We’ve been offered a chance to run a small dive operation in the north of Bali. The dive centre is owned by the Company, and accompanied by a hotel resort. The customer volumes have been low throughout the year for the last two years or so, and the Company would like to see the business grow. That’s what they’re hoping to achieve by sending us up there.

There are positives and negatives to the offer, as always. Negatives first: It’s up there, far away from everything. It takes three hours in a car up the winding roads over the mountain range and through the jungle to get there, and the facilities are not that up-to-date. Only one of us would have the actual work visa with real pay to boot, the other one would have to get by with commissions and sales, which means quite a meager wage for one of us, and not a massive amount for the other one either. (I do have to say though that we’ve been living off one budget for quite a while now, so that wouldn’t be anything new.) The local religion (Balinese hinduism) has a habit of sounding off very lound prayer calls in the morning as well as in the evening, which has proven irritating in the past. And we’d have to do supplying trips down south (read: Sanur/Denpasar area) pretty much weekly to keep the shop and the resort stocked.

On the positive side, it would be an unparalleled chance to show what we can do. We would get to design the dive shop interior, run the daily operations, deal with customers and answer their emails. We’d also have to manage a little staff, learn the nooks and crannies of accounting a small business and do all the marketing both online and offline. There is an opportunity to be one’s own boss without actually bearing the financial burden of becoming an entrepeneur. We’d have the freedom of making the best of the business as we can, creating our own best practices and ways of working. Also we’d improve on the web pages, try to get them higher in the search results and also do some translating.

Moreover, it’s not every day that fresh diving instructors get the opportunity to run a business to the best of their abilities with this amount of history in the field. It will look very good in both our diving and non-diving CVs, not to mention the mass of experience we’d gain from the trip. Plus, we’d be diving easily the best sites in Bali pretty much daily. Just because of the remoteness, not too many divers actually make it all the way up there which makes the sites absolutely pristine and teeming with marine life.

Adding to that, we’d finally have a real apartment, with a real kitchen and bedrooms and air conditioning and stuff, all paid for by the company. That is to say, yours truly has been suffering from home sickness in the sense of longing for a home anywhere for a while now, and having a place to call home is extremely fetching for me indeed. Even if it wouldn’t be for much more than a year or so, it would still beat moving every four months. And, did I mention the steady pay for one of us already? That’s something freelancing instructors down in southern parts of the island don’t get. That would mean we wouldn’t have to dip into our savings any longer, even if we wouldn’t be generating much income either. And we’d still get the commissions and provisions on diving days and equipment sold, as well as courses taught.

Many of the actual details of the agreement are still open, but we’ll do our best in negotiating them. We haven’t been discussing the actual whens of the deal either, but we do know that we could do our trip back to Finland in September and continue the work in October.

But, as always, it’s not as cut-and-dry as one would hope. As Heikki wrote, there’s the option of Finnish summer, our loved ones and probably the best food in the world. With the unemployment benefits and summer cottages to take care of, we’d be happy as pigs in mud there. Need a good, hard think on this.

Backpacks, heavy as hell – check.

Passports, immigration papers and tickets – check.

Bonus money to Mr. S for good service – check.

Pants – check.

Off we go!

It’s not all bad. The ‘hotel’ we’re moving to is Oakwood, where Heikki stayed before moving in to RT Nagar. They have a swimming pool and a gym, and the best restaurants are in the same building. (sushi, anyone? pasta, pizza…?) They also have a net connection, which is always a plus. (geek? who, me?) We have a bit less than a week there, and then it’s back to the winter wonderland of slush and darkness. Here’s hoping Finland gets more snow soon, so it won’t be so damned bleak.

And then we get to live in other people’s houses once again. Hopefully not for too long, and hopefully not in the same place for the whole time, but chances are we won’t be setting up our own home there – chances are that we’re gone before that.

So what to do meanwhile? Thus far I’ve sewn myself two shirts and read an innumerable amount of pages on the ‘net. I’m planning to stitch up a pair of pants while I’m at it. I’ve also played on the Xbox, drunk countless cups of coffee and chai and learnt some yoga. Three sessions to go before take-off. I also managed to get a crick in my neck so that my head wouldn’t turn to the right during the weekend. Luckily it’s heaps better already. I expect to do some serious swimming now that I have the chance and read some more, on and off the net.

… and try not to stress about things I can’t affect. Just chill.

I also realised I have only 11 working days left after today. Oh, joy.

What I know right now is not much: we will have our honeymoon in Maldives, come back to Bangalore, repatriate to Oulu and then get going to Bali for our IDC (SCUBA instructor) internships. I will have some severance pay from the Corporation, but we still need to gather some more cash for the whole trip to be feasible. If we are going to stay in Finland for more than a few weeks, we also need a place to stay, and that will complicate things even further. Our furniture won’t reach Finland before end of this year, and getting an apartment for one or two months would anyway be far from practical.

It would be easy to fill the gap by selling some of the furniture we have, but by the time we’re supposed to head southeast, our cargo will be evading pirates somewhere in the Somalian seas. We could of course sell them in advance, but the last expat to leave Bangalore had a nasty surprise in the box when they opened it – the whole crate was sprayed with bug spray that destroyed every single piece of cargo and they had to discard it all. Claiming the insurance money after something like that would be the quick and dirty way to liquidate our assets, with significantly better prices and all, but still…

A lot of questions are still open and a lot of loose ends need to be caught, but I think we’re on top of it again. Most likely I forgot to mention hundreds of things, but if something bugs you, please leave a comment.

We’re travelling back to Finland next month.

Next destination: the sea.

As I didn’t send my office chair here from Finland, I had to get a new one:

One of the buttons has come off already, but I don’t think I want to go through the trouble of hauling the chair back to the shop for that. See, I’m getting more Indian every day?

For the guests I got something in the upstairs:

And of course there has to be a bar with such setup:

The glasses are still missing, but that only gives me one more chance to post a pic of this awesome piece of handicraft. I just think it kicks ass.

And finally it feels like I live here!

At first I have to say how positively surprised I was with the guys who worked here with us today. They arrived on time, listened to our instructions and did their job with astonishing quality. They even suggested calling a real electrician to check out the wirings before connecting any of the equipment, which was something really unexpected. Of course that’s the safe way of doing things, but I never expected to see that in here. Still, two thumbs up and mad props to the guys for these:

The official ladder is actually next to the guy on the right, just against the wall.

Would you climb up there on a ledge less than half a meter wide?

I also got quite a bunch of furniture today, so let there be more photographs:

Some nice paintings in there…

…some missing bottles in here…

…and a missing queen witch here. If this one doesn’t tell who’s the fairest of them all, it can’t be done.

This one is placed in the master bedroom right now, but I’ll have to see if there’s more use for it in some other place. Who knows, maybe I’ll run out of storage space (not).

And there’s more to come, but  not yet – first I need a good night’s sleep on my new king-size bed.

Well, it seems like they’re already in India. I was informed that the ship arrived at Chennai last Saturday and they are being moved to a train today. If I’m lucky, I’ll get to pay the customs on Thursday and may see the actual stuff before end of this week. I did all the paperwork today with some help from the removal company, meaning that their agent tells me where to sign and fills up the forms for me afterwards. All I had to involve in was listing the values of my goods for the customs declaration.

And boy, did I get a firm reminder of where I am.

The agent was quite close to passing out when he heard how much my video projector had cost, so he made some adjustments to the figures before writing them down. It seems now that my home theater – including the projector, amp, speakers and Xbox  with its controllers and all – is now worth 300 euros in total. Add in the other dutiable stuff and the shipment is valued at around 700 euros for duty purposes.

Right.

Toothbrush mug

Yes, that’s the mug you’re supposed to put your toothbrush in.

And this is the key to the closest equivalent of a safe in the room.

So I’m writing this in a new place called The Residences, almost next door from RC. The place is bigger, cleaner, more stylish and with water mixers in the bathroom – a treat you don’t get here that often. The photos should tell the rest:

And it gets even better: there’s a buffet breakfast, meaning that I don’t have to decide what to eat before waking up and walking to the outdoor restaurant on the roof. I’ll get back to the breakfast if it’s exceptional in any way, but right now I’m quite convinced it will be good.

The exchange booth in the airport had apparently run out of 1000 rupee notes, so I should be listening to Abba instead of Edguy here:
…in a rich man’s world…

Oh, and by the way: the chicken haystack salad in Hard Rock Cafe was excellent <3

I also wrote a couple of rental agreements today and it seems that I will have some extra income during my visit in India. Still I would need some extra for my apartment loan payments in Finland, and it sounds like transferring money from India to EU can be a bit tricky. I hope to find a feasible solution when I get there.

Apart from being really tired, homeless and dirty, all is well for me. Tomorrow is practically the last day of work in Finland for me. I have the coming week off from work and I’ll spend it by having an utterly biblically fabulous Wappu once I’m still here. Hopefully I can keep my feet unbroken this year

This actually isn’t the first homeless Wappu for me: some years back I gave up my apartment before the celebrations and moved in to the new one after all the parties and other mandatory ceremonies. This year I’ll take it easy and just relax – I’ve already seen all the wild  stuff of it.

Now I’ll try to clean up this place, make it ready for the next occupant and find myself a place to stay. Does anyone need a digital TV box for cable network?

I have quite a lot to handle for my move, but I’m still on top of things. Visa application are almost on their way, travel dates are almost fixed, flight tickets are almost confirmed and so on. I still need to rent out my apartment, rent out my bike, plan my packing, attend a funeral and so on, but all in all everything seems to be going on as planned. We’ll see when the first catastrophe strikes…

In case you need me in the end of May, here’s where to reach me:

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I also got the promise of Malarone for malaria medicine (the first thing the healthcare tried to give me was Lariam, which is not very effective and has huge side effects), so all is good. Not that Bangalore would be an area where malaria is a problem, but it’s good to have the pills in case of travelling. And travel – it seems – we will.

It’s hard to concentrate on my job at hand as I’m still halfway in India in my mind. Yes yes, it’s hot and crazy and chaotic, but theres a certain Something to the country. I’m waiting for the move very enthusiastically, it’s going to be a huge adventure.

Talking about the move, it seems it’s possible I’ll have my own set of transportation for my stuff to Blore, which is nice. Not that I’m taking much with me, but the mere essentials will take some room. Later on I’ll post a great deal of stuff that will be for sale / given away, as soon as I make up my mind what to take and what not to take. I would like to take my futon with me, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it to drag it all the way there and back again.

Can’t really believe I won’t be going until September, but then again summer comes and is over before I know it. Waiting is like sitting on a pincushion… of vaccines…