"Easy" Going

Our assistant coach's wife is an English teacher at a local school here in Surabaya. A while back, she asked me to come and speak with the students and to let them experience a “native english speaker” ....the first ever at the school! I didn’t hesitate. Being a native speaker was my part-time job title when I was playing in Austria 4 years ago. Speaking infront of a class of students isn’t so hard, especially when you're not their teacher, they're extra excited.

I was told that I needed to wear my jersey, shoes and long pants. 80% of this country is Muslim, with the other 20% being Catholics...... my usual uniform of short tights and flip-flops just wouldn’t be acceptable. Wearing my uniform proved to come in handy for the introductions as I told the students my name was “Izzy”, while pointing to the name on my back, not “easy”. For those of you who don’t know, for every language other than English, “I” is pronounced “E”. After all my travels through Europe and Asia, I don’t flinch at this anymore. Every class I walked into, this was a good ice-breaker and got a good laugh.

This school was a junior high, grades 8-10 with 1000 kids. Each class has about 40 students. The kids go to school 6 days a week for 12 months of the year. They get one week of vacation twice a year.


As for the past weekend, we won another match in straight sets over Jakarta Popsivo. With the last weekend of regular season games next weekend in Jakarta and having officially clinched a playoff spot, we have 3 more weekends of volleyball left. I had a meeting with one of the team's "Big Bosses" yesterday asking me to please stay close to the team. For example, I should attend all team meals and avoid staying after matches to watch other teams play. At this stage in the season the foreigners are "high profile" and people will do anything to try and distract our team from winning. These things might include poisoning our food, putting "hexes" on us, calling us at all hours of the night and even sending the police our way to hassle us about our visas. My manager termed this "terrorism". I'm still not convinced that it's as bad as it sounds, but things are definitely heating up as teams are scrambling to bring in more and more foreigners to give their teams the edge.

So I'm off to Singapore tomorrow to renew my visa again and it'll be followed by another 10 days in Jakarta. I haven't been able to spend any time in Jakarta yet, so I'm looking forward to some time away from "Home".

Just when you thought it was safe to eat salad!!

We played Bogor Prayoga over the weekend. These guys are playing for the wooden spoon (aka. last place) and they did bring in a couple US troops to reinforce their attack, but to no avail. We handled them quite easily in 3 sets. I'm settling nicely into my new role as a "practice player". Who would've thought that my original self-coined identity as a UBC Thunderbird in my rookie year would actually still be with me 10 years later. The management has also decided to extend my contract to stay here for the 2 extra weeks of playoffs. It means that my Bali vacation will have to wait just a little longer, but it also means I get paid to hang around. I'll just keep doing what I do best: serving, shagging (that means collecting balls for those of you that don't know), cursing in Indonesian for the sole purpose of humouring my teammates, lying by the pool while the team is having pre-game naps, and posing for endless pictures with Indonesian fans.....It ain't so bad.

Over the past 7 weeks in Indonesia, each and every foreigner has gotten some sort of food poisoning. It's the creeping kind. Just when you thought you were home free walking out of that Indonesian restaurant, that sneaky little parasite is already multiplying in your duodenum. You get home, lay down in bed and notice that you are burping up what seems like calamari. But wait.....you didn't eat any?! You spend the night tossing and turning, alternating the AC on and off. You wake up in the morning in a puddle of sweat and motivate yourself to get up for 8am practice. I mean what else are you gonna do to get your mind off it? But before your feet hit the cold tile, your butt is telling you to get to that toilet. And so it begins....the only thing you can do it let nature run its course and hope it passes quickly. Quickly being about 2 days. Still trying to figure it out, but it could come from the water, could be the seafood or the non-existent food-safety standards. It took me about 22 years to get up enough courage to eat seafood and a swift 5 days in Indonesia to revert me right back. I find it funny that I knew more about foreigners' bowel movements here before I knew what country they were from or what team they played on. But hey, at least these new relationships are based on openness!

In regards to the photos above: This is what I think is the best thing in Indonesia...ever! For those of you that don't know, I would marry any man who likes to massage my feet....what can I say? It's my weakness! (Not to mention the fact that we practice on what is basically plywood-covered cement. A far cry from the bouncy gym floors we are used to back home. How I am still walking around is a mystery to me) Well, I've fallen in love with at least 5 or 6 Indonesian men at this point, so I'm going to have to raise the bar here. REFLEXI is the name and an hour and a half foot and calf massage is the game. And get this....it only costs 40,000rph ($5CAN). It's almost like stealing. My poor guy was working so hard he was sweating through his tight white pants. All in a day's work, I guess!