Life is suffering- Mon 12/29/08

Dear All,

There seem to be three basic types of long-term traveler. The fundamentalists, the rational seekers, and the lifers.

The fundamentalists feel that if the country they are living in or traveling through has not recently been bombed to smithereens or is still seeded with land mines then it has been overdeveloped and it is time to move on. I have met people who buy tickets to countries just after some tragedy has struck because they know that this is a sure-fire way to get away from "tourists". I think that I would prefer to hang out with tourists than trauma victims, but I can see the need to get away from "it" all in an ever-shrinking world.

The rationalists are open to anything but still care about being able to get decent medical treatment if the need arises. These fine folk are a very committed lot but we are an endangered species here in Bali where the bulk of foreigners are either here for a few days or here for a few decades. We pretend that we live here and though some of us do end up staying, most know that they are going to leave at some point for other places or to return home.

The lifers have set up shop for good so the only thing to do is to work at developing this place into one they feel at home in. They have houses, businesses, local staff, the whole nine yards. It's going native in style...hopefully not colonial style.

These days I am falling somewhere in-between the rationalists and the fundamentalists. I'm rebelling against the lifers because I feel too damn comfortable here. My days are developing a tinge of the mundane. This is in large part because I live in an awesome house now. When you are staying in a bungalow without a kitchen and rooms to spare, you are constantly reminded that you are somewhere different; somewhere not home. Nowadays, I feel like I'm living in Bali and not just here to develop my cooking skills. This is strange to me.

When we travel do we really want the comforts of home? If I did...well then, wouldn't I have just stayed in New York? That is not to say that I seek suffering and gross accommodations. It is to say that a little too much familiarity and one could start questioning the whole enterprise.

There is something to the idea that too much comfort is not a good thing. When we fall into this trap, we start taking things for granted, which is just a hop-step away from devaluing them. I am starting to feel normal about ducking to avoid hitting my head on the banyan vines that hang over parts of my morning commute. I'm starting to think that it is perfectly normal to see 80 year old women walking down the street with 8 foot sections of palm trees balanced on their heads. The roads (God help me) often make sense now. I hesitate to leave Ubud because the hour drive to the coast often seems like too much of a hassle.

What the hell is that all about? How can I be anything less than amazed all the time? Have I overdosed on the unusual? How do we strike a balance between too much comfort and being 'out there' for too long? How do we do this when we are on the road and the whole point seems to be experiencing new things and experiencing the familiar in new ways?

This could be why the fundamentalists are constantly looking for the next harsh terrain, the next risky adventure. They are probably, like me, a little terrified that the awesome and the exciting will become the 'not that exciting' or the 'I remember when I thought that was awesome'. They don't want to become a fixture in a foreign landscape. A little further from home but fundamentally the same as everyone else.

Love,
Alex

Goat Sate is da bomb! Oops, can't say "bomb" in Bali- Tue 12/23/08

Dear Interested Parties,

I realize that for a guy training to be a chef, I don't talk about food all that much. There has been no shortage of things to write about but I still figure I should give the subject of food some more attention. So, here is something I wrote about one of my favorite things to eat here:

A word or two about goat sate. I love goat sate! Goat sate has nearly everything good about food wrapped up in a tidy little package. First of all, it is on a stick. To quote 'Superbad', "you know what kinds of foods come on sticks? The best kinds!!!!" (except for green peppers on shish-kebobs. Get real!). Second, it is grilled over coconut husk coals, a process that gives it that special cancerous quality that makes everything grilled taste better than if it hadn't been grilled. Third, here in Bali, it costs about $1.25 for ten skewers and if you go to the right place, it could be the best $1.25 you have ever eaten. Ok, sure price doesn't directly correlate to taste but I thought I'd throw it in for good measure. The first two points are undeniable. I refer those of you non-vegetarians who beg to differ to a few case studies. 1) Spit roasted suckling pig. 2)Flash grilled shrimp or lobster kebabs 3)Corn dogs (corn gods for the dyslexic) 4) Goat Sate!! If you haven't tried it you need to...now.

I think goat is an underrated meat. Its magic, and perhaps its downfall, is that it has character, unlike chicken which is like Saturday morning cartoons; really good but eventually you outgrow them. I don't think it can be called gamy but it does have a depth and richness that makes each bite just a little more rewarding than most meats. It isn't as easy to love as lamb but once you convert, bite for bite, it is one of the more satisfying meats out there.

The place I was introduced to goat sate is in Denpasar. It is just a hole in the wall, like all the others, but with a line to get in. They not only prepare the goat perfectly and have a world class sauce, they also throw in a surprise on each skewer. Some skewers have a healthy chunk of goat fat thrown in, while others hide a piece of liver.

The secret is in the sauce and the fire. The sauce can be very simple. Just combine Kecap Manis(sweet soy) with some fried peanuts ground to a paste. Throw a few thinly sliced shallots in and you have a lovely accompaniment. You could get more involved too. A very nice recipe calls for combining fried shallots, garlic, garlic butter, sweet red chili, sliced kaffir leaf, sweet soy, stock (you choose), shrimp paste, and peanut paste. Reduce by half and add some crushed fried peanuts and you are there. I don't think that the coconut husk coals are a must but you do need to have a blazing hot fire and some tin foil under the skewer handles so they don't burn off. (The sate grills here are long, narrow and shallow and the husk coals require continual fanning to reach the necessary heat)

The other day in the restaurant, we were making the chicken sate skewers for the day and I learned something interesting. I asked if we were supposed to put four or five chunks of meat on each skewer. The chef replied that no, three was the only number of chunks that anyone in Bali would ever put on a sate skewer. Four or five would be extremely unlucky. The reason three is standard is that the chunks symbolize the three godheads, Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. And here I thought we were just eating some tasty meat. Now that I think of it though, sate has been playing a major role in creating, sustaining, and, if I eat enough, quenching my hunger. It has even, at rare times, approached the level of a religious experience.

I looked into this a little further. Turns out that you will never find more than three pieces of meat on a sate stick in all of Indonesia (there goes the Hinduism argument), and I read that the same is true in China. According to one source, the word 'satay' means three(san), piece(tay). This seems like strong evidence that it originated there but who knows (I looked up the words for 'three' and 'piece' and got different words. Anyone out there speak Chinese?)? The only reason I care so much is that if there was more meat on each skewer, it would be a more filling experience. Can't mess with tradition though.

I can't understand why there aren't goat sate stalls on the streets of New York City. Why does Sabrett have a near monopoly on street food? I say we ship over some Indonesian sate cooks, hack up a few goats, and elevate everyone's idea of how good simple food can be.

Cheers,
Alex

The Jungle is Winning- Mon 12/15/08

Dear All,

Ari is gone. Back to NYC. Back to Winter. Back to the holidays, which I completely forgot existed until he reminded me. I'm going to go buy a Wok tomorrow so I can feel like a consumer.

As usually happens when Ari decides to come to visit me in the 3rd world, someone ends up going to the hospital. Last time he got off the plane in Thailand he found me half delirious with fever due to a badly infected kickboxing injury and as his first in-country act, had to drag me to a Bangkok hospital. This time, though I mercifully escaped serious medical treatment, some other friends of mine were not so lucky. In fact, they have been having a somewhat impressive string of bad luck.

Leah and Kate, the teacher friends mentioned in passing in my Thanksgiving e-mail, have been doing pretty well for themselves here, minus a few small motorbike incidents. Recently though, Leah had been feeling progressively lousier and lousier. On the day Ari arrived, she woke up feverish, weak, and with strange bruises from old injuries that had already healed. As they made their way to get a taxi to take them to the hospital, another teacher friend of theirs stumbled into their house ragged and bloody. He had gotten into a motorbike accident near their place and not only sprained his shoulder, but was also covered in friction burns. Meanwhile at the hospital, two more teachers from their school had also felt sick enough to seek help. It seems that Leah had picked of a few parasites and was given a full complement of Cipro and Flagyl.

Using Balinese logic, it seems clear that Ari's arrival has caused this to happen.

We tried to help the situation by taking a fast boat to one of the more famous SCUBA sites in the world; the pristine beaches of the Gili Islands, near Lombok. We ate a lot of seafood, dove with Devil Rays and giant sea turtles, and when not under water, endeavored to move a little as possible.

Meanwhile, back on the mainland, while Leah's butt was being kicked by the powerful pills, Kate began to exhibit the same symptoms. That was when Leah found a snake in her toilet bowl, Kate was woken up by a pair of geckos mating inside of her pillowcase, and since then a steady stream of other jungle creatures have been encroaching on their sleeping areas. There was a small clan of fist-sized spiders, and now there is something large patrolling the rooftops above their bedrooms. It's bad mojo. Someone must be practicing black magic. They need to go get water from the ocean to douse their place with. Or maybe they just need to move out of the jungle.

Even with Ari safely home in New York, their trials continue. Yesterday, as they were sitting in their living room chatting, a six foot python slithered out of Kate's bedroom to check them out. For some reason, they called me, perhaps thinking in their panic that I would know how to wrestle a large muscle-bound reptile into submission. I called the bartender Poleng because I had a hunch he would know how to capture the thing and either eat it or sell it on the black market. Before he could get there though, the landlord showed up with a guy who beat the snake to death with a stick right before their eyes. A sad end. It's hard to tell which event traumatized the girls more, the appearance of the snake or its violent demise.

This is all very interesting given that I just moved into a jungle abode of my own for at least the next month. It is a beautiful, large house (1000 sq/ft), perched high above a jungle ravine. It is quiet, clean, and most importantly, has a nice kitchen for me to practice my recipes. Also, it comes standard with a pembantu (a private maid) who comes three times a week to clean. Still, it is somewhat open to the elements. I have an open-air bathroom that invites creepy crawlies and a unique infestation of flying termites that swarm the kitchen if I decide to cook in the evening. There are so many of them that they knock their own wings off as they fight to get closer to the lights, showering the counter space. It is fairly unsettling and I'm not sure I need wing protein in with the vegetables. My solution is to turn off the kitchen lights and cook using my camping headlight. Once the counter and stove are clear of wings, this seems to do the trick. I guess I can't complain. I'll take flying termites over pythons any day.

Now I have to tackle three small spider bites that just don't seem to want to heal.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Now that I have this huge place, does anyone want to visit?


Love,
Alex

Here are some photos of my new place:

My Doorway.
The garden path.
The living room.
The kitchen seen from the living room.
The view from the porch.

I want to be a Giggle-Oh- Wed 12/03/08

Dear Y'all,

Oh, the conversations I've had in just this last week. (From time to time I feel compelled to remind you all that I make nothing up. These letters are entirely true. I hardly ever feel the urge to exaggerate because life does that for me.)

First of all, I have gotten new insight into the whole "ice-water makes you fat" phenomenon. I was in one of the restaurants, talking to the manager(who speaks pretty good English) about the whole ice-water thing. He agreed with me that it was stupid to think that about something with no calories and no fat. Just to illustrate the concept, I asked one of the waitresses nearby, who also speaks better than average English, what she thought about the issue.

"Ya, I hear that. I don't drink ice water."
"Why do you think it makes you fat?"
"Don't know. That what my sister tell me. She say, you become pungiin."

That one took me five minutes to decode. After she drew a picture, I realized she was talking about Penguins. Apparently, the new 'logic' is this: Penguins are fat. Penguins drink and hang out around ice-water. If you drink ice-water you will become like a penguin. I just can't get enough of this stuff. (since then, I have seen other cooks drinking ice-water. They are usually older ones though. They must not care about their figures anymore.)

There is much more to the world of superstitions here. I'm am hardly scratching the surface. Just when you think things are familiarly mundane here, something happens to turn that upside down. The other night I was out with Poleng, the bartender at Cinta. He is a fairly level-headed guy and has become my regular going out companion despite my desire that he stop telling me to hump every woman we see. The other night we were out at our local bar chatting about the restaurant group we work for. There is a new Thai restaurant opening soon and having tried the food, I feel very good about its prospects.

"I think the new restaurant will do good." (I always say 'do good' now because for some reason I think it makes me easier to understand. Probably I'm just promoting bad grammar in Asia.)

Poleng replied very mysteriously, "no, I tell you why. The old lady from the place across the way, she very strong with black magic. She no want the new restaurant."

I admit to being a little caught off-guard by this new information. Recovering, I said, "That's ok, the boss is Orang Asing (foreign). Magic only works on believers." This is essentially the same argument as the ice-water thing so I figured I would test it on him.

"Ya, no good. But I help Cinta. I go get ocean water. Very strong because of ocean gods. We put on signs, front, everything. Person tries black magic, it don't work, not powerful enough."

"Yeah! That sounds good. Let's go get some more of that sea water!" For a second I wondered if me saying this was kind of like the adage that you are not supposed to play along with a schizophrenic person's hallucinations.

"Not simple. Not the same. It your personal energy too."

Wow! Black magic followed up with a semi-non-sequitor. The perspectives we get or give when trying to communicate in other languages are really something. I must now assume that it is not only super-powered ocean water that will protect against black magic, but also your personal spiritual output. I wouldn't have placed them both in the same strata but hey, whatever keeps the bad spirits at bay. He was so serious about it all. That, plus his reluctance to tell me about it, leads me to believe that he knew my second impulse would be to ridicule him behind his back. I on the other hand, believe that an important step in processing new experiences is to make fun of them. I think most Balinese people would agree with me, but perhaps not on this particular subject matter.

Ah well. On to the next vignette.

The other day I was behind in my journal so I sought out a quite place to sit and write. Usually when I need to write I go to Kafe Batan Waru. There are fewer customers and because the staff doesn't really know me, they don't approach me or talk to me. If I go to Cinta it is just ridiculously social, and if I go to Terazo, the chef hovers and the managers, bless 'em, talk my ear off the entire night.

I settled in, ordered a sandwich and prepared to do some serious catch-up writing. Just then, Ibu Dayu (the chef I had just catered a wedding with) and 2 girls from the main office showed up and without invite, joined me at my table. That's just the way it goes here. What's yours is mine and what's mine is yours.

I accepted my fate and put off thoughts of writing. Right away they started asking me about Anik, the single girl who had come to the catering event with us. I should say now that I have no interest in Anik and as far as I can tell she has no interest in me. That doesn't really matter to my Balinese friends. We are both single, hence, we should be married to each other.

"You want Anik? You like Bali-girl?"
This is the standard opener. I respond with my typical non-committal answer.
"I don't want marriage yet. Bali-girls only want marriage."
Then they pulled a sharp left on me.
"She too fat, isn't she?!"

How bizarre? This is rude to us, but just stating the obvious to them. The fact is, she is a bit overweight. While I don't personally give a damn, that can seriously hurt a woman's chances of getting married over here. They just have the balls to say it like it is.

I wonder if this blunt attitude has anything to do with how superficial the women at the restaurant are? If I don't shave for a day or two, someone is bound to comment.

"Why you don't shave, Alek? You no handSOME. I no like you this way!"

Conversely, if I do take care of these little details, the feedback is immense and the number of times my ass is fondled and my nipples are tweaked goes way up.

Oh yes, it is a bloody grope-fest back there. The male cooks fondle and playfully smack any body part of any waitress within reach. The waitresses give as good as they get, as do the female cooks, and all of the lady-folk treat me as if it is a petting zoo and I am the prize goat.

Things could be worse. I haven't gotten as sick of being a piece of meat as I have of their efforts to constantly shove rice, crisps, and fried animal parts in my face. Still, I do get a little frustrated sometimes. Some of the waitresses are really cute. Don't they understand that I'm not used to living in a sexually repressed, PG-13 society and that my libido is now supercharged with nowhere to go?

I'm clearly not the only one wound up because there is this dish washer in the restaurant who is the horniest guy I have ever met. He is also one of the prime gropers of the ladies, who put up with him because he looks remarkably like the hobbit that turned into Gollum. He swoons over every picture of a woman he comes across in a magazine or newspaper and rushes over to show me as if it was Christnukkah morning and he had just gotten a new Tonka truck. Endearingly, he is trying to learn English and practices with me all the time.

"I want to be a giggle-oh on Kuta beach but I no have good body" he said to me mournfully one day.

I assured him that I had seen plenty of gigolos in Kuta that looked just like him but he still seemed unwilling to give up his job at Cinta. Later that same day, he came up to me while I was eating lunch. He first showed my a picture of a blond with a boob job advertising a resort. Then he changed gears and started to caress the hair on my arm. This is not a gay thing, guys do a lot of touching here too. It is a way they show you that you are a friend or that they trust you. You just get over it.

"I like this on woman. On arm, on neck, on back! So soft!!! Ahhh."

He could barely contain his excitement for hairy women. Wacky little fucker.

I do feel for him though. With nowhere to channel sexual tension except for marriage, it's no wonder so many Balinese guys I meet try to send me to prostitutes. They flat out deny going when I ask them but think it would be a fine way for me to be with a local woman (from Java, not from Bali). Ugh.

Well, that's the wrap from the week. Peguins, black magic, the trials of single women, gigolos, and getting groped. It is colorful, that's for sure. I'll leave you with one final conversation from last night.

Guswidi, the head chef, came to me very concerned. He said that he was worried about me and thought that maybe I was unhappy in my new home. He cited my reluctance to eat, the job at the restaurant, no salary. I had to reassure him that I am loving being here. I told him that I don't want to eat fried crap but I am fully capable of getting my hands on whatever kind of food I could possibly desire. I told him that I love working for him and I could actually handle a lot more work than they can give me. In fact, I told him that there was only one major problem with being here and that was the incredible distance between me and my friends and family. Maybe that was what he was really driving at? The idea of being that far from one's center is difficult for the Balinese to grasp. Hard for them to grasp, harder still for me to live with daily. It helps that I'm having such a great time but I miss home an awful lot. That is not a solicitation for pity by any means, it's just good to let loved ones know you care, especially when you've left them to gallivant around the world.

Guswidi seemed to cheer up after I reassured him that everything was great. This is good because while I appreciate his concern for my well-being, I'd rather he be as happy and excited as I am.

Love,
Alex