Today was a grand victory. I finished work by 5:30!
It’s something I’ve been striving to achieve for awhile. It hasn’t been done since Mumbai. On a few occasions, I finished before dinner – that’s always nice too. But even in Bangkok, it never happened.
There are several reasons for that.
In Bangkok, we were always doing something – running to embassies for visas, getting our teeth cleaned, post office, shopping, sushi….things that interrupted the flow of the day. It didn’t matter too much since I loved being out and about.
In India, Internet lagged so much of the time. Sometimes it went out too – especially in Udaipur where the service provider was always experiencing technical difficulties. In Jodhpur, Internet flickered like a candle which drove my iPad crazy. Emily’s laptop was far more patient and understanding.
But irony of ironies, in Bali – the place in Region 3 where I was most worried about Internet speed and quality – I’m working like we’re back in Greece or France. Articles are back to taking 45 minutes to an hour thanks to the fast, smooth and usually consistent Internet speeds.
The fact that I haven’t finished before 5:30 is largely a function of distractions, errands and occasional outages. But more than ever, I’m getting done in about 6 hours of actual work time. Usually I’m done before dinner and when I’m not, I don’t stay up until 2:00 or 3:00 am like I did in many parts of India – where we were always promised at least 10Mbps if not 100Mbps speeds. The only correct parts of that information were the B and S .
I sleep better and feel as if I have a life during the weekdays.
Emily too is usually done by dinner time and overall happy with the Internet here. We have WiFi that encompasses the house and surrounding area.
Only one problem – it goes out during heavy rains and doesn’t seem to come back without a visit from the phone company. We finally found out last night it has something to do with the phone line. While I’m not able to get a clear, technical explanation, I’ve deduced that the line isn’t properly insulated at some point and when it gets too wet, it shorts.
The same thing happened years ago when I lived here. The power went out during hard rains – which typically come along for 20 minutes here and 30 minutes there, especially at night. There was a line that got wet. When it dried, the power came back. Eventually a wire leading to the upstairs lighting also shorted.
The landlord sent a repairmen each time I reported the problem. Each time an electrician came and “fixed” the problem which recurred the next time there was a decent rain. Eventually, it became clear that the electrician purposely wasn’t fixing the wires so he could get paid for the visits – there’s no warrantying work here. I advised the landlord and he sent someone else who did the job right.
I’ve been wondering if that’s not going on with our Internet.
As with everywhere so far, when the Internet stops, Emily goes…crazy. She rightfully needs her connection and she needs it when she needs it, so we’ve had a few days where we’ve had to go into town when we weren’t planning to do so.
As with anywhere new, we’ve discovered some restaurants have better connections than others and sometimes we have wasted money on lunch at a poor performer. Sometimes performance changes during the course of our visit as it did yesterday at the sushi place. We end up further delayed and a little poorer when we’re wrong.
Two pieces of good news: we have enough work to make slow Internet a problem and Ubud has plenty of places with WiFi and most of them are very good. We’ve developed a few standbys for emergencies and we are never without an option.
This has made all the difference.
So, while technology has amazingly worked in our favor, we face another familiar problem: we don’t wanna’….
Bali does very little to inspire anyone to work. The locals don’t like to work and the truth is neither do we. Everyday, Emily and I have the same conversation.
“Love, I wanna’ go shopping….and get a massage…and walk around….let’s not work today….”
“Yeah….I’d like that too, but…..”
“Let’s just spend money and not make it! Won’t that be fun? I think we need to just stop working for the rest of Bali.”
Then we go to our restaurant or cafe and work.
Sometimes we take breaks to look at this thing or go to that shop….and there’s always the surprising long visits to the grocery store. We’re really good at enjoying the very nice supermarket here. There’s something about selecting among the nine different varieties of locally grown mangoes in season that always captivates me. How are there nine? And that’s just right now! Different seasons, different mangoes. How does anyone get through it?
Despite the distractions of fruit, dresses and massages, it no longer feels like all we do from Monday to Friday is work. The balance that characterized Region 1 has resurfaced here in Region 3 – and most importantly in the place I wanted it most.
That’s why when we’re heading home from town where we fled this morning after an Internet outage from last night that hadn’t yet been repaired – we had time to stop and enjoy a passing ceremonial procession.
After all, if you don’t have time to watch villagers marching down the road, dressed to the hilt, with fruit on their heads, musical instruments in their hands, gods on their shoulders and mythical creatures walking among them – then you really have no soul and absolutely no business being in Bali.
Sent from my iPad
