dubious.biz(ness)

Sports Issue! Issue Three Mega Special!!!!!!!!

After a long hiatus, Burt has finally gotten off his ass and produced another Burt Reynolds and Peanut Butter Snake Show!

• Burt takes on his new post as Sports Ambassador to the world, by travelling to Indonesia to bring the joy of non-American football.
• PB Snake proves that Burt was making the Sports Ambassador crap up with a who am I sports know it all challenge!
• Burt and PB discuss OT’s falsie, the Original Whizzinator.

Download: BRAT PBS ISSUE THREE or paste into your Podeater:
http://dubious.biz/blog/pod-rss.php?category_name=BRATPBS

I now have skype in! You can call me at (859)GIVE LIP and uhh give me lip. skype is an incredible service that allows you to make and receive calls over the internet or over land lines. I can call anywhere in the world, particularly Sintha, for very low rates and now even better anyone in the 859 area code can call me as a local call.

This includes when I am in the UK, the main reason I bought it. This way for most of my family, it will still be a local call. Very cool.

So, a number of ways to contact me: via email, the site, skype (killermonkeys is my username by the way), IM…

When I originally started the blog I wanted it to help students who were applying to Cambridge from overseas and also to keep everyone up to date. Unfortunately it’s turned into more of the latter than the former.

So I’ve set up a wiki which anyone can edit, and I hope to put up there all I have learned about attending Cambridge. Other students can post there as well, making it “for students, by students.” Hopefully it will be well loved and well used.

The site is at Studyawayuk.com and if you are a student or hopeful, please feel free to take a look around it, and if you have anything to share don’t hesitate in posting!

Pictures from have begun appearing at the gallery! Yay! Keep a close watch on the little buggers because you never know what will happen next!

Here’s a teaser:

I know I’ve turned into a blogger because I’m going to blog this awesome dream. Before I begin, this is totally true or at least true in the sense that I really had this dream. Trust me, I couldn’t have made this up.

The setting: a bathroom. It seems like it could be a bathroom in my house because it’s so big, but it’s pretty crazy and it’s covered in tile rather than carpet. I am a wise-cracking cavalier martial arts expert. For some reason, I am having a face-off against a Ninja in my bathroom. At first, we face off man to man, but then he announces that he is a Puppet Master Ninja. He will not fight me directly, instead he will send his puppet after me, and I will have to defeat the puppet to defeat the Puppet Master Ninja.

For a puppet? He animates a conch… as in a shellfish conch. So now, the Puppet Master Ninja is fighting with me via his Puppet Conch. The Puppet Conch does some crazy ninja shit and faces off against me. I have no clue what a conch can do that would qualify as crazy ninja shit, but he definitely does it and I’m impressed. I realize that if I have to fight this Puppet Conch I’m probably not going to win on strength alone. I’m going to have to use my mind.

I do my own hand-whipping and wrist-flicking and stand on one foot as well. Racking my brain, I come up with the solution. Of course, the Puppet Conch has pretty much infinite strength so I have to direct my attack at the Puppet Master Ninja, but according to the rules of engagement I can’t fight him since I’m fighting the Puppet Conch. Of course these rules will be familiar to anyone who has watched too many kung fu movies.

As we circle each other, I begin to tell a story of an ancient master of kung fu who could render himself invisible. Unfortunately, invisibility wasn’t easy to achieve, it took a long process of meditation. I sat down to demonstrate and began to meditate. The conch took a strike at me which I deflected and then leaped up, pinning him in the corner and taking off a small portion of his shell. I then retreated back and continued my story. I explained that once invisible there was no turning back, that he would simply remain unseen until defeated. I began to explain the actual process of meditation, realizing that the Puppet Master Ninja would realize he was free to meditate since I couldn’t attack him. He seemed to be taking the bait. As we fought I continued to knock more of the conch’s shell off and began to expose his slimy body.

I continued explaining the process, grinning slightly because I knew I would ultimately succeed. After meditating and clearing his mind, he would have to, without breaking his concentration, paint a picture of a pine tree with characters at each branch. While weaving this story into the mind of the Gullible Puppet Master Ninja, I had nearly completely decimated the Conch’s shell, leaving only a few pieces which the Conch threw at me whenever he could. Unfortunately without his shell he was slippery, slimy, and much faster. I could no longer actually hit him without seriously hurting myself as I struck the wall, toilet, and shower behind where he previously was.

I continued to describe the characters and realized that if I was to really succeed, I would have to paint the characters myself, because the Ninja couldn’t actually paint them and animate the conch as well. I took a paintbrush in my mouth and began to paint as I leaped into the air, painting the tree and characters as I continued to press and duck the Conch. Finally I finished a 4 foot tall tree complete with all the necessary characters on the tile backsplash of the shower. It was now time for the showdown. I began to explain the last steps to turning invisible, and as the Ninja’s concentration on turning invisible increased, I began to turn the tide against the Conch, actually hitting him several times but with no real results.

I realized that I would have to use sharper weapons than my hands and feet to actually destroy the Conch. I used my teeth and began to bite the conch as I fought him and them spat out the pieces of him. Obviously this wasn’t very easy so it took me quite a while to get a good bite. I had explained the last step, which was to place one’s self at base of the painting, inhabiting the tree with one’s visible self, leaving the invisible self free to roam.

Stupidly, as I had expected the Gullible Puppet Master Ninja did just that, and just as he began to turn into wisps of smoke, the conch leaped into the air, flying right in front of the painting. I was perfectly positioned and in one move, snached him out of the air with my teeth, biting down hard and swallowing a part of him, spitting the other part out and continued on smashing my head into the tile and painting of the tree. Destroying the tree left the Gullible Puppet Master Ninja vulerable to attack as he was between forms of visibilty with pieces of the shell I picked up off the floor, I sliced through the Ninja’s neck and down the center of his chest instantly killing him.

No I haven’t been doing any drugs.

Anyone who has a good interpretation to this dream, please tell me, because I sure as hell want to know what it means.

I would like to finish these stories, but to be honest, there aren’t as many stories to tell after I got back to Jakarta. The final few days of my trip, Sintha and I went to a massive mall called Kalapa Gading (or Kapala maybe… one means coconut and the other means head). We watched Star Wars. I finally ate at Bakmi Gadjah Mada. We went to a crafts expo at the Jakarta Convention Center where I nearly bought a batik mask. I drove around the parking lot in the Kijang, driving a right hand drive car for the first time. It wasn’t as cool as I thought it might be. Perhaps if I was driving a Skyline rather than a Kijang.

Finally on my last day we went to perhaps the most interesting of the places I went to in Jakarta. Ironically, it isn’t somewhere that most Jakartans think is interesting. People are everywhere in Jakarta, and it’s relatively easy to gauge what’s cool and what’s not by the number of people in a given place. Malls are ridiculously crowded, most shops and restaurants are not for want of customers. There is a lot of wasted talent. Incredible artists of all types earn barely anything, and are happy for a job. There is a very unfortunate reason that your shoes, shirts, and furniture are “Made in Indonesia” and that is population. There are people everywhere. They all have their own individual identity, they all have their own story, but in total, they make the most densely populated place on Earth.

So imagine my surprise when I drove to Ancol, which is described in the tour book to be a reclaimed seafront property that was made into a recreational area. It has hotels, restaurants, beach, even an amusement park. When we finally found our way there (Sintha had never driven there) imagine my surprise when it had all of the run down glory of Coney Island or the New Jersey coast. Everything looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 1980’s and hadn’t been painted since the 1998 financial crash (and that’s probably the truth). Finally a place that seemed to have an identity that I could grasp, and one that felt like it had lived, and now rusting by the sea past its prime, had stories to tell. Not that it told me any, but just to be in the place had a real feel that nowhere in Jakarta I had been yet could match.

And fortunately, it did all this without really feeling like we should hold our purchases to our chests and cast down our gaze. It was reasonably secure, but mostly because it was totally lacking the currency of Java, people. There was no one; it was an absolute ghost town. We first went to the Pasar Seni (art market), where I silently noted we were the only car in the parking lot. We walked around. The Pasar was set up as a circle with radiating walks and sections set up into blocks of various vendors with every imaginable type of art. Unfortunately, no good quality wayang. A great number of oil paintings, wood carving, and sculpture. Rather than a bustling market crowded with people as we had encountered in Yogya, there were no customers and very few vendors at their boothes. Many were asleep, others watched TVs, some were reading, others just staring. Many snapped to attention as they saw us, as if we had caught them slacking. Others just kept on snoozing.

Finally we went back to a particular wood carving shop, the only one that seemed to be actively doing anything. I wanted in part to buy something from the shop because I felt that they deserved it. The entire village was on siesta, and there were four or five guys who had taken over a walkway with hand tools and were carving into a piece of wood while a radio playing dancy music blared at full volume. They were revolting against the market, against all of Ancol, they were the beating heart inside a sleepy town.

Of course, I wasn’t just rewarding their dilligence, their art was amazing. It was typical of Javanese style carving, with leaves, flowers, and vines carved in three dimensions through pieces of wood. Much of the work was very similar panels, all long rectangles that varied mostly in the types of vines and flowers and the relative density of the work. Some of the pieces were full blown furniture, but mostly just panels. I selected a number of them, and had the first gentleman price them for us. He gave completely ridiculous pricing. The piece that I really wanted? 2.1 million. The piece I was moderately interested in? 1.5 million. I wasn’t that interested. By this point we had learned that Sintha should do the negotiating if I wanted a reasonable price, and I should pretend I understand Indonesian but am not interested. Sintha offered him 500 thousand for the moderately interesting piece. He frowned, then left. A different worker returned. He apparently, was a supervisor. We asked him for pricing for the moderately interesting piece. He said 800 thousand. I indicated to Sintha to offer 500 thousand again, and he immediately accepted. I was a bit upset because I realized I could have gone lower, but remembering that I was only a tourist, I paid happily. Fortunately for me, that piece made it all the way home.

After leaving the Pasar Seni, we walked down the beach. More of the feel of Ancol sunk in. I began to wonder why they hadn’t made a boardwalk. Sintha said that the sand had definitely receded since she had been here, perhaps 20 years ago. The land may have been reclaimed from the sea, but now the sea was reclaiming the land. We walked up and down the beach but not finding anywhere very interesting, we walked back and went on a gondola ride as the sun set. Looking back although it doesn’t sound that romantic, it was a fitting close for the trip. We drove further down the road, and ended up at a reasonable but tiny beach. On Sintha’s insistance, I dipped my feet in the water. It was the first and only time on this small, overpopulated island that I had actually seen the ocean and gotten in it.

Unless Sintha reminds me of some other stories that I’ve missed, that’s a pretty fitting end to the story. The next day I started the arduous flight back home. It wasn’t as plesant because unlike coming, I knew exactly what I was getting into. No adventure waited for me. China Airlines gave me a bed at JFK for the six hours I was there, which I wasn’t able to make good use of. I got home and life was the same. As with all voyages, coming home is bittersweet.

Now begins the long, painful portion of our relationship. It will be at least three years before our itineraries again coincide and we will be able to live in the same city again. Having left her again, I seriously considered if we made the right decision; this is not the easy road. Of course, the logical side of me immediately answers that it was. The sensitive side of me is slower to respond. I have cast out my net, but with purpose. Now only with hard work will I yield any return, and without it I will have wasted so much that it will be clear how much of a fool I am.

Going to Cambridge is what I absolutely want to do. There are massive obstacles already that I have passed. Many are still unknown, and this will be more of an adventure than any vacation could ever be. It has been fufilling in a very personal way to finally have success in school and having been in the “real world” I know now what I am on track to do. It is absolutely where what I want.

But unfortunately, I have had to sacrifice three years, which when I was younger would have seemed like an eternity, of being with the one I love. I am flying into the unknown, now at terminal velocity and she will be, I hope, my point of departure and my arrival. It has already been six months apart, and it will be six more, and then another and so on, until the end. When I am finished, I don’t know where I will be able to find work and I don’t know where she will be, but I hope that we can find a place to be together and then my journey will have been a complete success.

Unfortunately, I will have to swear off the incredibly addictive passtime of travel until then, and my mission objectives are all but set in stone. I cannot look back now and I and she will both have to be content with the power of modern communciations and the networks which are my other love. Email, phone, SMS… these will be our currency for the next three years. Of course, in the end, nothing beats going there, and nothing sucks worse than leaving.

The next day, we walked across the street to the train station and waited for the Lawu Argo to arrive. The Lawu Argo is the best service running from Jogja to Jakarta. It cuts through the center of Java, and the service is considered luxury, which by all means I would say is accurate. We were served food, tea, coffee, in our seats the same was I would expect to be served on an airplane. However unlike an airplane the seats were full recliners with footrests. The scenery of rural Java went from mountainous to flat as we travelled west. While mostly fields, the scenery would be interrupted at least every two minutes by a village or house. Land is so scarce and people are so few that in Java, every available inch is used for something, even in the heart of the country.

The trip was uneventful until after we had deboarded. Waiting for Sintha’s dad I realized I had left the wayang gunangan, the object that hadn’t wanted to buy at first but ended up haggling about, on the train. The train had left the station and continued to the next stop in Jakarta, and I raced back into the station to try to find it. Of course I didn’t know the word for “lost” or have a phrasebook and in my rush I had left Sintha outside to wait on her dad. I was ushered to a ticket window, then ushered to a room inside the station. Realizing that I was going to get nowhere without a fluent Indonesian speaker, I left the room and went back out to find Sintha. We loaded our things into her dad’s van and ventured back into the station.

A police officer escorted us to the announcer’s booth at the top level of the train station. He told us that yes, the train had left the station. He then made a very long announcement, pausing frequently, which Sintha translated as “if you think that you feel that you have found something that looks like it is a wayang puppet and you do not feel that you are the owner of the puppet then you may consider that you could come up to the announcer’s booth and give it to the people who can’t find it.” Of course, I was pretty certain that no one in their right mind would have found the puppet, and it would be still on the train. I didn’t really insist because I didn’t know what was going on in general. Apparently the train’s final destination was the next station, and it departed again for Yogya in a few hours. I believe the announcer then called the other station and asked them if they had found it. Unsurprisingly, as would be most human beings answer to the question, “Have you found a puppet?”, they had not.

He then suggested that we call later and ask if they had found anything and gave us a four digit number which he said was the main line to the train station. He said to ask the receiptionist for the announcer’s booth. I was quite impressed by this at the time. You see in Indonesia, not every number is the same length. I had seen both seven and eight digit numbers, but had not seen a number shorter than 7. In America, this sort of honor is reserved for emergencies and information (911 and 411). I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but we had sat in the booth for quite a while and I knew that Sintha’s father was waiting for us. We thanked him and left the station.

Only later, after we had found that the phone number he gave us left us in perma-hold and it seemed no operator existed, did Sintha consider that we should have bribed him. I had thought of this in the booth, but wasn’t sure how one would go about telling one’s companion, “Perhaps we should bribe him to get the puppet.” I also generally assumed that when people wanted bribes in Indonesia, they were fairly forthright and gave an amount. Unfortunately, this chap said nothing about being paid to retrieve the puppet, and we walked away empty handed. It is now quite possible that my wayang sits nestled in an overhead baggage rack travelling from Solo to Jakarta and back indefinitely.

On my birthday, we got up relatively early and had breakfast at the hotel. Nearly every hotel has a complimentary breakfast in Indonesia. An Indonesian breakfast consists of fried rice with crispy fried shallots, sliced cucumber and tomato, slices of egg omelet. On the side are these delicious little dried crackers called rempeyek which are made of whole peanuts fried with some sort of starch. Not so delicious are the shrimp krupuk, which are shrimp flavored chips. Imagine a new doritos flavor: shrimp! Apparently the cheap ones (which I can tolerate) don’t taste much like shrimp while the expensive ones reek of it. Nasty, nasty nasty. At any rate, this is the breakfast I had every day I had breakfast up until my body politely told me that starting out my day with fried everything was not idea in the long term, at which time I switched to toast.

Breakfast behind us, we set out for the kraton, or palace. Via becak, which a sort of rickshaw that is pushed from behind by a bicycle. It is like riding in a basket on an enormous set of handlebars. Becak drivers are thicker than mud in Jogjakarta, and everywhere tourists go, you can hear an almost continual chant of “becak, becak, becak, kraton, becak…”

Jogja is one of two sultanates in Indonesia, meaning it is ruled by a patrilinear sultan, and Jogja’s sultan still welds quite serious power and his influence reaches far beyond the city. This is ostensibly because of the pivotal role that the previous sultan had in Indonesia’s fight for independence and the years after. More than just a figurehead, the 9th sultan kept revolutionaries safe from the dutch during their revolutionary war, he was one of the founding fathers of Indonesia who gave birth to its constitution, and he served in various positions under both the first president, Sukarno, and also the following president, Suharto, who lead a coup against the first and then became Indonesia’s dictator for the next 30 years. Serving both men’s administrations speaks volumes about his political importance, as other members of the first were quietly exiled or executed by the second.

So the current sultan, the 10th, owes a lot to his father. The current sultan is not nearly as politically able as the previous, but he was still seriously considered as a presidential candidate after Suharto’s fall, despite not actively campaigning, and most Javanese, especially those near Jogja, believe that he has supernatural powers enabling his rule. We were traveling to the kraton, or sultan’s palace, which is actually a modestly walled city containing a number of residents, shops, and craftsmen. Many of the residents perform duties for the sultan, such as guards, tailors, furniture makers, and so on, making the kraton a city within the city.

We arrived at the palace still fairly early in the morning, and saw the guards who are not very functional considering they are all over 40, gamelan music being played, a number of pavilions for reception of heads of state, and so on around the palace. Unfortunately, like the White House, the palace is actually a functioning palace, so most of the areas are off limits or not able to be walked on. One of the previous sultans had 80 children, so I imagine that the current sultan’s small family of five daughters and one wife means that much of the palace is unneeded. Many of the areas which now hold pictures are “boys” areas which aren’t needed as none of the current children are boys.

I would say that the palace is attractive, but not ostentatious, and large but not immense. In contrast to european palaces, it is more of a home and less of a store of wealth and monument to greatness. Perhaps the best room that we were in was actually a museum entirely dedicated to the 9th sultan which included copies of the Indonesia’s independence declaration, photos of the sultan receiving a number of dignitaries, and many of his personal effects. When we were done, we were left inside the palace to listen to gamelan music, and quickly bored of this and went in search of local crafts.

While leaving the palace we were accosted by what I am fairly certain was a salesperson. He just started walking with us and would not leave us alone, acting friendly. After the previous night I was skeptical of anyone acting friendly and tried my hardest to get him to leave us alone. Eventually we started to walk to an exit in the wall, he followed, and then we diverged and walked to a becak driver and got a ride away from him so he wouldn’t guide us into a sob story and hard sell.

I was also a bit concerned about the becak driver’s intent, unfortunately and it took a long time before he gained my trust. We first ask him to take us to some crafts places and he immediately took us to some batik painting shops which were less than interesting. I didn’t want spend a huge sum on art, and most of the batik paintings you find look like they were inspired by Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, not gamelan. Giant mushrooms, wisp-like human figures, strange nudes, and surrealist landscapes seemed to be the extend of the batik paintings in all the stores we went to.

We also went to a number of batik clothing factories. Batik is a process of wax sealing and then dying fabrics, and then removing the wax so that certain parts are masked from the dye. Intricate and multicolored fabric is created from this and made most commonly into shirts. The best of these is considered extremely formal attire in Indonesia, as formal as a suit is in the US. Unfortunately, I did not find a batik shirt I liked, probably because I wanted a silk waxed by hand (called tulis) not a more typical heavy cotton waxed with a stamp. We did however go to a batik factory where we were able to see the process in action.

Finally after getting bored with the batik shops and not wanting to venture into more expensive territory like leatherwork or woodwork, we told the becak driver to take us to Kota Gede, a very well known silversmithing area. The silversmithing of Kota Gede is legendary, and spans from filigree work to a unique use of silver wire to make small three dimensional scultures, where every surface is made of loops and loops of thin silver wire. While I was extremely interested in a silver wire sculpture, the typical subjects: motorcycles, lizards and flowers, did not really entice me. I wanted to get something, and ended up with two rings, one filigreed, one made of a weave of silver wire. I had my eye on a large silver cigar-sized box but the price, 14 million ($1400) put me off. The weight of the silver and the amount of detail was far beyond my means. One of the silver houses was also notable. It was done in a Venetian style, with amazing architecture and a sweeping private cule-de-sac where the house surrounded the road.

We continued on, and really made the becak driver work. I believe he was quite resentful because of the length of the last ride. He dropped us off at the market, which unfortunately was closing. The market was massive and spanned forever. It was three stories tall and seemed to encompass a number of different buildings. We almost immediately went to the top, away from the lower areas that contained mostly food and toward the top which contained fabrics, baskets, containers, and other goods. We also arrived in what turned out to be the back of the market, away from where most tourists went, and ended up in the heart of the real market, which sold such interesting goods as used shoes, flowers by the weight for offerings, wedding necessities, ultracheap toys, and raw batik fabric. I ended up buying two rolls of batik fabric with a traditional imprint on them of a garuda, one of the symbols of Indonesia. I have no idea what I will ever do with them.

The real reason I bought them was to bargain with the vendor. I got a terrible price, but pretty reasonable for a bule, and I got to haggle, this time knowing what I was doing. I also got to use my Indonesian, something that I hadn’t gotten to do much of since Sintha was usually translating. She started by saying the price was 150 thousand. I said 50 thousand. The women (there were three, I believe, one clearly owning the booth, the others just hanging around) laughed. They told Sintha I was very good. I told them no. I knew that a fair price would be below 50 thousand, but in the interest of local development, I ended up around 100 thousand, saying I was broke, telling them it was my birthday, and mostly acting offended. I believe I could have gotten 50 thousand had I tried.

We continued on to the hotel, and I took a nap while Sintha disappeared in badkat tradition until I was rudely awaken by her uncle, aunt, and two cousins. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I explained that I wasn’t sure where she had gone, and that she should have been back a while ago. She was supposed to have been going to the bank and should have been back some time ago. Her phone had just run out of minutes, and I wouldn’t be able to call her, so the family left disappointed. When she returned some time later, I poked her furiously as she said that she had been “looking around for sandals”. I wasn’t sure it wasn’t just a bad dream until she called them and confirmed that yes, I had been visited and that they had left and would now return. We had planned on going to eat dinner with one of her cousins.

She fortunately spoke English very well, particularly for someone who hadn’t ever visited the an english speaking country. She is a cousin from Sintha’s father’s side, the side that lived in Medan on Sumatra, and are Batak. Like Sintha’s father, this brother also married a Javanese, apparently also of royal lineage (the 3rd sultan, who had 80 children). She is going to the local university, one of the best in the country, University Gadjah Mada (no relation to Batmi Gadjah Mada, which is a chain of noodle shops in Jakarta). She is studying in communications and wants to work behind the scenes. Unbeknownst to her parents she also works on the side as an event organizer. She had been kind enough to get us a room in Jogja and checked up on us a number of times, and from her abilities there I can say that she is definitely a good organizer. She is also very typically Javanese, polite, kind, and friendly.

We ate in a sprawling multilevel restaurant Gadjah Wong (no relation to the university or the noodle shop). While sitting there we met one of her aunts, and interestingly, one of her cousins who was a thick muscled, towering Australian with firm grip. The relationship as I understand it is a second marriage to her aunt by his father. He being the child of the previous marriage, there is no blood relationship. I’m not sure if you’d call this a step cousin or what, but cousin is a generic term in Indonesia. The moment he sat down, he seemed to be scanning the room looking for some nusance, or perhaps the location of a faint sound, not that he was distant and nonconversant. He seemed to identify himself as an expat, a term I generally assign to someone who had made a life in a different country although he didn’t really seem to have any attachments.

I wondered what I would be like as an expat, because in his stay, three years, will be the same as mine at Cambridge. I imagine that I would try to blend in which is much easier in England than it would be in Indonesia, and he seems to understand a bit of Indonesian, but not a lot. To me the language is a huge barrier, and without understanding what is going on I feel lost. Perhaps this is what he felt, or perhaps he was just a particularly alert fellow. He was completely affiable and didn’t seem agitated, but he did say that he liked to drink nightly, so perhaps he was experiencing a long painful culture shock. I don’t think that I experienced any except perhaps near the end of my stay in Jakarta. His mood still lingers in my mind though.

At any rate, I ate something called the “seafood lasagna” which reiterated my belief that lasagna should never be tampered with other. We talked pretty far into the night and fortunately her father was kind enough to come and take us back to the hotel. We thanked her and prepared to leave Jogja by train the next morning.

We left off at the road to Jogja from Dieng. Jogja is often called a “college town” and also is assigned the moniker of the “heart of Java”. Jogja has a definite college town feel, it feels a lot like Lexington, but tropical. It’s laid back, contains a lot of history, and it’s lot cheaper than Jakarta, while not really missing anything except perhaps the skyscrapers. Like Jakarta, it’s a bit of a sprawl, but it seems to be centered around two areas, one to the northeast where the University lies, and in the center of the city starting at our hotel and going down Malioboro, which is a giant shopping strip that consists of stores selling both local crafts and typical touristy stuff like t-shirts and snoglobes. There are both stores and a wide sidewalk canopied over with vendors.

There are a few alleyways that lead off the enormous shopping strip and go to more secluded restaurants and bars. Going down Maliboro is a bit overwhelming, and these alleyways seem seedy, although once you get to the middle the barkers disappear and it gets very narrow and very lively. On the edges there are tour sales offices which heckle for tours to the sights around Jogja (like Borobudur and Dieng), as well as more locally oriented businesses like laundry services, wartels, warnets, (war* is short for warung, which is a shop, a wartel is a telecom shop where you can place calls, a warnet is an Internet cafe). As you walk further these businesses evaporate and you are left with eclectic restaurants.

I can’t quite remember the one we ended up in, but it’s Javanese for “creative,” and it had a warm sound. The inside was filled with surrealist murals and a heavily pierced and tattooed waitstaff. Our waiter had an distinct echoing throaty voice that reminded me of Shaggy, the reggae singer. The menu contained “Snake Curry” which sounds at first like a very spicy curry, but in fact is literally a curry made from snake. It must be ordered a day before. I stayed away from the snake and stuck to vegetarian food. Javanese food is all comfort food, it is simple with pure flavors, and I can’t really imagine something as exotic as snake being anything but distracting. Of course I would try it if it were available, but I imagine that the Javanese aren’t that interested in it, and I’m sure it is mostly eaten because of the clear phallic symbolism, not its taste.

After eating we travelled further down Malioboro, aiming toward a wayang show that happens nightly at a particular museum. Wayang is an ancient art that originated in Java and spread all the way back to the mainland. In its purest form it is an elaborate shadow puppet show, playing out Javanese or Hindu epics behind a puppet screen. A single puppet master who is responsible for the puppets’ movements, their voices, and even some percussion that he provides with cymbals strapped to his toes. Behind him is a gamelan orchestra, the traditional precussive music of Java, and excellent views are provided from both the front and the back of the screen.

Wayang then spread into a number of different puppet styles, marionette, bamboo, wood, paintings, and a number of variations of the original leather can be found throughout southeast Asia, but to me the most authentic and nuanced are the leather shadow puppets called wayang kulit (leather puppets).

The puppet master acts out scenes from the Indian epics of the Ramayana or the Mahabarata, or acts out local fables and myths of common people by tossing the leather skinned puppets up against the screen, giving them voices (spoken in highest Javanese, which Sintha cannot understand), and often tossing them against each other as they fight each other to death, or fly around. The puppets are both painted and intricately carved, so from the back side, you can see the gamelan orchestra, the puppeter’s management of the “stage” and the colorful puppets themselves, and from the front of the screen you see the detailed carving. The puppeter’s movements often seemed childish and overembellished from the back, but from the shadowed side the light plays perfectly and as he flips the puppets they go out of focus, and as he catches them they snap back into focus against the screen. It makes for a very entertaining show, even if you can’t understand Javanese.

During the show, we were approached by what seemed to be a kind gentleman who seemed quite happy to see an Indonesian at the show, and said he was the manager for the show. He explained that the puppeter and most of the orchestra were retired and were working at the museum for extra income. He left and returned some minutes later. He ask if we wanted to see the wayang

We were both interested and followed the kind hearted man across the street and to an adjacent workshop. It was about here that I realized that this may not quite be what it seemed. Unfortunately the man was speaking almost entirely in Indonesian, so I was at a bit of a loss as to his exact intentions, but he seemed kind either way. He began bringing out sheets of leather, carved puppets with no paint, but mostly carved puppets in a variety of sizes, mostly of the larger size that is normally used on the shadow puppet stage (which are notably larger than the typical tourist type). I began to see that he was trying to sell us the wayang, albeit a pretty soft sale, but a sticky situation. He continued on his line, that these were really not that commonly sold, but he had business cards stuck to the back of the shop and it appeared he was just trying to ply his trade, and did not really have as beneviolent of intentions as he had indicated. I was a bit annoyed at the fact that we were missing the show to hear his pitch, but I was particularly interested in one of the wayang, which wasn’t actually a puppet, but large intricately carved gunungan. It is a large tree-mountain that represents afterlife or a soul. From the puppeter’s side of the screen it is usually shown from the tree-like side which displays icons of guard dragons, tigers, monkeys, and on, which is the “good” side, however unlike most wayang it is painted differently on the reverse, with a red and blue monster face on the back representing evil. The puppeter will twirl the gunungan in his hand, spinning it between the masked side and the tree side symbolizing good and evil. It is one of the larger wayang pieces and in most plays several end up on each side, one for each dead character as the story progresses.

So you might imagine that I was quite interested in this particular wayang, not knowing the actual meaning of the stories (since they were in Javanese) I found the gunungan’s symbolism charming. However, I didn’t want to pay the 1.2 million the man had suggested was the cost of the item. He had previously mentioned that the puppets were 500 thousand, which is much more reasonable. After tepidly entering negotiations, as I still wasn’t sure I wanted a wayang at all, I basically stuck to my number, and realized that without knowing it I was haggling. He dropped a bit to 900 thousand, explaining that because I was a student (my excuse for having no money) that the government would want to spread the traditional arts to the young, and they were a government museum. But, I stuck to the 500 thousand mark. I’m not sure of how much the piece was worth, as value seems to be a pretty plastic concept in Indonesia, but 500 thousand (which is about US$50) was a price I was willing to pay.

He couldn’t speak English, and ended up finding the “painter” who didn’t appear to be in on his story, as he introduced himself as the man’s partner. He painted, the other carved. The retrieved partner was ugly, missing many of his teeth, and much more weathered than first partner, and it was now clear they had little to do with the museum we had left perhaps 30 minutes ago. I was a bit concerned because with the look of the new fellow, I assumed we would be in for the hard sale from this one. However, to my delight he spoke excellent English, almost immediately accepted 500 thousand, which I counted up and handed over. I was happy to be have the gunungan and happy to end the negotiations which I had entered on shaky grounds to begin with. Only on reflection did I realize I had done nearly everything “right” for bargaining. I had made excuses, I didn’t really want the object in question, I had stuck to a single, fair price, and I had made him meet my number. That is secret to bargaining with Indonesians, but it is much easier said than done. With my new gunungan, we went back to the show and finished watching while I wondered if I had gotten a reasonable price.

On the way back to the hotel through the now somewhat more rowdy streets of Jogja, a local called at me “hey bule, bule bule,” assuming I wouldn’t know what it means. I realized that bule, like nigger, or any other racial epithet, means different things depending on who says it. When Sintha or her friends call me a bule, it’s not really insulting, but being called bule by someone you’ve never met walking down a street really is racism, being judged by the color of your skin. I don’t mind the fact that I’m an “albino”, I’ve got no choice and it’s who I am. But being labeled one by even a slightly drunk local is not my choice and it makes me angry and sad at once.

Well, I’m back in the US now, but I’m going to go ahead and finish these posts up and try to recount the events. I had intended to blog daily or semi-daily, but that didn’t happen, which probably is a good thing because I was able to do more. If I had been able to blog in the car I think I could have done more, as I probably spent 10 hours or more inside that damned kijang.

Anyway, last we spoke I was in Borobudur. After the failed attempt to get into the temple at dawn to see the sunrise, we planned on going to Dieng plateau. Dieng is described in the guide as being a site of several Hindu temples, the oldest in the Indonesia, as well has having the historical significance of being the site of a “temple city” of perhaps 400 individual temples at one ancient time. Then, there was a great volcanic eruption from one of the largest volcanoes in the area, Merapi. This buried most of the area around Borobudur in ash (which hid and preserved it) and caused a huge climate change in central Java. It also caused a mass exodus to the eastern coast of Java, and no one returned to central Java until about a thousand years ago.

The drive was very informative, and relatively cheap by American standards. About $40 will get you from Borobudur west to Dieng, and then back east Jogja which actually passes through Borobudur. We could have gotten cheaper if we had negotiated, but considering that the driver spent all day on us, I was not disappointed. The drive to Dieng was the longest drive through rural Java we took, and seeing village life was surprisingly similar to city life, but with more people are devoted to agriculture than to merchantile pursuits. The farms are what you imagine when you think of tropical climates, terraced deep greens in the hills with cascading water flowing down. Rice is by far the most popular crop, and the flatter areas are devoted to corn soy and sugar. However the road to Dieng is near all mountainous and best suited to rice. Palm trees and boulders sit to the sides of the rice fields, making a beautiful view that stretches both up and down from the road which seems to be carved into the side of the ridge.

At several points in the drive, we are stopped by what appears to be construction, as a four foot tall mound of sand or demolished rock is piled on the corners. Often these are placed on opposite sides of the road a few feet apart making a chicane. At either either side, people stand with tin cans, and appear to be asking for a toll or perhaps money to repair some damage. The driver then explains that this is the “uncurable disease”, begging, and that the locals themselves pile things on the road to slow traffic and then beg to remove it. Begging on the roadside is not uncommon, but this was certainly ingenious. I asked whose responsibility it was to clean and repair the roads, and the driver said it was the governments, but they would not usually clear the roads of these piles because it was too expensive to waste time on when the locals would simply put the pile back after they had cleared it.

We arrived in Wonosobo, which is a mountain town a lot larger than I had expected it to be. It reminds me of roadside towns in West Virginia and around Kentucky. I believe Wonosobo exists pretty much as an overgrown trading and transit post for crops coming from Dieng. I don’t know that it really has any other significant claims. It was at this point that our driver asked for directions to Dieng. That was a bit surprising as I had assumed that he knew the way himself, I didn’t really ask him, but I got the impression that either it wasn’t a common destination or that he was a relatively poor driver.

Leaving Wonosobo, I had thought we were pretty much near Dieng. I guessed this by the fact that nearly the entire trip had be uphill thus far, and Dieng Plateau being a plateau, it would be at the top. Of course, after we left Wonosobo, the road began curling around a huge mountain ridge, and unlike the hills we had been in before which were covered in tropical vegetation so dense that you could rarely see very far ahead of you, this road was clear etched up a very large mountain, which we could see all the way up until it disappeared in a cloud. It looked like a pathway to heaven. Also going up that direction, we were stopped and paid a fee for seeing the sights. It’s nearly impossible to tell which fees are official and which aren’t which is why guidebooks are essential.

After we paid, the money taker offered himself as a guide, and seemed to speak english well enough. Heeding the advice that a guide is almost always a good idea, I took him up on the offer. Let me say this, when ever you have the option of a guide, take it if you can afford it. If you aren’t sure, read the guidebook and see if you think you could navigate and figure things out yourself, sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t, but you’ll always miss something, and in Indonesia, pricing is such that it’s almost always a good idea unless you are really on a shoestring. Consider that when you pay for the guide you aren’t really paying for the same information that is found in your guidebook, you’re paying for a local. The guide is really like a local friend that can lead you around, entertain you, and answer any questions. They also keep pesky sales people at a bit of a distance.

At any rate, this guide was actually a Batak (the same tribe as Sintha’s father) from Medan in Sumatra. I wouldn’t really imagine a Batak as a guide, but this one worked well enough. Batak can loosely be approximated to Indian people I know as far as mannerisms go, and this one was probably a bit of exception to that rule. He was pretty affiable, but he did have a habit of repeating weird phrases. “It makes no sense, but it is” was probably his favorite. This was his explaination for pretty much all of the Dieng Plateau, it makes no sense, but it is.

I haven’t really explained the Plateau because until I reached it, I didn’t really know what it was either. It’s a plateau in name, and as you rise up the mountain, you assume that once you reach the top, you’ll go back down the other side, but quite literally, once you reach the top, that’s it, it’s flatter than Kid and Play’s hair. It is also about 68 degrees and has a climate completely unlike that of anywhere in Java, it’s cool, seasonal, not nearly as humid although misty and foggy, and at some points actually has real snow. It is nestled amongst the clouds and was believed by the Hindu to be something akin to nirvana. Climbing up it you can see why. And, everything grows there, including things that you never see in the rest of the island, like potatoes and apples. The guide wanted very much to impress on us the agricultural power of the place, emphasizing that it could yield 4 rice crops and two potato crops on the same piece of land. I was frankly amazed that potatoes grew anywhere in Indonesia, I could only assume that they must be entirely purchased by McDonalds for fries, as I hadn’t encountered a potato at all during the trip.

Dieng is also relatively undervisited by tourists, which means that it’s sights are very natural and unpopulated by the thousands of vendors that had amassed in Borobudur. When we reached the plateau, the first stop was a colored lake, Telaga Warna. It is a very likeable shade of turquoise, like something you’d imagine in the shallows of the carribean, but of course this is in a cool mountain clime. Unfortunately it also stinks of rotten eggs because the reason it is this lovely color is a preponderance of sulfur. It needs sunlight to really show itself and it took a bit of time for the clouds to move, but once they did it was incredible, and made me forget the smell entirely. Also interesting were some flood plains that were dry which seemed to have coated the now dead vegetation with a gray ashy coating, making it look like they had been burnt. I did not want to touch this water at all. As we reached one of the corners of the lake, the guide pointed out bubbles which were either natural gas or just steam vents. Apparently no one is quite sure of how deep that lake is as it is a caldera of an old volcano. Oh yes, in case it wasn’t obvious, our guide did point out “no fishes.” A sign next to the lake (at the far end of the trail actually) warns not to use the lake for livestock. In the distance we hear a pump and I assume that no one who can smell would actually try to pump this water.

Of course, my explaination is a short walk away, Telaga Warna’s twin sister Telaga Pengilon is a “regular lake”, like one would expect. It is also very shallow, and there is an a small isthmus between the two with a fairly ancient cemetary on it. There was a bridge to it but it has been destroyed in a way that reminds me of photos of Vietnam. The guide explains that the locals did this to prevent what they considered to be the desecration of a holy place. This is quite an interesting contrast from Dieng’s temples which are huge tourist attractions and have spray paint on some of the faces. The guide says that when people now want to get to it they have to get a boat and row out to it.

Also in the land behind the two lakes are a number of caves, none of which are very large, but obviously they are spiritually significant still, perhaps because of their position between the two lakes. In front of each cave there are immaculately clean tile platforms, then inside the caves which are all less than perhaps 4 feet deep except one which is is diagonally down into the earth about 10 feet, there are spaces to kneel and pray or meditate, and alcoves carved out for incense. Only two of them are actually able to be entered, as a keeper has constructed a steel gate around another. These are apparently more significant, and one must first find the keeper before they can be entered. Of course, looking at these caves and knowing what a “real cave” looks like they are quite different, these are constructed from slabs of stone that seem to have fallen in the appropriate way with dirt cementing the gaps, and aren’t anything like the deep, hollow caves of limestone that I have seen in Kentucky. Of course, our caves are also heavily guarded by steel gates so perhaps I should not be so quick to judge.

Going out from the two lakes, we travel to Candi Bima, which is the largest of the Dieng temples. The other four are in a complex which we did not visit, but all are essentially similar squat flat temples which are relatively simple and utilitarian unlike the extravagant and detailed temples around Borobudur. It also appears that Candi Bima, unlike Borobudur and its surrounding temples, is not in current use, as it is spray painted on some faces and has no burnt incense inside it.

Next we go to a field of hot springs which look positively disgusting, like the earth’s own indigestion. I have been around other hot springs though none of them seemed to be so “natural,” there is very little between the hot spring and you, no bars, no Park Ranger, no pavement, just dirt and 600 degree mud that is emitting a continuous cloud of steam into the air. Also interesting is a large power plant that uses the geothermal energy to produce power and then sends it off to Bali, where it is used to power street lights and blenders. The guide invites me to touch the ground in a particular spot, and I hold my hand too long and burn it, but don’t admit it at the time, not wanting to look stupid. As we are leaving I walk past a purple vent and very near it tapping the ground below my feet it thumps tauntly like a drum. I then imagine the earth reacting unkindly and belching the load of dirt I was standing into my face. I move swiftly toward the car.

As we are leaving the mist is moving in, apparently the morning mist burns off at about 10AM and the afternoon mist starts coming in at 2PM. As we leave the steam let off from the hot spring is merging into the mist and I wonder exactly how much of the cloud cover is due to the springs.

We leave and start to sleep after we drop off the guide. However the sleep is short lived as once we enter the Jogja area, the Mr Wheeler in our driver rears its head and he starts swerving between cars, starting to move through the intersection before the light turns green, and at one point he even tailgates and then gives the evil eye to a driver in a tiny Suzuki. Fortunately we make it to Jogja safely and arrive at the hotel.