The Three- Hour Tour

In my youth, whenever I would go on a boat tour with my father, he would start singing the theme song to “Gulligan’s Island”.  The other day, my assistants and I went on a little Three-Hour Tour… and sure enough the theme song to Gilligan’s Island was in my head when we started.  It all began innocently enough, I was feeling like I didn’t have enough work to do with starting two research sites (why only work 14 hours a day, when you can work 18), that I figured I should check out a possible third site. The good news was that I could use my own boat to get to and explore the new site; the bad news was that we had to go out to sea to access the third river.  We arrived at the new river safely without any problems; after finding five proboscis monkey groups and buying some fresh fish at a boat thru fish shop (shop is a very generous word, basically a guy standing next to a cooler on a dock), we decided to head home.  As we approached the sea, I realized that this was not going to be a boat ride on smooth seas. I quickly wrapped all expensive electronic equipment into their various dry bags and boxes, tied everything down, and prepared for the ride.  We entered the sea, and when the first wave came over the edge of the boat…. I thought “Oh that wasn’t that bad”.  Then the second one came and smacked me in the face.  “Hmmm, sea water, good for the skin”.  As we headed out to sea, the waves started getting bigger and bigger, till the swells were about 3 to 5 feet.  Then just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the winds started to pick up, the sky turned an eerie shade of dark grey, and it started to pour.  There is wet, and then there is really wet, we had passed the point of being really wet, as my entire body had already started to prune.  As my teeth began to chatter, and I started thinking about how I could use my dry bags as floatation devices (shhhh don’t tell my mom, but I didn’t have my life jacket with me), my assistants (who don’t know how to swim) decided that maybe it was time to turn back.  As we arrived back to the town of exploration, the people we bought the fish from were laughing when a very water logged American got off the little boat.  Now you would think the story ends there… but the American can’t sit under an awning of a building in the pouring rain.  One of my assistants found a motorcycle to borrow, to transport me back to our house.  Funny thing is that now he insisted that I put on my poncho (had the poncho the whole time, but it was covering my equipment), and I prayed that the end of this adventure was not going to end in a motorcycle crash (since my helmet was sitting at home with my life jacket).   Eight hours of wearing my polar fleece, wool socks, and skiing liner gloves, I finally shopped shivering... and you all laughed at me when I packed that stuff to live at 1 degree south of the equator.  Needless to say, I might be sticking to only two sites.  

Interview Part 1

So I posted a blog asking for questions; however, I received no questions. That means that no one actually has any questions, no one is actually reading my blog anymore, or people have questions but keep forgetting to ask them (I wrote this before I got my one question… which I will answer).  Well, it really doesn’t matter which one of those things it is.  These days, I talk to myself a lot as I am the only one who speaks English or Spanish (two languages I feel fluent in) in hundreds of miles; I try to speak to the Indonesians in Spanish and they just look at me funny. Anyways, I talk to myself, so I figured I would just interview myself, since I have some questions. Here is part one of my interview.

Hi KT, thanks for taking the time to sit down for this interview, I know you have a busy field schedule.

Oh thanks Katie, but it is my pleasure to take the time and share my research with others.

Q. So to start off with let us cover some of the things you have mentioned in your previous posts.  First, are you still eating nasi goreng or has your diet changed?

A. Oh yes, my diet has changed a lot.  I like to divide my diet into 4 food groups, rice, msg and salt, eggs, and noodles.  Plain white rice is a staple in Indonesian food; they like to say, “if you didn’t eat rice, you didn’t eat”. Sometimes, rather than rice, we will eat ramien noodles, but usually it is noodles with a side of rice.  An Indonesian in my village would have a diet of rice and fish; however, since I still don’t eat fish, I eat eggs instead.  Oh yes, and msg is added to everything.  When I am living in town, I keep trying to buy veggies (which are rare and hard to come by); however, my host mom doesn’t really know what to do with them.

Q. Have you found any better coffee now that you are off the island of Java?

A. Yes, I have, but it actually has very little coffee in it.  My host mom makes this thing called kopi campur which translates to country coffee.  It is roasted fresh coconut, rice, and a little coffee.  It is pretty good, much better than instant.

Q. What is the hardest part of your job?

A. Many people would think it would be the snakes, or the heat or maybe the bugs, but I would have to say the loneliness.  When I was at school, everyone around me was working on a post graduate degree.  They understood the stress, the frustration, and the drive.  Currently, I am living in a town with a fairly poor population; most of the adults have a 6^th grade or maybe 9^th grade education.  Therefore, to have someone who is not just working on a college degree but a PhD is a bit isolating.  Add on top of that, I come from a very different country with a very different culture.  The loneliness is compounded by a ‘lack of understand’.  I can explain the lack of understanding in three ways.  First, although my Indonesian is getting better, there is still stuff that I just don’t get yet or can’t express.  Secondly, the people do not speak Indonesian to each other; they speak this local language (which of course there is no dictionary to it).  And finally, there are things I want to express that they just don’t have any concept of.  I think the best example of this is when my new thermometer came.  I didn’t know the word for thermometer but I showed it to my assistant.  He asked me what it was, and I said it is to know the temperature.  We ran into my other field assistant who has worked with scientists for years, and he said the word in Indonesian and explained it; however, there was still this question of what it was and why would you need to know the temperature.  I guess when your temperature ranges about 10 degrees Fahrenheit the importance of knowing the temperature is less important. There are three temperatures here, digin (cold, under 83 degrees), panas (from 83-90 degrees), and panas sekali above 90 degrees.  Therefore even when there are words, sometimes things just can’t be explained.  I thank all of you out there who have chatted with me or sent me emails, it really helps the loneliness, and I really appreciate it.