an entry somewhere else

I may seem to do an inordinate amount of complaining but sometimes it helps. This may be one of those times. The last 30 hours:

8p—I go to bed because I’m fairly sure I’ll get awakened by the 3-ish call to eat from the mosque. I’m pretty sure I’ll get awakened later at 5a by the church nearby. The church is far closer than the mosque.

8-10.30p—I float in and out of sleep before being awakened by a motorcycle driver that believes it is his duty to modify the exhaust to the loudest possible and rev the engine several times in front of my house before letting it idle. Of course, the idea of ‘louder is better’ for mufflers is not culture bound. I never liked it in America either.

00.27—Awoken by aforementioned motorcycle.

2.32—Awoken by a number of people in the street shooting the breeze. I’m irritated that no one in the neighborhood says a damn thing. I can complain in Indonesian but I can’t exactly respond to anything they would say. I stumble back to my bed and clamp a pillow over my exposed ear.

4ish—the muezzin chimes in. I fall back to sleep with no problems.

5a—local church uses megaphone to provide the village with morning services. Again, I try clamp pillow over exposed ear and grumble.

5.45a—church service ends.

6.15a—I get up 15 minutes before the alarm.

7.10a—leave for gym/work.

5.30p—return home. Speakers are blaring from across the street. I do a bit of work for tomorrow but end up leaving early for dinner/meeting with co-presenter of workshop for tomorrow. I mention to my supervisor from the language center that I need to find a new place to live. She has already paid for five months. I’m willing to fork over the cash for the months left and put it toward a new place. She’s paying around 125USD a month for this place anyhow. I don’t think I’ve had a full, undisturbed eight hours of sleep since I’ve arrived.

9p—return to home. The father of the family downstairs meets me when I pull up. We exchange pleasantries. It’s a birthday part across the street. He hopes it will end soon. I do, too.

It didn’t. I stayed up til 11.30p reading the 9/11 report before falling to exhaustion. I woke up again around 1a and stayed awake until the music was turned down at 2.30a.

I’m on the lookout for a new house after this workshop that I’m doing gets finished.