Tea From a Tree
As I mentioned Thursday, I have some problems with drinking tea. It isn’t just the caffeine that will do me in, but that’s a big one. When I discovered a tea at a restaurant that I could drink, I got a little too excited.
They passed around a little bowl holding the ingredients in the tea. It included things like ginger and cloves, a bit of sugar, and some tree bark. The only thing I couldn’t easily get my hands on at home was the tree bark.
This set me on a quest. I wanted to buy some of the bark to take home with me. My best chance came when we went to see a waterfall. Little shops were set up all along the way. I can’t remember the exact distance, but I’d guess the walk was about two miles. Many of these shops offered tree bark for tea.
I checked out each shop along the way down to the falls, then set about making my purchase on the way back. My intention was to get a bag from each of three different shops. Instead, I got caught up in a hard sell and bought three grossly overpriced bags from the same woman. Half of the purchase was about extracting my mother and myself from this woman’s clutches.
I then had the fun of packing it so that it didn’t get too badly crushed on the way home. I ended up buying a ceremonial offering basket to hold them. There was a rice steamer I would have gotten, but some of the people in our group snaked me on it.
I get the bark through customs amazingly easily, and transfer it from the little cellophane bags to jars. Along the way I tried a taste.
Nothing. It tasted no different than any other bark I’ve put in my mouth. (Quit laughing. I don’t make a habit of eating bark, but I have tried it a time or two.)
So all that money and effort were just for something that makes hardly a bit of difference. Still, I can now proudly point at a pretty jar on my shelf full of tree bark from Bali.
A Tale of Property Tax and Encroachment.
The last time Old Man Matheson stepped out of his outhouse, the sun was setting. Office lights turned on and the highway filled with rush hour traffic.
He was a young man in his twenties when he bought the land. A lot had changed. First houses went up, then sky scrapers. Now his little outhouse was all that remained of his original home.
He could hardly complain. He’d sold the land to them in the first place. Now it was time to move on. There was a condo in Florida with his name on it.
The Hub: Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
Photo credit: Roger Bultot
Lunch On The Way to Kasongan Village
After flying from Jakarta to Yogjakarta, we took a bus straight to a restaurant that was situated across from a rice paddy. Although they had tables inside, everyone chose to eat at tables set up in front. Not just our group. Everyone.
Our group happened to have over a dozen people, yet they managed to come up with a table we could all sit at. It was very elegantly appointed.
This particular restaurant’s claim to fame is a serving style involving a dozen servers carrying the food around the table and offering a bit to each person.
Personally, it is my leas favorite style. It puts the pressure on you to over eat because you don’t want to hurt the feelings of whoever is bringing the food out and you can’t control how much of it will hit your plate. No matter how much you say, “little” and make diminutive gestures they will glop on what they choose. Some even put things on plates when they were specifically told “No thank you.” Not by me. I’m way too much of a glutton for that.
All the servers were wearing traditional garb in matching fabric. What a great uniform! If I’d been smart I’d have sat on the side of the table facing away from the beautiful scenery so I would have been able to get more than just silhouettes.
When we arrived a local band was playing. They serenaded us for a while and seemed a friendly bunch. The music kept striking me as a little too familiar, as though Western tunes had been altered to local taste. The guide said it was actually Portuguese.
I could easily see myself playing in a band like that. It had the same feel as the Bluegrass I used to play in Madison.
Then we hit one of the biggest bugaboos I consistently run into while traveling. Caffeine. It literally makes my heart beat irregular. Though it’s not an actual heart attack, it’s way too close for comfort. As a result I try very hard to avoid coffee, tea, coke, etc. These three seem to be the only beverages you can count on in places where the water may not be safe.
Worse, many cultures have traditional forms of coffee and or tea. Indonesia is no exception. But I got lucky. This particular tea didn’t have any ingredients I couldn’t drink! Yay! More about that on Monday.
After the meal we were invited to wander around on the estate of the owner, which we accessed through the restaurant. And what a home! This place had “tropical paradise” tattooed all over it.
The grounds were extensive, manicured, gorgeous, and exotic. We wandered for quite some time until finally reaching an area the owner wasn’t willing to share.
Mind you, we never saw the owner. This wasn’t a guided tour like a museum. We simply wandered around going “oooh” and “ahhh”. None of us imposed enough to sit on any loungers or anything. We just looked.
It was about two thirds the way to the back of the estate that I started to get the feeling Indonesians have a different concept of architecture than I do. To me, a house is a building with a collection of rooms inside. There might be some structures built separately. For instance, there might be a bunk house, and out house, or a smoke house. But generally speaking, places like an exercise room will be just that – a room. When my eye finally adjusted enough to tell me this was an exercise room, I found myself looking at the dining room table a little differently.
Suzie’s House 433 : We Can Do What We Want Now
When Emma walked into the living room, she almost tripped over a pair of white orthopedic shoes – the kind her mother wore to work. A pair of hospital uniform pants lay over the back of the couch. The matching top lay on the floor by the hallway leading to the bedrooms. As Emma closed the front door, her nearly nude mother walked by with a shirt half way up her arms.
“Mother!” Emma couldn’t help being shocked. Her mother never, ever did anything like that.
Engrish
I still remember times in my youth when I went to places where I could not speak the language. Generally the places in question had to do with Spanish. I recall a certain feeling of helplessness that I overcame over the years.
When I go abroad now, I kind of look for that feeling of helplessness. I’d like to test myself – see if I really have improved in my ability to get what I need in a place where I can’t use language.
Mind you, I always go in a tour group. I’m well aware that I am largely insulated from the local cultures. I rarely have to worry about finding lodging or negotiating the price of food. I get a built-in translator, which is wonderful.
If things keep going the way they have been, I won’t need a translator much longer. English is taking over the world. I found it in the names of businesses in Mongolia, and on billboards in Indonesia. Many times when I went wandering on my own I found people who knew enough English to be able to negotiate a sale.
It’s comforting to know I can communicate in my native tongue all over the world, but it’s kind of disappointing too. My pantomime skills are getting rusty.
Hike
“I’m telling you, you’d have never made it.” Jim glowered at Daria from across the crisp white sheets of his bed.
“I would too.” Daria glowered back. She sat in the chair next to him. After moving her head a time or two, she gave up and moved the bouquet of flowers.
“It’s even steeper than it looks, and if you fall, it’s straight down.”
“That just means you have to take your time.” She tossed her hair and looked down her nose.
“We were racing the eclipse.”
“Oh. No wonder you fell.”
The Hub: Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
Photo credit: Sandra Crook
The First Half an Hour in Yogyakarta
We took a morning flight from Jakarta to Yogjakarta. On arrival we packed into a bus and went Straight to a restaurant for lunch. Here are thirteen of the hundred or so pictures I took along the way. I think it gives a fairly good idea of what it looked like.
1.
Suzie’s House 432 : Malaprop Internal Affairs
Gene itched to get practice over with. In a way, it kind of felt like a total waste. He should have said something before they started instead of wanting to do it afterward. As soon as the band started putting their instruments away, he went over to Tracy.
“There’s something we need to talk about.”
The Winner’s Circle
I did it! I hit 50,000 words! According to NaNoWriMo rules, that means I’ve written a book and have won.
Of course, I haven’t really finished yet. I estimate I’m about two thirds the way through. Maybe a bit more. I still have the most pivotal scene to write – the one the whole book is based on.
I seriously considered taking the story a slightly different way and skipping the pivotal scene all together. I’ve noticed that often when book is written to support a particular scene then that scene will not fit well and need to be removed afterward. It sounds illogical, but I’m not the only one to have written such a book.
On the other hand I have included some truly outlandish and poorly supported scenes and received compliments for them from my beta readers. Considering this one is very well supported, it makes more sense to go for it, even if the logic of the book would have taken me a slightly different direction normally.
As with everything in a rough draft, I can always take it out later.
Betsy’s Grate Day
It started off with a 5 am phone call from her boss that included screaming, panic, and acrimony. From there it went to burnt toast eaten while literally hopping out the door, coffee spilled on a cashmere skirt, a dead car battery, a taxi driver who took the long way and demanded twice the normal fare, and smeared lipstick applied while moving. The waterlogged inventory didn’t help. Nor did the attitude of the fire department. Panicked customers threatened to switch providers. More screaming and acrimony was interrupted by a call from the school system involving fever and vomiting. When the heel broke, all Betsy could do was pitch it. Some days are just like that.
The Hub: Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
Photo credit: C.E. Ayr
Suzie’s House 431 : No Go
If she groveled a little, that might be fun. Bruce had never seen Tracy grovel before. Of course he’d be disappointed now, too, so it was just as well he didn’t really care.
“Why?! We should just go anyway.” Tracy threw her hands up in disgust.
