Awaiting me this morning was a one word comment on my blog: "Idiot".
As a friend here suggested, the writer of this apparently accidentally deleted the body of his intended comment in full, such that only his or her own name appeared.
In any case, thanks for trying, Idiot.
Visits
Monday, May 13, 2013
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Reminisce
I think that foot will never touch again
the land where I was born
nor ear will catch
nor eye will see
the bygone places I have been
the land where I was born
nor ear will catch
nor eye will see
the bygone places I have been
Watch Out for that Tree
Hard to believe, but the wound on my ankle, incurred after being hit and knocked off my motorbike by a malicious tree, has still not healed, although the other wounds on my calf and knee have.
For a time, I had been going to the ER every couple days for wound scrapings and rebandagings, but the last time I went, they inflicted such extreme pain that I felt like I was going to pass out. So, no more of that.
They did, on that last visit, manage, as I believe anyway, to reinfect the wound as well as injure a nerve. I concluded that a better, possibly more effective and definitely more endurable course, would be to treat the wound myself with a different antibiotic (at my own expense) along with mega doses of prayer.
This wound was incurred more than a month ago, and now finally seems to be on the path to healing. The pain and almost constant aching within the ankle has now improved greatly, and the scab on the surface seems quite dry and hard.
Given the slow healing of the wound, it did occur to the ER staff to check for diabetes. I knew that I didn't have this -- since I raised a son who had it from a very early age -- but it did get me thinking about slow wound healing in association with MS.
And Lo and Behold, the same is associated with MS; which, along with the torments of the ER staff, would seem to explain the long life of this wound and its resistance to healing.
For some time, right up until recent days, I could not stand for anything to so much as touch or brush against the wound -- like the bedsheets, for instance. Anything -- even the wind -- that came into contact with it would send electric shock sort of symptoms through my ankle -- a very odd, very irritating sensation. Thus the suspicion of a damaged nerve.
Considering on top of this that the nerve reactions are messed up anyway due to MS, I guess it's not surprising that my system has reacted in such an inappropriate way. It's another new discovery for me in the wide and wild world of MS symptomatolgy.
For a time, I had been going to the ER every couple days for wound scrapings and rebandagings, but the last time I went, they inflicted such extreme pain that I felt like I was going to pass out. So, no more of that.
They did, on that last visit, manage, as I believe anyway, to reinfect the wound as well as injure a nerve. I concluded that a better, possibly more effective and definitely more endurable course, would be to treat the wound myself with a different antibiotic (at my own expense) along with mega doses of prayer.
This wound was incurred more than a month ago, and now finally seems to be on the path to healing. The pain and almost constant aching within the ankle has now improved greatly, and the scab on the surface seems quite dry and hard.
Given the slow healing of the wound, it did occur to the ER staff to check for diabetes. I knew that I didn't have this -- since I raised a son who had it from a very early age -- but it did get me thinking about slow wound healing in association with MS.
And Lo and Behold, the same is associated with MS; which, along with the torments of the ER staff, would seem to explain the long life of this wound and its resistance to healing.
For some time, right up until recent days, I could not stand for anything to so much as touch or brush against the wound -- like the bedsheets, for instance. Anything -- even the wind -- that came into contact with it would send electric shock sort of symptoms through my ankle -- a very odd, very irritating sensation. Thus the suspicion of a damaged nerve.
Considering on top of this that the nerve reactions are messed up anyway due to MS, I guess it's not surprising that my system has reacted in such an inappropriate way. It's another new discovery for me in the wide and wild world of MS symptomatolgy.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Rules of the Road
Nyelip-nyelip. This is the word used here to describe the practice of darting in and out of traffic, a common and generally practical form of road trade for those who are driving motorbikes. We dart along the sides of larger vehicles, or in between larger vehicles, over the sidewalk and across the center lane when practicable, in order to make our way more quickly through the elephantine pace of traffic, much to the chagrin of those entombed in cars and trucks.
It all works out pretty well -- for the motorbike. But when the larger, heavier vehicles, such as SUVs, dumptrucks, even buses, seek to employ the same method -- well, it don't work out too well at all. In fact, it's downright dangerous. Just imagine the bus veering in and our of traffic, careening from this lane to that, bumping along the edge of the road, half in and half out of a ditch. Madness!
And then there is the driver of the full sized dumptruck who somehow believes that his vehicle can squeeze through the crowd by using the bike lane. What can one call this particular failure of perception? Other than simple stupidity.
Then again, that's a western notion. In Bali, it's simply called "normal".
It all works out pretty well -- for the motorbike. But when the larger, heavier vehicles, such as SUVs, dumptrucks, even buses, seek to employ the same method -- well, it don't work out too well at all. In fact, it's downright dangerous. Just imagine the bus veering in and our of traffic, careening from this lane to that, bumping along the edge of the road, half in and half out of a ditch. Madness!
And then there is the driver of the full sized dumptruck who somehow believes that his vehicle can squeeze through the crowd by using the bike lane. What can one call this particular failure of perception? Other than simple stupidity.
Then again, that's a western notion. In Bali, it's simply called "normal".
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Waiting Game
Waiting for my friend, Mike, at JCO. Religiously late is Mike, but today he seems rather more extreme than usual. An hour late. Hmm, maybe he's not coming. I wouldn't know for sure, because my Blackberry is religiously broken. So, I've done an hour of EF work, and soon will be able to go home and do more, as the maid will have finished her exteme sweeping/mopping/dusting and general bustling by noon or so. She tells me this morning that it will cost Rp. 500000 to fix our 'mesin cuci' (washing machine), so it looks like she'll be doing the laundry by hand for some time to come. The cost for repair is considerably more than I pay her for a month of work. Could hire one and a half more maids instead.
Mike has always been rather 'ish-ish'. For those of you who don't know what this means, I shall re-post an article below which I originally wrote for The Bali Times.
LINQUISHTICS
America has been called ‘the melting pot of the world,’ at least in olden time, for its invitation to people all over the globe to immigrate to its happy shores, but for me it can never hold a candle to the variety and variance of cultures and tongues one finds in the sunny environs of Bali. The trouble with America is that people soon become Americans, shedding the uniqueness of their heritage for a new skin, a gray flannel suit of conformity, such that the quirks and traits that made them foreign people soon no longer attain. I knew, for instance, many Indonesians in America, and yet knew not a single one until I came to Bali -- for they had all become Americans, you see? And no one loves America so well as expatriated Indonesians -- its anaemic culture, its disposition toward greed, its worship of money, its love of ‘things’ -- shoes, clothing, jewellery, cars. Charity, community, character -- all suffer under the stress of a rich yet reductive national ethos.
But enough of America bashing for the moment. What I want to say is that here in Bali the Brit stays British, the Aussie Australian, the Frenchman French and so on the wide world of immigrants over -- for in this far flung archipelago a nonnegotiable divide is encountered. The bule can hardly become an Indonesian, and so he must stay as he is, dragging along his cultural and linguistic peculiarities just as surely as his own skin. We don‘t put on airs, or join the PTA, or sit in the seats of government, or reside over Hindu processions. No, we remain perfectly foreign. We are neither consumed nor altered nor absorbed. Our essential frame of reference remains with the culture and character of our countries of origin, and we continue for the most part to speak in our native tongues and to employ our native idioms of language.
Which brings me to this concept of “ish” as employed by the peoples of some western countries to denote some peculiarly uncertain increment of time. It is a strange notion to the American, for we are precise sorts of people. For the American, eleven o’clock means 11 o’clock. Noon means noon. There is no “ish” about it. And yet for the Australian, for instance, and the Englishman and the Frenchman and the Italian, time is not so easily pinned down. It’s fluid, somewhat questionable, somewhat if-ish.
“Coffee at 9-ish,” my English friend says. What does this mean? Something like 9? Two or three minutes before or past nine? At some point during which the general atmosphere of the day seems to resemble 9?
I certainly don’t know, and so I arrive for coffee at 9. And of course my friend is not there. Nor is he there at 2 minutes after 9, or 5, or 10, or 20. I conclude therefore that the term 9-ish has nothing in essential to do with the actual fact of 9 o’clock. I note also that by 20 minutes past the hour I have already finished my cappuccino. Why were we meeting? For coffee, right?
It may or may not be marginally interesting at this point to note that the word “Ish” was one of the first words used to denote a member of the human race, and can be found, curiously enough, in various widely separated parts of the world -- from the Middle East to South America. Adam, in the Hebrew, was called Ish, and in his first words in the Torah he calls the newly created woman Isha. Clearly then, the term has been a longstanding one, and why it never caught on in America, I cannot say. Other well known ishes would include Ishrael, Ishlam, Chrishtianity, Ishmail, Ishstanbul, and Ish-Kabibble. As well as fishes, of course.
Shall we conclude therefore, given the modern use of the term “ish,” that there was something inexact, unreliable, unpredictable about man and the world and the cosmos from the outset? Or is it just the American expectation of precision that is fishy?
In any case, my friend shows up at 9:30 -- ish having meant, in this case, for this day, 30 minutes past the hour. Why did he not say 9:30 to begin with? Why say 9 if you mean 9:30? Ah, but there is that all important, intangible “ish” attached.
“Well hey, Mike-ish. Run into some trouble along the way?“
“No trouble. Why?“
“You’re a bit tardy-ish, that’s all.“
“Not at all. I said 9-ish, did I not?”
“But as you can see, my cappuccino is rather gone-ish.”
“Ah well, have another. It’s still early-ish, ish-n’t it?”
It is agreed then. Next time around I will plan to arrive for coffee late-ish.
Mike has always been rather 'ish-ish'. For those of you who don't know what this means, I shall re-post an article below which I originally wrote for The Bali Times.
LINQUISHTICS
America has been called ‘the melting pot of the world,’ at least in olden time, for its invitation to people all over the globe to immigrate to its happy shores, but for me it can never hold a candle to the variety and variance of cultures and tongues one finds in the sunny environs of Bali. The trouble with America is that people soon become Americans, shedding the uniqueness of their heritage for a new skin, a gray flannel suit of conformity, such that the quirks and traits that made them foreign people soon no longer attain. I knew, for instance, many Indonesians in America, and yet knew not a single one until I came to Bali -- for they had all become Americans, you see? And no one loves America so well as expatriated Indonesians -- its anaemic culture, its disposition toward greed, its worship of money, its love of ‘things’ -- shoes, clothing, jewellery, cars. Charity, community, character -- all suffer under the stress of a rich yet reductive national ethos.
But enough of America bashing for the moment. What I want to say is that here in Bali the Brit stays British, the Aussie Australian, the Frenchman French and so on the wide world of immigrants over -- for in this far flung archipelago a nonnegotiable divide is encountered. The bule can hardly become an Indonesian, and so he must stay as he is, dragging along his cultural and linguistic peculiarities just as surely as his own skin. We don‘t put on airs, or join the PTA, or sit in the seats of government, or reside over Hindu processions. No, we remain perfectly foreign. We are neither consumed nor altered nor absorbed. Our essential frame of reference remains with the culture and character of our countries of origin, and we continue for the most part to speak in our native tongues and to employ our native idioms of language.
Which brings me to this concept of “ish” as employed by the peoples of some western countries to denote some peculiarly uncertain increment of time. It is a strange notion to the American, for we are precise sorts of people. For the American, eleven o’clock means 11 o’clock. Noon means noon. There is no “ish” about it. And yet for the Australian, for instance, and the Englishman and the Frenchman and the Italian, time is not so easily pinned down. It’s fluid, somewhat questionable, somewhat if-ish.
“Coffee at 9-ish,” my English friend says. What does this mean? Something like 9? Two or three minutes before or past nine? At some point during which the general atmosphere of the day seems to resemble 9?
I certainly don’t know, and so I arrive for coffee at 9. And of course my friend is not there. Nor is he there at 2 minutes after 9, or 5, or 10, or 20. I conclude therefore that the term 9-ish has nothing in essential to do with the actual fact of 9 o’clock. I note also that by 20 minutes past the hour I have already finished my cappuccino. Why were we meeting? For coffee, right?
It may or may not be marginally interesting at this point to note that the word “Ish” was one of the first words used to denote a member of the human race, and can be found, curiously enough, in various widely separated parts of the world -- from the Middle East to South America. Adam, in the Hebrew, was called Ish, and in his first words in the Torah he calls the newly created woman Isha. Clearly then, the term has been a longstanding one, and why it never caught on in America, I cannot say. Other well known ishes would include Ishrael, Ishlam, Chrishtianity, Ishmail, Ishstanbul, and Ish-Kabibble. As well as fishes, of course.
Shall we conclude therefore, given the modern use of the term “ish,” that there was something inexact, unreliable, unpredictable about man and the world and the cosmos from the outset? Or is it just the American expectation of precision that is fishy?
In any case, my friend shows up at 9:30 -- ish having meant, in this case, for this day, 30 minutes past the hour. Why did he not say 9:30 to begin with? Why say 9 if you mean 9:30? Ah, but there is that all important, intangible “ish” attached.
“Well hey, Mike-ish. Run into some trouble along the way?“
“No trouble. Why?“
“You’re a bit tardy-ish, that’s all.“
“Not at all. I said 9-ish, did I not?”
“But as you can see, my cappuccino is rather gone-ish.”
“Ah well, have another. It’s still early-ish, ish-n’t it?”
It is agreed then. Next time around I will plan to arrive for coffee late-ish.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Stone Age Realities
Primitive conditions keep me from getting much done today. I find that my internet allowance has run out this morning. You buy it here through an ATM, or by visiting the provider. No such a thing as automatic monthly refill and charge. So I go down to JCO instead to use their free wifi. Trouble is, it doesn’t work. Which is often enough the case. So now I’m headed for the ATM to try to understand the screen instructions in Indonesian. One has to be careful here, as he could end up buying nothing at all. Or sending money to some anonymous number, I suppose. The long and short is that I have already wasted three hours working time on trying to get internet time. One also ends up buying a JCO coffee for no particular reason and then gulping it down as he stresses over the work hours he is missing. Ah, Indonesia, thy primitive charms.
As an aside, I went to the corner “bengkel” this morning to get my motorbike washed. No such luck. His water is not working. Actually, this is no real surprise, for neither is ours. He did change my headlamp, however, which has been carefully designed to burn out every three months to the day. This is why the common Indonesian avoids using his headlights in any but the darkest conditions. It’s freakin’ 15,000 Rupiah, man -- about a dollar-fifty -- so, motorist beware!
As an aside, I went to the corner “bengkel” this morning to get my motorbike washed. No such luck. His water is not working. Actually, this is no real surprise, for neither is ours. He did change my headlamp, however, which has been carefully designed to burn out every three months to the day. This is why the common Indonesian avoids using his headlights in any but the darkest conditions. It’s freakin’ 15,000 Rupiah, man -- about a dollar-fifty -- so, motorist beware!
Sunday, April 21, 2013
The Beetles
A storm of flying beetles last night, like raindrops, only as quickly as they hit the ground, or the porch or the table or the top of your head, they unlike rain, start to crawl. This happens every now and again. Why the bugs suddenly decide to take flight en masse, I don't know. It seems to happen always at night, this flurry of small round insects, and whether they have a purpose or simply grow tired, each eventually regains the earth and begins to explore its new envionrment. They climb the walls, seek porch lights, and crawl under doors to climb the walls and seek the lights within. And to terrify boys such as my son.
I'm sure they must eat something. Happily, they do not appear to feed on flesh. Perhaps they eat curtains, or wood, or other bugs. In any case, they have no great objection to being expelled from the house with a broom. Trouble is, when you open the door to sweep them out, more of their compatriots fly in. This makes a bit of a job, and so is irritating at least at this level, as one may have preferred to watch a movie or read a book.
I'm sure they must eat something. Happily, they do not appear to feed on flesh. Perhaps they eat curtains, or wood, or other bugs. In any case, they have no great objection to being expelled from the house with a broom. Trouble is, when you open the door to sweep them out, more of their compatriots fly in. This makes a bit of a job, and so is irritating at least at this level, as one may have preferred to watch a movie or read a book.
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