Selamat Tahun Baru 2013!

Happy New Year everybody!! I hope you are having a great time starting out 2013 with all sorts of plans and happiness and excitement. I hope you spent some time chillaxing and enjoying what you've got, which is the best way to enjoy a new year. 

Tito Arrived in Bali the saturday before New Year's. And on monday, because its Bali, and beautiful  and sunny, we decided to drive down to the Bukit Peninsula and go see Uluwatu. And it did not disappoint. I mean seriously: scroll right...

Tito and I went down to the Uluwatu breaks themselves and were happily surprised to find that a Surfing competition was just entering the semifinals stage. The New Years's Local Comp was absolutely amazing. Tito was practically drooling, and we got a perfect seat up on a roof of a bar overlooking the waves. I thought it would be packed, but apparently the vast majority of everywhere heads to Kuta for new years, so it was busy, but not insane. It was, in fact, just right. Sun-check, Wind-check,  Bintang- check, Waves-check (omg check!) Fireworkes! -check! Operation 2013 was a success. 

Christmas in the Sand

Happy Holidays!

I spent my Christmas sunbathing on Seminyak beach.  It was lovely. A tad overcast, so i remained almost sunburn-free! I have never and to apply sunscreen on Christmas before. Awesome.  Christmas in the Sand is an adorable holiday song by Colbie Caillat, btw. Check it out.

And here is my lovely office on friday before Xmas, at a gift exchange! It was hilarious. And adorable.  These guys know how to have a good time.

Now all five of the other interns I've overlapped with are gone, and even Patricia is heading to the states for a bit. Many people are out of the office for the holidays. I find myself the last Intern standing. So I think it's high time for a change of scenery. I'm finishing the internship a little bit earlier than planned, and instead going to go explore Bali and Indonesia a bit more. And the best part is: Tito will be joining me!  He arrives this very saturday!  He will hang out and get over jetlag while I finish my last few days of work after new years eve, and then, we will be off.

What we will do and where we will go is still up in the air, but we will figure it out as we go, and have a blast in the process.  And the, after a whirlwind tour, we'll both be back in lovely Colorado on January 23. So Soon! So much to see! Yikes!

Critter Update

in case you thought that the bugs would calm down, now that the sky is pouring buckets every afternoon:

found in the gutter next to the warung i go to for lunch. Escargo anyone? 

GIANT Escargo?

!!!

Also, this guy decided to shed on my desk, overnight. 

And I first thought this guy was a bit of string blowing across the floor, but then I looked at it and realized it was a snake side-winding RIGHT FOR ME!  I definitely did not shriek like a little girl and jump up onto my chair. Do not believe such lies! And if I did, it would have been totally, justified  because it was moving really fast. So there.

It's maybe 2 feet long, and it only hung out under my desk for a few seconds, before winding off, so the pictures are a little fuzzy. Still, you can see the bulge of its lunch, right? Probably a toad....

Oh, bali. 

Seriously: THE Rain!

Looks like I wont be driving home just yet....

I mean, really.

Now I know why the Barn has a moat.

Update: Caught some video of the rain keeping me marooned at work tonight. Listen to this!

The Rain has begun!

Hello Everyone,

I'm writing this in the middle of a Rain storm. The sound of the torrential downpour on the metal roof of the studio is so loud that no one can talk, so I'm taking a time-out to write instead. This is awesome! The Rainy Season Has ARRIVED!

so, Last time I updated here I was not in a great situation. Since then, things are much improved.  Szuyin  is feeling much much better, and the dive company has begun to be less obnoxious.  Unfortunately, but entirely understandably, Szuyin decided to go home early, so she returned to Taiwan on Saturday, where she was immediately enveloped in loving family.  I'm hoping she comes back to full health soon, and finally finds a doctor that can adequately explain what the heck happened.

She also got out of here just in time to miss The Rain. I am from a desert, where we get about 40 cm of water per year,  and I think that half that has already fallen on us here, so from now on, I can only refer to it as The Rain.

Downside (kinda) of the rain: It is so loud we cannot speak to each other, even sitting right next to each other. I'm working in basically a huge, open-sided bamboo barn with a corrugated metal roof. It's like working in a really breezy drum. Awesome, ... but loud.

Upside: It's kinda-sorta-a-little-bit-wintery-ish! In the "there are clouds and I want a mug of hot tea" kind of way. Still nothing like proper snow, but I'll take it.   And so will Sophia and Pat, so we have decided to bring the Holiday Spirit to out "office" in the form of christmas songs, and even a tiny christmas tree! Thanks Pat!

And as such, we need a Christmas chard to go with it! So in honor of the holidays and of Szuyin, I present: the PT Bamboo Christmas Card picture!

HI!

Yep! Sooo wintery, right?

Anyways, in other news:

I did get a chance to finish out my diving certification, so now I am a certified diver, and will be able to tag along with Tito in January, hopefully. 

Oh, right: Tito is coming to visit in January!  Thank you Middlebury J-term!

The surfer lodge that we designed might actually get built! Yessss. 

Oh and, since, the topic of rain is still appropriate:

Last weekend, on Saturday night, the sky opened up while I was giving Divya (Another intern! So many interns!)  a ride home, and so I got to spend the night in a Green Village Villa!  We had to basically bike up hill through a stream (which used to be a road)  to get to the village, and the running boards of my bike were actually under water. Staying in the Villa during The Rain at night is like being on a ship. Re rushed in and had to lower the bamboo rain-curtains, and tie them off. And even then, in the living room it still felt entirely exposed. Gusts of wind still carried spray into the room. the Curtains billowed and heaved in the wind like sails.  And as we huddled there, soaked, and cradling a steaming mug of tea,  I felt like I had been transported in the movie The Swiss Family Robinson. It was awesome (in the actual, original sense of the word). 

Once the storm had died down, and we headed for bed, I got to curl up in the guest room, nested under wonderfully fluffy blankets. Even though the room only has walls on two sides, and is entirely exposed to the river valley, it was surprisingly cozy.  I fell asleep looking out over the river, through the thick trees to where the silhouette of the new Springland Villa emerges from the treetops like another Jungle Pirate Ship. 

Whatever it's faults, Green Village really is breathtakingly beautiful, and incredibly relaxing. 

UPDATE: Pictures! The morning after getting marooned on Villa Island:

Adventures in Bali Hospitals

aka, The Weekend From Hell.

Disclaimer: I am perfectly and completely fine. Szuyin was very very sick, but is now recovered and doing fine. Thank heavens. I just want to update people on why I havent been answering emails for 5 days, and my life is a bit crazy, but you will quickly understand why my priorities were different this weekend.  (On the other hand, the time off has given me a chance to update this blog at last. Silver lining! ish.)

So, this last weekend, I had another adventure, but this one was of the definitely-not-at-all-fun kind. Thursday was a national Holiday, since the New Moon marked the Islamic New Year, 1434. Happy New Year!

Szuyin and I took advantage of this by signing up for scuba diving lessons. Bali, and indonesia in general has an incredibly rich underwater ecosystem, with tons of coral, and unbelievable marine biodiversity. But we wanted to know what we're doing before going diving, so we decided to take a course. 'Cause, ya know, thats way safer, right?

We found a very professional dive center, signed up, and early Thursday morning got a ride to Sanur to learn how to breath under water. The first day of classes was a lot of fun. My teachers were lovely. The PADI educational videos were campy but informative. And diving is a lot of fun. On friday we finished up our last few in-pool dives, and headed out to the beach to get our first taste of open water diving. This, too, was awesome. In Sanur bay there is a lovely coral wall, not too deep, with a sandy bottom and tons of fish.

We only made two short dives, and only went maybe 6 meters deep, but still, somehow, afterwards Szuyin was feeling very very sick. At first we thought it was just seasickness form being on the boat, but soon after returning to the dive center, she collapsed. She was in pain, and having difficulty breathing. Luckily we were surrounded by trained divers, and had lots of strong bodies to help lift her into a van and get to a hospital.

And that is when the insanity started. i dont think i should go into too much medical detail here, but suffice to say, no one had any freaking clue what to do. This is a weird case, no one seems to be abel to give us a satisfactory answer as to why she would be affected after such short dives in such shallow water, but sometimes low-probability things just happen.

However, that does not excuse the ridiculously ineffectual care she received. We got sent to one of the fancy tourist hospitals, and they were crap. Seriously. Two different doctors basically did nothing at all to help her. They were not reassuring or convincing at all. They certainly did not take her to a decompression chamber. They didn't even give her pain medication. So she had to go through over 6 painful hours of decompression sickness as nitrogen bubbled out of her blood and her whole body went though muscle spasms, with nothing but her friends massaging her limbs. ay roe questions were asked about when we could get her insurance to provide guarantee of payment than about when her symptoms or medical history.

This is not how a friday night should be spent. Ever.

Luckily, Szuyin is a ridiculously strong human being, with spectacular self control and presence of mind and was able to make it through. Also, luckily, she has a group of friends from work who were willing to drop everything at a moments notice and come rushing down to the ER to battle on her behalf. Half a dozen of our coworkers were there within an hour to translate, call for specialists, deal with paperwork, bring food and water and insist on better treatment. I have absolutely no idea what I could possibly have done if Patricia and Yustiana (in particular) had not come to our aid.

that said, they were up against insane odds. Every paper to sign every cost, every document had to be tripple checked. We were getting billed for things that hadn't happened. It took an age to get documentation, and then it was misspelled. They spelled Szuyin's name wrong, got her birthday wrong. Multiple times, the doctors seemed to diagnose one thing, but treat for the opposite. Pat and Yust were amazing. They literally were checking the doctor's report's spelling at one point. Im mean really. What the hell is that?  We were all glued to our blackberry's getting treatment advice from friends and family that knew about diving, because we trusted them so much more than our doctors.

Finally, we switched over to Sanglah, which has a dive accident specialist, a decompression chamber ( which, at this point we were too late to use)  and fast, reliable, reasonable doctors that gave us much more convincing treatment at a quarter of the price.

I spent Monday with Szuyin at Pat's house, resting, watching bad movies, and eating. And now, finally, it seems like she is going to be fine. She's physically exhausted, of course, but hopefully all the medical crises are past.

 Lessons learned:
1. If you suffer a dive accident in Bali, go straight to Sanglah Central Hospital. Do not go to one of the ritzy tourist hospitals. Go to Sanglah. They know what they are doing, dont give you bullshit, and dont make up random costs. And in general, if ever you think you might have decompression illness,  get to a decompression chamber. Dont let your doctor try to drag his feet. Go. Doctors are not omniscient.

2. Never sign any medical waivers, or anything for a dive center without really understanding what kind of insurance they have. "Yes, we have insurance" is not enough. You want personal, all-eventuality-covering real insurance. I have been complacent like this too often. I am stopping now.

3. Dont think "oh, but this is a class, what could go wrong?" Even if everyone is being safe and thoughtful and methodical, diving is a risky risky thing.  And low probability events can still happen out of the blue.

4. Friends are amazing. And the kind of friends I have at PTBP are literally life-saving.

5. Decompression Illness is scary as hell.

6. Just, in general, never have a medical crisis in Bali, please. Thanks

OK, that is that for the not-so-fun side of dealign with Bali. Thankfully we had a positive outcome, but still.... waaay too close for comfort. Eeek.  I did get a couple of fun underwater pictures from the dive pool, but i'll post those later, once I'm not so angry at doctors everywhere. I hope this doesn't scare anyone away from diving, but I know I will definitely be more cautious in the future. 

Incoming Photo Explosion

OK, because it looks like I'll never get a chance to write about visiting Jogja and Bromo, I'm just going to get the darn photos up, so I have some feeling of accomplishment! A warning, though. AS a group, we took over TWO THOUSAND photos just on the first day of the trip to Bromo, so there are a LOT to post here. I've tried to narrow it down. I'll break it up by event/day, and try to narrate a little. Basically, Java is really cool, and the people I get to travel with are even cooler. I'll see if I can post-date them, so they postin in order. . . . hmmm. 

Fishies are cool

 Hello all.
It's been a while since I updated, but the last three internet cafes i've gone to have had malfunctioning internet. So I'll make this quick. Since I last updated, I've done a bit of traveling. I went on an awesome trip to Malang, and will some time soon post a gargantuan update full of photos.

But, until then, please enjoy these! Last sunday I went out to east bali and went snorkeling in Padang Bay. Patricia, Szuyin, Tanti and I piled into a car and headed east for a couple of hours, and finally found our way to a little beach called Blue Lagoon. Have to admit, when we first arrived, it was kinda disappointing  It was a tiny little cove with loads of trash everywhere. Plastic was scattered over the thin beach, and floating in the waves. It was kinda gross. But we decided to suck it up and go in anyways. 

And Once we got into the water, I was pleasantly surprised! Under the floating debris was a pretty huge patch of garden coral, just covered in bright fish! I caught a few snapshots with my snazzy little waterproof camera. The pics dont do justice to just how incredibly bright the fish were. Especially the huge blue fish I was chasing for a while, who refused to pose. 

I only snapped a few pick because I spent most of my time just floating there, bobbing in the current, enjoying quietly watching the fish go about their business. This little trip served two purposes. One, to get the heck out of Denpasar and not stare at a computer for a whole day. And Two, to get excited about learning how to dive! That's right! Tomorrow I start scuba diving lessons! I'm signed up for a PADI open-water course based out of Sanur, but we should be taking several dives up and down the east coast, so I will hopefully have lots to report about that soon. Wish me luck! 

Oh, and on the way to Padang Bay is Gua Lawah, the Bat Cave Temple. We stopped by briefly to check it out. it's fairly small and simple, but there is a cave full of the most chattery bats i've ever seen. It was actually rather impressive. A little gross, too. oh, the weird things you can find here. . . . 

That's all for now folks. Hope all is well!

PS. Happy New Year! Tomorrow is Islamic New Year,  so the new moon tonight marks the beginning of year 1434 AH (al- Hijriyah). Incidentally, this corresponds with a full solar eclipse today, visible from parts of Australia! Unfortunately, I totally missed it here, but oh well. 

Perfect Postcard Bali

Postcard Bali

On one more weekend of exploring more of Bali, Yustiana and her friend Inda invited Szuyin and me to come with them to eastern Bali, in the area just past Candidasa. And there, marked by a little hand-painted blue sign and down a long dirt road with a slope that would be illegally steep in the states, we found THIS:

Now THIS is what im talking about.  Apparently this is what Seminyak was like 5-10 years ago. There were definitely tourists, and definitely tourist oriented warungs, but there wasn’t the mad rush and crush of people. Just a couple dozen swimmers, and a few fishermen, chilling.

Also, I FINALLY got to drink out of a coconut.  I will now post pictures of food. I apologize, but I mean, look! THIS IS WHAT I’m TALKING ABOUT! Awwww yeah.  Basically, if I weren’t so sunburn-prone, I would stay here forever. Right here, on this chair. 

So, after a full day or doing absolutely nothing, and loving it, we stopped in Inda's city (again forgetting the name) and went to a night market! This was awesome. Tons of people out with lots of littel stalls selling everything from brooms to CDs to underwear food. Lots and lots of food.  So, naturally, we ate. 

And what we ate: This is not grilled chicken. This is, straight up, "a chicken: grilled."  I will henceforth call this "Flattened Chicken." It looks like some medieval torture threat, ..... but, my goodness, it is TASTY. 

And with that delectable image, I leave you. My internet cafe has got tired of me and is closing up shop. Good night everybody. Hope you are all well. 

Bamboo Harvesting

So the other time I ventured north was to watch how bamboo is harvested. We followed one of the PTBP employees who selects bamboo, and went an hour by bike to the area of Bangli.

We then met a group of raggle-taggle local logger dudes and jumped into a truck. (for those of you on  Dartmouth Woodsmen's Team or Crew, this is the Balinese equivalent of Pup Blodgget and Steaky the Truck, and friends.)

Hi ho, hi ho....

 We headed along an bone-jarringly potholed road for a bit, and along a path for another few minutes.  And then we went down. Straight down. We did not realize that the bamboo would be at the bottom of a freaking RAVINE. Poor Szuyin had on flip-flops!  Eventually we climbed/slid down to the bottom, and set off along/in the stream to find the bamboo.  Once we had located the bamboo, tested its density, and selected the one we wanted, the logger dudes took over.  I just stood there, transfixed.  I was absolutely sure that I was about to see a man get crushed to death by giant bamboo. I’m still not sure how that didn’t happen. Again, for those of you with Dartmouth woodsmen, they proceeded to break every rule of chain saw safety you every told me.  Literally every one. Every one. And continued smoking through it all.

This is my scared face!

The greatest mystery of all is, other than “how are you still alaive with all your limbs” of course, how the heck do you get the giant mutant grass out fo the giant ravine? Unfortunately this will remain a mystery, as they said they would leave the Ptung culm there to dry out a bit before hauling it out by some alternate rout. Presumably by magic. So we just scrambled back up the clif, and hoped back in the Balinese Steaky, and headed farther north. Here we found a pile of drying felled Ptung that was ready to be loaded onto the truck. Bamboo is light, but still, I was amazed to see these men each lift a 4-meter section of giant bamboo onto a shoulder and calmly toss it into the back of the truck.  After they had loaded everything, they perched on top, we climbed back in the cab, and headed homeward.

After this experience, I spent about there days trying to design things with only the absolute minimum number of columns, cause I now have a whole new respect for how much effort it takes to harvest each one of the dozens of bamboo stalks that come into the work-yard every day.  Eventually, I realized you cant build a bamboo house with only 3 pieces of bamboo, but still…. Just wow.

Also, bamboo is freakishly big. This is a species of GRASS. Like the little things in your front yard. It’s just giant, mutant grass.  When I think too hard about this, things get weird.