Adventures in Food - Part 2

After a few days of doing not much more than hanging around with Vonce's family we went to Lasiana Beach today. Some locals had shops set up on the beach to offer their goods to beach-goers. I didn't go over to look; I was more interested in exploring what the waves brought in (not much, though we did see a couple of fish). The water was warm but didn't seem as salty.
Vonce bought grilled bananas for us to try: one with a sugar syrup and a finely chopped peanut topping, and the other with chocolate syrup and a mild, white shredded cheese. I liked the latter and found the cheese's tanginess was a nice contrast to the sweetness of the chocolate-banana mixture. Definitely would not have thought of that on my own. As seems to be usual, the sugar syrup was far less sweet than what I'd get back home. The peanuts were raw, not toasted, and had little of that distinctive flavor.

We watched a man climb one of the palm trees on the beach. He had a basket on his back and harvested stalks that grew from the top of the palm.  I asked Vonce's sister Fonny what they use it for.

The palm stalks are peeled and eaten as fruit.  Fonny brought some over for us to try. The texture is interesting: when I bit down on it, it initially created resistance, but then gave in to the pressure and squirted out its juice from every pore. Kind of fun, very unique. The fruit juice is called tuak. (Think coconut water without the coconut flavor.) It was good, but the flavor was meh and, without the fun of biting into the fruit itself, I considered it unremarkable.


Grilled corn is quite popular here.  The corn is not as sweet and the kernels are starchier and slightly tougher than the hybrid varieties of sweet corn I'm used to back home. You have two flavor options: either regular with a side dish of sambal, or sweet, if you can call it sweet. It's a shame my tongue can't handle the searing pain of spicy sambal, as they are usually homemade and so each has a slightly different flavor.



Also seen: a kaki lima (street vendor) selling bakso from his cart.  What is bakso? I hear you ask.  Well, it's a meatball made from ground meat and tapioca starch, and served with noodles as a soup.  It's an inexpensive dish and very popular here.  The ground meat is usually beef but can also be made from other ingredients, such as chicken, shrimp or fish.  Its texture is consistently dense throughout.

Lesson 1 on living in Indonesia: Jam Karet

If you dream of living on a tropical island, one of the most important things you will need to learn is that time is not all that important. We called it island time when we were in the Florida Keys and Dominica. In Indonesia, the term is jam karet, rubber time. This was clearly evident while visiting our friend Vonce’s family in Timor. Last night we were told to be ready at 7pm to be picked up for to dinner, and we left at 8. (He apparently decided to run an errand first.) I waited for 3 hours before they finally picked up my laundry this morning.

This will take some getting used to. If I continue to be frustrated by Indonesians' seeming lack of concern for keeping to a schedule, life here will be miserable. I might as well adapt to their standard, for they will certainly not change to mine.

Oh, well. It’s not like anything will fall apart if I don’t start shopping exactly when I thought I would. Life in America is rush, rush, rush. Do three things at once, none of them getting 100% of my attention or 100% of my effort. Here I really don’t have anywhere I need to be right now, or anything I have to do right away. Jam karet is probably a good thing for an American like me. Perhaps there’s something to the Zen concept of living in the moment. You know: Enjoy the ride.

Adventures in Food - Part 1

Not wanting to shock our bodies any more, Dan and I had our first Balinese dinner at a Pizza Hut. We ordered a cheese personal pan pizza. The big surprise was the variety of fruit drinks. I almost ordered an avocado shake (really?) but instead got a strawberry-watermelon juice. It came in a stemmed glass with 2 melon balls and a strawberry on a skewer. Definitely a keeper!

Our first breakfast in Bali was served buffet style and consisted of noodles, fried rice, scrambled eggs, toast and fruit soup. Some of the foods were identical to what I've had for dinner at Chinese restaurants back home, which begs the question: Do they eat the same things at every meal?


The fruit soup was made of fruit juice, water, sugar, and diced tropical fruit. I don't care why it was red. Yum-o.

Turning my reality upside-down

I am literally sitting on the other side of the world from everything and everyone I've ever known. Everything seems different. The tides seem to change more rapidly here and the stars move faster. Perception, or reality?

So many things are different that I've been joking that everything is backwards. As my family and friends back home finish dinner, I'm thinking about breakfast. Cars drive on the left-hand side of the road. I flush the toilet by pulling the lever, and its whirlpool goes in the opposite direction. I flip the light switch UP to turn it on. The word for water is air. Most surprising, we pay for our hotel at the end of our stay.

This will be interesting.

Losing It

Dan and I have known for quite a while that his work would require going overseas. What we haven't known is how long we would be out of the country. We still don't know.

We realize that we can't take everything we own with us. Not only would it be expensive, there's a lot of stuff that we simply don't need. So we have been eliminating those things we don't want by giving mementos to our children, selling what we can, donating to charity, and throwing junk away.

Thinking back, I've just realized that this is the fifth time in my life that I've been reduced to little more than a suitcase-ful of possessions. The first time was when I moved back to New York from California. I was 24 then and didn't have a whole lot anyway.

A few years later my then-husband and I loaded everything we owned into our old Ford Maverick and left Albuquerque with our 5-month-old daughter. Most of what we took with us to Maryland was baby paraphernalia. Come to think of it, we didn't have much then, either.

I lost more when I moved to Florida. Most of my precious possessions were in the attic of the house I left in Maryland. When I filed for divorce a few years later, he left the house - and all its contents - to the bank and its foreclosure process. Losing everything was bittersweet. I lost cherished mementos but also got rid of my deadbeat husband.

In 2004 Hurricane Charley hit Dan's and my home in Punta Gorda, Florida while we were on vacation. We returned to find no roof and much of our home was soaking wet. Happily our photos survived, thanks to the Rubbermaid tub they were stored in. We threw out a lot of things we loved over the next few months.

On reflection I have to admit I'm not really being reduced to a suitcase. True, that's all I'm taking with me. But I've asked Elizabeth to keep a box of my favorite things and I'm leaving a lot of other stuff behind for staging the house while it's on the market. I've also given the kids most of the family heirlooms, like the photos of my great-great-grandparents, Granny's furniture, and pillows my great-grandma quilted, praying that they will someday cherish them as much as I do.

After they return from Virginia the kids are going to take what they want and Chris, who will stay there until it sells, will take it to his new home and sell the rest on Craigslist.

It's remarkably freeing to be rid of things I don't really need and even more freeing to know that I've saved my children from the emotional trauma of going through my possessions after I'm gone.