welcome to the hotel california...

everyone knows the song here in bali... and invariably as soon as i tell them that i:m from california... they just can:t help themselves from breaking into a beautiful but heavily accented few bars of the classic eagles tune...

harmless right...as if to say... i know you... i connect with you and no we can:t understand all the words either but at least we have the excuse of english not being our first or even second language, what was your excuse again?

however, as fundamental christians to the bible, the balians take our songs quite literally and that is where our story begins... right at the line that goes... "you can come, but you can never leave..."

my last 24 hours have been directly out of a salvadore dali or mc escher painting... there is something reminesent of life as i knew it but as in either of the above masters' works, something just isn:t quite right, is it the mind playing tricks or have i slipped into a slightly alternative universe where normal is anything but and i:m left with the only sureity that it's just not going to make sense or come fully into focus no matter how long i stare at it...

i am on my way home... or so i thought... and having reached the final day i was busy with the usual last minute things... one last swim in the ocean... once last juice at my favorie juice place... one more trip up and down the drag on my sexy fuschia scooter, a mad dash to buy all the gifts i meant to buy throughout my trip but hadn:t, and trying to remember all the placese that i had left luggage so i didn:t have to take it on the next leg of my trip, promising to return in a day or two that just never quite happened... and so as i was checking things off my list... i sent my confirmation e-mail Kim... who among many other roles, is the friend that picks me up from the airport... and those of you lucky enough to have a friend like that... well, then you know how special that friend is (gotta get points for that one) Now i looked at my return ticket... leaving at midnight wed. night... all day layover in tokyo, on to LA following morning... using my highly toned mental acuity i did the math and confirmed my friday morning arrival... and that's when the floor fell out from under me and although i didn:t remember taking the red pill... i certainly wasn:t in Kansas anymore...

with that being an extemely long set up, i may now tell you that i do not arrive on friday as i thought but rather thursday morning... literally 6 hours before i leave japan... basically i should be touching down right now according to the bizarro world that i've slipped into... and yet here i am with 5 more hours before i will board my plane that is set to travel back in time... so if there is anything you want to know about tomorrow, you can ask as i seem to be there...

now, normally this change in reality would be but a small tweek in the plan... grabbing a cab and not bothering to ask kim for a ride on a work day... but the plot is considerably thicker...

as part of a national conspiracy by the balinese to not have me leave their country, they staged a city wide blackout at the exact moment that i was withdrawing money from a local ATM in the beach town of Kuta just an hour before i left for the airport... with the power out for a mere 60 seconds... the machine which rebooted effortlessly, simply erased my transaction...keeping my card as a souvenir... however that left me whit...no money, no card... the teenagers working at the mini-mart laughed and played their role to the end, innocently repeating ...too late, bank:s closed, come back tomorrow... somehow not understanding that i was on my way to the airport and needed some money to close out hotel, taxi, exit tax etc... not to mention that although i have been on vacation for two months... my ATM card has been working overtime and it was looking forward to a long overdue vacation of its own which i had thoroughly promised it and didn:t very well want to go back on my word and leave it trapped in Bali...

after scrounging through pockets, i had enough money to get to the airport and even pay exit tax... however... i overstayed my visa by 6 days... which although i generally respect international laws, it seems a little weird that a country whose gross national income is more than 90% derived from tourism to be that upset that i spent 6 extra days in their country doing my best to spend as much money as possible to support their economy... but it was literally like a scene out of Goodfellows, The Godfather, or whatever other mafia-esqe movie as i was ushered into small immigration office and told that i needed to pay the equivalent of $120 US as a penalty...I told them that although that seemed like a lot, i would normally be happy to pay it because i was in the wrong... but due to extenuating circumstances...well after feigning interest in my explanation of loss of my ATM card and not having that much money on me they replied simply... "then you cannot leave the country"... and they showed me the door...
i plowed through my luggage and found $70 leaving me $50 short which i spent the next 2 hours trying every way possible to raise... including the worst street performance of "tomorrow" (think Annie) and passing the hat... but even if people agreed that the sun would indeed come up tomorrow, they must have assumed that it would whether i was in LA or Bali and didn:t feel moved enough to part with more than smile and an inward laugh...

in the end, we worked out a deal... one that i:m pretty sure they got the better end of...(please read with dripping sarcasm)

and so here i am... traveling first class without a penny on my person and no way of getting more until i get to the nearest wells fargo which surprising doesn:t have a branch in the Narita airport...

moral of the story... i still need a ride from the airport...

but before i go into that i want to give a quick word of gratitude to corrupt government officials whom without, i would still be in Bali, with no exit in the near future....

now, after the first hour or so... it seemed that everyone at Japan airlines, the whole immigration staff, the money exchangers, the street vendors, and most of the departing passsengers knew my situation and while amused where all quite clear that they could not help except by offering sage advice such as... why don:t you just borrow money from a friend... or the deeply provacative question..."why did you overstay your visa?" (yes i know many of you are asking the same thing, and it is a valid question, but in the moment of truth, that answer didn:t seem to get me any closer to a solution on how i was going to make my plane... and the genuinely humane repeating of my situation to me as if to make sure that i fully understood the gravity with which i had caused myself...that went like this..

them: "you overstayed your visa."
me: "yes"
them:"you need to pay $1,200,000 rupia to leave"
me: "yes"
them: "you don't have enough money."
me: " yes"
them: "you have big problem"
me: "you lost me... i'm sorry i don't understand... what problem?... oh the fact that i can't leave the country, and every day i stay my fine goes up, and i can:t reschedule my flight because i booked through american airlines and japan airlines is not authorized to reschedule a flight for me... and even if they were authorized they weren't sure there was any space on the flights in the next couple days... and that i have very little money...certainly not enough for taxi, hotel, and food for next 24 hours... with only a hope but no guarantee that i'll ever be able to get my card even if i do stay and on top of everything else i'm starting my period...

ok... i didn't say all that... i sat there and took my lumps, trying to think what MacGuyver, James Bond, or even Mr. Bean would do... surely there must be a way... isn't there always a way... and then after the 15th time of taking with different immigration guards... officers... whatever... they were the gatekeeper and i was hoping that i would find one of them who would take a liking to me as the rich white capitalist brother or son that he never had and risk his career forging my documents to sneak me out of the country... and finally after giving my best... "alright you broke me, i'll do anything... just name it" look the guard threw it out there...
"maybe you have something you could sell... maybe a phone or a camera... he said it softly, and at first i wasn't sure i heard him correctly, then thought he was honestly trying to brainstorm but then although it didn't let it show... it hit me... this was the oldest one in the books... and i walked right into it... might as well have been redford and newman working me for all i had...
so they could be bought... that was the message... but it wasn't going to be cheap... and so there i was... clock ticking... what was i going to do... stay and take my chances with finding a place to stay, rebooking my flight and getting my atm card back or "doing a deal" with my camera...

now many of you may not know the deep irony of this part of the story but i have very weird camera karma and in the last 2 years i have gone through 3 cameras all with very contraversial circumstances as to their disappearances... and here i was again, about to "lose" my camera...

so i walked back into the immigration office and it was hilarious... within minutes there were 4 guards working the mark (that would be me) they would look at the camera, say something in indonesian then ask me a question... each time creating a little confusion and widdling away precious minutes before i needed to board...

then one grabbed the camera and said he had to check with his boss... and told me to wait in outer office... another came and wrote down and number on the newspaper in front of me as if to say... i give you this much for it... was this really happening...

soon the guy that took my camera came back out and started helping a different customer... like he had never seen me before and then i thougth i may have just lost my one poker chip and really what could i do about it... i followed him and his new customer into the office and said i needed to go... was it a deal or not...
he grabbed the camera and walked me out... giving it back to me and telling me that it would be better if i sold it and just gave them the money vs them keeping it in exchange for my passage... me sell it... okay... anyone want to buy my camera for a couple hundred dollars so i can leave the country? that didn't seem like a very good option but at least i had the camera back...

but on my way out i saw the guard who wrote the number on the newspaper and figured, i mighth as well ask... walked up to him and said... it:s yours if you have the money on you...

he nodded for me to take a walk with him... somewhere no doubt a little quieter to do our illegal deal...
and within minutes it was done... and within another few i was stamped and on my way to my gate...

and there it was... my first real bribe (and by first i mean 3rd or fourth... I lived in mexico for a while and it was just a part of life down there) and i guess it:s like the old saying goes... a picture is worth a thousand words... but a camera may be your ticket home...

so again if anyone wants to pick me up that would be great... and yes i thought about trying to explain my situation to a taxi driver in the hopes that he saw the movie pay it forward and was waiting for an opportunity like me to fulfill his part of the forward...

i:ve even visualized the exchange...

me: hello
him: where to?
me: just santa monica... you see i:m just coming off a two month vacation in asia where i had my own personal driver and don:t have any more money on me so would you mind doing this fare pro bono?
him: that:s interesting... you see... i:m coming off of a 12 hour shift and haven:t have a day off in two months...ummm sure i:d love to give you a ride for free and why don:t we stop at urth cafe for a salad and a juice, my treat... and then i can play hookie the rest of the day and be your driver... you know, to ease your re-entry so to speak...
me: gee thanks... you sure are swell...

however... in the rare event that it doesn:t work that way... (besides rhonda brittan having some serious explaining to do) i:m hoping that i can buy him off with a couple bootlegged copies of the latest movies that i bought on the black market in Thailand.

flirting with the dark side...
jeff vader