Friday, December 25, 2015

Merry Christmas to all.

I’ve been neglecting my journal lately. I guess I haven’t had anything interesting to say for a while. And then I became quite sick. It seems to be a Christmas tradition. The last time I was this sick was during the typhoon aftermath in Tacloban, and the illness struck right before Christmas. I tried to gut it out in Tacloban and hoped to get better naturally, but it didn’t happen. I then got lucky and managed to see a doctor from Medicins Sans Frontieres, and they hooked me up with a series of antibiotics. I might be in the same situation here. I can’t even remember now which day I became sick. It feels like a long time ago. My personal treatment when I get this sick is to stop eating. I suppose the idea is to just starve the bacteria. If I don’t eat, maybe they can’t eat and they will die. But the real reason I don’t eat is to just avoid the pain. I suppose this is something else I’ve learned through travel – that I have a very low pain tolerance. I think men like to imagine that they are very tough and can stand a lot of pain. Even I can start to have a fantasy of being a tough guy. But this fantasy is only possible when you don’t experience any actual pain. Once I’m faced with the gut-wrenching agony of a bacterial infection, I turn into a whimpering puppy faster than you can say “I need antibiotics!” I just curl up into a ball on the cold bathroom tiles and whimper.

Anyway, the pain is so traumatic for me that I just stop eating. It was a brutal process for my body to expel all the bad food, and I don’t want to give it anything new to fuel the fire. I’d rather go hungry than go through that again. I think my last meal was four days ago. Perhaps that is why I have never gotten particularly fat as I got older. I go through enforced fasts. I remember in Taiwan before I left, I went without food for six days. It’s not as hard as it sounds. I’ve never been very excited about food to begin with. Eating has always been more of a chore than a pleasure – like putting gas into the car. Once I stop eating, it’s actually hard to start again. It feels like such a waste of time.

One big negative side-effect is irritability. And the last thing you want to be while overseas is irritable from hunger. I could really feel it yesterday. Yesterday was the first day that I was able to really leave my room and go outside into the world. I kind of needed to because my tourist visa is expiring soon. I woke up in the morning with the plan of going to the local immigration office to learn if I can extend my visa here. I had fully expected to go to one of the big cities on Sumatra. But at the last minute, I stumbled across the information that there was an immigration office here in Tanjungbalai. I wish I had known that earlier. Anyway, I had located the office on Google Maps and I was going to go there in the afternoon to start the process.

Then something funny happened. There was a knock on my door, and I opened it to find two of the young staff members of the hotel. They’re very nice guys – like friendly puppies. They said that there was someone in the lobby that wanted to talk to me. I wasn’t thrilled about that, but I was starting to feel better, and I quickly showered and put on some clothes and went downstairs. And who did I find but two of the students who had interviewed me for their school project before. I assumed they were there to set up another such project with some other students. And I was right. Unfortunately, they had brought the students with them. Just like last time, they had just shown up at the hotel and they wanted me to go with them right then and there to do a big project. It was really embarrassing. One of the students, Rismah, indicated that her friends were outside in the alley. Then a gaggling troupe of about twelve young Indonesian men and women came around the corner. They all expected me to just go with them and do this project right then and there.

Normally, I would be annoyed and amused but still just go with them. But I was really weak from the illness, AND I had plans to go to immigration. Also, I was a bit irritated with Indonesia and Indonesians in general because I was so hungry. The noise of the traffic and a lot of other things were getting on my nerves, and I was just in a bad mood generally. So this time, I told the students no. I had other plans. And even if I didn’t have other plans, I was sick.

I was a little bit angry with them. I knew that I was going to feel guilty for saying no. I would feel bad. And I blamed them for putting me in this position and making me feel guilty for saying no. It’s just so weird. I went through this with Rismah’s original group. They had just shown up at the hotel without calling me or messaging me or making any plans. It was pure luck that first time that I was even around. I did the video project with Rismah, but at a couple of points I brought up the topic of how weird it was to just show up without contacting me first. She apologized that first time and seemed to feel really bad about it. But here she was back at the hotel on a surprise visit with a group of twelve of her friends and classmates. And it wasn’t a social visit. It was to do a big school project. I kind of wanted to punish her for that. So I stood my ground, and no matter how upset they seemed and how much dismayed chatter there was among the group, I said that I had other plans and I couldn’t do it today. Any other day was fine. Let’s set up a time and place. I told her that if she had contacted me beforehand, we could have arranged something. But you can’t just show up like this and expect me to be available for hours and hours of video interviewing. It’s just weird. The world doesn’t work like that.

I often find myself in situations like that, and I wish I had a different type of personality. I feel like I’m too weak. In this situation, I’m going to feel bad no matter what. If I just went with the students and did the project and cancelled all my own plans whether I was sick or not, I’d feel like a fool. I’d feel like a chump who had let people take advantage of him. But if I didn’t go with them, I’d feel guilty and I’d feel bad for them. So I can’t win. Most people don’t have that problem. They’d just say no, and that would be that. It’s like all the times I’ve made arrangements with other people and then they don’t show up or they show up an hour late. They never feel guilty. But I feel bad both ways. I feel like a fool because I showed up really early and made all kinds of arrangements to make sure I’d be there on time. And then if I confront the other person for being late, I feel guilty. I can’t win. You can say that is just being a nice person, but it’s really being a weak person. A normal person should be able to stand up for themselves and then not feel guilty for doing so. I guess I’m not normal. I usually end up saying “yes” to everything. And then I just stop being friends with that person or those people. If they constantly let me down, I just give up on them. And most people always let me down, so I give up on all of them.

I’ve thought about this a fair bit in the past. It has to do with friendship. If you believe movies and TV shows, it’s okay to fight. If you have a friend, and that friend is constantly late and constantly taking advantage of you and always letting you down, you’re supposed to confront them. Then you have a big fight and then that person changes, and through this conflict you become better friends. But it doesn’t work that way for me. I don’t want to change people. I feel guilty when I confront people about something bad that they did. I think that’s being weak, but it’s the way I am. Besides, I don’t think people ever change anyway. People that are unreliable will always be unreliable. You can fight with them all you want, but the next time they say they are going to do something, they’ll still let you down. So I generally just give up on them and do things on my own. It’s easier that way.

Anyway, the students eventually settled on another time and day – Christmas Day, in fact, at 1 p.m. So in a few hours, I will be off being interviewed, and we will pose for a bunch of pictures. I haven’t decided if I will eat something beforehand. I need to eat for the energy, but I’m worried that I’ll just be sick if I do eat. It might be better to just leave my system empty for a few more hours.

A normal person would then have hired a local motorcycle taxi – a becak – to take him to the the immigration office. But of course I took my bicycle. It’s not easy riding a bike here, and I’d end up being hot and sweaty, but in my books that is better than the hassle of dealing with a becak driver and arguing over the price. For the first time, Google Maps let me down. I had pinpointed the location of the immigration office, but it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Google Maps said it was 2.1 kilometers away along the main road out of Tanjungbalai. I got there (amid much difficulty), and found a strange series of tiny apartments or offices. It was hard to tell what they were. They looked abandoned, and there was some kind of government sign near the street in front. I assumed that this used to be the immigration office but it had closed long ago. There was a small barbershop nearby, and I asked the owner about the immigration office. Many words in Indonesian are English words that have been shortened. So immigration is just “imagrasi”. This man pointed up the road indicating that the immigration office was farther away. I didn’t really trust him, but I opened up Here Maps on my phone and looked for the immigration office. And Here Maps gave me a different location from Google Maps. It said the immigration office was up that main road but another 2 kilometers. I figured I might as well check it out, and I cycled off.

To my delight, I soon found a large and very official-looking immigration building. To my disappointment, it was closed. It will open again on Monday. I chatted with the security guard for a bit, and he took selfies of us with his smartphone. He was friendly, and that gave me a good feeling about the immigration office. Hopefully things go well. I only intended to spend 60 days on Sumatra, but since I spent so much time just in Tanjunbalai, I haven’t got much time left to go anywhere else. So I’m going to get a 30-day extension. Hopefully, that will happen quickly, and then I will have 42 days to cycle through the north and back here again. That should be just right. As far as I know, I can extend my visa three more times after that if I wanted to do for a total of 6 months. After that, you have to leave the country. The one wrinkle in the process is that they still have an old rule on the books that you have to get an Indonesian sponsor for every extension. So you have to find a local person who is willing to act as your sponsor and fill out a form. In tourist areas, there are people who do this for a fee. I’ve already asked Rea (from the Samsung store) if she would help me, and she agreed. So that’s good.

I stopped at the Samsung store when I got back to town. Rea was there, and I chatted with her about a few things. I enjoy talking with her, but it is frustrating, too. I keep hoping that she can explain all the mysterious things going on around me, but she often knows less than I do. That is a very common experience when I go to a new country. It’s strange, but local people are very poor informants. Other foreigners often know much more about the country than locals. But I haven’t seen another foreigner since I arrived. I keep wondering if some other traveller will show up after having taken the ferry from Klang to Tanjungbalai, but so far I haven’t spotted another white face.

I had hoped when I got back to my hotel to carry my bike inside and put it on the balcony outside my room. It gets very dirty sitting outside, and it gets damaged as people move it around and hit it with their motorcycles. It’s also at risk of being stolen. But when I tried to bring in my bicycle, a grumpy older man that works here waved his arms at me and shouted “NO!” The young guys are friendly, but this one older man seems to be the boss. And he is UNfriendly. I really dislike him. I avoid him completely whenever he is working. I don’t mind being told that I can’t bring in my bicycle. It’s their hotel and they have their rules. But I hate discourtesy. And this older man is distinctly discourteous. He’s quite unusual in his way. Nearly every Indonesian I’ve met has been exceedingly warm and friendly. This guy is just in a bad mood all the time. Unfortunately, I was also in a bad mood, and I let his discourtesy get to me. I ended up kind of angry with him and irritable.

My irritability lasted through the night. I had trouble sleeping through the horrific noise of the motorcycles. I wanted to go outside and stop some of these guys and find out just how and why their motorcycles can be so loud. If I lived here permanently, the noise level would drive me insane. But Indonesians are used to it. Noise is life, I guess.

Tags: Sumatra Part 01