Hash This Harriers

The Hash Hash Harriers? Have you heard of them? Essentially, they are a group of people who trail run. But they don't take themselves too seriously, as the subtitle of the organization is "a drinking club with a running problem."

When I met my husband in Las Vegas in 2004, he ran regularly with the Hash, as it is nicknamed. While I have enjoyed an occasional trail run, I didn't join him because I can think of more enjoyable things to do than run through a hot desert. However, this week in Bali, we've had nonstop rain. We've had nonstop downpours of rain. The back and front yard flooded and I caught frogs hiding out in our kitchen for fear of drowning. My husband and I love the rain and left to our own devices, we would be happy to spend rainy afternoons inside with books and mugs of coffee. However, we now have a toddler. This means that cabin fever sets in much quicker as you must try to think of new experiences to stimulate your child's brain and make him tired in the process.

Kent, since coming to Bali, reconnected with the Hash Hash Harriers, as it is a group that exists around the world. He's done it three times. Thanks to the overwhelming amount of rain we've had, we thought to combat our collective cabin fever, we'd all go to the Hash; I'd walk with Fyo in the Ergo and Kent could then run.

I should say, that when we left the states back in September of 2009, I made Kent promise that if I got lost or kidnapped by aliens, terrorists, or the North Koreans, he would call Hillary Clinton and she would then send Bill Clinton to come and rescue me. I should also say that there are a few things that crop up in our marriage over and over again and one of them is that Kent has a very different gauge for walking. When he says he wants to take a walk, I used to assume he meant a walk like most people, ie 30 -60 minutes, but what Kent really means by a walk is 3-6 hours. The last few weeks, when Kent went to the hash, he was home within 3 hours, so I didn't think too much of the length. When I asked about the difficulty of the trail they ran along, he said, it was very pretty, along rice paddies.

Like an idiot, I forgot about the nonstop rain we've had for four days, so what usually are trails along rice paddies, were now mud and the kind of mud that swallows your foot. Kent stayed with me the very first part, until the path was clear and he explained how to find a trail, and if things got to be too much to just take the short cut (I swear he said there was a short cut) and if it got dark or I got lost, they would come and find me. Even Bill Clinton. Because he promised. We agreed we'd both would do the short trail so it would take about an hour and a half. Then he ran ahead.

Very quickly, I realized I had fallen into not just a mud puddle along a rice paddy, but into one of our marriage communication gaps. I was not even five minutes in when the only way to stay on the trail and to get down a hill was either to jump 12 feet with Fyo on my back or slide on my butt. I slid. Some lovely late coming women caught up to me and helped me slide. Then we came to (and this is where my geology knowledge fails me. ) a moving body of water more than a stream, less than a river, about 4-5 feet wide. Most people were crossing it by taking running leaps and jumping to the other side. You could see where a few had failed, or where their hands had grabbed on to the muddy hill on the opposite side and they had slid down into the water. With a 30 pound toddler on my back, I didn't trust my leaping abilities, even with 25 years of ballet on my side. The only other way to get across that I could see? I found a diagonally growing tree, and pretending like I was back in the fourth grade when I was facile on the cross bars, I grabbed hold with both arms, cross barred it to the middle until I could throw a leg over to the other side a la Indiana Jones style.

Not long after, Kent realized how difficult this trail was proving to be and came back to check on us. This was good, as the women who were with me thought he was a bit of a schmuck for leaving me. I said, no, this was the deal, he could run and have his bit of Kent time while I walked with Fyo. The trail wasn't supposed to be this hard. Kent saw we were fine, though now muddy, and went back to running. Of course, it was at this point, that the trail became like a roller coaster with no cars. I suspect this particular trail is what circus performers use to train for the circus. We came along one hill where the only way to get down was to lay down and slide on your belly. Or so this is what the women ahead of me said. But I had Fyo. So I had to figure out how to get us both down holding me and holding him. But the hill was so steep that I needed both my hands, so what I ended up doing with these women - was taking Fyo off my back and we passed him hot potato style down the hill, and then I slid. At this point, Fyo started to lose it; at the bottom I put him on my front in the Ergo so I could nurse him to calm him down (side note here - you know that quote "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astraire did but backwards and in heels"? I have told Kent on more than one occasion, that I do everything he does but breastfeeding a child). At the bottom of the hill, was a rocky stream where a woman with her daughters were doing their laundry and bathing. They had seen the Fyo feat down the hill, and despite being completely mid bathing, this fellow mother helped me across the rocks of the stream. However, it was once I was safely on the other side that I slid on a rock and fell face down - one hand catching me and the other Fyo but not in time to stop Fyo's head from dipping his hair into a mud puddle, so the poor child spent the rest of the day with a dollop of mud on his head.

I could go on and on about this trail and still not quite capture the level of difficulty or the amount of mud I found myself covered in. At no point did Bill Clinton come to save me (not the first time he's failed me I might add). There was no actual short cut. I ended up walking most of it with this amazing woman who writes a column for an Australian magazine on trekking around the world. She asked if she could quote me for her column. I said yes, though what she found quote worthy was "If I knew where the short cut was, I'd take it and start drinking."

When we finished, thankfully just before dark, I told my companion that she was an absolute life saver - she had told me more than once, given the abnormal difficulty of this trail, my spirits were doing rather well. I told her it was due to her company - if I had been alone or had got caught in the dark, I would have been a basket case. Kent said he was just five minutes ahead of us, but when he finished, he got castigated by a gang of women for leaving me. Even the woman I was with said K was out of line. I said again, I really did tell him it was okay to go ahead. But also, the thing with my husband was that he loves and believes in me so much, that often he thinks I am capable of things that I myself don't know I am capable of. Indeed, when I overheard Kent defending himself against the attacks from the gang of women, he was saying, "Listen, my wife's a bad ass. She's fine." Then he got me a much deserved beer.

That night Kent asked why I never joined him when he ran in Vegas. For one, I wasn't invited, but really, running in the desert in the heat? I'd rather hang from a tree over a muddy river. He said, he did take one old girlfriend and she didn't really enjoy it either - mainly because she asked him not to leave her, he did five minutes later to run ahead, and then at the end, he got drunk and jumped naked over fire. He then said, "I guess I can see why she didn't like it." Ah, hindsight is 20/20 they say. I had to admit, him jumping naked over fire would kind of send me over the edge too, if only because I'd be like, um, hello? I want a second child! Even if we had twenty children, I can think of much safer birth control methods! Is Bill Clinton still coming?

Breaking up with Buddha

This is Buddha. He lives in our bathroom. He shares it with the mouse. Knowing I am not a fan of rodents, my sweet sweet husband set a mouse trap in the kitchen for when the little guy skitters under the house to the kitchen for his midnight snack. Husband caught the mouse the first night he set the trap out. But the next morning, when he tried to move the trap, the little guy escaped. Husband suspects it was not the first time the little guy has spent time in the little trap. We've left the trap out every night since. Oh rather my husband has, because I am such a sissy, I don't even want to touch the trap.

The mouse seems to be a smart fellow as he hasn't made any other forays into the trap (probably he was a lab rat in a former life). I now think our problem is actually the Buddha who lives in the bathroom with the mouse. I think he has to go.

Since Buddha doesn't like violence or killing of any living thing, I think the Buddha is on the mouse's side. I had a few words with Buddha. Mainly, that I didn't wish any harm or killing to befall the mouse. I just want the mouse to live somewhere else.

Buddha statues generally have long ear lobes to signify long life, but this Buddha has long ear lobes to signify his stellar hearing. I think he heard the neighbor telling me how he caught a rat in his house. After letting his kids play with it, he drowned it in a bucket of water.

Last night when I went into the bathroom, the mouse was dangling by his feet from the rafter, exposing his belly before dropping down and scampering over to the Buddha. Buddha probably told him not to worry, that he only had another week with us in the house.

I'm also losing the battle against the mosquitoes. Last night one was caught under the mosquito netting over our bed. Husband and baby emerged this morning completely unscathed. I, however, looked like I had come down with the chicken pox.
"Wow." Kent said looking at my hundreds of bites, "thanks for taking one for the team."

I blame this on the Buddha as well. I like Buddha and I like what he stands for, but, like the mouse, I think it's best for both of us to spend some time apart. Just until I get rid of the creatures I don't like.

My Sister's Suitcase

My sister is coming at the end of the month. Sis is notorious for packing light. Largely, this is because she hates carrying heavy suitcases. Also, she lives in Brooklyn, and when you live someplace where you usually take the subway to and from the airport, it does, indeed, make sense to travel with carry-on only. However, when she said she was looking into tickets to come to Bali, I was already on Amazon shuffling my wish list over to my cart and giving Amazon her mailing address. It was then that I said, “Alright, enough of this carry-on nonsense. You get 50 pounds and we’re going to use it.” She said that Bryan, whom she is dating would also be coming. Fabulous. Make that a 100 pounds of luggage for our purposes. Because really, when you visit the tropics, what do you need besides sunscreen, shorts and a swimsuit? By the time she had booked her ticket, I had sent her the following list:

1 bottle of gin

1 bottle of dry vermouth

(you can legally bring in one bottle of liquor and one bottle of wine. Vermouth, lucky for us martini drinkers, counts as wine.)

(But maybe we should have them skip the gin and bring two vermouths, because oddly, gin is not that much more expensive in Bali, but vermouth is literally ten times the cost.)

(Kent then says to skip the gin and bring one dry vermouth and one sweet vermouth for the purpose of Manhattans. I fail to relay this message to Sis because I do actually want the bottle of gin. Sis would bring good gin whereas in Bali, we get the equivalent of Gordon's. But then, I come from a family of gin drinkers, where our liquor cabinets generally house a variety of gins, and one bottle of whiskey.)

(After 3 weeks of solid rain, I do think Kent is now right, that a Manhattan would be good. We tell Sis, one dry vermouth, one sweet. If the suitcase is too full, skip the gin.)

15 bottles of my favorite titanium dioxide sunscreen (from Badger) that I have already ordered

All natural mosquito repellent that does not feel like Aqua Net hairspray when you apply it

All the New Yorkers in my sister’s possession

Bottle of B1 vitamins because supposedly they help to prevent mosquito bites

A bottle of tea tree oil, (the all natural cure for mosquito bite itching)

(Maybe instead of skipping the gin entirely, I should have Sis decant it into 4 oz bottles that she can stick in her carry-on. This way, I get the gin and she can dip into it if the 22 hour flight gets a little tedious. Hmmm….will run this past Sis.)

(But it is one thing to take over your sister’s suitcase, and quite another to take over the suitcase of the man coming with her solely for the sake of vermouth. Is it a bit presumptuous? Oh, but this is the man who drove me to the Beth Israel Emergency Room when I needed stitches after falling on my face after a bit too much gin. Better not request any liquor go into his suitcase lest he think I’m a total alcoholic. Damn.)

4 bottles of my multi-vitamins

3 tubes of Tom’s of Maine gel toothpaste

4 Secret powder fresh deodorant (does it make sense that in the hottest places on the planet you can’t get decent deodorant?)

A gallon of half and half (why is half and half an American only phenomenon?)(Oh, if there was only a way to get it here!)

Crunchy peanut butter (this one is extra credit)

Sis sent word that our Amazon order totaling hundreds of dollars had arrived. Kent ordered other boxes of technological things and had them delivered to her as well. My grandmother called Sis and told her that she was sending The History of Saffron and other Spices to bring to me so that when I go to the market, I know the difference between Indonesian and Asian saffron. This is what happens when you live overseas, and a member of your family visits: that family member then becomes family ambassador and everyone else sends gifts for the toddler, and things they’ve been wanting to get to you.

When I skype with my sister, she shows me the accumulating pile of books, sunscreen, toothpaste and other random Trader Joe’s items. I have no idea how she’s going to get it all into her suitcase or if she’ll be able to meet the weight requirement set by the TSA.

Kent then started planning our time with Sis here. Sis and Bryan do want some time in Ubud, but also some beach time. As Sis says, she wants to wake up and walk out to the beach. An understandable request, given that she lives in Brooklyn, works in Manhattan, and has been reading the book Slow Love by Dominique Browning (that I ordered and had delivered to her address).

After Kent researched all the beaches within a day's distance, he recommends a few days at the Gili Islands. We’ll take a ferry over, he says.

He then pokes his head around the corner to where I am writing, “Hey, Sis and Bryan are packing light, right?”

“Um, no.” I say.

“Oh wait.” He says, “They’re bringing a bunch of our stuff.”

“Yes.” I say. “They’re actually bringing everything we are reading this summer.”

“We asked them to do that, right?”

“Yep.”

“Huh.” He says.

“Why?”

“Well, we can take a ferry to the Gili Islands, but while there’s a ferry, there isn’t actually a ferry terminal. So, we’re going to have to roll our rolling suitcases up the beach. Or pay a local a dollar to do it. Or put everything in a backpack.”

We start brainstorming what to do with their (our) luggage.

Gin? My entire Amazon reading list? A year’s worth of New Yorkers? Sis’s suitcase is the Holy Grail of my existence at the moment. I’m unwilling to sacrifice any of its contents. But still rolling fifty to a hundred pounds of luggage up a sandy beach?

I’ll pay the dollar.

Bali just ain't for blond divorcees

I love Elizabeth Gilbert as much as the next girl. I even envy her and think she is brilliant. Not that I think she had an easy road by any stretch: a marriage she didn’t want to be in, divorce in New York, one of the at fault states and consequently most expensive places to get divorced in the country and a case of depression alongside both?

Yuck.

But I do envy her and think she is brilliant. If only because in my experience, cases of depression, broken relationships that result in broken hearts are at some point inevitable.

Yet when I left my broken relationship with my broken heart, my depression already medicated because it was by that time an old and chronic companion, it didn’t occur to me to take a year off and go to Italy, India, or Indonesia.

I instead took what could have been travel money, and got a dog with as many heart and psychological issues as I had, bought a house and went back to graduate school. In the end, I can’t begrudge Gilbert too much, as I too found yoga, met and married the love of my life, and along the way weaned myself off of my security blanket of antidepressants, so that now I can live happily ever in Bali without having to resort to Gilbert’s medicine man.

I do admittedly envy Gilbert’s 3 months of doing nothing but eating in Italy, and it seems her year of travel has earned her considerably far more money than my stint in graduate school has earned me. But other than than, my only contention with Gilbert is what I imagine is a repercussion of her book, Eat, Pray, Love she herself could not foresee: the droves of divorcees who flocked to Bali to heal their hearts and find their Felipes. I don’t know why, but it seems that most of them, like Gilbert, are white and blond. From the sales of her book, I know it resonated with women of all hair and skin colors, but for some reason, the blond ones who come to Bali (The brunettes maybe went to Italy?).

I see them all over Bali. I have even met some of Gilbert’s precursors. It turns out that blond women have been coming to Bali to heal their hearts and find love and success long before Gilbert. The ones I have met have beautiful accents and look like a cross between Meryl Streep and Glenda the Good Witch. They tend to be older, even nearing sixty, have a contented glow and a sense of satisfaction.

I can’t say all of Gilbert’s followers fit this description; it does seem a fair amount look hungry, needy, even desperate. Some look like they just want a different life, but they don’t know how to get it. My husband and I see them in restaurants, and I admit, we act less enlightened than we are and quietly make fun of them. When they leave, they generally look like they have been stood up, and we kind of feel ashamed of ourselves.

Yet, what most of what we encounter in Bali are actually families. We’ve met a lot of families who are traveling for a year, either because one parent is on sabbatical, or they are, like us, taking a break from the run of the mill, and maybe even looking for a new place to live and create a home. We’ve met several families who started out like us, traveling, and have settled in Bali.

We talk with these other parents about the perks of Bali, that you can have a good quality of life for not much money. We talk about how much we don’t miss doing the laundry or cleaning our own houses or the good quality affordable playgroups for our children. While it can be a stretch to afford buying a house in our country of origin, you can build a house in Bali for $30,000. Add an extra ten if you want a pool.With all the good reasons to stay in Bali, I'm not sure why Gilbert still doesn't live here.

We also like Bali not just for the view of rice paddies or that the wait staff in any restaurant will play with our baby while we eat or that while the Green School isn’t perfect, it is of a far higher quality than the alternatives stateside. We like Bali because in addition to the cheaper cost for a higher quality of living, we enjoy the values of the Expat community. Generally speaking, they are forward thinking people, willing to try new models for education, energy use, and businesses. They are wanting to live lives that they haven’t had role models for.

Then I realize that those blond divorcees aren’t just looking for their Felipes. They are like us, and looking for a new beginning and a life we not only love, but that lines up with our values and that we can live authentically. We may stay and build a house in Bali, we may not, but we'll certainly be in good company as we figure it out.

White People Don't Like Papaya

For my high school graduation gift, my grandmother bought me tickets to Costa Rica to visit her where she was volunteering with the Peace Corps. The day I landed at the San Jose airport, she met me and took me out to lunch, assuming correctly I’d be hungry. The place we went was as wide as your average elevator. The entire inside was painted turquoise blue. She asked if I wanted juice with my lunch. I looked at the list of juices: orange, lemon, pineapple, watermelon, mango, and papaya. Determining to be more exotic than I actually was, or at the very least to be someone kind of adventurous or someone who liked to try new things, I chose papaya. I admit I chose it precisely because I had never had it, and it sounded romantic. It sounded like something I should love, and long for after I had left Costa Rica. It sounded like something I could savor while sitting on a beach watching sea turtle bury their eggs.

It tasted like that impossible-to-get-out-no-matter-how-many-times-you-brush your-teeth taste in your mouth when you are sick.

In Bali, every morning, lovely saronged women make our breakfast. Ignoring all nutritional advice about how you should eat different things every day, we essentially have the same thing every morning : fruit salad, banana pancakes and fried eggs with toast. The fruit salad consists of banana, pineapple, watermelon, papaya, and lime. My husband doesn’t like papaya either. The lovely saronged women don’t notice that we never eat it or that we’re always trying to pawn it off on our toddler son with the excuse that we’ve heard it is exceedingly good for him and his chronic constipation. Our son, of course, reaches for a slice of banana.

Since I have been in Bali, I have confessed to a few other expats that I don’t like papaya. I said it in an almost whisper, as if I am the only person on the planet who suffers from this embarrassing condition. The first neighbor I confessed to said matter-of-factly, “You know, I don’t like it either. But I find if I get enough lime on it, it can be okay.” Well, I thought, now we know why they garnish their fruit salads with lime: it’s the papaya coping mechanism.

Last week, my son’s school was on holiday. At first, my husband and I didn’t know what the holiday was, how to spell it, or what it would impact in terms of services. It didn’t take long to learn that Galungan is a Balinese holiday that takes place every 210 days. Essentially, when they want to explain it to Westerners, they say it is the Balinese version of Christmas. Except that there isn’t any gift giving. What they are trying to impart is that it is just a big deal and everything is closed. Including anything serving Westerners staying in the area.

With my son’s school closed, Kent suggested we find a nanny to help with his care for the week. When I said this to our neighbor, she laughed at me and said all the nannies were off too.

Kent protested, “This can’t be right. Somebody has to be working. I mean, we’re staying here. It’s not like they can’t not offer us services.”

Au contraire.

When they say there are no services, they mean there are no services. It is not like Christmas, where almost everything is closed, but your favorite bookstore and pizza delivery place stay open. No lovely saronged women were going to come to make our breakfast. No one would come to make our bed or do our dishes. The point of Galungan is to go to temple and make a series of offerings to the gods, not to serve white people who have forgotten how to cook or take care of themselves.

We quickly brainstormed for what we could make ourselves for breakfast. It took us a minute to remember what we used to eat when we had to make our own breakfast. Thankfully, those lovely saronged women didn’t completely neglect us: they stocked all the refrigerators with fruits and eggs, so we all could make our own fried eggs and fruit salad. When I opened the refrigerator door, all I could see was a rainbow of watermelon, papayas, pineapples, and limes. We didn’t know what to do with all the papaya. It felt slightly wrong not to like it as it sat there on our refrigerator shelf: the fruit a vibrantly beautiful orange with its inside covered with black shiny seeds opulent as caviar. It's a fruit that looks like it could have been served on a silver platter to Cleopatra on her barge up the Nile.

Yet our neighbors did not feel this twinge of guilt, of not liking such a fruit.

One neighbor brought over a fresh loaf of bread from the good bakery in town as a thank you for letting her use our cell phone when hers had died. She stopped back by to make sure we had received it, as we had all been sleeping when she dropped it off.

“I also have a papaya, if you’d like it.” She said.

“Um, no thanks.” We said. “We don’t really like papaya.”

“Damn,” she said. “I don’t either.”

“I haven’t yet met an Australian, English or American person who does.” I said.

After we ate our breakfast that we made our selves, I went for a bike ride through the town. Indeed, everything was closed, including all the favorite haunts of the Expat community. The only people wandering the sidewalks were white people who looked like they were slightly bruised from being kicked out of their hotel and like they may have been starving. I considered stopping to ask them, if they, by chance, wanted our papaya? Apparently, it is full of good enzymes…

But since they were white, I don’t know if they would consider it a generous offer. They might instead feel like the recipient of a gift that no one wants at a White Elephant Christmas party. Needless to say, that was how we felt. At the end of the day, our papaya ended up in the compost pile.

Crap. Turns out Paradise has its Drawbacks

1. I grew up in Portland, OR. I went to college in Seattle, WA. I know rain. I have spent months of my life not seeing the sun. In Singapore, I was so tired of the heat and humidity, that when we came to Bali and it was raining and cool enough I had to take out my thin sweater, I thought I had achieved nirvana.

We have been in Bali almost a month. It has rained almost every day. Not that tropical kind of rain, where it dashes in for ten minutes before it moves on to its actual destination across the ocean. But a steady Seattle-like downpour that lasts all afternoon and into the night, and even once or twice into the morning.

I don't mind the rain so much, except that I no longer own the clothes the rain requires. I own one thin sweater and one long sleeved shirt. I don't actually own pants. I don't even have any in storage in the states. I admit, I love all day rain. But when I don't actually own the right clothes - it means when I do go out, I wear my wrong clothes and freeze, so I can keep my warmer clothes dry for when I return.

But really, the problem with such rain is that thanks to the heat and the outdoor ambiance of our bathroom, when it rains, the bathroom mirrors fog up. It is like God is taking a 24 hour shower in our bathroom. When I take out my contacts and put on my glasses? Yep. Completely foggy. Which kind of defeats the point of putting them on in the first place.

2. The other way Bali is like Portland, OR:

One of the things we love here is the values of the expat community. The expats here are educated, liberal minded, healthy, yoga loving, and into organic farming, permaculture, and recycling as well as forward thinking people. Problem is, like Portland, (I suspect even more so in Eugene) and Boulder, CO, this type of community attracts a certain percentage of woo-woo-metaphysical-rainbow-wearing-greasy-haired-hippie-dippie freakos. For example, in the Expat Time newspaper, the headlining article was "How to Become a Spiritual Medium." I have lost count of how many stores selling crystals there are here. It constantly reminds me of Portland in 1995, and it has the same Indigo Girls soundtrack.

Today I was sitting in a favorite cafe of the expat community, where the internet is quick and free, where you can sit for hours and have someone bring you dollar lattes, and where the menu is full of great salads and chocolate cake. Of course, it also has a wide Raw Food and vegan selection. But there are those same annoying people from Portland Tri-Met buses and the Boulder Library; they have a particular woo-woo-metaphysical vibe that you can spot in a millisecond before they even attempt to make conversation with you. They maybe even wrote the article on how to become a spiritual medium.

One such person sat down at the far end of my table. I had my computer open and made sure to look nowhere but within the thirteen inches of my own screen. Sadly, I could hear him as he talked to the poor man next to him. I learned that he was teaching himself calculus from Calculus for Dummies (I can't imagine the poor soul who had to write that book. Dumbing down calculus? Also, we have enough problems. We don't need to be putting things like calculus in the hands of idiots.). His motivation for learning calculus? Because there is currently a war going on among aliens, as evidenced by the vast amounts of meteor showers occurring (I also learned about the poaching of meteorites by selfish and greedy countries trying to save their own financially bankrupt governments). Turns out, some of those aliens are pissed and on a rampage. He thought that if he learned calculus, he would have plenty of interesting conversation, so that when the pissed off aliens kidnapped him, he would be able to save his own life with his entertaining conversation, and maybe even, effect a peace treaty with all the other aliens.

3. The predominant religion in Bali is Hindu and Buddhist wanna be-s. So when, such people sit next to you and the aliens don't actually kidnap them in time to save your own sanity, you really can only assume it's a flaw somewhere in your own karma.

Looking Back at Singapore

and some of the pictures I took while I was there. I just had a moment to go through them. I think these three are my favorite. Especially the red shoes above. I kind of wish I had bought the red shoes. They were for sale in the alley by our house, probably for two dollars because everything I bought in the alley was for two dollars. I just had no place to wear them or store them, but now I wish I had them just as dress up props in my closet in my some day house.
This (above) is one of my very favorite altars that was also by our house and in the alley. The art of display in altars is one I am hoping to master.
And here is a sign on someone's back door. I have no idea what it says.

I don't miss much about Singapore, but I do kind of miss the street we lived on, the bookstore, my favorite dessert and design shop, my favorite cafe, and these kinds of little details.

On the Hunt

Kent and I have been married almost five years, together for six and have lived in five cities and three countries together. In the past, whenever we have looked for places to live, we have looked at no more than five places, and generally, it decreases by one in the latest city; in Denver we looked at five houses, in LA four, and Singapore, three. In Singapore, we congratulated ourselves on our intentionality, our focus, and our ability to utilize things we learned from watching The Secret.

Then we moved to Bali.

I have lost track of how many houses we have seen. The first one was beautiful, but was a ways out of town, and to get to it, you had to walk along a narrow dirt path along a rice field for the equivalent of five city blocks. It had no pool or Internet. Even if we were to remedy the Internet, the best we could do would be dial up. I don’t think I need to spend a lot of time going into why dial up just doesn’t work for us. The house had no pool of its own to use, but apparently, just across a rice field or two, there was a pool we could use. In case what I want to do in the heat of the mid-day Indonesian sun is to march my toddler over to somebody else’s pool along a narrow dirt path and then back again just before toddler’s nap. Or after I walk the five city blocks with the groceries along the back of a rice field, I then want to walk even further in the heat to the neighbor’s pool. Right.

It didn’t take long for me to get spoiled on the pool front. Not that I’m out to become an Olympic swimmer or even attempt to do a triathlon. Truth be told, I don’t even know how to do the crawl stroke. But I do know that for both my toddling son and me, when we’re on the brink of potential heat stroke, dunking us both in the pool is the fastest way to cool us off and put us in better spirits. And water play has become a way of life for a certain toddler who lives within ten degrees of the equator.

We seriously considered a cute small little house we could rent for the equivalent of about $400 USD a month. We’d have to furnish this house ourselves, which would be nothing but a joy in Bali, and it had a gated small yard Fyo could play in. The problem? It was a cute little house that could have been anywhere – it could have been in Portland, OR or Columbus, OH. Or it could have been in Bali. But I want the house we live in to feel like we’re in Bali, but not because the kitchen lacks a hot water faucet or you have to squat to pee in the bathroom.

So then we added a view to our priority list. Our house had to have Internet, a pool and a view.

We saw a beautiful house that hung over a river, but the kitchen was abysmal and the guest bathroom, you walked down a series of stone steps into a dungeon. One house we considered only because it had the fastest Internet on the island, yet it had no actual living space except for the front porch, which actually is fine in Bali. We love the idea of our space being an indoor/outdoor living space. But the dining table was glass topped (a physical and financial disaster waiting to happen with a toddler who loves to bang) and rather than couches in the “living” space were narrow little stools that even the most proper of Jane Austen’s characters wouldn’t have found comfortable. It was owned by a fellow American who I can only assume was a bachelor who never hung out in his own home unless he was also a trapeze artist who found teetering in his living room porch a relaxing meditative exercise.

The Balinese have a fascinating thing with their houses. On the one hand, they have beautiful and intricately carved doors that you can’t be bigger than your average teenage ballet-dancing girl to get through. You can have window shutters match your beautiful and intricate carved doors. But most Balinese avoid daylight at all costs. So most traditional Balinese houses don’t actually have windows. The interior then comes closer to resembling a Cuban prison with a lone fluorescent light bulb hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room. This house we saw yesterday.

But after looking at a couple houses after this one, we can only guess that between the lack of windows and the one lone light bulb hanging in the middle of the room (bad for ambiance, bad for reading, bad for everything really), the Balinese don’t really like light of any kind. Or when they are indoors, they are always sleeping.

The other fascinating thing about all the houses we’ve seen is that none of them have ovens. I’ve asked why, and no one really knows. One woman says, it’s too hot here for ovens. But Singapore is even hotter, I say, and they have ovens. The woman then shrugs her shoulders. I asked another woman. She said the Balinese don’t bake, and maybe traditionally they don’t, but all our favorite restaurants in Ubud make their own breads, cookies and desserts.

I gave up hope of baking my son’s 2^nd birthday birthday cake.

But this week, oh this week, we found it. Of course, it has neither a pool nor Internet. Yet the house is perfect. The woman we are to rent it from is a French-Canadian-Balinese fairy godmother who looks a tad like Meryl Streep. We stopped by to see the house and stayed two and half hours just talking to her.

She did admit the lack of a pool has been a missing for her. She rents the house from an American who I think lives in California. We’re asking if maybe he could put one in?

As for the house, all I can really say is that it takes your breath away. Or that it’s pretty close to the house I wished I lived in when I was a little girl. It comes with full time cleaning woman who happens to be fabulous with children. She comes everyday from 9am to 5pm. She doesn’t know it yet, but she is about to be my son’s new best friend.

Not to mention, it has the first and only oven I have seen in Bali. It also has the only Kitchen-Aid food processor I’ve seen. Each week, along with the water delivery, a supply of coconuts is also delivered to your door.

My husband is figuring out the Internet. I said I’d put in the pool myself if I had to dig the hole with a kitchen spoon. At least, I can cool off with a coconut.

Yes, You Heard a Rooster and Yes, I Outsourced Breakfast

My only complaint about Bali and where we're currently staying is the iffy internet (in quality and speed) as it makes it difficult to do a lot online. For example, posting a picture of our current house could take up to four days and generally I just don't have the patience for such things.

So, sadly, I have been unable to put up a picture of our current bedroom, where yards of white mosquito netting drapes romantically around the bed (or playfully, as Fyo thinks it is his personal fort and loves to play hide and seek in the folds of fabric). Or a picture of our bathroom where the shower tiled with white river rocks is nestled into a plant covered rock wall.

When Kent and I looked at the house, between the bedroom and the bathroom - even though the bathroom lacks a bathtub - I sighed that sigh I usually sigh when we've found the house we have been looking for.

There were a couple things I failed to notice, because I couldn't see them at the time. On the plus side, I didn't see that the house comes with breakfast service. This means that between 8 and 9 am, saronged women come into your kitchen to make you breakfast. Generally, they make you coffee (if for some reason you haven't already had three cups) or tea, fruit salad, banana pancakes or fried eggs and toast. According to our neighbors, they will also make you anything else you want if you have the ingredients on hand. They then do all the dishes in the sink as well as the breakfast dishes.

On the down side. I didn't anticipate the war I would have to launch against mosquitoes and ants. After my husband took Fyo to school yesterday morning, I attacked the house and all offending creatures with the Indonesian equivalent of Raid. I gave up any hope of ever becoming a Buddhist in the process, but was immediately grateful to the toxic chemicals in the blue and orange can as I could then walk across the floor without cringing.

I also did not suspect I would find a frog in the desk drawer or on a shelf in the bookcase. After I found a frog in my desk drawer, I went downstairs to tell Kent, and found him and Fyo herding an even bigger frog out of the dining room. That night, before I crawled into bed to snuggle with my husband and baby, I saw what I swore was a baby iguana perched on the wall next to the light. Kent took a look and said it was actually a large gecko. When we told those lovely breakfast-making-saronged women the size of what Kent still claims is a gecko, they told us that was still on the small side.

Gecko. Baby iguana. Whatever, as long as it eats bugs and mosquitoes, I don't care what it's called.

But the mouse I saw exiting the kitchen window? And then saw again in the bathroom where it charged at me while I sat utterly defenseless and pantless on the toilet? Now I have a problem. I am considering getting a cat and donating it to the property.

This morning we were skyping with Kent's sister (in a brief moment of internet bliss) and in the middle of the conversation, she stopped and said, "Did I just hear a rooster?"

Yes, you did. And now we're so used to them we just take them for granted. Along with the ducks, the cows that actually sound like hippos, the clicking of the bamboo cow bells, the dogs barking, the pigs, the chickens, and the butterflies the size of dinner plates flying through our nonexistent windows.

I haven't spent much time in Bali, but I have yet to be out of earshot of a rooster. Turns out they don't just crow in the morning.

But since I am no longer making my own breakfast or my own bed, I think I can forgive the roosters.

The Funny Thing

is that I hate the heat. I spent six months in Singapore fantasizing about cold places like Sweden or Seattle: places that require sweaters, scarves and thick down comforters, or places where I could knit, read thick English novels and drink coffee all day long. The things I love are generally things associated with cold or mild weather; I love warming my hands by holding a hot mug of tea or coffee. I love taking hot bathes to get warm. I love long coats and boots.

I enjoy other weather besides cold weather; I enjoy Spring and Fall, and I even enjoy Summer, especially mild ones. This may be the problem, that I was raised in Portland, where the seasons are mild. Whenever I am some place that has extremes in weather, I hate it.


Most of all, I hate the heat. While I appreciate the sun and swimming pools, I am fair skinned and neurotic about my fair skin. This means I spend a fair amount of money on sunscreen because I am going to spend a lot of quality time with it making sure it is applied to every inch of my body.

I also prefer being in cities. Especially cities with quality libraries, museums, restaurants and parks. Cities with subways or efficient transit systems I feel especially comfortable in because then I never feel stranded or stuck or in the middle of nowhere. To some extent, my love of cities may stem from a mild case of agoraphobia. To be some place where I can hear roosters all day long, the bellowing of cows in the afternoon, and cicadas zizzing and zuzzering in the treetops surrounding my current bedroom isn't generally like me. At least not for long periods of time. In fact, my usual city self wouldn't call this living. She would call it camping.

Yet, in Bali where the weather is very similar to Singapore and where the museums exist only for the benefit of tourists, I find myself wanting at least a part time house here, and it feels a little unsettling. To some extent the unsettled feeling is due to the fact that we are house hopping - a month here, a month there - the suitcases are only unpacked a little before being packed up again. But most the unsettling feeling, I suspect, comes from me surprising myself or me not knowing myself as I am not having the responses I normally expect from myself. When I wake up in the morning, to the sounds of roosters, ducks and dogs, and slip out of the mosquito netting tucked into the bed, it feels a little like I have woken up in some one else's life.

But then I see the trees and bamboo surrounding the upstairs of our house and think of all my childhood tree house fantasies. I see the green fields of rice growing and flags waving in the breeze. I think of how my sister reminds me from time to time that when I was younger, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew I wanted my life to be an adventure. Then I do feel at least a little like I'm at home, but home in the adventure of my own life, and home in the awe of finding this place that soothes as well as surprises the soul.

My Two Favorite Balinese Interactions (so far)

1. Kent and I were on the hunt for a child's helmet for Fyo that he could wear on the motor bike and push bike (aka bicycle). We walked into one helmet store and asked if they had child helmets. The guy behind the counter said no. Kent asked where there was a store that sold child helmets. The guy said, "Some other place."

2. I want a push bike to ride around Ubud (because I'm still a little intimidated by motor bikes). So today, Kent sent a text message (the most efficient way to use a cell phone in Bali) to the guy he rented a motor bike from. Kent's text said: "Wife wants a push bike. How much is it to rent for one month."
The response? "300,000 rupea. But we don't rent push bikes."