selamat siang

greetings from jayapura! i arrived in sentani, the next town over, yesterday around 8:30am after catching a 2:30am flight from bali, where i'd spend 2.5 days running around trying to squeeze as much holiday time as possible out of the place before beginning work. doesn't that sound relaxing? but it was.

in bali i was befriended by the driver who picked me up at the airport and he took me to ubud the next day, away from the maddening debauchery of kuta, the beach nearest the airport where people come to bali to party. kuta is where the bombings happened, so because of all the bad press, the place has really taken an economic hit...which makes it a great time to visit, since there aren't any crowds. most people make a living off of tourism, so they desperately need the business. ubud was lovely, full of traditional arts and culture, if also full of tourists.

in the meantime, i am already getting a crash course in indonesian, and in the cultural differences between an island like bali and one like papua. i'm really sympathizing with the plight of the native papuans; without going into too much detail at this point, it's clear that the indonesian government and military keep a pretty tight rein on the papuan people. it's very clearly a tense situation, with little friendly integration of the papuan society and the indonesians who have migrated in and settled. i've been lucky to have met some english speakers who have a lot to say and teach me, but we'll see how it goes in the more remote areas. even here in jayapura, the provincial capital, it's been a challenge to find people who speak enough english to point me in the right direction. part of the adventure.

other fun adventures: visiting a balinese temple carved out of rock faces, where yellow-bellied skinks slithered among the stones; some dude treading over my toes with the front tire of his motorbike at a gas station because i guess i was standing in his way? (thanks, man!); seeing an amazing performance of balinese kecak dance, involving 100 men in concentric circles chanting, singing and percussing with their voices to tell a sliver of the ramayana (the hindu epic); and learning how to say 'penis gourd' (koteka).

this is really a different world. i'll post more on papua when i get internet access again. in the meantime, i have a couple of minibuses to catch...

february

how did we get here?

i still haven't seen the official paperwork, but i have purchased a plane ticket to bali with the faith that cash will be advanced to me in a week or two. from bali, i'll be finding my way to remote, enormous papua. though it's highly unlikely that i'll be going anywhere near where these biologists went, that is the vast, amazing, untrammeled land i'm being sent to, and where i hope to do the lowest-impact, most responsible job i can. in the meantime, i'm boning up on my indonesian so i won't be totally lost.

that said, i'm already lost in stress, since you can't learn a language in a week. and traveling around half of the second-biggest island on the planet will be challenging, as it requires getting travel permits for any areas outside the bigger towns, and the terrain in some places may be impassable since i'm visiting during the tail end of rainy season. there will be many short-hop flights, and logistical headaches, and of course edit work i'm supposed to somehow retrieve from one of the precious few internet access points in papua (this will mean scheduling a flight strategically and crossing my fingers real hard, as getting from point A to point B may only happen on thursday afternoons if the plane fills up). not even thinking about that right now so as to avoid freakin out too early – i usually save that for the first night i arrive in the new time zone.

and in other tales of frustration, i took amtrak today.* see, on my way back from SB last week, my car decided to take a little nap on highway 101. at seventy miles per hour, it just shut off the headlights and switched off the radio to get nice and comfy, and inconveniently stranded me on the side of the highway in salinas on a friday night. the weekend stretching luxuriantly before us as it was, no auto shops would open until faraway monday. luckily, miss saigon and beau – who live in san jose, and who i was to visit that night on my way home – offered to come pick me up, an hour-and-a-half away, so i spent the night at their place and got to spend about twenty minutes with my super-darling godchild before miss S dropped me off at the light rail stop on her way to work. took that to mountain view, caught the caltrain to SF, and dos equis picked me up in time for us to spend a perfectly leisurely weekend, including a superbowl party on sunday at a friend's place and a saturday night gig he played with octomutt friends.

tonight after i came back from picking up the car in salinas, he came over to cook me dinner, and i'm trying to get my simmer down to room temperature. (the astor piazzolla remixes and sizzle sounds of sautéed garlic are helping a lot.)

hasta luego.


* remind me NEVER TO DO THIS AGAIN. effective trigger words: 'bakersfield,' 'bus,' 'brush fires' and 'routine four-hour delays.'