Entertainment from Bali

I think it’s time to shut my philosophical mode off for now and start entertaining my readers, don’t you agree? Let’s talk business…travel business that is, with a tiny little dash of humor. I already have a pretty extensive travel blog in Dutch, which I still read once in a while. It’s so nice to read those stories again; it always puts a smile on my pretty face and gets me through the day. Day dreaming about far away and sunny destinations. And I must say, I think I can be sort of funny at times. So I decided to share some of those hilarious “did-you-know-thats” from my trip to Bali with you.

Did you know that…: 
 

• I realized today this trip starts looking like my own Eat, Pray and Love experience;
• my “eat”-stage started in Sanur;
• the proof of this is the button of my pants bursting open;
• Bali is significantly more expensive than Thailand;
• therefore, I want to thank the CBI, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and thus all of you tax paying guys for making this trip possible for me;
• the medicine man from Eat, Pray and Love is the fourth child in his family;
• I know this because his name is Ketut and not Wayan (first born), Made (second born) or Nyoman (third born);
• this is probably totally useless information for you guys;
• statues on Bali all wear a skirt;
• these skirts are black and white checkered;
• this is not necessarily fashionable in Bali, but it seems to represents good and evil;
• I’m being stared at by this little concrete guy in a skirt all night long;
• this does not impress me at all, though (hello!? Men in skirts make NO impression);
• in the streets of Bali it smells like who smoke (incense) everywhere (note from author: uhm...I guess this is actually only funny for the Dutch speaking readers. Wie-rook: who smoke);
• this is because Balinese people put little baskets with flowers and incense sticks in the streets;
• out of respect, I do my utter best not to step on those baskets;
• nevertheless they’re all pretty crushed, because most tourists step on them without any shame;
• Balinese people actually do the same;
• the usefulness of my frantic attempts is therefore totally lacking;
• three waiters have told me tonight “you look soooo happy”;
• I find it a bit odd they all added an extremely surprised “why???”;
• I tried some chakra meditation at the yoga barn in Ubud. From now on I call the thing yoga darn, because it was darn difficult to find;
• afterwards somebody approached me in the streets asking “you do yoga?” I said “yes, but how do you know?”;
• he drily responded with “you have yoga face”; 

0900-call-a-horse...also for beer delivery!

• I haven’t been wearing my watch for three weeks;
• as a result a day actually only has four times: time for breakfast, time for lunch, time for dinner, and time for a beer (not necessarily in that order);
• there are no cars on the Gili’s;
• the only means of transport is 0900-call-a-horse;
• I asked the driver if accidents ever occur with this primitive type of transport;
• he simply responded with “yes, for sure” and I actually had to explain to him that it was not a reassuring answer;
• “java update available” on my portable computer thing’s got a very different meaning since my trip to Indonesia;
• that’s all for now folks;
• I’ll end this update with the overly poetic “no hurry, no chicken curry”.

100 days

Preps? Writing? Preps? Writing? Aaarrgh, the pressure of choices. I’ve had a tiny little writer’s block over the past few weeks – hence the lack of a new post. Like I told you guys before, corporate life does not breed creativity, at least not for me. And on top of that, I’ve been preoccupied with preparations.

100 days. For some cabinets it took 100 days to reach an agreement; several turned out to be a lot quicker to tear the whole political circus down. 100 days is also supposed to be the ideal time span to master meditation techniques; although I’m highly interested in this relax-and-come-to-peace-with-yourself-in-this-crazy-must-do-everything-but-don’t-have-time-to-truly-enjoy-it-society, I can barely shut off my thoughts for 100 seconds. And within 100 days the Olympic Games start again; that’s a minimum of 200 times brushing teeth. And about twice the time an average chicken lives nowadays, before it ends up in a plastic tray in the super market.

Smart guy, this Mark Twain...

But cut the crap. For me, those 100 days represent the number of days left to tear down everything I’ve been building up over the past years. An “Oh My Buddha” is in place here, right? (I’ll take another sip of wine). In 100 days I’m liberated from this corporate mambo jambo, I don’t have a job anymore, no house full of materialistic stuff that has been unable to proof its usefulness anyways, no overly expensive iPhone contract, no furniture, no car, no television, no wardrobe full of clothes of which I’ve been only wearing about 25% on a regular basis, etc. and so on. Yes, I’m burning all bridges behind me. An early midlife crisis? Or did I totally lose my sense of consciousness? I don’t think so… To prove, I’ll quote from one of my favourite TV-shows (from the time I still watched television). Grey’s Anatomy; always entertaining, but I especially love it how it always ends with a little wisdom.

A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world 

the secret of his success. Never leave that till tomorrow, he said, which 

you can do today. This is the man who discovered electricity. 

You think more people would listen to what he had to say. 

I don’t know why we  put things off, but if I had to guess, I’d have to say 

it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, sometimes the fear 

is just of making a decision, because what if you’re wrong? 

What if you’re making a mistake you can’t undo? 

The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is 

lost. We can’t pretend we hadn’t been told. 

We’ve all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents 

warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us 

to seize the day. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make 

our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today’s 

possibility under tomorrow’s rug until we can’t anymore. Until we finally 

understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really meant.

 That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and 

even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying.

- Grey’s Anatomy

You see, that is exactly it. I don’t want to put things on hold, because one day time will be running out. I don’t want to wake up 30 years from now saying I could of, should of, would of about anything. So yes, I’m taking a risk. 100 days. Destination: highly uncertain. End date: undefined. And I’m not saying it’s gonna be easy…but I’m damn sure it’s gonna be worth it.