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I fail at fasting

SarahAlderson

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June 9, 2011

‘So Pooja,’ I say, ‘I’ve been really good. I’ve only had a banana smoothie this morning.’

Pooja looks at me confused. ‘Are we starting our juice fast today?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘though I am bloody starving and it is only 9.30 am.’

‘Hmm,’ Pooja says.

I look at the plate by her side on which remain two biscuits and a spattering of crumbs.

‘I didn’t know we were starting it today!’ she says by way of explanation.

For a few seconds I feel smug and superior.

Then I walk into the kitchen and start ransacking cupboards.

‘I’m going into town do you want me to get you anything?’ Pooja asks as I stare at the fridge and all the things I can’t eat.

‘ooh, are you going to Bali Buddha?’ I ask, ‘Cos I really fancy some Spanish potato pie.’ I stop. ‘Oh crap. I can’t have that can I? Remind me again what are the rules of this thing? Juice and fruit and vegetables?’ And biscuits?

Pooja thinks for a bit. ‘Maybe we should start this fast thing tomorrow.’

‘But tomorrow we have dance and we’ll need energy for that.’

‘Well how about next week?’

It sounds good, some nebulous time in the future though I’m half aware we have dinner plans on Monday and I’m not prepared to sit and watch others eat sushi whilst I drink a glass of air putih (water). I agree nonetheless and reach for the Pringles deciding simultaneously that a visit to Gaya ice cream might be in order later – Cashew and Gianduja are on the menu after all.

An unusual, underwearless detour

SarahAlderson

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May 31, 2011

Here’s the cliff notes version of the last four days…

Singapore airport

‘I’d like to check in for my flight to Bali please.’

‘Sorry your daughter’s passport is three days under the six months validity required to enter Indonesia.’

‘You’re kidding right? Kidding yes? Right?’

‘No, sorry ma’am. Please step away from the counter.’

On Phone to Foreign Office

‘The British High Commission doesn’t issue passports anymore I’m afraid. You need to go to Hong Kong.’

‘I can’t go to Hong Kong. I need six months on my daughter’s passport to clear immigration.’

‘Oh.’

‘I suppose I could tie her up in the butterfly enclosure at Changi and pick her up in four days.’

‘You could try to get an emergency travel document. But the high commission isn’t open until Monday, maybe Tuesday. And it costs 100 pounds and I’m not sure if Indonesia accepts them.’

On phone to John

‘ANSWER YOUR BLOODY PHONE.’

Conversation with Alula

‘Is this our house now?’

‘No, this is where we have to stay for 3 nights.’

‘There are no windows.’

‘I know. And you can sit on the toilet to shower.’

‘I miss daddy.’

To Alula

‘Mummy only has her handbag. We have no underwear, no hairbrush, no toothbrush, no anything. We need to go shopping.’

‘To Toys R Us?’

‘Well, if you’re a good girl and let me do all the shopping for everything we need, then yes we can go to Toys R Us.’

On phone to John

‘I need money.’

Conversation with Alula

‘We just saw ‘Pung Fu Kanda Two’

‘Kung Fu Panda’

‘Pung Fu Kanda two…But you didn’t buy me popcorn.’

‘I bought you littlest petshop so be happy.’

‘What happened to the panda’s mummy and daddy?’

‘They died.’

‘When I die mummy I want to buried because then mother earth will keep me safe.’

Conversation with Alula

‘Sit up straight. No, don’t slouch. Don’t smile either. Tilt your head this way a bit. Ok, stay still, don’t move…listen if you can’t sit still and they can’t get a good photo they might not issue a passport and then you’ll be stuck here in Singapore for the rest of your life.’

‘Cool. Will you buy me more toys?’

At British Embassy Monday morning

‘I need an emergency travel document for my daughter.’

‘I can’t issue an ETD without proof of flights out of Singapore.’

‘I can’t book flights out of Singapore until you tell me how long it’s going to take to issue this.’

‘We can issue it by tomorrow.’

‘Please, please please can you do it earlier?’

‘If you can bring me your travel booking confirmation by 11am I can issue by 4pm today.’

‘Please can you put 7 months on it just to be sure?’

At Bali immigration

‘Come this way please ma’am’

‘It’s an emergency passport. See the dates here? I needed validity. Here’s our flight out of Bali to London in three weeks…. Is everything ok?….hello?’

‘You wait.’

‘What’s happening mummy?’

‘Errrr, don’t worry. Everything’s fine.’

Conversation with John

‘Next time you’re doing the visa run.’

The 9-5 encroaches on the dream

SarahAlderson

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May 19, 2011

For those of you who’ve followed us since the beginning you’ll remember that our reasons for leaving the UK were numerous. We wrote these reasons on post-its and stuck them on the wall of our bedroom in south east London before we decided to up stix and get the hell out of dodge. The reasons included: spend more time with Alula, be healthy, swim everyday, no commute, no working 9-5 ever again, live a 4 hour work week and of course, HOT SUN.

Hence Bali. Hence the fact that can we live here turned into, hell yes we can live here and then into oh, look we are living here (I just didn’t want to buy all those different URLs).

We’re lucky, I managed to get a really good book deal whilst we were still travelling and John being the super talented designer that he is hustled his butt off in Singapore, set up his own company and has not stopped working since. We both work pretty much full time (so much for the ‘work a four hour week’ post-it – but we both love our jobs so that’s cool) and admittedly I work beside the pool a lot. And I can stop to watch episodes of Buffy and / or decide that I need a three week break by the sea to recharge my brain whenever I like. We’re lucky and we’re oh so grateful for the way life has panned out.

Up until now John’s been spending about 2 days a week in Singapore but now he’s been offered a job at probably the best design company in the world. A permanent job that is.

Excuse me whilst I tear up the post-its which said ‘no 9-5’ and ‘no commute.’

Now to me, the idea of ever working again for anyone else sends me into such a panic that my throat closes over in much the same way it does when someone with a peanut allergy eats a snickers bar.

Recently I did my birth chart and discovered that I should never, ever work for anyone because ‘I don’t respond well to being managed.’

If only I’d known that ten years ago. Could have saved a lot of my ex bosses a lot of heartache and stress.

But no point looking back. And thank God I’ve discovered a way of working that doesn’t involve a boss. I mean I have an editor but it doesn’t feel like she’s my boss. It feels like she’s Willy Wonka and she’s giving me the keys to the chocolate factory of my dreams (no oompah loompahs on my factory line, only clones of Alex Skarsgard naked swimming in the chocolate lake…sorry I digress).

Anyway for John this role is like gold dust. It’s a career high, a once in a lifetime offer that will really open doors– potentially to places we might want to move at some point (sagittarius remember?). But as I write this my bottom lip is sliding up and out. I’m pouting I realize, in a way that even Alula would be envious of.

We’ve come this far just to slip back into a similar routine to the one we had in London only replacing Starbucks with coconuts and south eastern trains with Air Asia. And replacing the child minder with well, um, me. Hang on. This doesn’t feel right.

Ok, so the childcare thing isn’t so bad, especially as Kadek is there to make pancakes. We can hang out at the pool as opposed to Croydon Rec, and there’s no waiting around for trains at London Bridge panicking at whether I’ll make it back in time to pick Alula up. But what does this mean for us if John takes the job?

What does it mean for our relationship? For my sanity as a part time single mother? For Alula? What does it mean for our dream? We haven’t compromised on anything thus far, other than not living in the same time zone as fashion, I’m not sure I want to start now.

They fuck you up

SarahAlderson

2 comments

May 14, 2011

When we were travelling, moving around every few days or weeks, Alula started displaying worrying behaviour traits. Every time we would arrive in a new hotel or guest house she’d gather up a random assortment of belongings – her toys, hairbrushes, shells, books, her tutu, her Barbies – and place them all in a carrier bags which she would then stash in random places – behind the loo, under the bed etc.

It was weird.

It was disturbing. And it freaked us out. I mean when a three year old does this it kind of reveals latent displacement issues. What issues were we seeding in her psyche that might manifest at a later date as psychosis? How much did we need to start saving for therapy? At thirteen would she throw this back in our faces – ‘I hate you you’re not my mummy (she already has this line down pat) – you ruined my life making me travel around the world – wearing only a tutu!’

In rebellion against her hippy parents would she become an accountant? Would she refuse to board another plane for the rest of her life, move to the suburbs of some faceless city and choose to vote conservative?

I hated it that she had no feeling of stability and it was the one thing we struggled with whilst we were on the move, forcing us to slow our pace (a good thing) and cancel some parts of our travelling to provide her with a sense of semi-permanence at least. We even resorted to buying her Barbies as tokens of guilt.

So when we arrived back in Bali we were relieved to finally have a home, to create a space for lula that she felt safe in. ‘But how long are we staying?’ she kept asking.

‘For ages and ages,’ we answered. ‘This is our home. Look here’s a bookshelf and your own princess bed.’ We even bought her a puppy.

And then I mentioned to her the other day that we were going back to London for the summer and thirty seconds later I find her burrowing through her treasure drawer, frantically emptying the contents into a plastic bag.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked her.

‘I’m packing up all my treasures,’ she answered.

‘But darling we’re not going for ages, and we’re coming back here, this is our home.’

She didn’t seem to hear. She just kept packing up her stuff.

Philip Larkin was right, they fuck you up, your mum and dad.

Black Magic (and not the chocolate kind)

SarahAlderson

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May 12, 2011

I think I mentioned in my last post how our capacity for surprise has dwindled, been blunted into oblivion by the sheer craziness we’ve encountered. We’re now blasé at the mention of raw food, aliens, chakras, spirits, colonics, living on sunlight, goddesses, kundalini crises, tantric power and so on… we tend to just accept what we hear with a nonchalant shrug. (Then I go away and write it all down because one of these days I intend to write a Jilly Cooper-esque romp set in Ubud, drawing on all the whack job crazy stuff I have heard but of course it will ALL BE FICTION AND ALL CHARACTERS WILL BE FICTITIOUS AND NOT BASED ON REAL PEOPLE AT ALL WHATSOEVER. DISCLAIMER OVER).

It’s as if we’ve come to accept that Bali is a whole new reality altogether and if you want to live here you just have to accept that fiction couldn’t make this shit up. Ergo it must be real.

I mentioned the astral projecting last week. That was kind of bonkers but then the very next day another friend came round and told me how they had just been to see a healer to have a black magic curse removed.

I am living in Sunnydale. Next I will be hearing of a girl called Wayan the chosen one, a girl child born in every Balinese generation, whose mission is to slay the creatures that come through the hellmouth, aka Seminyak and Kuta.

Bali as you may have figured out by now is a unique island, rich in ceremony and known for its magic. Even the houses are designed to stop the bad spirits from finding their way in, the villages too have bends in the road before you get to them (spirits can’t figure out how to turn left or right apparently). It might be Hindu but the ceremonies are very animist in nature, offerings laid out every morning outside our house, on our Bale, on our car windshield, to protect against bad spirits. Or maybe just against my bad driving. So far they seem to be working, even though the dog eats half the offerings and Alula prefers to lay out her own version of cornflakes and half chewed prunes.

My friend had been hexed by someone she’d had an altercation with. To her it was a terrifying, very real experience and hearing her tell it gave me goose bumps.

She managed to find a healer who banished the demon. So far, so Exorcist right? Except without the spinning head and vomiting child talking in a freaky voice.

It’s a funny old place Bali. A place of magic for sure but also a place with an underside that’s as creepy as it is fascinating.

I just intend to be extra specially careful from now on not to piss anyone off.

Might have to stay indoors indefinitely then.

The slow but inevitable death of cynicism

SarahAlderson

1 comment

May 8, 2011

A good friend popped around in the week and astrally projected from my balcony. She met a twelve-foot tall blue alien in another dimension. I wanted to know if he looked like Sam Worthington but she couldn’t say. Footnote: there were no drugs involved in this.

But really, only in Ubud right? Where else would that sentence make sense?

And I was sort of jealous that I lacked the switch in my brain to turn off my cynicism and join in. I mean astrally projecting sounds fun, don’t you think? I even have a character in one of my books who can do it. Though he never meets a 12 foot alien or visits other planes of existence. Clearly I need to work on my imagination.

The funny thing is that a year ago if you’d have told me I’d have been taking part in a ceremony on my balcony whereby someone astrally projected I’d have snorted with laughter. Same too for going to Kirtan and ecstatic dance. But somehow living in Ubud does open you up to the esoteric. Even if I can’t quite quit the eyeball rolling, I find I’m snorting less and less and thinking ‘well, why not?’ a lot more. The cynic in me might be dying hard, but it’s dying. And maybe that’s got a lot to do with not living in London anymore where cynicism was hardwired into my DNA.

I guess it is no surprise though really that moving to Bali would involve some kind of re-evaluation of beliefs, given that Bali is called the island of the Gods and has always been regarded as a magical, spiritual place. There is a deep mystical connection between the people and the land, the people and the gods. It is why so many ex-pats choose to live here.

It is not why we did – I believe ‘somewhere hot,’ ‘somewhere I can lie by the pool all day and write’ and ‘sunshine’ were the pre-requisites on choosing a new place to live. Yet, here I am patting my Buddha statue and laying flowers on Ganesha every morning, choosing a card from a psychic tarot deck, putting on my saraswati necklace (goddess of creativity) and thanking the universe for my russian rights deal and please could the universe see fit to send more foreign rights deals my way? (The cynic in me suggests I am covering all bases).

When we meet up with people who are just visiting here from London or LA and tell them all the alternative viewpoints and beliefs you’re likely to find in Ubud – from raw food (which once to be seemed whackjob crazy and now just seems normal) to Pleidian technology, chakra meditation and breatharianism, their jaws drop open. John and I just shrug. We’ve become used to alternative ways of living I guess.

Don’t worry though people there is no need to stage an intervention just yet. I’m not about to sit naked on my balcony and entreat the Pleidian mothership to beam me up. Nor am I going to ever attempt to live on air alone and give up food or drink.

I can’t even manage to meditate or do yoga after all. I think enlightenment and 12 foot blue aliens will continue somehow to elude me.

He’s going nowhere

SarahAlderson

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April 26, 2011

‘Kadek’s good at making pancakes,’ Alula says, ‘but she can’t even do a puzzle.’

It’s true. She can’t.

And this being the Easter holidays this means I am without child-acceptable child care. Or I was. Until a manny fell into my lap.

I have a manny. Well I don’t. Alula does.

And for free. I’m not paying him a bean. AND, the good news is he’s going nowhere.

Mainly because he got hit by a scooter the other day and broke his leg in two places. This is where I admit the manny is actually a friend who is now staying with us because on crutches he can’t hop the 50 steps down to his stunning place on the Sayan ridge…I did think about suggesting a life swap, where I’d take his house, and hang out in his plunge pool whilst he hung out on my veranda with his foot up watching cartoons with Lula for the next two weeks but thought it a little unfair. They only gave him so much pain medication.

Alula is loving the disabled manny with the 70 hours of The last airbender on his computer. She thinks he is the funniest person in the world. EVER. and has taken to drawing him love letters and making me write him notes because after the first fifty her hand cramped. Earlier she made me write ‘I love you and you love me and I will love you forever even when you’re dead and I forget you’ and then decorated it with hearts and swirls.

So for two weeks I’m able to escape upstairs, leaving Alula curled up by the manny who doesn’t know I’m secretly calling him this, hoping that he doesn’t notice when I move his crutches out of grasping/hopping reach.

The manny / my friend is trying to book a flight out of here, back to Europe. I tell him he might want to think about letting the swelling go down first, that really he should stay the whole two months it will take to recuperate in case his foot explodes on the plane. But I think he’s getting quite anxious now to leave.

Thoughts of Cathy Bates spring into my mind. Today I’m going to the hardware store to buy myself a sledgehammer.

He’s not going anywhere.

The weird and plain deviant words that lead people here

SarahAlderson

1 comment

April 20, 2011

For your entertainment I thought I’d treat you to a sample of the search terms used to find my site:

big hips

being sarah alderson

disneyland makes me hate people

porn hard core most viewed top

where can i live in a feminist run town

irish poo and wee

how to keep cockroaches away india train

jamie oliver e-nummers

sex in Ubud

phantom headphone syndrome

can you live in an airstream year round?

unting lila

is the lady in breakfast with tiffany’s crazy?

I think I have trush

what’s d best thing to do when a girl has no money and her boyfriend insists she get d money to lodge in a hotel?

who is the cray lady sat next to me

liver by louis bernieres

naked “tape measure”

“colonic” blog “stuck up my”

men that have colon tubes pushed up their ass

can someone be crazy to live

big irish bear

willy up my ass

i wonder why we cant live on any planets?

were does alex skarsgard live

alexander skarsgard laying in bed covered by a sheet

approaching crazy getting crazier

dead in the alley

primark look i’ve got a camel toe

see you of the cosmic party in 2012

eric northman eats edwards

big boobs girl in t sherts in india

homemade terminator t-800

cool stuff 2 do with sideburns

THINGS I HAVE LEARNT FROM THIS:

people really can’t spell
I’m about to get a lot more sexual deviants finding my site
Google search needs to improve its algorithms
There are a lot of crazy people in the world and not just living in Ubud.
There are lots of people stalking Alex Skarsgard (all you Askars fans/stalkers buy my book Hunting Lila – I had him in mind when I visualized my lead character…mmmmm)
Someone wants to make their own Terminator. Why?

Another crazy tale of Ubud

SarahAlderson

1 comment

April 20, 2011

I have twelve minutes to make it through Bintang picking up whatever it was I wrote on the list and left in the kitchen and get back across town to pick Alula up at the library. I slide the car into a sweet spot in the shade, jump out and am heading, keys in hand, across the carpark when I hear,

‘SARAH’

I almost jump out my skin. There sitting on the steps of the supermarket is the woman I’ve been avoiding since, well, since our return to Bali. Since we arrived just over a year ago we’ve only met maybe two Balinese people we’ve really not liked. But this woman plain gives me the heebee geebees. She sends my psycho compass spinning. She makes me want to reach for a bottle of holy water. If this was Sunnydale, you’d know she’d stepped right out of the hellmouth. If I were Buffy I’d slay her without asking any questions.

‘Hi,’ I say. It comes out kind of strangled.

‘You need visa?’ she asks.

‘Er,’ I say, fumbling for an answer. This lady is just trying to part me from my cash. That’s her job. She organizes visas for ex-pats. But I’m sure she also curses them with black magic when they say no. ‘No, I’m good right now,’ I say nervously.

‘I get you visa,’ she says.

‘No, I’m good thanks,’ I say. ‘Visa sorted.’ Please don’t curse me.

I’m about to move off, aware that time is ticking when this white dude next to her with a straggly beard and a cap, stands up. He looks like an extra from Winter’s Bone, like he just spent the last week camped out in a shack in the hinterlands of Minnesota cooking up some meth.

And when he opens his mouth I think I must have the gift of clairvoyancy. Because the man is clearly high on something meth-like.

‘You must come on Sunday,’ he says to me.

I stare at him. I stare at the heebee geebee woman wondering how these two know each other.

‘Um, I must come where?’ I ask, thinking he’s about to ask me to some cookathon.

‘This woman she’s amazing she saved my life you know Anna she knows Kali who came here six years ago she saved so many people and she’s having a Tantra workshop and you must come and ….’

I know my mouth has fallen slightly open and I’m kind of gaping, whilst also looking over the top of my sunglasses at him wondering how he managed to make the verbal leap from ‘visa’ to ‘tantra’. Talk about non-sequitur.

I am rendered speechless. He rambles on some more about tantra. In my head this is what I’m thinking:

What the fuck is this guy saying? Think of some excuse. What are you doing on Sunday? Tell him you’re going to Singapore. No, don’t do that because scary lady might ask questions about my visa. Tantra? With this dude? I feel sick. And how does evil lady know this crazy lunatic? And god what are the odds of running into two totally mental crazy people outside Bintang and just when I’m in a hurry? Actually don’t answer that. The odds are pretty high in this town of bumping into a crazy person outside the supermarket. Shit, he’s staring at me again. Pull your sunglasses up. Make an excuse. Is it rude to interrupt him? If you don’t interrupt him he’s going to talk until your ears bleed. Don’t make eye contact, back away slowly, slowly now. Smile brightly. Now say it.

‘Thanks, but I have to run. I have to pick up Alula.’

There I said it. I run. He’s still talking about Sunday and tantra and this woman called Jo or whatever to my departing back.

When I come out two minutes later he’s still there. He’s still talking. I dash across the car park with my trolley avoiding eye contact.

I might have to start avoiding the supermarket. It’s getting too stressful dodging the lunatics in this town.

Admiring the view

SarahAlderson

3 comments

April 18, 2011

We’ve had friends staying the last week. Sorry to neglect you. Here’s a quick catch up. I have started and written 30,000 words of my new book. I’ve been dragged rafting along the Ayung River – about as much fun as being shoved inside a carrier bag and thrown repeatedly against rocks. I’ve butterfly stitched Alula’s chin (not from the rafting, she was pretending to be a dog), I’ve had two massages and a pedicure and been to the beach for the weekend. I’ve turned down an offer of climbing mount Batur at 2.30am. I’ve ecstatic danced.

Anyway, friends staying is always quite amusing because it let’s me see my life through their eyes. It reminds me all over again how amazing the place I live is. It reminds me to not be complacent. Their gasps when they walk into our garden and catch the view, then the second gasp when they come onto the balcony make me smile every time.

One friend arrived from Mumbai and in twenty four hours I showed him everything I loved most about living in Ubud. I took him to Clear for a chocolate Matrix, we ordered enough Sushi to feed the five thousand, we drank frozen margaritas, we danced ecstatically, we went to Sang Spa for a massage, we ordered salad from Sari Organic delivered to the door and drank coconuts. Yes, it’s true most of my favourite experiences involve food and drink and dancing.

My bro in law arrived for a holiday last week too. He was our biggest supporter when we first decided to pack up and leave London. He runs Careershifters so he’s driven by the aim to help people find the career and life they love. He says we’re one of their best stories. We broke out of the routine and found a way of making our life work.

And when I look out my window, lying on my bed, watching an episode of Buffy (he’d never seen Buffy before so I had to rectify this issue), and drinking a g&t because 2.54pm counts as g&t o’clock in the tropics, I realize how right he is. This is a better story than one I could ever have written.

On a Monday morning in London we’d be crawling out of bed, running frantically to get Alula to the childminder and make it into work. And yet here I am (see paragraph above).

‘It’s pretty amazing,’ Rich says sipping his g&t.

‘Yeah,’ I agree, and we go back to admiring the view.