Thoughts | how to escape

Poverty, Entrepreneurship and the Third World Myth

April 29, 2013 · 5 Comments

The cute picture is to distract you from the fact that I do not mention my children AT ALL in this post! Shock horror, maybe I’m not a mummy blogger after all!

Lastpass informs me that it’s been two weeks since I last logged into my WordPress dashboard, which is an eternity in blogland, so many apologies for my absence I have mainly been holed up working almost every waking hour. Along with reducing my sleeping hours to the minimum possible for normal daily functioning.

I’ve been pitching left, right and centre and managed to get myself some interesting blogging gigs, some of which may turn out to be long-term (I’m hoping). I’ve been travel blogging, tech blogging and even fashion blogging. Yes, me! A fashion blogger! Who would have thought it. Anyway it’s been a lot of fun in some ways (and starting to see hope of starting to dig into my debt mountain after being bailed out by my parents AGAIN is certainly a nice thing) but also a lot of work. A LOT of work when you have two toddlers to take care of anyway.

And all this work has got me thinking, in the moments when my brain is not fried from writing another article about cloud computing. Made has always been quite incredulous that I spend so much of my time freelancing. “So much work for so little money!” he says and yes, maybe, but I have to start somewhere and when I work out my actual hourly rate of billable hours it’s not amazing but not horribly terrible either.

But the thing is that here, the fact is quite clear that you never get rich working for somebody else. From the persuasive women selling sarongs on the beach to the little old granny selling nasi bungkus on the corner to the oversupply of drivers in Ubud – everyone makes their own fortune. Even doctors and lawyers usually work out of their own offices tacked onto the side of their family home.

I get most of my work done in the early morning and recently I’ve taken to tuning into a radio station from my hometown of Newcastle. Early morning here is late night in the uk and every night this radio station runs a chat show and call-in program. I used to listen to this when I was an insomniac in high school but haven’t tuned in for years – it’s kind of a cheesy cliche of life in the northeast of England. Anyway, whether it was nostalgia or homesickness that gave me the idea to listen in, it’s nice to hear the geordie accent that I haven’t heard for so long.

The first morning I tuned into this radio show was the day after the budget had been announced by the government. I am probably the least political person ever, but it’s clear even to me that the current government are not keen on giving money to people who need it. My sister in law was amazed when I told her that if we lived in the UK we would get money from the government every month (admittedly not much money!) just because we have children, but it seems like now maybe the welfare system will be on its last legs in another year or two.

Anyway, a lot of the people calling into this radio station were protesting about the so-called ‘bedroom tax’ – a new tax that penalises council tax dwellers if they have a spare bedroom in their property. There were a number of people on the edge of tears saying they were going to be made homeless because things were so tight they couldn’t afford this extra payment (for those not in the UK, council houses are offered to those with low incomes who would find it difficult to rent private properties). One guy who called in was in his late 50s and said he worked a 12 hour night shift as a security guard on minimum wage (£6.19 per hour, which makes my ‘low-paid’ freelance work seem pretty damn good). His wife worked all day in a supermarket – he came home at 5am, dropped his wife at work at 6am and they basically never saw each other. This had been their life for god knows how many years and they basically struggled every day just to earn enough money to survive.

I’m sitting in my little office in Bali listening to this and wondering what on earth is wrong with my home country. There is poverty here – REAL poverty. But in the middle ground – those who could never be considered rich but not ultra-poor either – those people are generally happy. Work comes pretty low on the list of priorities here. Family and religion is first, followed by community, neighbours etc. If there’s a big ceremony then work is just dropped. It can make things a little frustrating for the non-Balinese employers but I think it’s not a bad way to live.

Why work your fingers to the bone every day to live a life when you never even get to see your family and are probably too tired to do anything when you get home? Surely there is another way? Somehow here people always make do – if they need money then they can go out and sell something or come up with some kind of service and the money will come. Balinese people are entrepreneurial in spirit. They’re poor in a lot of cases but who has the better life?

I have a lot more to say on this matter but my thoughts are still kind of scattered and I need to get up in five hours so I’m calling it a night for now. As I’m working so much and my free time is so limited, the blog and other things that don’t make me money have dropped down the priorities list (yes I’m aware I’m contradicting myself here). But I’ve already upped my efficiency a lot and been experimenting with daily schedules this month. Things are starting to settle down and I’m hoping for an amazing May. Hope you stick around to see it with me

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While you were sleeping

April 9, 2013 · 10 Comments

Next door in the room together you sleep and dream, stirring occasionally, sometimes one of you will let out a whimper which turns into a cry and I offer comfort in shushes and milk or sips of water. While you and your father and your grandparents sleep, I sit and rub my eyes, fingers clacking over the keyboard. I organise bits and bytes with code and move pixels around and I write and write and write.

On a good day I’ll get up well before the sun rises and watch the skies turn through shades of pink and gold from my desk as I get my day’s work done before you wake. Most days though, I can’t escape the bedroom before 6am with at least one of you in tow, as the second I tiptoe towards the door you stir and call out “mama!”.

Some days I’m too tired to wake up until the heat of the day is already seeping through the cracks in the window and I know that tomorrow will be one of those days. Tonight we sat up for hours waiting for you to sleep before I could check my email or write a single word. Well after 10pm you tossed and turned and whinged and tried to keep your eyes open until peace fell over your body and you looked like an angel again. At least one of my babies sleeps at night.

In between work I read blogs and download ebooks and search for some kind of secret answer I’m missing about how to be a great parent and run my own business and cook nutritious meals on 2 hours sleep without wanting to bash your heads together or go and lock myself in a room for an hour so I can just have some peace.

I wonder what damage I’m doing to your childhood by letting you watch too much tv because when I suggest we read a book instead of watching kipper the dog you howl and I’m scared of walking your brother up. Once you’re both awake then we really are screwed for the rest of the night.

In my searches across the blogosphere I find amazing women who are mothers of 4 or 5 or 9 who spend their days dyeing Easter eggs and making flash cards and water colour painting. I don’t understand how anyone with 9 children can sound so happy and look like they haven’t aged a day past their 25th birthday. I wonder if these women ever snap at their children or scream into a pillow or want to run away

I have ideas and plans and projects but the next day they sink too the bottom of the to do list until they’re forgotten and fall off altogether. The time slips away and I’m scared I”ll watch these years slip away before my eyes as I try to build a future for us all and suddenly one day you won’t want to make play doh pizza or build block cities or read In the Night Kitchen anymore.

Lately I struggle to write in my blog, not only because there are so many other things I should be doing but also because I just can’t think what to write. I have blogged for a long long time. Since 2000 on Livejournal, back in the day and then before that on my own websites, way before WordPress or Blogger existed. The archives on my computer go back until 1998 – pages and pages of hand coded html. I never had a problem knowing what to write then but now it feels like everything should have a point. What i constantly forget is there is a point. You are the point. And you stir again before I’ve finished writing these words and I wonder again how much I’ll get done before morning.

Just write

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Worlds Apart

March 27, 2013 · 12 Comments

I’m warning you now that this is going to be one of those rambling stream of consciousness type posts, so if you’d rather just skip knowing what my mind goes through at midnight on a Tuesday, go right ahead.

Tomorrow is Galungan and as usual has been preceded by weeks of preparations and stress about lack of money and why I’m not helping and what’s going to happen when Made’s mother is too old to do all the ceremonial stuff. It’s very sad but the longer I’m here, the less I enjoy anything to do with Balinese Hinduism. I think in essence, it is a very beautiful religion and makes a lot of sense but I find myself turning away more and more each day. In fact I realise now that I pretty much hate Galungan due to all the stress and subsequent arguments it causes, which is a real shame as it is supposed to be the biggest celebration on the Balinese calendar.

The fact is that Galungan and other big ceremonies may seem colourful and exciting to visitors but for the Balinese, or rather the Balinese women, they are a LOT of work. Work on top of taking care of the children, looking after the home and doing their normal paid work. Made’s mother has been preparing offerings for months and once Galungan and Kuningan are over, it will just be onto getting ready for the next ceremony.

I think the idea behind doing offerings to show your thanks for everything the world has given you is a great one. The simple daily offerings can be a joy to do. However backbreaking work for weeks on end and families getting into debt just so they can make a load of offerings for some big ceremony that will be thrown away or eaten at the end of the day – why?

Sometimes I feel like the longer I’m here, the less I understand and I don’t even try to understand anymore. I’m used to the fact that Made will be moody and quick-tempered in the weeks running up to a big ceremony. I’m used to walking on eggshells until it’s over with and we can go back to normal, that is until the next ceremony.

Stress, stress and more stress. Stress about his mother working so hard with no support, stress about having no money, stress about me being on my computer all the time trying to make money. We go round and round in circles and get nowhere.

There is so much that I want to do. I have about a million business ideas and about an hour a day to put them into practice. And of course I use that time in exchange for money so we can keep limping along until the next month. I don’t want this blog to just be pictures – I have a million words dying to get out (if you couldn’t tell by what you’ve read so far) but there just isn’t any time to sit down and write when I should be doing something else. I want to draw but in my free time I work and feel guilty that I’m working and not weaving palm leaves or studying the Hindu vedas or something.

I never really realised how hard it would be being in a multicultural relationship before we got married. After having kids, things only get harder because while you may be willing to compromise when it comes to yourself, everyone just wants the best for their children. When you have conflicting ideas about what is best, of course it is bound to lead to arguments.

I’m trying to pick my battles and be less obsessed over the things that don’t really matter. I no longer glare and slam doors when I see my in-laws chasing Maya around with a bowl of rice – I just sigh, hand them a spoon and let them get on with it. But some things just seem to wind me up more and more and I don’t even know if it’s really a cultural thing or just me disagreeing with them.

For example, I hate the way they lie to Maya. I hate how they will say they’ll take her swimming or to see the monkeys when really they just want to say anything that will get her dressed and out of the door. I hate how they just give children whatever they want if there’s the slightest hint of a tantrum. I’m not harsh in my parenting style but I really don’t want to be raising little spoiled brats.

I’m not even really sure what my point is here but sometimes I feel like I’m an alien just landed on this planet and I look around and think “who ARE these people?”. Yesterday I cut a good 6 inches off my hair and I’m still waiting for someone to comment or even notice it. Is that normal? Maybe it’s not polite to comment on someone’s appearance here? But no because every time I go out, someone is sure to tell me that I’m getting too skinny. Maybe they’re just worried that I cut my hair off because I’m going slightly crazy and maybe that isn’t too far from the truth.

I do love my life here most of the time but wow, is it hard. I know I should be trying harder to fit in, to learn more, to do more but I have two small children crying for my attention, a mountain of credit card debt and not enough hours in the day. I’m so behind on everything at the moment, it’s not even funny. I feel like I’ve been working harder and harder these last few weeks and yet I’m getting less and less done. I can’t even stay on top of my project 365 photos.

Anyway I guess I should get some sleep so I can wake up too late (ie after 4am) and get glared at again and apologise silently for not being born the perfect Balinese housewife. But tomorrow is Galungan so maybe things will improve for a while until the next ceremony rolls around again. Such is life.

This post is brought to you by my rapidly degenerating grip on reality and the fact I’m up way after my normal bed time supposed to be catching up on work that is already 2 days late but I’m blogging instead. I rock.

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Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries – Beauty

March 14, 2013 · 10 Comments

So we’ve finally come to the end of The Sling Diaries. I really can’t quite believe it – 6 months gone in a flash. Kiran has grown from a little baby into a walking, talking (well, grunting!) little person. I’ve had so much fun going on adventures with my baby on my hip and exploring the themes of delight, connection, discovery, expression, tradition and beauty.

So beauty – here is what I know. I’m lucky that my children get to grow up in such a beautiful place as Bali. They are lucky they get to see the world from our height instead of seeing nothing but feet. We are all lucky we get to explore the beauty around us whenever we want.

This is one of my favourite walks in Ubud and I learned recently that the land is for sale and there may very well be a big hotel being built here within a couple of years. There’s a very real possibility that many of my favourite places and walks in Bali may simply not exist by the time my children have kids of their own.

Thank you Sakura Bloom for inspiring us to get out and see all this beauty while it still exists. I hope in some small way by getting out, exploring and posting up my pictures here I will inspire some others to enjoy the natural beauty of the rice fields, forests, hills and rivers in Bali as they are instead of putting up another hotel or villa.

We wear simple linen and silk slings from Sakura Bloom

This post is the final part of a 6 part series for the Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries. We are one of 15 families documenting our babywearing experience over a six month period. You can follow the Sling Diaries on Pinterest, Facebook or Tumblr. You can read all my other blog posts for the sling diaries here.

Photos by my beautiful and talented friend Stephanie Mee

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Life Without an ‘e’ Key

February 27, 2013 · 2 Comments

This is what happens when I try to take a photo of the two of them together these days

Apologies to those of you who like to see my project 365 photos daily (if there are any of you out there apart from my family!). I got a little behind due to the insane amount of work I’ve been doing lately. My technology is conspiring against me again. After the great hard drive crash of 2013, I’ve been working on my mac which has been fine since I got it to recognise all the ram. However one morning I left it open on my desk for half an hour while I went to get Maya ready for school and when I came back, the ‘e’ key wasn’t working and I have a line of dead pixels on my monitor screen. It was raining pretty hard and my office has a leaky roof and I think maybe some water got inside? Such are the perils of living in Bali. I have lost many electronics to the humidity.

Anyway, I decided I needed to work super extra hard over the past couple of weeks in order to try and stem the tide of debt tsunami and also because I’m going to have to buy a new computer. Also I think my health insurance is due for renewal soon. Meh. So a lot of my work at the moment is writing – do you know how hard it is to write without the letter ‘e’? Try it. It’s typical of course, it had to be the ‘e’ key that broke and not the ‘z’ or the ‘~’. So I’m getting by for now on my 2 laptops that are still limping along until I can scrape together the money for a new one. My financial review is due (I keep a spreadsheet of all my bank balances every month so I can keep track of my ~~money~~ debt). I kind of don’t even want to look any more.

So work/life balance has kind of gone out the window. I’m thinking of making a fresh start in March and really trying to just work on my own projects. But I’m so scared of having no money. Argh, dilemma. And yes there is my $50 a day plan but it’s kind of hard to pitch for and plan my work so that it averages out to that. I prefer little jobs that I can just pick up and do as I choose but they tend to be harder to find and lower paid. Sigh.

So last night I worked until 2am. I watched the end of Game of Thrones and half of a One Born Every Minute episode until 3. Maya woke me up at 5am wanting to play angry birds. I got up at 6. Both kids down for their first nap by 8.30 am. It’s going to be a long day.

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Things are Different in Bali

February 20, 2013 · 14 Comments

Recently I’ve been catching up on some of my favourite UK tv on youtube (namely One Born Every Minute) and to my surprise, the adverts are making me long for England in an odd way. I never really get homesick but it’s funny how advertising can make you miss random things – the eccentric British sense of humour (some of those adverts are just downright weird!), online supermarket shopping, Cadbury’s creme eggs, even the dark cold gloomy days before Spring arrives. I’ve also been away long enough that I’m a bit bemused at some things – breakfast biscuits? Is the nation really gullible enough to believe eating biscuits for breakfast is a good idea?

The longer I’m here, the more things which shocked me at first here seem pretty much normal. I’ve written before about the potential dangers around the house, which are pretty much overlooked by everyone but actually there is a whole load of stuff that I actually think is pretty terrible but I’m just used to it now:

Our nextdoor neighbour leaves her 3-year-old alone in the house watching her 1-year-old sister while she shops in the market.
Children stay up late every night playing and watching tv until they fall asleep. Bedtime routines or an actual bedtime are non-existent.
Nobody wears seatbelts in the car. Nobody has baby seats. In fact most people don’t have cars and just stick all their kids (un-helmeted) on the back of the motorbike.
Talking of motorbikes, it’s pretty common to see young kids driving themselves to school on one alone.

Made’s always reminding me that as I live here I should adopt the local customs and practices and stop doing things the way I would do in the UK. Ok that’s fair enough, but I do struggle a bit with some of them. Especially when I think they’re just plain WRONG!

My friend on facebook joked yesterday that I was becoming Indonesian but I think in some ways it’s true!

I dress my kids in long sleeves and trousers if it rains.
I ask Maya if she wants “more nasi” with that.
I’m shocked at seeing tiny babies (belonging to foreigners, never Indonesians!) out and about outside.
I caught myself chasing Kiran around with a bowl of rice the other day, much to my shame

I do feel like my kids are missing out a bit on the British half of their heritage at the moment and I’d love to take them back to the UK for a few months when they’re a little bigger to improve their English. Actually Maya’s vocabulary is a lot larger than I thought it was after quizzing her when we’re reading picture books and she randomly comes out with a little gem like “oopsy baby!” (mishearing oopsy daisy, haha). She also love shouting “Mama stupid!” at the moment when I won’t let her eat another biscuit/crisps/sweet. Sigh.

I’m not sure if I should be doing more to balance out the British half of their heritage or not. We have lots of English books, a decent number of English cartoons and a city of London wooden train set…. Maybe I should be feeding them baked beans or something. Maya quite likes tea – that’s a start. Or maybe I should just go with the flow and let them be Balinese children who happen to have an English mother because this is Bali after all and things are different here…

Photo of random Balinese children by my dad

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Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries – Tradition

February 18, 2013 · 6 Comments

Tradition is everything in Bali. It’s the reason we live with my husband’s parents in a small village, rather than getting a place of our own. It’s the reason my children’s first names are the same as all the other children in Bali – Putu and Made, meaning first and second child. Tradition has governed our lives here in everything from our wedding to the birth of our children.

Every home in Bali has its own family temple and every day offerings are placed around this temple and the family compound. Every day – rain or shine. The normal everyday offerings are simple trays made from palm leaves filled with flowers and a sweet or biscuit. On auspicious days like full moon and new moon or on ceremony days, much more elaborate offerings are carried out.

I first learned to make these simple offerings a few months after our wedding and I did them every day when I was pregnant with Maya. After having children, my ability to carry out tasks like this in solitude was greatly reduced and I tended to leave it to Made’s mother while I rocked and entertained my babies. Recently though, I’ve taken to popping Kiran in a sling and doing the offerings myself in the morning. It’s a lovely meditative way to start the day and fills the compound with the scent of flowers and incense smoke.

The offerings are usually topped with small cookies or crackers and Kiran was rather indignant when I didn’t give him one.

Biscuit in mouth and all is right with the world again!

Today was also a special day for Kiran – in addition to their Otonan ceremony every 210 days, a small blessing ceremony is held for children every month with offerings of fruit and cakes. Kiran could barely contain his excitement at the shiny red apples

One of the places where we make offerings every day are the stones outside the entrance to our home that mark the place where their placentas were buried after birth. These stones receive special treatment during the first few months of life, being washed with the baby’s bath water and given a small sweet or cake offering whenever the baby is taken out of the house. Today Kiran’s stone received special offerings.

Now Kiran is walking everywhere, I don’t know how much longer he’ll be content to be carried around in a sling but I enjoy these little moments while they last.

I wear Kiran in a Sakura Bloom Essential Silk Sling in Aubergine/Fig

This post is part 5 of a 6 part series for the Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries. We are one of 15 families documenting our babywearing experience over a six month period. You can follow the Sling Diaries on Pinterest, Facebook or Tumblr. You can read all my other blog posts for the sling diaries here.

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Finding My Balance

February 12, 2013 · 2 Comments

This morning Kiran woke up at approximately 3.30am and refused to go back to sleep. My usual trick of lying him back down and feeding him didn’t work and he rolled away angry and pointed at me shouting “uhhhh!” Kiran has a few words that aren’t really words and he’s in a phase of not saying mama and papa at the moment (Maya did the same thing at about the same age) but is very good at getting his point across all the same. So I picked him up and we cuddled for a bit and then watched cartoons for half an hour until he started yawning and I put him back to bed. I’m normally not too happy to be woken in the middle of night and forced to stay up but I didn’t mind the extra cuddles last night after reading on Tamsin’s blog about another blogger who just lost her little boy to SIDS and then another little boy I follow on facebook, finally losing his fight with cancer.

I’ve been struggling with my temper recently. Maya is headstrong and at a difficult age and sleeps late every night. Kiran is napping so little now and needs to be watched constantly now that he’s walking – he toddles around with his arms out in front of him like a little zombie baby and then inevitably loses his balance and topples over onto the concrete steps or Maya comes along and pushes him over. He had so many bangs to his head yesterday alone that I was seriously considering investing in one of those baby helmets. Anyway, all this means that I am getting very little time to myself and to work and I’m screaming constantly at Maya not to push her baby brother or scratch his face when he takes one of her toys.

I don’t want to shout or scream and I don’t want Maya remembering her toddler years as me being angry all the time. She’s two and she can already remember things that she did a year ago. I don’t want her to be spoiled or naughty but it really breaks my heart after I tell her off and she sits and howls “Mama, Maya anak baik!” (Maya’s a good girl). I remember being very patient with her when she was younger and Kiran was still newborn but now she’s older and wiser and quite deliberately naughty sometimes, I find it very hard to keep my temper in check.

And then there’s the time issue – I don’t want to waste these precious years working on my computer when I could be reading or playing with them. Yes, I must admit, it’s not always fun for me and I’m sometimes at a loss for how to entertain them without losing my mind in boredom myself. Maya is pretty fun to be around now, plus she’ll tell me whether she wants to read a book, play with her train set etc., but I do get a bit stuck with Kiran – what do you do with a one year old? I don’t remember! He just wants to walk everywhere. And climb things.

I talked in my 2013 goals post about how my aim for this year is balance but wow, it’s tricky. I have not been working a lot recently, nowhere near the amount I was working when Maya was the same age Kiran is now. It feels good to work on my own projects and not drive myself into the ground working for stupidly low rates but at the same time, the money situation is stressing me out. My debt level stayed the same for many months (just earning enough to cover what we spent) and then I managed to reduce it a little but after working a minimal amount for the last three months while I had visitors, it’s gone way past the level I’d mentally set as the ‘maximum’.

Things need to start turning in the other direction and I’m not ure how I can do this while still not getting stressed out and eating into my quality time with the kids every day. One thing is for sure, I need to get out of just working X number of hours for X per hour and create something that will make money on its own even if I can’t work for a few weeks. I did know how to do this once upon a time but things changed before I managed to scale it up and it’s not so easy any more. I wish I’d put the work in while I was still child-free with all the time in the world and I’d probably be a lot less in debt now. Oh well, live and learn.

Anyway I watched a video recently posted on a forum I’m in that talked about separating money-making activities from your other business ideas so you don’t have the pressure of needing to make cash from it straight away. Basically if you can make $50 a day through whatever means, that is $1,500 a month (which is enough to live on and start paying back my debts here). Put that way, it doesn’t sound so bad. Work at $50 an hour for 1 hour or $25 an hour for 2 hours or $16.67 for 3 hours. Make the quota for the day and I’m free to work on my business ideas, blog and other personal projects. Now who wants to hire me for $50 an hour?

I’ve been terrible at getting up early since I got out of the habit while the kids were sick and interrupting my sleep. Now I think this is the key to my success and I need those 3 uninterrupted hours every morning. Let this be my public accountability – I will get up at 5am every morning or strike me down!

Work and computery stuff aside, I’ve been really wanting to get back into drawing/illustration lately, spurred on by some of the amazingly talented artists I follow on instagram (lillypiri // outtoplay // becwinnel //audkawa // kozyndan – my mini claim to fame is that I took the photo reference for kozyndan’s Battle on the River Tyne panoramic). Please let me know if you know of any other amazing artists on instagram! I used to really enjoy drawing but I’ve not done it in years. I have 2 blank moleskine notebooks sitting on my bookcase and I jsut bought myself a set of nice good quality colour pencils (which I will be hiding from Maya) so whenever I find that elusive free time I’m looking for, I’m going to get sketching.

Wow, another epic post. I’ve got to stop doing that, I’m sure nobody bothers reading all this! Oh and if anyone knows of any good websites or books about how to parent toddlers without strangling them or screaming at them all day, please let me know! I’ve heard 3 is worse than 2 – god help me.

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Dead Hard Drives, Sick Kids and General Malaise

February 8, 2013 · 2 Comments

Posting this pic because they make me smile (when they’re not driving me crazy), despite what else might be going wrong.

So I’ve not written here in a while. Now we’re well into February I thought it might be a good time to review my goals for the year and how things re going in general. Truth be told, I’ve not had a very good start to the year. Both kids were sick since new year for pretty much the whole of January. First we had the awful vomiting and fever virus. Then they both had nasty coughs (me too) which turned into a chest infection for Kiran. As soon as Maya would get well, Kiran would get sick and so the cycle continued. Now we’re all healthy, thankfully, but things continue to go wrong. My hard drive crashed the other day, taking with it months of photos that I’d been lazy in backing up. The guy in the computer repair shop looked at me like I was incredibly stupid when I asked him if there was any way to retrieve the data. In fact by some miracle I did manage to get all my files back. A friend told me he’d heard that putting the hard drive in the freezer overnight could recover it for long enough to access the data. I googled it and found a whole lot of sites saying it was an urban myth and it would just make the damage worth but I thought what the hell, I have nothing to lose. Anyway, it WORKED. So if you’ve somehow arrived at this page after googling the same thing, it is NOT an urban myth, it does work!! So yep, got my files back and I’m happy about that. Still will need a new laptop a some point. Oh well.

Yeah so January has pretty much sucked. Due to sick kids being clingy during the day and waking up multiple times at night so I get no sleep, I’ve not been managing my early morning starts and I’ve been getting nothing done. I’m horribly behind on work, even more in debt than I was and generally going crazy. I literally feel like crawling out of my own skin some days. I’ve had moments where I feel like I’m suffocating inside and have to run out to get some air. Like I said – going crazy.

I know a big part of the problem is not getting out of the house enough. Or rather, not getting out of the house without children enough. Looking after these two 24 hours a day is enough to drive anyone crazy I tell you! It is tricky really, I don’t like going out between 10am-3pm ish (at least not with the kids) in the sun because it’s too hot so going for a quick walk is out of the question for most of the day. Mornings and afternoons are ok but they’re also the busiest time to get everyone bathed/fed/put to bed/sent to school/whatever. I need to learn to drive that motorbike so I can escape to somewhere in the day time because there’s certainly nowhere I can walk to without getting fried to a crisp.

So anyway, apart from being crazy, what else have I been up to?

De-cluttering has been happening slowly but steadily and I’m actually pretty much finished. The cupboards are cleaned out, the baby clothes are gone, the toys are packed away and in rotation and I’m doing pretty well about keeping it that way. I think we will call this one a success. I am still longing for some new furniture (and Maya definitely needs a new bed as she is half on the floor by the time morning comes around) and a fresh coat of paint but that I can wait. I already feel like I can breathe better without so much stuff around.

Indonesian is going ok. I was sticking to the 5 words a day until the kids got sick and then it all kind of went out of the window. Must start up that habit again. The podcasts haven’t happened but there is time for that yet. I am making a lot more effort to speak Indonesian to Made which is the main thing. Already I’ve found that sometimes I think something in Indonesian instead of English first now. A very odd feeling.

Work, yeah, blah – already discussed how well that is going with my masses of free time. Actually we had another talk about my work and I’ve kind of decided to cut back a lot on my freelancing and focus on my own work. This is rather a tough thing for me to do when we need the money so badly but I think Made is kind of right. He said “you’re stupid, why are you wasting your time working for other people when you’re clever on the computer at making websites and things for yourself”. He’s right, there are so many opportunities for making money from tourism here, as well as my websites that can make me money (not this one – I wish, ha!). I’m cutting down on web dev but doing more writing jobs because I’m enjoying that more at the moment although it doesn’t pay as well so far. I’ll reassess in another month or so and see where we are.

And as for the rest of my goals – pfffft. January has pretty much been a write-off and I’ve had neither the time or the mental energy to work on them. Lets hope things will start to look up now we’re into february and I’m past the urge to strangle my first-born several times a day.

Wow, I am sorry for that mental vomit – if you got through all this you deserve a medal! Or a coffee at least… back to our regularly scheduled programming in the next post, promise.

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Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries – Expression

January 24, 2013 · 2 Comments

If we were living in the UK I’m sure we’d be taking the kids to the park, but as we’re in Bali we take them to the Monkey Forest.

Yet another reason why Maya and Kiran are so lucky to be growing up here – nature is not something separate from our everyday lives that needs to be sought out on weekends and school holidays. It is all around us in the rivers and the palm trees and the orchids and the snakes and the monkeys.

It’s strange to watch the monkeys and see how almost human they are in their activities and their expressions. Fear, anger, curiosity, contentment is plain in their faces as they go about their day ignoring the humans that pass through their little world. Siblings fight over food, youngsters whoop and chase each other through the trees, babies cling to their mamas. There was a lot of ooh-ing and finger pointing from Kiran towards the baby monkeys and I think maybe he was trying to say “Look! My mama carries me too!”

Bali is also an island of artists which is clear everywhere you look from the intricately carved temples to the colourful daily offerings that are placed on the ground daily. Monkey Forest itself is filled with stone carvings of monkeys and mythical creatures with grotesque expressions. Balinese children are taught from an early age to express themselves through art, music and dance. As a creative person myself, my parents always encouraged me to follow my passions but growing up in the west, the pressure to follow the crowd in terms of education, career and life in general is undeniable. It wasn’t until I left the UK that I finally felt free to live life as I please. I hope Kiran and Maya can grow up with the freedom of never having their creative spirits crushed whether they want to be a dancer, an artisan stone carver or just go and live in the jungle with the monkeys.

I wear Kiran in a Sakura Bloom Essential Silk Sling in Aubergine/Fig

This post is part 4 of a 6 part series for the Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries. We are one of 15 families documenting our babywearing experience over a six month period. You can follow the Sling Diaries on Pinterest, Facebook or Tumblr. You can read all my other blog posts for the sling diaries here.

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