If anything, there is beer

When Kent and I went to Africa in 2005, we spent a night in a small village somewhere in the middle of Burkina Faso. Kent wasn’t feeling well, so I went alone to dinner with our friends and guides, Gehrt and Emmanuel. In the village where we had dinner, the power was by generator, and there were no menus. Essentially, like many places in Bali, you ate whatever they happened to be preparing. When I peered into the kitchen window, all I could see was a soup pot with chicken feet sticking out of it.

Gehrt joked that Madame Dauphine, whose home and restaurant we were sitting in, founded the slow food movement, and indeed, we sat there over an hour with our beers waiting for our food to be served. By the time our food did arrive, the generator had been turned off to save power, so we sat and ate and drank in the dark. Gehrt said, this was actually a good thing, that often in such places you don’t want to see what you are eating.

What I ate – I assumed was a baguette with chicken and some kind of sauce over the chicken. However, for a chicken, the meat was rather tough, a bit stringy, and I found a bone here and there. I also pulled a feather or two out of my mouth.

I had never been so glad to have beer to wash my dinner down with in my life.

The next day as we were driving to another village, a strange and ugly bird crossed the road. It looked something like a small turkey with an unfortunate dash of rooster thrown in. I asked what it was.

Emmanuel, turned around in the front seat to face me and said, “A guinea fowl. You know what that is. You ate it last night.”

My stomach turned just a little.

The other night in Bali, we were driving back from an Earth Day celebration. We thought we’d stop along the way for some take out to eat once we got home. In a village, we saw an open air market and food stalls, all preparing satay.

We loved having satay in Singapore and often found it was a cheap and satisfying meal. Kent ordered two orders and paid two dollars. When we got home, Kent immediately started eating while I got the beer and poured it into glasses. I grabbed a stick and took a bite, just as Kent told me, “So I asked the guy what kind of meat this was as I was watching him slice it off.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Baa….” Kent said.

“Goat?”

Maybe it was the sauce. Maybe it was that the meat was kind of tough and chewy. Maybe it was that Je ne sais quoi sensation where you can’t get the food out of your mouth fast enough. I put the stick down.

I thought I like adventure. I like trying new things. And sometimes, I like having beer for dinner.

The Insect Who is Now Living in My Eye

Oh, the adventure of living in Bali!

My husband and I went for a walk along a trail through rice paddies, and I came back with the sudden urge to claw my eye out. But I didn't think anything of it, and I certainly didn't think it was an eye infection. I put eye drops in, took my contacts out, found an eyelash and assumed it was the culprit.

Even the next day when redness emerged across my eye like a seeping ink blot, I didn't think it was an eye infection. I still just thought my eye was slightly irritated. Despite the rainiest dry season Bali has ever seen (in the words of the locals, "It's all upside down upstairs.") there is still a bit of dust floating around that we Westerners have to build up immunities for. I thought this was all I was doing or one of those rascally dust particles had maybe just scratched my eye.

I do know that contact lens wearers are much more susceptible to eye infections, but in almost twenty years of wearing contacts, I have never had an eye infection. I never even had pink eye as a child. The only eye related event that landed me in the Emergency Room happened at the expense of my little sister when she scratched my eyeball the morning of my Uncle's wedding. I was six.

I guess I assumed I was immune to eye infections. So, like an idiot, I continued to attempt to wear my contacts a little bit during the day when I thought this little irritation had passed. Which is how I ended up looking at a house, with my eye tearing like Niagara Falls, bright red, and so uncomfortable, I thought that I would remove my entire eyeball when I finally got a chance to take out my contact.

Luckily, for me the house we looking at was down the street from three different clinics. One was an Ayurvedic Clinic (this may be why Bali feels familiar is that it is just as woo woo metaphysical as Boulder, CO or Portland/Eugene, OR), one was a Midwife clinic and one was a 24 hour regular clinic. We missed the turn for the regular clinic, so we turned at the next sign we saw that said, "Clinic." This is how we ended up at the Midwife Clinic where a doctor arrives at 5pm. Because it was 3pm, I saw a nurse. She spoke a only a little English.

First, I begged for a glass or some kind of container to put my contact. She finally understood what I was asking for and found me an appropriate container with a lid. She then handed me a container of eye drops and told me to take them every four hours. When I asked her what was wrong with it, she said, "You have an insect in your eye."

I said, "No, no. We went for a walk and I think it was a speck of dust that flew in my eye, not an insect."
She said, "No, it's an insect. You have an insect living in your eye. It should be gone in a few days."
I insisted she was wrong, but asked how much I owed her. She pointed to the donation box. I took out my wallet and gave her two 10,000 rupea bills, thinking that about twenty dollars was about right for a donation to a Midwife Clinic in the middle of Bali. I knew I was grumpy because I was so uncomfortable, and she was very sweet in trying to prevent me from clawing my own eye out Oedipus style. And I speak no Bahasa; she spoke only the little English I got, so I had no idea what kind of insect I had in my eye, if it was a contagious insect, if it would eventually hatch eggs in there or any other details that might have been helpful in such a predicament.

It took me three hours to realize she was trying to tell me that I had an infection in my eye. I realized that at about the same time I realized I had figured the currency wrong and that I did not give her twenty dollars. I gave her two dollars. So in addition to feeling like an idiot, I now felt like an asshole as well. A cheap one.

Two days later, we stopped by the clinic so I could atone for my sins. No one was around, so I snuck in the room where the donation box was and slipped in two 100,000 rupea bills.

A week later, my eye infection was much better, but not quite gone. Because my nurse of Entomology had told me that my insect would move onto his next destination within a few days, and it was now six days later, and the redness was mostly, but not quite, gone, I thought I'd give my contacts a try.

I am rather dense when it comes to sickness and injuries. I can have a hole in my face and insist I am fine and that it needs nothing more than a band-aid and certainly not a trip to the Emergency Room nor five stitches. Mostly, I just hate hospitals. Specifically, I hate hospital waiting rooms.

I had my contacts in not even ten minutes, before I again was struck with the urge to follow Oedipus's lead. My husband told me not to rush it or be dumb. Two hours later, I realized I had finished off the bottle of eye drops. Despite my hatred of waiting rooms, I have an even bigger fear of my own husband thinking I am dumb. So off to the official 24 hour English speaking Expat clinic in Ubud.

We all have heard the reports of the state of health care in the US. In the past, I have been known to idealize the health care systems of other countries (usually France) though in my time abroad I have learned that every country struggles with the quagmire of getting quality health care to its citizens. So I don't want to idealize the system in Bali at all. Especially after my limited experience here. But there are certainly a few key differences worth mentioning.

The first? The nurse met us at the door and opened the door for us as he welcomed us in. The second? He apologized that there was only one doctor who was currently seeing a patient, so we would have to wait. My husband and I waited five minutes.

The doctor spoke English, looked at the bottle of medicine I had been taking, then asked me to lie down on an examining table. Because my husband was in the room, she pulled the curtain around behind her so we would have privacy. I thought this was cute as she was giving me an eye examination and not say, a pelvic examination. She was very nice, though she did scold me for my attempt to wear my contacts, but said that it should really be gone within two days. Three at the most. We paid thirty-five dollars for the consultation and the medicine.

The name of the insect in my eye? Acute conjunctivitis. When I asked what caused it, the nurse said, there were several germs and things that we Westerners didn't have immunities for and that probably a speck of dirt or an insect flew into my eye.

Damn insects.

On the Creepy Hand Front

I am thinking of spending my time in Bali searching the island for these door handles. I love them and want them for my some day house. My some day house is the house I either buy or build and fill top to bottom with the treasures I have found from my world wide travels, markets, garage sales and so on. After just one week in Bali, I have decided that I may require more than one some day house. I could have one just in Bali furnished with carved four poster beds, butcher block tables and bamboo chairs with ikat upholstered floor pillows at every turn. And oh the stone bathtubs they have here...just wait until I get a picture of those!

On Packing (oy)

There are at least four things that my husband and I will always have arguments about:

1. Towel folding*
2. How late I was to our wedding**
3. The yard tools I sold in his garage sale***
4. How much to pack for (long international) trips.

Kent, raised as an army brat, has lived in at least 31 different houses. He has moved so much that within weeks of moving into a new place, he grows so restless he has to rearrange all the furniture in the house so that the space feels new. As our old landlord said, it’s in his DNA. Our old landlord continued on to say, that he felt kind of sorry for me, because moving so much is not in my DNA, especially since giving birth and breastfeeding, all my hormones are telling me to nest and create home. Yet I have moved a fair amount myself, and have gotten rather good at moving and moving often. Still, it stresses me out a little more than Kent. I generally spend a week oscillating between dread, tense stress and general funk. I don’t get excited about our new location or potential adventure until mid-transit.
Consequently, Kent and I pack very differently. I have a few habits that are not conducive to moving. One is bringing stacks and stacks of books home from the library and used book stores. Books are my security blanket. Even if I know I will never get around to reading all of them, I like to have them around. I also have a love of odd collections of dishes. Really, I love odd collections of anything that make my space feel cozy and homey. So when it came time to pack our suitcases for Singapore and our house for storage I had to be closely supervised as I fought temptations to stick my favorite coffee mugs not into boxes but into my suitcases.
Kent, on the other hand, abhors clutter and collections of anything (especially – and I agree with him – collections of ducks). He packs for a month or six months the same way he packs for a weekend. Before moving or traveling, he goes on a rampant purge. His ideal is to get rid of everything and start over fresh, keeping only the absolute favorite things. The arguments/discussions start when he’s trying to throw anything not nailed down away, while I’m trying to shove it in my suitcase.
In coming to Singapore, we brought two bags each (including two for the baby) plus one extra (we paid for) plus our carry on (my smaller rolling suitcase, and our respective back packs). Truth be told, in comparison with a lot of expats, we didn’t bring very much at all. But now, we’re at the end of our stay in Singapore, and for the moment, plan to put most of the things we brought to Singapore in storage, and then take just a bag or two with us to Vietnam for a month. We each agreed to not take many clothes because Vietnam is a relatively cheap place to buy clothes (and when you’re essentially only alternating between shorts and your swimsuit, how much do you really need?). I do feel I am making progress in packing, in that I no longer have to bring everything I own. And I did go to Thailand and Cambodia for a week, with one suitcase for both the baby and me(including the diapers! Impressive!)
Yet I still have two urges battling with each other. One is the urge to pack as lightly as possible; the other is the urge to create home for us, but especially for our son. I want him to have his favorite toys and books. I also have things I like to have: my good knives, my favorite salt shaker, my favorite salt, and, of course, my dictionary. I have yet to achieve the delicate balance, of having what makes a space feel like home while still traveling lightly.
My sister, however, seems to do this effortlessly, though she hardly moves at all. When I traveled with her around Italy, she traveled with a footstool in her suitcase. I had bought her the footstool I think at a Siena flea market. Now, I think of this every time I travel or move. I think, after traveling with her around Northern Italy, that I too should be able to travel internationally with my favorite piece of furniture wedged into my carry on.

*The towel folding argument: K folds towels like a man. He brings the short ends together, then folds that in half, then I think the remaining part either gets folded into thirds or half again. It is a lovely fold. One the Gap would be proud of. Problem is when you go to actually hang the towel on the towel bar, (you see where this is going right?) it requires refolding the towel so it hangs properly. Which is why I fold towels in the same way hotels do, so that you can just hang the towel on the bar with no refolding. I say it’s like a man, because I argue that women, especially women with children attempting to climb up the walls, don’t have time to do things twice.
**I was an hour late to our wedding. K says it was an hour and a half, but actually, whenever he tells the story, my arrival gets later and later. Whatever. I was late. But I was late because my sister’s plane was 2 or 3 hours late. Not because I had cold feet or anything.
*** I sold K’s yard tools at his garage sale. In my defense, I have this to say: where I come from, when you have a garage sale, you sell things that are in your garage. So if you don’t want to sell something, it should probably be moved out of the garage. I also sold his tools for cheap. Because, again, where I come from, when you have a garage sale, it is generally because you are trying to get rid of things, not get a return on your initial investment. Finally in my defense, since I sold said tools, we actually haven’t lived any place that had a yard where we would use them.

My Favorite Singapore Interactions

1. Up the street, at the cafe where I ordered a sandwich
Waiter: We don't have the kind of bread you want for your sandwich.
Me: What other kind of bread do you have?
Waiter: All the other kinds.

2. In a taxi, around 1 o'clock, on the way to the Botanical Gardens
Me: To the Botanical Gardens, please.
Taxi Driver: Really? You know it's going to rain around 4?
Me: Yes. I know.
TD: Are you sure you know?
Me: Yes. It has been raining at 4 in the afternoon for awhile now.
TD: But are you sure you know that?
(It did indeed rain at 3:30, by which point, F & I had seen the gardens and were sharing a cup of mango sorbet and waiting for our taxi home.)

3. Today, in Chinatown, walking by a temple with my husband, who said: "I can't tell if they play this music to wake the gods up or scare away the evil spirits for the day. Either way, it's a ruckus."