Baliology

Don’t you just love it when you are sitting on your veranda and a huge precession and ceremony parades past your house?

Or when your friends invite you pray at the temple and you get to the money/business temple and Putu jokes, ‘Tracie, you better pray really hard at this one!’ After learning how to pray with your Balinese and Australian friends the fun continues as though you are at a fair. The kids get a balloon, we all get an icecream and everyone shares fresh fruit and sate in the car on the way home.

Or when you go walkabout through Bali in the search for Tempak Sering Holy baths at the temple but as the sun is setting, your feet are hurting from walking for hours and you begin to think you may not make the rest of the journey. But then you happen make a friend called Adi who takes you the rest of the way, just because; not for the money. And the rest of the way is only one and a half kilometres so you don’t feel hard on yourself about not completing the journey.Then when you reach the holy baths, a lovely Balinese lady helps you tie your sarong, guides you to the first fountain and as the fish are swimming between your toes and kids are throwing flowers at each other out of boredom from waiting in the line to pray you thank each of the gods (in order!!) for their innocence, your freedom and everyone’s kindness.

And when the morale is low at work, the IT guys always come through with their multimedia jokes.

And when you help a new friend they give you a present that means something to them, like a bracelet they wore.

When you give and give and give all of the time sometimes it becomes harder to accept a gift in return.

But you have to remember that the person that is giving feels the same way you do when you help someone else.

Peace out x

Guest Post by Russell. I really enjoyed this read, thankyou Russ for your Baliology post. I’m sure you will all enjoy it just as much as I did. Selamat membaca!

“Getting your gitu’s right” and “That’s not f**king hangat!”

There we were, sometime towards the end of last year, on a barmy evening sitting in a café: just three among many other foreigners seeking a quick treat in the form of some morsel reminiscent of home.  That and we’d decided to hang the expense and fork out for a bottle of actual wine as opposed to a Balinese wine.  This night was not one for Hatten down the batches.

Language and our use of it, be it our own or not, is a common subject among this small group of temporary expats in Bali.  The title of this here blog post derives from just such a conversation.  Our waitress had just employed a much-used Indonesian term, gitu – short for begitu – meaning “oh, like that” or “I see”.  The reason our waitress was driven to this term was because I had asked for a brownie to be made hangat, or warm.  As I fumbled through what should have been a simple request that I was very successfully making complex by virtue of my poorly worded sentence, she began to join the dots.  Hence, gitu.

The influence of hangat on this missive will become obvious later in the story.

Gitu is a term that I have yet to master the use of and I am baffled by it.  It seems to be used just about anywhere that there is a small space available for it in a sentence.  So this sparked a conversation among us about how to go about the correct use of gitu.  Needless to say, we didn’t get very far and have not yet determined how to go about getting our gitu’s right.

Living in a foreign land is an excellent way to absorb and respect a language and, to my mind more importantly, a culture.  Should I be asked to try to define baliology, that term yet defined, I would suggest that in very general terms it is an approach to taking in what is around you in a kind of passive but somehow contemplative manner.

If there is one thing living in Bali, working with Balinese people, and existing in this culture can teach you it has to be patience.  But this type of patience is not simply waiting around.  It is a particularly good variety of patience that allows you to stop and step back from what you are doing (or indeed, delay it); reassess; develop objective insight; and proceed with confidence.

Now let me insert a quick disclaimer here: this confidence by no measure means that your selected approach is the right one, just that you’re now happy you’ve thought the steps through up to the end point of doing whatever it is you’re doing.  Not its consequences: those are for someone else to consider at a different time.

And thankfully it applies to using the language.  After a mental pause to muster what I believe is the right collection of words, I never feel apprehensive launching into some attempt at verbal communication in Indonesian because I know that if I trip up, or if I make no sense, or even if I offend, someone will cheerfully request a clarification and then humbly correct me in my use of the language.  None of this English-based fear that what I say will be taken the wrong way.  My use of Indonesian – or indeed bahasa campur, mixed language – engenders a type of courage with which those that regularly use a second language can probably sympathise.  In fact it is not even my use of it that engenders this courage, but the culture of patience and acceptance in which I am using it.

In this place the adage that the more you learn the less you know comes to the fore.  There is ALWAYS something to learn, discover and wonder at.  The benefit of having the courage to try something out far outweighs the risks involved, or the risk of not doing it at all.  And this applies not least to language.

Let’s return to the café.  Eventually our order arrived at our table, replete with wine and traditional Balinese courtesy.  Now, here’s an example of bahasa campur mentioned earlier…after our waitress had retreated and I put my fork into my much-anticipated brownie, I discovered that it was at best room temperature.  And the first thing that came to mind – and even prior to that, out of my mouth – was “that’s not f**king hangat”.  Of course, there was no malicious intent in my statement – it was akin to saying “oh, that’s not too warm…oh well”.

And that is just the point when I speak of getting your gitu‘s right.  Ease of use of small parcels of language is not a great measure of proficiency.  There are bits and pieces of any field of study, but particularly language, which you pick up with ease and that will readily fall into your vernacular or regular thought.  The insertion of random words in a foreign language could be considered an indicator of proficiency.  But in my case it was much more likely an indicator that my brain was not active enough to remember the word in two languages, let alone one.

So, I will continue to fumble my way through this language and this place for the next three months.  Even if it does elicit responses like one from a colleague recently, when she said with complete innocence, “you know, you should learn to put your dong in the right place”.

RJH.

Its weird you know?

Being an expat in Bali can be challenging in more ways than one.

(Enter epiphany mode. Warning this post contains high amounts of emotion but has an equal amount of humour. There is some reference to monkeys. Not to be viewed by those with a stick up their ass).

We Bali expats are very lucky because we get to live on a tropical island that is so easy to travel around on. As a temporary Ubudian, I hide in the mountains most of the time while I go to work each day and then go I out at night to play. Every now and then, a trip is organised to the beach or to another part of Indonesia. After returning each time I look at Ubud in a slightly different way. There’s a new shop on Jalan Hanoman, or a new building being erected on the outskirts of town. Maybe there’s a new dog roaming the streets or a family of monkeys has reproduced. The baby monkeys may have even already learned from their parents how to jump on your motorbike and steal the packet of chips from the console below your handlebars. Well there goes your mid-ride snack (ahh…the advantage of having your full faced helmet stolen and needing to still use the half faced helmet until your insurance money comes through).

Recently I have been challenged by two things in regards to tourists and living as an expat in Bali.

Number One: I am not a tourist.

Let me menjelaskan the shit out of that.

Say I go out at night to hang out with the local crowd and the expats that have become like myself, a barnacle clenching for dear life to the local bands and bars, and say I make a few friends from around the world.

The next night you think…hmm they were really cool, I might go out again and make the most of their time here getting to know them and partying – let the good times roll.

Also, maybe they will let me sleep on their couch when I visit their country in the future.

But then you hang ’till you are hung over for work and you lose interest in work and these people that you hardly know become more important to you while you suffer the consequences of your actions…or lack of actions for that matter. (Justification statement: I mean even the Bali dogs sleep all day and socialise all night, frolicking and eating nasi kuning wrapped in banana leaf).

So it has been really interesting trying balance life out between working and living as an expat, and between partying and living as a tourist.

It is hard. (For me anyway!)

Because the people you meet while traveling – while they are traveling – are interesting and fun and so love-able!

So you get a glimpse from the perspective of the locals’ eyes because they not only see tourists/friends come and go but they witness for even longer periods of time the comings and goings of expat friends like us, too. That brings me to my next point.

Number Two: Tourists don’t work in Bali.

(So simple really…)

The new friends then become more than a ‘comfy couch opportunity’ in a random country that you hope to one day visit.

But then our new friends eventually leave. They travel on or go home.

There has been a mass mobilisation recently and you can’t help but feel a little sad that your friends have moved on.

You celebrate the good times before they go and put up with the hangover at work and you make each other sentimental and funny presents

in the form of picture frames

or poems that you read aloud to that person in the middle of the bar while the not so good band twiddles some melody that resembles improvised salsa reggae in the background

and you all cry and hug like someone died,

you talk about how you will see that person again some day

in their country,

your country,

in Bali again

or in some other country one day

and it seems like forever until that day

and you try to be strong for that person because it is harder for them to go.

Then you realise that you have turned in to Ron Moss from Bold and the beautiful because you’ve created your own soapie with soundtrack and all.

Then you remember that you live on a tropical island.

And when you don’t have a hangover at work every day you feel a little better and a little more back on track and you get more work done in one day than you have for the last few weeks…months…

You Skype and FB each other and thank someone for technology.

It has been the topic of conversation amongst friends lately that our generation are very lucky that we can still communicate with people (whether we want to or not), via the Internet.

I have finally clasped my hands on a copy of Corinne Grant’s ‘Lessons in Letting Go: Confessions of a Hoarder’ and I’m about halfway through reading it (thanks Laura for leaving at Erin and Clare’s house!)

I was lucky enough to see Corinne at the Ubud Writer’s and Reader’s Festival last year on the comedy panel and though I’m not a regular celebrity stalker of hers, I immediately became interested in wanting to read her book. This was probably more due to her wise crack at Tony Abbott or her joke translation from one of Rodaan Al Galidi’s beautiful poems into ‘There was a man from Nantucket’; both instances delivered with the comedic timing that resembles a fart in an elevator; inappropriate yet necessary and really hilarious.

(You may be wondering what all of this has to do with Baliology? Re-read ‘What is Baliology?’ and you will see that I started this blog with the intention to ‘document’ (ha!) my change in perspectives of life and whatever, whilst living as an expat in Bali. If you want to know about cool travel destinations in Bali, go to my other blog: Jalan Jalan at- http://journals.worldnomads.com/tracie/).

I realised that I’m kind of a bit of a hoarder too. Well I was. Not as bad as Corinne was.

I still have display folders full of the boy-band posters that hung on my bedroom wall as a teen. Instead of throwing them out during my ‘clean out’ I filed them in to A4 display folders.

I also still have a box full of silly letters from friends at school. They are folded in really creative ways that I can’t remember how to do. What if I need to fold a letter like that one day? Instead of remembering how to do it again, I jut kept the letters.

I have my workbooks from when I was in grade two. Being a teacher I thought, well maybe I will need them one day. The difference is that I actually did look back through those workbooks for inspiration when I needed it during teaching.

I used to write diary entries or journals for everything (hence this blog, and the other one!).

I have a journal from when I attended drama classes after school. It includes a weekly diary entry typed in curvy font as well as posters and pamphlets from the plays I performed in.

I still have the mini magazine booklets I made and dedicated to Savage Garden, Friends and JTT. They included cut outs from magazines and catchy one liners that I was assured would lure all of my friends in to thinking that they were the best superstars ever.

I still have a journal from when I worked at Tomteland Themepark at Newcastle as a teen on $5.76 an hour for nearly three years. It includes funny jokes we used to play on people at work as well as the weekly gossip column we used to write, which included, ‘This weeks love triangle’ and ‘Your Star Signs – Literal Version’. (Example, ‘Aries, this week you will walk through a door, but it will hit you in the ass on the way through and you are at risk of falling unconscious or at least or ridicule’). I even stuck each of my payslips in the display folders. I still think the folders are amazing. Even the pay slips. $5.76 an hour what a joke!

I like documenting things. I like history. I like preserving things for the future.

In A4 display folders.

Anyway back to the point.

When Kieran and I moved to Indonesia we chucked a lot of things out. He had accumulated a lot of personal mementos too, like magnets and coasters from when he lived on the Cocos Islands with his family, his great grandfathers lamps from the boat he steered down the Tweed River and cassette tapes of dodgy recordings of The Late Show. So what if our ten-year-old video player that his parents had owned didn’t work.

Ask our friends at Red Rock how hard they scrubbed our floors and helped us make – or try to make – ‘the shack’ shine when we moved.

And all the crap we threw out.

And all of the crap that is still at their houses: the old broken drum kit, the mattresses and the tinnie.

And ask my family and friends about the ‘going away party’ we had organised which in fact involved my dad hiring a truck and us making everyone pack our shit in it. It also involved us recreating that scene from the IT Crowd where Roy gets caught up in a situation where he is sitting in a wheelchair on the elevator on the back of a bus full of people with disabilities riding up and down and staring blatantly off in to the distance. Ours didn’t quite work. I left the breaks off. Don’t ask why we had a wheelchair.

So to finish the ramble and get to my point (odds are 2:1 that I will actually get to the point in case you wanted to bet on it).

I let go of a lot of possessions, or as Corinne describes them, ‘things that possess you’.

I cleared everything out.

I mean everything.

I left my family and friends behind, my house, my car and my dog. In my euphoria of ‘letting go’ I even let my husband go from my heart too. It was a fire sale bearing the hyperbole “everything must go!” (Die Hard 4).

Everything.

Well most things.

The A4 display folders with my teenage-hood filed away in them are still in storage. I did throw out Ron Moss’ CD though. Sorry Nan.

Now when I talk in my blog (yes talk – this is a rant not an example of professional writing) about eating cheap simple meals of nasi goreng, or having fresh fruit for brekky or walking five hours to Sanur to feel like I’m stripping back the bark to get back to me; I understand why. I’m pretty sure that is why Siddhartha and Buddha went walking and starved themselves.

So, after the bushfire everything grows back green again, right?

To continue my personal psychological analysis and ongoing metaphor that letting go of possessions and moving to a new country is similar to the result of a severe bushfire…

I realised that when we strip everything back and let everything go and give in, we only have what is left within us. We then deal with only the problems that exist in us. We make ourselves strong because when we have nothing we only have ourselves to rely on. When the greenery grows back after the fire, it is a test to see if we are strong enough to allow the new greenery to crawl all over our trunks again. Sometime we reject this new greenery at first because our trunks are not strong enough to bear the weight of the new greenery. I just said greenery a lot. Is that even a word? Dictionary says yes. So does the Indonesian dictionary: kehijauan. But you already knew that if you are an avid fan of Baliology…

So back to my other point (God I’m turning in to Billy Connelly or Erwin with all these tangents), our generation is very lucky that we have the internet to store all of our crap on and to document everything like this documentation about documenting. But it is getting us in to the routine of storing things online and letting go of the hard copies.

How many times have you said, ‘nah don’t worry I’ll just Google it’? Or ‘nah I don’t need these actual photos they are all on FB’. ‘Or don’t worry, I’ll just download Ron Moss’ CD on iTunes.

My next tangent if I were to continue on another tangent, would be along the lines of questioning the possibility of some Stephen King thriller-style occurrence where the internet becomes invaded by giant cockroaches and they ‘set fire to it’ to teach us a lesson.

I would then include another tangent about the possibility of this occurrence being written as a thriller style by Stephen King and how the first three ‘chapters’ would involve some intense character development but then go on to say how they are all killed off in the fourth chapter.

And then the next tangent would continue on to discuss how maybe the internet isn’t actually helping hoarders let go of their hoard but in fact replacing the space where we stash our hoard. That reminds me, I haven’t backed this file up yet on my USB or on my External Hard Drive. One moment please…

But instead I will go back to my other point. Corinne, I understand why you kept those mementos. Because the sentimental picture frames and poems we make for each other remind us of these crazy amazing moments that we never want to forget and we don’t feel confident enough within ourselves that we will remember them but we also want them to last so we can harass our grandchildren and their friends at their 14^th birthday party, with these mementos,

so they will understand our life

and therefore, their own life

and who they are,

so that they will become a better person

and be able to make a better contribution in the world

and this is all getting deeply existential (ooh I have a diary entry in my drama A4 display folder journal about existentialism and theatre-gotta love waiting for Godot!!!)

Even as my mum reads this Baliology post, I know that she is about to ask Karen where the print button is so that she can store a copy of this in a box with the rest of the posts I’ve written as well as photos she has downloaded from FB – comments and all – and next time she sees the Nans she will give them a copy (probably pay back from her 14th birthday party).

So I’m glad that I can document my life and changing perspectives whilst living in Bali through this blog

so that next time I’m sleeping on your couch

in that random country where you live,

I will have something to reference as we discuss our funny stories from when you visited Bali.

And if we happen to be sixty years old by the time this happens we can harass your grandchildren at their 14^th birthday party

and maybe even sleep on their couch

(maybe that’s why we kept the wheelchair!).

*             *              *

Since finishing writing this post and in the time I spent editing it, I have finished reading Corinne’s book.

I realised that people get caught up between things in the past as well as expectations of the future and that’s why they hang on to things. Not just to remember the context they came from but as an expectation that it will be needed in the same context in the future because we believe that history repeats itself. But that means three things.

We are not living in the present.

We are not making new experiences to learn from.

We are not moving on.

So my extreme accumulation of things led to an over-exaggerated need to throw things out, toss them in the trash. Then everything becomes disposable. From someone you loved to your iPhone. You don’t add meaning to anything because you ask yourself what is the point? Or, what is it for?

Now that is existential.

How do we find the balance between the past present and future?

Maybe I wrote this post because I am still trying to dispose of things in my life as part of my reaction to the hoarding, rather than ‘letting them go, freely, and at the right time. It resulted in me force-quitting everything in my life as you would with the simple click of a mouse to the non-responsive applications on your Mac computer. This force quitting makes me feel at a loss when my traveling friends move on because it makes me want to move on to. But seriously when does this turn in to running away from things?

The Balinese have an extremely well defined skill of balancing things out in life (except for the balance between eating rice compared to non-rice meals!).

They pray to the God’s on three different levels: here, below and up high. They believe that if someone dies that it was their time and that a new person will be born with their eyes. They believe that if someone steals something they will get their due karma. So tourists, new friends or expats, coming and going is the usual. The biasa. Why dwell? Remember them and pray for them and then move on.

Maybe I hoard friends…

Being an expat is Bali is challenging.

Finding balance in anything is challenging.

Ending this blog post is challenging.

But so is life. Tapi itulah hidup.

(Hand over your money, I got back to the first point!)

Peace out x

Hi everyone,

thankyou for being a big supporter of Baliology!

Now is the time to show you full support by voting for me in the Australian Best Blogs People’s Choice Round!

Go to the following link to VOTE NOW!!!!!

http://www.sydneywriterscentre.com.au/bloggingcomp/peopleschoice.html

And terima kasih banyak semua!!

x Trace

In a recent post, I described the various interesting, pleasing and annoying sounds of Indonesia. Today however the only sound that can be heard is the soft exhale of the wind as she caresses the rice paddies, making the rice stalks rustle and hustle.

There are no motorbikes whizzing past, no people gossiping on the side of the road and no men walking down the street screaming ‘luuummpiaaahhh’ (that ones for you Hannah, Pras and Gopar!).

It is very peaceful as I sit on my veranda in awe of the kehijauan of my local village of Katiklantang (or ‘Longstick’ as the locals call it. It is a popular naughty joke amongst my Balinese friends because I live in ‘Longstick’…)

Today, everywhere in Bali, people are required to stay in their homes, not allowed to use listrik, nor make any noise as part of the holiday called Nyepi. I could act like an encyclopedia here and go in to some sort of detailed description as to what Nyepi is, or; I could put it in the words of my Balinese friends. I will choose the latter.

Today everyone must stay home and stay quiet so that ‘the bad spirits don’t get you’.

After last nights celebrations, I expected today to have an eerie children of the corn – or rice – or that matter, feel to it. But right now is very peaceful.

For the past few weeks, or for some villages, only for the last two days, the Balinese people have been constructing Ogoh Ogohs in preparation for Nyepi.

Ogoh Ogohs come in all different shapes and sizes, from massive bores bearing large, white foam teeth at the front and a large pink penis at the back, to small angry-looking monsters riding on top of a Tek Kotak packet. Some of my favourites are the large breasted Amazon woman and the dreadlocked wild surfer man.

At about 5pm yesterday, tourists and locals gathered on the side of the streets all around Bali in anticipation for the Nyepi precession. I situated myself on Jalan Hanoman in Ubud and it wasn’t until about 6pm that the excitement began. First came the clanging of the gamelan instruments which were played by the Balinese as they paraded down the street. The musicians were followed by hundreds of people shouting and screaming in excitement. Groups of young kids carried the Ogoh Ogoh structures down Jalan Hanoman, with what looked like to me, much ease. There were men working on the street corners directing traffic out of the way. They used walky talkies to communicate with other traffic directors in the other villages so that they knew when the precession would begin. I’m sure if they all just started playing the gamelan in each village at the same time they may not have needed the walky talkies.

Amidst the precession were a couple of men pulling what I would call carts which were similar to the kaki lima food cart, but without the soto ayam cabinet. One cart cradled a small sound system and the other, a set of spotlights.

The precession stopped at one end of Jalan Hanoman and filled almost the entire street with oversized monsters. A voice filled the street, filtered through the crackly speakers of the kaki sound system; ‘Selamat Hari Raya Nyepi!’ The sun slowly gave way to the moon creating a blue twilight atmosphere and the kaki light cart flashed a large red spotlight, highlighting the eerie Ogoh Ogohs and the crazy costumes and face make up that the Balinese had so decoratively worn.

The kids were painting each other’s faces in the nooks and crannies of the closed shop fronts on the side of the street. Teenagers spotted colourful spikey hair styles and face make up that would make Halloween seem like a cute, non-rabid puppy and one teen even wore the famous scream mask!

The lights flashed faster, the voiceover rattled with more intense excitement and the people screamed and clapped as the Ogoh Ogohs were paraded around in circles to release the bad spirits.

And the bad spirits were released that night.

I joined my friends on Jalan Bisma for a drinking party on the temple stairs. The nights bad spirit of choice – arak, poured from a plastic water bottle and shotted from a plastic cup.

Despite the bad spirits making their way on the streets there was no bad spirit-influenced dancing because the nights party was a silent party aka. no live music.

After a deliciously satisfying Irish Coffee with the other two of Chalies Angels (how ironic, being called angels on Nyepi eve!) at Napi Orti, we went home to our other loungeroom CP Lounge to continue the partying in silence.

The usual family members were there and then some. We all sat in the dark together (some tried to play pool in the dark) and indulged in some more bad spirits before shutting down early so that everyone had enough time to pulang before the 6am curfew. There was a lot of talk about what people were planning to do for the day of silence. Most people, including myself said that we wanted to do it properly and stay home in the dark, not use any technology, maybe write or read or catch up on sleep or meditate. After being asked so many times what my Nyepi plans were I decided to cut the conversation short and say that I was going to stay home, get drunk and high and watch porn all day. Ha!

I returned home in the early hours of the morning and slept through most of the day. At 1pm I was awoken by Mawar from downstairs and handed a smorgasboard of Indian food, a coffee, salad and sandwich to devour before sleeping again through the afternoon.

I was awoken surprised at approximately 5:30pm, by the sound of about sixty children walking down the streets of Longstick. They appeared from all different directions at the same time and continued through the muddy path that divides the rice paddies towards the river.

Maybe the children are off limits to the bad spirits or maybe after being inside the house for so long the parents were like ‘whatever, the bad spirits can have them!’

At about 6pm, Mawar appeared on my veranda again bearing a plate of delicious nasi goreng and she reminded me that I couldn’t turn the lights on.

Before Nyepi, I asked my friend Brick what people do all day on Nyepi? His reply was that lots of couples stay home and have sex all day. On that note, I wonder what the percentage of Capricorns is in Bali in comparison to other star signs…

So at this stage it does feel a little bit eerie. There is a man walking down the street with a flash-light and my paranoid and imaginative mind replays that scene in ‘Ghost’ when the bad guy dies and all those little black monster things scurry across the road to take his soul.

Ah well, not to worry. I’ve still got my sandwich sitting on the table in case I need to sacrifice it as an offering. I hope the bad spirits aren’t allergic to egg.

There’s nothing like hanging out at my fave (use the whole word! How much time do you think you’re saving!!!) spot, Moko’s in Ubud. It is an intimate environment to watch the band play, drink arak mojitos by the jug and dance on the table as though it is your own living room.

Last night we saw local gig-meisters Aboe, Keydux, Dadok, Dewa and awesome ‘semangat-power voice’- Hannah take the floor.  You can’t help but dance when the crew play their more than toe-tapping tunes.

But the brilliant thing about these guys is not just Dadok’s funky bassface and grooving style, or Aboe’s gorgeous smile – as bright and wide as the sunset on the horizon, or Keydux’s mantap guitar playing and the funny schoolboy tricks he plays on Dadok, or Dewa’s funny expressions as he hammers the cajon (watch Hannah’s face when he does this!), or Hannas’s powerful voice that pulls at your soulstrings;

but it is also that they always leave the microphone open to random hijackers.

The first celebrity swinger was Olaf. Olaf stepped up to the microphone, guitar in hand and blew our minds with three original songs. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor so I didn’t dance on it.

Kum, local artist and famous for his song ‘Take Me Home’, written in under a week for a fundraiser for the Bali dogs, was passed the guitar by Aboe during a song. It is this mutual understanding of the love for songs that I love too.

The highlight of the evening was Mr Khan, or Chuggekhan from India. I was lucky to see him hijack the band with his castanets last week but last night’s jam was extra special because he sang as well! The band improvised an Indian influenced rock song with ease and once again I had to try to keep my jaw off the floor. Kum and Mr Khan brought the house down with their interactive, intercultural improvised lyrics while the band had their backs 100%.

If you are visiting Ubud, make sure you check out Mokos. They don’t mind if you rock up in a green wig and steal the dance floor; they don’t mind if you dance on the tables; they don’t mind if you want to run random trivia nights there and stride the bar wearing fake moustaches.

But they do mind if you don’t join the family!

So don’t forget to get down with keluarga Mokos; it’s where the locals go.

Semangat!

So there are times when we think we know that the other person has understood what we have said but they haven’t, even when we are speaking the same language let alone when we are speaking in different languages.

SMSing in mixed languages can be very entertaining.

For example, the temple can often be misunderstood for a tampon. God/the universe/Elvis what ever you believe in knows that praying in a tampon can be somewhat uncomfortable.

Dinner that you have just bought for two didn’t actually include you, but included the person you bought it for and their friend.

Sometimes ‘a little bit’ means that the person saying ‘a little bit’ results in them actually declaring themselves, ‘a little bitch’.

‘St. Patricks Day’ becomes ‘St Party’s Day’ which makes sense when you get the day mixed up in the first place.

Sitting and waiting for a friend for over half an hour may not be due to jam karet or rubber time in Indonesia but actually due to the fact that there you misheard or misread the name of the warung.

And it doesn’t just stop at verbal language but body language too.

If you happen to be seen with a person of the opposite sex maybe once twice or three times, you are now their pacar (boyfriend/girlfriend) or could even be considered their spouse.

I joined my English teacher Made Suwana on Thursday night, in an English class at the local banjar, Negeri. Seriously, Made has taught me more about English than Mrs Palagy ever did. It could also have been half mine and Hayley’s fault too that we didn’t learn much in English considering the fact that we spent our time in class nicknaming Long John Silver, Long Shlong Silver, after the casual teacher who happened to be teaching us at the time. Yup, that’s how I remember studying Treasure Island…

Made introduced me to the class, introduced the question words in English and then handed the class over to me.

And I thought I was just there for the food…

Made S had to remind me after speaking to the class for a couple of minutes that although we could understand each other at the speed we talk to each other, the students couldn’t.

It confirmed my realisation that communicating can be so fragile.

The class were really shy and even scared to talk to the crazy bule who had just hijacked their class. The thing is, I remember being that shy whilst learning Indonesian. I remember being too scared that I would make a mistake.

It really makes me think that whatever I wrote back in one of the first couple of blogs about the man with the bad Indonesian accent, was really awful. I can’t believe that I had a go about him speaking bad Indonesian. I know nothing about him. Just like you may know nothing about me right now while you are reading this blog. Ah well, nasi sudah menjadi bubur.

There’s that old saying, don’t judge a book by its cover. We can be too quick to judge people sometimes. And maybe both people are at fault. Maybe one person didn’t communicate himself or herself clearly and maybe the other didn’t listen properly.

In Bali, people are always asking questions about you so that they can place you in the status rank. Some example questions are: What is you name? Where are you from? Where are you staying? Are you married? How many children do you have? What religion are you?

Sometimes my friends and I just make up silly questions to ask people when we meet them so that we don’t have to ask or answer these questions AGAIN!

Some example questions are; what is your favourite colour? What do you think about having a coconut as the next president of America? Why do birds suddenly appear anytime you are near? Why did the chicken cross the road? What is the average velocity of an African Swallow….? Hahaha!

One expectation of bules in Indonesia is that we are all rich. I have discovered that money is a very sensitive topic. Now, that is true if you consider the differences in the average wage between a person working in Australia and a person working in Bali that bules are more well of. I won’t even get in to the fact that we have health care, centrelink and a university loan repayment scheme. However I do know people working, volunteering and/or studying in Bali, whos wage is the same or less than the average Balinese wage.

When my funds get low at the end (hahahah-okay the beginning) of the month and Pak asks me why I chose to eat the nasi campur that I just bought from the lady carrying the basket of food on her head instead of at the fancy restaurant over the road, I don’t say because I don’t have enough money. I say that it is lebih enak, or tastes nicer. Which it is. I made this mistake once when an Ibu asked me if I wanted to but some manggis, the price was Rp. 13.000 for a kilo. I told her that I didn’t have enough uang and she laughed at me. It would seem ridiculous that I didn’t have enough money. I would never tell them that I’ve been selling all of my books at the local bookshop so that I would have enough money to eat all week!

But that’s just the way it is.

I was reading Siddartha a few months back and one of my favourite parts was when Siddartha went to the river and studied how to read it. All he did was listen and observe. He learned the ways of the river and earned much respect from the people crossing the river.

I like to remind myself now just to listen and observe and take things in rather than think that I know what I’m doing, take over the situation and exit the situation feeling empty.

Whilst learning how to teach language at uni, I heard a story about a person who lived next to a Japanese family and they had a four-year-old girl. Everyday this person would speak English to the little girl but would not get a response from her-in any language. Then one day after about three months the little girl started speaking English.

If we immerse ourselves in anything long enough we will learn it. Isn’t that how advertising works? Ooh I could go for McDonalds cheeseburger right now…

Its like if you listen to a song a few times and then randomly start singing it one day realising that you know the words.

I suppose it works the other way too; if we are exposed to something negative for a long time then it will have an effect on us too.

I realised the other day that for the last few months, I have not had anyone raise their voice towards me me and I have not raised my voice at anyone else (and I mean in anger not in the ‘yahoooo go Mokos band yeeeeewwww!’ way). So I haven’t been exposed to any angry vibes. This is the first time in my life that this has ever happened. And I realised that I haven’t had a need to be angry. Yes I’ve been frustrated at times, but not angry.

Anyway, I spent this night with Made S listening to the banjar meeting in Indonesian/Balinese and I realised that since coming to work in animal welfare I have learned to understand a lot of animal welfare-related vocabulary. It made me feel not so lost in translation for a moment.

Anyway, I do realise that as my brain soaks up Bahasa Indonesia, my Bahasa Inggris is deteriorating faster than you can say antidisestablishmentarianism.

I saw Blacky The Dog (coolest dog in Ubud) the other day and someone had hang a gold chain around his neck. I immediately messaged Kum to ask who pimped Blacky?

Try explaining what ‘pimped’ means in Bashasa. Kum understood what I meant as I tried to menyampaikan via SMS, the image in my head of Minime singing ‘It’s a hard knock life, for me…’ with his large, gold clock swinging around his neck.

But I was successful; so stick that in ya pipe and smoke it.

Peace out

x

For those of you who know me in Australia you will know that I’ve always lived on the crazy side of life and like Cyclone Tracey I tear a path through anywhere I go mixing it up; why? Because life is boring otherwise. It helps to have a short attention span and lack of patience if you want to have fun. I will never forget the photograph I saw in the Museum in Darwin which was of a beat up, old Torana nestled amongst the debris of Cyclone Tracey’s war path. Someone had painted on the back of it ‘Tracey, you bitch’. I love that; bring it on!

For those of you who know me in Indonesia you will know that I often get called Traciegila, because gila means crazy, Tracie rhymes with crazy and it suits my personality.

So how do we measure craziness? And what do we mean by craziness?

I’ve always been inspired by the crazy’s. I always say; if you’re contemplating regret; don’t, discuss it with a friend, justify it and move on! I’ve been lucky enough to have friends who I can be myself around – go freedom for self expression!! – Semangat!! For example, Hayley and the Richards family, Carmel, Monica, Sue and of course my sister Karen. I won’t list you all but you know who you are. So my point is that when I say I’m going to do something crazy like walk from Ubud to Sanur just because I want to you would know that this is a normal Tracie thing. So what if the hundred or so people I spoke to on the way thought that I was a crazy bule who had just escaped an institution for the insane! I could blame the cuaca panas, the chili, the arak I suppose…but I think its just that I was programmed this way.

The thing is, that I’m naturally a rebel. And I don’t mean the bandanna-wearing type nor the beret-wearing type; but, I have to question everything all of the time.

If someone tells me, ‘don’t eat cheese before noon’, goddamit I will eat cheese before noon! Why? Why not? Everything is just an experience.

So I will tell you about my Forest Gump moment. First of all let me tell you that I didn’t grow a beard by the end of it but it doesn’t matter because thanks to Hana, after the other night’s Trivia extravaganza, I now have a gorgeous set of stick on eyebrows and mustache. Phew!

So the original plan was to get up at 4am,  chuck my backpack and cool walking sandals (courtesy of Sue) put one foot in front of the other and hike it to Sanur. But when the alarm beeped at me and I looked outside, it was rainy and dark so I went back to sleep. As you do.

I eventually got up a few hours later and found myself trekking down the road at 8:30 in the morning. The idea was that I couldn’t, listen to music, smoke, read a book when I stopped or use my phone and I could only drink water and eat fruit along the way. So if you want to get all DnM about it, the idea of this stroll was to let everything go, supaya (yes! Finally get to use that word in context!) I could let everything go – consider it a cleansing of the soul, heart and brain if you like. Or maybe I really do just like Forest Gump that much. Who knows? Semangat!

I followed the flat and winding road; it wasn’t too hot as it was overcast so it was quite pleasant. Well that was a boring sentence wasn’t it?

Anyway I’ll skip to the important parts. (I always imagined reading Jayne Eyre without the descriptive paragraphs and thinking it would only take 5 minutes).

I ran in to Wi from work and he was surprised to see me. He asked me; ‘Tracie where is your bike? Do you have a flat tyre? Do you need a ride?’

‘No thanks Wi, I’m going for a jalan kaki to Sanur’

His daughter on the back of his bike smiled at me and another smaller version of her, popped out from in between him and her taking me by surprise. It’s funny how many Indonesian people can fit on a motorbike or in a bemo…

‘Noo Tracie, why? Why do you want to walk to Sanur? For olahraga?’

‘I don’t know, maybe for sport but also just to talk to the people along the way and have a think’.

He left and wished me a hati-hati (atau mati!) and a selamat jalan.

I stopped at the markets in Singapadu and bought some manggis. Yes that is your fault Ben because now I’m addicted to manggis. I spoke to the lady’s in the market and they laughed when I said that I had walked from Ubud.

Crazy Bule. Ha!

On I walked singing to myself ‘pagi, pagi jalan jalan (jalan jalan), siang, siang jalan jalan (jalan jalan)…’

I thought about some stuff for a while, then after these thoughts had whirled around in my head long enough I let them fly off and now I don’t even need to think about them anymore. And I don’t mean thoughts like, what should I have for dinner? Or should I buy that dress? I mean serious stuff that has been eating away at me for a long time. I once heard that to come to terms with your past you must slowly digest it. The way I see it was that in the last few years, my past was providing me with a nice dose of indigestion because…(wait for it!)…things just kept coming up! Ha! How’s that for a good pun?!

I stopped at a small shop in a village just before Batubulan and met a lovely girl called Indah and her little sister Novi. I ate pineapple and watermelon and had a chat about the weather. It was still overcast but the badai had berlalu’ed (wrap that around your tongue!). Talking about the weather in Indonesian is much more interesting. You don’t even need to say that you found a fifty thousand rupiah note at the end.

Then I kicked on towards Batubulan. I was surprised that I wasn’t feeling too sore or tired so I just kept on walking and looking at things. For example, there was a wedding precession stopping traffic, twelve year old children riding motor bikes home from school and anjings making love in the street (thank god for the spay/neuter program!). It didn’t feel like I had just walked 15 or so km’s but rather it felt like I was taking a light stroll on the beach watching the waves crash against the sand bar or in Indonesia’s case, watching tango wrappers wash up against the black sand beaches.

As I walked through Batubulan I heard another voice call out my name ‘Traaacie!’

It was none other than Komang; Mokos Master of Blues!

We had a chat on the side of the road and I explained that I was walking to Sanur. He was so happy and surprised to see me walking there. He also asked me where my bike was. At home of course, I answered. He offered to drive me with all seriousness but I explained that I needed to complete my mission. It was good to see a familiar face but at the same time it felt like all of the people who I stopped and talked to or who rode beside me on their bikes talking to me were familiar anyway.

Now the next part is my favourite part. As I walked along the footpath through Batubulan, a mob of school kids just leaving school for the day, crossed to my side of the road.

The kids were cheeky! They skipped along side me and asked me in their best English what my name was and where I’m from. h you’re an Indonesian teacher ‘hey hey, dia bisa bicara Bahasa Indonesia!!” So now I had my own precession going for me! Some of the boys explained why they were carrying a long sword. They had been practicing traditional dance at school. The students drizzled off after a bit, making their way home for lunch after a hard days study. They jumped on the back of motorbikes with the rest of their family or skipped down the small gangs towards their homes. I walked on smiling to myself.

It wasn’t too long after that a couple of the girls and their father pulled up next to me on their bike.

‘We have barong masks, ayo ke rumahmu!’

So I followed the family down to their house and was introduced to the Ibu and the bapak. The little girl explained that their family made barong masks and she took me on a full tour of the barong shed. I then shared my manggis and watermelon with the family, before heading off gain. One foot in front of the other; pelan pelan, adeng adeng, alon alon.

The traffic started becoming more gila as I approached the outskirts of Denpasar. I was getting low on funds but decided to stop at a small warung to do my bit for animal welfare. This particular warung had a cage full of puppies out the front up for sale. I greeted the family and asked for a bottle of water and a small container. The puppies were so thirsty and they lapped up the water I gave them quite quickly. I didn’t tie myself to their cage and demand their freedom but I explained that the puppies needed water and to be let out of the cage for a run. So together we exercised the pups, gave them a hug and a kiss and I threw in a bit of information about getting the pups vaccinated.

And then it was back to me again. Walking. Just walking. I crossed the bypass and wondered for a moment how I would be able to stand the tedious bypass. It started to sprinkle a little hujan so after another couple of kms I stopped in at a small roadside warung and chatted with the bapak there.

“Apa kabar Pak?’

‘Biasa saja.’

‘Why only okay?’

He then spoke Balinese and we played charades and I worked out that he was in a motor bike accident.

‘Kasihan Pak’.

I bought a kopi from him, had a Little Sit Down (LSD) and then said my goodbyes before taking on the bypass again.

We’re nearly there!

The bypass wasn’t so tedious for a few reasons. One of them was the random Balinese men selling gorilla masks at the traffic lights.

‘Mau ini?’

‘Sudah!’

Yes that’s right I already have a gorilla mask.

The hujan started getting a bit heavier but I just gave in to it and let it fall.

At one point I jokingly hid in a small tin shed with a corn lady (lady selling corn) and that was funny. You probably had to be there.

Then all of a sudden I was in Sanur. Jalan Tamblingan.

I stopped at a circle k and sat down on the bench seat out the front. I looked down at my feet and noticed that I had a couple of nasty blisters. I then realised that my legs hurt! I decided to finish off the 30km or so walk with a swim in the rain at Pantai Indah as well as a coconut to rehydrate and a warm soto ayam for my belly.

I lay down on the beach and had a nap in the rain and was later woken by two small dogs licking my face.

I slept well that night at Erin and Clare’s house; despite Kucing, the stray cat, leaving Clare, Erin, Laura and I a lovely little dead-rat surprise during dinner.

Well that’s the end of my walking adventure. I think that I will do it again sometime. Thanks Corinne for the idea. And for now, let me just say that most people I know think that I’m crazy; crazy by name and crazy by nature. But without the crazy, the gila, the ‘look this is me in a nutshell’ moments; we would all be going nuts anyway…out of boredom. So don’t measure the craziness. Don’t question the craziness. Just justify it with a friend…or in a blog post. Semangat! Semangat!

This morning after I woke up, I stepped out on to the sun streaked veranda and let my skin absorb the daylight. I quickly got dressed and walked down the stairs and was greeted with a coffee and breakfast by the Balinese family that live in the art gallery below me. They then threw a t-shirt and cap in my arms and told me to change. I put my ‘uniform’ on; a white t-shirt labelled with Indonesian advertising slogans and a matching white cap, and then progressed to the new building that was recently erected behind the art gallery.

I was introduced to a group of about forty artists, local government officials and visiting ministers from Jakarta before being asked to sit in the front row of the many rows of metal fold up chairs. The building, which I had come to know over the past few weeks as being a random block of cement being held up by sticks of bamboo accompanied by the loud banging of hammers every morning by Indonesian builders wearing thongs, hanging off the side and smoking; was now decorated, Balinese style. There were billiard table-like red and green coloured squares of carpet overlapping each other spread out over the cement, gold and red coloured flags dangling from the poles and don’t forget the multi-coloured streamers twisting from the corners of the ceiling. The walls were lined with ugly grey tarp which blew back and forth in the wind but they were partially hidden by hanging artworks, amazing artworks, which had been borrowed from the art gallery for today’s art workshop.

An Indonesian lady introduced everyone on the panel in formal Indonesian so I could understand most of what was going on. They spoke about art, artists and exports a lot, so the story I put together was that the workshop being held was a friendly meeting amongst artists and government officials to support the export of art to promote Indonesian art.

Who knows though, because I was more interested in eating the lipstick red snack I had found in my complimentary breakfast box. It was gooey and sweet and tasted like rice. I didn’t really expect it to taste any different than that!

After the officials and ministers left, I went up to my room and had a nap. I woke to the sound of Monica’s footsteps through my door and we had a bit of a chat and laughed at my new ‘jogging’ hat. Monica went home and I decided to check up on the artists. As I walked in to the building, Mawar, the lady who lives downstairs informed me that the artists were – typically – saying that I was beautiful. I replied with the usual ‘saya malu!’ or ‘now I’m embarrassed!’ and she laughed and randomly told me ‘banyak ikan di laut’ or there’s plenty of fish in the sea!

It amazed me at how talented the Balinese artists are. One man had painted a family of four from a photo; the colours were bold and the details were so accurate that I could see that the lady in the middle needed an eyebrow wax. I checked the photo to make sure and yes, she did need an eyebrow wax. Well at the time the picture had been taken. I hope she got them waxed after that…

Another young man had started to paint what he described as light coming through a cave. The textures and colours amazed me during the process and the end product was luar biasa!

Another favourite of mine was like a grey scale painting of some trees and plants. Once again, the detail was amazing.

I really admire these artists because their creative juices are so abundant!

I popped upstairs again and decided to have a fiddle on the guitar. I tried to learn how to tune it and stuffed it up. It seriously cant be that hard right; just pluck a string along to the Mac tuner and wait till it goes green, check the two dollar ‘how to learn guitar’ book (in Indonesian, killing two birds with one stone!) and you should have yourself a tuned guitar. But no, something went wrong. I couldn’t trust that I had done it right. I sat miserable on the bed knowing I could no longer play the same chords I have been learning over and over again, G, A minor, C, E, D, G A minor… until I had an idea.

I grabbed the guitar and plonked down the steps to the workshop. I asked one of the men there if he could tune my guitar. Please note that I had just spent half an hour fiddling around with the Mac tuner and had no success. Anyway, one of the artists picked it up, had a bit of a fiddle and a strum, a twist and a hum and there, in a couple of minutes was my guitar – tuned. I asked if anyone would like to play and one guy began playing a few Balinese songs. He then asked me if I liked dangdut and he strummed away. He had an interesting strumming technique. He would flick his fingers up and down and press the palm of his hand on the strings muting them on the downward strum. I asked him about it and he showed me the technique, which to my surprise I found I could play in a few minutes. It made me feel better about my lack of guitar tuning skills.

I’m really happy that I didn’t remain a kucing malu, or shy cat because sitting with the artists as they put up with me playing sketchy chords for an hour or so while they created masterpieces was really enjoyable. The family gave me lunch and another cuppa and I left them with the guitar to go upstairs for another nap.

A friend told me recently that the word Ubud comes from the word Obat, or medicine. Without getting too stereotypically E.P.L. maybe that’s what Ubud is; medicine – for the soul.

Well it is bedtime now and I have to practice remembering the words to ‘Old McDonald Had A Farm’ so that I can teach sekolah TK (kindergarten) tomorrow.

Maybe I’ll also book in for an eyebrow wax.

Peace out x