Thursday, 21 August - Update

It is 2pm Wednesday, 20 August and still unclear what we will be doing tomorrow. We have our tickets to fly out of Solo at 10am, which would require that we leave Jogja at about 8. Someone from my university is in Jakarta applying for the extension and has been told that an answer will come by 4pm today. He is confident that we will get the extension but it isn't clear to me what his confidence is based on. He has worked hard on our behalf and I would hate to have all that effort go for naught.

If we don't get the extension, things get a bit more complicated. In order to apply for the extension, we had to hand over our passports to Immigration. And we can't get the passports back until the question of the extension is resolved. Which means that we have to consider how we will get our passports back in time if we have to be in Solo by 10am. At this point, if we don't get the extension, the tentative plan is to be at Immigration here in Jogja when it (hopefully) opens at 8am, get the passports, and then race to Solo.

Of course, by 4 we may find out that we don't need to go and then the only things we would have to do is cancel appointments in Singapore and figure out what we will do for the rest of the week.

This isn't really interesting in and of itself, since we will be fine no matter how things turn out. What is interesting is the degree of uncertainty to which we have become accustomed. Much like our lives in Africa, we have slowly become used to a degree of uncertainty that one wouldn't normally experience in N. America. In 24 hrs, we may have to be in a different country. Or maybe not. I don't know what courses I will be teaching in September, nor do I know when classes begin. Also, Ramadan runs over most of September and I am not sure how this changes the operation of the university. I have heard that as Ramadan progresses, the campus becomes progressively more empty. Our lives rarely have the opportunity to become routine so we gradually become used to change. I really need routine to structure my day but I have to admit that I also enjoy the uncertainty of our lives here.