I’d say Happy Tuesday, but I just got back from being halfway across the world and boy are my arms tired! 🥁

… Okay, too many dad jokes to start off the day.

Anyway, I had a chat this week specifically with a friend in Pekanbaru, Indonesia, a city of 1.4 million people (and the answer to a geography trivia question nobody in North America is getting right on the first try).

She’s a translator, delivery motorist, social media manager, podcast co-host, caretaker, swimmer, and cook. Yes I am still talking about one person, and yes, we did all get a little tired just reading that.

And with that, it’s showtime!

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Endah takes care of both of her ailing parents, operates a delivery service by scooter, translates books into her native language, works on OK Boomer’s social media, is starting another podcast with Yours Truly, works out and swims in the rapids… oh, and she cooks.

A typically busy American woman, right?

Believe it or not though, she is not American. Endah Wahyuni lives literally half way around the world — 12 time zones east of Chattanooga. Endah is Indonesian, and lives firmly in the 21st Century.

But last century, I would not have even thought of Indonesia. And if I had, grass huts and farm fields would have come to mind. There would have been no way that I could, with a few clicks, converse with Endah online as if we were in the same room. The internet didn't exist in the 1970's.

And translating? I would have had to mail the manuscript of my novel to her home in Pekanbaru 9-thousand miles away; it would have taken months or years, rather than mere weeks, using the internet, to get the Saluki Marooned published in Indonesia. Saluki — as in the Egyptian dog, and Maroon — the school color of Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Put them together and you have a burned out broadcaster who returned to his alma mater in the 1970's but got trapped in time...a Saluki Marooned. The novel received the best reviews of any of the other seven foreign translations.

And…. although 21st Century technology separates us into angry tribes, some of us are brought together despite it. That's why Endah and I are now collaborating on an English conversation podcast for Indonesians. In the good old days I would have had to move to Indonesia in order to do so (or vice-versa on Endah’s end).

Now, Endah is not only the 1970's equivalent of a pen pal and colleague, but a nice friend. She also tolerates my sense of humor. Given the immediacy that Zoom allows for me to bug her, that's an extra nice plus!

She laughed when I told her that Indonesia would be the 51st state, not Canada.

Or at least I think she laughed.

This week, I sat down with Endah: my Gen-X colleague all the way in Pekanbaru, Indonesia for a conversation about our energy, language, family chaos, and what it's really like working with what I self-describe myself as a, "demented boomer."

Nobody sits down to write a novel about a 1970s college radio station thinking it's going to lead to a friendship with someone in Indonesia. That's not something that you can usually plan for, but it’s just how life pans out when you stay curious long enough.

There's something remarkable about two people finding common ground across every difference imaginable — generation, geography, language, culture — and just... getting along despite it all. It’s not a work relationship either where we tolerate each other enough to get through another week of content, we genuinely enjoy collaborating, laughing, and figuring out what comes next together.

The world spent a lot of years making that kind of connection impossible. Now it's just a Tuesday afternoon Zoom call.

I'll be damned.