Possible Subtitles for DHL's Advertising Slogan "Go All The Way"

(see the ad)

• We'll still respect you upon delivery
• Prove your love for international shipping
  
• If you don't use us, someone else will
• It's not normal to wait for a package
  
• Don't you want to see what door-to-door service is like?
  
• C'mon, everybody's doing it!

A Summer To-Do List

register for classes
tidy room
research work
go running
buy bookcase
reply to emails
edit friend's personal statement
return library books
unpack boxes in bedroom
officially accept scholarship
rejoice greatly

No Frigate Like One

Like Katya, I keep a booklist. She's posted before about her list, and really, I have nothing more to add about the theory of such a list: it's fun to see the reading phases I've gone through, and useful when trying to recommend, or even remember, books I've read.

It's also useful, of course, when trying to prove how desperately underemployed I was this past year in Indonesia. Days are long when you work fifteen hours a week--even with countless hours devoted to language study, practice, and research, pirated DVDs, travelling, and texting the SLO, I had time to read. A lot.

See for yourself:

A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf

Lord of the Barnyard, Tristan Egolf

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
The Mighty and the Almighty, Madeleine Albright
Culture Shock Indonesia, Cathie Draine and Barbara Hall
Semester Pertama di Malory Towers (First Term at Malory Towers), Enid Blyton
Kelas Dua di Malory Towers (Second Form at Malory Towers), Enid Blyton
The Girl Who Invented Romance, Caroline B. Cooney
The Witches, Roald Dahl
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Oscar Hijuelos
Gilead, Marilyn Robinson
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, John de Graaf, David Wann & Thomas H. Naylor

Kelas Tiga di Malory Towers (Third Year at Malory Towers), Enid Blyton

Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift

Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman

The Turn of the Screw, Henry James

Best American Essays of the Century, ed. Joyce Carol Oates

Deep River, Shusako Endo
The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch
Tom Jones, Henry Fielding
Mulai Malapekata (The Bad Beginning), Lemony Snicket
Kelas Empat di Malory Towers (Upper Fourth at Malory Towers), Enid Blyton
Kelas Lima di Malory Towers (In the Fifth at Malory Towers), Enid Blyton
The Collected Short Stories, Nikolai Gogol
Arab and Jew, David K. Shipler

Shopaholic Ties the Knot, Sophie Kinsella

The Woman In the Dunes, Kobo Abe

Kokoro, Soseki Natsume
Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe
Orlando, Virginia Woolf
Akhir Satu Cinta (The End of the Affair), Graham Greene
Gio, Jangan Cari Pacar Berjilbab!, Chris Oetoyo
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
Semester Terakhir di Malory Towers (Last Term at Malory Towers), Enid Blyton
Wonderful Fool, Shusako Endo
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
America: The Book, John Stewart

Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl

Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

Confederates in the Attic, Tony Horwitz

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark

A Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett

Out, Natsuo Kirino

Spring Snow, Yukio MIshima

Made in America, Bill Bryson

A Severed Head, Iris Murdoch

The End, Lemony Snicket

A Million Little Pieces, James Frey
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, Amy Krouse Rosenthal
The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby
Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton
Lies my Teacher Told Me, James Loewen
A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut
The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
Ludmilla's Broken English, DBC Pierre
Manhattan Monologues, Louis Auchincloss
Clear Light of Day, Anita Desai
The Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs
The Piano Teacher, Elfriede Jelinek
The Accidental, Ali Smith
Confessions of Love, Uno Chiyo
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell
The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl
Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry
The Master Butchers Singing Club, Louise Erdrich
The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom
Culture Shock: Indonesia, Cathie Draine and Barbara Hall
We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light John Baxter
The Final Martyrs, Shusako Endo
Appointment in Samarra, John O'Hara
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata
Hard Times, Charles Dickens
Some Prefer Nettles, Junichiro Tanizaki
The Glass Palace, Amitav Ghosh
Confessions of a Mask, Yukio Mishima
Monumen, Nh. Dini
Three Men on the Bummell, Jerome K. Jerome
The Europeans, Henry James
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
After the Banquet, Yukio Mishima
What Went Wrong, Bernard Lewis
Six Easy Pieces, Richard Feynmann
Perempuan di Titik Nol, Nawal Al-Sadawi, trans. Mochtar Lubis
Mereka Bilang, Saya Monyet, Djenar Maesa Ayu
Saman, Ayu Utami
Raumanen, Marianne Katoppo
Sepuluh Anak Negro (Ten Little Indians), Agatha Christie
Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman
He's Just Not That Into You, Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo
Aib (Disgrace), J.M. Coetzee
Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia, Benedict Anderson
Bali, Putu Wijaya
Dua Dunia, Nh Dini

The Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz

Cerita Pendek Tentang Cerita Cinta Pendek (Short Stories about Short Love Stories), Djenar Maesa Ayu

Write Away, Elizabeth George

No Touch Monkey, and Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late, Ayun Halliday

The Sociopath Next Door, Martha Stout

Full House, Janet Evanovich and Charlotte Hughes

The Rocky Road to Romance, Janet Evanovich
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea, Yukio Mishima
Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Booty Nomad, Scott Mebus
Vampires of Venice Beach, Jennifer Colt
Snow, Orhan Pamuk
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott
The Sportswriter, Richard Ford
The Riddle of the Sands, Erskine Childers
Home, Manju Kapur
The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, Steven Sherrill
The Bell, Iris Murdoch
The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
Such a Long Journey, Rohinton Mistry
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
What Came Before He Shot Her, Elizabeth George
The Good Good Pig, Sy Montgomery
Fermat's Last Theorem, Simon Singh
And Then, Nastume Soseki
Arthur and George, Julian Barnes
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Runaway Horses, Yukio Mishima
Sacred Games, Vikram Chandra
The Famished Road, Ben Okri
The Lady and the Unicorn, Tracy Chevalier
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
The Suffrage of Elvira, V.S. Naipaul
Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion, V.S. Naipaul
A Flag on the Island, V.S. Naipaul
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Umberto Eco
Villette, Charlotte Bronte

So if you ever need a book recommendation, you know who to ask.

An Educational Weekend

Things I Learned from Quakers This Weekend

1. ...
2. ...
3. We are like a grove of aspen trees, connected through tangled and deep roots.
4. ...
5. The modern global warming discussion lacks heart.
6. Join the journal. Oh, and join some committees too.
7. ...
8. One hour of total silence can actually be quite pleasant.

Things I Learned From Scientologists This Weekend

1. What's true depends on who you are.
2. Therefore I can't tell you what Scientologists believe because it's just my truth, and might not be yours.
3. But L. Ron Hubbard's truth is true for everyone.
4. And you can buy this book, or this DVD, or this book-and-DVD set, if you want to know more.
5. Scientology is a religion, as determined by over 65 court cases.
6. No, I'm not trained to tell you what this religion believes. But you can buy a book.
7. Psychiatry is an "industry of death."
8. And if you pay $17.99 for a DVD, it might tell you why.

Things I learned from Mormons This Weekend

1. Meeting Jesus will be just like appearing in High School Musical 2.
2. Testimonies will have the opportunity to be strengthened.
3. I don't really know what I'm going to say...
4. I know the Church is true.
5. Vague reference to trials.
6. Stops due to emotion.
7. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
8. Bingo!

Things I learned from Alea and Melyngoch This Weekend

1. I haven't lost my Boggle skills.
2. Or my anagrams skills.
3. Ice and salt can, in fact, burn you.
4. References to George Fox and his "shaggy shaggy locks" never get old.
5. Melyngoch and I need to have a "how long can you hold your hand in ice water" rematch. Beating Alea was just too easy.
6. Never sell a rodeo cowboy an insurance policy.
7. Dude got trivia'd.
8. Being Melyngoch's social coordinator is fun.

For Spacious Skies

U.S. States My Students Guessed Were the Largest

In The Order That They Guessed Them

Canada
Mexico
Los Angeles
Virginia
Brazil
California
George W. Bush
Alaska

A Long Day's Journey

There were, as far as I could tell, two good ways to get from Yogyakarta to Bali on Tuesday. One could suffer the inflated holiday prices and pay $65 for a plane ticket and arrive in Bali on Tuesday night, or one could pay $18 and take a bus, supposedly arriving in Bali on Tuesday morning. Since first, I am a cheapskate, if not miser, and second, I wanted to get to Bali as soon as possible, I opted for the bus.

That was the wrong choice. I did not get the smooth 2 PM departure from Yogyakarta and 9 AM arrival in Denpasar I was promised. I got, instead, Indonesia:

1.50 PM: Arrive at travel office.
2.00 PM: Car departs to take waiting passengers to the bus station. Nearly die of shock because something happened on time in Indonesia. Think hopeful thoughts about this trip.
3.00 PM: Scheduled departure of the bus. Still no sign of it.
3.30 PM: All the other buses except mine have left. Lose solitaire nine times in a row. Worry that might be a sign.
3.45 PM: Check with the front desk employees that the bus has not left without me. Play another six hands of solitaire. Lose.
4.15 PM: Bus finally departs. Settle into reclining seat, adjust AC, sigh happily.
4.30 PM: Pick up passengers, including a 20-something hipster who sits next to me and stares.
4.45 PM: More passengers.
5.00 PM: More passengers.
5.15 PM: On the road! Finally!
5.15 PM-6.15 PM: Stare out the window at Mount Merapi. It's definitely a volcano. It's definitely belching smoke. Worry, momentarily, about the impending doom of Yogyakarta.
6.15 PM-8.15 PM: Read Clifford Geertz. Listen to Okkervil River. Wish seatmate would stop staring.
8.15 PM: Stop for dinner. Get a wolf whistle from the restaurant employees.
9.15 PM-10.15 PM: Watch, out the window, an amazing lightning storm. Beautiful!
10.15 PM-11.00 PM: Try to sleep. Avoid tossing and turning because Mr. Hipster is still staring.
11.00 PM: Remember the Valium my mother gave me over Christmas. Desparately rifle through purse. Success!
7.00 AM: Wake up. Understand why people develop Valium addictions. Realize the bus has stopped to wait in line for the ferry. Bali, here I come!
9.00 AM: Still in line for the ferry. Get off the bus to jalan-jalan, or wander around.
9.15 AM: Hear from the other passengers that our bus's turn will come about three o'clock. Decide to abandon the bus.
9.30 AM: Use my fascinating womanhood to sweet-talk the ferry official into letting me board by myself, for free.
9.45 AM-10.45 AM: Sit on the ferry listening to a salesman trying to sell small flotation devices by claiming they can double as a raft if the ferry sinks. Hear the sweet strains of Amr Diab from the back of the ferry. Dance to the beat, to the rhythm of the Nile.
10.45 AM: Bali, here I am!
11.00 AM-3.00 PM: Sit on un-airconditioned public bus. Rest my chin on the pile of bags balanaced precariously on my lap. Try not to wake up the Indonesian woman sleeping on my right shoulder. Try to nod along with the Indonesian woman on my left as she happily chats at me. Wish she would take her hand off my knee.
3.00 PM-3.30 PM: Arrive at one of Denpasar's bus terminals. Climb on a public minibus to be taken to the other bus station, to catch a bus to Kuta. Sweat profusely.
3.30 PM: Still sitting on the minibus, waiting for more passengers before departing. Think, what the hell am I doing here? A taxi costs $6!
3.30-4.15 PM: Enjoy an air-conditioned $6 taxi.
4.15 PM-4.30 PM: Arrive in Kuta. Search for a cheap hotel. Put my bags down. Walk to the beach.
4.30 PM-?: Enjoy paradise.

At least I'm here now. And, let me tell you, forget aviation disasters and inflated prices: I'm flying home.

Buy Me Some Peanuts and Cracker Jacks

American Foods I Only Like While Living Abroad

macaroni and cheese
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
milk

What is the world coming to? Next thing you know I'm going be craving hamburgers, corn on the cob, and apple pie. Blech.

One Out of Many

Part of my job here is to be a good, upstanding representative of America, to help counteract bad press. (Britney Spears, I'm looking at you here: knock it off!) While sometimes I'm great at this--"you think all Americans love free sex? Congress pays me to tell you otherwise!"--at other times I worry what sort of generalizations my school colleagues are going to make. I feel a list coming on.

If They Judge By Me, The Teachers Will Think All Americans...

• firmly believe orange and pink match
• are willing to sing Arabic pop songs if asked
• maybe even dance to them
  
• speak passable Indonesian, but with a tendency to over/misuse colloquial particles
• wear big, dangly silver earrings
  
• can talk really fast
  
• can't tell left from right
• gesticulate wildly while explaining things
  
• go to strange churches who, it is rumored, sacrifice newborn babies and drink their blood
  
• don't get offended when asked if they drink baby's blood every Sunday
• say the word "rad" with a straight face
• giggle every time anyone says "get off." Or "ball-peen hammer," but that doesn't happen nearly as often, more's the pity
  
• read, on average, a book a day
• act "flirtatious," which can also be translated as "vain"
  
• wear a pen behind their ear
• forget that said pen is behind their ear and start looking for another one
• complain endlessly about waking up so early
• drop the whiteboard marker every fifteen minutes or so
• don't like durian

(Actually, that last one may be true.)

I feel sorry for my replacement next year. Whoever you are, I just want to say this: have fun singing and dancing in the teacher's room. Brush up on your Amr Diab, if you can. Though they also like church songs--have you ever been to Bible camp? Oh, and don't try durian. You won't like it.

By the Rivers of Babylon

Movies I've Watched in the Last Few Months While Battling Culture Shock

(And My Reaction)

Crash
(cried)
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
(cried)
United 93
(cried)
After the Wedding
(cried)
Pan's Labyrinth
(cried)
Schindler's List
(cried)
The Queen
(teared up)
Fahrenheit 9/11
(sneered, teared up)
Borat
(laughed)
Thumbsucker
(laughed)
Looking For Comedy in the Muslim World
(laughed)
Look Both Ways
(laughed, cried)
Dogville
(looked at the clock, cried)
The Squid And the Whale
(looked at the clock, fast-forwarded)
In America
(fast-forwarded, cried)
Children of Men
(cried)
Kandahar
(cried)
City of God
(cried)
Mystic River
(sobbed)

Most of the information I've read on culture shock lists one of the symptoms as "feelings of sadness, melancholy, or depression." Yeah, you think?

Let's just say I'm glad January is far behind me. Ayo, onwards and upwards to my happy ending!

Wild Wild West (Sumatra): A Roundup

The Good: Flora and fauna like I’ve never seen before; a canoe ride across a volcanic lake; really cheap homestay rooms; delicious Padang food, famous across Indonesia for its spiciness; the feeling of reaching solid ground and fresh air after five hours on a rickety, cigarette-filled public bus; conversation with a real, live American, my friend She Who Must Not Be (Blog) Named; spectacular scenery; touring Japanese World War II-era underground tunnels dug by forced labor; monkeys on the side of the road; singing along, loudly, to Celine Dion on another public bus, wantonly disregarding the real words to “My Heart Will Go On”; watching traditional Minangkabau dances, including one which involves jumping into a pile of ceramic and glass plate shards; cooking chicken fajitas, tortillas, and salsa with SWMNB(B)N and watching “Little Miss Sunshine” as we ate them; buying silver jewelry for cheap; gorgeous 75-degree weather; spending only $160 for the five-day trip, including round-trip airfare, local transportation, souvenirs, and four nights in hotels. I’d say it was worth the money.

The Bad: The only book I brought with me was Moby Dick. Cheap homestay rooms have really dirty sheets, pillows, and bathrooms. I feared for my life on those public buses, especially when twisting and turning down a mountain. I dropped SWMNB(B)N’s cell phone in the squat toilet and ruined it; I gave her mine in exchange, leaving me deprived of communication or a clock. Don't worry, though, it all ends happily: I finally finished Moby Dick, I’m back to clean sheets, I survived the 44 hairpin turns descending to Lake Maninjau, and I paid $20 and got my cell phone fixed and hence can once again send text messages and wake up in the morning.

The Ugly: The scratches on my arms and ankles from branches in the "jungle”; the intense sunburn on my arms, neck, and nose; the peeling of the same, soliciting many questions from my students along the lines of "Miss, what's wrong with your arms?"; the mosquito bites on my legs, arms, feet, and, mysteriously, stomach; my own personal odor after three days of bathing in really cheap homestay bathrooms. Yet, the sacrifice of beauty is but a small price to pay for a west Sumatran adventure.

Ten More Things Jaya Would Be Cute Doing

10.
Working as a footwarmer.

9.
Vanquishing her new Christmas toy.

8.
Helping out the servants.

7.
Reading The New Yorker.


6.

Getting ready for a walk.

5.

Playing computer with Brother #2 (a.k.a. Hairmano).

4.

Singing the jailhouse blues.

3. Showing off her circus dog genes.
2.

Hiding from the puparazzi.

1.

Just being herself.

Busy Bee

Things I did this week, in a desperate attempt to fill my spare time:

hosted a radio show
read four (4) novels
taught piano lessons to six (6) rowdy Primary children
worked on my grad school application
created a poster presentation for an academic conference next week
did aerobics with the Relief Society
taught my weekly English class at the church
did numerous (?) crossword puzzles
guest lectured about anaphora and deixis in a university class, in Indonesian
took a five (5) hour nap
watched my favorite soap opera, The Teenage Bride
memorized five hundred (500) vocabulary words
tried to watch Trainspotting for the second (2nd) time
beat my students at Scrabble one hundred seventy eight (178) to forty-four (44)
changed my phone number to avoid my stalker
wrote tens (10s) of emails
went to a housewarming party
had a Javanese lesson
read six (6) books of the New Testament
ate delicious soup with some friends from class

Notice how not one (1) of those things is "did homework" or "studied for finals." Life is good.

Talk the Vote

Recently, I've been working on my graduate school (re)application. (I deferred and now have to reapply, with the assurance that I will be accepted again.) If I want a certain scholarship--and I do--I have to study a foreign language. I can't decide what I want to study next (7 down, several thousand to go), so I figured, hey, why not let the internet decide? So, here we are, a poll: what language should I study in graduate school?

Afrikaans (to quote a certain mountain climber, because it's there)
Arabic (I miss hacking up parts of my throat)
Dutch (super useful for Indonesian linguistics)
Farsi (to be the NSA's wet dream--Arabic, Indonesian and Farsi)
Indonesian (they have some lit classes that look fun)
Irish Gaelic (Welsh was fun, so why not Irish?)
Sanskrit (it's dead, so I would never have to speak)
Turkish (vowel harmony, plus see "Farsi" above)
Vietnamese (tones, topic-comment structure, reduplication, classifiers. Whee!)

Thoughts?

A Day Late and Rp. 9,157 Short

This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for, in no particular order:

Listerine
Maya, who solves all my problems
the Internet
Indonesia
my family
Toblerone
Mark Kozelek
your mom jokes
the Church
Google
McDonald's soft-serve ice cream cones
toilet paper
the new James Bond
Graham Greene, Shusako Endo, and J.M. Coetzee
my sense of humor
the $10 all-you-can-eat buffet at the Novotel, an excellent Thanksgiving dinner

and, finally,
my health, strength, and daily rice.

Trick or Treat

As discovered in last week's lessons about Halloween,

Vocabulary Words My Students Knew Without Me Telling Them

corsair
eye patch
peg leg
hook
coffin
pale
vampire
fangs
zombie
cutlass

This from kids who can't put together a complete and correct sentence about what they did over their holiday. I don't get it.

Born to Be Wild

Things I Am Now Comfortable Enough to Do While Riding On the Back of a Motorcycle

• Open my eyes


• Breathe


• Put my hand out to indicate turning direction, like a good passenger


• Put my hand out to ward off oncoming buses


• Talk with the driver


• Let my legs dangle off the sides


• Ride sidesaddle in a skirt


• Not hold on


• Send and read text messages


• Send and read text messages from the driver's phone


• Think of blog entries like this one

Sources of Endless Fascination to L., the Youngest of the Maids

1. How white my skin is.

(Indonesians pay good money for whitening creams and powders and don't seem to understand that I don't like my white skin. Sunburns are clearly so a foreign concept.)

2. How my arms that are braceleted and white and bare are in the lamplight downed with light brown hair.

(Okay, maybe not in so many words, but the intent was there.)

3. How my legs are also covered with the same blondish hair.

(Slightly awkward follow-up question: "Is your hair that same color everywhere?" Um, excuse me? Did you just ask what I think you asked?)

4. How my face turns red at certain questions.

(With questions like "does the carpet match the drapes," I should think it's no surprise that I'm blushing!)

5. How big my feet are.

(As if, in a country where the largest shoes are two sizes too small, I needed reminding!)

6. How new "red freckles" keep appearing on my face--yesterday there was one on the right cheek, and today there's one on the left! Are those mosquito bites, or what?

(Yeah, kid, I'm 22 years old and still fighting pimples. Thanks for bringing that up.)

Things I Never Thought I Would Do, Part 1

Sing "I'm a Little Teapot" to a classroom of 15 year olds.

(To be continued...)

How I Spend My Time

What I read in the course of 13 days of vacation:

Adverbs, Daniel Handler
You Remind Me of Me, Dan Chaon
Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis
The Truth, Terry Pratchett
A Basque History of the World, Mark Kurlansky
Pompeii, Richard Harris
The Grass Harp, Truman Capote
The Best American Essays (College Edition), ed. Robert Atwan
The Broker, John Grisham
44 Scotland St., Alexander McCall Smith
Letters to a Young Mathematician, Ian Stewart
Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov
Rhinoceros and other plays, Eugene Ionesco
Why Girls Can't Throw, Mitchell Symons
A House in Sicily, Daphne Phelps
Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey

What else did I do? I played countless games of capitalism, poker, solitaire, sudoku, and the perfect card game. Spare time? Yeah, I've got that.

(Oh, right, and I toured Italy.)

Thoughts, Alone On Campus At Midnight

Never adopt the old-lady habit of turning your headlights on at daylight. You will forget them when you turn off the car, guaranteed. Also, Petra, you are stupid.

Why was it necessary to drive to campus, anyway? Doesn’t the idea of walking sound so much more appealing?

Thank heaven for cell phones.

Hi there, Tolkien Boy. Hi there, Optimistic. Hi there, Roommate’s Boyfriend. Hi there, Roommate’s Fiance. Hi there, Friend From Old Ward. Does no one have jumper cables?

What could the University Police possibly be doing right now that they can't help me?

Never be caught anywhere without a book. Drat.

Why, oh why, won’t the internet work? Oh, please, technological powers that be, smile upon me!

iFilm is one cool program.

Actually, Macs are just cool in general. I’m a fan.

Desert climates get rather chilly in the evening. I should have brought a sweater.

Be polite to the police, even when they make you wait for forty-five minutes in the middle of the night. All can be forgiven, as long as they come bearing jumper cables and a working car as a peace offering.