Warning: First class complaining.

03/07/2011 at 8:02 am · Filed under Uncategorized and tagged: challenges, complaints, mango, metaphor, reality check

I’m really trying to work things out with Indonesia. This post is me trying to deal with those things that need working out. If you want to avoid all my complaining and frustrated writing, read these two lists, avoid the explanations and read the bottom. I think that stuff at the bottom is really what this whole post is about, and all that junk in the middle is me indulging my frustrations.

In between my frustrations, I am trying to take stock of things I am really quite pleased with:

1. The availability of vanilla oreos
2. My mostly-decent internet connection/availability to skype home nearly twice a day
3. The cheap cost of food
4. How nice the ladies in the kitchen are and the fun we have when nobody’s ordering food at night
5. How nobody really thinks its weird that I am white and I don’t get stared at 24/7
6. The pizza delivery I had the other night with tiramisu for only $6
7. Mango juice. Fresh mango juice.
8. Cheap laundry that smells delicious and gets delivered to my place.
9. How I don’t really miss home all that often

And I try to ignore the things that are frustrating me most here:

1. The mosquitoes that every night leave me with new red bumps, making me feel like I have some strange chickenpox.
2. My inability to drive myself places and reminder of how pathetic this is with every day that my wounds seem to still not be healed.
3. How if I don’t go places with Indonesians I get ripped off and am completely aware of it unlike a lot of white people here
4. How few people really can speak English and therefore, how few real conversations I can have with people
5. How pathetic it is that I skype home twice a day here
6. How I still have no schedule and often wait for people to come who never do.
7. My inability to remember any of the bahasa I am told
8. How stupid white people look in town
9. My lack of studio space and motivation to paint without it
10. How far I am from the beach
11. How I keep getting new charges to pay for for my bike accident/useless bike
12. The lack of people I can really call ‘friends’
13. How I miss home often enough to still keep a countdown till I go back.
14. How pathetic all my complaints are.

As you can see, my list of things that are frustrating outweigh the positives. I realize there is a lot I need to work out. Let me expand this list a bit, more for my own curiosity.

Happy Things.

1. Oreos. And not just oreos, a lot of things from home. I can get most things here, and although the western stuff is more expensive, it is often worth every rupiah for my spaghetti and tomato sauce dinner. I think I can get more American things here than I could in Ireland, and more Irish things here than I can in America! (Can you say, whole aisle of digestives!? My UCD’ers will understand the excitement of this.)
2. Internet. I am lucky a. I don’t pay for it and b. it is mostly reliable. I get angry when it stops working for like 5 minutes and suddenly feel pathetic. I see my family more here than I ever did in Ireland, or at home for that matter. I am on facebook a disgusting amount, even worse, my email. Especially since I told my advisees that I would probably ‘take some time to respond to their emails’ but usually write back within 5 minutes of them emailing me… I sure look busy in Bali.
3. Cheap food. Seriously, there is nothing better. Caveat: near me is not the cheapest warung  (local restaurant) and I really should find cheaper, but I really love the woman who cooks my food and she knows how I like my gadogado now.
4. I love the women here, especially Cadek. I feel like she is my adoptive big sister. She has the biggest, most joyful smile and the warmest laugh. She’s brilliant and seemingly understands all the junk that comes from my mouth about the most irrelevant things.
5. The whole being white thing did not fly so well in India, but here, it’s like, “I think you’re beautiful but I won’t come nag on you for money or food, I’ll just try to sell you things at prices 10X the local cost.”
6. OH the pizza was delicious and I didn’t have to do anything to get it other than make a phone call. It actually was really good, although cold- this place also has pumpkin ravioli, to be purchased next time having a bad day.
7. Fresh mango juice from a ripe mango is seriously, one of the best things that’s happened to mankind.
8. If I had known it would be 40 cents to have someone wash and press my shirts I would have brought all my clothes here to be properly steamed for once in their never-time-to-be-ironed-correctly lives.
9. I think this not missing home too much thing is mostly because I spent so much time away already this year in Ireland, and also from the availability of skype video chat at 7am and 7pm in which Tori often can’t even think of things to tell me because we talked so recently.

Cue the whines.

1. Mosquitoes. Seriously. The bugs here are bad. Good thing they are not filled with that scary disease called ‘malaria’ and therefore I don’t have to worry about them, only itch so much that I can’t fall asleep finding new spots on my body I didn’t realize could itch.
2. Yeah. The whole bike thing has still got me down. This lack of independence is pathetic and frustrating and my wounds don’t look as good as I’d like them to at three weeks after the fact. Still trying to figure out if I can pretend I got in a shark attack.
3. This is one of the most frustrating but expected things about being white in Asia. I should not be as upset about it as I am considering I get to go home to a room with running water and a fridge full of food and most of these people I encounter do not. I ooze entitlement when I tell them not to rip me off because I am a student, but alas, I am a student, and I am even broker than I was before thanks to my bike riding experience.
4. Again. It’s pathetic how I expect people to speak English, but I do. And maybe it’s just that I’m not on a program and I’m not living with Americans/Native English speakers, but I’m finding Indonesia to be incredibly frustrating with my lack of Bahasa and their lack of English.
5. Seriously. I need to find other things to do with my time. (No offense Mom and Dad, I love you lots)
6. I am hoping this whole ‘lack of schedule’ thing will change soon (aka: this week since I DO have a schedule) but living without one for three weeks has been incredibly frustrating, and I can’t begin to explain how many times I’ve been stood up by someone or something that I had planned to do/see. And how pathetic I feel for not finding ways to use my time more productively.
7. I am the worst language learner ever and the words here are so different from English I have nothing to relate them to. I can’t even remember what hello is. Kelsey is most pathetic.
8. Seriously. I know, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones- but my gosh, white people, can you please become less awkward in public when you travel? I have seen way too many poorly dressed (or not really dressed at all) people look like fools on the streets of Ubud. Or loud Americans make scenes in restaurants. Or ask stupid questions like when the shop owner hands them a bottle of water that is double sealed with plastic if that is a clean bottle of water. White people, sometimes you really frustrate/embarrass/challenge me.
9. I realize now that even if I had oil paints in Ireland I would not have painted. I have a huge box of them here, canvases, mediums and .. 1 painting nearly finished. With all this free time I should be pushing out paintings like its nobody’s business. Not the case with the heat and the rain and the limited space that I have without dirt and rocks and ants to crawl all over me.
10. Bali is an Island. Everywhere you go there is a beach. Unless you are in Ubud.
11. First my medical fees, (about $350) which I know will not be fully covered by CISI because I dealt with them last year and was graciously rejected for most of my fees connected to my Indian surgery. Then there was the $200 car damage. $40 bike damage. $45 wall damage. $200 I paid for this bike which has now ended up being a really expensive helmet rental.
12. Other than Yuli I really feel like I haven’t been able to establish real friendships here. I am left to wonder if the people here are only nice to me because they have to be and secretly get annoyed by my wanderings in and out of the kitchen.
13. With emailing my advisees about how excited I am for them to come to Brandeis and thinking about the second 4^th of July I’ve missed in a row, I am beginning to get excited about the notion that I will be home for a full, probably mainly complete year next year. I’ve never really looked forward to this, but I feel ready to have my studio and little sister back.
14. No need for explanation.

This post is a bit of a diversion from where I’ve been with this blog. I’ve been really trying to post nice little stories about Bali with cute pictures, which if you notice, has been something I only do every three days or so. This is mainly because in between those times where I take cutsie pictures, I am struggling not to become completely suffocated by my frustrations with things here. I don’t like to write whiney posts. I hate to complain that I am in BALI with nothing to do. Oh poor, entitled little Kelsey. Sometimes I disgust myself. This tension can eat a person inside and make it impossible to write anything of real meaning.

But while doing research for a potential year in Malaysia next year (we’ll talk about this later, I promise. It’s giving me something to think about…) I found an amazing blog by someone who did the program I want to do a few years back. He’s a great writer, now going for his master’s in creative writing, but more importantly- totally engaging, interesting and real with his blog. And he complains constantly. He tells stories in tones of frustration and anger that I try to avoid.  And somehow I really enjoyed it. He was raw in a way that I really admire.

I realize I’ve basically been cutting the skin off the mango and forgotten to have you taste the inside. This mango that I’m talking about is not ripe. The insides are not tender and sweet like a mango should be- but instead solid and meaty and grainy and actually quite gross. It’s been cut off the tree before it was ready. When I try to make juice with this mango, Cadek tells me to put extra sugar in, because it needs sweetening.

The only other way to eat this unripe mango is how Yuli showed me the other day. Cut it up into thin strips, chop up a chili and drench it with brown sugary liquid that makes it so disgustingly sweet I couldn’t stand it either.

The Indonesians have tricks for dealing with these ‘unsweet’ things, (they do love their sugar) just like I have- except instead of choosing to avoid them all together, they just cover them with sugar and hope that will fix it.

I guess that’s what I’m guilty of. I can’t blame Indonesians for this behavior of mine, even if it seems like the kind of thing that would be fun to do. No. I just haven’t been dealing with how frustrating it is to be in a foreign country where few people speak my language and less know my name. With coming with a plan and it being ‘put on hold’. Continually. With feeling like I have accomplished very little in a period of time that I feel I could have used productively doing something else. With my future career supposed to be figured out with this summer and the feeling that I am only further from figuring out my calling.

My story isn’t that sweet these days. Of course, there is still a list of things I am happy with here, and I know, I should be a bit more grateful and a litle less frustrated with my time to be alone in a tropical paradise. I will do my best to really start working on that. But I still can’t mix that second list with chilies and sugar and expect it all to work out for the better. Not yet at least.

Thanks for indulging my frustrations for the time being.

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