Days 38 – 44: Ubud

Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2051000&l=b882f&id=1101094

I arrived in Ubud and immediately gave my friend Dino a call on the cell phone I had just bought in Kuta. He gave me directions to his house, and I hired a man to drive me there on his motorbike. But when I arrived at Dino’s house, I could tell something was wrong—Dino wasn’t his usual cheery self, and his wife seemed preoccupied. It turned out that Dino’s two young children had been violently ill for the past two days, and no one could figure out what the problem was. Despite everything that was on his mind, Dino still offered me dinner and then drove me to a guesthouse in town.

The guesthouse, called Puji Bungalows, was the perfect place to spend the week. I had my own bungalow overlooking the rice paddies, and each morning the owner brought me breakfast on my porch. I could have stayed for a year.

I spent my time in Ubud attending panel discussions on literature and politics, as well as a few writing workshops. The workshops were not all that helpful, in the end, but the panel discussions were fantastic.

The highlight of the week was meeting Kiran Desai, winner of the 2006 Booker Prize, and Shashi Tharoor, Indian author and politician who was second in the running to become the next Secretary General of the United Nations.

My interaction with Kiran Desai went something like this:

Me: Hey, you live on 2nd Street in Brooklyn, right?

Kiran: (Disbelief) What? How did you know that?

Me: Because you live next door to my old boss, Jim Nimberg.

Kiran: (Still disbelief) Who?

Me: You know, the short guy who lives at 636. You live at 634, or 632, or whatever the number is, right?

Kiran: (Illumination) YES!... but how do you know this?! I don't even know him! How does he know me?!

Me: Because you're a famous writer (duh).

Kiran: (Shock)

Me: Oh, and he said to get your umbrella out of his yard.

Kiran: (Still shock) What? That's HIM?

Me: Yeah, you know, the shorter guy... (I wanted to say "You know-- shorter guy. Hairier guy. Fashionable guy," but then I thought better of it).

Kiran: (Still shock, and maybe a little awe) YES! OK, now I know who he is! But, that's not my umbrella!

Me: Well, he thinks it is, and I guess that's all that matters. Anyhow, you should get to know him. He's a cool guy.

Kiran: (Hopefully a lot of awe) OK!...

My interaction with Shashi was a bit different. After listening to him speak to a large group, I attended a smaller luncheon with him, and I got to ask him a question about Kashmir. Before answering the question, he said, “I saw you there with your hand raised, and I noticed your Free Tibet shirt, and I was dreading a question about that….”

The following day, I was walking from the Indus Restaurant, where the festival was headquartered, to my motorbike, and I passed Shashi standing next to the road, apparently waiting for someone. He glanced up at me and asked if I had a local cell phone he could borrow to call his driver. Never had I been so happy to have an Indonesian cell phone. I nearly ripped the thing out of my pocket in my haste to hand it to him, and then I asked him if he would mind if I took his picture while he was on my phone. “Not at all,” he said.

After he finished his phone call, I told him that I had thought a bit about getting into diplomacy, and that I wondered if I might be able to email him sometime for some advice. He said, “Well, you can, but I also have some time right now—want to talk about it?”

I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I gave him a quick rundown of my past experience and how I’d come to be at the festival, and I told him that I’d applied for the Foreign Service in the past, and then he gave me ten minutes of advice on how I might get into the UN, and the differences between a UN job and a job in the US Foreign Service. He was quite helpful and very willing to discuss my different options. As his car arrived, I thanked him and said, “By the way, I wish you would have won that Secretary General election.” “So do I,” he said, “So do I.”