I was 24 years old, and I was in Java, sitting on a bus crowded with people (oh, and hens). I had been in Indonesia for eight weeks. I was loving the experience of being constantly surrounded with new vistas, new tastes, new fauna, new people, of having everything be completely different from what I had known before. But recently, the fact that there was never anything familiar had been getting to me. I was starting to have occasional dreams that I got to go home, just for a weekend, or that I went into a store looking for aspirin and knew exactly what the bottle would look like, or that I spoke my own language and was understood. That day, the little differences were really getting to me.

One of the things that were particularly irking me that day was how everyone always stared at me, I guess because I was a white Westerner. How they followed me around, always solliciting, asking, touching, pulling. I was usually pretty good at being philosophical and telling myself that this was their country, that I should respect their way of being, but that day… well, I was just plain out of philosophy.

Next to me sat an ancient lady, topless and toothless, with a wise, weathered face. In front of me sat Dean, an Australian tourist I’d met a few days before. Dean read my exasperation and tried to make me laugh. He started telling me what the old lady was probably thinking. Eventually he said “Gee, I wish this white girl next to me would sing me a song”.

And that’s when it happened. I thought, “All right, you people wanna stare, well, I’m gonna you a reason to stare!” And I started serenading the old lady with the song California Dreamin’ by The Mamas and the Papas. As I went on, my song grew louder and eventually I was singing to the whole bus, as its local occupants laughed and stared.

Then I sat down, and everything felt okay.