Putting Down Roots

“There are two lasting bequests we can give our children:  one is roots.  The other is wings.”  William Hodding Carter, II. 

I am a rather haphazard gardener.  While I love to be out digging in the dirt, I am likely in my enthusiasm to plant things too close together, or in an inconvenient spot.  This means I often spend much of my gardening time digging things up, dividing, separating, re-planting. There is nothing quite so vulnerable looking as a formerly strong, steady and upright plant that has been dug up and is hanging, roots dangling, from my gloves, waiting to be safely and carefully planted in its new spot.

In Pennsylvania, where winters are cold and the spring is wet, plants need roots that go deep into the ground and hold them steady.  Think Oak trees.  Here in Singapore...well lets just say plants have a few more options.  On my first visit here, I was amazed at the sight of trees whose trunks appeared to start 10 or 15 feet off the ground, roots exposed to the air, sending new tendrils out to find a place to plant themselves away from the main tree.  These trees are also the happy hosts of many epiphytes, plants that live non-parasitically on trees and other plants.  

A couple of months after arriving, I was running through the Botanic Garden here, watching the wind blow some particularly long and dangling roots swinging from the limbs of a tree when it struck me.  These plants are just like us!  Me and my expat compatriots have been dropped into this place, roots forged somewhere else dangling freely, reaching out for something, anything, to hold onto.

I will admit, the months leading up to the move and the first few weeks here are still in many ways a bit of a blur.  The process of uprooting and moving left me literally feeling a sense of vertigo, of spinning wildly through space.  Our roots in Pennsylvania were deep, friends, family, community, we knew who we were.

Here, these things are much less certain, especially for the person in the family known as the “trailing spouse.”  Many people don’t like the implications of this term, arguing that they are equal and enthusiastic partners in this life choice.  However, once the person with the job is digging into work, and the kids are making friends at school, there is a sense of being at loose ends...roots trailing.  

Some jump into volunteer work, others join clubs, or sign up for classes, some (like me) do a little bit of everything.  And do you know what?  It works.  The first connections are the obvious ones, find a grocery store, find a doctor.  I was also lucky early on to find a good friend who is game to tromp all over town and explore.  It is much easier to figure out strange things if you have an equally confused buddy.  Our conversations for the first couple months were frequently punctuated by exclamations of “Oh, I am glad you said that!  I thought I was the only one!”  

I have also been overwhelmed by the generosity of people who seem to really want to help me feel settled:  a mom and nurse who has been here for more than 10 years who gave me thoughtful recommendations for doctors, an acupuncturist and a great Thai restaurant; a friend of a friend back in Pennsylvania who invited me to join her for lunch and introduced me to a group of interesting women; the checkout ladies at the grocery store who made sure I didn’t pay too much for the overpriced imported produce (and who goaded me into finding my local community center so I could get my “Passion” discount card); too many people to count who opened up their address books, iPhones and Blackberrys and asked “what do you need” before sharing phone numbers for hairdressers, tailors, shops, restaurants; and the one or two seasoned expat spouses who looked at me thoughtfully and said “you are doing well, you will be fine.”  

So, here it is, a new community.  Not the firm solid kind built on years of knowing each other and working side by side, but a different one, based on a shared experience and a desire to help each other along.  These roots aren’t deep, they aren’t even planted in the ground anymore, but they are strong.  Combined with the ties to the amazing friends and family back home who never left me feeling alone out here on the other side of the world, I find I feel sure footed and firmly planted, right where I am.

Bali Dreams

Ok, I’ll admit, one of the most obvious selling points for this little adventure on the other side of the world was the fact that we would be in close proximity to places that, at least for me, have long been the stuff of mystery and dreams. Fiji, Tahiti, Borneo, Bali...I know in my head that these are real places, with real people living regular lives (pirates don’t ply these waters anymore, and they sure don’t swashbuckle) but that doesn’t mean I still don’t get a little thrill thinking about seeing them for myself.

So, of course, given our first opportunity to de-camp for a long weekend (and ticket prices that rivaled deals to Detroit and Pittsburgh from Philadelphia) we headed off to Bali, “The Island of the Gods.”  

Stepping off the airplane, we were greeted by the short, pudgy, fierce-yet-cuddly-looking guardian idols that stand watch at all entryways around the island.  Wearing their jaunty sarongs, and sometimes shaded by an umbrella, they keep quiet watch at doorways and bridges.  A little divine protection could come in handy around here we soon discovered as we met up with our driver and set out through the streets of Denpasar on our drive across the island to the tiny fishing town of Amed.

It is an understatement to say that the roads are crowded. Small motorbikes are the transportation of choice, weaving in and out of traffic and slipping between cars, often carrying precarious looking loads of rice bags, multiple passengers, a chicken or two...one guy had SEVEN five gallon water jugs strapped to his bike as he drove up the road.  Then there are the overloaded trucks hauling rocks, rice and other loads around the island, often with several workers perched on top.  Add to these twisty roads that seemed to be perpetually under construction, and traffic laws that seem to be more of a suggestion than a directive, and it was an adventure just getting to our villa.  

But wow, what a ride it was.  Our location in Eastern Bali meant we got to drive across much of the island, through beautiful terraced rice paddies, towns with elaborate woven offerings on bamboo poles lining the streets, and temple after temple.  We also saw the temple builders, groups of three or four stonecutters set up on the sides of the road, carving huge black boulders into demigods, altars and the square black stone blocks used to build the temples.

In Bali, religion is as much a part of everyday life as eating or even breathing.  I can’t claim to know much about the unique form of Hinduism practiced (the more I research, the more I find to learn), but there is clearly a very personal, practical and everyday spirituality here.  In addition to the temples (at least three per village, and often more), altars to the “all-in-one god” Sanghyang Widi Wasa, who is depicted as an empty throne are present in most establishments.  We saw our hotel staff making daily morning offerings at the altar near our room, and saw similar altars in restaurants, shops, at various spots during our climb up Mt.Batur (one of two active volcanos on the island), and even at the airport.  

The offerings are presented in tiny leaf trays, and usually include flowers, food, salt, even cigarettes.  They are meant to be perishable and are replaced frequently, at least three times a day.  When we climbed Mt. Batur, we also found offerings at a crevice near one of the volcano’s craters, where the heat of the lava causes water to condense and drip of the rock.  Next to the offering was an old plastic bottle collecting the water, which our guide told us is considered holy.  Holy water in an old soda bottle, like I said, a very practical spirituality.

Of course, there is a reason for this practicality, people here are intimately connected to the natural world.  It appears that everybody spends much of the time outdoors.  In fact, “indoors” is kind of a loose concept.  In our rooms, the shower in the bathroom was open to the sky, and there was at least as much living space on the porches as there was in the rooms.  The main lobby and restaurant were a large porch with no walls.  Even shopkeepers and seamstresses set up in three sided tent-like structures, doing their work and watching the world go by, keeping track of who is coming and going. 

And everybody takes care of their friends.  No matter what we wanted to do, someone had a friend who could help us out.  Our driver had a friend to help us get the climbing guide, the guide had a friend who ran the coffee hut at the top of the volcano where we took refuge during a downpour and drank hot tea while we waited for the weather to clear, and so on.  

Somehow connected to this “taking care of friends” is an innovative concept of “karma” that was often brought into play by salespeople touting their wares.  We first encountered it on the black sand beach below our villa, resting after a beautiful morning of snorkeling in the amazing under water world of a vibrant coral reef.  A man walked up selling kites and little sail boats made of sticks and colorful fabrics.  They weren’t an unreasonable price, but we weren’t interested.  “Do it for your karma,” he urged, as though somehow buying something we didn’t need (or in the case of a woman selling batiks, paying more than it was worth), just to help the seller out, would be good for our karma.  “Good for you, good for me,” he urged my son.  Who replied, “well actually, it’s not good for me, because I don’t need it.”

However, we did do our best for our karma (and our taste buds) by finding locally owned restaurants to eat in.  One particularly memorable evening we decided to walk into “town” to find a place for dinner.  We settled on a little restaurant, overlooking the ocean, that was really not more than a large, open deck and a small kitchen.  Noticing that, except for a couple of the owner’s buddies, we were the only guests I was a little worried when I saw the wide range of dishes offered on the menu.  I asked the man what he would recommend, and he suggested a fish curry (the kids chose ham.)  All the food was great.  It was only later, after ordering a fried banana dessert, that I realized I didn’t need to worry.  The owner came over and regretfully told us that his son had scoured the village, but could not find any bananas, would we like the coconut dessert instead?  I realized then that the 14 or 15 year old boy who had been zipping in and out on his motor bike was his dad’s gofer, he was going for whatever fresh ingredients were needed for the dishes we ordered.

At the airport on the way home, we ran into some Singapore friends who had also taken advantage of the school break.  Comparing notes, we realized that, there is still a whole other Bali to experience.  So we will have to go back and shop the stalls in Ubud, climb Mt. Agung, have a Balinese creambath, and maybe even check out the scene at Kuta beach (with the infamous Kuta Cowboys) on the other side of the island.  In the meantime, we brought home a bag of Amed salt bought from a woman who spends her days pouring seawater into long hollowed out logs, then letting it evaporate in the hot Bali sun.  Sprinkled on our ordinary food, it tastes a little like a Bali dream.

Who's The Fairest One Of All?

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?  Snow White? Really? 

Ok, here is a confession, I love to look at fashion magazines.  It is a guilty pleasure.  And, what with all of the travel coming to Singapore and planning the move, I have had more than the usual opportunity to indulge in the last year.  Since western magazines are ridiculously expensive here ($18 for Vogue!), I have recently taken the opportunity to check out some local magazines.  While the overall themes are pretty similar, there are some striking differences in the local flavor of unattainable beauty and style.  

In the U.S. in the last decade or so, the fashion and beauty industries have been patting themselves on the back for the emergence of a more diverse beauty ideal, evidenced by some of the beautiful women of color who are now shilling for big cosmetic companies and appearing on the covers of magazines.    

I had imagined that moving to Southeast Asia, to a country that has existed as a multi-cultural society since at least the 19th Century -- it is hard to argue that Sir Stamford Raffles and his colleagues could have made much headway without the Malay, Chinese, Arab and Indian merchants and business men who settled here -- these folks would at least have the whole multicultural ideal of beauty thing down cold.

I may have been naive.  

I won’t get into the underlying social issues relating to skin color in this country, because frankly, I don’t completely understand them myself yet.  What I can say, though, is that white skin is big business here, and the message is: the whiter the better.  Magazines, billboards, cosmetic counters, and drugstore shelves are filled with products promising “ultimate whitening,” “extra whitening,” “sparkling white,” “increased fairness,” and, these aren’t just Asian brands.  Almost all of the major western skincare lines, whether sold in drugstores or department stores, have a “whitening” product line for sale here.  I am trying to imagine the response in the U.S. to a media blitz promoting a product promising “white perfect, transparent rosy whitening.”  It isn’t pretty.  And, while the local fashion magazines do feature Asian women predominantly, these women are generally those with remarkably pale complexions.    

However, I suppose that in a “best of two evils” analysis, there is a positive side to this “fairness” frenzy.  People of all shades take care of their skin here.  Women wear hats and carry metallic lined umbrellas to keep the sun off their skin.  Sidewalks are shaded by large awnings and umbrellas are plentiful at pools and beaches.  I have even seen road workers setting up large umbrellas to protect them from the sun.  And sunscreen is a given, with SPFs of 50 plus being the norm.  It appears that anything less than an SPF of 20 or so isn’t even always marked on the label of some lotion bottles, they are just labelled as “whitening” or containing “UVA/UVB protective filters.”  I don’t know what the country’s skin cancer rates are, but there are a lot of beautiful women (and men) walking around this town with remarkably beautiful skin.  Even the elderly ladies doing Tai Chi in the mornings at the Botanic Gardens have smooth, firm skin. 

Let’s face it, Coco Chanel didn’t do western women any favors back in the 1920s when she came back from her holiday in the South of France with a tan.  We pale, freckled types might all have been better off health-wise if the Victorian preference for pale skin had prevailed.

So, all deeper issues aside (and as a woman who admittedly hit the baby oil bottle too hard and too often as a teen in Colorado), I was game to see if I could purchase a little redemption in a bottle.

A few weeks into our stay here, I went to our local Watson’s Pharmacy to see what I could find.  Stumped by the sheer number of whitening products (I was also hoping for a  “reduction of dark spots,” the remnants of old sun damage), I asked the advice of one of the sales women.  She helped me to select a “whitening essence” to use under my sunscreen / moisturizer, and a “whitening mask” to use a couple of times a week.   We’ll see how it goes.

“So what else do you need?” she asked, giving me the once over as we moved toward the register.  “How about slimming?”

Slimming??!!?!?  I looked toward the row of shelves she was indicating and saw an array of supplements and products that rivaled the skin whiteners in sheer numbers.  I assured her that my somewhat curvy Western frame suited me just fine, paid for my products and fled.  

By the Light of the Silvery Moon

I was wandering through Borders a few weeks ago, taking in a dose of air conditioning to perk me up for the walk home, when I saw the first of what turned out to be many headlines in the local health and fitness magazines on the same topic:  “How to Survive Mooncake Season.”

Mooncake season?  Huh?  I had no idea!

Mooncakes are small, round, beautiful pastries traditionally given as gifts and eaten during the Chinese mid-Autumn festival.  The more traditional ones are filled with red bean paste or lotus seed paste and sometimes yolks from salted duck eggs (which tastes better than it sounds).  However, there are literally hundreds of choices, as my daughter and I discovered when we went to buy a box to take to dinner at a friend’s house.  Not only were there an amazing number of choices (including mint chocolate chip, yam, green tea, even tiramisu), but the lovely lady selling them would not hear of us making a selection without tasting them all! 

All of this pastry eating leads up to the mid-Autumn festival, or moon festival, held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, a day that generally coincides with the full moon and, in the Western calendar, the autumnal equinox. 

A joyous festival, traditionally preceded by the harvest and a settling of all delinquent accounts, the whole idea is to relax and celebrate.  It celebrates the moon goddess, Chang’e, who lives in the moon with a jade rabbit.  The stories of how she became immortal vary, and sometimes contradict each other, but most involve her unintentional separation from her beloved husband, Hou’yi the archer, and an elixir of life that was supposed to make both of them immortal, so they can be together forever.  However, vice and treachery intervene and only Chang’e takes the elixir, but the double dose lifts her toward heaven.  In one story, Chang’e decides to live in the moon because it is closest to the earth and her heart remains in the world of mortals.  In some versions of the story, Hou’yi gets to visit Chang’e each year, on the night of the moon festival.   

Down here on earth, we and many other families, gathered in the moonlight to look at the many beautiful and elaborate lanterns hung in honor of the holiday, and to enjoy the night.  Children carry their own lanterns, often lit by candles, couples snuggle on benches, and people write wishes on red ribbons attached to shiny disks and throw them into a beautiful “Wishing Tree.”

Frankly, this is my kind of holiday.  Walking in the moonlight with the people I love best, eating cake, and hoping dreams will come true.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

How Did I Get Here?

You may find yourself in another part of the world

You may ask yourself, how do I work this? 

You may ask yourself, how did I get here? 

-- From Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime”

How did I get here?  Good question!  I am a confirmed homebody.  My family had a comfortable life in the Philadelphia suburbs with good friends, good jobs, cats, a garden....  What am I doing sitting on the balcony of an apartment in Singapore, drinking coffee, watching geckos, acting like I live here?  Frankly the mind boggles.  But here I am.

I will say right up front, we are not the typical, adventurous, expat family.  My last major move was in 1985, from the house I grew up in in Colorado, to college in Pennsylvania.  I moved to the Philadelphia area after college and pretty much stayed put for the next 20 years or so.  To say that picking up and moving to the other side of the world is completely out of character would not be an understatement.  

But the truth is, from the time my husband M came home from a trip to Japan a little over a year ago with the whiff of an idea that this might be a good job for him, it just felt right to all of us on some basic level (even when we were all feeling a little queasy at the same time.)  Sure there were plenty of good reasons not to even consider it, but there was something compelling about the idea.  A chance to do something life altering not only for ourselves but for our kids who, at ages 9 and 12 seem to be a perfect age for an adventure like this.  The reasons to go for it kept stacking up.

And, of course, in the back of my head was that great Mark Twain quote: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.”  So we sailed and here we are, the kids are in school and making friends, M is buzzing along getting things done in his new job and I am...hmm, well, that is the story of this blog.

The great opportunity for me in this adventure is the chance to put aside the work I had been doing for nearly 20 years as a legal journalist and writer and find out the answer to the question:  “What would I write if I weren’t writing for money?”  The answer so far?  “Umm...do Facebook status updates count?”  (There is no arguing that cash is a great motivator.)

The good news is, I am now feeling a very strong itch to write about this exciting, strange, crazy experience.  So really, this blog is mostly for me, to get me writing and keep me writing and see where that might lead.  But I also know that on any trip, it sure is nice to have company along the way.  I am hoping a few friends will join me for the ride.

So I won’t be starting at the beginning.  All good intentions aside, that ship has sailed.  Rather, I will start where I am right now and see where this adventure leads.  The last few weeks have been dizzying at best.  Life is exhausting when every single thing you do is a new adventure, from figuring out where to buy groceries and how to get around, to learning new laws and, more practically, learning how to cross the street all over again (the cars come from the other direction here.)  But now it seems the spinning has stopped, we are settling in, making friends, there is food in the cupboards, and I have stopped nearly walking into elderly ladies on the sidewalks (somehow they always seem to zig when I zag).  I can now start looking forward from my new vantage point, 180 degrees from where I started.

In future posts, I will share my adventures at the Giant Hypermarket, encounters with monkeys who think they are people, how 20 hours (more or less) on a plane can defeat even the most ambitious plans, life with geckos, feeding hungry ghosts, eating cake in the moonlight, getting up the nerve to drive the car, the joys of Skype and Facebook, and what it really means to be a "Singapore Expat Wife."

And although I sometimes have to stop for a minute and remind myself that, yes, this is my real life, I am finding that, in many ways it is still “the same as it ever was.”