On not being prepared

So we leave on Saturday morning for a long and probably tortuous travel route that takes us through Minneapolis, Tokyo, Singapore, and then into Jakarta. It is about 36 hours of transit time altogether, with longish layovers in Minneapolis and Singapore. The transit hotel at the Singapore Airport is full, so we will arrive in Jakarta after a 90 minute from Singapore less than refreshed, of course, met at the Jakarta Airport by someone from the grant office in Jakarta at 8 in the morning on August 16. I'm not sure whether we'll be in Jakarta for one night or two, and I'm hopeful that arriving around sunrise in Jakarta during Ramadan (Indonesia being the biggest Muslim country in the world) won't mean we can't get something to eat. These sorts of petty ruminations can keep me awake at night.

Here, it's a little too much. In these situations, I have a tendency to go into denial, and instead of the focused flurry of activity the moment calls for I can wander around distracted by things like whether we will be able to eat when we get there on Monday, which can lead to a google search that soon will have me looking (in the most speedy internetish sort of way) into the arrival of Islam on the Indonesian archipelago and the sorts of food I might get were I to get lost in the neighborhood around the airport upon arrival. These matters are interesting, and I am sure that sometime in Indonesia Laura will be grateful that instead of running around Bozeman being efficient I was finishing the last little bit of _A History of Modern Indonesia_  quite an extraordinary book that I won't try to discuss here because it would make me sound like I think I know more about Indonesia than I do, which is still nothing.  I am happy to know that the giant tower built in the center of Jakarta in 1965 is referred to locally as Sukarno's last erection - Sukarno being the first Indonesian president/supreme-ruler-in-charge-of everything who made a cult of personality around his sexual prowess.

I got another email from the Dean today, still unclear about what the teaching will be when I get there. I have resigned myself to the fact that there is little I can do to prepare for this (read: nothing) and that I will have to do what I had to do when I taught in the jail, or when I learned to teach at Goodwill in Seattle (a shout out to Mallory Clarke, who worked with me there and taught me the most important things I learned about teaching) - that is, I'll have to improvise based on the context. He tells me everything is prepared already for me, which is a little frustrating, and which I would override if I knew exactly what I could get prepared for. Fortunately, one of my great professional skills is not being prepared. I've seen few people who are better at not being prepared than I am.  Even as I write this blog 48 hours before we leave, I am skillfully not preparing. If I write another entry before I leave, you'll know I am working to hone that skill even more.