Caterpillar Season

It's caterpillar season here in South Bali. Or centipede season, or whatever these multi-legged crawley creatures are. They are brown critters, or black with yellow stripes, and they are all over the place, outside and inside. Every day I sweep a number of them out of my house in the middle of their explorations. It's hard to tell just what they are up to. Their travels appear aimless, round and round the front patio, in and out of the house beneath the doorways. Searching for meaning, perhaps. Them and me both. But they're not really bothersome. They don't bite nor do they sting. They merely wander. 

I drove this morning to Pantai Matahari Terbit, the closest beach to my house, needing merely 5 minutes or so to get there. The beachfront has been totally changed from what it used to be, the long line of ticket seller booths gone (tickets for the boat trips to nearby Islands), replaced by a row of small cafes with oceanfront sitting areas. Rather pleasant, really, although a bit hot in the morning, facing as it does the rising sun. But that, after all, is what Matahari Terbit means. Sunrise Beach. Nonetheless, it is easy to find a table in the shade, where you can enjoy a morning coffee and the novel you brought, and maybe even a cookie or a pastry as well. And there you have the sound of the ocean waves crashing into the rocky shore, a sound rather reminiscent of the Oregon coast. The rest of Sanur lies on a quiet bay. It's nice to hear the sea lifting its voice a bit higher for a change. 

The Dry Season

Sometimes one looks up and takes note of where he is. In the span of my immediate vision is the open paperback book I am reading, the God of the Woods, a tabletop, a coffee cup, an ashtray and a lit cigarette, the sand at my feet. My eyes tire at the end of a chapter. I glance up and find, somewhat to my surprise, the vast blue shoreline of the ocean as it inhales the last of the sunlight this day, the white waves rolling in, a freighter ship just beyond the reef, it's orangish flank catching the sun from bow to stern. A woman walks by on the beach path pushing a baby carriage, white blouse, black swimsuit bottoms, black hair fluttering in the breeze like a pirate flag, pretty still, but not a girl any longer. A woman now. The green leaves on the low branches of the short trees watch over the brown leaves as they fall. The dry season will soon tear up and turn to rain, and everything will grow again.

Dragnet

Recently, the Indonesian police did sort of a nationwide dragnet for traffic law enforcement. In Bali, a total of 783 motorists were caught in the net, having broken some kind of traffic rule, from no helmet, to no license, to no registration and so on. Of this number, 221, or less than one-third, were committed by foreigners. Curiously, however, only 107 Indonesians received a ticket, many merely receiving a warning, while almost all of the foreigners were ticketed. Put another way, roughly 70% of all traffic tickets during the operation in Bali were issued to foreigners.

Hmm.

Well, it's kind of an old story, I guess. Leniency for locals, severity for foreigners. But hey, it's their country and I guess they have more of a right to break their own laws then we have. I mean, they are the ones who came up with the laws in the first place, right? That should count for something.

Name Games

The Banjar in my area of South Sanur--Banjar translating to something like Balinese neighborhood association--has decided that it will be fun, culturally relevant, and also required, to change the name of my little street from Blok A to something more descriptive, more exotic, more Balinese and, in my mind anyway, more trouble than it is worth, for this is bound to further confound our already confounded postal system and mail carriers. As it is, the streets of Sanur defy any logic of pattern, scrawled as they are across the terrain like a 5-year-old's finger painting project--and an incompetent 5-year-old at that. And now you want to give him new paint?

A number of street names have been suggested, which I am sure would be lovely were they pronounceable, and the residents of the street have also been invited to submit their own suggestions. 

I think that Blok Goblok would be fitting. 

That's a joke, by the way, because Goblok is Indonesian slang for stupid.

Furthermore, the Banjar decided last month that they would begin requiring a monthly fee from every household in their jurisdiction. The amount of the fee, as outlined in the proclamation they sent around to each house, depends upon the type of residence and the category that best describes the residents. You may be a single person in a single dwelling, or you may be a family, you may be renting by the month, or you may be renting longer term under contract. Each category has a different fee. 

The fee for a single person living in a single dwelling was stated as 10,000 rupiah per month. This comes to about 61 cents USD. Not bad. 

However, the rules proved not so simple as written on their own paper when the Banjar representative came to collect. We argued back and forth for the longest time, I continually pointing at the pertinent paragraph regarding single occupancy, and he pointing everywhere else. Finally, it occurred to the pleasant though persistent official that he could not win an argument against his own document. So he compromised, and changed the document. 

Oh sorry, sorry, he said. That's a mistake. Haha. It is supposed to say 20,000, not 10,000.

Upon which he withdrew a pen from his pocket and substituted a 2 for the 1 in 10,000. Presto, 20,000. See how that works? 

Ah well, it's still next to nothing. But it's the principle of the thing, man! The principle!

Brat Pig

There is a boy in my neighborhood, a toddler really, who is truly the naughtiest child I have ever met. Or maybe naughty is not the right word. Deranged might fit. My girlfriend calls this boy Brat Pig, I suppose in dubious honor to Brad Pitt. 

Brat Pig's main interest in life seems to be in tormenting the dogs. The boy races up and down the street on one or another of his little tricycles (he seems to have a garage full of the things, bringing out a new model every time I turn around), running over the dogs, or trying to anyway. They are generally pretty good at leaping out of the way. But he pursues them relentlessly, and when they come into the front patio of my house, he dismounts and pursues them on foot. 

For some reason, he is intent upon kicking or hitting the dogs, as if it were they who had been naughty and not him. And when he is not hitting them, he is trying to spit on them instead. It's as if the boy has some kind of demon. 

My great fear is that he is going to get bit, because while the dogs are for the most part heroically tolerant, they are, after all, dogs, and half wild dogs at that, compared to the civilized dogs of America. They are street dogs. They have not a particular home, but go from house to house on the street, seeking food, shelter, companionship, a place to sleep. 

I have tried to teach Brat Pig how to be kind to dogs, how to pet them, how to approach them, when not to approach them (when they are eating, for example). I supervise, and watch him while he pets them for a time, but he soon returns to slugging them again, or yanking a tail, or poking an eye, or pulling on an ear. And the dogs don't really appreciate this. And so off they flee, Brat Pig on their tail like a bat out of hell on a tricycle. 

Sometimes, he just walks up and down the street screaming like a girl. Has something actually upset him, or is this a war cry? Cry havoc! And let loose the dogs of war. Or in this case, the boys.

I keep wondering what's wrong with Brat Pig.. Is there something happening in his home? Is he mirroring a type of behavior that he sees? Is he attention seeking? Or is he just a natural born little fanatic? A budding serial killer perhaps. They say that one thing most serial killers have in common at a young age is cruelty to animals. 

In any case, my patiece, dog-eared, one might say, at the ripe old age of 71, wears thin, and I have taken to merely shutting the door when the Brat is nearby. It's not that I don't care about him. It's just that I care more about the dogs, who indeed often opt for being shut inside with me.

Sleepless in Jakarta

A couple of weeks ago now, I traveled alone from Bali to Jakarta to meet my girl friend there. It was quite the challenging adventure for me (the traveling part, I mean) because I had not traveled alone since 2005. I have been on trips here and there to various locations in Southeast Asia, but these required no more thought on my part than would be required of a suitcase. I just rolled along behind whomever was in charge, first Louis, and then Evelyn. Now, however, it would be necessary for me to navigate the airport alone, pass through the appropriate gates and checkpoints, and to actually arrive at and embark upon the proper flight. 

As it turned out, this went more smoothly than I had expected it would. I discovered that there are actually signs in airports, big, bold lettered signs that tell you where to go and what to do. I had arrived at the airport 3 hours early, just to be on the safe side, and ended up having plenty of time to spare. In short, I arrived in the appropriate city at the appropriate time and met Evelyn waiting for me in the Jakarta airport.

Evelyn herself had been called to Jakarta several days earlier at the request of her youngest daughter, a college student there, who was suffering from some sort of sleep disturbance. I guess separation anxiety might best describe the problem. You see, she is used to being around people all the time, her friends and her boyfriend, and does not sleep alone. But finding herself on her own, her boyfriend and her friends having gone home during the school holiday to visit their families, Monica began having panic attacks. 

So, mom to the rescue. 

Evelyn had rented for us a cheap apartment in a tall building full of equally cheap apartments, not because either of us likes cheap apartments, but because we cannot afford expensive ones. This apartment was very basic, with a small front room, a small kitchen, a smaller bathroom with tiny cockroaches hiding here and there, and two bedrooms, one featuring a horribly uncomfortable bed and the other and even horriblier uncomfortable bed.

On the first night, we were stuck with the horriblier one. I awoke at some hour in the middle of the night and realized that Evelyn was gone. Having someone in the next room had proven insufficient medicine for Monica's night terrors.

I went back to sleep, only to awake early in the morning feeling very uncomfortably hot. This, I noted, was due to the fact that suddenly the air conditioning unit in the bedroom was not running. I pointed this out to Evelyn when she awoke, and she said Oh, yeah, Monica turned it off. 

Hah?

Well, you know, she explained, the motor for the AC is right outside of Monica's room and it is very loud. So she turned it off. 

All righty then. 

The plan for the next night was to move Monica into our room with the horriblier bed, while we would take her room with the horrible AC noise.

All seemed well as night fell and slumber overtook us, and yet in the middle of the night, hour unknown, I awoke once again, this time to a whispering noise. (How I had managed to hear this whispering over the purported roaring of the AC motor remains unclear).

It was a whispering, and then a dim shape in the night--someone, or some thing hovering above my girlfriend's head. As my eyes adjusted a bit to the dimness of night, I could make out what looked like long black hair, the shape of a head, the suggestion of a face, all accompanied by this whispering sound. I don't know why, but I was reminded of the Japanese ghost in the movie The Grudge, which is something that always gives me my own sort of night terrors.

I next saw Evelyn rise noiselessly from the mattress, as if she were air, and float out of our room behind Monica, to join her again, this time in the other room, in the horriblier bed. 

One might have thought it would be easiest by this time, on the third night, for Evelyn to simply go to bed with Monica to begin with. But no, Evelyn had come up with plan C. In this arrangement, the overly noisy AC units in the bedrooms would be turned off while the slightly quieter one in the front room would be left on at the coldest setting. The door to our room would be left open, such that the cooling air from the AC could enter, while Monica would sleep with her light on and her own door closed.

Naturally, this attempt also was in vain, and quite naturally so, really, for the problem from the beginning had always been separation anxiety. 

But aside from these restless night adventures, we had an enjoyable week-long stay in the big city. I mean, as far as anyone can enjoy the stifling heat of the place. It is always cloudy, you know, in Jakarta. Or smoggy, I should say. I'm sure the sun is up there somewhere beyond the gray cotton-like barrier of pollution. We were in the Central Park section of the city, which features a sprawling mall many blocks long and several stories high. This is a particularly convenient circumstance, because traveling anywhere else in Jakarta can take hours in the tangled traffic. They say that the city is gradually sinking, which is probably all for the best. But in the meantime, one may as well enjoy the endless shops and eating establishments in the mall complex.

Jakarta, July 2025

K