indonesian hangover

I've already written about the time I spent in Indonesia working as an English Teacher. The experience was meaningful and revealing. I spent three months on Sumatra island. I experienced a Ramadan in a Muslim country, a monsoon in the tropics (my second one) and some others things...

I used to teach in an English Academy with a wide range of ages among my pupils, they could be anything between three year old kids to grown-ups. Now that I am back in Spain I still keep in touch with some of the older students, those of them who can actually read and write.

Siska is one of those students and we write to each other every now and then. A couple of weeks ago she asked me if she could give my e-mail address to another former teacher of the same academy and I told her to do so. This teacher wrote to me thinking I was another person he met somewhere but, anyway, we exchanged a couple of mails. I was quite shocked when I read this in one of his first e-mails: You sounded like an interesting person, i heard a lot about you having a drinking problem but you seem to be a very ambitious person too.

Drinking problem? He was calling me alcoholic just like that! I really did not know how to take it. I am absolutely sure I am not an alcoholic but I guess like many other things that changed when I was in Indonesia; this also was a relative issue. So I asked him Drinking problem? and the answer was Mike Villa and some other guys at that apartment that GEC teachers are always put up in (like me) were talking about you sitting on a couch and drinking beer...I guess that in a country where you can not drink a glass of wine or a beer with your dinner at a restaurant, if you drink a beer at home, you become an alcoholic. And that´s that. I smiled and thought that this was a really long hangover....