Where Are All the White Women?

It’s a bad habit I have.  My alarm clock is my iPad, so when it goes off at 5:15 I click snooze and then catch up on all the news that happened overnight.  

Of course, it's never good news. Often it's about the latest human life that has been ended prematurely. often with a gun, but sometimes with a bomb or a machete, usually with accompanying film.  I never watch the video. I don't want that in my head.

One day a few weeks ago, I learned that there is such a thing as an "anchor baby".

The following day, I learned that the commentor on anchor babies wasn't referring to Hispanics, but rather it was Asians who came here to have babies in order to gain citizenship and all the trappings associated with this.  

I woke up to the possibility that I may have lived for decades without knowing that I was part of this conspiracy.

This brought up a new and imagined revision to my family history. A history that starts when my father, the original S.A.M, stepped off of the plane from Asia with his funny winter hat and his 700 dollars in savings and asked "Where are all the white women?"

He found and courted one. And eventually set four anchors in form of four children. He suckled for often 16 hours a day, 7 days a week at the teat of a Midwestern hospital ICU, saving the lives of CEOs and steelworkers and pimps. He helped start a thriving medical practice. He bought cars, paid taxes, made art and cooked fried rice for legions at potlucks and picnics.

He earned enough to put his kids through a small private college, turning out a doctor, a teacher, an international marketing whiz and a geologist. All of us hard working moochers.

It's too soon to tell about his eight grandchildren, but all of them seem smart enough to know the the American Dream is vastly more than a few hundred dollars of food stamps. Rather, if you make port in a land of resources, you can chart your own course and make your own opportunity and in turn make a little more opportunity for those behind you.  

Anchors aweigh!

What's up with the Donald?

Let me start off by saying that I don’t really want to be too political here.  I don’t really want a lot of shrill shout downs or shout outs about your preferred presidential candidate.  I really just want to make an observation.

We had a trek on our last day on the island of Komodo itself.  We were hiking up to a ridge that overlooked the water and the islands and islets beyond. This is it in this photo here.

We’d heard a lot about the dragons and the other wildlife on the island and had been walking in silence for a bit, when our ranger turned to us and said, “What’s going on with Donald Trump?”  

This is not the first time I’ve faced this question.

I’ve told you Indonesia loves Barack Obama. In their minds he is a great leader leading a great country.  Despite the evident anti-muslim sentiment shown in the media and the Kardashians, the United States is still a place to be aspired to.  Many people want to visit someday.

Our guide continued, “I was watching TV the other night and they were talking about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  They have the same hair, but they don’t think the same. He’s so rich, but I don’t think that Donald Trump likes foreigners.”

There is such a disparity here between the haves and everyone else.  Those with money have  lot of money. I mean private jet and lamborghini-for-your-birthday money.  The millions without live on a few dollars a day.

The general perception here is, if you’ve got a lot of money, you got it from a river of corruption and payoffs and perhaps with the help of the police who helped snuff out your competition.

I think it creates a great dissonance for Indonesians when a man with what they presume is corrupt money comes to the fore as a leader of a country and people they admire so.  How can this be?

So, right there on that ridge, in the middle of nowhere and 10,000 miles from the U.S election I found myself trying to steer the conversation elsewhere. No, Obama can't run again... It’s early...  There is a lot of time...  I say that I don’t want to say anything because Mr. Trump may be my boss someday.  

“Ha ha ha. Maybe he tell you 'Your fired!' Ha ha ha."

Sigh. That’s right.

Manta, Manta Manta!

Day two of our Komodo boat trip.  

We woke before sunrise to the return of the fruit bats who make their homes in the mangrove trees near our anchorage.

We got a breakfast  and after a brief stop in Komodo Village we head out to Manta Point. The first snorkeling spot of the day.  

Close to the point our guide let us know that seeing the mantas depends on the tides and that usually they come through to feed at high tide.  I asked what tide it was and he said he thought the tide was coming in.

We searched for a good 45 minutes for any sign the mantas may come, but they were nowhere to be found.  

Our boat trolled around to the other side of a small island. The guide said we could snorkel here while we waited. He assured us that the current would carry us around to the other side of the island and the boat would pick us up there.  Sure. Fine. Sounds great. So, in to the water we went. This reef, and many we saw were amazing.  Hundreds of different species of brightly colored fish and corals.  Tiny, tiny jellyfish pulsating in front of your mask. Smaller stingrays, parrot fish, angel fish. It was like being in “Finding Nemo”.  We saw seahorses, right off the beach  SEAHORSES! I’m telling you. We could reach out and tickle a Poppa seahorse right on his seahorse belly.

Everything is going swimmingly. We're drifti.ng along, when rather suddenly and dramatically the current shifts.  The boat is parked off in the distance, but it is quickly evident that there is no way we'll make it to the boat. Before we exhaust ourselves, we signal to them to come get us.

Our guide expressed some confusion over the current and the tides.  “Maybe it is just the beginning of high tide.”

“Do you mean low tide? “

“Yes. Low tide. But don’t worry, we have plenty of time.”  Yeah, I thought. 6 hours or so.  

We move over to another, more sheltered snorkeling spot and have a nice enjoyable swim while we wait for the manta rays.  We eat lunch, have a snooze.

I asked, when high tide was.

“Well, the other day , the mantas all came at 2 o'clock, so maybe we'll be lucky and they'll come then."

I asked, “Do Indonesians have tide charts?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, in the U.S., every coastal community has the time and height of the tides calculated, so people know the best time to take their boat out or the best time to fish.  Is there any thing like the here?”

“No, we don't really have anything like that.”

“How do the boaters know when the tides change?”

“I guess they just have an instinct, ya. They can look around and tell.”

Hmmm. So far we were off by 4 hours.  My own instincts can tell me a high tide will come twice in the next day.

But, 4 plus hours later we were back on the hunt and it wasn't looking too promising until the captain shouted... “Manta, Manta, Manta!”

And the chase was on. We headed the boat over that way and we all scrambled to get our gear on and we leaped into the water and this is what we saw.  

Great manta rays sweeping through at high tide gobbling up plankton and moving on.

And after swimming within touching distance, I guess it didn't really matter about the lack of tables or charts or the hours long wait.  They knew they were going to come, and they did show up as advertised.

Komodo Dragons are Assholes.

Komodo Dragons are assholes! I'll tell you why in a minute.

We headed to the Island of Flores for a long weekend. One of the main things to do is scuba and snorkel in the 30 or so islands in this giant nature preserve.  The other thing to do is see the Komodo Dragons.  

These are an Indonesian treasure and a UNESCO World Heritage site.  They live on the islands of Rinca and, of course, Komodo.  They must have been here for a very long time, for they look like dinosaurs.  

These 12 foot long lizards are born to be fighters.  

Here’s the basic start to their lives. A momma dragon digs her nest and lays her 15-30 eggs. Then she digs a bunch of decoy nests so predators get confused.  She also guards all these nests for the first three months, then she wanders off while the rainy season commences.  4 months later, as rainy season is ending, she comes back to her nesting site and waits. And when the babies hatch and crawl out of the ground, she eats them.  That's right.  She hangs around and gobbles down own her young.

So, the first thing that a baby Komodo must overcome is the snatching jaws of its own mother.  The strategy is to emerge from the nest with a sibling, preferably a slower and less enlightened sibling and while momma gobbles up bubba, you make a run for the nearest tree where you spend the next 3 or 4 years of your life feasting on insects and geckos until you’re 1 meter in length whereupon you descend from the trees and become a ground dweller.

But, eating your young is not really the jerky thing I'm talking about.

All that is left after a komodo feast!

These ancient lizards are total carnivores.  They can bring down a water buffalo and digest the entire beast except for its skull.  The will digest and reduce the entire animal including the large bones to a long, chalky turd.

We'd heard tell of a Swiss man being separated from his group and taken down and all that was left was his glasses.  

When you look at these things you wonder how they do it.  They don't run very fast. The can't run far.  How do they kill something like a buffalo or a pig or a human?

The secret is their bite. They don't have a venomous bite as once thought.  Rather, their mouth's harbors some 16 types of toxic bacteria including Listeria which Jeni's ice cream fans will recognize as the type of germ that shut down the factory.  I think Jeni should create a flavor called dragons breath, maybe with mango and tamarind in honor of their shut down.  But, that's another matter.

So, this lizard has this dirty, filthy bite. And, when still, it looks like a log.  So, it camouflages itself around a watering hole and waits and then it leaps out and bites its victim.  If can get a good solid strike it will kill the animal then, but it doesn't matter.  

If it survives the first bite, the victim now has an infected bite which often won't stop seeping.  It roams the countryside dripping fluids. The lizard just stalks it. Day by day. Hour by hour. Until the victim succumbs and the feast begins.

And this, is why a Komodo dragon is an asshole. Can anyone name an animal, other than humans, who kills in such a tortured way?

Sayin "Yes" to Gangstas Paradise

I'd been talking to my Secret Asian spawn lately about  the need to say yes to things. Resisting the urge to pull back or turn down offers, just because initially they seem uninteresting or frightening or foreign.

Pull back is what I'd done when a nurse in Timor Leste asked me along to her choir practice.  

Choir? No thanks. I'll keep it between me and my bar of soap if it's all the same to you.

But then I thought maybe I should practice what I preach. I wasn't going to do much of anything other than eat, sit and go to sleep, anyway

So, I said "yes".

I said "yes" to a choir of mostly expats that rents out a hotel meeting room and sings once a week.  It's not gospel and no one strives for perfection, though they made it to the semi finals of a local competition. It's just a guy and his keyboard and a bunch of sheet music and 15-30 folks.  It's pretty democratic.  There is some structure, but people seem to just yell out songs to sing and if there is enough agreement, that is what they sing.

We started out with a new rendition of "Let it Be" which improved after 4 or 5 tries.

While we were finishing up a man strolled in with 6 or 7 Timorese guys. They were milling about when some one said, alright it's time for “Gangstas Paradise”.

Apparently the late-comer is leaving the choir and tradition holds that when you leave you get to pick a song to sing.

He also volunteers to teach English to the locals. Since they were young guys he'd been working with them on the lyrics to “Gangstas Paradise” and asked them to come work with the choir on it. They were also going to translate the rap lyrics into the local Tetun language.

So, we all reviewed our parts and after a few false starts put together a pretty rocking rendition.  Or at least as rocking as an acapella group of middle aged expats and a non-native speaking Timorese could be.  It was musical melting pot. There was video taken and I’d hoped to have it to post for you , but alas it hasn’t come through yet. I really wish I could see the final performance at a local bar in a few weeks time.

In addition to some friendly acquaintances, I found myself invited along to a book club and hiking group.  And all this because I said ‘yes’ at a point where I’d usually say,  ‘thanks, but no’.  

CrocoDili

Back to Timor Leste for a visit. This was my third time there.

I met with an expat therapist who sees primarily foreigners, but some locals often around the issue of trauma and loss. She passed on that in addition to feeling typical grief, she often has to,help them with the community’s perception of them.

If a Timorese suffers something bad, yes, they may feel guilty, but they also have to deal with what their neighbors think.  The communities are close and the general feeling is, if something bad happens, it is because you deserved it.  Your spouse is cheating? Maybe you took money from the till. Lose a child? Children are still too pure, so it must be something you did as a parent.

The country is 95% Catholic, but this sort of reap-what-you-sow, primitive mentality runs older and deeper into the realm of fatalistic animism.

Large saltwater crocodiles ply the waters between Australia and Timor Leste.  Mostly they hang around the sparser populated south coast, but not uncommonly they're spotted on the north near the capital.

The crocs are seen as the arbiter of God's law here.  A few times a week the local papers write about a child who didn't come home after swimming, or a fisherman snatched from his boat by a croc.  

Afterwards the community cluck-clucks and wonders about the victim or the survivors whose only sin may have been they let a child swim in crocodile infested waters.

But, it keeps people in line. People say, "I've lived with a pure heart. I’ve got nothing to hide. I can fish without a problem, or I'll let God decide if what I've done was bad enough and they swim or fish regardless of the news article they just read.

“If the crocodile comes, it won't come for me.”

Rum and Coke Reprise

Sitting in the Esplanada hotel. Realizing that it could be one of my favorite places on earth.  There is a constant sea breeze, good food, a stream of interesting people and often live music.

Long time readers may remember my fawning over this place a year ago, but my trials at getting a rum and coke.  If you don't you can read about it here.

This year I was in the same mood. There was a band playing some great cover tunes.  I thought I'd try again.  Maybe to see if they'd remembered anything.  I called the staff over and asked for a rum and coke.

“What kind of rum would you like, Bacardi or Bundaberg?”

Hmmm. This was promising! The place may be stepping up! I chose the latter.

I was sitting with a view behind the bar, so I could see what happened. I watched her go and pour a shot of rum and pull a can of coke out of the fridge and put them both on a tray.  She told the other bartender to ring up what she was making. The other woman snapped something like, “serve it with ice!”, because the first bartender went and got a glass of ice. And put it on the tray.  

Then the second bartender barked, “serve them together!”  The first bartender got a third glass and dumped them all together and brought it to me.  Success!

Wings Air and A Prayer

Wings Air is the smaller, regional budget arm of Lion Air.  This is sort of funny, because in these parts, Lion Air  is itself a budget airline.  

Mrs. S.A.M. swears she heard it reported that they don't pay their pilots, but rather allow them to accumulate flying hours in exchange for flying us around the Southern Asia for cheap.  Who knows?  

Anyway, we headed to Flores, Indonesia on Wings Air and found this handy dandy invocation prayer card right in front of the safety card. Prayers in multiple religions and languages. Islam, Hindu, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist.

Truly traveling with Wings air and a prayer.

Tongsis

Here's a brief blurb.... The pervasive selfie stick is known here in Jakarta as a "Tongsis". This is short for "tongkat narsis" which translates to narcissism stick. Perfect!