Part Three

The Smarter Way To Internet


Conventional wisdom learned from television and films since childhood tells me that a rooster crows once a day, some time around sunrise. As it happens, several roosters will crow back and forth to one another from opposite sides of the neighborhood every 10-20 seconds from about 4 AM until… I don’t know, 6 PM?
Sometimes yowling cats and ill-mannered children join in the fun!

I’m developing a regular routine involving the neighborhood bakery in the morning, classes, Internet time on campus [when their wireless network is functioning] or another "hotspot", followed by copious napping, reading, writing, eating, exercise and –most shocking of all- voluntarily studying Indonesian.

I bought a bike -one of the generic black Dutch models favored by the locals- which has simplified getting around. It's slow and it makes noises like crushing pop cans when I go over bumps or pedal too fast. For almost $50 American, I'm told that I got royally ripped off. Oops!

Riding in this city is… different. But fun. Motorcycles, bicycles, and cars move fluidly, like fish. No, that’s not quite right; fish are more organized. You drive on the left here, except of course for the times when you’re pretty sure you can get away with driving on the right, then you do that. In fact, “I’m pretty sure I can get away with…” covers doing basically anything you want. The primary rules of the road seem to be:

1. Don’t hit the guy in front of you.
2. Assume that the guy behind you is following Rule #1.
3. OK, now get there however you want to. …Fast!

For my own purposes, I add a fourth rule: “Don’t die.” I believed it before, but this trip has renewed my faith in the superiority of Oregon in all things. I’d be extremely disappointed to die anywhere else. Of course, the copious fumes we’re all forced to suck down most likely negate any possible health benefits of riding everywhere. If that creates 'problems', I might reevaluate my transportation strategy... ["I ordered Zima, not emphysema.”]

Speaking of death! Here are some chickens in a graveyard. With so many chickens running around, I guess it’s bound to happen. Still, it seems... disrespectful?

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The most basic local restaurant* involves a series of plates dishes displayed in a window at the front. Inside, you help yourself to rice from a large pot and to any of the items in the window. [Whole, fried fish are quite popular, but I tend to stay away from those. As a rule, I'm uncomfortable eating meat with its face still attached.] Once you have finished eating, the proprietor does a mental tally and decides on the amount that you owe. This seems to vary depending on the day and the staff's apparent mood, but a plate full of tasty food and iced tea usually runs you somewhere around 50 cents.

*Excluding the many, many carts. We've been cautioned against some of the fully mobile juice peddlers because of rumors that they cut the juice with the local water; a serious no-no. With this in mind, I try to avoid eating establishments without roofs.

Of course, my efforts to sample the local cuisine include these curious snack foods available in Jogjakarta’s finer convenience stores:

Important note: The chicken-flavored Chitatos taste surprisingly like dark-meat chicken. Also, Indonesian Cheetos aren’t cheesy. They’re yellow and dry, with a breakfast cereal ‘corn’ flavor. And while the American Chester Cheetah is content to lounge about gorging himself, the Indonesian Chester bounds eagerly through a cornfield in pursuit of his treats. For some semi-familiar cheesiness, one must turn to “American Cheese” flavor:

In one of my more homesick moments I purchase some mediocre peanut butter and bread. I eat mediocre peanut butter sandwiches every other meal for a few days. The only available peanut butter is creamy, I have to spread it with the flat handle of a spoon** and the flimsy local bread sort of falls apart… Anywhere else these would be tragic sandwiches, but they suit my specific need here perfectly.

**When they eat with utensils here it’s usually just a knife and a spoon. In other words, there is a shortage of butter knives.

Some good news! In another reversal on something we’d been told all along, it turns out Regular (one-year) Program Darmasiswa students will receive college credit for our studies here. Of course, I don’t know how PSU will choose to categorize those credits or how long it will take ISI Jogja to send the particulars for transferring those credits. Those are worries for another day!

More amusing “English” slogans on signs around town:

You heard it here first: YAMAHA Motorcycles = "The Spirit Of Indie".

Next: The Post-Ramadan wrap-up!

Part Two

Yogyakarta By Night

Eyeballing the distance from Jakarta to Yogyakarta on a map, I had pegged it at not much more than 200 miles. Apparently it is considerably farther! Our bus route winds through slow-moving Java highways, with bathroom/food stops every two hours. The journey takes all night.


When we arrive in the morning we are informed that the Darmasiswa Initiative is paying for two nights in the luxuriously dilapidated Hotel Rose, after which time our lodging will be up to us. We are urged to find a place to live quickly.


I find a place relatively quickly; a tiny apartment above a nice lady named Susi’s house/batik shop. Susi speaks good English, the room is affordable and meets my needs*… it looks good. It’ll be ready at the end of the week. Score one for taking care of things promptly!

The next day our program administrator at ISI Jogja shows up for a meeting wearing this:

He says it was a gift from his friend, a U of O teacher who was also the first person to major in Jewelry there. I demonstrate the reaction sending this photo will elicit from certain friends [a resounding “GO DU-UUUCKS!!!”]… He seems quite pleased. During all subsequent interactions he addresses me as Mr. Oregon. I have no problem with this.

After being distracted by all the buses, hotels, orientation, and general “moving to another country” business, the first trip to the ISI Jogja campus reminds we why I wanted to come here in the first place. [“Oh yeah, I’m studying awesome art that’s going to help me get way better…”]

First classes are profoundly exciting. This is my classroom:

Since ISI Jogja is considered one of the best places in the world to study wayang kulit and gamelan, I had feared that the wizened masters we’re studying under would have no patience for my foreignness and lack of Indonesian language skills. As it turns out, they are really nice, laid-back dudes who mostly seem amused by my fumbling Indonesian. So far I understand maybe 10% of what’s spoken, but since the classes are performance-based, they can typically demonstrate proper technique without language. One of my three(!) classmates translates the rough gist of parts I miss. I still need to learn the language ASAP** [and I’m making progress] but for the time being things are workable.

I have three classes this semester: Wayang Kulit puppeteering, Gamelan, and Voice (singing gamelan tunes). Gamelan is a lot math-ier than I had realized. With all due modesty, learning a series of relatively simple parts layered over one another with just enough changes to make it tricky [hence, more rewarding] to play causes me to think several times: “This works a lot like something I would write!”

It occurs to me that I shouldn’t get distracted from what I’m doing here by the awesomeness of what I’m doing here. Once we get further into the school year I trust this feeling will fade. Or not...

As for the city itself, Jogjakarta is enjoyable and not too hard to get around. Much of the city is still in ruins from the big earthquake a few years ago. The pollution is less pronounced than in Jakarta, the air isn’t quite as thick.

This is an Indonesian hamburger:

The whole thing is soggy enough to necessitate the knife and fork, but the chili sauce and cucumber contribute to a unique taste sensation. Recommended!

On an unrelated note: I learned the Indonesian word for intestinal worms is cacing, pronounced “chuh-chinnngggg!”

By the end of the week, the apartment is finally ready. I move in. I pay my rent for the year.

Moving in was the last loose end I was waiting to take care of. I am now officially living here. Most of me is excited and fully committed to this adventure. It’s good; I know it’ll ultimately be great. But I confess: there’s a part of me that hates me for leaving Portland. It howls and claws bitterly at its cage, gnashing empty gums. It’s a fearful, petty feeling I’m not particularly proud of that should –I hope- subside soon enough. But two weeks in, I definitely miss everyone at home.

Maybe it’s best to close things here with two amusing scenes from the Malioboro mall:

*It’s two small adjoining rooms, really just enough space for a bed and a desk to work at. Similar to a less-than-optimal living situation I enjoyed a few years ago… Fingers crossed that a foreign setting and renewed sense of artistic purpose can keep this from ending up like that did. Ohhhhh my!

**Funny thing about that… While all the Darmasiswa literature said we’d be studying Indonesian along with the area of art/culture we’d chosen, it turns out they meant they assume we’ll study Indonesian while we’re here but that isn’t included in the scholarship. Oops! Make that two languages I get to learn Independent Study-style!

Note: there are more Indonesian graffiti photos here and I put grainy digital-camera video here. More soon!

Part One

Off He Goes

7:45 PM: After checking in, checking my bag, and sitting at my departure gate for about an hour, a slow freak-out begins to set in. The ground feels unsteady. I think hard about shedding virtually every responsibility I’ve ever had, trading them in for a set of strange new responsibilities, how quickly the year will pass, what I’ll do when it’s over... I think about all of this so hard that I leave my last paycheck and an envelope full of cash just sitting there when I board the plane*.

Last looks:

The international wing of SFO is breathtakingly futuristic. Enormously tall, white, with long, tall aisle after aisle of ticket counters for airlines going everywhere. Strange people are jabbering away in their strange foreign tongues... I have stumbled into a spaceport. With three hours to kill, I hole up in the corner of a cafeteria next to a free electrical outlet. I watch Fight Club and eat cold Round Table pizza.

Saturday night lasts too long and rudely becomes Sunday without alerting any of us first. I spend the 12 hours between San Francisco and Taipei pinned in the window seat, except for the time I get up to take this picture:

Approaching Taipei we are greeted by an astounding lightning storm over the ocean. Lightning briefly illuminates the clouds far off to our side and the ocean far beneath us. It's an awesome image. [Caladan!] This is as close as I can come to capturing it with a camera through the airplane window:

As the sun comes up I listen to the new Grouper (you know, Dragging A Dead Ox Through Water Up A Hill?) for the first time and enjoy it quite a bit. We arrive at 5:00 AM Taipei time on September 1^st [AKA 2:00 PM Portland time on August 31^st] and –despite a few hours sleep coiled up in my seat- I'm definitely in that blotchy, wild-eyed "up all night" mode.

The Taipei airport is boring. The chic Taiwanese clothing shops in the airport play Linkin Park, Evanescence, and Mariah Carey. I sit on the floor, savoring my last Round Table slice. There is an enormous Vincent Gallo ad for Belvedere vodka:

The flight from Taipei to Jakarta is uneventful. I successfully resist the sick urge to watch the new Indiana Jones on the way. I catch most of it on my neighbors’ seat-back screens and fear that -even without sound- I have gotten the drift. That sadness passes quickly.

The plane drops out of the sky toward Jakarta and I stare into the murky green canal running parallel to the runway. Hmmm. No one meets me at the gate. No one meets me at the immigration counter. No one meets me at the baggage claim. I finally find the kids in the standard-issue bright blue Darmasiswa blazer waiting outside the airport exit. Then, as with all things that need to get done here, we wait around for another hour or so.

Cats roam the Jakarta airport. Cats and goats roam the sides of the road to downtown.

The land surrounding the airport is a strange mix of palm-lined orchards, tin-roofed shanty towns, and unidentifiable buildings that don’t appear to have been demolished so much as turned inside out, spewing garbage in all directions. It’s Southeast Asian Trailer Park Boys, except if Ricky and Julian get caught dealing hash here, they end up being publicly decapitated**.

The Darmasiswa Initiative puts us up at a youth hostel in Taman Mini, a theme park with areas based on all the different regions in Indonesia. [Disneyland scale, Enchanted Forest tech level.] All the participants fill several of these rooms with 20 bunk-beds:

The hostel is lousy with cats. Chickens too, but in the land where “BIRD-HUMAN-HUMAN” was/is still a reality, I presume it's best to steer clear of those. Thankfully they have the infected under strict quarantine:

On the second day, we go to malls. I see clusters of small shops selling identical merchandise, a clothing store that prominently features University Of Oregon Football t-shirts(?!!!) and the biggest, most offensive, ostentatious mall-shaped monstrosity I have ever seen. I emerge from this little trip with a cheap cell phone and bootleg copies of The Dark Knight and Carnivale: Season 1 for about $3 each.***

That night the mosquitoes eat me alive. 47 bites on my left arm and 55 bites on my face.

On the fourth day I wake up around 5 AM [right around the time morning prayer calls kick in] and finally get it together to go running. The park is deserted but surprisingly loud: buzzing insects, fluorescent lights, what I assume are bats, and distorted calls to prayer coming through the park’s PA system from all sides. Somehow the lack of sunlight amplifies the already-powerful odors here. I don’t make it much more than two miles in the heat and the stink, but I emerge feeling more productive than I have since arriving.

We meet with representatives from each of our respective universities later that afternoon. The ISI Jogja group is friendly and the meeting is very informative. Particularly informative is the part about how wayang kulit is not taught in Bahasa Indonesia; it’s only taught in Bahasa Java. [That is: It isn’t taught in the simple, notoriously easy Indonesian equivalent of Hochdeutsch that we all learn. It’s only taught in notoriously difficult Javanese, the one with different structure and sets of vocabulary depending on your and the person you’re addressing’s respective ages, social status, etc.]

Obviously this is the kind of important detail that would have been most helpful, I don’t know, SIX MONTHS AGO. Nonetheless, I have resolved to not worry and just roll with it. After all, I didn’t jump blindly into this thing because I thought it would be easy. It just turns out that there was room for my studies here to get even harder and more obscure. Bonus!

Next: Moving to Jogjakarta!

*Someone found it and turned it in. No worries.

**Kidding! I don’t think they do that in public.

***B- image quality, and you can’t turn the subtitles off. But only $3!