Our family owns a little red Hyundai.
For a while it was mine. I had it up in Sydney, zipping around to interviews and to take photographs, with my straightened newsreader cut hair in a snappy little outfit.
After a couple of years in an office job where I never had to leave the office, my snappy dressing toned down dramatically… but the car is the one that really let itself go while I was in the tropics. It was not entirely Mr Hyundai’s fault though I have to say.
When I went to Indonesia, the red Hyundai became my brother’s vehicle of choice. In fact, “when I moved to Indonesia” was the last time the car had been cleaned until I came back from Indonesia. It was filled with crap, and still jetlagged, I took it and cleaned it out so I could drive it up to Sydney. Hard yakka.
Five weeks later, my bro has filled it with so much rubbish and crap again that I would be ashamed to take any non-relative passengers in it again.
But tonight, when I was driving up to work, a new level of disgusting was reached.
A chip packet STARTED MOVING. Something was thrashing around inside it. THERE WAS A MOUSE IN THE DAMN CAR!!!
I squealed so much, thank god I was only a block or so from work. It was also fortunate I was at traffic lights when it started moving around, otherwise I may have crashed the car out of shock.
Regular readers may remember how much I hate being in enclosed spaces with rodents. I was not impressed.
I have no idea how it got in there. But at least my bro is cleaning the car now.
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My nanna has dementia. It’s getting worse. Some days she is OK, some days she is terrible, driving my poor uncle, who is selflessly caring for her full time, understandably crazy.
It’s a sad disease, especially when it impacts younger people. But it can also be oddly hysterically funny. It feels wrong to laugh at, but until there is some sort of cure, those caring for someone with the disease deserve to be able to see the lighter side of it, I feel, if only to keep their own sanity. Answering the same questions over again every five minutes is frustrating even for just a few hours, let alone every day.
My grandmother’s sister suffered from Alzheimer’s, and I remember as a child thinking it quite hilarious when she would take dirty dishes, “dry” them with a tea towel and then put them away in the cupboard as if they had been washed, forgetting the crucial step of actually washing them. That being said, I wasn’t the one that had to go through the cupboards to find the dirty plates, often with chunks of food still on them, and clean up the mess. I also wasn’t tasked with having to try and tactfully dissuade her from helping out with the dishes anymore.
But my grandmother takes the hilarity to a whole new level. Nanna’s latest annoyance is the failure of my mother to return her bicycle, which my mother borrowed when she grew out of her child bike and needed a new ride up to the high school when she was aged 12, circa 1972. The bike got many years of use. When we were young kids, mum and dad took us out on rides on the bike, which by then had a child seat fastened on the back. But it is now 2010, some 38 years after the original loan, and Nanna wants the bike back. So she can go riding. Even though she is very elderly and has troubles hobbling around the house.
[keep reading…]
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(My darling friend Ani at the left at her amazing 25th birthday bash)
Swanky birthday parties in Sydney art galleries complete with drag queens. Fattoush and hummus and sausages and pies until one’s brain explodes. A whole aisle of cheese in the supermarket. Hearing my brother and dad talk footy while my mum watches Home and Away on the tele. Being able to eavesdrop on every conversation on the train. Lots of people with weird nicknames like “Shazza” “Dazza” and “Wazza”.
I’m not in Indonesia any more.
I’m back home for two months to catch up with my family and friends, do some work for my parents and most of all, get ready for my move to Washington D.C. in August, where I will be attending grad school.
It’s nice to be home. It has been more than a year since my last visit.
It’s also nice to be invisible and to have clean clothes each day after backpacking for three months.
But I know I will miss Indonesia and I will miss all the adventure… and it has been a bit of an adjustment being back in regional Australia.
Thankfully my family are a little nuts, always providing blog fodder, and thankfully I’m way behind on blog posts from my travels, so I’ll still be posting heaps of Indonesia stuff in coming weeks!! I’ll probably also be trying to replicate some Indonesian meals in the kitchen with ingredients available in Albury… the other night I cooked a pretty good beef rendang with buncis belacan and lemongrass-scented nasi uduk.
So this blog will be a bit of an Indonesian-Australian hybrid in the next few weeks… and then its on to Washington!
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Contrary to popular belief, I am doing some freelancing on the road. It’s the type of freelancing I would class as “hardly investigative”, but it’s been keeping me occupied and badly paid, just like if I had a real journalism job.
So here’s a few links to some recent writings.
1. Remember, ages ago, I alluded to actually telling you all about how much I enjoyed attending the Casa Luna cooking school in Ubud, Bali? Well, I ended up writing about it for the Jakarta Globe, so you can read about it all over there. The picture on the left shows some of the dishes that we made in class… so yummy!
2. I wrote a (according to some commentators) rather humorous piece for the Jakarta Globe called “I love you Indonesia, but please stop trying to kill me.” It’s written in the style of a monologue to a slightly abusive lover. You can read it here.
3. During my stint at language school in Yogyakarta, I wrote a piece of mind article about the rewards of studying Bahasa Indonesia. You can also read that one over here at the Jakarta Globe.
The main project I’ve been working on over the last fortnight isn’t live yet, but when it is… I’ll let you all know. All five of you that read the blog.
On an entirely different note, does anyone have any pointers for boosting my blog traffic? Because this is not a niche blog and is more of a “whatever” blog, it’s hard to promote… and I love writing posts and taking photos for it, but the traffic numbers and comments are so few 
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It’s apparently against the law for taxis in Penang island not to use their meters. But they will always say they don’t have one and no amount of arguments will help you if you are a tourist.
The other day it started raining and I was contemplating catching a cab because there was a rank nearby.
When I asked “With the meter, yeah?” the driver was like “ooohh no. I don’t have a meter.” Then quoted me a ridiculous price.
“I know it’s the law here that you need to use your meter,” I snapped back.
He pauses for a minute, then goes “oooohh no, that hasn’t come in yet. Next year.”
I cross my arms and lift an eyebrow.
He figures I need more proof. He points to a sign in Malay.
“That sign says it. Not… until… next… year!” He points at the (alleged) words as he says them, like you would if you were teaching a child to read.
Bad move buddy. Bahasa Melayu (Malay) and Bahasa Indonesia are about 85-90 percent the same. Plus, I watch a lot of Star World and on all the cable channels in Indonesia, the subtitles are in Malay anyway.
“Aku bisa membaca bahasa Malayu, Pak. (I can read Malay, sir). That sign says that it is forbidden for taxis to take passengers without using their meter. It doesn’t say ‘tahun depan’ (next year) anywhere on it.”
“Oh.”
“So with a meter?”
“No, it’s broken.”
I ended up walking, as a matter of principle.
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Sometimes living here has felt like making spice paste… hard work but overall worth the effort. (random segue I know :p)
So I’m back in Jakarta for a few days before flying out to Malaysia (if I don’t fly out soon, they’ll kick me out because my visa will be canceled). I don’t have a home here anymore, so it’s very different from when I arrived with 40 kg of luggage in September 2008 and went straight into the loving arms of a very posh hotel and straight into working on a newspaper that didn’t actually exist yet back then.
It’s nice to be back. I’d much rather the sofa of a good friend for a bed than a hotel and that’s one of the best things about visiting a place that used to be your home — seeing the friends and people who made you fall in love with the place and that make you (and will continue to make you) miss it like hell.
But this time, I very much feel like a visitor, just passing through. And I’m ok with that.
[keep reading…]
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Writing this on my Blackberry so excuse the typos.
I decided I wanted, nay, needed to go swimming last night and it was rainy all day, so I stubbornly decided I needed to go to the only Fitness First pool that’s indoors… Far away in Taman Anggrek.
I impulsively jumped in a dodgy non-bluebird cab and off we went. The roads were so jammed up that we had to go the long way through back streets of dodgy West Jakarta kampungs.
I spent most of the ride staring out the windows in silence. When I’m not in a rush sometimes I don’t mind the traffic. There’s always something to look at in this town.
But I was getting bored. The driver took the chance to spark up a conversation while I watched a cockroach traverse the dirty car window.
“Don’t worry, nona, I’m only not taking the tollroad because of the traffic.”
“That’s ok, I know Pak. Always traffic.”
“Some people feel scared not to take a bluebird. Some foreigners only ride bluebird.”
“Ah, I’m not scared, pak, it’s ok.”
“You know what you should do is always remember the number on the door of the taxi, non. Even though the drivers have identity cards (on the dashboard) sometimes they are not theirs. If you have trouble, you can call for help and it makes it easier for the police to know what taxi you are on.”
“Thank you Pak.”
On the way home, it was my turn to give advice.
At first I was confused about what the driver was saying. I thought he wanted me to pay a toll but we hadn’t passed a tollroad. Then I realised he wanted me to teach him how to ask for a toll in English. He said he often had trouble if he picked foreigners up because they thought he was trying to rip them off on the toll.
So we went over and over the phrase ‘ you need to pay the toll now please.’
He said he was studying english. I asked him where he was learning and he said he just studied tv shows and love songs. We then discussed the differences between highways, tollroads and normal streets. I tried to teach him how to say ‘ the tollroad has a traffic jam’ but by then I was home.
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by Ashlee on February 13, 2010
in life
On the Hume Highway, near Wangaratta, June 2009
Just because I’m single (like usual) on Valentine’s Day doesn’t mean I don’t have people out there who I adore.
Happy Valentine’s Day to:
- The family who lend moral support to my madcap lust for adventure and being in far-flung places, even though sometimes I know they’d prefer if I just came home.
-The friends who have made me feel at home, no matter what city I’ve lived in.
-The friends who are also supportive of my crazy, tolerant of my crazy and sympathetic of my crazy (a lot of you cross over with the previous category)
-Everyone else. You’re lovely too.
xxxx
OK, enough mush, now let’s get this Hallmark holiday OVER with so I can stop seeing fluff stories in the news about it.
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I’ve been to lots of cities, many of them with reputations for romance. Paris, Rome, Florence… yadda yadda. I mostly just ate gelato or crepes there. But they definitely had the romantic vibe.
But after more than a year in Jakarta, I have to say that I have never met a city so publicly wrapped up in the idea of romantic love… even if it doesn’t have footpaths for lovers to wander along holding hands.
[keep reading…]
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