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.