Part XIV
Strangeness in a Strange Land
by Mad Dog

This inertia could be caused by the constant heat and humidity taking its toll, much like a tropical E-Z-Bake oven where your brain is the cake mix and you’re either always half-baked or permanently fried. 

    I don’t know the physics behind this phenomenon, but I suspect Einstein predicted it in one of his many theories. After all, anyone who couldn’t be bothered combing his hair must have understood the lassitude of island living. Day by day, nap by nap, you find yourself losing momentum and, as anyone who’s even slept through a physics class will remember, inertia slips in to take its place. It’s the natural order of things—momentum and inertia are the yin and yang of activity. Of productivity. And of something else too but I really don’t have the motivation to be bothered thinking about what it might be at the moment.

    This inertia could be caused by the constant heat and humidity taking its toll, much like a tropical E-Z-Bake oven where your brain is the cake mix and you’re either always half-baked or permanently fried. Then again it might be the force of the waves pounding against the shore which surrounds an island, setting up a resonance that vibrates at frequencies which block alpha wave activity in the brain. And beta. And theta. And any others too.

    But I suspect it’s actually because the gravity is light here, which may explain why so many strange people float down and land here so easily. And trust me, there are plenty of them.

  Not all expats are strange, though you do have to be a little different to reject your homeland in favor of a place where you can never completely fit in, not even after 30 years, a native spouse, three kids, and a Certificate of Inertia signed by the village chief.

    Then there are the tamu (tourists) who, in addition to the usual touristy foolishness, go to Lovina to see the dolphins, which entails getting up at 5 A.M. to climb in one of 30 small boats which sit in the water, then race en masse to a spot where the dolphins have surfaced. The dolphins, of course, dive underwater before the boats get there since they have this innate fear of being run over by a flotilla. It’s called survival instinct. This slapstick farce goes on for hours. It’s like the Whack-a-Mole game at the carnival without the hammer, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they used to hand them out before someone convinced them it was an unnecessary expense.

    But the expats might be the strangest of all. I’m not sure at what point you’re technically considered an expatriate, but for our purposes we’ll consider it someone who’s here longer than the average holiday. Of course that would mean I’m an expat, though the saving grace—or rationalization if you insist—is that I’m leaving soon so I won’t be an expat much longer.

    Whew, that was close!

    Not all expats are strange, though you do have to be a little different to reject your homeland in favor of a place where you can never completely fit in, not even after 30 years, a native spouse, three kids, and a Certificate of Inertia signed by the village chief.

Everyone in the ‘hood thinks it’s a real hoot whenever they see me sweeping the porch or —gasp!— mopping the floor. Seven months I’ve been doing this, and each time they still smile and call the kids over to see how wacky we tamu can be.

    Of course the Balinese think all Westerners are strange, and I’m certainly not in a position to argue the point. Most of them live in a rumah keluarga (family compound) their whole life, being born there, getting married and having kids there, then watching the kids get married and raise their kids there. A typical rumah keluarga houses more people than a Canadian province. Thus they go through life with no privacy and lots of people around. Twenty-four hours a day. You have to wonder when they have enough privacy to create the kids.

    Thus they think that anyone who spends time alone is doing it because they have no one to be with. It couldn’t possibly be voluntary. They don’t understand the concept of, say, quietly reading a book by yourself. That’s why they keep you company all the time, like it or not.

    When I’m working on the verandah it’s not uncommon for a Balinese I’ve never seen in my life who’s walking by to come up and sit next to me. He usually speaks no English, has never seen a laptop computer, and feels very sorry for me since I’m all alone. He sits and quietly watches me type, and trust me, I do some of my best work when someone’s staring at my fingers on the keyboard. After about five minutes he smiles, gets up, and leaves, having done his good deed for the day, received a little karma boost in the process, and knowing he can go home and have something to tell the 287—or is it 288 today?—relatives at dinner tonight.

Even though I kept telling them “tidak mengerti”—I don’t understand—and their family told them I’m not Balinese (duh!), they’d look at me like I was an idiot and kept repeating themselves. They probably thought tamu actually meant moron.

    Everyone in the ‘hood thinks it’s a real hoot whenever they see me sweeping the porch or—gasp!—mopping the floor. Seven months I’ve been doing this, and each time they still smile and call the kids over to see how wacky we tamu can be. I’m surprised there isn’t a TV show here called “Tamu Do the Strangest Things!” I’m sure it would be a hit.

    My landlord’s niece and nephew—okay, two out of a slew of them—used to think I was really weird. Okay, they probably still do. They had the hardest time understanding that I don’t speak Indonesian or Balinese. Even though I kept telling them “tidak mengerti”—I don’t understand—and their family told them I’m not Balinese (duh!), they’d look at me like I was an idiot and kept repeating themselves. They probably thought tamu actually meant moron. But they figured it out eventually. Now they speak to me the same way they do to their two-year-old relatives. And I understand perfectly. Well, on a good day, anyway.

    But I’m small potatoes on the strangeness scale here, and since I’m ranking it I can place myself anywhere I want. Probably the oddest person I’ve run into was a budding cult leader I met last week. He seemed innocuous enough as he talked to a friend of mine about being socially and environmentally conscious. It wasn’t until he ended up declaring that he was Shiva, a shaman reincarnate, Michael Jackson’s evil twin—or was that the good twin?—and that everyone who didn’t join up with him would be dead soon that it became apparent he was the frontrunner in Bali Bonkersfest 2001.

    Obviously that was an extraordinarily light gravity day. Even for Bali.

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