Every Day Is Equinox

It's kind of cool living here on the equator.  Every day is equinox.  The only seasonal differences have to do with the amount of rainfall and where the Sun rises and sets against the sky.

The monsoon season is drawing to a close now.  Back in October, everyone was preparing for the worst, since conventional wisdom has it that every five years, there's a major flood in Jakarta (this being the fifth since the last biggie).  We seemed to have dodged the bullet.  Sure, there were some heavy rains and high water, but being a native Houstonian, I didn't find them to be exceptional.

Right now, we're enjoying the two weeks in between Wet and Dry seasons, where there's a pleasant breeze as the winds shift to the south, the skies clear and Jakarta is almost pleasant for a moment.

The Sun is shifting from the southern sky to the northern, which is nice since my porch faces the north and my plants can get some badly needed light for the next six months.  If I stand facing the sunset, then to my right is Spring and to my left is Fall.

The other difference is that in the coming six months, the Sun will rise and set a little after 6 o'clock.  During the other half of the year, it's a little before.  Regardless, every day is 12 hours, come hell or high water, which incidently is a pretty good description of the seasons here.

Monsoon season is rather interesting.  Many Westerners think of it as non-stop rain for six months, which is not true.  In fact, the normal cycle is to have moments when the sky gets dark and foreboding.  Then the sky literally splits asunder and water falls so fast it doesn't even bother to form drops.  This normally lasts about 10 or 15 minutes, and usually occurs just before sunrise or just after sunset.

There are some days where it's rainy all day, but it comes in blasts rather than unending rainfall, like Houston. The storms are sometimes accompanied by strong winds and even tornado-like destruction, though no one claims to have ever seen a funnel cloud.  It's almost like the wind gets channeled into a strong tube that levels everything in its path.

If you get out of the city and find some relatively dark skies, you can see Orion and the Magellanic Clouds in the same night, not to mention the Southern Cross and Microscopium, and other southern asterisms.

Right now, the fruit trees are busting with goodies.  My apple tree on the porch is offering up some delicious little pink apples that are about half-way between sweet and sour.  The markets are overflowing with fruit.  My wife just bought a bunch of manggisan (mangosteen) and some pisang raja (king bananas).  Until I came here, I had no idea there were so many kinds of bananas.  I've counted as many as 15, ranging from thumb-sized sweet boogers up to mean green gnarly suckers as long as my arm.

There's rambutan and salak and kelapa and apulkat, and these cool little oranges about the size of a shooter marble, and limes that are so sour they turn your face inside out, but make hellacious margaritas!  My favorite are the buah naga, or dragon fruit.  They are about the size of a football, pink with yellow curly things all over them, and the flesh and taste are kind of like a pear with little black seeds sprinkled throughout.

The most unusual tropical fruit, which is saying a lot since they are all rather strange, is the durien.  This fruit has a near cult following in Southeast Asia.  From Thailand to the Archipelago, people build statues and have laws and even have entire restaurants devoted to this fruit.

It's about the size of a football (again), with a hard shell covered with formidable spines.  Flung hard enough, they would make useful weapons.  When they are ripe, the shell splits, which is about the only way you can get into the suckers.  The smell is, well, rather unique.  I've heard it described as rotten onions tucked inside year-old gym socks, and that's about as accurate as I've found.  Most Westerners won't go near the stuff, which is fine by me.  All the more for us brave ones.

When you open the shell, there are about four fleshy, pale yellow slugs.  They look a lot like stuffed chicken gut sausage, really.  The slugs are the part you eat.  Each one has a massive seed in the center.  Now this is the best part...the texture is like tapioca pudding and the flavor is indescribable.  There is nothing else like on Earth, that I've ever experienced.  It is wholly and completely unique.  And for those not brave enough to try it, there are pastries, cookies and even ice cream made from it.

In Singapore, it's against the law to take durien on the subway, and most hotels won't let you bring it inside, because Westerners find the smell highly offensive.  In Medan, there's a street restaurant only open at night that is famous for serving several varieties of the fruit.  If you find yourself in Medan and would like to try it, just follow your nose.  You can smell the place for about a half-mile around.  In Thailand there are festivals.  In Surabaya, you can find literally piles of it along the coast road.

An interesting note about durien is that as it ripens, the alcohol content rises in the fruit.  If you eat enough of it, you will get a hangover.  In some places, it is unseemly for unmarried couples to be seen eating it together.  It really is a unique phenomenon, and one that every Westerner visiting Southeast Asia should try.  Just hold your nose and be brave.

So today we celebrate the Equinox with a Hindu holiday called Nyepi.  It's basically a day of purification when Hindus (and anyone living in Bali) may not use any technology AT ALL.  Everything shuts down.  No traffic, no pedestrians, no home appliances, no TeeVee, and no one leaves the house.  The Hindus spend outrageous amounts of money on something called ogoh-ogoh.  These are elaborate constructs designed to entice and trap various spirits that 'pollute' the realm of the living throughout the rest of the year.  Folks place them in front of their homes and groups get together and erect huge ones in public areas.

The ogoh-ogoh cost anywhere from $100 to thousands of dollars, and can range anywhere from discrete displays in front of the house, to the size of a house.  And while these clean the spiritual environment, folks clean out their houses, the streets get swept and everything is polished up for the holiday.  Kind of like spring cleaning back home, but taken to the extreme.

Seems that even without seasons, there are seasons.  Many parts of the world have some kind of ritual surrounding this moment in time.  Even astronomers and astrologers calibrate equipment and measurements on the Vernal Equinox.  My ancestors built enormous bonfires and got ripped to the gills to celebrate, which I find a rather attractive way to observe this moment.

However you choose to celebrate your turning, just remember that for half the world, it's the Autumnal Equinox.  There's such a bias in common culture to the Northern and Western Hemispheres.  And us equatorial dwellers are always left out, either way.  Enjoy your Spring/Fall/Dry!

Down On The Farm

Being a seventh generation Texan, it just wouldn't be right if I didn't have a farm, even living on the far side of the Universe from home.

A while back, I bought 7 hectare (~17 acres) up in the mountains.  Beautiful place on the side of a hill with a view of three volcanoes and a couple of distant cities.  The previous owner had quite a spread, and for whatever reason, decided to break it up into parcels of 3.5 hectare and sell it off.  He even cleared the land down to the money-trees (fruit and jati, or mahogany).

When I first went up there, the land was cleared down to the dirt with a couple hundred jati trees, some avacado trees, several durian, and a metric ton of bananas.  This past weekend, it was already overrun with chili peppers, corn and cassava bushes.

The volcanic soil here is amazing.  I tell folks that if a woman stands in one place too long, she'll get in the family way pretty darned quick.  I've seen this type of thing down in Cental America, as well.  You can clear a patch down to dirt, and in about three months, it's overrun again.

Getting to the place is quite an adventure in itself.  Once you get to the end of the line, then keep going about another 8 miles and you'll be there.  You have to walk the last kilometer or so, because the road stops at the neighbor's horse barn.

As usual, everyone in Jakarta bails out into the country on the weekends, so the road up the mountains was at a dead stand-still starting just before the foothills.  We didn't want to wait, so we paid an ojek $5 to lead us up the hill on the back-roads.  Great investment!  Not only did we blow past all the traffic, but got a rather scenic tour of small villages, as well.

When we rejoined the main road, it was just in time to see two tour buses run into each other.  They had jumped into the opposing lane to try and run around the last bit of jam, but the one in front locked up to avoid killing a motorcyclist, and the second one smacked square into the first right next to us.  Rather exciting.  Keep in mind this is a tiny two-lane blacktop that puts the word "switch-back" to shame.  Everyone runs that road like they are Mario Andretti, passing on blind turns and cutting across hair-pins.  It's truly frightening, so I concentrate on the scenery and pray like it's the Second Coming.  So far...so good.

After about an hour or so, we came to a medium-size village on the main drag.  At that point, we turned off and started down a road that makes driving on the Moon look like a picnic in Kansas.  We drove through half a dozen smaller villages full of rice fields, strawberry patches and flowers.  It reminded me a bit of the back roads in Holland, only not as flat and a lot more gritty.

After a while, we came to a turn-off that lead up the mountain.  If the road we turned off was the Moon, then this one made the Moon look smooth.  The pavement ended after an hour or so, and it actually got smoother at that point.

We passed tiny villages, a lumber mill, and scenery that makes me gasp every time I see it.  Driving within inches of the mountain's edge, you can look down into a vast valley covered in dense jungle.  Occasionally, you see some monkeys, if you look sharp.  Up the hill in the opposite direction, there are mahogany trees six feet in diameter and nearly 200 feet tall, and an undergrowth of smaller trees covered in orchids.

Finally, the road just ends.

The neighbor has a beautiful spread with orchards, a horse barn, a couple of houses, and a bunch of ducks.  we parked here and talked with the caretaker for a bit while we waited for the motorcycles to show up.  When they got there, we mounted up for the last leg of the journey.

The footpath was slick as a weasel.  It had just rained an hour before we got there.  We managed to get up the hill and level off on the path to the farm.  Finally, none the worse for wear, we rounded the bend and came onto our land.

After the engines cut off, you realize just how far you are from anything.  It's so quiet, you can hear your blood cells bumping into each other.  Just some birdsong and the hum of hornets the size of sparrows, and a light breeze in the leaves.

I stood for a minute, sucking in the clean, cool air.  You can't find a spot anywhere in Jakarta like this.  And with the recent rain, the earthy smell and flower scents were overwhelming.

The caretaker had planted corn, so there were rows upon rows of it down the side of the hill.  The jati trees stood tall and straight as arrows, with their strange puffs of leaves way up at the top.  They were nearing 20 cm in diameter, and would be ready for harvest early next year.  There are about 150 of them.  There's also five golden jati trees.  They're protected and you have to have a government permit to cut them commercially, but you can cut and use them on your own land.

I picked up a good walking stick and started off down the hill.  At the first banana tree, I stopped and picked a hand of pisang ambon which are little suckers just bigger than my thumb, and really sweet.  They were warm from the sun and perfectly ripe.

A little further and I checked the durian.  Wasn't ready yet.  Maybe another two months.  Curious fruit, too.  It can get to the size of a rugby ball, covered in a very thick, hard shell covered with large, mean spines.  It smells like a pair of old gym socks full of rotten onions, and it's delicious.

When it's ripe, the husk splits open, giving you a fighting chance to get at the goodies inside.  If you don't end up in the hospital, then what you find is about four or five flesh, pale-yellow, worm-like things inside.  Each one has a singe, large brown seed in it.  You peel the worms out and start snacking!  It has the consistency of a thick custard and a similar flavor, though it's completely unique, like nothing I've ever eaten before.  If it's overripe, it has a slightly bitter taste and will get you drunk.  In fact, it's unseemly for unmarried couples to be seen eating it together in public.

Next stop was the avocado trees.  The fruit was still small and green, and hard as rocks.  By September, they'll be the size of softballs and rather good, though the flavor is not the same as the black Hass variety back home.  Still, they make pretty good guacamole.  From the looks of things, I'll be making guacamole for the entire neighborhood, come the time.

At the bottom of the hill is a river with ice-cold, clear water.  It has plenty of lele, which are small catfish.  Very popular around these parts.  There are a couple of other varieties of fish, but I haven't learned the names of them yet.

Later, I plunked down in the shade with my bananas and ate my fill.  For good measure, I added a mango and part of a papaya, as well.  I just relaxed and let the wind caress me with its chilly tendrils.  Through the trees, I could see the outlines of the mountains in the distance, and the large valley stretching out into the haze.  I drank in the smell of sweet Earth and listened to the birds I couldn't find, and whose songs I have never heard before.

I dreamed of the house I will build at the top of the hill.  The top will be level with the footpath, and the house will sink three stories into the ground, with the entire downhill side being nothing but glass.  From the top, I will have an elevated walkway that will run out to a landing in the tree tops.  At the base will be a fish pond and swimming hole.  The view will face the rising Sun and offer a commanding perch over the surrounding jungle.  There will be chickens and goats, and a horse, of course.

Since there's no grid there, everything will be solar-powered, and water will come from a well down by the river.  I'll put up a four-foot stone wall around the living area, but the rest will be a controlled kind of wild.  The chickens will eat the bugs and the goats will clear the undergrowth, and both will be on the menu, as well as good home-made goat cheese.

I mapped it all out in my head, while my wife took photos so I could design the place.

As the sun set and the air cooled quickly, we saddled up the motorcycles again.  Back down the horse barn.  There we sat with the caretaker, who loaded us up with all kinds of strange and interesting fruit.  I also bought five macadamia saplings from him for $2 (all together).  We ate and joked and hung out until dark, then it was back down the mountain and back to the crazy rat race that is Jakarta.  At the tea plantation, the air warmed up again, and soon the fog of bus exhaust and the roar of motorcycles were assaulting us again.

Won't be long, though, and I'll have my house on the farm, and later, my retirement home.  With any luck, I'll be buried there, too.

You can take the boy off the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy.