Why?

It's 10am on a Tuesday. A tad early for a soundtrack of Indo Pop. My Bahasa Indonesia is coming along just enough for me to make out about two or three words from each song. But I don't really need to speak the language to know that it's pining, teen angst emanating from the speakers. “Maaf!” – “Sorry”, the young Indonesian man sings with heart, though for what I can't quite tell.

I'm sitting at a cafe perched somewhat above the steep eastern bank of the river that runs through Kasongan, a village south west of Yogyakarta known for ceramics. A murky khaki colour, the river runs swiftly, carrying with it leaves, branches and the odd plastic bottle or bag just like those that pepper the opposite shore. While far from pristine, it's nowhere near as bad as you might imagine a Javanese river downstream of a large city to be. I'm not sure I'd swim in it, but the waist-deep cast net fisherman, just now hauling in his morning's catch (or maybe his fifth of the day), seems completely unfazed by the quality of the water.

My cappuccino arrives. Sickly sweet, for a guy who always takes his coffee tanpa gula (without sugar). Yet again, I forgot to request gula di sisi (sugar on the side), which is essential here even for the most sweet-toothed visitor. Not sure it would make much difference — this is 'fresh from the sachet' coffee. Come all this way for hot cup of Java, and they give me the sachet mix. But hey, it's a cappuccino, and it cost me 5,000 rupiah — less than 50 cents — so I think I'll cope.

Against the picturesque backdrop of the river, a sign hangs on a roof post:

“Today is the best day in my life”

What better prompt to whip out the lappie and write this, my first journal entry of this crazy Indonesian adventure? I've thought a lot over the past five and a half weeks about what to write about, but I truly haven't had the chance to stop, collect my thoughts and write it all down. The main thought that keeps coming up is “why”.

Why write a blog?

Why Yogyakarta?

Why would a guy in a stable job, with lots of fantastic friends and family around him, choose to uproot with his wife and three-year-old boy, and relocate to a country where he can't even speak the language?

And extending that - “what do I hope to gain from this?”

“Why Jogja?” is easy. My wife's father lives in Tembi; a gorgeous, quiet village about ten minutes south of the ring road that encircles the city of Yogyakarta and effectively marks its boundary. He's been here for over ten years now, using it as a base for his international disaster shelter consultancy business, and more recently also setting up a homestay bungalow business*. I'd already been to Jogja thrice prior, to visit Dave, and I really loved the place. And as many of you know, my wife and I were married here. Suffice to say, when my wife suggested moving here it wasn't a difficult sell. We had a ready made community waiting here for us; a cushioned landing to what otherwise might be an overwhelming leap of faith.

* (If you ever plan to come to Jogja, seriously check out Yabbiekayu (www.yabbiekayu.com‎) as an accomm option. It's a beautiful, unique and special place, with vastly more character than a hotel. And cheaper too).

Ooh the young waitress has switched the soundtrack over. Not sure if she thinks this is catering to the tastes of the bule (white person) – which it isn't – or more likely this is just the western music she, and apparently most of Jogja's youth, get into.

Hoobastank – The Reason Is You, followed by Jason Mraz – I'm Yours.

I think I preferred the Indonesia Pop mix, if only for the cultural immersion factor.

I don't know what the answer to the first question is. Indeed, why write a blog? There are a lot of blogs out there, and I'm not sure what adding to the overload will achieve. I guess the main idea is to document my experiences to remind myself later as the memories fade, and to update anyone interested as to what I've been up to. But I think this is also a form of therapy for me as well, a much-needed creative outlet. I've called it “The Jogja Bludger”, as I am taking a year off from my paid career back home to be here, and “belajar”, my wife informs me, means “learn” or “study”.

And that leads on to the third question – why such a dramatic life change?

Ostensibly, I'm here because my wife is doing her Honours year in Midwifery, having completed her bachelors degree over the last five years (while birthing and raising our three-year-old). Her interest is less in the western risk-based “child-birth is a medical emergency” model, and more in the “women have been having babies quite splendidly for millennia, long before doctors and hospitals came along to intervene in this (usually) perfectly natural process”. So here we are, in a developing nation, where she hopes to learn about more community-focussed approaches to pregnancy and labour.

My situation was a bit different. Career-wise, I'm roughly nine years into a career I fell into completely by accident. I'm quite good at it, am financially able to support my family adequately, and I even enjoy my job for the most part. But realistically I've advanced as far as I am ever likely to in this role. Perhaps I just need a break, but that said, both they and I are totally open to the possibility that I might not come back.

...Oh good, the Indo pop is back...

I am blessed to have a wonderful, if scattered, family. But they will always be there, and thanks to the wonders of modern technology, they are only a video call away (if I can just be organised enough to make the global time differences work for us!).

My friends are really important to me, but I'd be lying if I said the arrival of our son hadn't reduced my social interaction to almost zero. Same with my creative pursuits – particularly DJing and music making, both solo and in a band. Heck, for a guy for whom music is his lifeblood, I hardly even had time to listen to music. So add all this together, coupled with the fatigue levels and frustration that comes with parenthood, and you have a guy with next to no sense of 'self'. My life of late has  pretty much been dictated by my job and the needs of my son. Don't get me wrong – I'm grateful to have a job, and friends, and family, and an amazing wife and son. But something was missing...

Oh no – now the young lady has taken her phone away and the music has stopped completely. Suddenly the sounds of trucks and motorcycles crossing the bridge come to the fore. That's pretty much the soundtrack to Jogja; a constant background hum, engines approaching and fading like the endless loop of waves on a beach, only more polluted and far less soothing.

So, when the wife suggested doing her honours year here in Jogja, where we could afford to support ourselves on savings even if her scholarship bids were not successful, saying “yes” felt like the first major decision I'd made in ages. It sparked a sense of adventure, an opportunity to go somewhere foreign, get uncomfortable, get back in touch with my creative side, and really “live” again. The dream of making music inspired by my escapades, riding a motorcycle through this slightly alien world taking photos and really investing some time in myself was too good to pass up. Why not?

The question, I guess, is how much of this will I really be able to do, given I am putting on the "stay-at-home dad" cap at the same time?  I guess time, and hopefully soon after, this blog, will reveal.