Even though there’s no way in knowing where to go,
promise I’m going.
...But the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair
...I can’t ask you to give what you already gave.
humans are funny creatures.. that too much can still be not enough. moderation is quite challenge, especially for those with experience or potential for more. i wonder if a room can even ever get clean with so much stuff in it. broken capacity makes for instbaility and ungoodness. everything moves to …what the heck is that word now..??.... ...thinking about it…. i think the word is “entropy” ... i’ve been out of school too long. oy. anyway, it’s the law of chaos. everything degrades or upgrades to a more chaotic/messy state. increasing complexity, increasing abundance, continuous increase, growth, improvement, change, chaos, order, magic.
back’s hurting. stands to reason. that with the tummy weird ouching makes for a funny front-to-back discomfort. just a few chips in the mountain of email and other items to address.. but every chip helps.
home. tired. happy to be here. a bit stressed. grumpy tummy. not really sure what it’s grumpy about, but i’m trying to be nice to it anyway. mountain of email and matters from absence to address. i’m awake, but can totally see myself back in bed any minute, at the same time. beautiful weather to come home to you yesterday. seems to have rained overnight/this morning. home view is very nice. much to unpack, clean, organize. laundry! computer files to rintegrate and fix.
lost the pretty purple orchid to the airport, but kept my cattleya. and the little money leaf appears to still be growing, despite ridiculously unfriendly and crushed conditions in my backpack for the past two weeks.
came home to a broken cell phone charger yesterday, with a low battery on the phone making me quite nervous. been ammended already, which is really good because i was surprisingly distressed about it.
been a few days already of the new Chinese Year: the year of the Fire Dog, also known as the Red Dog. Henceforth (actually a few weeks running now), I shall be referring to this year as The Year of Clifford. mixed reviews on whether this is supposed to be a good year for me. apparently it’s supposed to be a pretty tough and challenging and frustrating year… but that doesn’t mean i can’t have things turn out alright. and it’s sposed to be a similarly uncomfortable year for Dogs too, which I find quite ironic.
wonderful wonderful to seem family and cousins again. the older we get the harder it gets it some ways. we have our own lives.. responsibilities.. issues.. interests.. hearts in different places. but also the potential for deeper relationships than we were capable whe were small. however, the two youngest of the family—currently 6 years old) currently share what’s prolly the cutests friendship i’ve seen in the family ever. i hope to always see them hug each other like that, and talk about each other with such certainty and trust and love. and i hope the rest of us always remember each other and reach each other past our grandparents and parents.. connections and committments are up to ourselves, increasingly. we’ll decide whether we want to remain close to each other or not. i hope we choose to.
7:49pm~ beautfiful ‘traditional’ Balinese wedding/vow renewal ceremony for Mom and Dad. even Lor and I got decked out.. This is a very nice place.
Monkey Forest earlier in the day.. not quite the same as Monkey Mountain in Japan.. the Monkey Forest here is much more of a temple in beautiful forest setting.. and the monkeys are much friendlier, as they are kept well fed… and they’re encouraged by the guides to climb on you to get fed extra treats. much much unlike the monkeys from Monkey Mountain Japan where if you look at them in the eye for a few seconds too long, you could find yourself charged at and killed very very painfully. i’ve thought about it — it may be much more pleasant to be killed by a large animal like a tiger or a bear — they can simply crush your skull or rip out a big enough chunk of you to bleed out quickly. but to be attacked by little creatures? like monkeys or porcupines or guinea pigs or a swarm of crabs or or wasps or fire ants… that would take a little longer.. and that would really really really hurt.
Did i mention i saw little bunnies yesterday, being sold on the side of the road as we were driving by? Tiny lil bunnies.. being sold every couple of meters.. Reminded me of my lil bunny Tinsel back in Bangkok days.. Tinsel could fit easily in one hand when we got her.. and we were told she’d stay pretty small — supposedly a Dwarf Rabbit. Well, she turned out to be much more of a Dutch — grew to be the length of my whole arm when lying down spread out a lil. Anyhow, I saw the bunnies and was like, “awwww…bunnies!” and thinking how i’d like to go play with the bunnies and take bunnies back home. A couple hours later, it occurred to me…. “Dad, what are those bunnies being sold for? As pets? or bait..?” Dad: “Likely to be taken home and raised for dinner.”
Oh. Awww.
Apparently the general Muslim/Hindu (I dun remember which) rule is that thou shalt not eat anything with paws. (My recollection of Muslim general rule on meat is that thou shalt not eat anything that’s a scavenger/eats dead things — no crabs, sharks, pigs, etc.) I dunno who’s buying and eating these rabbits then.. I tried to think about raising a bunny and then eating it. I think I can conceivably do one or the other.. not both with the same bunny.
Onto another side of Bali tomorrow.
in a couple hours, it’ll be happy birthday Dad o^_^o
and happy anniversary also to Mom and Dad..
additionally, happy birthday Matt o^_^o
and happy birthday Hanley o^_^o
and happy yesterday birthday Alina o^_^o
My awful cold from the past few days has, as of a little while ago progressed into a cough. Yay. well, it is progress. I think it started as sneezing.. and then a rough, painful throat… and then lots of nose blowing.. and then totally stuffy nose and lots of nose blowing.. and after a day of getting a bit better but also still being a bit yucky and then spending hours and hours in a car driving up and down mountains and on very windy roads rather quickly and giving me headaches and elevation making my ears totally stuffed up and similar pain to airplane landing and then left ear wouldn’t unstuff half the day (is there a different spelling for the verb “stuff”? it doesn’t seem right to be the same as the noun..) and then finally unstuffed toward the end and then now is restuffed again… now i have a strong cough instead. i got through that Balinese ceremony without needing a tissue, all the way through! that’s good.
this trip is going by rather quickly.. even tho i do need to get home, the fleeting time here is much noticed and is a bit sad. will have to be back soonish.
7:47pm~ Lor thought it would be a genius idea to open the window to look at the rain storm that’s beginning. the window that has no mosquito netting. now there’s a big cockroach flying around our room. not cool zeus.
retroposted:
{========== Sunday 22 Jan 2006 ======}
7:36pm~ at cabin in Bali. absolutely no wireless networks found in range here. that’s fine.
end of plane ride hurt much. dunno if i’ve mentioned before, but plane landings have always hurt my ears very much. it’s congestion.. it’s very painful.. over years of experience, i’ve found that taking Tylenol Cold & Sinus (maximum strength) approx 30-40 minutes before landing can sometimes make the pain nonexistent. without it, there’s basically nothing else i can do except sit and suffer for a while. takeoff and flight are no problem for me. it’s always the landing. i remember sitting quietly in my airplane seat with my fingers/hand pressed against my temples/ears when i was a child, eyes closed tight and tears streaming. the fact that i have this major cold/existing congestion (for the past several days) already, coupled with not realizing we were near landing time (i don’t live so well without a watch) made for pretty thorough discomfort and pain, and my ears remained clogged and a little bit throbbing for a while even on land.
all that aside, we made it to Bali well and wide-eyed.
Bali is a tourists’ country—but without any tourists. After the stupid terrorist bombing in 2002, and again in 2004 (Australians were targeted), the general occupancy in hotels is apparently 10% now.. though it’s looking to me to be more like 5% or less. It’s horrible for the people here. Driving through some of the streets, it is very very apparent that the area has grown up around tourists, and caters to them and exists for them. Then add the recent monstrous hike in gasoline prices. Our driver explained his own situation, while taking us from the airport to our hotel: He rents the car from his boss, who used to run 20 cars and now has only 5.. He used have jobs every day.. now he’s lucky to have a passenger once a week. And gasoline is more expensive, and the price of rice has gone up with the price of gas. This is very very sad.
Our hotel is breathtaking. Apparently it’s not actually a hotel.. but supposed to be an arts center, with accommodations to subsidize. It’s very very nice. Cabins on stilts with eating areas underneath.. Freshwater pool that spills off the hill, surrounded by papaya and coconut trees, overlooking rice paddies. The rooms are nice.. very romantic. good thing i get to share that king-sized bed with my brother. Mom and Dad have the room below—they have a bathtub and a balcony. Frengi Penny (no idea how to spell it) flowers everywhere. That’s happy.
My parents made arrangements today to have a traditional Balinese ceremony tomorrow, to renew their vows and commemorate their 25th anniversary. Should be really beautiful, and this setting will be very lovely.
I’ve been taking tons and tons of pictures. I know the whole thing about 3×5s, but.
This evening we went to see Balinese dancing: Kencak and fire dancing. It was outdoor, and toward the end of the Kucak dance, we started getting some rain… Dad and I toughed it out for a while, then looked at each other, knowing this type of rain gets much worse before it gets better. (We’re in rainy season in this corner of the world.) So we also joined Mom and Lor on the side under a bit of roofing… but very soon the rain became a serious downpour, and the wind was blowing it into us, and the dancers were getting soaked but still sitting and doing their thing… and then we made a run for it to the other side where there was a full area for us to sit and be safe from the rain and where the the next dance would take place.. then they had a pile of coconut husks together and they lit this on fire… then guy came out “on a horse” and eventually kicked the fire apart and danced around in it, which ultimately meant flaming coconut husk-bits and fire sparks being kicked in our direction, and tons of smoke everywhere… hard to see and breathe… covered eyes and nose… could see a bit through fingers… when that was done, we ran for car.. drive home was quite interesting… the 20 minutes of torrential rain was a flash flood, and our car was practically floating in water a lot of the time… at one point i thought the engine was going to give… miraculously, it didn’t. our hotel area is on higher ground, so was much dryer toward where we are, and our rooms are on stilts anyway.
i’d say the most adventurous thing we’ve done on this brief trip to Jakarta, is to have willingly gotten into cars that have gone on to do battle against the mass of other cars, busses, vans, tuktuks, motorbikes, pedestrians, etc… Malaysia’s pretty absurd when it comes to driving/traffic behavior, but Indonesia takes my cake. they don’t even bother painting lines on most of the roads, cuz where a 4-lane road may be, we’ve watched a full 11 vehicles share the space, and the “lanes” quickly change, as motorbikes carrying full families (mother in back carrying baby, while another child sits right behind father driving.. i saw a guy playing a guitar on the back while his friend drove, too.. and there was also a pair on a motorbike, carrying a car door between them) and huge buses weave through as if this were all very reasonable.. and cars pass within mere inches of each other—sideview mirrors would crash frequently if the cars didn’t miraculously curve away from each other at that last minute. really, the cars come up so close that i can reach out through my window and make thumb prints all over their glass.
mom—the native malaysian driver—closed her eyes several times in the car today, to block out the crazy closeness of the surrounding vehicles.
okay… mom found a mushroom growing at her bathroom door, and so parents tried to move into our room (Lor and I had a room across the hall) but she found that one had a distinct mold smell (i’d mentioned the first day), so we moved to a new room upstairs on the Executive floor: newer room, better kept. that mushroom really was kinda scary… as tall as my thumb.
visited place where our old house used to be (moved away from it when i was turning four years old).. and found the same address (7) and gate, but the street name has apparently changed, and the house has been completely remoddled. can never go home again.
went to place in hills where my family and i used to go apparently almost once a month.. we would rent a cabin with some friends and enjoy the fresh spring water swimming pool overlooking the village in the lower banks of the hills, and play tennis/ping pong and take pictures of me in a bright rainbow-colored jacket grinning ridiculously in a big(ger than me) rattan chair
developed some sort of a bad cold/throat thing, midday yesterday. all through the night. slightly better this morning, but still a lil miserable. not so bad though, for what i’ve experienced in past in terms of sudden, brief – semi-brief complete sickness. might have been all the langsat i was eating, and the very much lack of water. or the mold. shrug
out of time here at the moment.. much more to tell.. will have to back later.
oh… today’s saturday? tomorrow we head out to Bali in the morning.
![iching: Fêng - Abundance [Fullness]](https://ferrydust.com/images/21.gif){kind=small}