Cari Duit

In Denpassar today I passed a policeman with a sub machine gun. Yes. It made me feel . . . safe.

After that it started raining and the air actually got hotter than it had been before the rain. It came down thick, drenching, and everyone took cover under the barung awnings, and then after about 20 minutes the rain stopped, just as if someone in the heavens had slammed a door shut.

We had gone to look at our house--or rather the shell of our house, all conception, lacking material--no furniture, no beds, no kitchen, most importantly no air conditioning units (for a place without air conditioning here in Bali is not a house but a hell)--and so we imagined once again, and worked with the numbers. To make up our house will cost us approximately one million billion trillion rupiah. Oh well, no problem. It’s a couple thousand bucks US.

Nearly everyone here is a cheat--or rather an entrepreneur (which is still French for cheat), and so you have to be careful. Cari duit, is the familiar saying. Looking for money, making a buck. We all have to live, and that’s the truth. We all gotta have our daily bread.

My wife knows these people, I do not. I am eternally trusting, which is to say I am callow. My wife is suspicious. Which may just be the same as wise.