buying a white blouse

it started off with the woman sitting next to me on tuesday night at the end of the gamelon practice, telling me that the following day is a full moon ceremony and all the musicians wear white shirts and white sashes ( the sash is kind of like wearing a tie with a suit...it shows that we are serious!
so off i went the next morning in search of a white Kabiya, which is the tailor fitted long sleeved and longish blouses the women here wear...usually from a brocade and see thru and a girdle underneath it that is part of the "look" on TOP of the sarong...
most balinese are built much smaller than me...so i already knew it was pretty much mission impossible, but armed with my new understanding of buying skills (caspar said: know what the price you are willing to pay, they will "feel" that and there will not be a problem of them screwing you , but if you are wishy washy they will know that too and put a high price" and budie telling me "think before buying. go to 3 stores so you know what the price is approximately, and then go back and buy what you want and bargain for it." which is all good advice as far as making any purchase in life!)

so off i went with an imaginary figure in my mind ($8) and went into my 3 tourist trap shops to get an idea of prices of things i had already bought other places so i knew how much they cost..so a mere 200% markup price is what everything was going for...so that gave me permission to start below the belt....but where oh where are we going to find a white blouse MY size? and the sellers so much want to make a sale, that they hop on their motorbike and drive around town looking for just what you asked for....and off she went, coming back every 10 minutes with another something to try on, and her neighbors were also searching for what i needed and mine came on her motorbike with a white brocade, see thru for me, even bigger than my size, but it thought : beggars can't be choosers....i need a white blouse in another 4 hours and she just ran around town after i had also been in half the town and couldn't find one my size, take it....it wasn't flattering, but...beggars can't be choosers,...and her neighbor ran over with 2 more, one cream and one white just as i was about to close the deal knowing that...beggars can't be choosers...but while that kept going on in my brain, another voice from the day before was caspars saying "ALWAYS listen to your intuition." hmmm...i don't like this blouse, i don't look nice in this blouse, but it is a white blouse ...and when i saw the other 2 blouses i decided to try them on, and the cream was so beautiful and a perfect fit and i looked like a princess....what a difference....but its creammm, not white...hmmm,,,,kept looking in the mirror and imagining that it is white, but it's cream...but with my sarong it will probably "look" white, and another voice saying.."don't rush into things you will find the white blouse...and how will you feel if you get to the temple and everyone is in white and you are in cream because you didn't TRUST, Patience! hmmm..and then i tried on the white one...nice too!! brocaded cotton, not see through and a good fit...but full of stains and stinking from moth balls...what a disappointment...how can i buy a blouse that has brown and pink and green marks all over it??! and she said.."no, i will clean it for you now. it will all come out." who is she kidding?! how can those colors come out? "wait here" so i wait and wait and keep wearing the cream blouse and seeing how beautiful i look in it...and while i am still trying to convince myself that it is "almost white" and the saleswomans' husband is sitting on the street watching me as i keep looking in the mirror and wondering whether it is white...maybe...
and suddenly a young thin balinese woman flies by on her motorbike wearing a beautiful white brocade blouse, and i laugh how god always gives me messages, so THAT is called a white blouse...and not what i am wearing! and i glance over at the husband and he smiles and nods his head agreeing with me, that yes, that is what you are looking for...

wait wait wait, and finally the neighbor saleswoman returns with a wet blouse but almost no stains! " i took alcohol and you see it is clean" almost...except for all the stains she didn't notice...and i decide that this is my chance...offer my $8 price for this since it is stained and lets go...

when i did, she nearly had a fit! $8 for a white brocade blouse, are you crazy?! and i just continued to say that is my price, take it or leave it, it is stained and that's what its worth...she took it...and i ended up buying the cream one too...it was so pretty! another $8! and a few t-shirts for the kids that i already knew how much they should cost, so all the drama of bargaining was gone for them....they saw i knew what i wanted and at what price and they just gave it to me, and i thanked them and left...

and...after the gamelon performance the priest shooed us all out of the inner temple until we first go through an initiation purifying of the body ceremony for gamelon temple musicians...so off we marched to the outer entrance where all 18 of us stood in a half circle while the priest and priestess were busy sprinkling about 10 different types of holy flower water on us and all kinds of seeds and rice and flowers and strings and blessings and drinking and smearing and combing and dabbing and smoothing and stomping and ....by the end of the ceremony i knew my white blouse was no longer white....

when i got home a few hours later, i washed it, hung it up to dry and in the morning saw it was nice and clean, and then the thought suddenly came (my god has such a sense of humor!) and i realized that the white blouse they had brought me to try on with all the stains had been someones blouse, that was at a ceremony, and that's why it looked like that! and they just went from house to house trying to find someone my size that was willing to sell their used white blouse ....i laughed..

when i told the german woman who is staying here the story, she said: can you believe that a balinese outsmarted a jew!

later she returned and said that we can look at the whole scenario differently....that maybe they so much wanted to help me have a white blouse for the ceremony in a few hours, that they didn't want to insult me and tell me they will find a used one for me, so they purposely pretended to give it to me "new" so that i would feel good. a possibility...instead of thinking they will go to any lengths to make $8!