Going to Indonesia to teach Interactive Fiction
The Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation is a not-for-profit that does all kinds of wonderful things to improve the IF community (which is already fantastic) including organising and fundraising for the IF Comp; keeping Twine running smoothly; and they’ve just started a micro-grant program.
I happen to be one of the first recipients of a micro-grant from the IFTF: a grant to go to Indonesia at the time of the Ubud Writers’ and Readers’ Festival and teach IF to Indonesians (and other speakers of Bahasa Indonesia).
This was the excuse I needed to take my whole family to Indonesia, as Chris and I have been planning to do since before we even had kids. From the age of 12 to 24, I planned to move to Indonesia as an aid worker/teacher, and before the IFTF grant I’d visited various parts of Indonesia seven times altogether. At one stage I was technically fluent in Bahasa Indonesia. Chris and I visited Indonesia briefly after a year of marriage, but that was more than ten years ago. It was the longest period of time I’d gone without visiting, but I’d also become disabled (and diabetic) in that time. And, you know, we have two kids now.
There are so many reasons I wanted to take the family to Indonesia that I’m not even aware of all of them. Holidays build resilience and flexibility in my kids, which is especially handy when they’re both autistic. And it’s valuable to spend some time in the third world, even in a luxury setting like Bali.
We’re home now, and our trip went really well. I taught about twenty students (eighteen in person including two ex-pats living in Bali) and thoroughly enjoyed seeing the “Oh!” on their faces as they saw how easy it is to use interactive fiction thanks to tools like Twine.
And my family all had a great time, complete with some of the classic challenges of travel to Indonesia (traffic, heat, food poisoning, communication challenges, unexpected obstacles, etc).
I’ll be doing a LOT of travel videos. This first one is about the Sacred Monkey Forest in Ubud.
Spoiler: it was excellent!
Felicity Banks 