Bernhardt’s blog

1: Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
2: The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
3: And bathed every veyne in swich licour
4: Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
5: Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
6: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
7: Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
8: Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
9: And smale foweles maken melodye,
10: That slepen al the nyght with open ye
11: (so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
13: And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
14: To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

15: And specially from every shires ende
16: Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,
17: The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
18: That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
19: Bifil that in that seson on a day,
20: In southwerk at the tabard as I lay
21: Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
22: To caunterbury with ful devout corage,
23: At nyght was come into that hostelrye
24: Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye,
25: Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
26: In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
27: That toward caunterbury wolden ryde.
28: The chambres and the stables weren wyde,
29: And wel we weren esed atte beste.

Two words you will never have to use in the same Indonesian sentence: water and pressure.

Some of my favorite Indo words and phrases, so far:
gigi - teeth
ibu jaris - thumb (lit. lady finger?)
pipi - cheeks (I laughed for while at this one, much to the chagrin of my friends ~pronounced Pee Pee)
kelingking - pinkie finger
nggak - no (Jawa dialect)
kegagalan - (no idea, but you sound like you are strangling when you say it)
bumi - Earth, ground (gumpa bumi - earthquake)
suam-suam kuku-lukewarm
bubur - porrage/stew
cuci mata - window shopping (lit. washing windows)
tutup - closed
bandara - airport (mix that one up with bandalero)
wanita - her (another Spanish confusion)
berbicara - to speak (berbeechara or barbacoa?)
air - water
yang - which
sedikit - little, small (sedikit-sedikit, very little)
tidak apa-apa - it's OK (lit. not what-what)
saya/aku/gue - I, me, my, mine (so many uses)

Learning to speak Indo is a real challenge.  There are over 300 dialects in this country and none of them are remotely similar to the general language.  For instance in Bahasa Indo, "thank you" is "terima kasih," but in Puncak, you say "nehun" (nuh-hoon).  Not only that, any given conversation will switch back and forth between Bahasa Indo and, say, Jawanese or Menadoan or Balinese.  Makes it a real mind-bender trying to listen to a group of people talking, especially when they are from different parts of the country.  My revenge is when Steve and I talk together, he in his South Carolina drawl and me in my Texan twang.  Any English speakers around have the same looks on their faces that I usually have.

Indo is also sprinkled with dozens of borrowed words from Dutch/Blanda, English (not American, mind you), Hindi, and Japanese.  In some cases, Indo uses one word for many different things, and in others each little nuance of the English equivalent is broken out in to a dozen words.  It's the same in English, just not the same words.  Try telling someone what "can" means, or "use," or why "live" is pronounced differently depending on how you use it.

One sound that an English speaker will love attempting is the letter -e at the end of a word.  It is something like a shwah (upside down -e) with a dash of -oo in look, but with a little long -e and some gagging involved, and it is very clipped.  Just gotta hear it.

When teaching English, it is particularly entertaining trying to teach several things.  Silent letters are one.  Indo is like Spanish, all letters are sounded and they rarely change sounds.  English is a nightmare.  Things like -gh and silent -e and -w in words like "write" are hours of fun, not to mention two completely different sets of vowels, short and long.

Dipthongs can be an entire evening's entertainment.  Things like -ou and -ow ( the word "bow", for instance, the difference between "thought" and "sound") can eat up an hour trying to explain.  Another hit is -th with it's hard and soft sounds and no rules as to when you use one or the other.  The language has 43 sounds and about half of them can be written as many as a half-dozen different ways.

Indo doesn't have articles that I can detect.  You never say "a house" or "the house", it's just "house."  An example would be, "Aku pergi ke rumah," or "I go to house."  Which brings up "ke" and "di."  Both can mean more or less the same thing, but you use them in different situations.  "Aku pergi ke ruhma," and "Aku berada di rumah," might seem pretty clear (I am going home vs. I am at home), but if you are going to another country, you use di instead of ke. "Di" translates as "at, on, in, up, to." "Ke" translates as "to," but add "atas," and you get "upward," "arah" for "toward" and "dalam" renders "into."  Should you say, "di bawah umur," you get "under age."

This is the first language I have ever learned that is completely divorced of European roots.  The techniques I used to learn Spanish, German, Italian, French, etc. don't work here.  For the most part, Euro languages have the same roots and grammatical structure, but Bahasa Indonesian is so different that I have had to develop new tools for learning it.  In some ways, it might even be easier to get to the point where I can think in Indo because I am learning more like a child does, rather than trying to translate it in my head.  Just rote memory and repetition. 

So, hours of fun.  I am pretty good at writing Indo because I can take the time to think about what I am saying and find the right words and structure.  Speaking is a whole different matter.  I sound like someone speaking the King's English to them.  I carefully pronounce every word and speak slowly and distinctly.  Of course, they always start rattling off to me and I catch about every third word and have to have them repeat themselves at least twice.  I am getting better, though.  When I landed two months ago it all sounded like gibberish.  Now I can hear the words, even when I don't know what they mean.  Makes my head hurt sometimes.

Fortunately, a package of 20 400mg Ibuprophen over the counter is only $3.50.

Mercury must be opposing my fifth house, or whatever.  It is one of those days where communication seems impossible.  Either I have the nouns and no verbs, or the verbs and no adjectives, or I have all the words, but the grammar is completely upgefucked.

Don’t know what it is, but it is frustrating.

Ever want to tell someone something important, maybe answer a question they have?  You start to speak, and nothing comes out.  You wrack your brain and no words fall out.  Just unintelligable sounds. 

Let’s say someone wants to know what Texas is like.  In your mind, you see vast starry skies, beautiful deserts, the view from El Capitan, the grain laying down as a storm approaches, the smell of wet earth, days of driving and never seeing a "Now Leaving Texas" sign, the long empty beaches of North Padre, the sunset at Lake Travis, the grandeur of Big Bend, or a field of Bluebonnets.

Maybe you want to talk about the feeling when you first saw your daughter pop out, or watching the rodeo from the VIP stand, or riding the ferris wheel and winning a stuffed animal for your girl on the midway. Maybe it’s camping in the rain, seeing scorpions and racoons, dancing in the driveway at 2 am, or relaxing front of a movie with someone special.  Perhaps it’s cooking with a good friend, or the smell of bar-b-q on mesquite, or slinging coffee and buddhist art in the warehouse district, or the view from the top of the Texas commerce Bank Building.

All that comes out of your mouth is, "Uh."  You frantically finger through your translation dictionary but the conversation moves on and before you even have one adjective, the moment is gone.  Frustrating.  The best you can do is say that it is 1,000 miles from Dalhart to Brownsville, and the same from Orange to El Paso.  Maybe get in a plug for really good enchiladas.

When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires will come to you

If your heart is in your dreams, no request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star as dreamers do

(Fate is kind, she brings to those who love
The sweet fulfillment of their secret longing)

Like a bolt out of the blue, fate steps in and sees you thru
When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true

Everything tastes like fish, even the dawn.  It slithers up behind the hill like a flounder.  The sea breeze docks with its cargo of sardine.  The fog lays upon me with its scent of coy.  Everything I eat tastes of salmon.  Everything I smell reeks of grouper.

Life is a fish.  Life swims in its own ocean of dreams and hopes.  Life is water.  Life has fins and a tail and schools with its kind.  Life is a reef upon which the mightiest assertions are dashed.  Life is bouyancy.  Life is.

Life is an ocean without a map.  Life is wishing and finding storms.  Life is hurricanes and swells.

The dawn creeps like a squid and squirts ink at the first sign of danger.  It envelopes like a starfish and cracks with its beak.  It stabs like a ray and hides like a snail.  The dawn is its own master.

The dawn runs like a sea snake slithering to mid-morn.  Then it rains and it rains till all is scoured and clean.  The dawn debredes the flesh and makes Death hide its face.

Everything tastes of fish, even the dawn.

When I first arrived, I asked my nieces about the tap water and whether it was potable.  "Only if you want to die," they responded in chorus.  Being an Irish Texan, I saw that as a challenge and immediately drank three large glasses full.

I'm out of the hospital now.

But, seriously...water has an unusual air here.  In fact, they even call it "air" in Indonesian.  Of course, it's pronounced "ay-earrrrr," but such minor details hardly register in my thick skull.

Bathing is a rather enjoyable pastime.  We have no hot water here, since one purchases the heater seperately and mounts it on the wall in the bathroom.  There are even capped pipes and an outlet pre-installed high up on the wall for your convenience. Like pretty much every other appliance here, you can buy them in the shop downstairs, and they come in small and smaller.

Once you have restarted your heart at the beginning of every shower, you find that the water is so hard as to be akin to bathing in wet sand.  Lathering is a completely foreign concept.  Soap does not make it past the stage of being a white frothy slime.  Thankfully, they sell Zest here, which rinses clean every time.

The bathrooms (and this is true everywhere) are showers, and showers are bathrooms.  The entire room is tiled and other than a six inch high retaining wall, there is no other enclosure.  The entire bathroom becomes your private bathing space and anything in it gets sopping wet, including towels, clean clothes and TP (we'll get to that in a minute).  In fact, I am generally shivering so violently that the shower water becomes aerosolized on contact.  I can air-dry in seconds (pun intended).

Many bathrooms, though not ours, have a rather interesting tub situation.  It amounts to a 3-foot high and square walled space that one fills with water.  Then one steps into it, takes a large dipper and proceeds to douse oneself.  The remaining water is saved and used to flush out the squat toilets, which are little more than porceline-lined holes with foot pads on either side.

Now the really fun part!

Toilet paper is very rare.  Every toilet has a squirt nozzle, much like the rinse hose on your sink, attached to it.  When you are done answering Nature's Call, you simply take the hose and give everything a good rinse.  Sensation generally returns within 15 minutes or so.  Many of the public restrooms in the malls have an even niftier arrangement.  There is a small jet mounted under the rim at the back of the bowl with a knob on your lower right.  No muss, no fuss.  Just a high pressure stream of ice water in your nether regions!  If there is TP, it is only used to dry off.

Which brings me nicely to the paper thing.  There is not a single paper towel that I have found in all of Jakarta and environs.  Most dinner tables have a small dispenser that is loaded with, yes, toilet paper or facial tissues.  One can go through a forest and a half during a particularly messy meal, with lemon water bowls for rinsing after greasy foods (which is just about everything).  But, at least we now know where all the toilet paper goes.

Which all brings me to a rather interesting sign in the restroom at the Taipei airport: "We proudly recycling toilet papers and face paper."

Guess I'll stick with the ice water jets.

An hour's drive north of Balikpapan, Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, brings us to a cross-road marked by a Pertimina gas station and two dozen or more warung (small shops selling water, coffee and other necessities).  We turn left and head west over a blacktop road that is only slightly better than ruts in the dirt.  At one point, traffic comes to a halt as a wash-out has claimed half the road and traffic is proceeding single file.  The rest of the road is a series of pot holes that could easily swallow the myriad motorcycles around us.  Sudden braking throws us around the truck cab on a regular basis.  On a blind turn, a pile of brush in the road alerts us to a stalled truck just ahead.

In about 30 minutes, we come to a turn-off that goes up a steep incline.  There is a guard shack and swing arm gate, but no one is manning it today and the gate is up far enough to let us through.  Going up the hill, we pass dilapidated scarecrows on the side of the road.  The faces are painted on the central pole and tattered clothes hang from the cross bar.  There are no gardens in sight, so one assumes that they are warnings to trespassers rather than wildlife.

What follows tests the patience of even the most saintly.  Fifteen kilometers of the most bone-jarring, tooth-rattling, kidney-bruising road I have ever experienced.  And this only brings us to a cross-road, with one sign denoting "Base Camp" pointing south along a ridge lined by sheer drops on either side, the other north on a slightly more improved road.  We take the north branch, to my brief relief.  What follows is not so bad, to start.  We nearly hit 30 kph at one point.  The jungle on either side would take some serious machete work to penetrate just 5 meters into it.  The sunlight is heavily filtered.

Passing a road cut, we see the reason for this trip: a coal seam one meter thick embedded in the rock.  It dives down in the direction of our travel and foreshadows the sudden and nerve-racking incline we must now descend. 

My head repeatedly hits the roof of the truck, only to have my body slammed into the seat on the next bump.  The Isuzu 4x4 takes the road easily, but the occupants are a bit more rattled.  At the bottom, we pause to switch to four-wheel drive, as there is a mud pit about 20 meters across in front of us.  The ruts are about one meter deep, and that is the passable part of the road.  One bad turn and we either slam directly into a rock wall, or fall 100 meters into the dense jungle.  From the looks of things, rescue would be several days off.

I try to photograph the monkeys and various birds and the ants that are shiny black and at least an inch long.  Either the jostling of the ride or the poor lighting or the impatience of my jaded companions frustrates my attempts to document the wildlife.

This scene is repeated several more times before we come to the first signs of civilization in the past hour.  There is another guard shack and swing arm gate, but this time there are four men manning the station.

A man called Blondie (his hair is dyed red), who is a member of the local tribe hired to keep security, wearing Oakley sunglasses, approaches the truck warily.  He glances in the driver's window to inspect the occupants.  Recognizing one of our party as the "Boss," we are quickly waved through with some brief pleasantries exchanged.  There is another gate 100 meters ahead and one of the men rides a motorcycle past us to open the gate with a smile and a salute, as we arrive.

What follows is yet another nerve-jangling series of steep declines, mud pits, sheer drops, and encroaching jungle.  After nearly two hours, we arrive at the destination: a wide, level field with a 500-meter long conveyor belt being assembled across the middle of it.

We turn left and drive a bit down a newly made jetty of clay and rock that cuts through mango swamp until it stops abruptly at the open water of a large river.  Here there are two shacks, several generators, a crane, a cell phone tower, and several men watching badminton tourneys on TV.  It's a national holiday and they are relaxing on a rare day off. 

I notice that my cell phone suddenly has signal, a sign that the rudimentary forms of civilization have returned.  Only the broad, open space of the river allows signal access to the beach several kilometers down river for such amenities.  I unfold myself from the cab of the truck and painfully stretch away the cramps.

Out in the water are four steel piers jutting up tracing out what will be a 100-meter long dock.  Leading out to them are a couple of wooden ramps made of tree branches topped with three narrow planks of finished wood that look barely able to support my weight, much less that of the three of us walking across.  At the end of one is a meter-high box with the floor cut away to the river that serves as the camp toilet.

We slosh through ankle deep ochre mud to reach the ramps.  Tied to one is a narrow boat, like a canoe but with a square stern.  Using these ramps, the boat and the crane, these men have welded the piers and placed them out in the river.  I find myself wishing I had seen this operation.  It never ceases to amaze me how much these people achieve with the simplest of tools.  In some cases, construction plans are drawn in the mud and executed with precision an engineer could appreciate.

In four months, this will be a thriving coal mine, with over 600 men employed around the clock digging and loading, ultimately reaching 100,000 tonnes of coal a month.  The client has joint-ventured with the Indonesian producer to develop 10 concessions, totaling 25,000 hectare here in the jungle.  This initial operation will open four of the concessions and production will start up at 25,000 tonnes per month, ultimately reaching the production goal by next year, with an estimated 10-year supply of coal in reserve at that level.

The coal will be dug from the jungle and piled on the leveled field we just crossed.  It will then be shoveled into a crusher and transferred to the conveyor, which will load barges tied to the dock.  The barges will be ushered downstream to the ocean and the coal transferred to ships for the ultimate destinations.  From shovel to plant, the whole process will take 45 days.

The coal will be used to fire power plants, ceramic, glass and textile factories, and a half-dozen other industries.  The resulting products will ultimately be your table or sit on your table or be worn by your children or sit on your bookshelf or fertilize your lawn.  The lights in three countries will be powered by this mine.  Over 1,000 men and women will ultimately spend the better part of their working lives at this mine, and many will retire before the mine is spent.  Huge trucks and earthmovers will be delivered down the road we just came.

When the mine is ultimately shut down, the jungle will quickly reclaim the land.  Keeping the jungle at bay is a full-time job.  If work stopped today, everything I have just seen would be buried in dense growth within months.  In fact, on the drive in, we passed a mine that closed last year.  Already there are trees ten feet high and brush everywhere, with bananas ready to pick.  On my next visit, there will likely be bamboo thickets 50 feet tall.

That night, we meet with the senior geologist in a hotel lobby in Samarinda.  The seam is likely half again as large as the last round of estimates, based on new core samples and the findings at other mines in the region.  We spread the papers discretely but excitedly on the table.  The shareholders will be ecstatic.  The "Boss" grins like a Cheshire cat.

You, dear reader, can look forward to even more fine dishes, cups, furniture, clothing, fertilizer, and other necessesities.  The labels on your products will say made in half a dozen different countries.

Now you know how the process begins

To the dulcet tones of Hendrix belting out "Are You Experienced," mixed with the cantor at the local mosque and the buzz of the occasional motorcycles coming up the street, the sky fades to a smoky pink and vivid blue over the ocean just two kilometers distant.

The neighbor is throwing green leaves of some unknown tree on a fire to create the Indonesian form of Deep Woods Off!  The whole neighborhood is cloaked in an acrid haze that smells vaguely of burning fresh-cut homegrown and mint.

The maid glides imperceptibly through the room dipping her right shoulder low, nearly dragging her knuckles along the white tile.  Her motives and face are inscrutable.  She says hardly a word, ever.  Just appears here and there, dipping and gliding.  The most interaction I have with her is when I try to wash my own dishes and am roundly chastised and nearly block tackled to get me out of the kitchen.  Guess she is as bored as I am and really wants something to focus on.

The power has been on and off throughout the day.  Tested the generator and things worked well.  Waiting on the phone to ring.  Waiting.  Waiting for an email.  Waiting.  Waiting for that moment when things will catch fire and the excitement begins.  Waiting.  Waiting for anything unusual.  Waiting.

The people across the street sit all day on the porch, like they have done everyday for the past 20 years.  The children play at the corner: kickball, sticks and cans, hide and seek.  The woman up the way flips the drying laundry from one side to another.  The man at the top of the hill with the competition birds moves them around, shifting some in, others out, changing this cage to the shade and taking that one down and placing it on the ground.  A woman in a berka bounces down the lane on a motorcycle.  She doesn’t start the engine until she reaches the bottom of the hill. A girl carries her shoeless sister up to the warung.  From here, it looks like they buy a candy bar.

Some folks stroll mindlessly up the lane or down.  No hurry here.  Nothing to hurry for.  Just moving to the next waiting.  Saving energy from the heat and humidity.  Only the children sound and look excited.  They haven’t been hit with the stultifying boredom yet.  Things are still fresh and new.  Baru they say here.

They are afraid of the sun, but afraid of the dark.  They are afraid of the water, but have grown up on an island in a rain forest.  They are superstitious and see magic everywhere.  Not the kind that entertains and mystifies, but the kind that hexes you and vexes you.

They are obsessed with food.  The streets are lined with restaurants, fruit stands and shops as far as you can see, as if to be more than a meter from the next meal would cause terror in the heart.  The kitchen table has bowls of food all day every day, and pots of steamed rice sit anxiously on the side board.  They worry about whether you have eaten, as if skipping a meal is a sure sign of illness, mental or physical.  Yet, food is cheap and plentiful.  It grows everywhere.  You could walk three minutes and return with armloads of mangoes, bananas and hair fruit. 

The breeze has kicked up and the sky is now black.  A moment waiting, watching, wondering.  A moment that is both eternal and ephemeral.  Languid and languishing.  A moment gone and repeated tomorrow, like a matinee show.  A moment shared and remembered.

The quest for a good Irish drunk can be nearly as exciting and exotic as a proper buzz.  When Steve said that he wanted a good drunk too, I was nearly floored.  I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen him drink alcohol in 20 years, so who am I to hold back such a momentous occasion?

Having established that there are no liquor stores anywhere in Indonesia, there remained the problem of where to get it.  The ritzy bule hotels sell it beginning at $9 a shot plus 21% tax and service.  Out of the question.  In Jakarta, I knew of one store that kept a couple of bottles under the counter, wrapped in newspaper.  I have even seen some of the men sitting around at night with a carefully bagged bottle sitting between them.  So it must come from somewhere.

Pondering the problem, it occured to Steve that cousin Freddie up the street would know where to get it.  Though dry now due to diabetes, he was once a lively sort.  So we pile in the truck and head up the hill.

Freddie runs a warung in front of his house not 1/2 a click from here.  The patio next to the store holds numerous exotic plants, which are his hobby.  He is tall for an Indonesian, maybe 5-6 or 7.  He speaks broken English through rotted teeth and grins broadly when he hears our mission.

Liquor is illegal in Indonesia, except for the hotels that cater to foreigners, he tells us.  However, there is a small shack down by the docks that sells liquor sailors bring in for extra cash.  All name-brand and relatively cheap, compared to the lubeless rape at the hotels.

Freddie gives us directions.  He would go, but he was stabbed in the heel by a piece of bamboo three days ago.  He proudly displays the wound, as if we needed confirmation of the fact.  We politely examine the wound like hospital residents examining a case study and nod appreciatively.  No explanation is forthcoming as to how one gets stabbed in the heel by bamboo and in the interest of brevity, we don’t ask.

The directions aren’t particularly complicated and Steve recognizes some of the landmarks.  Begging our leave (Freddie seems willing to go on at length about his wound and the medical follow-up), we pile in the truck and head for the docks.

, or BC, is a bustling hub with normal traffic a mind-bending knot of traffic coming at you in all directions on a normal day.  Friday night on a holiday weekend is an adrenalin rush of fear and death-defying stunts with cars and motorcycles seeming appearing out of nowhere and stopping suddenly in front of us. 

On the left, there are parking attendants waving red lighted wands futilely trying to guide cars out of parking lots for tips.  On the right, cops with red lighted wands futilely attempt to control U-turns on the bustling strip.  In normal traffic, no one pays the least attention to cops, red lights, stop signs, lane stripes, or any other indication to yield right of way.  Tonight, it is a free-for-all of epic levels.

Across the street is a muslim outdoor festival.  Hundreds throng the sidewalks, streets and parks.  On our side are the beach-front cafes and night shopping drawing twice as many people.  We pass the huge outdoor market and a strip center composed entirely of show stores.  Down the alleyways, we see the lights of the cafes and the mobs of mostly local shoppers and diners.

Having finally made it to the first landmark, we turn left into a tight drive that bursts open onto the docks.  There are far fewer people here and there is a decidedly rougher feel.  We slowly cruise back and forth trying to find the shack, in the process finding a hut selling fresh famous Balikpapan crabs and seafood.  There are small congregations of men sitting on benches or squatted on their haunches discussing inscrutable things.  They watch us pass with bland curiosity.

We have no luck finding our target and are afraid to ask, given the clandestine item we seek.  One more pass and we surrender the mission for another time.