Garbage, Rain and Happiness – #11

hello from the island,

where the rainy season is at its fullest and it rains as i have never experienced it before. the noise is so loud that we don’t hear each other, everything is even damper than usually, washing never seems to dry, roof is leaking and the swimming pool is overflowing. some parts of the island were hit by floods and landslides, my kindle went mouldy (can you imagine that?!?) and i have experienced the rare moment of pure bliss while doing my practice on our porch – under the roof but so close to the raging storm i felt part of it.  i love the rain – not sure if that’s due to 8 years in the desert or because i don’t feel guilty doing nothing while the nature is going wild.. apart from the beauty of the rain we are hit by another yearly ‘natural phenomenon’ – garbage season. i didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when i saw this sign:

as i have said before, the situation is appalling. all the rubbish thrown into the forests, rivers, by the roads.. usually at least semi-hidden from us all is brought to light – and to the ocean – by the torrents of rain. it ends up at the beaches that are no longer beautiful. sad is not a word to describe it. we humans are such a disaster for this planet.

on a more positive note, just before we left bali for christmas break we had one of those surreal bali experiences you can’t avoid here – i couldn’t open our safe. to open it you need both key and code. i just couldn’t enter the code, the thing wasn’t reacting. our lovely helper, totally unperturbed as usually, announced that this happens sometimes, no worries, it will start working on its own again. well.. i was really happy this happened couple of days before our flight, not couple of hours – as our passports were in the said safe. however, surprisingly enough, it just hasn’t sorted itself out. next suggestion was to take it to denpasar (bali capital) for repair. the thing is bloody heavy and we – as a rule – don’t go to denpasar as it’s way too busy there. i wonder what would you do in such situation. dan started to search youtube for ‘how to open safe’. i honestly thought it was totally stupid, you can’t find instruction like that on the web. well apparently you can – i was astonished to see there are hundreds of videos covering this very topic!!!! nothing seemed to work though until dan woke up in the middle of the night, did some youtube magic and the safe opened. so.. if you run into similar problem, you know where to look.. 

recently we returned to our bali home after almost a month in europe, where we had a great time skiing in italy (sunshine, powder snow, greasy food) and prague (food and more food, family, christmas, friends, some culture for us jungle natives and my mom’s birthday, yay! ). these trips always remind me why it would be great to live there again (friends and family) and why it would not be so great to live there again (pollution, cold, short days and long stretches of darkness, shitty weather, shopping malls literally everywhere, tons of useless stuff being sold everywhere, not being able to eat in majority of places, too much alcohol, general gloom..). in spite of all the negatives listed we really enjoyed and although i generally do not like things like christmas, NYE and birthdays i managed to have a good time. even my birthday was funny – i woke up to a (super unusual) power cut that for a moment made me think i was already teleported back to the island – but then i interpreted it as bali calling – then dan couldn’t (and didn’t) find his present for me – but found a bali centipede crawling in our prague apartment instead – i accidentally run into people i haven’t seen for ages (like our kids dubai nanny from 10 years ago) and not so accidentally spent hilarious evening with my beloved girlfriends, laughing so hard it made me cry. i miss you all!

in bali we experience the usual – cat brings in a snake, cockroach runs over me while i’m sleeping in my bed, people do not keep their appointments, lice come and go and come back, dogs fight and i have to play nurse on the top of mother and wife, kids enjoy school and friends, i can eat again.. life is back to normal! to create an illusion of freedom i have decided to learn riding a motorbike. as unbelievably as it sounds. keep your fingers crossed.

and something new and (kind of) exciting – as you can see –  i have  put my emails all together and published them on this web.

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take care and let me know how’s life for you.

jarka

xx