Settling into the local rhythm

We are into our fourth week in Bali and are becoming more aware of the lay of the land. Where to get our basic food supplies, where the local eateries are (walking distance), where the local supermarkets are, and the not so local ones.

School life has been good. The 10 minute school run has been mainly soggy (with the occasional sunny day) and wild, while we navigate puddles which are created by local construction vehicles, and then filled in with rubble from a nearby building site – there is a lot of construction in Bali. No two days are the same.

The butterflies – stunning! Such a huge array of them. As well as birds. I will try to record the songbird one day. I haven’t taken photos of them as I’m too busy enjoying them flutter by in awe. Some move like lightweight tissue paper – so fragile – it seems that touching one would see them turn into powder and disintegrate. We have seen chickens, roosters, cats and many wild dogs – the latter have a lot to say and some are really angry. We have been advised to get some rabies shots just in case. We even discovered a pig farm – only because of the loud, fierce squealing we heard one morning on our way to school.

Our Community

We have begun to meet more locals and school parents who live locally, who are from every corner of our planet. Through school events (I’ve been to a yoga class, a conscious parenting group and an outside school “Creating Sanctuary” space run by a GS parent – which challenged me!), local coffee shops, and lots of WhatsApp groups – I don’t know how we are going to leave WhatsApp at this rate!.

We have a neighbour who is from Turkey – a paediatrician with her 2 young children. Her husband – who is a pilot – joins them once a month. We’ve also met a couple from Texas, and Amita is from India and pointed me to the local Sibang WhatsApp group for parents (a group for parents who live close to the school). We received a wonderful welcome and a wealth of information – including a local dentist, barbers, where to get bread, the best local supermarkets, recommendations for some international health insurance brokers, as well as other local recommendations for general day-to-day living.

We were also introduced to a local cafe, Baja Deli, which has a burger and drinks evening on Friday nights for the school families. Marianni who runs this place is Indonesian and lived in Romania working for Renault for many years. She has a son who is now doing multiple jobs locally and is a Green School Graduate. The Romanian connection never ceases to amaze me.

We recently discovered that there are options to have online grocery delivery via Gojek and Grab (the 2 main modes of transport – car or bike – if you don’t have your own). Bali Direct delivers to your door, while there are more organic options like Island Organics. We were recommended some local grocers too (which is our main source of supplies), and local laundry services – something I would never have considered before – but it helps support the local economy (another nod to Yas). They do a way better job of ironing than I ever will! Although the humidity here means that if you wear a crumpled cotton shirt, it will iron itself within the hour. Yes – tried and tested by moi!

School life

Last week was New Parents Orientation day. It was useful to see how the school aligns with its the mission and vision. Completely values driven. We were both caught dancing on the Green School FB stories (although Suleiman questions whether his ‘moves’ could ever be described as dancing – but anyone can do ‘The Grapevine’!).

Our (yes – it feels like OUR school as all 3 of us are part of it and parents can sign up for extra curricular activities with the kids. We can also use the parents workspace there (The Bridge), which is currently being reconstructed. A project led by the older Green school kids. The yoga and conscious parent sessions are held there too) second week at school has been fairly quiet. Mainly because Monday and Wednesday were days off.

Monday was Isra Mi’raj. A Muslim public holiday. This is observed on the 27th day of the month of Rajab, the seventh month in the Islamic calendar. This event marks the night that God took Mohammad (SAW) on a journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and then to heaven. People give charity, take time for personal reflection and make extra supplications.

Wednesday was Chinese New Year. The school put on a special celebration for the first time ever and it was pretty epic, with a troupe of dancers who had travelled from afar to put on an early morning performance.

“Spirit Fridays” is a school event which happens every month (or so). Families get to hold a free stall and sell things after an assembly where everyone is invited. Music plays, the Green School song is sung and everyone can choose to dance. It is chaos with no child being forced to do anything. One came and sat at the back with me – clearly not feeling the vibe of the whole thing. We had a few brief words before he went off to lean on a block near him – with his head held in his hands, and it was all good.

Exploring

We went to one of the popular malls in Bali. Living World. We needed a supply of mosquito repellent and bite creams, as well as some clothes for Anisa. Uniforms can make the life of a pre-teenager so much easier!

Conscious Tech

So after doing some research, we have gone for the best UK Green Hosting service I could find, with THE BEST customer service. A huge shoutout to all the support team there – especially Ben Coleman. Their support with the transition has been a massive help. Their details are https://krystal.io. I will be sending a code through in a couple of weeks which means if you decide to move your hosting service – we both get a little treat with a cash reward. Watch this space!

I’ve been doing really well with the Socials. A couple of quick logins on FB (sometimes, I wish I hadn’t) and one on Insta (just to see how my coaching community is doing) in the past week. WhatsApp is still proving a struggle.

I am back to dabbling in tech trying to sort the website – and I am reminded how good I am at breaking things. Three different support calls, with 3 different vendors – 2 of which were exceptional! I’m glad I have finally moved away from some providers who are just unethical. This feels like a cleanse.

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Anisa’s Experience

Hello!

I love my new school it is 1000000000 times better than my old school.

I also got eaten alive by mosquitos. The best thing i have eaten all week is sashimi and I FINISHED SQUID GAME S2.

I don’t want to go back but I miss my Singy.

in Jalan Jalan – Friday fun, basically – I chose gardening so we picked cassavas and aubergines from the community garden and made crisp thingies and Baba Ganoush which we ate as a snack. Which was really nice and fresh.

On Wednesday we all picked electives for the rest of our day – for every Wednesday – I picked mindful brush and flow for elective A and band for elective B. In mindful art we had to create a piece of art using natural materials such as coffee, turmeric, freeze dried berries, etc. I made a fox standing outside a road near my house which i took inspiration from an old photo i took. It looks strange to me with the nonexistent buildings but i like it sort of.

For the second elective I picked band which was VERY different to my old orchestra. Instead of the In the Hall of the Mountain King we have to play old rock (Queen, ELO, The Beatles) …which is … different?

Bye.

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Reflections from Suleiman

After three and a half weeks here and with Anisa starting at the school, we are now settling into more of a routine.

We’ll walk Anisa to school each morning, a 10-12 minute stroll through some back roads which can often be quite muddy after the rain. Other families who live nearby and have children at the Green School may pass by on bicycles or scooters, and there is generally a dog or two close by, a chicken to be encountered somewhere en route, and beautiful butterflies are always glimpsed.

Sometimes I forget we are basically in the jungle. Then some animal or object or weather aspect or feature of nature – even the mosquitos and lizards we see when we’re back in the house – remind me of my location again.

Abiansemal is a quiet, sleepy district (in Bali a number of small villages make up a district). When we arrived 10 days before school started, it seemed mortally quiet here compared to the districts of Ubud and Canggu where many parents elect to live. Is anybody here??? But we’ve now met lots of families who choose to live nearby, it’s a growing community. There are 5-6 places to eat and drink around the school, and these start to fill up from 7:45am. Mainly they are coffee shops, but we like Baiku for their fresh juices and smoothies; a Korean cafe called Soogi Roll for their Bibimbap and Buddha bowls; and the classy Baja Deli which has a wide menu, and a shop selling natural products. In common with all the eating establishments we have encountered so far, they are in no hurry for you to leave.

We can also eat and drink at the cafes at the school. Many parents choose to work at The Bridge, a parent-friendly area where they can use the WiFi and get refreshments, but my working hours of 3-8:30pm (local time) mean that I don’t need to utilise that facility.

Given those working hours, what do I do of a morning? Well, last week I went to Baja Deli for my first lesson learning Bahasa, the language of Indonesia. The tutor is Indonesian and her English is excellent. She says she has studied in Manchester, though she never once said she had a cob on or that she was gasping for a brew, which was disappointing.

She facilitated a class with parents from Australia, the Netherlands, Turkey and the UK (me). Bahasa seems pretty straightforward at first sight. It features the same characters as the English language. Pronunciation is pretty consistent (c is always ‘ch’, g is always a hard g, j is always j with no Portuguese-style variants). And they use the same pronoun for ‘he’ and ‘she’, which saves time.

I can now proudly tell any local how much I enjoy watching horror films in my house with my sisters, or how I like to play with dolphins (“lumba-lumba”). Actually I’m not sure I’d admit the latter to anyone, even if they were a “psikiater” (psychiatric professional).

I tried to supplement the group class with learning Bahasa on Duolingo – but I hit a snag. I loathe everything about Duolingo. The forced jollity. The gamification of the whole experience (collecting of diamonds and tokens, etc.). The garish colour scheme. The monitoring of your dedication. The guilt at missing an already pathetic and unambitious target (e.g. 10 minutes practice every leap year). The group classes at Baja will be more useful, I’m sure.

Observations about Bali:

1. Holidays – This week they had two public holidays, one Islamic and one Chinese. Sadly this is the last three-day week for a couple of months, but at the end of March, the Balinese New Year will be commemorated with Nyepi. I was excited to find out what Nyepi entailed, thinking it would mean colourful and noisy celebrations. In fact, it is marked by a period of 24 hours of total seclusion. Families stay indoors the entire time; no visiting friends; no lights are allowed; offices and shops and tourist attractions all shut for the day; and no transport can run. That will be an experience!

2. The joy of the e-sim – I was umming and aahing about getting a physical Indonesian SIM, and reluctantly having a different phone number to my UK one. But Lutfiyya – being on top of modern technology – suggested that as I use the Revolut app for my banking, I could arrange an e-sim and Indonesian data package from there. And indeed it took no more than thirty seconds. Sometimes modern technology is great. It definitely made me feel like a Luddite, though.

3. Butter knives – We cannot find a butter knife for love nor money. Well, any knife suitable for spreading butter, honey, peanut butter, etc. Every knife here is either really sharp or has a serrated edge … which I know is a very middle-class frustration, but it’s bloody frustrating! Do they not use butter knives here at all? Was there a massive communal picnic before we arrived where the national supply was used up?

4. WhatsApp – Everyone in Bali uses WhatsApp for everything. E-VE-RY-THING. Businesses and services will routinely message you on it in preference to email, and they conduct most of their transactions on WhatsApp too. So if like us you are hoping to reduce your usage of the Meta-owned platform, Bali is entirely the wrong place to come.

Word of the week:  kadang-kadang meaning “sometimes”. It’s a very pleasant word to say out loud, especially as the emphasis is on the second syllable each time, so ‘dang’ has an onomatopoeic resonance.

Moment of the week: when a taxi driver was negotiating with me (on WhatsApp of course) and tried to get me to book him for the day rather than the single short trip we required. Tiring of the silly toing and froing, Mahnaz quickly booked another driver. I advised my chap accordingly, and he then responded in epic fashion:

Excuse me???? Kiss my what, now???

What’s more, he turned up at our address half an hour later! We had already left, but he messaged to say he had waited outside the house, professed his disappointment that we weren’t in (!) and advised ruefully that he had now gone home.

I replied later asking why he’d even turned up given we hadn’t confirmed the fare, and given I’d already told him we’d booked someone else.

He didn’t answer.

Probably gone to look for his father, I suppose.

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Thank you for reading! Do pop us a comment below if you would like Suleiman and Anisa to read or answer any questions you may have. Emails are very much private and will only be read by me.

Much love
Mahnaz

Date : 02/02/2024