Scenes ...April, May 2012

28 April 2012 Just 1'15" north of the equator. Steel-blue, mottled with darker patches of gray, the surface is ever so slightly rippled between stretches that are smoother, these latter better reflecting the early light, the Straits of Malacca this morning are quiet. South of where I sit a hundred ships, all moored, appear motionless, their lights softening as the morning grows brighter, between them and the low, small green islands more directly across the narrow waters in front of my terrace there is a stretch of open water across which, dimly, I can see the lights of Indonesia, glimmering through a low haze; across this blank canvas a freighter now glides quietly, turning a painting into a film; it slips behind the islands and makes its way northwards, up the channel, heading for the north point of Sumatra where it will turn and head West. 29 April 2012 Sunday No rain, the day began brilliantly, clear, illuminated as if the island had been dragged North during the night, to climes where the atmosphere is not so heavily laden. But it's still here, floating just north of the Equator, it continues hot and a later haze has formed, made up of sea water and low cloud, catalyzed by the sun. Visibility has dropped, not because rain or a storm has come up (though there are towering cumulonimbus clouds along the horizon), but simply because of nature's cocktail of water and heat, undiluted by any breeze. The endless parade of merchant ships appears out of focus. 1 May 2012 Tuesday, Jakarta It's been almost a decade since I was last in the archipelago. Both in physique and temperament the pleasant people of this land are similar to Filipinos. The latter may sound condescending but it is not; geography, climate, history and culture all have an impact on social values and social behavior, Indonesia is no different. Like all humans they are equally capable of genius and evil, creation and mayhem. History in this case, however, has shaped the social culture. The Dutch hand on this vast collocation of volcanic islands was necessarily light, far different from the impact of the far heavier weight of, first, the Spanish and then the Americans on the Philippines. As a consequence of historical causality, therefore, it has been more difficult for me to organize a cup of coffee this morning. The hotel puts an espresso machine in the lobby for early leavers and late arrivals. This is a simple mechanism, you put a cup under the spout and press the button for your desired version of the beverage, in my case a double shot, 'short' as the Australians refer to it. The challenge in this case, however, was that my 'short' was 'long', watery, diluted, without body. Stay with me here; it may seem I am digressing but that is a slander. You may have forgotten or your attention has drifted, but a couple of paragraphs above I mentioned that the Dutch hand was light on Indonesia. This feathery touch -- and I am being ironic here -- included language, only merchants and collaborators learned Dutch, the majority continued to live and die in Bahasa. And here's the point: when the coffee maker shoves too much water through the beans to ruin your morning coffee the solution is beyond me, my technical capabilities in this case stop at pressing the button, I must express myself in words. In a panic I looked around for help, I needed coffee. No one from behind the reception was available. I am pretty sure they were back behind the wall, huddled around a working machine, enjoying perfectly brewed coffees. Too bad because I could have spoken with them in English and communicated my distress. In my growing need, however, I found a couple of cleaning staff who were extremely friendly and full of good intentions. By gesture I was able to convey that something was wrong with the machine. They huddled over the malfunctioning device, intent and full of goodwill but, my bad, I was unable to get across to them the need for the quantity of water to be reduced.... ...the rest of the day was dreamlike and muzzy, only improved when I found a fortuitously located Starbucks (not yet arrived when I last visited). They had coffee but somehow the mere presence of the chain, however minuscule at the moment, has bleached a tiny bit of the vivid colors that are Indonesia. 20 May 2012 Sunday Some of the heat has dissipated with a breeze today that has blown the hot, wet air around and made sitting on the balcony/terrace a pleasure. The week was hectic. It began with a day in the office but then I flew overnight to New Zealand, landed in Auckland at 10 AM the following morning and drove to Taupo, three hours south, sitting on the edge of a huge caldera that is now the country's largest natural lake, as big, they tell me, as the entire city-state of Singapore. The weather was bright at first and fall-like but in the afternoon it came up a rain that turned to hail and the temperatures dropped, to 3 degrees C. Because time was tight, we drove back to Auckland in the late afternoon, three colleagues and myself in two cars. My traveling companion was bright and pleasant and full of energy and we would have dined at the airport hotel where I was booked but the other two must have grown tired of each other's company because they called us about halfway along and suggested we stop and eat. We did, at a Thai place in Matamata. Having spent the previous weekend in Phuket, this struck me as surreal. We were the only customers on a blustery, wet evening, served by a lovely young woman who was half Samoan and half American and knew nothing about Thai food. The painfulness of watching her carefully write down our order is a memory that will stick. She wrote in longhand and I'm pretty sure spelled out every one of the four dishes we asked for -- each one ending in 'prik' or something equally likely to cause teenage boys to think up clever plays on words (something I can verify that grown men will also do when they are in an otherwise empty restaurant in a rural New Zealand). The food was interesting if you look for consistency -- the duck was served in a mass of vegetables and noodles, the pork came in another mass of vegetables and noodles, ditto the chicken and, for variety, the beef was also served in the same style although it was distinguished by the presence of more broccoli than a couple of the other platters. It wasn't really bad but it wasn't Thai either, at least if the excellent curries and Pad Thai's and so on that I'd consumed in too large quantity in Phuket were examples of Thai food. At the end of the meal I wandered back toward the toilet, past the bar where sat a fairly stout, older Thai gentleman, alone and staring at a video of a new program from a Thai TV station. We got back to the airport around 9 PM, I slept deeply and quietly and next morning flew to Brisbane. In May the capital of Queensland is a good place, the days are bright and cool and the people live outdoors as much as they can, drinking coffee, eating, drinking beer, eating, drinking wine, eating some more. I like it like this, in February it's Miami, only hotter. I flew back to Singapore on Friday, leaving in the afternoon and arriving 8 hours later. Long trip, during the day, hard to sleep, you work some but mostly you just endure. It's good to get back to the island, sweltering but alive.