Digs Coherence

Our new digs are in a fairly upscale part of town.  Lumped in with hundreds of other 4 story sand colored buildings.  It turns out that the King decreed that housing be of three varieties.  Faced on all sides with limestone, faced on one side with limestone and painted beige or painted all beige.  

It’s capacious, if rather oddly laid out. There’s definitely a public space and a private space inside

It is not as large as our last place. We’re upstairs and we don’t have a yard. The dog, who’s not really lived in a multi level, is getting used to the steps.

As yet, it doesn’t seem like we’ll have need for the staff that we had before.  Maybe a parttime housekeeper, but no need for a driver or a gardner.  

There is a boab.  This is a guy who lives in the basement who keeps up the place.  Removes trash and washes your car.  He watches fuel levels and tells you when to order more.  It’s a different concept, but apparently you can ask him to run errands for you. So, far we’ve established that we will give him money, but beyond that, it is vague. He’s very friendly, but there is an adversarial quality to the relationship.  A man who lives in your basement with access to all vital fluids tacitly demanding cash every month. But, it’s less than we paid before and part of the culture.

As in our last life, we are near several mosques.  It’s nice to hear the call to prayer again. Except for the 5 am one.  That still takes some getting used to.  

The singers here are better. Maybe the arabic is less accented than those in Indonesia.  Maybe it’s better genetics.  Maybe the dusk adds a certain husky quality. Maybe they bought a better speaker system.  Whatever the reason, it’s more rich and sonorous.  At 5AM, you can get back to sleep pretty easily.

I’ve been reading lately about coherent breathing and meditation and how the ideal breathing rate when one is totally relaxed is 5 to 6 times per minute. I wonder, on some level, if this call to prayer is in some way supposed to mirror this. A reminder to pause and breathe out.

Click Above.  Take a moment and listen and imagine just stopping for 90 seconds 4 or 5 times a day

Playing Tourist

We’ve arrived in Amman at the exact worst time. Three days before a 5-day religious holiday. For many in the country it’s a 10-day holiday.  Plus, there’s an election coming up, so that means another national holiday in a couple weeks.

Apparently, even during the days of operation nothing can get done. It’s a personal bureaucratic clot.  We missed the day to get a Work I.D. Without a work I.D. we can’t cash checks or fill out forms.  The government won’t accept passports to work on visa issues. Without a visa, we can’t leave the country. We also can’t get a residency card.  Without a residency card, we can’t contact customs about our belongings.  We also can’t take ownership of our car which needs a license and insurance.

The process that should take 3 weeks, could take 6.

So we walk or taxi or Uber around.  It does let us play tourist a bit.

Yesterday, we went to the old city to the Citadel.

We shelled out for the guided tour and found out about one of the oldest continuously inhabited places with evidence dating back to the neolithic period some 7500 years ago.  This one hill has been swapped around from the Ammons to the Greeks to the Romans to the Arabs. Houses built on top of caves.  Churches built on top of houses. Mosques built next to churches.

At bottom of the hill is a Roman Amphitheatre that looks like it could still be used today if safety and fire codes didn’t exist.

Here’s a slideshow of the afternoon along with some catchy music courtesy of the folks at google.

>>>Secret Asian Man goes to the Citadel<<<

Beige First Impressions

If it is not yet apparent, Amman, Jordan is the site of our next post. We arrived 5 days ago.

One word, first impression?  Beige. Beige earth and beige building stretch away into the hills.  On the road in from the airport, the light beige looked like snow under the moon.

Second word? Dust. It's everywhere and everything that is not beige, turns beige. Plants, cars, people. It's such a disparity from the moisture filled air we've been in previously.

It's desert air and so, from 11 until 5 pm it is 90 degrees. It's a dry heat, but it's heat. Space in the shadows is cooler commodity. The remainder of the day, at least this time of year, is wonderful? Morning and evening walks are High 60s or low 70.  Refreshing. That's the time to be outside.

Overall, it seems safe. Peaceful feeling, really. If you didn't read the news you'd have little idea of the skirmishes and wars within a few hundred miles to the north, south, east, and west; in Syria, Yemen, Israel or Iraq.  There is a fairly strong security and police presence around.

We've gone from a personal famine in bread and cheese, to an absolute Mecca for both. The average corner store has a cheese selection that could rival anything back home.

And we've found a bakery where pita bread falls pocket by pocket out of the sky. Not kidding. The bed is baked in the basement, conveyed and cooled on a belt to the second floor and then plops back down to the ground floor through a chute where pita elves bag it up. 2 dozen pieces for about 40 cents. A gluten lovers paradise. I promise you, dear reader, a video of this process soon.

Spices abound as do olives, which grow everywhere. Dates and figs as well.

In what seems to be our pattern when we move, we've been to 4 different grocery stores in five days. Just seeing what's out there as we expand our bubble. Seems that we can get most things we may need within walking distance.

More news to come soon.  It's safe. We’re safe, sheltered and will be well-fed.  I’ll put a call out now for visitors. Flights from the U.S. can be found starting around $675. We’d love to show you around.

You can read more here at: Adventures in Wonderland

Reprogramming

I’ve been home on leave.  We're required to take time in the US in between assignments. I guess to remind us how great America is and to prevent us from thinking about moving away.

My friends chide me that we have to come back to get the battery in our microchip replaced.  Or to be reprogrammed.

Nonetheless, here we've been here. And this is what I've seen.

Coloring. This was hitting Indonesia a bit as we left, but is here at an amazing level. The number of mandalas and puppy dogs and sci-coloring books is remarkable. Along with the cords of coloring pencils. Even the local throw away mag has a coloring page. Perhaps, you'd like to print off and color the mandala at the top of this page? How long until this trend is complete? I'll say by Christmas.

A drive through southern Ohio revealed an astonishing number of confederate flags flying proudly in yards throughout the area. It seems that maybe in the effort to stamp out the festering sore that this banner represents, some of the pus has splattered north of the Mason-Dixon Line and  probably onto the tracks of the underground railway that ran through those parts. In fairness, I did see some rainbow flags. One pizza joint had both flags pinned up, bracketing the door, in a true message of… something?

I went to Lululemon to get some pants hemmed. Their ABC pants are amazing. They truly are travelling pants.You can travel  in them for days. If you need to sit on a plane for 40 hours, these are what you want to sit in.

But, they’re sized funny.  If you normally wear a size 32, you’ll wear a 34 in their pants. While waiting, I decided to try on a pair that was labelled “New Sizing”.  I put on a size 34 and they fell off me.   The lovely clerk said, “Oh yeah, that’s the new sizing.  They’re sized accurately now. 32 inches is 32 inches.  We really listened to our customers!”  I wonder what happened that led them to listen to centuries of international measurement standards.

Perhaps most distressing was a scene I witnessed in the fitting area.  A middle aged man with a slight paunch was trying on t-shirts and examining them far too closely.  I mean, it’s  t-shirt for Pete's sake A $68 t-shirt, but a t-shirt nonetheless.

“Hmmm”, he says.  “It’s a little long.  Can you hem them?”  Raising the shirt 2 inches, barely concealing his hirsute belly.

“Oh, yes! Of course!” says the shop lady, just as pleasant as can be, like they get this request all the time.

“Ok. I’ll take 4.  Just make sure they’re all hemmed to the same length” If you're counting, that's $280.00 on four t-shirts.

And there you have it.  In my absence, America seems to have become a coloring-obsessed, confederate flag-waving, t-shirt-hemming, middle-aged paunch bearing Britney Spears wannabes. Seems I’m not the only one who needs re-programmed.

Oh, America! You are a beacon unto the world! Surely your light can shine brighter than this.

One Last Walk

Last entry was supposed to be a goodbye. My last entry from Jakarta. But then I went for a walk the other day and this all happened.

After work, I needed to get some pulsa, prepaid money on my phone. With a short time left, I figured I'd need about 4 dollars worth of data and calls.  There's a man in the village across the road who makes his living recharging money on phones.  For $0.15 per transaction, he'll put whatever amount you want on your phone. You have to give him the money, of course. His shop is about 10 minutes away.  I took the long way home so all in all it was a 30 minute walk.

This is all that I saw in my very short stroll.

I opened the tall gate at the end of my driveway and found the security guard bent over clutching a good size rooster in his hands.  Blue and green in plumage with a bright red crown.  The rooster, not the guard.  The skinny patriarch of a family that lives in a narrow lean-to crack between two houses down the block was stringing twine around the birds legs.  The rooster waited surprisingly patiently.

“Ah...  Dinner?” I asked.

“Yep.”  said the guard with a smile.

Halfway down the block a trio of 20 or 30-somethings was briskly walking toward me, head in their phones.  I saw that they were chasing Pokemon, which has taken Indonesia by storm as well.  This is unusual in that Indonesians don’t tend to move briskly anywhere. It’s too hot to move fast, so they saunter or sit.  This is a population that culturally uses the elevator to go down one floor.  It was good to see these guys getting some activity.

Down an alley by the pulsa shop, walks a 6-foot transvestite in a bauble-laden turban and a full length red velvet dress.  She has a small,  battery-powered speaker slung around her neck.  In one hand is a mic, in the other a silk purse that’s open.  She’s strolling down the alley crooning for small change. She serenades a group sitting on the steps of the mosque.  Most of them donate.  Who says all Muslims are intolerant. It is show time!

And then there are these guys.  I see them at dawn. I see them at dusk. They march around hustling and singing a song while they do it. I often hear their echoes in the evening or on the way to work.  This time I caught a snippet on film. Click the link below

Street Musicians Near Senopati 

Walking back to my gate I asked the guard.  “Where’s the chicken?”

He drew two fingers across his throat.

“Did you eat him?” 

“Not yet!” Then he laughed.  “Okay, Mister!  Have a good evening.”

And that is a 30 minute snippet of Jakarta Life. There is no way you can catch it all!

One Papaya Leaf and Counting.....

It’s the end of Ramadan in Jakarta.  The perfect time to be here. The city has emptied out. Some 80% of Jakartans have gone elsewhere for the week.  Electricity usage is down by 70% compared with a week ago. The air is clean. The streets are quiet. This holiday has given us, in the words of that guy on Ally McBeal, “a fresh bowl”

And winding down my time here in Indonesia, I’ve taken the time to reflect on all the things I’ll miss about Jakarta when I leave here. I’m sure the list is greater, but here are 6 things.

1. Fauna: in a city with near zero green space and 20 million people, you think it be limited, but it is everywhere you look. The geckos who welcomed us so abruptly when we arrived have become
   
   our friends.  Yes, they scare the bejeezus out of me when the scurry away when I open a cabinet door, but they cause us no harm and eat the mosquitos.

The myriad of butterflies that grace us daily in our own front yard.

The flying lizards. Flying lizards? You ask.  Damn straight.  We’d heard from our staff that the

lizards fly and we totally disregarded them, until one day we watched one climb a tree in our yard and soar across the lawn into another tree.  It was the darndest thing.  And now we see it all the time.

Even rats, considered horrid when we arrived, are rather quaint.  We look up and see one running across the rafters of our new favourite smoothie bar and it doesn’t faze us. They’re part of life here.  Except when you step on a dead one.  Then, they’re still pretty horrid.

2. The dozens of sights I’ve seen and the millions of sights I haven’t.  I’ll miss the beauty, the uniqueness and the history of this place.  Once could spend a lifetime here and see something new every day, I’m sure. And that is all rapidly changing whether by neglect or progress. It won’t be the same again forever.

3. The people, who are generally kind and considerate.  They are also seriously proud maybe to their detriment. Insisting on doing things their way even when solutions lie in front of them. Take, for instance, the Uber drivers who, despite the power of a GPS on their dash and turn-by-turn directions in a native language, insist on orbiting my neighborhood in ever shrinking circles until they find my house!

But they are endlessly resourceful and their solutions to problems work and sometimes are even better than conventional.  I’m also convinced there is some sort of magic among them..  I hear stories of magic here.  Stories of people mysteriously gaining power or influence. Or after months of seemingly nothing happening, there is suddenly instantaneous progress. And being here now, I start to wonder if time may be more fluid here. May all the real work is being done in some other dimension.  

I also think that a large portion of their communication is telepathic.  Watching them communicate in a loud, crowded places, they never seem to yell or slow their speech and yet, the message always gets through.  Mostly though, I’ll miss the easy smiles of the Indonesian people.

5. Motorbikes. Though a scourge upon the traffic scene with their blatant disregard for laws and
   
   sidewalks and their platelet-like way of clotting routes for the rest of us, I marvel and the efficiency of all that can be done/carried on the back of one. Texting, sleeping, even breastfeeding an infant.  Balloons, live goats, hundreds of pounds of ice, small furniture.  All can be carried with some seat space and some raffia twine to lash it. It is still a source of entertainment. 

5. The hustle.  Just the sheer hustle of people here. You don’t need a lot to survive here. Food is cheap. Clothing can be cheap. Shelter is as little as a tarp and a bench. It may not be easy, but you can survive if you hustle for that  last little bit. From the parking hawkers, to the Momma Jockeys, to the rag pickers, to the street musicians. They’ll take a handout if it’s offered, (They may even take your hand),  but few are looking for a handout. Everyone is constantly hustling. It can often be frustrating, maddening at times, but they're all trying to make their way in the world.

6. My papaya tree. Planted from a seed,to a pot, to our yard, I’ve watched it grow daily. It’s still quite small and I’ll never see fruit. This papaya tree only ever has 12  or 13 broad green leaves at a time.  A new one sprouts out the top, and the lowest one yellows and falls off. Losing one leaf perhaps once or twice a week.  In an age where things move in a flash and lives change in an instant, I think there is a good value in measuring time by the leaves of a papaya tree.

I’m told if you stay in a place long enough, you’ll grow to love it. Warts and all, Jakarta has definitely gotten under my skin. And so, with just one papaya leaf remaining of my time here, those are some of the things I’ll miss the most.

Keep an eye out for Secret Asian Man's continuing ventures in Jordan.

Our Daughter the Shredder.

Daughter of S.A.M. got a summer job at the embassy. Often kids can’t work on the local economy.  They do a great job of creating positions for kids on summer breaks either in late high school or home from college. A lot of the jobs are kind of important.  Creating housing photo displays or working on events for high powered people.  

Daughter’s job was not one of these jobs.

I can’t recall the name of her department. It sounded very techy and edgy.  But, it’s neither of those.  It’s the mailroom.  

“The mailroom!” she exclaimed, “Could be exciting. I do like organizing things!”  

It is not that either.

Apparently, they created this position because they thought regular employees would be short staffed for the summer.  But, plans changed and it seems they are, in fact, overstaffed.  

So, she’s been given a windowless room, a desk, a computer, and 8 hours a day of time to kill.

This is her first real job beyond babysitting, so it’s been interesting to watch. We press her daily for details of her office experience. “I did a task today.”

“Oh? Do tell!”

“I turned in my time sheet.”

“Oh… That’s it?”

Shrug. “There wasn’t anything else to do?”

“Can you ask them for something to do? File something? Tear up boxes? Be proactive!”

“I did.  They said there is nothing.  I just sit and read. Sometimes my boss comes in and tells me to go do something like go get coffee or lunch.”

She came home the other day and announced that she got sit behind the service counter and hand out packages for 15 minutes. But, no one came, so it was back in the box for her.

“It’s alright”, she said, one week into the job.  “I get paid. It’s only for a month, three weeks now.  I can do anything for three weeks.”  

We asked. “Can you find a higher up and ask them for something do?  Do you want us to call someone?”

“NO!  Please don’t!  I’m fine” She pleaded.

So, of course, we called. Well, I didn’t.  Mrs. S.A.M. did.  And if you know Mrs. S.A.M., you know that things happened.

Up the chain it went and back down it came.  Down upon Daughter’s poor Indonesian supervisor, who, according to Daughter, also lacks a great deal to do on any given day.  But, down upon him it came, so he approached her.

“Hello.  So, I’m really confused about what I’m supposed to have you do.”

“Yeah.”

He handed her a 20 inch pile of papers and walked her to the shredder down the hall.  “These can be shredded.”

“Shredding! I can do shredding. My dad had us shred things when I was younger”

On a side note and in my defense, I had my kids do lots of things.  Setting fire to things, riding motorcycles, catching fireflies, sending  them off to camp.  jumping off the high dive. All those high points and apparently shredding things made the list of memories.  

“Wait! Don’t do all of this.” He begged.

“I don’t think it will be that hard.”

“No.” He held up a hand. “Seriously.  How long are you working?”

“Two more weeks.” she replied.

He pointed to the pile. “This pile has to last you two weeks.”

And so she shreds 1.5 inches per day.  

Ever the optimist, Daughter of S.A.M. put a positive spin on the experience while driving to work the other day.  “I gotta say, I learned a lot from this job.  I learned how to manage time. I learned how to work in an office environment.  I learned how to break one large task into smaller tasks..  That will look okay on a future resume, right?”