We’re here, safe and sound.

As I anticipated in the last post, our luggage isn’t, but it should be on its way already. If we’re lucky, it lands in Bali in a few hours and will be transported to us defore dusk. Until then we’ll just have to cope without a few things.

Speaking of few things,  we couldn’t go diving even if we had the time: I did take our certificates out, but it doesn’t really help as long as our swimming gear and Eve’s contact lenses are somewhere on their way.

Anyway,  here we are. First impressions on food, traffic and the diving centre are all good, the locals are friendly and so on. Our accommodation, the Bedroom, only has a bed, fridge, shower, toilet, fan and (at least) one cockroach, so we won’t be spending a lot of time there.

Now we’re off to find some food, and in the afternoon we’ll start studying first aid and do some shopping.  Seems like there’s a lot to learn, but that’s why we’re here. Let’s get busy!

Tags: accommodation, Blue Season Bali, flying, food, the Bedroom, traffic, travel

A few more weeks and we’re off to Bali. Apart from visas everything is paid and settled, now all we have to do is to pack and go, but first we’ll have a nice Christmas with our families and friends. Good food, sauna, some wine, reading and board games for a couple of days – I mean, what’s there not to like?

Happy holidays to everyone!

Tags: food, friends and family, holiday, it's good to be me

I’ve been asked more than once what the stuff is, so here’s a photo:

In the inside it has three types of chocolate mousse, wrapped in a leaf of milk chocolate and decorated with – you guessed it – chocolate. Maybe not so sushi-ish, but still sinfully delicious.

Shiro, the restaurant that serves this, is one of the few things I will really miss about India.

Tags: food

It really is not bad at all living at Oakwood. As I mentioned earlier, some of the city’s best restaurants are located on the premises (essentially, after all, this is just a mall that is a bit overblown – it looks like the Empire State Building (in miniature) from the outside and boasts a heap of silly designer boutiques that no-one can afford to shop at) and I had a go at the Sunday brunch at our favourite one – Shiro.

Now, the essential thing to know about Sunday brunches is that while they’re not exactly cheap, they’re affordable. They’re not only all-you-can-eat, but also all-you-can-drink – the bubbly wine and other things are included in the bill. The other thing you should know about Shiro is that they serve excellent East Asian food, namely sushi and dim sums (but also curries and stuff) along with some stunning salads. I took some photos of Shiro interior on the previsit:

Anyhoo, as Heikki wasn’t feeling up to it, I went and ate and conquered. My tummy that is. Started off with tofu wontons, continued with veg & chicken dim sums, stuffed my face with my favourite maki pieces while tucking into some of the most gorgeous salads. They also served this fried fish with basil, absolutely stunningly brilliantly magnificent! There’s just one word to describe it and even that’s in Finnish: Itkuhyvvää! And yeah, the desserts are included in the whole shebang as well. I only just had room for the chocolate sushi and coconut-pecan-chocolate pie.

So how much for all of this? After taxes and tips I ended up with rs. 1700 less cash than I walked in with. That’s somewhere in the ballpark of 24 euros. But then again, I didn’t need to eat that evening… and left the restaurant grinning stupidly from ear to ear. Not many places do that to me anymore.

A propos, I entertained myself with the question of what would I bring with me if I had the power and assets. Shiro is most definitely one of the things, but also the Sunday brunch tradition is something to consider. I wouldn’t mind bringing over the rooftop pool or the modern gym, although I do realise that having an open air rooftop pool in Finland is rather stupid. There are good reasons why we don’t have open air pools in that country… but anyway. It’s the thought that counts, right?

Two more nights to go. On the 26th is the anniversary of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and I’m guessing the security might be a wee bit tighter than usual at the BIA (Bangalore International Airport). Considering that the security measures are somewhere between absurd and downright silly regularly, we’re anticipating delays, irrational checks between checkpoints for passports, visas, tickets, stamps and all the like. Better be there several hours before the take-off, which would be at 3.30 am.

But then it’s home bittersweet home.

Tags: drink, food, hotels, luxuries, money, travel

Things happen too fast for me to comment on here. I’m being bombarded with various sensory stimuli all the time, and something has to be forgotten in order for new ones to be inserted. Here goes, then.

The air smells a bit acrid in the city, since there are so many engines running at all times. The noise is overwhelming, there is absolutely never a time that would be silent. If the horns of the cars, rickshaws and bikes are not hooting, the squirrels or birds are making some din.

Riding on the back of a motorbike in the traffic can be fearsome. Please keep all limbs close to the torso at all times. Beware of bumps and potholes in the road. Even if the traffic is supposed to be on the left, it’s not always so. Be prepared that you will be stared (what, two white people on an Enfield??) and made faces at. I was very happy to have a helmet with a reflecting visor today – I was alternately making faces and smiling to the flabbergasted people.

On Nandi Hills I was having a bit of vertigo. It’s not that high up, but the walls are steep in places. It was also beautiful, and in parts it seemed to be stolen from the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. Gum trees, ancient gnarly trees and acacias everywhere. Again we were a part of the sights to be seen for the locals – enough to have our pictures taken from buses and cars going past.

The transit back from the hills to the city is a big one for the senses. In the countryside the air is clean, there are orchards and vineyards in between villages which are less than well-kept or well-organised. Cows and water buffaloes are plentiful, hen and roosters in all colours imaginable and stray dogs, packs of them. Kilometre by kilometre the neon lights and billboards start to appear more and more, and less of the orchard/vineyard/field plots until none are there. One does feel more free on the countryside, that is very much true. Not so many staring faces, no more walls around the roads, and no kingfishers sitting on electric wires.

And yet again we were back home. It is really starting to feel like home, more and more. There is still the syndrome of putting stuff down and forgetting which floor I put the said object down on, but I’m getting better on the efficiency side.

The nights are warm and my love is here with me. I have a home away from home.

Tags: food, happiness, motorbikes, natural beauty, road trip, traffic

My (hopefully) last weekend in a hotel for some time is almost at its end, and it could be worse. For the last two days I’ve been chilling out on the poolside, eating in ridiculously priced joints and reading a lot. I’m currently going through Steve Berry’s The Templar Legacy, which I bought just because I found The Da Vinci Code fascinating and well written. Berry draws his ideas from the same pool with Dan Brown, but his themes and locations are a bit less well-known than Brown’s. For example, while Robert Langdon deciphers messages in The Last Supper, Berry’s Cotton Malone has to settle with less known artists such as Don Miguel de Manara. Still, the story is quite interesting – I only bought it yesterday and I’m on page 350 or so already.

Things seem to be going well towards me moving out next Thursday, but there’s plenty of room for catastrophies to happen. I’m usually not this pessimistic, but seeing how things (don’t) work around here has given me enough reason not to hold my breath.

Tags: books, food, hotels, money, prices

It just never stops amazing me how much moods can swing during a single day. In the morning I was battered, tired and down, mainly due to the flu I had the whole last week. No appetite, no energy to do anything, and certainly no ambition to dig into the heap of mail that was waiting at work.

And whad’ya know…

I got the SIM card I had been waiting for, so now I can make calls again.

And halfway through the heap I found my pay slip for May. 5 figures.

After a nice lunch, some meetings with people and a good afternoon rest I went downstairs for dinner. I was prepared to wait forever, especially since I ordered a steak, but the chef was fast as lightning today and the whole visit took me less than 40 minutes. Seems like the universe knows when things should go smoothly since I found myself chuckling uncontrollably under my beard.

What the hell just happened?

Tags: flu, food, it's good to be me, money, oh bugger, surprises, work

The last 24 hours have been something I wish no one would have to endure. It all started as neck, shoulder and head ache, which I accounted to bad ergonomy in the office (still haven’t got a display or a keyboard) and  standing out in the heat (I had to register myself at an office with no aircon). During the evening it got worse, and by the time I was supposed to have dinner it came clear to me that something was wrong besides the usual office worker’s aches: I was dizzy, nauseous, sweaty and, in retrospective, horribly disoriented.

The reason came up – along with my lunch – just before I went to bed. I checked out the symptoms of malaria just in case, but it seems like it was just a regular case of food poisoning.  These things happen quite a lot in here, but this was my first one here. I thought it was all over and went to bed, hoping to wake up safe and sound.

As you probably have guessed already, it didn’t go that well.

I fell asleep relatively quickly, but woke up somewhere in the wee hours of the night with a biblically sore hip bone. It felt like the outermost parts of the bone (the ones on the sides) had been in a screw clamp, pressed inwards by some kilotons of force. The reason turned out to be the rock hard matress in the new bed, combined with my tendency to sleep on my side 90% of the time. I usually sleep on a soft matress that gives way for the protruding bones and distributes my weight more evenly, but these futons and straw thingies just don’t do the trick for me.

So I spent the rest of the night rolling around, sleeping on the couch, lying awake, wandering around the house, trying to sleep, looking for anything soft to sleep on, and missing my loved ones in the dark, hopeless hours of Indian night. What would I have given for being with my wife at that moment!

Eventually morning came, I gave a call to our agent, and he promised to arrange me a softer matress before end of the day. It came in around two o’clock (on a rikshaw), but looks suspiciously similar to the previous one. The coming night will tell if it’s any better.

I had already forgotten how things can suck sometimes.

Tags: accommodation, food, friends and family, oh bugger, sleep, surprises, transportation

Last night I came back to the hotel after going bowling and, despite the brilliant brunch at Olive Beach, hungry like a wolf. So I paid a personal visit to the reception and told them to order a pizza for me. And so they did.

Guess how long it took for a small topped bread to arrive?

Three bloody hours, but it was still warm.

Tags: culture, food, time, what is different