finally, october

..so I believe in my last/first post I may have mentioned that I am a terribly unreliable blogger.. 

I have actually written a few drafts for blog posts over the past two (?!) months, but they have ended up so long and rambling that I have left them, with the intention of editing them in the future, and then just never returned to them..

I have to re-think this blog, and not feel the need to write every detail about everything, and then I think all will be well.. I also have to stop writing about how I should write this blog, because that will also get exceptionally tedious, for all of us..

So..

The last two months have been somewhat challenging. No surprises there, really, however the surprises have come in the ways the challenges have cropped up, rather than in their actual existence.  Actually I feel like I spend so much time and energy talking about said challenges that I don’t want to do so here other than to say this:

The other volunteer at my (sporty) organization had to go home. Pretty much due to the somewhat reactionary response of my boss to his program and the things he was required to do.. I can not really say much more, as

a)as I mentioned spend a lot of energy on this already and

b)just realized that the fact that I am using a blog with my WHOLE ACTUAL NAME as the address may mean that I can speak less freely on such matters that I would generally like. Heavens, I can’t believe that I am self-censoring. I have come a long way since I once poured my heart out on a blog whilst sitting in a dodgy internet terminal in a Czech airport. (nope, you can not find it, I have made that old blog private after recently Googling myself at a school cybersafety workshop and realizing that it was the first thing to come up..!!)

and, even though initially when said other volunteer and I were living, working and socialising together it was a little challenging (as I mentioned in my last post,  I had gone from living either alone or in queer generally female-only share houses – even once a women’s co-op -  to suddenly sharing a house atop a factory with two rugby playing boys), he and I had come to really support each other, particularly in dealings with the “unique” nature of our workplace.. and so now I feel  a little bit like I have suddenly lost my (unrelated, rugby playing, very sporty) little brother.

And in light of this, there are other things that have popped up that, along with the ‘third month volunteer blues’ contribute heavily to the What Are We Doing Here thoughts.. that will hopefully vanish as we start the fourth month…

Challenges aside (or vaguely brought up and then slightly swept under the carpet - or daybed, if in my house - as the case may be), it is amazing to live in Bali. Here are a few snippets from my life. (I feel slightly uncomfortable that I have used the word snippet. It also gives me flash backs to my days at Helen O’Grady Children’s Drama Academy where our instructor always used to demonstrate that a ‘snippet’ was a little bit, by getting a corner of her  - brightly coloured, oversized, silk – shirt and pretending to cut it.. Anyway, I feel that some snippets, however annoying the word, are really what I am going to write).

I moved house.

It is really good.

For many reasons, including that I now live in an amazing house with an open living area and a fish-pond and a kitchen and many daybeds and I share with my friend CC and that is good and we have our own rooms and our own bathrooms with HOT WATER. It is so lovely. Come and visit, seriously.   

Also it is good because I was LOSING MY MIND at the factory. There is only so much factory noise drowned out by crazy Indonesian radio (it is basically exactly the same as TT FM in 1993. I mean the actual same playlist. I have heard Meril Bainbridge several times) drowned out by factory workers singing to said hot hits of 1993 that one person can take. Oh and also our water stopped running. CAN YOU IMAGINE SHARING A HOUSE WITH TWO RUGBY BOYS AND A NON-FLUSHING TOILET? And I do not mean that we had to use a bucket, oh no I’d not have minded a bucket. I mean we turned on the taps and….. nothing. yep. On a positive note it inspired me to finally commit to that gym membership, as at the gym there are really good showers..

So my new house is lovely and in a lovely area and I feel very happy about it.

We have lovely neighbours. One is an old lady with no teeth who sells watermelons. She always says hello and asks if we want to buy watermelons. I thought I was really clever and had worked out how to say ‘I can not eat watermelons’ (not true, but I felt that saying I don’t like them, when they are her livelihood, would be a little bit mean) and she stopped asking me for a while. But then the other day she saw me and smiled her toothless (actually, she has two teeth, which I think are the two main ones that get filed in the tooth-filing ceremony so it is probably lucky) smile and said, in English “melon?”.. From her however I have learnt the word for watermelon.

She sometimes has a gang of other watermelon selling old ladies. The other day I was walking down my street when her friend, a very old and small lady carrying a sack of about 25 watermelons on her head, passed me and was gesturing and saying in Indonesian what I took to roughly translate as “hahaha why are you walking and not riding a motorbike you crazy bule? If I was young and was not carrying 25 watermelons on my head I would be riding one! Hahaha”.

People in our area do seem to be a little amused that we walk places. And people seem to know where we live – one day CC and I had walked to our local shops, and a man on a motorbike drove up to us and said ‘oh, you live on the small road?’. I sometimes think that everyone in the local area thinks of us as ‘those two bule girls who live on the small road and wear the same clothes and walk everywhere’..

It is a lovely area to live in, though. It feels really quiet and safe. The nosiest things in the night are a) some far off karaoke, perhaps in someone’s house??and b) the frogs!! The scariest thing for me is that there are a few dogs that sometimes bark when I walk past, but I have learnt that they will bark but not come over to me (I was told that if you pretend to pick up rocks they will go away. Actually sometimes I actually pick up rocks, but not to throw. Actually sometimes I actually pick up the rocks and throw them, but not at the dogs, just near them). Although their visiting dog friend did come close to me the other day and I was scared. Luckily (as a building site full of young Balinese men were watching me, quite amused) I have learnt how to say ‘I am scared of dogs’ in Bahasa Indonesia. It is not true, but sometimes easier to say than ‘I really like dogs but I am scared of that dog because it is not wearing a red collar and therefore I am worried that it might have rabies’. Although sometimes I try it, and say something that probably comes out as ‘Like dog. But scared – rabies!’.

We do, however, have rats in our roof. They just came. They are not too feral looking (rats here actually look quite healthy and nice, they are nowhere near as tough as the Glasgow subway rats, which I imagine probably even carry knives..) but nevertheless I do not want them to come into my room. And they have become a little bit Out Of Control. They are so noisy, running around. So I told our landlord. And now someone is going to put traps for them. Which I do not think will be the special rat-collecting contraption I am imagining, where the rats go in and then have a fun time and then get humanely released in a field far away… So now I try to telepathically will messages to the rats:

Dear rats, if you are going to live in the roof please keep quiet, especially when I am trying to go to sleep, or just waking up. Also please stay in the roof and do not come inside, especially into our bedrooms. Alternatively you could move into the lovely spacious field behind our house, where I am sure there are lots of fun things to do, and things to eat. Also you can easily access a myriad of snacks as there are lots of offerings on the ground near there, and I am sure you snack on them. If you do not Bikas is going to bring traps and, as much as I like to think it will be humane, I don’t imagine that will end well. Thanks.

So I hope they get the message…

Anyway petals, I don’t really think that this has been altogether super interesting, but now that I am on track I will attempt to write more, and that will hopefully enable some interesting things (I imagine writing about the beach, ceremonies, incense, palm trees..) to filter through.

One interesting thing perhaps is that I saw Paul Kelly the other day. I saw him play (at the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival…I did not wear my EPL-style purple scarf and yoga pants, but did bump into a random relative..!) which was super, and also saw him the day before at the café where I met my friends for lunch after my monthly swimming program with the kids at the special school in Ubud. I did not speak to him then, however, and did not even go near to him. Partly because I was too shy, partly because it would have been a bit ridiculous to go up to him while he was eating, partly because I was busy eating a delicious vegetarian soup, and partly because I was not looking my best, straight out of the (lovely, villa) pool, and unfortunately that morning I had forgotten to pack my underwear in my swimming bag (I knew I was forgetting something… I had my towel, free red RLSSA rash vest, free Bali Sports red cargo boardshorts, just no undies!!..) (on the topic of my work costume, let me just say that with my current work outfit being an oversized ugly polo shirt, and my cargo boardshorts, I fear that before long I will end up with crew cut, be playing for darebin falcons and hanging out at libation trying to arm wrestle people..eep.)..  Thus, I got out of the pool and was faced with either a)wearing wet bathers under my clothes all arvo or b)going freestyle. I am not going to discuss my decision but needless to say neither was to be particularly glamorous.

On that ridiculous note, but in a more serious light, swimming was really good last week. Those kids are super, and getting more confident. It was great.

Anyway petals, (it slightly bothers me that I always write this like a letter…but I just can’t stop doing it..) now I will post this and go and walk past the watermelon ladies and perhaps have a coffee at the place around the corner where they allegedly sell cappuccinos (cappuccini?) (cups of chino?) but where when I asked for black coffee it all got very confusing and I got a POT of coffee… and maybe eat some green-tea cake, which I don’t love but which always tempts me.. although if only they sold pandan green swiss rolls…