Part Twelve

See The World, Subjugate The Ocean

“Kids Learning English” Story #1

A friend of a friend is looking for a Native Speaker to judge an English Speech competition at UNY (Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta) in the first week in January and I enthusiastically volunteer. For the first round, the 12 competitors have prepared speeches about:

a) Whether the Indonesian government lowering the price of fuel was a good idea (All agree: YES!)

b) How Obama’s victory will affect Indonesia in the coming years (All agree: President Obama will be good for Indonesia! Because he used to live here!)

c) The Young Leader Phenomenon (Each one mentions Obama’s victory over McCain and makes a vague reference to how younger leaders know more about things like The Internet.)

Most of the speeches are mediocre and repetitive, with few coherent arguments coming across. Five finalists move on to the second -and final- round, in which they’re given 10 minutes to prepare a brief speech on “Israel’s Recent Aggression Toward Palestine”.

The frontrunner from the first round once again gives the best-pronounced, best-thought-out speech. However, her speech is barely 5 minutes long and before addressing the topic she takes a moment to define the word “Holocaust” and brings up discrepancies between different groups’ claims about how many people were killed in the Holocaust, plainly explaining that: “The Jew uses the Holocaust to get sympathy from the rest of the world…” [That’s right. ‘The Jews’ would have been special enough, but no. The Jew (singular). Like how Borat says it.]

However, her arguments and her English are by far the best of the group and she wins easily. To her credit, she goes on to acknowledge that the issue is a complicated one and that blame cannot be laid solely at the feet of… The Jew.

This is the nightmare tree with long human-sized fingers

for roots next to where we park our bikes.

“Kids Learning English” Story #2

The same acquaintance needs help a few days later, so I join Dora (Darmasiswa from Hungary) in administering a conversational English test at a school where Indonesian kids are trained to work on American and Dutch cruise ships.

The test covers basic introductions and personal information, then describing a few simple photographs. They’ve only been studying English for a few months, but some show remarkable progress. When asked why he wants to work on a cruise ship, one young man happily replies: “I wish to work on cruise ship so I can see many places and subjugate the ocean.”

“Ha ha ha," I say, "Uhh, are you sure that’s the word you want to use?”

He nods earnestly. “Yes, yes! Subjugate!”

“Kids Learning English” Story #3

When Jeannie goes on a school field trip, one of her [normally conservative] female tutors arrives wearing a t-shirt with this on it:


If there were any questions about how much English this tutor knows, this would answer them. Jeannie opts not to explain the meaning of the shirt to the tutor, to avoid an immensely awkward conversation and –I expect- hysterical outburst of shame from the girl.

[Australian] Carla and I have been practicing for weeks, putting together a set under the name Kilat Khusus (from an Indonesian postal service slogan alluding to their lightning speed, a reference I find particularly laughable since the package I’ve been expecting has taken more than a month to arrive). Some moments sound a little like Glass Candy or Suicide or The Deckers. Audio/video evidence of a possible show in late January will follow.

We’ll have to work quickly though since they just got word that Darmasiswa canceled the Short Course for Second Semester, so Carla, my friend Alexandros, his sister, and all the rest who were applying to extend their studies for the rest of the year are out of luck and will have to vacate the country soon. This is especially lame since the administrators here were telling them all along that extending their programs would be no problem. (Apparently it was 100% possible right up until the day it suddenly wasn’t.)

I recognize Pooh and Mickey, but which Copyrighted character

is that blue …thing on the right supposed to be?

“Kids Learning English” Story #4

Helping kids learn English is fun, so I agree to take Maya (Darmasiswa from Wisconsin)’s place speaking English at a local high school. This assignment turns out to mean accompanying a group of a couple hundred kids to a local herb plantation, then to a park at Kaliurang (near the foot of Mt. Merapi). It also means free lunch.

Seen from outside, Kaliurang is super cool; tall hills covered with jungle trees arouse the imagination. Unfortunately, upon entering one finds paved paths and state park-style structures everywhere. The group of students -which includes several contestants from the Speech Competition from the previous week- crowds around me to practice conversation and endure long, ranting answers to their questions about American culture.

My excitement at seeing “wild” monkeys for the first time fades quickly. The park monkeys are less wretched than the cats and dogs I’ve seen in town, though they are afflicted with the same hideously drooping Malnourishment Teats.

As one monkey scampers along about 20 feet away from me, my eyes catch a quick flash of red. I follow him to get better look and that’s when I see the Worst Thing I Will See In This Country. This poor monkey has sustained a terrible injury to the balls. His sac has been slashed or torn on the right side and movement pulls the wound apart, revealing a wedge of the bright red stuff inside.

After attempting to draw this horror at home with unsatisfactory results, I manage to recreate it using a pink t-shirt inside a plastic bag. From behind, this poor monkey’s pouch looked like this:

And yet, there in the park, somehow no one else seems to share my dismay. They can't NOT notice. How could ...THAT... be unremarkable? FOR GOD'S SAKE, SOMEBODY RENDER SOME ASSISTANCE!

But they don't. The injured monkey disappears, the field trip concludes without further incident, and they give me some nice batik for my trouble. The End.

Part Eleven

Crappy Holidays! (ZIIIINGGGG!!!)

Christmas Eve 2008! Unprecedented snow? Familial warmth? Delicious prime rib, pies, and whatnot? Sadly, no. In Jogja it was last-minute gamelan rehearsal that forced me to postpone beach travel plans until Christmas Day.

The rehearsal is held in a dusty shack full of gamelan instruments somewhere in backwoods Bantul. My classmates and I practice a new song for about an hour as members of our teacher’s gamelan group trickle in. Once the whole group arrives, Amateur Hour comes to an end and they get down to the real business of the night - running all the music for the next show. Here’s a taste (Note: the video's a little dark):

Things conclude at around midnight and we [Yuri –from Japan, the other non-Indonesian in class- and I] are told to report to campus in the morning to get new text for the show on the 29^th, when we will be “opening” for Pak Udrek.

I get up and go to school at 10 o’clock on Christmas morning without protest [since, really, what else do I have to do?] and find the wayang building locked. I wait around until 11:00 when Yuri shows up to tell me that Mas Udreko is still typing up the text, he’ll be here at noon and can I wait there til then? Uhhh, NO. I have to catch a bus to Pacitan. I’ll get it in a couple of days. Bye!

Actually boarding a bus to Pacitan turns out to be more difficult than expected. Jeannie and I barely make it to the bus station by our scheduled departure time and everyone there is aggressively unhelpful. We’re pointed in all different directions, usually by dudes hoping to hustle us onto their own buses. All insist there is no direct bus from Jogjakarta to Pacitan, despite the fact that our friends Alex and Paula took that bus on the previous day. Suspicious but tired of waiting, we end up getting a bus to Solo [around 2 hours] then transferring to a bus to Pacitan [almost 3 hours].

In Solo we eat Christmas Dinner: sate ayam and water at the bus station, choked by the fumes of a dozen shabby buses. It is at this point that I realize that I will never have to worry about having a worse Christmas than this one. Maybe there’s some long-term satisfaction in that. In the short term, though, it just sucks.

Real hat, real chair, cardboard girl. From a distance = alarming!

Exhausted and smelly, we arrive in Pacitan after 9 PM. Having spent the entire day rushing around or crammed into bus seats designed for a people whose average height is 6-12 inches less than ours, we manage to chat with Alex and Paula for a bit [and ascertain what a nice, relaxing Christmas Day they had, those jerks], and we all retire to our small, hot, mosquito-friendly room.

We spend most of the next day (December 26^th) at the beach. As a town Pacitan is unremarkable, but the beach is nicer than Krakal. The sand is softer, the water is cleaner, and there is ample area for swimming. We play in the waves, eat tasty watermelon, and escape with manageable sunburns.

Alexandros goes in for the close-up.

Later we venture out for food and I finally get to try roti bakar. For the uninitiated:

-Roti Bakar begins with a loaf of bread.

-The loaf is sliced lengthwise three times, until it looks like a tall book with four thick pages.

-Each “page” is painted with butter.

-Chocolate sprinkles are poured over the butter.

-Condensed milk is drizzled onto the chocolate.

-Then they fold the thing up, smear butter all over the outside, and grill it.

The result is like a chocolate sandwich between wedges of French toast. I have heard it aptly described as “apocalyptic”. [Note: In Jogja, Roti Bakar is sold alongside local Fresh Milk stands. More on that when I experience it.]

After more confusion and misinformation at the bus station, I get the bus from Pacitan to Batu [2 hours] and the bus from Batu to Jogja [3 hours]. The Batu-Jogja bus is particularly crowded, as they seem to stop at every wide part of the road to take more villagers on.

Several times I think I detect the smell of shit. It passes so quickly, I assume it was my imagination. Not so! Apparently that’s an intended use for the plastic bags dispensed from the ceiling of the bus. The kid in front of me hands a bagged-up package to his mom (who is standing in the aisle, hovering over him) and she dutifully flings it out the window.

[photo coming soon]

December 29^th is my first wayang performance in front of an audience. While the shows I’ve attended so far have been remote village affairs, this one is in an open-air building on a [relatively] well-trafficked Bantul street. Before the show, they take me to the epic wardrobe at Pak Udrek’s house where all the group's traditional dress is kept. It takes two of them to assemble the dhalang outfit: a fancily wrapped batik sarong thing, tightly wrapped and pinned sashes and belt, flowery shirt, and kris (plus another 20 minutes of rooting through the many hats to find one that I can squeeze onto the huge melon on top of my neck).

[photo coming soon]

The performance goes well. The next few days are quiet, New Year's Eve is mellow, it isn't until the following week that they mention that the show on the 29th was NOT my exam, that in fact my exam performance will be on January 5th. We meet on the 4th to dismantle Pak Udrek's wayang screen, cut down some banana trees (puppets stick into banana logs just below the screen), load it all into a truck, and spend the rest of the day setting it all up in the place we practiced on Christmas Eve.

The second performance is better than the first. Even though I'm still in the dark on the exact meaning of most of the script I must still read phonetically, the jokes get laughs and my singing elicits fewer jeers than at least one of my fellow students'. Considering these circumstances, not being The Worst in some respect feels like a major victory.

Next: Judging English speeches, finding a job, and adding YouTube videos to old entries...

Unrelated

Every website and magazine has trotted out its own Best Of 2008 list and –as usual- the “mainstream indie” squares all cite the same handful of titles (each in a slightly different order) and ignore a ton of exciting new music most people probably missed during the year. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise by now, but it’s still annoying. I’d like to point out/remind folks about some of my personal favorites from the past year that major publications seem to have overlooked:

Zach Hill Astrological Straits

Dense with nonstop fills and twists, this album combines jaw-dropping playing, complex compositions, fierce experimentation, and bursts of fun into something both catchy and overwhelming. [Les Claypool’s guest appearance here is a welcome development as well. It’s good to hear him lending his talents to something edgier than his recent output of boring jams.]

Thee Oh Sees The Master's Bedroom is Worth Spending a Night In

This saw moderate praise from critics, it was somehow NOT embraced as the most infectious (and timeless?) album of the year. The songs bounce along with a giddy garage vibe and sweet harmonies. AND it’s the first Oh Sees record to approach the jumpy energy of their live show. I love it. Pound for pound, this was my favorite release of the year.

Secret Chiefs 3 Xaphan: Book Of Angels, Vol. 9

Trey Spruance, Eyvind Kang, and the rest apply their methods to John Zorn’s Masada tunes. While Zorn’s hand dominates the other volumes in the Book Of Angels series, this is a Secret Chiefs record first. That means the usual cinematic flourishes, Eastern spice, interestingly layered arrangements, and of course impeccable playing. This was the album I was most looking forward to this year (in part because it was repeatedly delayed) and it did not disappoint.

While we’re on the subject! If you’re at all interested in the history of Mr. Bungle, Faith No More, and SC3, I’d highly recommend this recent interview with Trey Spruance. In it he says one of my new favorite things:

"Work only happens to an artist because he loves what-has-not-yet-come-into-being-through-him, and he loves it more than he loves anything else besides God while he works; he works not because he wants to get a genius cookie at the end of the day. Nor is his work a "chore", like rowing a boat to get him to some temporary sense of self-satisfaction at the shoreline, once he is "finished"... the work itself (not the object, just the work) has to be divine artifice; otherwise you really do find yourself reveling in human excrement (like Metallica)."

The Melvins’ Nude With Boots was a great rock record and getting to witness the Dale Crover/Coady Willis two-drummer onslaught in July was one of the best concert experiences I had all year. But for potent ROCK, nothing released this year comes close to the greasy, hairy, spilled-beer crotch kicks on Harvey Milk’s "Life... The Best Game In Town". Every single person I played this for burst into delighted laughter at the same point I still do, when the opening song’s subdued falsetto lines about Christmastime give way to the sudden roar: “WHEN I THINK OF ALL THE LITTLE MOMENTS IN MY LIFE I HAVE DESPISED…!” From there on it’s loud, unhurried, eminently confident, and glorious. This record just ROCKS.

Dragging An Ox Through Water The Tropics Of Phenomenon

Brian did it again. That he’s starting to receive the same glowing attention outside of Portland city limits as he does inside them shouldn’t surprise anyone. Tropics Of Phenomenon stretches further in every direction he reached on Rebukes (and before). The pretty songs are sweeter, the noise breaks are longer and noisier, and the lyrics I’d already memorized from countless shows over the past few years are all newly devastating.

Arrington De Dionyso All Is On, All Is One

This set of free-form ragas for solo bass clarinet /voice is surprisingly focused as Arrington solo albums go. For maximum benefits, I recommend listening to the whole thing in one sitting. If you can make it all the way through, you will have reached the desired trance state by the time the drums finally kick in midway through the last song. And when they do…! As far as I know, this -like much of his new catalog- is only available at shows, packaged in original artwork.

Mugison Mugiboogie

Here Mugison shed the solo-genius vibe that originally drew me to him. [Three years ago, Mugimama, Is This Monkey Music seemed like it was made specifically for me.] But with the more conventional full-band arrangements he manages to reach some admirable ‘straightforward rock’ heights with satisfying dashes of weirdness.

Atlas Sound How I Escaped the Prison of Fractals

Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel got all the attention, but I listened to and enjoyed this EP much more. It's a more concise serving of dreamy, layered, lo-fi pop songs AND it was released for free through Bradford Cox’s blog.

Another rundown of under-appreciated picks from 2008 will follow when I receive Chris' package containing the long list of things it was impossible to download/investigate properly here, Indonesian internet resources being what they are. So stay tuned for that.

Next time, updates will include: Christmas, Exams, and more...!!!

Part Ten

In Which I See A Puppet Show And Behave Like A Ninny Around Dead Things


The rat lay on its side, kitten-sized and still, with a fly licking at its open black eye, just inside the front gate of the house. [A gift from one of the neighborhood's many ugly cats, no doubt.] It was too big and the path was too narrow... leaving the house would mean either moving this thing -I doubled over and made an exaggerated wretching sound at the thought- or stepping over it. (And give the fly a chance to shoot up my pant leg and introduce whatever disease-y bounties he's just sucked off of ratus mortus' eyeball to my nether parts? I think not.)

I knew it would have to be moved. Still, I paced back and forth for a while, laughing nervously in between long, womanish moans. Rats and dead things out in the world are A Fact and I've certainly seen my share since coming here. Call me old-fashioned, but rats at home is still really not OK with me.

I searched the house and soon found an appropriate tool: an old pink mop handle in the kitchen closet. Upon returning to the front porch I experience a brief pang of disappointment that the thing hadn't magically disappeared during the minute I was away. After another brief psyche-up [in which I reminded myself that this sort of business is my job since I am quite literally the Man Of The House] I was ready to approach the... obstacle.

With the mop handle held out as far from my body as possible, I poked gingerly at the rat. Its body was already completely stiff and it rocked onto its side like it was made of papier-mache. With this confirmation that the thing was not squishy or somehow still alive, I drew the mop handle back like a pathetic pink hockey stick and swung, knocking the rat about 18 inches to the right.

Just far enough! Plenty of room! Mission accomplished!

I found an out-of-the-way place near the porch for the mop handle (No no, I don’t think we’ll be having that item back in the house. Burn it! Send it to Hell!) and continued on my way to school. Upon returning home that afternoon I found the rat was gone. We later deduced that Bibi (the landlady’s housekeeper next door who tidies up out front and waters the plants) had probably dealt with it properly.

That evening –as is her custom from time to time- Bibi brought over some treats for us. Cooked bananas and these little tubes of rice wrapped in banana leaves with a ground meat center. No one was crass enough to suggest that the meat filling might have been rodent-based, but the question did come up as we sat munching on the treats: “Do you think Bibi picked the rat up with her bare hands?”

The following photos are from the most recent Paper Moon [local puppet company featuring Carla From Mexico as puppeteer and Carla From Australia as music supervisor] production, (A Short Journey). Colorful strangers meet on a train…

When everyone falls asleep, the Skeleton (a life-sized version of the Horny Skeleton from their previous show) steals some stuff and runs away. When they wake and find their things are gone, the Beggar character (Carla) reveals her Sherlock Holmes hat and magnifying glass and begins to investigate the crime. They eventually catch the Skeleton, he returns their belongings, and Yolanda –the woman in yellow- gives birth:

When we first see Yolanda in her house she is admiring a photo of her sweetheart, the cop on horseback. He re-appears just as she gives birth (on the floor of a train station?).

Note the photos of the birth scene: Yolanda gives birth to a fetus seated atop a slimy little fetus horse. The kids in the audience seem oblivious to the troubling questions this raises about dual paternity.

Meanwhile, Christmas is now just days away. Average temperatures here are still in the 80s and things don’t feel the way they should at the end of a year. Maybe having seasons to help mark the passage of time is more important than I had thought… If Summer 2008 continues for another seven months like some hellish tropical time warp, I will be sweaty and annoyed. As it is, I’m nearly finished with the project that was supposed to be a late gift from Christmas 2007. [Sorry again, folks! I’ll make sure it’s ‘worth it’, I swear!]

Part Nine

Kethoprakin' In The Third World


On Sunday [Was that two Sundays ago? Three? Four??] I send a text message to my classmate Haryonto, asking about the Sunday practice session at Mas Aning [our teacher]’s house. He replies quickly, telling me to meet him on campus ASAP. I do! I arrive in such a hurry that as I speed through a puddle on the road to ISI my bike strikes a bump in the concrete and suddenly becomes extremely difficult to pedal. [In the morning I will examine it and find that while the pedals, gears, chain, and wheels are fully intact, the part of the frame running from the pedals up to the seat has snapped apart. Like a pretzel stick.]

Anyway, I meet Hari, Danang, and some others. We ride motorbikes into the leafy depths of Bantul [the village to the south where I saw the all-night wayang show mentioned here before]. We reach our destination and there are lots of people there. Too many people. No Mas Aning. And a full stage setup.

“Hari”, I say as politely as I can, “Is this the practice? This looks kind of like a show.” His eyes get big and he begins apologizing. Apparently he’s been having girl troubles! He forgot to tell me we were NOT in fact going to a practice session, but were instead going to another all-night show. Whoops-a-daisy!

Since I missed his wayang orang show, I had promised Danang I would see his kethoprak [stilted Javanese theatre] show the following Tuesday. We arrived late after some confusion about the venue (we rode all the way to Rumah Budaya Teman only to learn that the show was happening at Taman Budaya! Classic comedy, that!) we made it in time for the show.

Most of the show involves actors sitting on stools on either side of the stage, having long discussions in Javanese. [Booooooor-rinnnggggg!] However, the battles are pretty cool. And at the end they stab the wicked king in the gut and he fights and snarls right up until the moment he dies. Good stuff.

After the scene shown above (where arrows come flying across the stage from both sides), these archers retreat and the enemy general enters from the right, angrily taunting them. After a few moments, there’s a sharp noise a giant silver arrow flies along a line of monofilament, hitting him directly in the chest.

Once he dies, these women file in on either side of his corpse:

He stands dazedly and they all exit together. With the women and the trailing fabric like a river, it's a really elegant way to usher a character offstage, into the afterlife. Other than that, though, the show was pretty lame.

FINALLY! After some delays and uncertainty, Jeannie, Carla, Carla, and I all get moved into the new house. We agree: it's the nicest (or at least the biggest) house we're likely to live in ever again.

Midway through my moving process [I got it all in five quick bicycle trips!] I finally get a chance to talk to my landlady about how much of the year's-worth of rent I paid for my old place I might expect to get back. As it turns out, that amount will be something in the neighborhood of NOTHING. Because she ALREADY SPENT IT and refunding any of that money "doesn’t fit into her monthly budget."

This is disappointing to say the least, but not a total lost cause. I might see some of that 5 million Rupiah (<$500) again when I am able to find a sub-letter. As of this point, no takers yet.

In a hilarious follow-up to the discussion about responsible money management: I found the most incredible amplifier for Rp. 150,000 (<$15). Its clean tone is horrendously distorted, with weird octave effects. The distorted tone = even MORE. [The ensuing racket is often recognizable as a sound a guitar would/could [never 'should'] make. The message scribbled across the front is an apt one:

To describe the sound of this thing another way, it sounds the way this dead rat looks:

[I was compelled to take this photo a couple months ago, on the street where I now live. FYI: Rats are the #1 roadkill I've seen in Jogja (followed by frogs, then snakes at a distant third), but they're ordinarily found as flattened and sun-baked rectangles of fur. The freshness and sheer volume of materials -at least two rats, by my estimation- were remarkable.]

Anyway, the amp is exactly like that. Two rats' worth of guts splattered across the pavement of your ear. I love it.

Speaking of dead rats! On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have this charming fellow:

More about him soon!