balinese life is religious and communal. It blows my mind that there are whole industries here based around forming rice flour or meat products into pagodas.

That is enough for now. As usual, I'm excited for what might come next.

Love,
Alex

P.S. I have to make a few corrections to a previous e-mail. It turns out that while a lot of the offerings are thrown out, anything that is still fit for human consumption is generally split up and taken home by family members or guests. Also, the roosters that die in the cockfights are then eaten. Their meat is said to be especially flavorful. Also, (and I'm still a little unclear about this) cockfighting might actually be legal. It is gambling on the fights that is illegal. I do believe the disenfranchised Bali animal rights activists still have a case.

-The pics are a little hard to see but here they are anyway:

This gives you a tiny idea of the temple carvings
Hard to see, but this is part of the temple buried in offerings
The beans and rice dragon from the front. If I had a side view you would see that it is about 6 feet long

More offerings:

One of the many rice-flour pagodas

The water buffalo

Also not a great shot but my favorite!
The meat statue (part of it)

2 Gamelan Troupes- The soundtrack of Bali life. Oy.

Bali Bombers/Life goes on- Mon 11/10/08

Dear Everyone,

In the last few weeks a number of Balinese people have asked me what I think about the executions of the 2002 Bali bombers that finally occurred two days ago. What a strange question for an American. Can you imagine people back home going up to complete strangers on the street and asking them what they thought of the McVeigh execution? There seem to be so many people here who share and ask really personal things with little thought of argument or offense.

My answers are LAME but quite political. I know that most of the Balinese favor the executions. They still live with the fear of more attacks and the hatred of a large fundamentalist population within Indonesia. Bali is, after all, just a tiny Hindu enclave in a sea of Islam. I tell them that it seems like the Balinese need the executions to occur but that I'm concerned about making martyrs out of the bombers. This seems to relax the questions. I think they just want to find out if I am on their side or not. I do think they should have just kept them in jail. Why give them what they want? Plus, killing is bad karma.

Anytime I bring up the same subject with my coworkers or Balinese friends, the look in their eyes is one of pain and unrealized rage. I've heard the following: "Jawa people hate Bali." (In Indonesian) "They don't kill because they afraid." (English- referring to the politicians continually pushing back the executions.) "One more bomb and Bali finished. Nobody come here no more." (in English) "Fucking Muslims. They fucking die!" (In English) In one place, the man just clenched his jaw, shook his head and wouldn't say a word. With my coworkers, I am able to make the point that it is only the fundamentalists that are responsible and that there are plenty of good Muslims. They all quickly capitulate this observation. They are Hindu after all and rage is bad karma too. Plus, they know it is true, they just simplified their thoughts so I wouldn't get confused. We all divide our thoughts into bite sized pieces in order to communicate effectively with each other.

So what does it feel like to be living in a place that the U.S. and Australian governments have issued warnings about?? It feels completely fine. I live inland, at least an hour from the touristy beach community of Kuta, where the original bombings took place. The message is the same; stay away from big crowded clubs and large groups of people. Not a problem, I don't usually like scenes like that anyway. I visited a Javanese surfer friend at the beach in Seminyak the other day. He said that their community is very afraid and that they are avoiding the big clubs too. I'm just saying all this so that nobody, particularly my family, feels unduly nervous about my choice to be here.

Love,
Alex

My first Bali wedding????‏- Fri 11/07/08

Dear All,

It has been a very eventful few days. I've been trying to put the election into perspective and I can't help thinking about 9/11. I remember hugging a total stranger on the street as a gut reaction to the panic and awful sadness. I remember being afraid of what our government's reaction was going to be, knowing that it had to be massive. Somehow, miraculously, I felt an incredible sense of togetherness with the whole city. A large population of thinking people coming together in shared pain and horror, and somehow, consciously or unconsciously resolved not to become savages. We were let down then and let down continuously for almost the last decade, but on election day I experienced a release of political anxiety so strong that I can hardly believe I had been able to bury it inside for so long. I had the privilege of being tipsy at a great restaurant/bar with 60 other foreigners from all over the world, to witness Obama's election. There was not a dry eye in the house. Everyone, even the heavily tattooed Australian and the stoic guy from Helsinki were crying and hugging each other. This time, the sense of togetherness was worldwide but instead of negation and a desperate clawing for humanity, there was a feeling for the first time in my life that I might be able to read a newspaper and not be totally depressed. Am I naive enough to believe that all our problems are now solved? Not hardly. But what a moment!! And how much we all deserved it!

I rewarded myself by moving into my new apartment/bungalow. It is a small improvement over the squalor I've been living in for the last month. My door opens out onto green terraced rice fields, I have a small swimming pool, tropical plants are everywhere and I have traded my no-flush toilet for a marble bathroom. In the morning, invisible house elves leave a platter of hot tea and coffee on the table in my little veranda. Now if they could just tackle repaving the approach, which looks like something out of a Beirut combat zone. It is going to be a little rough on my beautiful scooter but I think the rewards are well worth it. Speaking of my scooter...

I got my second flat tire while cutting across miles of rice fields today. The bartender, Poleng and I were taking a shortcut home after going to my first Balinese wedding. When I called to him and told him about it he suggested, in fine Balinese style, that I should sit further back on the seat and be careful not to veer off the dirt path into the mucky rice paddies. As usual, his advice worked and we made it to a little shop in the next town where an old dude squatted and patched my wheel, while his bald, retarded, adult son diddled himself off in the corner. I was able to chat with the guy while he worked and when he found out I was not only living in Bali and studying but that I was also a pandai besi (blacksmith), he charged me Bali price of 6,000Rp (.60 cents) for his work.*

*I can't help it, even after a month and a half I can't get over the price differences. I've stopped telling the restaurant staff the prices of anything I brought with me. Even the price of something simple, like my rip-stop rain poncho (an item that they intensely admire because we all ride through monsoons on scooters and ponchos are the national uniform), which only cost $20, would make their eyes bug out of their heads if they were to find out. So I tell them that something is "cheap" or "expensive" and then when they ask for the price I tell them that there is no way to compare things like this.

The wedding itself was something I was really looking forward to. A waitress from one of the restaurants was getting married and everyone said it would be fine if I went. I had heard that Balinese weddings were no big deal but firsthand experience is the whole point of a trip like this. True to form, it was a pretty laid-back event. Because ceremonies are relatively expensive, this family had decided to combine a tooth-filing ceremony with the wedding. There were three or four girls that were coming of age and they were all decked out in full golden tiara, slinky dress, caked-on make-up, regalia. They went first as the wedding was the main event. In turn they lay down on a table and proceeded to get small portions of their teeth ground off with a metal file, while their elders crowded around to facilitate. I still haven't been able to get a clear explanation from anyone Balinese about the significance of this ritual but then I think of our expression "to cut one's teeth" and wonder if maybe they just take that literally.

This part of the event ended and we all went to eat. I was sitting with the brother of my host and a group from the restaurants. My host's brother told me that part of the ceremony involves the couple stepping on eggs. He didn't know why so I told him about the Jewish tradition of stomping on a glass at a wedding to symbolize things that can never be undone. He said, "yes, maybe that's why we step on eggs." Further proof that Bali is a big Jewish family. After we were finished eating, everyone got up to leave. I was shocked. "What about the wedding?" I said. "Already happened" they replied. I raced around the corner and sure enough, the ceremony was winding down. I'm still not sure if I missed it or if that is just the way weddings are in Bali. I'll happily go to another one but, for the moment, I'm checking 'weddings' off my list of ceremonies to see. This just leaves one more; a cremation.

Love,

Alex

Bottomfeeding- Sun 11/02/08

Dear All,

I just got back from a three-day road trip I took around the entire east half of Bali. Thank God I am back in Ubud!

The day before I left I brought a map of the island to work and some of the staff helped me plan the stops I should make along the way. This seemed like the absolute best way to go about planning a trip. Why depend on a guide book when I had locals who had been to all these places and knew exactly where to go?

Once I cleared the Ubud region, the drive was simply spectacular. Jungle roads crossing massive ravines. Hairpin turns winding thousands of feet through the mountains, up roads so steep the scooter could only go about 15km/hr. On at least one cloudy mountain top I had to slow to a crawl as riders were emerging from the fog literally yards in front of me. Of course all I could think of was that "Scooters in the Mist" would be a good name for a movie- an epic tale of a scientist who dies tragically while observing scooters in their natural habitat. Then the clouds would clear and I could see miles of lush terraced rice fields and the ocean in the distance. (It is in times of struggle and moments, like these, of astonishing beauty that I feel most alone. It is unavoidable, but I do wish I could share these things with you directly instead of having to wrestle with words).

As I arrived at various temples and recommended destinations, I quickly discovered that my friends at the restaurant thought I wanted to see all the big "terrorist" attractions in Bali. All the spots were so touristy but since there were no tourists but me the collective selling pressure of a thousand desperate shop owners was directed right in my face. I had envisioned more of a trek into the heart of Bali but I kept arriving in small ghosttown Bali Disneylands full of things I didn't want or need and attractions that were hardly worth the hassle.

On the first night I finally made it to a little dive town called Candi Dasa (pronounced Chandee). The only westerners there are the men I have begun referring to as "Lobsters". They are a particular brand of older man who has made his life in Bali. They are recognizable by their bright red leathery skin, their paunches and their much younger native wives. They tend to chain smoke and drink too much and say off-putting things in very familiar ways, as though any fool would have to agree with them. For instance, I was staying at Ari's Homestay, a business owned and operated by an Australian expat named Gary. We were talking about all the expat businesses around Bali and he chimed in saying, in classic Lobster fashion, "the Balinese really don't have the brains to make a go of it themselves." I could hear his nice little wife in the background chopping veggies for dinner and laughing at her favorite new TV show "The Nanny." I politely pointed out that there are plenty of successful Balinese businesspeople in Ubud and he let the matter drop. Later on, he suggested I get a girl and I don't think he meant for me to go out and be charming.

I made it to Amed by noon on the second day. I was expecting a bustling little dive town but all I found was Arizona-like heat, gorgeous coastline and a whole lot of emptiness. I went snorkeling, exploring the wreck of an old Japanese warship in crystal clear water. Then I ate some lunch on the beach and made a reservation at a guest house. At this point it was around 1pm so I went to find an internet spot because there seemed to be nothing else to do with the rest of my day. Halfway through an e-mail to a friend, I realized that there was really no reason for me to be stuck in a dead backwater village no matter how pretty and I quickly signed off, jumped on my scooter and blazed off in a westerly fashion. As soon as I cleared the town, I felt my strange heaviness of spirit lift. Lovina, about an hour and a half away, held such promise.

When I got there, I knew I hadn't found anything special. Like the other beach places I'd been to, Lovina had all the makings for a happening little tourist town...but no tourists. Sure it is the low season and sure we are in the middle of a financial crisis but I still thought there would be more than a few intrepid souls out for adventure. Instead, I felt like I had arrived at the stadium early and the only people there were drunk guards.

In the desperate hope of finding something fun to do, I went to a bar that some random Balinese people said was THE spot. The Poco Lounge was lit by blacklights, and had a large rotating crystal ball near the small stage. In an effort to class up the place they had covered two-thirds of the walls with Leopard print wallpaper. I sat at the bar, a bit drunk on Arak(local moonshine) and orange juice and just watched the scene mesmerized. A Lobster was dancing with a plump Bali whore in a bright banana yellow dress that glowed in the blacklight. The contrast between the dress and her dark skin was so pronounced. The Balinese band was playing Oasis' 'Don't Look Back in Anger' but getting all the words wrong. They then sang U2's 'With Or Without You' (Bali version: "Witowichouthyu."). I certainly never thought I would get to hear a Bali version of 'Thunder Road.' The lobster was wearing a silver cross on a choker and a denim shirt open to his belly. He had started grinding with his heavy lady-whore. Next to them there was a married dutch couple in their late forties dancing closely with a tiny working woman in high heels who kept making eyes at me from across the bar. Thankfully she was already with them or I would probably have had to fend her off. The singer crooned 'Hotel California', which in turn reminded me of the Bob Marley song I've had running through my head for the last week. "Time alone, oh time will tell. You think you're in heaven but you're living in hell."

It's odd but I hadn't felt like I was on the other side of the world until this moment. Far from home, certainly, but never off the map. I must have been so hungry for human contact to have stuck around as long as I did, but you can't draw life from bankrupt souls. Sitting there watching these older, twisted men dancing and gyrating and generally having a good time, it is difficult to describe the hatred I felt. It was like vomit and violence and suddenly I had to get out of there.

First thing the next morning I jumped on my scoot and took off (only stopping along the way for some Rabbit Sate). What a relief it was when I saw the signs for Ubud. Familiar people, fewer hucksters, and access to real Bali culture and life beyond to scope of tourist reality and perversion.

Hugs,
Alex

Gary, the Lobster

Liver-Liver!!‏- Tue 10/28/08

Dear Karass,

There is something that has been bothering me ever since I arrived in Bali. It is a kind of memory hanging in the ether, a ghostly echo of a life I recognize, a seat of well-being in the midst of anxiety. Have I turned round the bend and become a yoga-mat toting, wheat grass chugging, psycho psychic, tantric, feeling the universe breath and sweating out tears of the Buddha in this paradise hinterland? Of course not! I'm simply referring to the realization that the reason I feel so at home here is that the Balinese behave almost exactly like a big Jewish family.

Let's examine the facts: (This e-mail might at times make it seem like I'm being stereotypical. I am. Just go with it)

When I am at the restaurant, the standard thing that I hear from the staff, both male and female, nearly every five minutes is, "sudah makan?" or "have you eaten yet?" It is like an annoying, yet somehow soothing mantra that makes me want to alternately scream and run away with an Irish Catholic, or curl up with a plate of rice, right there where I belong.

The waitress Putri, "Allo Alek, sudah makan?" "Ya, sudah."
The chef, "sudah makan?"
The manager, "sudah makan?"

Ok, ok, I get it, I'll go get some food!! So I go get some of the wonderful and fiery kitchen food and go sit down. Whereupon, without fail, someone will walk by and say, "why you eat so little?!!"

I can sometimes, if I listen very closely, detect a slight New York twang in their voices as though what they really mean to say is, "Eat somethin' will ya! You're awl skin and bones!" It's gotten so incessant that I went out and got shirts made for work that have "sudah makan" silk-screened across the chest. This way when someone asks me for the eighteenth time if I have eaten, I just smile, point to my shirt and go about my business.

I have already discussed the fact that they are always trying to marry me off to someone. They are very family oriented, these Balinese. In fact, the center of all life is tied directly to the family, the local community and to religion. There are nearly constant ceremonies to attend and these are both religious, social, and spiritual events. For a nice Balinese boy, a tooth filing ceremony is the best place to meet chicks!!

They have TONS of superstitions. A good example is that they never go anywhere on their motorbikes without a jacket. It has to do with their phobia of wind. Colds are called Masuk Angin or 'entering/letting in wind'. This phenomena is not limited to their motorbikes. It could literally be humid and 95 degrees out and they will insist on turning the fan off in the kitchen then turning to me and saying, "sangat panas!" or "damn hot today!" Once again, I hear the voice of my grandmother in Florida telling me to put a coat on so I don't "catch my death of cold."

So what do I do? I go to get a glass of ice water.

"No drink ice Alek! Make belly big!!"
"Are you telling me that drinking ice water will make me fat?"
"Ya. Make fat."

This, after they just put out a staff meal of fried chicken livers, gizzards, and hearts, and a big mound of fried vegetables topped with fried shallots (I swear I do not make any of this stuff up). At first I engaged with their superstitions. I would say in my broken Indonesian, "why does ice water make you fat?" They would respond, "I don't know." "Am I fat?" (in fact I've lost most of my North Country insulation) "No" they always respond. So I follow up with what I'm sure is a conversation ender. "See, I drink ice water. I'm not fat. What do you think now?" To which they reply, "still no drink ice. Make belly big." I even learned how to say, "ice doesn't make you fat...Fat makes you fat!" in Indonesian, but that didn't work either. Now what I do is tell them that only Bali people get fat from ice but it doesn't work on Americans. That is my secret weapon for which they have no defense. After all, we are an exotic and mysterious people.

In addition to their traditional anxiety that I might not be eating enough, their failure to understand being post-pubescent and unmarried, and their fear that I might suddenly stop sweating for a few minutes, they are also very concerned about my safety on the road. Whenever I go anywhere on my motorbike there is a chorus of people who call out, "Hati-Hati, Alek" which means 'be careful', but really 'hati' means either 'liver' or 'heart'. I like where this takes my imagination. The roads are dangerous so I must follow my heart...or maybe my liver. It makes no sense but I dig it. I also imagine that what they really mean to say is "liver-liver!" No doubt they just love liver and want me to remember to pick some up at the store while I'm out.

I can't imagine my case being any more obvious. It is no wonder that Jews all over the world are drawn to Hinduism and Buddhism. It is not that we are spiritual seekers in search of truth or have found other paths and places that resonate more in our souls. Rather, it is that we leave these places well fed, well cared for, thinner, closer to an extended community or three, and, quite often, married. There is also a mostly comfortable level of anxiety that comes from this overbearing hospitality. What could remind us more of the comforts of home than that?


This brings me to part 2 of this e-mail entitled- "Other words I love in Bali"

The first is "Jiggy Jig", the slang word for sex. Did Will Smith come back from a trip to Bali and decide to write the song "Gettin' jiggy with it"?

The second is "terrorist." Forgetting for a moment the deeper irony of the comparison, this is what they call tourists because the words sound the same to them.

The last three are phrases/words in the English language that have their origin in Indonesia. They are:
To run amok- In Indonesian, this is spelled Amuk and means to go berserk. Nothing too surprising there.

The Boogy Man- Apparently there were a group of pirates from Silawesi called the Buggi. They were quite notorious and though I don't think they targeted children, they were certainly scary enough to keep you up at night.

Orangutan- Isn't this a great word? Orang means 'people'. Utan means 'forest'. I always loved the idea that man had more or less descended from the great apes.

There you have it! Balinese culture distilled down to it's very essence in only one page. Plus, some cool words. Hope all is well. I love hearing from you all. Keep the e-mails coming.

Love,
Alex

Politics Vs. Arachnaphobia‏- Fri 10/24/08

Dear fearful voters,

You would not believe the size of the spider I just swept out of my room. I'd say that from leg to furry gray leg, it was about the diameter of a small apple. When I told my family about it their first question was, "was it poisonous?" I told them that I'm pretty sure all spiders are poisonous, it just depends on how much. In any case, I don't want to find out and I am now going to be a lot more careful about feeling around in the dark.

Speaking of poisonous spiders, I am more or less in the loop with regards to the upcoming election. Surprisingly, the expats here are very much involved in the election. When asked, they almost universally say that being abroad makes them even more concerned about the impact the next leader of our country will have on the world. One nice lady told me about a voting party for Obama and pointed me towards the Obama website for more information. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't find any of the information there. I am learning that despite everyone's best intentions, a lot of the stuff that people say will happen here, never materializes. Things like this, or that time I was told to come to a ceremony on the beach on the wrong day. Anyway, voting party or not, I sent my absentee registration in. Who knows how long it will take to reach the U.S. The mail system here is notoriously inefficient.

The other day, while I was playing soccer in the tiny village of one of the dish washers, his friend came up to me and asked me about the financial crisis in America. "Is it very bad?" he said. I didn't really know how to answer him besides 'yes' but I felt somewhat odd talking to a Balinese farmer about all the money issues Americans are suffering through right now. It somehow lacked the right perspective. This brings me to an episode the other morning.

As usually happens I arrived to work a little before everyone else. They are on Bali time after all and silly me, I think I should be there when I was told to show up. Still, there is one man who is always there before me. His name is Ketut and he has been a great friend since my arrival. He took me to find an affordable place to stay, he helped outfit me to go to temple ceremonies, he understands English and is a great teacher so anytime there is something I need explained, I go to him. He is also, despite his great intelligence, the low man on the pole and though I would never dare to ask him what his salary is, I am fairly sure it is impressively unimpressive.

We were sitting in the back room that morning. I was eating breakfast and he was looking at a magazine called 'Yacht and Villa' that the night watchmen had left behind. He flipped through the pages and every one was plastered with the most elaborate and massive sailboats, models in bikinis lounging in hammocks on the edge of swimming pools at villas set high on dramatic cliffs above the ocean. That type of thing.

He told me that he had always wanted to travel and see the Dalai Lama in Tibet. I reminded him that he was a refugee in India, which in turn reminded him about the Taj Mahal. So I told him about the Taj and about it doesn’t look real even when you are standing right in front of it and that there are flowers formed from inlaid semi-precious stones on the inside of the tomb. I told him how a guard had shown us that if you take a flashlight and shine it at the stem of one of these flowers, the light refracts up the stem and the blossom glows multicolored in the near darkness.

He seemed to like my stories and when he turned to a page that had a private Gulfstream jet on it, he asked me how much to fly in one of those. I told him I ride coach like most people but if he could manage to dig up an extra 800 trillion Rupiah, he could buy his own. When he heard my little joke, he kind of deflated. “Who can have that much?” he asked. I told him that there are people that own their own companies that have jets. “I need 100,000Rp($10) for my whole family for one day and that is so hard.” he said, shaking his head a little.

I just felt ill. Here we were in our dark and somewhat dingy kitchen. There are yellowing grease stains on the walls behind the stove and grill. Soot is caked around the tiny exhaust fans. A stray kitten had just wandered across the prep table. And here he was, holding in his hands an artificial glimpse of a world that I’ve considered visiting for weddings and the like, but that he could understand only with the most extreme difficulty.

Something like this can make a person philosophical about financial realities and electoral politics, both topics intimately connected. When you are sitting on a soccer field in a small village in Bali, it is a little difficult to really consider the concept of a private jet or a mortgage crisis. When you are dealing with politicians and poisonous spiders, is it perhaps a little naïve to assume that the one that looks less scary is any less of a predator? My mind, though addled by the sun, conjured up the final words of the David Lerner poem, ‘Mein Kampf’

They’re selling radioactive charm bracelets
and breakfast cereals that
lower your IQ by 50 points per mouthful
we got politicians who think
starting World War III
would be a good career move
we got beautiful women
with eyes like wet stones
peering out at us from the pages of
glossy magazines
promising that they’ll
fuck us till we shoot blood

if we’ll just buy one of these beautiful switchblade knives

I’ve got mine.

Love and Knishes,
Alex

The other Bali‏- Fri 10/17/08

Dear People,

Remember the other e-mail about how the insanity of this country is really just disguised efficiency. Try to keep that in mind.

The other night after work, during a mini-monsoon, the bartender from the restaurant took me out to some of the local bars to show me a good time. I rode behind Pauling on his scooter but since it was storming, he had me hold a large golf umbrella over us to keep the rain off. As we zipped along, getting sopping wet from the waist down, he steered with one hand and used the other to grab the edge of the umbrella to keep it from turning inside out.

We went to a couple of places and it turns out that middle-aged German women absolutely love Pauling (who speaks their language fluently). It seems he was one of the so-called "Cowboys" that can be found all over Bali; men who try to seduce unhappy older women in the hopes of getting off the Island. Although he did almost marry a German woman at one point, that fell through and now he is married to a Balinese girl and has more or less given up "hunting" (his word not mine).

The second bar he took be to was a reggae bar on the roof of a craft store. It is called Napi Urti ("hello" in Balinese). It is designed like a tiki hut and is plastered with pictures of Bob Marley, swaths of tie-dye, and various other brightly colored curiosities meant to draw the eye. It was there that I was introduced to Arak, the local moonshine distilled from either rice or coconuts, depending on the speak-easy. It starts off smooth and then turns on you like that pet gaboon viper your friends told you not to buy. You might survive but you won't be especially happy the next day. It is popular since it is a fifth of the price of everything else. One of the expats we were hanging out with began raving about the mushroom shakes at the bar. It turns out that although drug trafficking in Bali gets the death penalty and drug use can lead to life in prison, psychedelic mushrooms (which grow naturally in dung piles here) are perfectly legal. This brings me to another conversation I had on a different night.

I was talking to a man from Long Island (with the accent to prove it) the other night at the restaurant. An expat in his forties, he was telling me about the time he took Salvia, a legal herb that induces brief periods of hallucination. "I was fighting the pages of this giant book, man, and they were closing on me and I was ripping them up and, like, fighting for my life and losing. Then I was falling and there were bees and fluff all around me and I was trying to grab the fluff the whole way down. When I came out of it, my room was in shambles, all the stuff on my walls was torn to shreds. My friend said I was out for like five minutes but it felt like days." I couldn't help thinking, "wow, for a drug dealer you certainly aren't selling this very well. I think I'd rather have a colonoscopy."

He went on of course. Talking about herbs he had found that made pot look like ragweed, various products of various potency that he ships off to Europe and the States by the kilo. Despite their mind-altering potential, the various governments of the world haven't yet declared them illegal. I can't understand why except to suspect that they might not be very good.

So I guess I've inadvertently wandered onto a sort of psychedelic crossroads? A place that one 60 year old expat referred to as the 4th dimension. Is there some reason that it would be here in this country, where drug trafficking brings such harsh consequences, that I would find so many people either using, searching for, or profiting off of mind altering substances that, as yet, defy governmental classification.

Despite the fact that I am not strongly inclined to try these herbs, I'm thinking that maybe I shouldn't send this e-mail to my parents.

All the best,
Alex

Cocks in the kitchen- Sun 10/12/08

Dear All,

Things in the kitchen are very interesting.

Before I even get to the food, it's important to know that the staff has tried to marry me off to every unwed woman in the place. They are half joking and half serious. The typical scene, repeated two dozen times over the last two days, goes something like this:

"Ooooh, Alek handSOME. Married???"
"No, Tidak berkeluarga. Singgal."
"You want Bali girl??!!"
At this point one of the unmarried girls, either on hand or walking by, is grabbed roughly by both arms and thrust towards me. She looks mortified but smiles nonetheless.
"This Jupun!!! No married! She pretty girl!! Nice mountains!!! You want??"

Out of curiosity I asked one of the guys who speaks English a little, what dating is like for Balinese. I asked, not because I'm prospecting, but because they, the women at least, never go out. They just go to work and then go home to their families. He told me that if you are interested in someone, your family will meet their family and once that is going well, they start planning the wedding and you get to find out if you actually like each other.

The other interesting twist is that Balinese women do not, to the uninitiated, look their age. They seem to experience a prolonged period of looking really young, followed by instant onset old age. A woman that looks thirty is probably approaching ninety and is a day away from shriveling into a Bali raisin. Just about all other women look like they are between twelve and eighteen. Fortunately for me, there is zero chance that I'm going to get involved with a local, so I don't have to try and figure it all out. The guys, on the other hand, all smoke like chimneys and I think this causes them to show their age a bit more. They still look young, but they are more craggy and have the occasional identifiers like receding hairlines and bad teeth.

Inside the kitchen, my knife skills are coming in handy. I am shadowing a woman in the cold kitchen and basically prepping salads, fruit drinks and desserts. It is not rocket science but there is a lot of memorization so that the food looks the same every time there is an order. Also, I haven't done a morning shift yet so I have yet to learn how all the dressings and cold sauces are made. That will be useful information. The staff are universally friendly and, in between efforts to pimp me out, have really been showing me a lot and correcting the little mistakes I inevitably make.

I guess that food-wise, things are just a little bit anticlimactic. I know that will change in time so it's no big deal. In the meantime I am starting to learn the nuts and bolts or restaurant work. It is fascinating how things are portioned and priced. So much of the food is made ahead of time that there is actually very little cooking done during the service. It is more of a carefully orchestrated heating and compiling of ingredients that were prepared, whenever possible, ahead of time. It is also really tricky to get all the orders out at the same time but I've improved a lot already.

I'm also learning the language really fast...and forgetting it almost as rapidly. The people in the kitchen here speak Balinese, Indonesian and kitchen English all at the same time, which is playing evil games with my mind. Yesterday, I tried to say I was very full, but it turns out that the word for "full" in Indonesian is the same as "penis" in Balinese. They laughed and laughed. Later, one of the guys was telling me more about cockfighting. He kept saying things like, "I used to grow my cock very big but not any more." "I feed my cock chop beef so it strong." "Very expensive to buy good cock!" I couldn't help but giggle my ass off. In your face Balinese people!!!

In more relevant news, there is an upcoming, expat organized, voting party for Obama that I plan to attend. Stay tuned.

Hugs,
Alex

Crazy people- Fri 10/10/08

Dear Folks,

Here's my new theory: If you want to describe Southeast Asia to someone who has never spent time here, all you have to do is tell them to imagine a place run by mostly insane people who are trying to accomplish things as efficiently as possible.

That is the only explanation for barefoot construction workers, rickety 2x4s used for scaffolding supports, and the drivers...oh my God, the drivers. U-turns right into oncoming traffic, turns without looking are commonplace, and then there was that lady carrying a pane of glass in front of her while driving her motor scooter. I could list 200 more observations (like the cockfighting thing, and the priest taking a call during a prayer) but I might be here for a while.

Basically, living here kind of justifies all the dumb things I've done. When seen in the light of 3rd world comparison, the craziest thing ever is simply an efficient idea for maximizing the trip from point A to B. Nobody would think twice about it. Try it out. Make a mad lib out of it. Write back one of the crazy or ridiculous things you have done and I'll compile them with an eye towards 3rd world rationalization.

Part two of the theory is figuring out how it could be that most things here end up working pretty well? Here's my superficial analysis. I think we have to throw out the western assumption that everything must always be rational. It is far more likely, as we see daily in a variety of ways (The smoker taking a multivitamin, peace through mutually assured destruction), that the rational and the irrational can exist quite comfortably together and it is only because we assume this shouldn't be that we work so hard to try to make sense out of everything. Not that there's anything wrong with trying to make sense out of things, the problem lies in our attachment to the solutions we come up with. So, as most eastern religions draw nearer to enlightenment by reducing their attachment to rational ideas, perhaps that same principle works just as well for the people of Bali.

I'll start us off with a mild example of the ridiculous. My host asked me if I would be so kind as to roast a duck for a series of Thai dishes she was creating for the new restaurant. She handed me three ducks, a pile of herbs and Chinese 5-spice to stuff it with and a Jamie Oliver book to help the process along. So, on my own in a kitchen in Indonesia, asked to roast a duck with Chinese flavors by an American for a Thai restaurant, using Jamie Oliver as a guide. Let's just say that even though I was doing the backstroke in a pool of contradictions, it hardly felt out of the ordinary. I might also say that the ducks came out crisp, golden, and absolutely delicious.

Today, I officially start work in the restaurant with a regular schedule and all that. It seems I will be doing a week on cold kitchen items (ex. Salads, sandwitches, etc.), a week on hot kitchen items, and then a week doing bread and pastry, before repeating the whole cycle again. Can't wait to get started.

Yours Truly,
Alex

Chapter 2...slumming it- Wed 10/08/08

Dear Friends and Family,

It is not without sadness that I said goodbye to the compound and my status as houseboy on "lifestyles of the rich and Balinese." My new place, while being well within my budget, lacks certain amenities that we in the western world have come to expect. A flush toilet for example. More on that later.

The day I left my host's compound, I was a bit worried about finding a place that wouldn't overextend me. The answer was to take a place closer to the outskirts of Ubud that was recommended to me by Ketut, the guy who stocks the store room at the restaurant. He actually stopped what he was doing, grabbed his motor bike, and drove me around to look at places. He didn't even want me to pay him for his trouble. As a result of his efforts, I now live in a place that is nicer than you would expect it to be for the jaw dropping price of $70 US per month.

"Nicer than you would expect it to be" does not come without a few notable flaws. For starters, there is no flush on the toilet. There is instead, the classic southeast Asian tub-of-water-with-bucket setup. You flush by pouring a bunch of water down the pot but since the bucket is only half sized, I am having considerable difficulty getting anything to go down. I think paying for utilities in Bali means purchasing bigger buckets so you don't have poo permanently floating in your commode. I don't even know if toilet paper will go down as there isn't any to test with. It didn't help that this realization came only after a violent bout of Bali belly. There I sat, staring at the peeling paint and the lines of ants marching across the wall, everything bathed in the light of a dangling fluorescent bulb that makes even white tile look dingy and sick. I couldn't help musing to myself, that just a few days earlier I was enjoying a candlelit gourmet dinner for ten in the compound, our food perfumed by the Jasmine trees and washed down with flutes of Dom Perignon. Ah well, now I'm stuck with the runs and only a water spritzer with almost zero pressure to try to rectify the problem.

The good news is that the trickle of water turns warm after a while. Also, the nice old lady who I'm renting from has supplied me with a hot pink mosquito net that she swears the Japanese tourists love. There is a fan, and I live next to a rice paddy so the views aren't too bad. I also rented a motorbike (for almost as much as the room) so that I can explore Bali on my days off. I will try to walk to work as often as possible but I bet the bike will come in handy there too.

Well, I guess the good life has been replaced by real life. With my bike and room, and my job officially starting this week, I feel like I'm embarking on a brand new chapter of my trip. A bit less glamorous but hopefully very satisfying nonetheless. I probably won't spend too much time at home anyway. Who wants to be indoors when it is blue and tropical outside? I just wish the fluorescent lighting wasn't so damn depressing.

Hugs,
Alex

The cutest little barbarian‏- Mon 10/06/08

(Disclaimer: People with weak stomachs when it comes to animal cruelty should not read this e-mail. Animals were harmed during the typing)

Hiya,

In staying with an established family here, I really am getting to see some things other travelers would never get to experience.

The ceremony to purify the compound was most enlightening. It started early in the morning with the arrival of hordes of men and women connected to the family in some way. The caste system is alive and well here in Indonesia. My hosts husband is Brahman and kind of a big deal here as he is the firstborn of a very well-known and influential family. As a result, he not only has people running around doing things for him, he also bears a lot of spiritual responsibility within the community. This was to be only a small ceremony yet over the course of the day, hundreds of people came by to take part and pay respects.

The men and women ran around setting up the offerings and various elevated bamboo and wicker structures that signify the four cardinal directions, the four godheads, their appropriate colors, symbolism like that. Essentially, this community of Hindus worships Shiva, although Brahma, Vishnu, and I think Krishna are also very important. A simple drive around Denpasar confirms that the Baghavad-Gita and the Ramayana are still living documents. There are statues and artwork of Arjuna, Bima, Rama, Hanuman and all the major characters everywhere you look (I can't believe that something I studied in College is actually turning out to be useful).

Once the containers were all set up, the offerings began to arrive. And arrive, and arrive, and arrive. There were literally hundreds of pounds of offerings from the mundane to the most ridiculous things imaginable. There were flowers, huge arrangements of flowers. Food, piles of it. Chickens, and ducks both cooked and with the feathers and heads still on. There was an entire spit roasted suckling pig (this is a delicacy and we ate it later. Yum). And, I shit you not, there was a dead puppy offering. It was the cutest dead puppy offering I have ever seen. They had scooped the goop out of the body cavity but left the head and feet intact. It's fuzzy light-brown fur still had a healthy sheen to it. It looked to me like a war pelt for the cutest little barbarian in the history of the world.

Once the offerings were all piled up, the priest got onto his dais and the ceremony began. There was no fanfare or anything, no singing of hymns, he just sat cross-legged, chanting, making hand gestures and ringing his little bell. I was in the kitchen and didn't even realize that the thing had started. Nobody really seemed to care. People mingled about, smoking and drinking coffee, and chatting with friends and family. Many had their backs turned to the priest. There seems to be a pervasive blurring of the lines between the sacred and the profane here. This is becoming more and more apparent the more I see and learn.

The priest was a funny guy in his own right. He had all the traditional garb, blinding white robes and a fancy crown. He had bells, bowls, wingdings and doohickeys, and next to him he had a cheap black suitcase that he had used to bring all that stuff there. I was allowed to take pictures and even some video (see links below). Needless to say I was very interested in the whole event and was asking my host a lot of questions about the significance of this and that. Then, just as I was asking about what it takes to become a priest, he stopped his incantations and answered a call on his cell phone. When he hung up, he picked up chanting without missing a beat. I tried to get my camera out to snap a picture but I was too slow. Apparently, it is sort of OK here to put Shiva on hold while you take another call.

There was almost no interaction with the crowd until the very end. Then, the family was invited to pray with the priest and anyone can come up and get blessed. I joined in and got sprayed with holy water and the priest ground some kernels of rice into my forehead. The whole thing took about an hour to complete and then they chopped up the Babi Guling (roast, suckling pig), laid out a huge buffet of food and everyone got to eat. The pig is the only thing they reuse from the enormous pile of offerings and that is fortunate because it is one of the best things I have ever tasted. Everything else gets thrown out. It is an interesting quirk about Bali that they don't recycle the offerings by giving them to the poor (as they do in India). Here, while there are plenty of poor people, there are very few that are destitute, so the food goes to waste.

After eating, the men retired to the courtyard so that the cockfights could begin. The birds are trained to jump up in the air and kick down at each other. Specially made knives are tied to the back of the rooster's feet so that a solid blow will off the other bird. Everyone takes bets and then the handlers make the two birds look at each other while they vigorously ruffle their neck feathers, pull their plumage up, and slap them right in their chicken butt holes. While strange to watch, I'm pretty sure this last technique would piss me off too. The birds associate the manhandling with their opponent and once they are sufficiently riled up, they are released and the blood begins to flow.

The fights don't last long. Some for 30 seconds and some for a few minutes. I'm not entirely sure as I could only stomach one fight, pretty much purely to satisfy my morbid curiosity (and so that I could tell you all about it). Once the first bird is down, it is taken into the compound, its throat is slit and they drip the blood around the perimeter as another kind of offering. From the inside of the compound, nauseous, I could hear the yells and cheers for another hour as the men made and lost money on other fights.

My host informed me that not everyone is eager to see animals in mortal combat. Many people here oppose this type of thing. In fact, cockfighting is illegal....unless it takes place during a religious ceremony since the blood is needed for the offering anyway. I'm not sure they get it.

After the fights were over, the workers came back and within the hour the entire compound was completely clean. But for some telltale drops of chicken blood on the cement, it was as if none of this had ever happened.

Love,
Alex

Here are some links to the ceremony and the cockfight. I don't show the end of the cockfight so if you are curious, it is PG-13.
Ceremony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLKJ4spE65I
Cockfight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsHd6sVehL8

WTF??‏- Sat 10/04/08

Dear Folks,

A few days ago on the way to work with my host, we stopped off at the compound belonging to her Indonesian mother. I thought about describing the compound I'm staying at as palatial but decided that was a little too exaggerated. I have no reservations using that word to describe this one. This compound is about 4 acres large. It is walled in, as they all are, with a dozen buildings built in the style of an ancient Hindu temple. Squat stone structures, every surface heavily carved and crenelated, with mysterious purposes that are impossible to make out but hide all the amenities of a modern dwelling. It is kind of the same idea as rooms in a western house but instead they build a separate building for each function, all positioned in careful relation to the family shrine. You could only do that here where the building costs are so low. The mother of my hosts was very sweet and even suggested that I live in one of her spare pagoda-like buildings. This is tempting, but I'm leaning towards finding my own place closer to Ubud. I kind of want to avoid the scrutiny of the elderly.

In stark contrast to the religious calm of the compound and the orchids swaying gently in the breeze, is a bizarre acre of land in the back of the property where Gusky's brother Guscuk rears chickens. He's got regular old chickens, chicks, and, last but not least, a whole field of roosters born, bred and trained for cockfighting. Strangely, he also designs and sells his own jewelry, and is married to a Balinese model. Nice guy too. He told us he "just loves chickens"...I guess that's why he trains them to kill each other.

The interesting people I'm meeting in Bali are really the theme of this e-mail. That, and the shit they say and do that makes no sense (I have a theory about this that I'm still developing for a later e-mail).

Later in the day, after spending time wandering the streets of Ubud and absorbing its quaint touristy charm, I met up with my host and we went for dinner at another one of her restaurants. She knows everybody in town and during dinner she was constantly either getting up to say 'hello' to someone or we were being approached. I must have met half of the expats in town over the course of two hours. Most of them, grizzled veterans of the jewelry or hospitality business.

After dinner, we ended up joining two expats she is friendly with for drinks. An older woman Carolyn (who reminds me of a pychotic, nymphomaniac nurse I used to know), and her younger half-Balinese companion Karim. With a drink or two in her, Carolyn began telling the most ridiculous stories. She recounted their trip to Burning Man, hanging out naked with 7,000 other tripping hippies in the desert. Then she followed that up with the time she went cruising naked down highway 1 with the top down in her '84 Cadillac convertible. Continuing the theme, we learned of her idea to start a website called ShaghighwayUSA.com, or somthing along those lines. The premise being that if you plug in the itinerary for your road trip, the service will let you know the best spots along the way to pull over and have sex.

At this point in the conversation, a friend of Karim's pulled up to say 'hi'. Somehow it came to light that he was in Bali studying to be a psychedelic marine biologist...or perhaps it was a marine psychopharmacologist. Whatever it was, he was studying with various shamans and medicine people and his research sounded like it involved licking sea cucumbers and chewing on the peneal glands of male starfish. That seems like far too much dedication for a habitual hallucinator.

After he took off, Carolyn segued into stories about ghosts and the paranormal. Bali is filled with gods, ghosts and spirits. The capstone story was about her mom who had apparently committed suicide rather than suffer through terminal cancer. Out of concern for the state of her soul, Carolyn had consulted a local magician/healer who said that her mother was fine and would be reincarnated as an asian boy. Some time later, she had purchased a dog and when the dog began to behave just like her mother used to, she returned to the healer to ask him about it. He informed her that the mothers spirit was telling the dog what to do.

My host then took the opportunity to share her own ghost story. As luck would have it, the spirit in question resides at her compound. This ghost manifests itself as an old lady and is most often seen by people staying in the same bedroom that I have been sleeping in for about two weeks. These sightings culminated in one of her daughters friends getting the shit scared out of him. He was staying over one night and went downstairs to pee. He was only able to open the glass door to the bathroom an inch before he was stopped by something on the inside. Apparently, as he tried harder to get the door open, a pale white face had pressed itself up against the glass and stared right at him. After screeching loudly enough to wake everyone up, he bolted back upstairs and remained awake and trembling for the rest of the night.

There was a purification ceremony planned for the following morning at the house and in a slightly sheepish tone of voice my host let me know that it was partially to cleanse the house of this bad mojo.

Even for a skeptic like me, her revelation was a little unnerving and I was slightly annoyed that she had neglected to tell me about my spiritual roommate. We left to return home and though uneasy about going to sleep, I was also quite excited to be a part of the ceremony the next day. It certainly promised to be a insider view of Balinese culture that I would be unable to witness if I were simply visiting Bali on my own.

I climbed into bed and, as I drifted off to sleep, you bet your ass I said a very polite good night to the old lady spirit .

Hugs all 'round,
Alex

The prince and the paupers‏- Sun 9/28/08

Dear All,

It feels like months to me. I've settled as well as can be expected for the first week in any Southeast Asian country (meaning that everything is fine except that my body is mad at me for flipping everything 12 hours forward and feeding it strange food that it hasn't figured out how to process yet).

The owner of the restaurant I am going to learn at, picked me up at the Airport and took me to her compound. It is a walled in acre of land with a complex of six or 7 buildings all linked together by covered, open walled connecting rooms and outdoor pathways. There are trees, orchids, and staff everywhere (I counted 5 including their driver). There is a lap pool, recessed lighting all over, and two little shrines (apparently all family compounds have these). We even watched the first debate by satellite. It is spectacularly comfortable.

I'm staying in the guest house where their daughter(now in school in the states) used to live. It is a rather large duplex with its own full bathroom, air-conditioning, wi-fi (but I left my laptop home), a flat-screen TV with a DVD player and a full-sized bed. Unfortunately, I won't be living here very much longer. It is too far from where I'll be working. I'll have to rent a place like all the other white folk and join the soiled masses. For now though, I feel like I'm cheating or something...but I am most certainly not complaining.

Outside of the compound, things are a teensy bit different. Out there, it is developing nation business-as-usual. You know, open sewers, feral dogs, shanties, entire families of 4 or 5 driving home on a single motor bike. Seriously, they should have an HOV motor scooter lane.

I've been getting shepherded around by my host so I can learn the lay of the land and get acclimated. Basically, we hop in her shmancy new car and the driver takes us wherever she needs to go. With four pretty successful restaurants, a catering service and another restaurant and spa on the way they are able to live ten times more luxuriously than an upper-middle income family in the states while earning about the same amount of money. It is astonishing how well they live, amidst the hovels.

A plan for my stay seems to be emerging. I will, most likely, be working at a restaurant called Cinta (Pronounced "Chinta") Grill in Ubud. The chef there is named Getsweety and is a nice 30 year old guy with a slightly messed up foot from a botched childhood surgery. It is an absolutely lovely place on a busy shopping street with open air dining (covered) on both sides of a square site with a rectangle of open-air dining (uncovered) in the middle. The kitchen is small but serviceable, with a 6-burner stove, two woks, a barbecue grill, and some counter space.

So far, the four, count them, four days I have been here have been like this. I wake up at an ungodly hour and listen to my body yell at me because it doesn't know what is happening. Then I have some breakfast and plan the day. We have been spending our time with a variety of restaurant related activities such as visiting the office, sit in on catering meetings that "might be of interest", tour her other restaurants, or stay at home and work on recipes for the new Thai restaurant she is building called Siam Sally's. Then, at 3 each day, we go to Cinta Grill to hang out with Getsweety in the kitchen perfecting the recipes for that same new restaurant. I get to watch/help out in order to get used to the kitchen, staff, Getsweety, food, language, etc. It is a lot of fun because not only am I learning a lot, I get to taste all the new dishes and give feedback. It seems that I will have a few-days a week schedule at Cinta to begin with, plus occasional stints helping to cater events. It will be good to get experience in both of these aspects of the business.

So, overall, Bali is pretty bloody sweet. Compared to India, Bali is 3rd World Lite; just like the rest of the 3rd world only better for you. Even though my time in the lap of luxury is drawing to a closed I'm not bothered by that at all. I'm excited for what is to come. I'll do fine.

Lots of Love,
Alex