And the winner is …. STAY!!!!

In the end, I really was always going to choose to stay. I feel too much loyalty to the project, and to my staff, and I really want to see it through to the end. It’s been a year already (time flies when you’re stressed to your eyeballs), but what’s another six months? Especially if I get to see all the latrines and wells finished, the community happy, and be a part of the completion and handover of the project to the community and Indonesian Red Cross. That would give me a great sense of satisfaction.

While this place certainly has its drawbacks:
- It really is the middle of nowhere …
- Friends and family not here!
- Limited social life and opportunities to have any sort of relationship with ‘that special someone’
- Same same food all the time…
- Ongoing staff issues and office politics (that’s probably the thing that irks me most about this place)
- Being the ‘poor cousin’ of the Banda Aceh office and regularly forgotten and/or ignored
- Extra lengthy procedures for buying anything, especially since the investigation, not to mention forests’ worth of paperwork for everything!
- Logistical nightmares, including materials being difficult to procure, corruption, shit roads … the list goes on …
- I am always a novelty wherever I go (“HELLO MISTER!!!!” and other things yelled out at me, not to mention teenage boys regularly gesturing that familiar hand signal of people f*$#ing – which I hate - or men flashing their cocks at me when I'm walking on the road. Twice I tell you, TWICE!)
- The power dropping out on a regular basis … speak of the devil. HA! It just did then.

It also has a lot of positives:
- I work with a great WatSan team, and general ARC team in Simeulue;
- I get to go out in the field whenever I like and don’t have to be stuck in the office;
- I’m my own boss (well, for my program anyway);
- There is a great group of expats living here, who make life tons of fun;
- It’s a beautiful place to live, not to mention a recreational paradise. For example: I get to play tennis every day, and go kayaking/swimming/surfing/ snorkelling/fishing/boating on the weekends;
- Living and working in a different culture is really interesting;
- I get the opportunity to travel on my breaks;
- I’m getting good at speaking Bahasa Indonesian;
- I don’t have to pay rent or electricity or car or anything really except food, and while I’m not getting paid very much I’m not spending much either, so I’m saving my money; and, last but not least:
- The quiet life ain’t so bad. :)

Plus, I know that when I go home, after the initial fun stuff – catching up with everyone and drinking lots of beer and seeing all the little changes that have happened in my absence, the up-shot of it all is: Nothing really changes back at home. While I do miss everyone a lot, and doing all the normal things, not to mention the comforts of home, I am enjoying living and working in Simeulue.

While I only have a skeleton of a team at the moment, and I’ve been very busy (read stressed) since my engineers left, it’s actually been very good for me to have to cover their workload – I am much more familiar with how everything works, the components of our latrine design, how much things actually cost, and the processes involved in making things happen. Before, most of this was the engineers’ job, and I just signed a lot of papers J. Now that I have to do it all myself, I have a greater appreciation of how much work is involved in doing it, and am more familiar with the nitty-gritty of my project. It’s a good thing. I feel that my title of WatSan engineer is now actually a bit more applicable. :)

I seriously considered going back to my old job, but I know that I would be way too restless with it – I was last time I went back there, and that was only after one year, let alone two! Plus I know that a lot of the projects I’d been working on will still be there (it is government after all).

Plus I think that when I do go home, it’s time for a change. If I decide to stay in Oz and not do another stint OS, I want to get a new job, have a change in career, and possibly even move away from Adelaide for a while – Melbourne looks good J Or somewhere completely different. I don’t know if I could go back to working in an office all day, especially after 2 years with Red Cross working in the field. I like the idea of working in a national park, or working with refugees from Liberia, or something like that. Maybe even pursuing some extra education or artistic pursuits. Who knows? Or maybe I’ll just throw it all in and travel for a year. That always sounds good :)

But for now, it’s all about Simeulue. Of course I’ll cruise home to see everyone for Xmas, but until then they’ll have to wait. And I don’t mind, until then I’ll keep enjoying my experience here.

And the good things is, I’m allowed to have a whole month’s holiday – WOOHOO! Which is just what the doctor ordered. Getting off Simeulue and not thinking about work for a month will be what I need to refresh and refocus on getting my project finished. I’ll get to hang out with four of my my best mates – two of them my brother and sister – which is the part I’m looking forward to the most.

You would not believe how excited I am getting.

I love random adventures

Random adventure #1: our August trip in Indo, involving Ange and the Scotts, just got better: Dad rang me with the news that my brother Dan is coming too! Sweet!!!! I can’t wait. And it’s only 3 weeks away! Yeeeeharrrr!

They’re chronologically out of order, but random adventure #2 goes a bit like this:

On Friday, I got a sms out of the blue from my mate James. It said (and I quote): “Hi Jac. I am on a container ship just passing Jakarta heading to Singapore. You close by maybe? Hope you are well. James.”

As a matter of fact, yes, yes I am. This whole screwed-up visa renewal thing was timed fortuitously with James’ one day stop-over in Singapore. Awesome!

I like it when things work out like this. Especially when they come after such frustrations from incompetent people…

So, when I arrived in Singapore this morning, I checked into my hotel, cruised down to Boat Quay and had a nice lunch and a few beers with James. It was great to see him, it’s been ages and it was a little surreal to see such a familiar face in a familiar city that’s not in Australia! I caught up on all the news from home, and then found out about his adventure on the container ship.

James first mentioned his idea to travel back to England (he’s a pom by trade) by container ship a couple of years ago, and it’s cool that he’s gone and done it. He is one of only two ‘passengers’ on the ship Alexandra somethingorother, a German ship, and rest of the people on board are either the Eastern European crew or the Filipino deckhands. Sounds like a nice life: a nice front-of-ship-facing window looking out over the containers to the horizon; all their meals with the captain and crew; playing ping pong; reading books; tax free grog; star gazing parties; karaoke ... It will take him 32 days to get there, stopping off at Singapore, Colombo, Egypt and Italy on the way. Not a bad way to spend a month I reckon!

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get past the gate into the port to get an insider’s tour of the ship, so I just wandered back to Chinatown, a part of Singapore I hadn’t been to yet. It’s a cool place to hang out, lots of good food stalls, markets and temples to visit. I really like Singapore – it’s such a multicultural place with an interesting history and while it is essentially an uber-modern city with skyscrapers, flashy shopping malls and sanitary streets, it still retains its ethnic heritage in the Chinatown, Little India Malay and Kampong Glam quarters.

So once I get my visa back tomorrow, it’s back to Simeulue and back to the field. Looking forward to it. Kevin07 – oh yeah, we got a new Paul! – will be coming as well. I forgot to write about my new boss. He arrived this week. An Irishman by birth, he lived in Australia for a while, and recently married an Indonesian lass who he met while working in neighbouring Nias Island. He’s a very intense guy and has spent long hours in the office this first week getting to know all the staff individually and hearing all their stories and gripes and project/staff histories. Seems very no-nonsense, just the sort of person we need to sort out this bloody mess of an office. So, we’ll see how it all goes.

Sad news and tiring travel.

I managed to (easily) convince my boss to allow me to go to the ‘Konferensi Aceh Hijau’ (Green Aceh conference) in Banda Aceh this week. It was all about sustainable fisheries, and not at all related to my job, but definitely relates to my background and interests!

I only managed to get to lunch on the first day when mum rang with the news that my nanna had passed away. Nanna Symonds has been in the nursing home in Jamestown for around 2 months, she had recently suffered from renal failure, and things had really gone downhill the last few weeks. She was unable to do anything herself any more. She apparently died peacefully, not in any pain, and with someone by her side, early on Wednesday morning. While I was relieved that her demise was short-lived, it still came as a big shock and I was really upset. I had spoken to Nanna a week or so before, and even then I knew she wouldn’t be around for much longer. But I never got to see her or spend any time with her before she died, which is really sad. But in some ways I am glad that my last memories of her are when she was in good mental and physical health, rather than on her deathbed.

What was even more stressful was that I only spoke to mum around 2pm Wednesday, and the funeral was only 48 hours later. At the time I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get there. The expense didn’t worry me – it was the time I had available to do it!

I was lucky enough to have the support of my country manager and admin team in Banda, who pulled a bunch of strings to get me home for the funeral. This in itself was a mammoth journey, one I was almost not prepared to do when I first found out: a nine hour, security-cleared, overnight drive in convoy from Banda Aceh to Medan Wednesday night, because there were no seats left at such short notice; a flight to Jakarta, to get my passport – I had sent it there to get a visa! D’oh! – another flight to Singapore; and 5 hours hanging out in the airport until my 8 hour flight back to Radelaide. Then it was a 2.5 hour drive home to Jamestown. Phew!

But I was really glad that I made the effort to get home. It was my first family funeral, and I would have regretted it forever had I not. I felt good to give my Pappa, Dad and his sisters support, as well as to see my other family members who I don’t see all that often. It was nice to be a part of a celebration of the life of someone as special as my Nanna.

Enroute I wrote a poem for her, with some input from Ange by phone from London. After two of my Aunties and my Dad had read their pieces at the funeral, I read the poem, and was so tired and emotional I burst into tears quite a few times ‘on stage’. I felt quite embarrassed at the time, but was helped along by nods of agreement from all of the other grandchildren sitting in the front rows of the church, as I read out our memories of our amazing Nanna. And hey, if you can’t cry at a funeral, when can you?!

What I was most disappointed about was the lack of time that my family spent in Jamestown for the funeral. Mum and dad had organised a lunch before the funeral at Nanna and Pappa’s house, and on the morning of the funeral they called and said they wouldn’t come, and would just come straight to the funeral from Radelaide. Mum had spent a lot of time preparing food for everyone, and had it all set up, and they pulled out at the last minute. As usual, Mum didn’t say anything but I know she was disappointed. And once the funeral niceties were over – in fact even before everyone had left the church hall – they had to rush back to Radelaide, one family to fly back to Melbourne, one for a wedding, and the other because they were busy arranging the sale of their house.

I just felt that they don’t place much importance on their family. Maybe it’s just a different way of looking at things and different priorities to me. But I would have thought that they could have at least stayed around after the funeral was over to spend some quality time with each other, especially for Pappa’s sake. And I also feel that they take for granted the amount of work, time and effort that mum and dad have put in to take care of Nanna and Pappa, especially over the last few years as they have become older and more frail. It’s a thankless task, and while I’m sure they do appreciate it, I don’t think they realise just how much of a strain it is on M&D, and the size of the commitment. And Pappa will need extra care now that Nanna is no longer with us. It just makes me so sad that they don’t seem to care. Surely it wouldn’t have been difficult for them to take a few days off from their jobs – they’re all wealthy enough, not to mention working for themselves – to spend at ‘home’ with their family.

Anyway, enough griping. The fun part of all of this was hanging out with my brother Dan on the journey up to and back from Jamestown. It was bloody freezing in Radelaide, and I only had summery Indonesian-weather clothes. And I was wearing sandals! So I raided Dan’s beanie and jumper, but I had my feet up on the dash to get the heat from the heater vents, because the passenger window of Dan’s car is missing! And has been for about a year since someone broke into our little Suby. In fact I must say that Suby looks a lot worse for wear since Ange and I sold it to Dan. It looks like five cars have rammed it simultaneously.

So in summary, I had freezing cold air blasting in, and the heater going full bore in order to try and stay alive, all the way to Jamestown. Gold!

And then back to Indonesia on Monday. Only a short visit, but well worth the effort. And on my return to Indo, yet another travel fuck-up to make me more stressed. On Friday, when I was in transit to Australia, I specifically asked the admin team in BA for advice regarding renewal of my visa, because I knew it was single entry. I was informed that I actually didn’t need to get a new one; given the timing of the funeral with the request, I was in transit to get to it, and the fact that I think the team knows how to do its job, I thought nothing further of it. Maybe I should have checked it again, but it’s the reason I asked in the first place.

Anyway, so I rocked in to Medan’s Polonia Airport with a bit of a strange feeling of a new talent – future-telling. I had that sinking feeling and just knew that when I got to the customs desk they would ask my where my visa was and not let me through. And that’s exactly what happened. And it’s all because the admin staff in BA didn’t check my visa status properly – it was just assumed that I had a multiple entry visa because the other delegates do. So, on arrival in Medan airport and getting entry refused, I directly called them for advice on the type of tourist visa to get – and one week was advised. Sure, it would only take a couple of days to get the new one. So I paid up.

Then, when speaking to them about it later, and finding out that they even asked each other and all agreed that I had a multiple entry visa, but didn’t actually check it (stupid idiots), they said it didn’t matter because I had a month to get it all sorted. Directly after advising me to just get a one week tourist visa! What is wrong with these people? It really makes me worried that they are responsible for organising so much… Anyway, so now I have to get back to Singapore in a short timeframe to avoid getting another transit visa (or overstaying in-country and having to pay a fine later!).

What makes me so frustrated about this whole thing is that I was just IN Singapore and could have stayed a bit longer to get the visa. And then when I rocked up at the hotel I didn’t have a room booking, even though I’d already had it confirmed by admin. Totally not a big thing, but all the little things had added up by then and I was mighty tired, not to mention pissed off! And I then I couldn’t get hold of my admin staff in Simeulue to assist me and find out if I should stay in Medan and get a flight at short notice, or fly all the way back to Simeulue, only to then fly back to Medan AGAIN in order to go to Singapore AGAIN. So I spent a frustrating day in Medan stressfully waiting to see if I should take the afternoon Susi flight back to Simeulue, or stay in Medan.

In the end, they managed to find me a flight on Sunday to Singapore, so I cruise there on Sun, get the visa Mon, and come back to Sim Tues morning. At great expense to ARC, all because of stupid idiots in Admin. Ahh why can’t things just be simple. At least they got it right when they sent me home for the funeral. If they’d stuffed that up, I would have gone stark raving mad.

Right, from now on I won’t air my dirty laundry. But I just had to do it to get it out of my system. Humble apologies, faithful readers.