3.6.07

Surfing Bali

I feel I've had a writers block. I haven't been able to edit my booklet or write my diary. You see I feel I've become increasingly tired during these past months. I guess its because I've been moving around a lot. And as I really can't afford spending the tourist price on everything I always have to find the cheap prices everywhere immediately, which adds up to the job. Its just that when you have blond hair over here you are immediately assumed to be a wealthy guy and thus nobody even imagines giving you stuff for the normal price. Its always triple or at least double.
I also feel dislocated actionvise. I feel more like I'm kind of more respoding, than initiating stuff. I'm back in my whirlpool of trivial or and megalomanic thoughts about this and that. And these thoughts seem to overwhelm me like they did in my, oh, so troublesome teenage years. I'm just not really living the moment and initiating, but just letting thoughts pass without action. No that I think the thinking part of it is bad, but without action even the most beautyfull of thoughts just pass. Sure, if it's a heureka!-kind of experience you'll remember it, but in truth I think our brain(or at least mine) isn't that brilliant of a recording device to begin with. Thoughts come and go and so has so many beautyfull moments of thoughts, experiences and feelings passed without being recorded. Do you people out there have any working methods of recording yourself? Do you use dictators or something? How do you manage your selves? All athmospheric aweing, which in fact is what I'm all about in real life gets left out of my writing and get's left out of my reflection. Not that I'm relly feeling bad or something. All these things that have happend to me on this trip has put me on the verge of, hmm, developing myself. For example I believe I was very good at taking stress.. Now I know that if I just keep my mind open for change my smile will never fade. Before I thought I have pretty good skills to come by in life. Now I know that I have em'. And ever since a few years ago I started working on this childhood trauma of mine having to prove myself to others. That's not what I want. I want to prove my stuff for myself because I believe the essence of myself is something I can do. Not that anything can be done to make me unambituous -I'm too twisted to be less than trying to chase my dreams that have formed my mind for so many years and why should I be anything else? My ambituousness lies in doing as much good as possible. I'm trying to be as much myself as possible and I'm trying to be as good as possible while always being able to enjoy the ride. And that's something I've learned more about along this particular path.As things get more and more different in cultural aspects you start noticing how there is no right way. There are just different ways. Well, some ways might seem more effective and some even might seem futile, but that absolutely is not up to you to decide although in life and especially within systems we might think that there are right ways and wrong ways and often it seem so. But this is just an illusion. The thing you think is better is based on your experience on repetition of something you've done succesfully(in your opinion) before. What we don't take into account are the experiences of the other persons previous experiences and the actual subjective intention. Even if the way of somebody trying to do something leads to them later on soing something the way you would have done it it still will probably evolve further into something that then would look down on the previous ways of doing things. So different isn't neccessarely better or worse for that matter. Sure, you can help if you have a more efficient way of doing things, but the way of setting values like this actually evokes resistance towards evolution. Looking down on someone never helps. When your ways get efficient you can be sure there's a bunch of people with ways as efficient as yours and groups that might aswell look down on your so called efficiency from their aspects. A good example of this is eating with your fingers. Somehow I've always secretly thought that it's something savages do somewhere or just if you don't have any other option. Boy did I learn from this one. I'd spent all Malaysia not eating with my hands, but on Bali driving around with the motorbike one day coming back from a not so succesfull attempt on riding the surfboard I bought some ginger rice and without any sorts of tools to dig into it I thought "what the heck, they do it everywhere" and started digging.Actually eating with your fingers recuires a bit of finesse. It's like learning to use western cutlery when your a kid or tuning in to use the chopsticks. Either my techniques that time weren't that pretty or they dont see westeners eat with their fingers that often or both, but I attracted attention. A guy standing outside his car even knocked on the window to draw the attention from the back seat towards more interesting sights.
Anyhow, Because I found out it was actually that difficult I decided to learn to do it as gracefully as the locals did. There's a special way of pushing rice into your mouth from your palm with your thumb. Actually, when you get rid of your prejudice towards it it actually feels better than eating with some sort of cutlery. You can actually feel the texture of your food in a different way than we do with our mouths. And about the hygiene factor: I think most westeners somehow lure themselves into thinking that when you eat with a knife and fork you automatically eat hygienically and even washing of the hands becomes irrelevant. Still people drop their food from the plate to the table or floor, pick them up with their fingers and still eat it.
Live and learn. Bali Must be one of the most beautyfull places on earth. Not only was I awed by the paradiselike nature, but the balinese just value beauty in almost everything they do. Where is this attitude in our hyperproductive culture?
These people manage to decorate everything. And its not because they want to brag by something fancy. They really aren't that rich to begin with. It's in valuing beuty itself. Still our "rich" western cultures progress into building everyting on a more and more cost effective basis. Who ever let all these "I don't need curtains" kind of guys in charge? Is culture really evolving if everything people build is getting uglier? Why hasn't anyone come up with a rule like "if you build something new after tearing that old building down make sure it's more beautyfull than the one thats being replaced"? Well.. Maybe it's just me, but I value beauty and I think there should be somekind of system to encourage the "growth" of beauty in our societies.The balinese are wonderfully unaware about their artisticity. Before, there wasn't even a word for 'artist' in balinese, because everyone was doing art in some ways even if only by making a flowerarrangement every day to drive bad spirits away and to lure good ones with their beauty.
Getting to know Indonesia through Kuta on Bali is a little bit like trying to understand thai culture by staying on Khao San road in Bangkok. Both are places where the unnormal is normal. It's a place where during the morning and day people do healthy activities like for example surf, dive or something. Then in the evenings people party hard. Every day. I met many people who said it's like this every day and the people who live there are on some kind of "get the money now and spend it now" kind of gear. I think it just might be true. There's a lot of aussies on Bali. It's even cheaper to fly there than to fly somewhere on holiday in Australia and the surf's good all year round almost every day. And it's cheap. And you gotta love the balinese people and why not Indonesian people in general. But Indonesia is huge and its more like a melting pot of cultures than a single culture. Well, I guess that's a fact with most larger countries. The balinese even have their own language although what binds Indonesia together is bahasa indonesia -"speak indonesia"- a true international language, in whitch everybody in indonesia, who study, study with. It's easy to pronounce and builds up in an easy to understand way. It's unbelievable how quickly you get the hang of it!The thing about the people there is that the smiles on peoples faces are sincere(well most of the time) and that's beautyful. And especially many balinese
girls did indeed have made my head turn. People are really friendly and genuinely interested in you. Well of course in Kuta it's like anywhere in the tourism bubble -it's all about money. Heck, you get that even in normal society a lot. It's all about the dough. For me money is a function. It's outsourcing something that you decide not to do yourself. And by using money we agree on somebody doing something on our behalf is it for growing food or doing out laundry for us or something more abstract like a service. But for many money has become an abstract and value by itself. People are in it for the glitter. Many many people agree on other people making many stupid things to earn a buck, by just not not really even caring what was done by whatever they just used their money for. I think I have a right not to spend my money on people doing stupid things for me, or for my money I mean. I guess people could cosiderate me a cheapskate. I'm not greedy, but I tend to like many functios in my life. !) And those functions cost money. Which I don't really have enough of. So my stuff is usually old and a little bit broken or repaired, but works. =) Here's my sandalrepair mark VI:So about the two weeks in Kuta. On arrival at the airport on Bali I bumped into five swedes of which I'd met three first on the Cameron Highlands and later in Kuala Lumpur. So I joined them and spent the two weeks mostly in a place called Sari Bali Bungalows on Kuta beach. Days by the pool or learning to surf. Chasing the sunsets in the evenings and eating well. And drinking.I rented a motorbike after two days and just started driving around looking for interesting places and boy did I find many. I also rented a surfboard for a week and dragged it around to various spots. Did I learn to surf?Well you could say I'm on the brink. I can't really catch the big waves yet, but I catch some and I think I got a hook of it.. It really is one of those addictive sports. When you actually catch a wave and ride it it really feels kind of like flying. And after you catch one you go "I wanna catch at least one more". I'm lucky I'm interested in so many things, that I'm not considering to become a full time surfer. Surfing can also be dangerous. Many surfers get a fright from ending up in the "washing machine". I did. A big wave catched me an pushed me several meters underwater and held me there my back aginst the sandy bottom until what felt like a very long time. Eventually the wave let go and I came to the surface to gasp for some air when the next one rolls in and tries to give me the same treament. Luckily I could hang on to my board and stay above. Decided to get out of the water for that day. Well.. On Kuta beach it's not as dangerous as in some places which have dangerous reefs, that you can be cut on or hit unconcious on while you get this treatment from the waves. But its good to be a good swimmer if you want to catch the waves. Learning to surf on already broken waves is possible even for people with lesser swimming skills as there's a strong current on top of the wave and it kind of just grabs the board and gives you a ride without the need to paddle hard and jump on the board with a perfect balance. People sometimes even manage to get up on the board on their first try. Catching a bigger wave is a bit trickier though. You need to paddle hard to get some speed before the wave comes and then at the right moment and depending on the size of the wave grab the board from the right spot and push yourself up. I'd say don't bother with any lessons, but just ask the person renting the board to just show you how it's done. You'll have to get the hang of it mostly by your self anyway.So because of the sheer fun of Kuta and the swedish lads I ended up staying at the beach for two weeks. I also spent some qualitytime with this crazy aussie surferchick Mads and her cousin Erin.
But after a while I woke up to this feeling of having to get going if I wanted to do this trip around Bali and to other islands..
So I decided to start my roadtrip by heading east towards the "Tirta Ganga-Water of Ganges"..

Singapore

I really ended up liking Singapore.
First night when I arrived there I ended up sleeping in a banyon tree(what is it with banyontrees and me?).
Mainly because it was allready quite late an
secondarily, because Diana,(one of the people I met in
the Cameron Highlands studying in the National
Univercity of Singapore) who had invited me over, had
accidentally given me the wrong number.. Not that I felt
upset about it. But I was rather puzzled. It's suprising
how many people have trouble remembering their
phonenumbers correctly these days..
Well anyways I had a good sleep and then wandered into
the city next morning to look for a web connection
-which by the way wasn't so easy to find. Many wireless
networks around, but they all cost money and you had to
have a phone to register..
This building reminds me of the main railwaystaion in Helsinki with the statues holding lightbulbs and all:
(I wonder when it was built?)
Raffle's:
So after a longish walk
across the town I decided to find myself at the NUS
campus and took a train to the "educational area" in the
west. It looks like the singaporeans really do spend
money on education. Walkig along lush green boulevards
seeing students perform their activities I couldn't help
but to think: "impressive".
The Singapore Polytechnic:After I reached the nus campus and found the library I
managed to slip into the computer center and talk a girl
into signing me onto the computer with her account -hey! free
internet!
I sent Diana a mail and luckily she replied in just a
few minutes and within half an hour we met up. She'd
been equally curious of what had happened to me
yesterday as I was for what had happened to her
phonenuber. Turned out she had mixed up two numbers.
Well.. It happens. No harm done.
She was wonderfully hopitable as she gave me her room to
sleep in and slept at her friend's place herself. Felt
quite luxurious to me.
We also made a visit to a junglish spot remaining on the outskirts of the city.. Did you know that in the old days 200 people a year were killed by tigers? Suprisingly there are no tigers left..A suprising fact about Singapore: although it's the worlds second least corrupted state in the world right after Finland there is still some political oppression. I heard that somehow, because some buildings are owned by parties and people voting for other parties livin in parts of the buildings they'd actually arrange, that the lifts wouldn't stop on floors "with the wrong political opinion"..
Get a load of that!

I greatly enjoyed my three days in Singapore walking around,
taking pictures, eating well, drinking coffee, telling
stories, discussing science and philosophy and our
relationships towards it all.

As I'm a bit of a wonderer by
nature I felt I hadn't been so intellectually satisfied
during this whole trip. She also told me stories about
her country, that really animated Columbia in my mind. I
never thought the place to be like that. I only thought
of it as the cocaine hub of the world and.. umm.. that
was basically it. But after hearing about the culture,
the people and it's natural beauty now I really want to
go to Colombia some day..Strangely enough when it was time to go I felt that i'd
really like to stay around considerably longer -probably
because of the company(there's also loads to see in the
city itself). But since I'd allready booked myself on a
plane to Bali it was time to go after only three full
days of Singapore.