My strange connection to Robin Williams

Today I had to go to work early to fill out a bunch of forms to get my debit card for the bank here in Indonesia, after filling out all that paperwork I had a few hours to kill and walked to the mall to buy a bunch of pirated DVDs (my favorite thing about Indonesia; I bought 5 today for $2.50). While browsing the DVDs I came across a childhood classic, Hook, with Robin Williams as Peter Pan, Dustin Hoffman as Captain James Hook, and Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell. First, I believe this might be the only role in which I actually enjoyed Julia Roberts. She usually unnerves me in all of her roles. Especially Erin Brockovich, but maybe thats just because of my fear of strong, motivated women; who knows. Anyway, I realized as I was watching Hook that I was making some connections to the story and theme of the film with my current situation.

Now I realize this is my second blog referencing a Robin Williams movie as Mrs. Doubtfire was the topic of a previous discussion. I found it quite odd to be spoken to by two different Robin Williams films. I then realized he is also in a movie based on my highschool, MBA (Dead Poets Society), and the only film that can make me cry more than Rudy (Good Will Hunting). This seemed strange to me; of all the actors who make wonderful films, why is it that Robin Williams has been the one I am having the most connections with and finding most thought provoking. I can only hope it to be coincidence or proof of God’s twisted sense of humor, although it could be that I feel a connection because we are both hairy individuals. All I know is that I hope I don’t follow in the alcoholic and cocaine-addict footsteps of my new film idol (sorry John Cusak, you are now in second place).

But back to the point of this entry. As I was watching the movie I began to draw parallels to my own life. Robin Williams ends up on “a great adventure” as it is often called by the lost boys in which he becomes torn between this great adventure, this carrying on of youthful excitement, and his responsibilities back home with a family and job. In numerous scenes he forgets why he is even in Neverland (something most of the children who visited Michael Jackson’s version wish they too could do) only to be pulled back toward reality. It is a feeling I am quite familiar with; being youthful and trying to hold onto that as long as possible while occasionally forgetting that I am here in an attempt to grow. I am currently visiting Neverland by seeing parts of the world that were totally unknown to me. I travel with fellow “misfits” much like the Lost Boys. None of us are ready to grow up; there is a great fear to what lies ahead. In the film it is Peter’s “turning into an adult” that killed his ability to fly. I think that myself and probably many other TEFL teachers share a similar feeling. We see the adults around us who, to us anyway, look stuck; look as if they have forgotten how short and fun life can or should be. We are the ones who currently have the ability to fly, to go on adventures, to see new places, to live life. Now I admit this is an early 20s prejudice that is probably wrong, however it is still a feeling that is as of yet inescapable. I always hear my parents say how it is everything in their world to have a family, and I honest to God believe them, I just don’t think I am totally there yet.

Even Captain Hook is avoiding the ticking of time with his fear of clocks. Both Hook and Pan say that “To die would be a grand adventure.” I don’t think they mean they want to die, I certainly don’t mean for my connection to that statement to indicate as such (I don’t desire death, in case that was hard to understand...no suicidal thoughts here, just Steven Spielberg induced existential ones). However, I think they are saying that in their search for a life of youth and adventure the unknown of what death entails seems to have far more potential for adventure than the actual process of growing up. We have all seen people grow up, there doesn’t seem to be much adventure or excitement to it: get a job, settle down: eventually that routine turns into go to work, come home, eat dinner, fall asleep watching the 9pm news with the remote control resting on your beer belly. There is sense of repetition and boredom in what the average youth sees as adulthood. Now I assume that this is not actually the case as looks can be deceiving, just as well the look and appeal of adventure, or the closest we can come to Neverland, may also be deceiving us into this lifestyle.

The film ends with Peter Pan/Robin Williams realizing that his “happy thoughts” were based back in reality and before leaving Neverland he says “To live would be an awfully big adventure.” I guess what I am trying to say is that by taking my trip to Neverland through this experience I can both satisfy a very base and immediate desire to know that I am living a life worth living, one in which opportunities were seized, and also come to my own conclusion that “to live would be an awfully big adventure.” This begs the question as to if life is best lived in adventure (but relative solitude as close friends and family are hard to come by on the run) or if it is best lived in human connections that can carry onward even after we are gone. Mumford and Sons sings “The flesh that lived and loved will be eaten by plague. So let the memories be good for those who stay.” We all have to leave this life at one point or another, so is it best to live through love, or to live through experience. The first we can pass on, the second we can’t take with us. So as it was for Peter Pan; life, growing up, may take away our ability to fly, but perhaps there is something to be said for being grounded.

Anyway, I hope this makes sense to the rest of you. Maybe you can see a connection, or maybe you just see me as some self-obsessed egomaniac who can turn even a children’s movie into a metaphor for his own life. I think both may have some bearing. Well, I am off to find more Robin Williams connections in my own life, perhaps next up with be the genie from Alladin, wish me luck.

First Post in nearly 2 months.

My Recent Adventures

My first few months in Indonesia was filled with relatively little traveling. I left Surabaya all of one time from my arrival in late September until Christmas break. however, since Christmas I have really started to scratch the itch from the travel bug. Over Christmas I spent a week in Bali and since then have seen Probolinggo, Bromo, and Tretes. Most recently I traveled to Tretes for a weekend with two friends, Zac and Allan. Tretes is a beautiful mountain town about 2.5 hours from Surabaya. We decided to take our motorbikes up there for a weekend, leaving late Friday night and coming home Sunday mid afternoon. Tretes was absolutely beautiful. It was a bit cooler and the scenery was amazing. We couldn’t see much on the drive up as it was already dark, but regardless the drive up there was amazing. There is a sense of freedom that one feels while driving a bike “cross-country” that you miss while driving a car. Once up there we stopped into a hostel called Villa Putih that was very nice and costs the equivalent of $3.00 a night. During our days we wandered around the town and down some hiking trails that led to beautiful waterfalls. We stood at the top of the waterfall looking down into an amazing valley below us. During the nights we met a few local guys who took us out for a drink. It was a nice chance to practice and learn a bit more Javanese as they spoke no English. The drive back may have been my favorite part though. Since we left while the sun was still up we got to see the awe inspiring scenery as we drove down the mountain. Absolutely breath taking mountain-side terraced rice paddies with streams running through the middle. Tiny towns filled with nothing but rice farmers and colorful houses. It was one of my favorite experiences so far.

A few days before Tretes we took advantage of having a Thursday off for Chinese New Year and about 10 of us hired a car and driver to take us to Probolinggo and Bromo. In Probolinggo we hired a little john boat to take us out to sea where we chased after Whale Sharks in an effort to be able to swim with them. This tiny boat with no life-jackets and enough floatation rings for about 3 of us puttered along at the pace of a snail way out to sea. We saw beautiful, colorful fishing boats from Madura; one of which pointed us towards where they had seen some Whale Sharks. As we were chugging along towards the supposed Whale Shark spotting the boat needed more gasoline and a man poured more in while simultaneously smoking a cigarette. (if you haven’t figured it out by now, safety concerns are not of the upmost importance here). Once we saw the whale sharks everyone stripped down to their swimsuits and dove in after them. They are huge, amazing animals. Blue and what and grey and covered in spots as if wearing polka-dots. The mouth is shaped like the head of a vacuum cleaner and I believe it works in the fashion as the vacuum, sucking up plankton as if it were dust bunnies hiding under the couch. We swam right up next to them and they would slip underwater and pop back up 15 feet away. Some were more curious and swam directly towards us getting with arms reach. We noted how strange it is that we were swimming AFTER sharks and not the other way around. After splashing around for awhile, we all hopped back into the boat and began the slow chug back towards land. During this return trip one of the sharks actually ran head first into the boat, killing the motor temporarily.

After arriving back on shore, we loaded back into the rental cars and headed towards Mt. Bromo on our way home. Bromo is an active volcano that is currently erupting. Its eruptions are very rare, allowing people to live and farm on the mountain. It is a very popular tourist destination because of its amazing beauty. Bromo is one of the few places, outside of Bali, that has a majority Hindu population. There were beautiful statues of the Hindu deities dotting the road and villages as we made our way up the lush, green base of the mountain. As we made out way up, we noticed some majestic terraced rice paddies. Bromo’s volcanic soil causes it to be a great farming area. However, as we slowly ascended the winding roads the scene began to become more bleak. We began to notice ash on the side of the road piled up like gray snow on the side of the ride after the plows come down the streets. Also the fog covering the top of the mountain began to dissipate giving us a view of the massive black cloud spewing from the top of Bromo. When we reached as high up as were safely allowed to visit the scene became post-apocalyptic. Trees and plants were dead, covered in ash. Houses and whole neighborhoods were deserted and blanketed in ash. It looked like Mordor from Lord of the Rings. After seeing a place entirely devoid of life, we decided to go back down the mountain and return home. However, night fell as we were driving down and it began to rain ash. The windshield became impossible to see out of and the curves of the roads that hugged massive dropoffs down the side of cliffs became nearly impossible to navigate. We were stopping, getting out, and using our water bottles to clean the windshields in order to make it far enough until visibility was gone again, only to start the process over. Finally we made it past the range of ash-rain and all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Before these two brief trips however, I took my first extended vacation over Christmas break to Bali with my roommate Paul and our friend Allan. I was a bit nervous about the trip as they are both a little more wild than I am (or at least more wild than I am trying to be). Also, Paul is in his early 50s. I have never travelled with someone my parents’ age unless it was, of course, my parents. Paul also is a unique character. He looks well over his age because of his previous rock-star lifestyle and lack of about half of his teeth. He recently travelled to Thailand and while there had fake teeth made and fitted, but refuses to wear them because they feel funny now that he is used to having no teeth. Someone asked him about if he were excited to be able to eat an apple again with this fake teeth and he responded “I haven’t eaten an apple in 30 years, why the hell would I start now.”

We decided to take the train to Bali; it was about a 10 hour train ride. We departed around 10pm on a Friday night and a few hours into the ride decided to head to the food car to buy some beers. Unfortunately the people there looked at us as if we were crazy and offered some noodles or fried rice. Totally defeated and sober, we headed back to our seats to try and get some sleep. We were in “business class” which is actually bucket seats with no A/C and some interesting smells. Executive class is nice on Indonesian trains, but business class was just a slight upgrade over the train scene in Slumdog Millionaire. While my two travel companions laid out newspaper on the dirt covered metal floors and began to sleep the sleep that only prescription pain killers can induce, I was left to try and sleep without the aid of pills. Needless to say, I slept a total of maybe 45 minutes over the 10 hour trip. So after sleeping for 10-15 minutes at a time throughout the first few hours of the train, I decided to head to the space between cars. As I was walking towards the area between cars, I passed Paul sleeping on the floor and realized he was covered in ash. We had driven past Bromo as it was erupting and the cars had filled with ash (I soon realized that was why I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face about an hour earlier and explained the sulfur smell...I had assumed something caught fire and that caused the smoke, again safety not a big issue here). I was amused at how much he looked like a relic from Vesuvius, covered in ash, sleeping peacefully on his Christmas themed pillow. As I said before, safety is not the biggest concern here, so I joined a fellow sleepless traveler in opening one of the doors to the outside, catching some fresh air and watching the sun come up over the beautiful scenery.

After arriving at the end of Java, we unloaded the train and piled onto a bus that drove directly onto a ferry. We floated across the Bali Strait onto Bali island where the bus pulled out of the ferry and began a windy 3 or 4 hour trip to Kuta. Upon arrival to Kuta around 1pm we decided to first and foremost grab a beer and then find a hostel. After one beer turned into 3, we finally made our way to a little alley that Paul had stayed on before. We found a little hostel with yellow foam constituting a bed and an outdoor bathroom with no hot water. However, for $3.00 a night when the next cheapest thing in Bali costs $15.00 it seemed like a great find. It actually was a nice hostel and the staff was very nice. The biggest downside was the lady-boys who circled the area constantly trying to pick up us nice looking white boys. I believe my favorite part of the trip was one of them cornering Allan and grabbing his ass as she/he gave him a big ole kiss right on the kisser. I have never seen a look of fear like I saw at that moment. I nearly wet myself I was laughing so hard as we sprinted the last few meters back to the hostel. The next night Paul, our elderly companion, was stopped by the same lady-boy and he took off in a dead sprint (for about 5 meters, which he is convinced is the first time he has run in decades). The weather in Bali wasn’t great so we spent more time bar hopping than surfing or laying out, but it was still a great trip. Paul was a champ on this trip, by about day 4 he was still going out harder than any of us and smoking about 4 packs of cigarettes a day. His stomach started to get to him, so instead of taking it easy he just would sip from a Pepto bottle between beers and cigarettes.

While I really enjoyed the trip, Kuta beach was full of Aussies. Aussies are the Jersey Shore cast of the rest of the world. They apparently have a huge aversion to shirts that have sleeves on them. I have never seen so many sleeveless shirts. We stayed out of any and all night clubs because they steroid ridden monsters just wanted to drink and fight anything that moved (I think that included women as well). I honestly don’t know how American’s got the “ugly American” stereotype when compared to these guys (well actually I do, but if you put an American and an Aussie together on travels and didn’t tell people who was who, I think most people would pick the Aussie to be the “ugly American”). Kuta was very touristy though. It was what I imagine Cancun to be. Next time I go to Bali I think I will just rent a motorbike and see the rest of the island, some of the other beaches, Ubud, and some of the mountains and temples.

Anyway, that is all for my travels so far. Hopefully I will have more to write about soon as I have a trip to Jakarta planned in March and a week in India in April.