Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Almost fall out of the dressing room and you most definitely will not laugh alone.

This week I went on a shopping journey to try and find a Batik blouse or dress to wear to my son's college graduation. The Batik here is so stunning and I thought it would be fun to have something regional to wear for this joyous occasion.

A couple of things became apparent during this outing. First off, I am definitely not the same size, any way around, as an Indonesian woman. I am taller, which means that most dresses are too short for someone my age. Now my high school buddy, Debbie would tell you I wore very short skirts back then. However, it isn't a good look on this mature woman for sure. My shoulders are broader and so you have to really work to find something that you think you would be able to move in without ripping the fabric. Finding something that fits across the bust is also an issue. The fear of putting someones eye out after a button goes flying off your shirt when you take a breath is real. Forget about something fitting across the hips. Off the rack clothing makes most expat woman cuss under their breath I am certain.

I have been told that there are great tailors here. I have not ventured in to that arena yet, so there is hope for me still. Just not for this trip home. I have even heard that they come to your house and bring fabrics and all you do is point, pay and they do all the work. Sounds like heaven. If I could just get into a house so I could have that joy. But that is another story.

Back to the shopping story for now. I went to a mall called Pasaraya. It is an older, less visually stunning mall than some of the newer ones here. However, it has some very interesting features. The one pertinent to this post is that there is one entire floor where they sell EVERYTHING Batik. Table clothes, table runners, napkins, shirts, dresses, slippers, shopping bags, skirts, men's bathing suits, etc. It is pretty overwhelming. There are probably 40 to 50 vendors doing business on that floor. All selling Batik.

Since it is one of the upper floors of the mall, I had to pass through several other clothing areas on my way up. Some casual blouses caught my eye, so I stopped to take a look. I found a few items to try on and then tried to find the dressing room. A lovely young woman sees me and understands that I want to try on the blouses. She gives this sweeping motion to indicate "go that way" and I move forward. I am looking, and for the life of me I can't figure out where I a supposed to go. She continues to gesture and I keep moving, but it is just not clear where the dressing room is. Finally, we kind of end up in the middle of the sales floor and there is a U-shaped, metal rod attached to a support pillar with a curtain hanging from it. I realize this IS the dressing room. I stand in the middle of the area under the rod and she pulls the fabric around me. It was a quiet Monday, so I tried not to worry.

Now might be a good time to mention that many of the malls and stores are not air conditioned the way we air condition. Some are not air conditioned at all. Many times they do not turn the air conditioning on if there is no one in that area so you are often greeted with very still, almost body temperature air upon your arrival. Once on, it is still warm, just not as warm. The temps are beginning to reach about 95 these days so that should give you a clue that you are a tad bit uncomfortable when you wander around outside or in.

I stand in my dressing room and begin the trying on process. Not too much is fitting, so I go out and get another blouse and see an elastic waist skirt. That could work I think. Back into the shower stall, maaf, dressing room I go. I try on the blouse and it fits. Miracle of miracles. I then proceed to try on the skirt. Since the floor is bare tile and it is out in the open where large numbers of people walk, I decide to not take off my shoes before I slip out of the capris I have on and into the skirt I have hanging above me on the metal bar. Since I am a bit sticky from the heat, I am having to wiggle around a bit to get the blasted capris off. With the struggling and the warmth, I am getting more sticky. As I try to remove one of the capri pant legs off of my shoe, I catch my foot. Oh, dear Lord, I have horrible visions of pitching out into the store in a pile of fabric and metal with my pants half off. I am trying to find something to grab on to. My choices are the curtain or the bar. I know that I will most like pull the entire contraption down on top of me either way. So, I find myself hopping around on one foot trying to regain my balance. I can only imagine what this looked like from the outside. I am sure they can see my elbows and knee flailing and bumping the curtain. I hope they thought I was grooving to the music in there and enjoying the clothing I was trying on. However, God was smiling on me as I managed to get it under control, not rip everything down and expose myself. After all of that, the skirt was not a go and I then had to try and get out of it and back into the pants. Lesson learned: if in doubt, remove the shoes and stand on them.

With a new blouse in the bag, I am off to Batik heaven. I stroll around and spot a really lovely Batik sheath dress and decide to give it a whirl. The young woman directs me to the fitting room. This time, it isn't a curtain I am faced with. Instead, it is pretty much a wooden crate that is sanded and varnished. Hmmmm. Not looking too good and since I am higher up in the mall, it is even warmer. I go in and peel off my blouse, drop my capris to my ankles and try to slide the dress on.

Have you ever tried to put on a damp bathing suit? You know how it sticks to you and takes off a layer or two of skin in the process? Well, you get the idea of my dilemma only I am the wet bathing suit. Also, I am trying to do this changing routine in a box about the size a refrigerator would come in. Elbows are banging the wall, the door doesn't latch so I am once again at risk of flashing fellow shoppers and store clerks if an elbow or backside hit the door. Looking kind of like a cobra moving to the rhythm of a snake charmer's music, I get the dress on. Lovely and fits pretty well, but too short. Drat. Now I have to do the process in reverse. To say it was getting a little close in there is an understatement. Good thing I am not claustrophobic or I would have come screaming out of the box and ripped the dress off of me right there on the sales floor and not given a hoot.

After several vendors, I find two lovely blouses that fit. Checking the sizes, you try not to let it hurt your ego that in order to get it broad enough across the shoulders, one of them is an XL. It is like thinking about your age. It is just a number, right? So maybe the trick to fitting in to life here is to forget what normal is back home and just go with the XL life presented to me in this crazy place known as Jakarta.