Let's Focus on the Positive, shall we?

So last night I saw something that one would normally only see at a rowdy soccer match. During the men's match, prior to ours, there was a controversial call by the linesman that lead to him being hit with a water bottle from the stands. This lead to the tossing of at least 4 more water bottles, fans on their feet yelling profanities and a good 10 minute delay in the match. Although this happened a couple weeks ago in another men's match, the Pro Liga committee had taken precautions to try and prevent this in the future. They were selling water in plastic bags(!!) as well as having stern meetings with the captains and teams to ask them not to question calls made by the officials. Well the 'bag-o-water' only lasted one weekend after that and, well it's difficult to keep cool with some of the reffing around here. There was a moment last night where I was a little scared for my life as the fans got rowdy, but then I remembered (see Feb19 blog): "Never be scared and love your life". These Indonesians sure are loud and rowdy, but they're just big softies deep down and really wouldn't get vicious. So yeah, that was exciting!!

Our game, wish it could compare, was an anticlimactic 4 set win. Our team is playing well and with the debut of "Team China" we are only that much stronger. The thing I've noticed about the teams here is that every one has their foreigner(s) but in matches, they really just cancel eachother out. This leads to the old adage: May the best team win. Imagine that! Volleyball is different over here. The only thing that is emphasized is hitting, and the more straight down, the better! Ask any foreigner how their body is holding up and they'll definitely whine about their shoulder. All we ever do, and this goes for every team, men and women, is HIT HIT HIT, and this against no block. I do have to hand it to my coach though, he is starting to incorporate more and more team-play into practices and I think this is the real reason our team is winning. As I spent the last week training on the B side, hitting against our starters, I've taken a new challenge on; and that is to not get frustrated at the defense (or complete lack-there-of) on my side of the court and actually try and teach them a thing or two about how rallies are extended in the rest of the world. I put myself in a position where the ball is most likely going to hit me if I don't dig it, they prefer to stand about a meter behind that spot, and flamboyantly flail as the ball hits the ground in front of them so as to give off the illusion that that ball was just hit too hard to dig! Frustration has led to finding humour in all this, believe me.

I also took it upon myself to take some stats on the teams that we will most likely meet in playoffs. I think I blew them away as our stats have so far been limited to those seen in the above photo (columns for missed serves, receptions, blocks, attacks and defence)!! I'm trying really hard right now not to make further comments on that!

Don't get me wrong, I am having a blast. Just trying to figure out if being on the bench of a winning team is better than being the only fish on a losing team. But as I think about it and my brain starts to hurt, my thoughts are interrupted by.......BALI, BALI, BALI!

It is what it is.....

"And in the Green corner......."

It’s been a while since I last wrote and I apologize to all you loyal readers out there, whomever you might be. I was quite emotional this past week and so I chose not to write. I find that I sometimes say things that are very impulsive only to later reread them and shake my head at being so melodramatic. But I will say that there were a couple of things on my mind during the Easter weekend; one is that on Saturday my dad would’ve celebrated his 64th birthday and the other is that two of my closest friends in the world exchanged vows in Maui and I would’ve given the world to be there. But I’m here and I’ve chosen it to be this way, so on she rolls......

I try not to pay too much attention to horoscopes, but they do say that Aquarians should surround themselves with people/friends and action when feeling despondent and not to retreat even though we might naturally feel inclined to do so. I do have to say this has been difficult for me due to my daily schedule. Let me map it out sequentially for ya: sleep, eat, train(practice or weights depending on the day), eat, surf the web, sitting meditation, read, nap, snack time, practice, eat, watch some Asian news, the occasional movie, maybe another round of meditation, read and then sleep. Repeat.
Needless to say I lost a little perspective!

Lucky for me my 30 day visa was up last week and I was able to break out of the routine with a short trip to Singapore to renew it. I showed up in the late evening on St. Patty’s day at Muddy Murphy’s to find my fellow Canadian volleyball friends who were well into the frothy broth. Bingo, back to reality! Singapore is very refreshing after a month in Indonesia. It’s almost like coming home to do your laundry as well as enjoying a few greasy North American meals before heading back to the battlefield. I hope I don’t make it sound too bad, but there comes a point while living in a developing country when one can start to go a little nutty!


We did win our last match of the first half of the season and are sitting 2nd in the league. I guess second isn’t good enough. We brought in Chinese reinforcements and now have three foreigners on the team. One is a middle blocker who happens to also be an ex-Chinese national team member and the other is another outside hitter, originally brought in as an alternative to our other outside hitter. Unfortunately the rules here in Indo allow teams to only dress two foreigners per match. I guess we’ll see how things go, but as far as I can see these gals are hot as s**t and they also have the advantage of being able to actually communicate with the coach. That’s big! A wise, but little, Indonesian man once said to me: “Just try your best. That’s all we expect of you.” Yes, my friend, I will.

The biggest thing for Indonesian volleyball also just took place over the weekend.....a little event known as the All-Star game. Basically there is a committee that selects 24 men and women from East and West Java and there is a huge flashy match somewhere in the middle. Here are a few highlights:

1)having not only a roommate, but it being the one and only other white girl selected to the All-star team.....Dani Mancuso, you are now my new BFF,
2)marching out onto the courts wearing what I would best describe as silk boxing robes (we kinda looked KKK, but whatever, the crowd loved it) and tossing them off as we were individually introduced to the crowd,
3)winning 20 million rupiah ($2200CAN) as Team Dynamic defeated Team Spirit,
4)watching Jake Cabbott get attacked by a group of Indonesian men as they all battled for his sweaty uniform after he won his match (his one-armed over-head dig was pretty sweet after all),
5)being treated like a celebrity with Dani as the only white girls at the entire show (did I mention that yet?) posing for endless pictures and shaking countless hands,
6)the hotel’s “Music Room” and DJ Tarheety (Liquid), yeah!
7)going for a 3am swim in the hotel pool just before the 4am breakfast.

So here I am, about to hit the halfway point of the Proliga here in Indo. The thing that you have to understand is that you never really know what is going on. Apparently we are going on a team roadtrip this afternoon to Malang, which is about an hour away, for a little r&r. The hotel does of course have a fitness centre and seeing as people around here don't like to sleep in we will be hitting it first thing tomorrow morning. But two days off practice sounds pretty good to me right about now.

Only in Indo

We beat Bogor Prayoga 3-1 in what was a very ugly match and after an altogether ‘gong show’ weekend. I guess I’m just not used to the way things are done around here, but let me take a few minutes to paint you the picture.

After our loss on Friday we woke up early on Saturday and had a team weight session in the hotel fitness centre. We then proceeded to have a 2 hour meeting about the previous night’s match. You can imagine how spell-binding this is in a hotel room with a Chinese-speaking coach and 12 other Indo speaking team members where the lines of communication are definitely not english. Although our translator tells me the gist of the meeting after it’s over, the content that was covered in 2 hours was condensed into a 2 minute English re-cap. Good times.

Thinking that we would have the afternoon off, I scheduled a long overdue massage to get my legs rubbed out. But as it turned out, the team management thought it would be a good idea, due to the loss, to have the year’s hardest practice on Saturday night in some random gym with cement floors on, what I think was an army base.

Coach Huang then decided that we would get up at 6:30 the following day/Sunday/game day and practice again. At this point, I just had to laugh and shake my head. Chayo! (that’s Chinese for digging deep, sucking it up, giving it your all) When it hurts....Chayo!

So this brings me to game day (or what’s left of it after my 2.5 hour afternoon nap) and we arrive at the gym to begin our warm-up at 3, as the game is scheduled to start at 4. It’s the rain season here (In Indonesia there are only 2 seasons: rain and no rain, aka hot and hotter) and every afternoon there comes a downpour. Thank Allah, as it gets to be pretty humid every day before the skies open up. Anyways, at about 2:45 it begins to rain....hard. Lo and behold our match has now been delayed. The roof in the gym in which we are playing begins to leak in several areas on the court. Oh yes, a rain delay. They don’t even have those in beach volleyball!

At this point I am just trying to tell deal with all the psycologically distracting factors as, well into the 2nd set of the match, there are about 8 towel boys and girls running out onto the court and wiping up the puddles between points. You can imagine that, well, Izzy isn’t having the greatest match of her life at this point and the fans just love to heckle me as it is. The crowd goes wild when I get subbed out of the match, they boo and whistle when I come back in (must be the hair). So there comes a point in the match, we are up 1 set, but down in the second and I get set a ball from the back corner of the court, I approach hard, slip on a puddle and go down hard, unable to save the ball and we lose the point. Well, you can imagine how the crowd went wild then!

So everything worked out fine in the end. My ego has taken a bit of a hit and I’m currently working on letting that go, but the double-yew is what counts. It’s days like these that make everything else in life seem easy. Things don’t happen the way they should, they happen the way they do and it’s how we choose to react that really makes us who we are.

Purple Nurple

So it happened. We lost. Not saying it like it was impossible or anything, but I think we could've put up a better fight.
We played Jakarta Electric BLN and they were definitely fired up as they came off a big upset loss last weekend. The gym was crazy crowded and the atmosphere was awesome. It's for nights like these I know why I'm still strapping on the knee pads! Looking at the score, the game was tight. We had moments of brilliance but only to cut the momentum short with a bonehead play or a missed serve. Our whole team played average and against what is probably the 2nd best team in the league (after us, of course) we can't afford to be complacent. Pats on the back and "good jobs" from teammates, fans and management weren't justified. I know it's natural to feel that way as I've experienced it often after losses throughout my career. It's not enough to have a good game, I expect myself to be better. But it's after losses where we really feel the pain of a missed serve or blocked hit ten-fold. When we win we don't analyze and punish ourselves. It's the losses that keep us coming back for more.

The way this team is going to win is to stay together. It's easy to feel the flow when you're winning, to use momentum to keep pushing points. But how do you turn things around and get 6+ people on the same page when the threads are unraveling? In my experience it's not the players with the heaviest hits or biggest blocks that win matches. It's the team that sticks together and dusts each other off when needed. For now, I'm trying to teach my team to celebrate when we win a point but also come together and regroup after we lose one. To not get caught up in our emotions, but to enjoy the moment and experience the pure joy of playing.

I let myself experience the anger and frustration of a loss, I saw my errors replayed in my head, and now I'm just going to let it go. After all, we have a day's rest and play again on Sunday. I'll be getting massages and watching cheap dvd's in my hotel room tomorrow!

Oh! FYI:
I dyed my hair purple for this game and needless to say, it was a hit. I was, once again, interviewed for the sole purpose of discussing my "do". Although I'm no longer known as 'the chick with the dreads', I guess I'll have to settle for being 'the bald chick'. Thanks Babs!

Deep Thoughts.....

For the most part of the past 5 years, I have had the opportunity, through volleyball to travel to all corners of the globe. Other than brief stops in various cities in Asia and Europe where I have played beach volleyball tournaments, I have had the unique opportunity to actually live in Austria, Spain, Brazil and Indonesia either training or playing professionally for club teams. Although it isn’t exactly “rough” being a professional athlete, and other than the time spent on the court or in the gym, we do find ourselves well out of our comfort zones for the most part. But for me, this is the most challenging and exciting part of it all. The ability to experience entirely new cultures and ways of life has allowed me to become an extremely adaptable human being and I find that I am now at the stage where I have a constant hunger to see and experience more. I wake up each morning as it is wondering what sort of things are possible, but these constant changing surroundings provide an ever challenging way of keeping me fresh and on my toes.
After calling all these temporary places ‘homes’, the one thing that I take with me from each of them is the language (of course there is always a need to practice in order to maintain what one has learned). Being able to communicate with people in their own society is necessary to really enjoy a country and its people. After 10 days here, I am picking up key words and working on expanding my knowledge beyond volleyball jargon and the first page of my hotel menu.
The other day someone told me that I was “a rich Canadian”. There were several thoughts that continued to run through my head for the rest of that day and even a few days past. How do you define rich? I agree when it comes to the material wealth we Canadians possess. But as I look around and witness the Indonesian people surviving in this country I also notice a richness in them that most Canadians never have and/or never will experience. To me poverty is more than the cash one doesn’t have in their pocket. I see it everywhere at home with high rates of depression and mental illness, obesity, drug and alcohol abuse, cancer and other diseases. I haven’t witnessed any of these so far in this country. We may see these people as being poor, but I see richness in their hearts. There are smiles on their faces and they breathe life into everything they do, whether that be pedaling a kabuki cab, selling newspapers in the middle of highway traffic or tending a smelly durian stand on the street corner. I feel blessed for my life and the way I am able to live it. Many people are unable to leave even their own hometowns for entire lifetimes and don’t have the opportunity to understand the human race as it is.......we are all one and the same despite what we do, where we are or what we have.