Clive is Alive!

Welcome back after all these years. Almost three years in fact. 990 days to be exact.

Bali: it’s a reasonably big island, approximately 45 x 90km, but ‘our’ bit is quite small – 8 x 16km - and hangs on the southern tip below a thin, appendix-like strip where the airport lives.

The airport may be familiar because of the crash a couple of months ago where a Lion Air plane decided the runway was too short and went swimming. Everyone got off so that was nice.

I stayed in a hotel opposite Martini’s hotel (not allowed to stay there – company rules) for the first few nights while we house-hunted and gave the once-over to the beachside restaurants.

House-hunting, as usual, was frustrating, but eventually we let lucky whilst driving around in a taxi when Martini spied ‘a sign’. There’s always one somewhere. Lovely little secluded, private, almost gated, cul-de-sac’d, single street of 18 houses (nine each side) so no through traffic and we’re almost at the end so virtually no traffic at all - three bedrooms, three bathrooms plus a maid’s room and maid’s toilet. It was ‘finished’ d day before we saw it but, of course, some of the windows don’t close properly, all the shower heads leak and one toilet takes four years to refill. All standard, new house stuff.

The rent is extortionate: $4,600CAD per year! (£2,900, S$5,600, NZ$5,600). Martini asked if it was negotiable whereupon the wifey of the builder snapped, “No!” I said we should have replied, “That’s a shame, we wanted to offer more.”

Next thing shopping. For everything. Forever. I never want to go shopping again. Ever. Anywhere. For anything. Having said that, (hate that phrase) most everything is really well priced but the numbers frighten my brain. A ‘big shop’ ends up at Rp550,000, which is eleven blue banknotes. They’re the equivalent of $5CAD each (3/6/6) so it’s not a big deal, but dealing with hundreds of thousands and millions just doesn’t compute; to stem panic attacks I have to convert everything all the time as my brain still uses Singalong dollars as its base currency.

Take furniture: I ordered the following, all hand-made in solid teak (for some reason blogspot insists on these images being sideways even though they're the correct way round in 'real' life):

4 – high-back dining chairs

1 - splendid ‘captain’s’ chair with padded seat cover (guess who for)

1 - 90 x 90 cm dining table

1 – coffee table

1 – 2-seater settee + padded seat cover

4 – folding chairs

1 - reclining, sooper-dooper thingy chair with adjustable footrest

2 – 80 x 70 cm desks

1 – cue drum-roll …. da-dah … 2.5m x 70 cm desk FOR ME!!!

Total: Rp7,000,000 – that’s seven million! Actually its $720CAD (455/880/880). Most people agree with me that the drum-roll-da-dah desk alone would have been more than that in any other country I’ve lived in.

Another example: taxis. One of the girls in Singapore has been selected by Kenya for the World Junior Championships in Dubai at the end of August. Her Sing school is on vacation so she has nowhere to train. Singapore Sports School has refused he permission to train there either with the school groups, or by herself before or after the school groups (2 x 10-lane 50m pools sitting empty for most of the day; go figure the community thinking behind that decision.) The official decision was, “It’s not part of our core business.” As I pointed out to them when I left; the model is wrong! Anyways, being from all around the world, the family was having their 4-yearly get-together and had commandeered the whole of a resort in Ubud (think The Blessed Julia in Eat, Pray, Love). They contacted me to see if I could help. Sure, I’ll come up to Ubud and we’ll find a pool somewhere. Somewhere was a nearby hotel with a 30m x 1-lane pool with impossible-to-turn ends, but it was straight so it was usable. Ubud is a two-hour drive so I asked Sucipto, my tame taxi driver to take me and wait before bringing me back. Six hours in total - $46/29/55/55. Quite remarkable.

What else? Martini and I visited Klub Jimbaran as a possible venue for the wedding (apologies for the website – NEVER, NEVER, NEVER put ‘under construction’ on a website!!!). This is a new private club (klub?) quite nearby and it turned out to have a quite nice 6-lane, 25m pool. The brochures offer seven types of martial art lessons, three types of dance/yoga (not sure how they are synonymous but whatever), futsal, table-tennis, general fitness access etc. but only general access to the pool – no organized lessons, development or training groups whatsoever. So I have a meeting with them tomorrow to discuss the possibilities. As the Zen Master said, “We’ll see.”