Massage

We have a particular idea about massages in Western countries. It goes something like this. You go to the neighborhood salon - Massage Envy, for instance. You are given a cup of warm green tea and ushered into your private room, where a cleanly made massage bed awaits. Soft, New Age music is playing and a faint aroma of perfumed oil is in the air. The masseuse, gender of choice, enters and begins to gently knead and rub your muscles, shoulders, back, legs, and so on. You close your eyes and sort of float with the music, aware of the muted swishing of pant legs and arm sleeves, and maybe you drift in and out of sleep.

Not so with the traditional Javanese massage, which is anything other than a relaxing experience. A person of unimportant gender, and shaped rather like a TV antenna, assaults you from the outset with uncommon ferocity, goring muscle and bone with iron-like digits, separating joints from sockets, searching out nerves with sinister expertise and exquisite effect, in the form of excruciating pain. In short, you know you have had a massage. Oh, have you. This is no game. This is dead serious business. And something is bound to result for better or worse, barring death (which, of course, would be catastrophic). 

And in the end, you are happy. It's a happy ending, so to speak. For you have survived, you have seen the thing through; and, moreover, you feel good, like something definite, something helpful has been accomplished. I must say that I was for one night quite without pain, and slept like a baby, or a log, or the dead - whichever can be considered the most restful among these.

Massage

Hard to believe that I'm still having this shoulder and neck problem seven months out from the original onset back on August 10th. As I've mentioned before, this began with a very intense pain in my shoulder blade, extending down my right arm and turning into numbness in the right hand. It has very gradually improved, but I would never have believed it would still be present after 7 months. It is now manifested as a general aching in my shoulder, a weakness in the arm, a stiffness in the neck, and a numbness in the right index finger. A combination of Neurontin and high dose methylprednisolone seems to help, but these are expensive, and so I try not to take them every day. 

While in Yogyakarta, it was decided that a massage might help. I use the term "massage" lightly, for this, as it turned out, was much more like getting the crap beat out of me for a period of about an hour. The westerner tends to think of a massage as a relaxing sort of activity, with the application of soothing oils and soft hands, a gentle kneading of the muscles, pleasant aromatherapy and maybe some quiet music. Not so on the island of Java. Rather, this is a violent, trying, frightful experience with some question of the likelihood of coming out alive on the other side. In short, it's serious business. This is not a pampering. It is a pounding. 

Nonetheless, I did actually feel significantly better when finally allowed to escape, and slept like a baby that night. As the days pass, the customary pain and stiffness returns little by little, and so it may be necessary to allow myself to be beat mercilessly on a regular basis. 

Changes

So, as you can see, I've at long last changed some of the images on my blog, plus I've begun to type in larger letters, so that I can see what I'm typing. I'll be adding a couple more new things in the next few days. 

Short Trip

Took a week long trip to the island of Java, the cities of Solo and Yogyakarta. I've been to Solo once before, but this was my first time to Yogyakarta. 

Katanya mati, my wife's aunt said about Solo. A dead town. As industry on the island of Java has changed over time, Solo has been left behind, somewhat like an Oregon logging town. It is a perfectly flat, drab sort of place, and yet strangely endearing, to me. Maybe it's the people. Maybe it's the slow pace.  Maybe it's just the rundown quality of the houses and buildings. I don't know. It just feels restful, cozy, worn, like an old shoe. The folks in Solo don't see a whole lot of bules, or white people, so one is accompanied by a bit of celebrity wherever he goes. People want to introduce themselves, smile, practice their English, or simply stare. Could that bald guy be Bruce Willis? They want to know who you are, where you're from, why you're there, and so on. 

Yogyakarta, on the other hand, is a larger city - the second largest city in Indonesia, after Jakarta; busy and bustling, a university town and the seat of Dutch Colonial history. It's a sprawling city with wide roads crisscrossing at the center and spreading out to the periphery into ever narrowing avenues, ending in tendril-like alleys, or gangs, just wide enough for the passage of motorbikes. The city seems to have rusted and crumbled at the edges, ultimately chipping away into the verge of rice fields and lush riverbeds. Aside from the historical district, the place has the feeling of an endless strip mall, decidedly less than beautiful. But again, it is the people who make the difference - friendly, open, eager to interact.

I'm struck, upon returning to Bali, at how plain these places are in comparison. Once becomes accustomed to the lushness of Bali, the quaintness of the place, the abundance of scenery, from beaches to mountains to rolling rice tiers and exotic resorts. It does look rather like paradise after you're gone for a while. Then again, one of the most pleasant things about central Java is the cooler weather, with a brief rain every day in the afternoon. It is truly nice to be able to sit on the porch and read, for instance, without having to swim in your own sweat. If they could just somehow turn down the heat in Bali, just a bit, it would truly be a more complete paradise. 

Necessary Tasks

Well, I've arrived once again at that unpleasant time of year when everything comes due at once. I must reapply for yearly permission to reside as a foreigner in Indonesia, must negotiate with the landlord regarding whether he wants to continue to rent the house, and at what price, must renew the registration for my motorbike, and must renew my driver's permits for the car and the bike. It is a frustrating, tiring time of year -- frustrating because all these tasks are more simply said than done here in this land of bureaucratic confusion, and tiring because ... well, because of the same reason. To add an extra pinch of difficulty, it turns out that I must procure a new sponsor on the resident permission issue, as the one I had used for the last six years has now fashioned for himself a somewhat shady reputation -- a matter of no small effort in an already generally shady complex of red tape. This involves leaving the country, if only for a day, turning over a ream of papers and proofs to the new sponsor, then returning with said ream to the immigration office in Bali. To this end, we have planned a short trip to Kuala Lumpur. Upon returning, I will appear, once again, at the immigration office, have my photo taken (again), my fingerprints taken (again), and pay the fees (again). 

In the matter of our rental house, our landlord decided, as with every year, that he would need to raise the rent. When he called again regarding the matter, my wife explained that we would be moving.  Oh? Why? he said. Because you're raising the rent. Oh ... uh ... I changed my mind, he decided. 

So much for that. I really did not want to face moving house on top of everything else. 

The driver's licence renewal is just a matter of showing up at the motor vehicles office, somewhere out in kingdom come, along with a few thousand other folks, and rubbing shoulders for a couple hours in a space about the size of a closet, getting your picture taken, and paying the man hired to expedite the whole experience (such that it doesn't take more than one day). 

I hope to be a retired man of leisure again by April. 

Hantu?

I am told that there are many ghosts in the Yogyakarta Phoenix Hotel, and there probably should be, given that it was built long ago in 1918 as a private residence, was later sold and turned into an old folks home, was later occupied and administered by the Japanese Army, and, after the war, functioned under various names for various times right up to the present day, and yet I cannot say that I have seen a single ghost thus far in my stay. I'll keep my eyes peeled again tonight.

Kid Attak

Walking down to the little mall in Solo, which features a JCO and a Gramedia, two of my favorite places, I was terrorized by an army of screaming school children in brown uniforms 😂. Bule! Hey, Mister Bule! Pak Botak! Ya ya ya! They danced along beside me, shrieking, laughing, skipping. One little girl decided to hold my hand and stroll along with quiet gravity amid the hilarity. I don't know whether I have ever experienced quite so much stardom 😂😂 My four minutes of fame.