Where there is Buddha...

In our old house, the Buddha statue and the mouse lived in the bathroom. In our new house, the Buddha statue is on the kitchen window sill, and it so happens that in our new house, the mouse also happens to live in the kitchen. I saw him one night scurry across the floor when we came home after dinner. Then I heard him behind the oven when I got up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water. Kent went ahead and set the trap. No luck the first night. But last night, we got ourselves a mouse.

Our new house also comes with a house cleaner and gardener for three and half hours in the afternoon; they oblige us and do whatever heinous thing we ask, so when we set off this morning, we left the mouse in the trap for the gardener, Wayan, to deal with. We came home this afternoon after Wayan had taken care of the mouse. Happy to see that the mouse was gone, Kent asked what Wayan did with the mouse - if only because we wanted to make sure the little rascal wasn't going to come back.


Wayan said he soaped it.
"Soaped it?" Kent asked.
"Yes." Wayan said. "I soaped it."
"What do you mean, you soaped it?"
"In water. I put the mouse in water then I soaped it." Wayan said.
"You put the mouse in water and then shocked it?" Kent asked.
Wayan looked blank for a minute.
"Wow." Kent said. "Harsh."
"Damn." I said. "Hindu much? At least you're not worried about your karma."
"No no," Wayan protested, "I just soaped it."
The light bulb went on.
"Oh, you soaked it. We call that drowning." Kent said.
"Droaning." Wayan repeated.

Ten minutes after Wayan left for the day, I walked into the kitchen to put our afternoon coffee cups in the sink. Standing at the sink, I heard that distinct rustling sound in the trash that can only mean one thing: a brown mouse like rodent scampered out of the trash can and across the floor of the kitchen. I can't help it, but I scream when I see a mouse. Kent says it's girlie; I think it's instinctual. I also have a hope if I scream loud enough, the mouse will run faster to the place where I can't see it. I also have a tendency to shake my fist at the running rodent and holler, "You're supposed to be nocturnal! Scamper and steal when I am sleeping!" Can't say that it's my finest moment when I catch mice in the house. And I certainly don't act like someone who was raised by an Eagle Scout or like someone who then grew up and married an Eagle Scout.

Sissy to the core.

Alas, whether Wayan soaped, shocked or soaked it, the mouse has either quickly reincarnated or he took care of reproducing before biting it in a bucket of water. Either way, Kent is setting another trap before going to bed and I am removing Buddha from the mouse's protection. Kent says I can't blame the resiliency of mice on Buddha, that Buddha, by nature, is blameless simply because he is Buddha. Kent says this in that tone of voice of his where he wishes I would occasionally act more enlightened than I actually am.

Maybe it is just a coincidence that where there is Buddha, there is a mouse. But tonight, I plan on going to bed and dreaming of the house cat I will get to replace Buddha. I might even name the cat after Buddha. Just as long as the cat likes mice.

To Market...Or Not

Volumes have been written about the art of negotiation whether it be in business, politics or marriage, though it sometimes takes a different name depending on where the negotiations are taking place. In marriage or families, I think negotiating usually falls under the nicer sounding term of compromise, while in politics it falls under quid pro quo by those cynical and bipartisanship by those who still want to believe that people who agree on nothing can work together on something.

Yet I have seen little more than a paragraph written on negotiating, compromising or bargaining in the Balinese market.

By nature, I fall on the frugal side, and in some circumstances, I freely admit to being a complete cheap skate. I am good at not paying much for things. My mother raised me in the art of garage and estate sales. I learned the unspoken rules first hand: books should be no more than a quarter and any item of clothing no more than a dollar, unless it was a vintage wedding dress. One victorious Saturday morning with mom I bought a set of California pottery plates for less than five dollars and a Swedish dining room set for forty.

Thanks to mom, I have paid full price for very little in my life.

However, Mom failed to teach me anything about the ways of the world market. The first time Kent and I visited Bali, we hiked Mt. Batur. On the way home, our driver stopped at a coffee plantation. We enjoyed a brief coffee sampling then we were gently pushed towards the gift shop.

Being someone who cooks and bakes quite a bit in the states, my jaw dropped when I saw how much they were asking for Saffron and Vanilla Beans. In the states, a pinch of saffron will cost you twenty-five dollars. One vanilla bean will go for eight dollars and sometimes as much as twelve. So when I saw vanilla beans for a dollar a piece, without a second thought I threw fifteen into our shopping basket.

Then Kent and I went through the market in the center of Ubud.

We realized we had been robbed when we saw that you could buy a bunch of vanilla beans for two dollars.

We spent the rest of the day rationalizing our idiocy, that we couldn't have known, that compared to what you pay in the states, the first set of vanilla beans were a good deal, so of course it made sense at the time to buy them. We had also just hiked a mountain, and we were starving and tired – too tired for it to occur to us that we were smack in the middle of a tourist trap.

So in our first week of being in Ubud this time around, I stopped in the market to buy coffee. I bargained hard and got my kilo of coffee for five dollars - half of the seller’s original price. I didn’t think any thing of it until Kent and I walked through a corner convenience store and saw the same exact bag of coffee for all of ninety cents.

My next time at the market? I was pissed. If I didn’t get the price I wanted, I acted like the sellers were crazy and walked. If you’re white and in a market in Bali, you do essentially have a bull’s eye on your forehead. Occasionally you also have the word SUCKER. Being from Portland, Oregon and having lived in California, I come programmed to buy local, and I don’t want to exploit the locals even as much as I love a good bargain. But I don’t want to be taken advantaged of either, and while I forgive a lot in my personal relationships (or try to anyway), I don’t forgive or forget greedy shopkeepers – even if they’re local, organic, Fair Trade, or the charity shop for the Humane Society.

When we had settled into our new house and our beautiful kitchen, I realized what I really wanted from Bali is one of those black stone big mortar and pestles. I came across one when I was at the market with my sister. I asked the seller how much it was; she said the equivalent of fifty dollars.

Fifty dollars? I said. You don’t look like Williams and Sonoma.

I counter offered half, the equivalent of twenty-five.

She said forty. It was the lowest she’d go.

I walked away.

She called me back, and said fine, that she needed the sale – with morning price – so she’d have good luck the rest of the day.

In hindsight, that she caved so quickly should have been my first clue. But in the moment, I felt victorious. I felt like Julia Child in My Life in France when she buys her mortar and pestle in the Paris market. Plus the shopkeeper made this cute tuk tuk tuk sound as she demonstrated how to use the mortar and pestle. I fell victim to my love of buying in markets; I even felt a twinge of nostalgia for shopping in the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena, California. I love the stalls of vendors and the way they have an entire moving van's worth of stuff shoved into a cubic four feet worth of space. I love scanning the random accumulation of things and being able to zero in on my next favorite item in life, and finally, I love paying not much for really cool things. I get a little endorphin high when I score cool things for cheap.

So when Sis and I got home from the market, I boasted to Kent that I bargained for half price and got it.

Later that night, as Kent and I rolled over to go to sleep, Kent said, I wonder what the mortar and pestles go for in the supermarket?

You think they have them in the supermarket? I asked.

It wouldn't have hurt to look, he said.

Huh, I said.

After my sister went back into the states, Kent and I stopped in the supermarket for ingredients and a pan so we could bake cookies (because we have the only oven we have seen in Bali!). There at the very end of the cooking utensil aisle, on the ground tucked in the corner, were the mortar and pestles.

For three dollars.

I felt sick. I am sure my complexion turned grey. I went cold as if I had just been slapped. I went through the stages of bargain shopping grief: bewilderment, humiliation, disgust, anger, the urge to shake my finger and yell at someone, mainly the shopkeeper who ripped me off. I felt homesick and wished for Target and their return policy, the one where you can take merchandise back because you found it better and cheaper somewhere else. In that moment, I hated Bali.

Kent cut me off from the market. When I pointed out that I still got vanilla beans cheaper at the market then the grocery stores, he took it back. Still, lesson learned - the hard way.

For the first time in my life, driving past a market makes me ill. But I do get a little weak in the knees when I come in sight of the supermarket...