Yeah, it’s warm and sunny, occasionally rainy. No, our place is nowhere near as flamboyant as the crib in India was, but that’s really beside the point – we’re not here to stay indoors, we’re here to dive.

And that’s pretty much what we’ve been doing. Monday we just settled in and took a look around the town (basically one road with a T cross) and got the necessities. Tuesday we got the orientation going, met pretty much everyone at the dive centre (later on known as BSB for Blue Season Bali), got our luggage which was left behind already in Helsinki (thanks again, Finnair and their outsourced ground staff), and fixed transportation (a scooter of about 100 cubic centimetres) as well as telecommunication. Numbers given on request.

Wednesday, pool day. Talk about starting by jumping into the deep end… literally. Figuratively it was true too. There were some skills we were supposed to demonstrate I had never done before since I did my open water course with another company, not PADI by whose standards we’re now studying. All things considered it wasn’t that bad, but I would’ve wanted to shine, of course…

Thursday, Tulamben. Up at 5.30 am, gear all together at 6.30 at the centre, and then two hours and some change up north with a wheezing minibus. The views were amazing, as was to be expected. Bali is a volcanic island, and there is a functioning volcano. We drove up and around it to get to Tulamben, where off the black beach lies the wreck of USS Liberty. It’s one of the easiest and safest wreck dives in the world, and probably one of the most famous too. We went there to learn new species of fish, and how to identify fish we don’t already know. I did my very first swim-throughs there too, and saw a humongous barracuda slumbering under the hull. (by humongous I mean about 2 m long, looks like a hauki [pardon my Finnish]) And yes, we learned new fish species. Two dives on that day, and back on the bumpy bus.

Friday (that’s today as I’m drafting this offline, we don’t have the net in the Bedroom which suits us just fine) was a three dive-day. Off the Sanur beach to south-east there are three more islands, one of which is called Nusa Penida. Off Nusa Penida there are lots of reefs and sloping, coral-clad walls with currents blowing past them. When in season, the Mola Molas a.k.a. oceanic sunfish come to Nusa Penida to hang out and reproduce. Now is not the season, but there was plenty to see nonetheless. Scorpionfish (in the picture), frogfish, stonefish, heaps upon heaps of the usual suspects (different angels and butterflies) and a huge napoleon wrasse. We just drifted along the current, letting it do most of the work.

As I’m writing this it’s almost nine pm, and we’re pretty much ready to call it a day. Tomorrow we’re going – surprise surprise – diving again. It takes forever to upload the photos, but eventually they’ll get there – just be patient.

To be continued…

Tags: Bali, diving, practical stuff, time, why I wanted a change

While we’re in the capital city area, it’s easy to get the visa process done in person. No need to send the passports via post, no need to wait for them to come back. The Indonesian embassy surprised us positively by being so very efficient with the visas. We took our passports there on last Thursday, and on Monday when I called, they were ready.

The amount of paper was not overwhelming, they just needed the digital copies (this is unheard-of sometimes even in Finland, that a digital copy of something would suffice!) of the recommendation letters from Indonesia plus the scan of the identity card of the person who wrote the letters, our tickets there and away from the island, and the receipt that we had paid the visa fees.

But of course, there’s a catch. The visas are only valid for  60 days, and our training takes twice as long. What this means is that we need to renew the visas while there, but the good thing is, we have the dive school people to help us with the process. Having natives to help you is a huge bonus, and I’m pretty sure we’re not the first ones to extend their visas while in the country.

Talking of embassies, the Finnish honorary embassy in Indonesia is in Bali, so in case of emergency there’s help to be had. Not that we plan to have cases of emergencies, we plan not to have any.

Not too long now…

Tags: bureaucracy, diving, practical stuff, surprises, travel

Oh, how I love being European in the world economy of 2009.

The guys in Bali have decided to operate on a steady currency instead of Indonesian Rupiahs (a wise choice as such), so everything is paid in US dollars. However, while the steadiness of euro has been rock solid, the value of USD just hit its all-time low at .66 euros. I just paid our 5-figure course fees and accommodation, saving several thousand dollars just by living in the this specific part of the world!

So, we have the flights, we have the course payment on its way, and we have accommodation waiting in Helsinki after New Year’s. And it seems like we’re getting to visit Vuohijärvi as well!

Tags: it's good to be me, money, planning, practical stuff

Okay, let’s have a checklist. Just in case we’ve forgotten something.

We are in the process of getting visas for Bali. Our passports have more than a year in them left.

I’ve found suitable flights for us and we have someone to take us to Helsinki first. There’s enough time for transit in Singapore even though we will have to transfer our check-in baggage by ourselfs.

We can pay for courses, flights and visas any day now without going bankrupt. And I still have my final salary payment ahead of me.

We have an appointment with a doctor for health certificates and we have all the necessary vaccinations in effect.

Are we missing something hugely important here?

Tags: Bali, let me know, planning, practical stuff, travel, vaccinations

I’m going to the office tomorrow to sort out the details of my short but interesting post-Bangalore career in the Corporation. Most probably I will go back once or twice after that, but that’s about it – I hope. I’m not going to say anything as fact before having something about this on paper.

Still, it’s good to be back.  Clean streets, peace & quiet, me blending in the crowd… Oulu is a lot better than most of people even realise.

Tags: planning, practical stuff, work

The packers-and-movers will be here on Friday, and we’re moving to the hotel on Thursday. So basically all we need for survival in Finland needs to be packed in the luggage, as well as stuff we’re contemplating to take to Bali. Just the thought of packing again feels slightly dreadful, although I do know that this is just another leg on our long trip.

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.

Tags: accommodation, hotels, moving, planning, practical stuff, travel

There is an expat saying, or more like a rhetorical question, that goes around. It’s used whenever anything goes wrong or works in an unexpected manner. It’s this: “Did India surprise you?” This country does surprise us, daily. Most of the time it’s nothing big, occasionally it’s even something that’s positive, working or just simply induces happiness.

As we were heading out for dinner however, the surprise was a bit on the nasty side. It’s payday today, and my sweetie gets an SMS every time the balance on his account changes. We were expecting the usual monthly sum (as is due until the end of November, the end of the contract), but somehow about 70% of the sum had been deducted. In other words, only 30% of the monthly salary landed on the account. We do not know why, but the guess is that the tax people at the Corporation have decided to do Something Radical, and they decided not to give a heads-up.

I’d say this is inconvenient, as we’re leaving tomorrow morning for Maldives and can’t reach the people at the office to find out what is going on and why. Happy honeymoon from the Corporation, or something. Sigh. Patience is wearing thin, since pretty much everything we have to sort out we also need to bitch, moan and yell at someone with the Corporation to get the sorting done.

Here’s hoping we can unscrew this screw-up. At the latest it will be sorted when we come back in a week. Expect photos, lots of photos.

Gone divin’.

Tags: oh bugger, practical stuff, surprises, what?

They usually say that no news is good news, but right now I’d like to have some. Almost anything would do, but one thing is hanging above everything else: I would very much like to have a schedule and know the terms for our move.

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.

Tags: holiday, money, moving, planning, practical stuff, time, travel

So, we landed last night and now we’re back here, married and celebrated and everything. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that this is the stuff now for some 7 odd months.

The transit went as flights generally do, nothing special. We got scanned for fever at the airport, the people are nuts about the swine flu and trying to stop it. Apparently, it’s not just another influenza here. Otherwise everything was smooth, we got our luggage and Mr. S was there to pick us up as agreed.

Today it was all about shopping for the necessaries (a helmet for me for motorcycling and heaps of food) and having  a terrific lunch at Shiro (sushi buffet, all you can eat, delivered to the table fresh, yummmy!), otherwise just trying to unwind.

It’s surprisingly cool now, the air is very humid and full of noises. The local squirrels hooted me awake a couple of times last night. I’m guessing that when I get used to them, I’ll need a seriously bad-noised alarm clock. I’m constantly reminded of Darwin in Australia, the humidity and the warmth are like nothing else I’ve experienced. It’ll take me a while to acclimatise, but I’ll get there eventually.

Just a word from Heikki, the glasses he last got from the optician didn’t have the correct lense in the right frame, so he hasn’t been able to write for a while. What’s more, we’ve been running around organising stuff back in Finland and offline anyway for a few weeks, so that’s another good reason for not to post more. But that’s about to change, the glasses problem has yet again been faced and now that I’m here, I might actually have something to say about expatting too.

Tomorrow’s agenda has a meeting with the corporate liaison who will organise paperwork and stuff for me, but we’ll take it from there and see what happens. Will keep this blog posted though.

Tags: accommodation, luxuries, motorbikes, practical stuff