
When the food bills came, interestingly, my full name was spelled correctly and I seem to have just achieved an old patron award, which I guess I could accept, I have been coming here every year since 2008. It’s adorable and nice to be appreciated with a discount off my food bill too. Seeing my full name on the bill brings me two thoughts, one is of warm and fussy thought of coming home, and one of paranoia of ‘what else do they remember of me?’ They seem to be indifferent about me telling them I'm staying at some other place near by, a place without a pool, so I asked if I may use their pool, and ofcourse the Javanese always says 'yes, ofcourse, no problem'.
Sleep came quite easily, the bed was comfortable and the night was cool. It sounded like rain came in the night. The sun rises really early here, it's 5 am somewhere in the distance there is already sounds of construction, and straw broom being dragged to cleaning floors. People get up early here, around 4-5 am there are all kinds of movement and a bunch of little birds are chirping. I sat at the back porch watching the morning sun beat down on the paddy fields, and a man fertilizing his paddy plot. The plot immediately in front of the porch is already high, and when wind blows, the tip would swing every so gently and created beautiful waves of green leaves. As I was sitting there quietly, and present in the midst of my country's agrarian wonder fields, I grew to notice the sounds around me, creatures in the distance, chickens, trickling water, and a distant sound of Marvin Gaye's Aint No Mountain High Enough, and started to smile to myself and thought how cool that the workers next door was listening to that while they are working, how cool that they know Marvin Gaye? usually they don't go past the slow rock ballads of the 80's like Foreigner. The funny thing is that this one song kept repeating itself, or rather that one verse of Aint No Mountain High Enough….and I thought maybe is it because it’s a cassette tape and they only had that one song that repeats? I sat and tried to listen a little longer, and it was just that one verse repeating itself, how odd. I eventually got up to go find breakfast at the other porch, and as I walked inside my hut, Marvin grew louder and louder and it turned out the repeated verse came from my Iphone Alarm on the little wooden table in my hut.
....cause baby,
There aint no mountain high enough
aint no valley low enough
aint no river wide enough
To keep me from getting to you, babe
Sleep came quite easily, the bed was comfortable and the night was cool. It sounded like rain came in the night. The sun rises really early here, it's 5 am somewhere in the distance there is already sounds of construction, and straw broom being dragged to cleaning floors. People get up early here, around 4-5 am there are all kinds of movement and a bunch of little birds are chirping. I sat at the back porch watching the morning sun beat down on the paddy fields, and a man fertilizing his paddy plot. The plot immediately in front of the porch is already high, and when wind blows, the tip would swing every so gently and created beautiful waves of green leaves. As I was sitting there quietly, and present in the midst of my country's agrarian wonder fields, I grew to notice the sounds around me, creatures in the distance, chickens, trickling water, and a distant sound of Marvin Gaye's Aint No Mountain High Enough, and started to smile to myself and thought how cool that the workers next door was listening to that while they are working, how cool that they know Marvin Gaye? usually they don't go past the slow rock ballads of the 80's like Foreigner. The funny thing is that this one song kept repeating itself, or rather that one verse of Aint No Mountain High Enough….and I thought maybe is it because it’s a cassette tape and they only had that one song that repeats? I sat and tried to listen a little longer, and it was just that one verse repeating itself, how odd. I eventually got up to go find breakfast at the other porch, and as I walked inside my hut, Marvin grew louder and louder and it turned out the repeated verse came from my Iphone Alarm on the little wooden table in my hut.
....cause baby,
There aint no mountain high enough
aint no valley low enough
aint no river wide enough
To keep me from getting to you, babe