How to cross the road in Indonesia

Learn immediately or quickly become a statistic: I realized this on the first day. Next day, I stepped into the path of a hundred snarling motorbikes and nearly became a statistic. In Indonesia, as many countries of the world, pedestrians are legitimate candidates for roadkill, or a nuisance, at best. My daily crossing was not merely a busy highway, but a main artery: a national road. Container trucks, natural gas and petrol tankers, cars, medium lorries, and motorbikes all jostled for space. The fun was compounded with unscheduled “counterflows” and people driving on the left-hand side. A year and a half later, here’s what I learned.

The number one rule is to give your full attention to what you’re doing. The immediate concern is the lane nearest you and a little less, the next one. To think of the whole road to the other side - the entirety of your undertaking - is like proposing to live a lifetime in a day: you wouldn’t do it at all.

Naturally, the first thing you'll be looking for is where other people are crossing. This may or may not work as that crossing might be too far from where you are.

Look for the narrowest strip of road. Scout about 100 yards or more upstream and downstream of where you want to cross. The narrow portions usually result in backed-up traffic which chokes vehicles and motorcycles. They also give you the shortest distance to the road median where there are slightly better odds of safety.

Be very wary of motorcycles. They are the unpredictable factor of road traffic and are likely to be aggressive and downright deadly. They will gun their engines at the slightest hint of open space so stay alert even when crossing a space that has opened between larger vehicles. Other than Jakarta, motorcycles are also tolerated by the police to ride on the wrong side of the road, INCLUDING sidewalks. So, when crossing, look to BOTH sides of the road regardless on the lane you are on.

Take advantage of traffic jams but keep an eye out for motorcycles trying to squeeze between vehicles. This means that even when you’re squarely on one side of the road going a particular direction, you have remain alert for motorcycles when crossing between the lanes of that side, even when the cars have stopped.

Take advantage of meridian islands, street light posts, and any barriers. Stay behind them particularly when caught by the traffic light. Be willing to stay on the meridian if stranded there, but heaven help you, try to never be caught at an unprotected meridian.

Have infinite patience. Do not force a crossing when your mind and your gut tell you not to. This may sound like New Age advice, but believe me you’ll know when it’s not right to cross.

Look for stop lights, if any, but also consider the hour. Traffic lights are usually respect during work hours and when cops are around. Nevertheless, stay wary and don’t bet your life on the light. Expect motorists trying to beat the light.

Cross only where you have a clear view of oncoming traffic. Avoid blind curves just after stoplights, and do not cross where the road bottoms out from an extended downhill drive.

How to Ride a Bicycle in Jakarta: 10 steps - wikiHow

How to Ride a Bicycle in Jakarta: 10 steps - wikiHow

Starving Quietly

I suppose there are as few examples of the close connection between body and soul as the hunger pangs of an expat who can’t get the food he/she is used to. I cannot forget the way a former classmate of mine from California, USA would talk so earnestly about how grateful he was to have discovered a source for applesauce. “Apple sauce?” I was thinking at the time.

Now it’s my turn. I’m dying for bulalo, sinigang, petchay, kare-kare, pork chops, chunky beef stew, stuffed and roasted milkfish, bagoong, dinuguan (blood pudding), menudo, giniling, oh a slew of other unacquirables here. It’s particularly bad when the meal hours come and the only things edible are the foods that the people here have. Indomie, mie instan, mihun, mie basa, mie kuning, sohum mie, bakmi, cwiemie, mie goreng, mie bakso, mie ayam bakso, ayam bakso mie, bakso mie ayam, mie bakso ayam, mie rubus, rebus mie, mie dan kuah, mie tampah kuah, mie thrown at the wall, mie on the plate, mie on the side of the plate, mie under the table, mie and you, you and mie. That. Works for them, but it's killing mie. I mean, me.

I come away from the table stuffed to the gills but positively starving in my mind. I recall the parakeet squabs I had when I used to keep parakeets. The barely fledged baby birds would find themselves kicked out of the nest and sitting at the bottom of the cage, right on the birdseed dish. While the mature birds had enough sense not to sit on the seed, not so the bugleys (I called them bugleys from bird + ugly). The other thing that bugleys hadn’t yet figured was how to eat the bird seed. Hungry but no longer fed by their parents, they’d have the general idea of eating the birdseed like all the other birds were doing. What they didn’t quite know yet was that they were supposed to hull the seeds first. Often, the result was a sorry-assed looking bugley with a drum-tight crop, bursting with un-hulled birdseed. Starving, of course! Yep, that’s what I feel like these days.

I am losing weight. This is a good thing, yes? But I’m starving. That’s mie. (Whimper)

City Bites

7 Aug 11 (Sunday)

That’s what big cities do to foolhardy newbies and I played the part yesterday. Three things I managed. 1) I moved apartment. I moved from a hi-rise apartment complex to a ‘kost” or a homestay sort of lodging. I thought it would bring me closer to the school and I could stay later and produce more work. Well, no, not exactly. Seems I made the choice without really understanding the layout of this area and I find, so far anyway, that I’m not much closer to the school than I would be had I just stayed at the apartment. The room is great. Unfortunately, I had not taken into account the stench of the open sewer canals that surround the place.

The last straw is the water. I saw the bath water in the pail this morning. Noticed big bubbles on the surface. Damn that’s dirty water. Then I recall hearing in the conversation with the other residents last night – no, I don’t speak the local language very well, but I do understand enough to catch phrases and the thrust of the conversation – something about how there was a water pump. Shoot! That didn’t register in my head until this morning: ground water! If you’ve never been to Jakarta I’ll tell you something about it. There are lots and lots of open sewers here. Breeds lots of mosquitoes, creates unspeakable views, generates a miasma that perhaps only the longtime residents don’t notice. City newbies, well, we notice. And that black water, it seeps down to the ground!

Perhaps those apartment dwellers are there not just because they’re seeking a stylish lifestyle but because they’re refugees. This city is beginning to reveal itself as one of the more environmentally degraded places I’ve been to. Oh sure, Manila has its corresponding areas. Still it’s not very nice to discover that this dismal state of the environment is endemic here. It’s all around. Yeech!

The second stupid thing I did was I went shopping for too many things. More than I could comfortably handle in one go. Consequently I lost a couple of items. A pail and a trash bin. Not too expensive items, but still that cost me money.

Finally, I got fleeced by a cabbie. I still don’t know my bearings in this city. I stayed at the supermarket without realizing it was nearly midnight and so had to ride through the dark streets of this city. Dumb. Ha ha.

Wisdom isn’t a stage you achieve, I think. Instead it’s a dynamic state brought on by having to deal with circumstances that keep you sharp and alert. Take away those conditions and you revert back to the not-no-smart you. Then change the situation again, make the situation difficult and then you start hurting, and consequently getting smart again.

Incidentally it’s Sunday morning. Normally I would be at church today. But I don’t know where that is and it’ll take some time to find it. So I’m spending this morning walking around and getting my bearings. Maybe I’ll find a place where they sell cheap secondhand bicycles because I sure could use one.

Race Against Kungfu Master!

Tonight I went on a footrace with some unknown Kung Fu master.

Not having worked out at the gym the last few days, I had got it into my head that I would walk home from work today. It’s a good 30 minute and I usually get to the house feeling nicely fazed. There are some challenges to this walk though. One of them is you can’t walk on one particular side of the road because the pedestrian path goes right under some trees that local egrets have decided to call home. Unless you’re willing to take your chances with highly acidic and fishy bird poop, you can’t pass there. The other challenge is the sidewalk isn’t anywhere near even. It goes up and down very abruptly, with many camouflaged obstacles like telephone pole stumps, brow-height street sign edges, missing cobbles, missing manhole covers, phone pole guy wire anchors, and parts where the sidewalk had collapsed completely into the sewers below. Just to make things more interesting, there are large intervals of the sidewalk that are in complete darkness. Nevertheless, as I have walked this way many times before, I know I can negotiate it with a grain of caution.

One other option is to go off the sidewalk and walk on the roadway itself. I do not often do this as both motorcyclists and public utility minivans think nothing of running mere centimeters from you at high speeds. An imprudent leaning to one side could easily spell grievous bodily harm and even an untimely demise.

So there I was walking when I noticed up ahead, on the roadway but close to the shoulder, a man in a tunic like outfit, clad in flip-flops, pulling an old-fashioned bamboo cart, you know, the one with two long handles and rests on two large wheels? The outfit he had on reminded me right away of Bruce Lee, because he wore loose trousers, and his Chinese-collared long-sleeved tunic was also loose. He was going my direction.

I quickly dismissed him from my mind, half-expecting to draw up on him and then pass him at any coming moment. I only had an empty knapsack and was wearing comfortable track shoes besides. My eyebrows went up when I noticed that not only was I not catching up on this KF Master, but inexplicably, he was steadily pulling away from me. Now how could he do that? I watched his legs in action. No, he wasn’t running. If anything, he looked like he was taking both slower and shorter strides than I was. Besides, how fast could he go? He was in flip-flops for heavens sakes!

So why, even as I watched, did he seem to be pulling ahead? I shook my head. Nonsense! I quickened my pace, but taking care not to appear that I was running. I’ll show him! With a quiet sense of exultation I closed the distance. But what should have been a quick sprint to close the gap didn’t turn out to be a sprint. It took serious effort! A glance at him showed that no, he didn’t seem to be trying to walk any faster. How the heck was he doing this?

I passed him! Hallelujah, I passed him. I was practically running now. In the half-dark, dodging trash cans, plant pots, phone pole stumps and trying to fall into a manhole. My breathing was rapid now and I was seriously pumping those legs. I imagined in my head that I was pulling rapidly away from this impudent stranger and quelling the urge to look over my shoulder to see how far back he was.

Of course, I looked. And there he was, KF Master, languidly walking in flipflops, about 12 paces behind me, keeping apace and threatening to overtake should I ease up on my frantic rapid strides. Oh my gosh! This was not looking good! Did this mean I would have to maintain this pace till my house? That was miles ahead!

I could feel the beginnings of shin splints, and my calves had begun to ache. No, I steeled myself. I would not fall behind this man. Besides, with any luck, he’ll probably arrive at his fruit stall or maybe veer off to a side street. Just keep walking, man, and pretend he doesn’t exist. For the next 10 minutes I did my best to look nonchalant while attempting to break into a run. I also told myself that no, I would not look back.

And so I looked back. And there he was! 10 paces behind me! Walking as leisurely as you please, still pulling that cart. Ye gad! I had long since broken out into a sweat. The hope that he would quietly disappear into the darkness had itself disappeared. At this point I gave up trying to give a semblance of subtlety. I began leaping up and down the uneven sidewalk, dashing to the sides of open manholes, ducking under low streetsigns, and sprinting when the there was enough even ground to see. I would not, no how, be beaten by Kung Fu Master! No kungfu way! I ignored the pains in my shins, the stitches at my sides, my ragged breathing.

Farther on, much farther on, I came to a traffic build up. I was near my home too. There was no way he could get through that traffic. Wherever he was, if he was still back there, he would have been stuck. I dogged between close-packed cars and motorcycles to get to my street. On an grassy island, the last one before the turn-off to my street, I paused to catch my breath. I also paused because I wanted to know if Kungfu Master was still behind me. If I had managed to get that far ahead of him.

When the light turned green and most of the cars had passed, there, coming implacably in that deceptively unhurried pace, was Kungfu Master and his cart. Backgrounded by passing traffic, he kept going, going up the road to heavens knows where, maybe the next county.

Soundly beaten, I reverted back to a sane pace. Good night, Kungfu Master. Your Kung Fu is stronger than my Kung Fu.

Old Dog Does New Tricks with Dialysis Machines

Abigail and Mon, a photo by Uberdoog on Flickr.

Everyone admires excellence when they see it. A pilot smoothly landing a plane. A ski jumper slaloming down a course. Or Roy, head nurse of the Hemodialysis Unit, setting up the arterial blood lines of the dialysis machines. 


What’s that? Did I say dialysis machines? Yup, you read right. You’ve heard of dialysis, right? That’s when your kidneys decide to go on ahead of the rest of you. The rest of you gets messed up because your blood builds up toxins and water builds up too. For that you need dialysis. Dialysis machines are machines the size of two personal refrigerators stacked atop each other and they do the job that two little kidneys, individually smaller than your fist, did. Better than any dialysis machine. But what choice do you have? 


Let’s get back to Roy. It's 4 in the morning, he's racing through the set up of the machines. Washing this, plugging that, pushing these buttons, inverting cartridges, purging excess, heck if I know.
Watching Roy is watching excellence. Working with an economy of motion, purposefulness and fluidity, he got one of the machines harnessed and ready to go in no time. 


Admiring excellence is like admiring the tip of an iceberg, 90% of their mass is out of sight. With excellence, what you don’t see is the hard work, perseverance from day to day, or the bad hair days with their terrible balls-ups. But I guess it that would be an unfair comparison. Excellence probably hides at least 99% of practice and work. 


“Great!” I thought to myself, I have 98 more days to get a little better, but most likely nowhere near as good as Roy. But I was just being flippant and was not actually bothered. The good thing about Nursing is it’s not a competition. At least, not in the usual sense. 


All I want these days is a new bag. While the rest of my contemporaries are packing up and looking forward to retirement, I’m moving into new and unexplored territory. I’m having to toughen up, physically and mentally. I’m having to become game, quick, flexible, alert and responsive. If you’re young, you’ll find it hard to imagine how inertia can slow down a middle-aged man. The habits of seeking comfort and familiarity, formed of earlier decades have to be gradually broken. It hurts, but then I have seen the changes to adapt.   And the changes feel good. I can see the banner in my head: Old Dog Learns New Trick. So Roy , how do you set up the dialysis machine again?


Originally posted Jan 6, 2010

Java Homecoming

Being Filipino, I have the tendency to think that all roads lead to the Manila, it being the center of the universe. I fail to add of course, my universe. And being the center of the universe, it builds its own reality, an overwhelming preponderance of seriousness and gravity which travels with me, along with the actual baggage that I have to weigh and check in. Can you imagine how much more the airlines could charge if they could only figure out a method of weighing the local worries and concerns that passengers bring with them when they check at the airport?



Fortunately, and with satisfying consistency, the premise that Manila is the center of the universe thoroughly shatters on each trip. There are, it seems, people and world out there that don’t give a hoot about Manila and could not care less if it sank like Atlantis into the sea. They have the right idea. The right
perspective. That release and relief is why I must travel. To get my head right, I need to break free of Manila’s mind-numbing concentricity.



The last trip I took was to Java. No, not the programming language which takes precedence when you Google up Java. No, not the hoary World War II-vintage term for coffee that’s quickly
going the way of the dinosaurs, if it hasn’t already. I mean Java, the island in Indonesia. Yes, it’s still there. No, it’s not an island off Bali. Bali is an island off Java. Java is much bigger than Bali. Yes, it is.



I enjoyed my trip to Java without once seeing Bali. I’m saving Bali for another trip. My trip to
Java was akin to a surprise homecoming. How could I have known that I actually had family – cousins twice, thrice removed if you like - living in other parts of Asia? They looked like me, they spoke a language that strangely sounded like mine but was just slightly on the edge of my comprehension, they had a similar
temperament, had rice with their meals, and wore shirts that looked like colorful renditions of the Filipino’s loose and ivory colored national costume. It was a great trip!



My first hint of familiarity was the language. There were so many words in Bahasa Indonesia that
meant pretty much the same thing in the Philippines. Its words seemed to be derived not just from Tagalog but from the entire gamut of Philippine languages.
Nasi from Kapampangan in Central Luzon, ikan from Northern Luzon, ini from the Visayas, putih from Tagalog and a slew of others. When I got back from that trip and did some research, I discovered that Tagalog and Bahasa Indonesia were actually sister languages that shared words and word characteristics, that my Tagalog had ties to languages as far away as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Taiwan. Now that
is so cool!



For the longest time there had been this anguishing about how the Philippines had lost its real culture because it was all alone there in the middle of the water and the big bad Spaniards, Americans, Japanese etc. etc. had come along and had taken its soul away. But as it turns out, the Philippine languages continue to link it to its regional identity! I don’t have to go to one extreme where I am abashed about
being messed up by the colonizers, as one camp of social anthropologists would have me believe, and neither do I have to go the other way and get defensive about the fact that colonizers did have their way with the Philippines. Filipinos are still part of the Asian family. What a relief!



Then there’s food. Indonesians, like Filipinos, eat rice. It’s a staple. That solves more than
half the problem of having to adjust to the food. In my trip to Java, I discovered that they liked a lot of vegetables in their diet. Filipinos, the Manila Filipinos anyway, eat a lot more meat. Indonesians replace the protein requirement by a heavier consumption of tofu. Tofu is also commonly found in the Philippines but is not eaten as much. But all that’s a minor difference. Rice remains the staple food.



Whenever I’m in a new place I want to walk. Walking lets you see things and in Solo, Indonesia, I saw the national flower of the Philippines – the Sampaguita - growing by a wall. The Sampaguita (Jasminium sambac) does that in the Philippines. Grows by walls. But doing here what it does 1031 miles away in Manila gave me pause. A little later, I found Atis (Annona squamosa)happily growing near the Solo train station. Again, I had to stop. Later on, I discovered that these plants are endemic to the region. They were not my plants, they were our plants. Now how do you like that?


I didn’t get to stay in Indonesia very long. Just two weeks. But I’ll be back, longer this time, and I’m looking forward to it. I sure would like to poke around my cousin’s backyard and see what they’ve been up to all this time. There’s nothing like having family.

Originally posted on April 29, 2010 11:38 am

And They Said It was OUR National Flower

There are many things we assume when we are given bare facts. One of them was when I was taught at school that the Sampaguita was the (Philippine) national flower. Oh, ok then. If it was the national flower, then it was ours. The unspoken premise was no one else had it.

In the course of my travels however, reality has been chipping away at these hoary assumptions. One was when I discovered the Philippine roast pig called Lechon, happily existing in a Laotian marketplace. (Yeah, yeah, a Laotian Roast Pig). The latest to take a fall has been the Sampaguita (Jasminum sambac) which I encountered happily growing on a sidewalk in Solo, Java. Research on Wikipedia has since shown me that the Sampaguita ranges from Southwest, Southeast, and South Asia.
Great. I feel betrayed. I want to punch someone. Whoever led me to believe the Sampaguita was uniquely Filipino. Arrrgh!

Originally posted on Nov 1, 2010
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Man, Take a Hint!

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Life is not easy. That much is clear to most people. Nor is life fair. It has many circumstances that are not in our control that nevertheless have bearing on our lives. In any case, we have to deal and live with those circumstances of fate as best we can.

We need to be mentally strong. The waves that will batter us in life are not predictable and may come singly or in a long punishing spell. One cannot, must not, break. To break, to give in to the vagaries of fate is to squander one’s strength, will, and determination. Lose that and it’s a downhill spiral.

Man cannot live by himself alone. He needs his God, his family, his friends. In that order. When a man finds sanctuary in his God, then he takes on God’s power and might. You might physically destroy such a man, but you only deceive yourself. Such a Phyrric victory nothing against the greatness of God.

Man insists on living by himself. He eschews the company of God, spurns his family, and avoids friendships. He convinces himself this is proof of his strength. He takes great pride in it, much like a toddler wields a twig or a ball, filled with self-importance and accomplishment. He is proud of it until he loses it or it is taken away from him. And then he is dejected.

God would have man seek him. It was God’s plan that man should not go about this world stumbling about in ignorance. It was God’s good plan that man should come to the conclusion of his own inadequacy and the sufficiency…nay, the abundance, of God. Men who keep the counsel of God are those who accomplish the most in the life. The are the ones who are protected, guided, and rewarded with a full life. In contrast, those who seek their own way apart from the direction of God are those who eventually fail.

Psalm 91:1-2

1. He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High

     Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

2. I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress

    My God, in Him I will trust.

The person who trusts in God and lives close to Him can dwell "in the secret place" or in the shadow of God within a secure fortress. Stop for a minute and think how comforting that "secret place" is.

Psalm 91:3-4

3. Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler

    And from the perilous pestilence,

4. He shall cover you with his feathers,

    And under His wings you shall take refuge;

    His truth shall be your shield and buckler.

An image of being saved from bird traps and various "perilous" diseases appears here. Stop and discover the feeling of complete protection that a baby chick feels when the mother hen tucks him under her protective wings. The shield and buckler indicates that God is the believers shield against all harm.

Psalm 91:5-6

5. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,
Nor of the arrow that flies by day,

6. Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,
Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.
God will protect us from all evil at all times of the day and night.

Psalm 91:7-8

7. A thousand may fall at your side,
And ten thousand at your right hand;
But it shall not come near you.
8. Only with your eyes shall you look,
And see the reward of the wicked.

Psalm 91:9-10

9. Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
10. No evil shall befall you,
Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;

Psalm 91:11-13

11. For He shall give His angels charge over you,
To keep you in all your ways.
12. In their hands they shall bear you up,
Lest you dash your foot against a stone.
13. You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra,

Psalm 91:14-16

14. Because he has set his love upon Me,
Therefore I will deliver him:
I will set him on high, because he has known My name.
15. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will deliver him and honor him,
16. With long life I will satisfy him,

And show him My salvation.

Time and again, God asks me to trust him. To walk with him, to keep his counsel, to depend on him. God is no beggar nor is God an opportunist. Man is doomed to fail if he acts only by himself. It is the man who walks with God who is the complete man. The complete man cannot fail for God empowers him, shields him, and answers for him. The complete man cannot fail for God cannot fail. The complete man may die in the service of his God, but such a death would ultimately be a victory for God is the ultimate destination of the complete man. Meanwhile, the incomplete man, he is lost.

I should listen. I should do. And keep on doing what God wants me to do. Walk with Him through life.