The Bubble

You've probably noticed that I call Palm Meadows, where I live in Bangalore, the "bubble."  And it is truly a bubble.  We have nice, even, palm tree-lined roads with beautiful landscaping set inside a gated wall protected by barbed wire and security guards.  It even smells nice inside Palm Meadows, at least most of the time.  Not when there is a garbage fire burning just over one of the exterior walls, but we can't have everything perfect inside our bubble I suppose.

The view from inside the bubble

And it certainly is not perfect.  Our power still goes out frequently and the Internet works intermittently and sometimes the pool water is a little cold :)  But we survive as best we can in the conditions.

But today I was fortunate enough to join some of my favorite people on a walk outside of the bubble.  My running friends, Leisa and Daleen, enjoy a nice 5k run outside the bubble most early mornings and I would like to join them but wanted to know what I was in for.  So a group of 6 of us did a nice walk today in the bustle of the morning commute.  Let's just say that we were not anywhere near the bubble even though we were simply walking around it.

The first thing I notice when I leave the bubble is the noise.  It is truly remarkable how different the noise level is outside the gates.  Horns honking incessantly, dogs barking at anything that moves, diesel trucks speeding over bumps and ditch sized divots in the road.  The second thing I notice is the amount of interference I need to watch out for - motorcycles on the sidewalks, holes appearing out of nowhere in the sidewalk or roads, power lines hanging very low.  This is not a place where texting while walking is advised.  Third are the smells.  gross diesel and choking smoke from cars, feces of undetermined origin, garbage everywhere, and then out of nowhere the nice and very local smell of incense burning in the huts and houses and, on one road in particular, a lovely row of flowering bushes.  

One eventually gets used to the unevenness and noise levels.  The cars sideswiping our shoulders took a bit more getting used to and I'm pretty sure I will never be cavalier about that.  Also the dogs are scary and heartbreaking.  I love dogs.  But street dogs are scary.  Until I see an injured street dog dragging a leg and then I want to scoop him/her up and go to the nearest vet.  But that is a story for another time.

I was looking forward to meeting Bessie as I've heard about her from the running ladies.  I wasn't disappointed, but I do think she was giving me the evil eye.

Today, as I do many days, I got to thinking about how people live outside the bubble.  I wonder if the person, or more likely family of many, living inside the small hut is happy there.  If the women I see on the sides of the roads washing dishes with dirty water over sewers are concerned about disease and health, and if the women I see washing clothes by soaking them in a bucket, banging them on a rock, rinsing and repeating long for a washing machine.  Do they even know how convenient life can be inside the bubble?

Woman washing her dishes over the open sewer. Behind her is most likely her temporary home where her family lives while one or more members of the family work at a nearby construction site.

And many of them do realize how convenient life can be because they work within the bubble households.  They get to see how the bubble people live with cars and electricity and running water and even HOT water.  And it is not just expats that live in the bubble.  All of the bubble houses are owned by locals and many live in their houses.  The expats are simply renting.  So it isn't as if the expats invented this lifestyle, it is here but not available to many.

The average income in India is $1500 per year.  I know that I find the grocery shopping to be fairly inexpensive here (unless I want a decent bottle of wine or imported product.)  But it is hard to really understand what $1500 buys.  So I did some conversions.  $1500 is almost 100,000 Rupees - not quite, but that is what I am sticking to for the sake of argument.  Before I continue, I need to make very clear that I am not an economist, I have no understanding of international currencies and stock markets and anything else that involves anything more financially complex than paying bills or balancing my bank account.  This is simply an observation of a current expat wife.

I've thought about some of the things I've bought over the past few days.  20 rupees for 4 tomatoes, 60 rupees for a quart of milk, 1700 rupees for my cell phone bill, over 300 rupees for a 4-pack of toilet paper.  If I am making $100,000 dollars a year I don't think I would ever pay $20 for tomatoes, $60 for milk, $1700 for a monthly phone bill and certainly I would have to forgo the $300 toilet paper.  So even though I think of these items as fairly inexpensive, it is completely out of reach for the average local.  My housekeeper asked me for a loan the other day to pay tuition for her two children.  20,000 rupees for public school tuition.  (again, not an expert so I don't really understand what the fees are for, but I assume it is for food and notebooks and uniforms.)  I don't know what her household income is but I can't imagine how she can afford to feed and house her children and ensure they have a decent education so maybe they can live a different life than she does.

One of the curious children we saw on our walk today.  He was very interested in the crazy walking ladies, but it doesn't look like he is dressed in uniform for school.

But, alas, our walk finishes up back in the bubble and I wonder if I would ever manage that route alone.  I'm sure I'll get more and more comfortable as I get used to being outside the bubble and also outside the protection of the car.  But, luckily for me, our walk finishes up with the lovely ladies discussing future shopping plans and possibly a meet up at the club in the bubble for drinks on Friday night.  Ahh…back to my comfort zone.  And, I hope we provided some amount of amusement to the many who witnessed the crazy white ladies doing the prancercise.

Trailing spouses...

A few of my expat friends have been sharing a blog post written by an expat wife in Jakarta.   In this post she talks about how expat wives are now called "trailing spouses" presumably because there are more and more expat husbands making the sacrifice to leave careers and move across the globe for their partner's career.  I love how we are described as dripping in diamonds and designer handbags and drunk by lunch…not entirely true but we might be dripping in affordable, hand-made local jewelry and bags that are beautiful none the less.  And, we may be drunk most weekends at fabulous parties that we could never afford to throw back in our home countries (or have the time to attend in our home countries.)

Being a trailing spouse is an amazing experience, in India anyway, because we have lots of free time to explore whatever we wish - education, volunteering, sight seeing, lazy afternoons at the pool.  Our children are in school from 7:30-4:30 and our houses are cleaned by someone else and our meals are cooked by someone else, my main responsibility is to grocery shop (and I mess that up often!)  And, the biggest difference I've found in my lifestyle here vs. my lifestyle at home is that I am not constantly running around going to practices and games and school events.  Our evenings are our evenings and our weekends are our weekends.  Yet, even with this life of leisure we have many frustrations…there are people constantly in the house.  Electricians when the fire hazard of our electrical systems break usually once a week.  Plumbers when my hair falls out (at a scary pace) and clogs the drain each week.    The power goes out and the Internet fails and every Indian experience is full of contradiction and illogical process.  Yet, we are in it together.

I arrived in Bangalore knowing no one and with unhappy children (and everyone knows a parent is only as happy as their unhappiest child) and a lack of understanding of how anything worked.  But, within 24 hours I was visiting with the other spouses of Fidelity employees.  They were providing advice on how to hire a housekeeper, and which hospitals and doctors were the best and where to go to shop.  And they invited me into their worlds and introduced me to their friends and my kids to their kids and before I knew it I was part of a group.  Very much like freshman year in college when you arrive knowing nothing and nobody and within a week you know how to move around campus and have found life long friends.  "What's your major" has been replaced with, "where are you from and how long have you been here?"  These are usually followed up with, "where can I get decent toilet paper?"

Within a few short months I feel like I have been here for ages and I've made friends with people that are so different from me and yet so similar because of our experiences.  I have friends from the states and South Africa and Australia and Holland and Sweden and the UK.  I have dozens of people I can call at anytime to find a ride somewhere or to go shopping with or to simply sit and vent with.

When I told people I was moving to India for two years the reactions varied from excitement to sadness to "are you freaking kidding me?"  I kept assuring everyone that two years would fly by and I would slide right back into my life in Brookline.  Now, I'm not sure how I will slide back into the routine of housework and chauffeuring kids around town.  I'm glad I can continue to enjoy this craziness for a bit longer.  And maybe I can bring some of this lifestyle back with me.

I'm off now to drape myself in my diamonds and get drunk at lunch :)

Christmas Adventures

Bali, Indonesia is my new favorite spot on earth.  I can't even say why exactly.  The Balinese people are genuinely nice and engaging and Bali has everything one could want in a travel destination from beautiful beaches to an active volcano to tropical forests to mountainous regions as well as areas of nightlife, shopping, relaxation and exploration.  But I nearly cried when it was time to leave Bali.  8 days was not enough and I hope to make it back here some day so I can spend far more time meeting people and exploring.

Any of you who are friends with my husband on Facebook know that it rained for our first three days.  The rain, while disappointing, was not nearly as troublesome to me as it was to Kyle.  The kids still played in the ocean and I still sat in my cabana reading a book.  And Michael, in true kid fashion, played in the puddles!

Mikey playing in the puddles

By Christmas Eve we were worried that it might rain the entire week (full disclosure, it is rainy season in Bali so even though it was highly unusual for this amount of rain, it wasn't entirely unheard of.)  We managed to have a very nice evening with an outdoor dinner and managed to get the kids to sleep so Santa could come - and he made it to Bali even though the majority religions are Hindu and Muslim.

Pre Christmas Eve dinner

Whoever said, "Santa is white, kids, he just is." obviously has never seen Santa in Southeast Asia.  This Santa visited our hotel on Christmas morning to participate in a celebration with cool Balinese dancing, music and gift giving!

We got the best Christmas present when we woke up on Christmas morning.  SUN!  Which meant Kyle could stop complaining about the rain!  But, it didn't stop him from talking about the trash.  On certain days the beach was perfect, but the next day it would be covered with trash.  Mostly wood and other organic materials, but there was also a lot of general trash mixed in.  I'm not sure if the beaches are just that polluted in the area or if the recent massive storms contributed to the influx of trash, but it was very sad that such a beautiful location was overrun with litter.  On the mornings when the trash was bad we would see locals cleaning the beach.

Local Balinese woman cleaning the beach

Needless to say, we had a lovely Christmas day that ended with a nice dinner on the beach:

For one day we explored the area with a tour guide and I learned so much about Bali during this tour.  We started by driving about 2 hours into the city of Ubud and stopped at a traditional Balinese house.  The houses are set up very differently from how houses are constructed in the US.  There is a wall around the property and inside are a series of unprotected areas.  In the southwest corner is the kitchen (southwest symbolizes Hell in the local religion which is why the kitchen is located there.)  Then there is a platform with a cabana like roof covering and curtains surrounding it acting as walls which is the gathering area.  There are bedrooms which are essentially platform beds constructed like the gathering area.  The only bedroom with a door and traditional walls is the room of the newly married couple.  In the northeast corner of the property is the family temple.

Traditional Balinese kitchen.  The mother/female in the family spends all day in the kitchen preparing food for the family over the fire oven.  It is hot and backbreaking work.  

After visiting the house we ventured to Mikey's favorite location of the trip - the Monkey forest.  And it is aptly named because there are monkeys EVERYWHERE!  They were fun to watch as they played with each other, tormented the humans who were unlucky enough to carry food into the forest, and took care of each other.  We spent over an hour exploring the forest much to Mike and Jameson's delight.  Mine too because it was significantly cooler in the forest than the hot temperatures everywhere else.

A mom protecting her baby

From there we traveled up to the active volcano for lunch.  We passed a rice field on the way so we stopped to take a look.  In Bali the rice fields are completely harvested by hand without any machinery at all. Rice fields are surprisingly beautiful to look at.

When we arrived at the volcano we were able to each lunch in an open restaurant overlooking the impressive sights.  The restaurant was a bit scary because there was only a half wall, and by half wall I mean it was about as high as my thigh and the drop over the wall was deadly.  I was nervous anytime a family came in and took a picture with their kids sitting on the wall.  Luckily my boys were afraid to get too close.

The boys admiring the lava fields of the volcano

I think the favorite part of the day for everyone was the trip to the coffee fields on the way back to our hotel.  One of the famous coffees of Bali is the Luwak coffee.  You may have heard of it from the movie the Bucket List.  But for those who haven't, it is made from a coffee bean that is eaten by the wild cats of Bali (the Luwaks).  The cats only eat and digest the outer portion of the bean so the coffee kernel is passed through their system and deposited onto the ground.  it is then collected and processed into the coffee that our family was affectionately calling the Cat Crap Coffee all day.  While I was drinking said coffee, Jameson's clever little mind came up with our new name for the coffee, Defecation Caffeination.  So, for anyone who may drink coffee at my house, you never know when I will serve up a cup of Defecation Caffeination for your drinking pleasure.

Mikey roasting the coffee beans

All in all a good day!

We spent the first 6 days of vacation at a very quiet and relaxing hotel on Jimbaran Beach.  The final two nights were spent at the louder Hark Rock Hotel on Kata Beach.  I definitely realize that I am in a quiet and relaxing hotel stage in my life.  But we had fun at the Hard Rock.  On our last full day we spent most of the day at the pool where the kids were invited to participate in a "Walk on Water" competition.  The competition involves a long ladder-like contraption with floating steps set up in the water. The steps are similar to floatation devices but they get very heavy when wet and will drop pretty far into the water when stepped on so it is extremely difficult to manage to walk over the 15 steps.  In a moment that truly defines the strengths of both of our children - Michael managed to complete the ladder walk three times (the only child to do that!).  Jameson, who is not blessed with the balance of Michael, managed to fall after five steps on his first try - which was very similar to what most of the children accomplished.  On his final attempt he fell again around step 6 or 7, but instead of swimming back to the start, he crawled the rest of the way to the finish.  He was going to get there one way or the other and if he could make a pool full of people laugh while doing it all the better.  In another proud mom moment, Michael quite clearly won the event but the person keeping score mixed up the results and he was not included in the award ceremonies.  He was at first confused because everyone knew he had won, but as soon as he realized that his name was not going to be called he jumped in the water, swam back to where Kyle was sitting, and apologized for not winning him a free beer -  Yup, a free beer was the prize for winning a kids competition!  He couldn't have cared less that he didn't get a prize or recognition, he was just happy to compete and was ok that a mistake was made in a silly competition that has no bearing on anything.

All in all is was a fantastic vacation and a much needed get away from the craziness that is Bangalore!  But I was happy to get back home - and I realize that home now is Bangalore.  And even with the frustrations of traffic and people in my house ALL. THE. TIME! I am happy to be here and especially happy that I get to visit so many places that I would never get to under any other circumstances.

One of the reasons I like to travel is that I love to meet people and learn about how other people live.  And, as much as I would love to retire to a place like Bali, I also realize that I won the birth lottery in the USA.  I could have been born in a place like India or Indonesia and never have even imagined the opportunities I was missing.  America has many faults and the polarizing discussions of politics and religion drive me insane, but at least I am able to have those discussions or choose not to have them as is more often the case.  Equality of opportunity is a truly amazing thing that I didn't even think about until I moved away.  I agree that we, as americans, have not mastered the application of equality of opportunity.  The rich are always going to have more opportunity than the poor and unfortunately it is still legal to discriminate against people for their sexual orientation, but in my limited experience, America is better at this than almost anyone else.

In Bali I noticed a muslim woman's bathing suit for the first time.  Traditionally, I understand that muslim women are not allowed to show any body part other than their face.  I see many muslim women walking around covered but I had never seen one on a beach before.  They wear head to toe beach wear, including a head covering, even though the men they are with are wearing only shorts.  It just seems wrong to me, although I do not pretend to be an expert in the religion nor do I know any Muslims who are this traditional so I certainly am not judging the behavior.  I am just glad that even though there are days that I would like to cover myself completely in a snuggie, I am glad that I also have the choice to wear a bathing suit and feel the sun on my skin if I want to.

a muslim woman at the pool in Bali

In many countries, like in India, it is accepted that since one is born into a certain group they are unable to attain any job outside of that station in life - maybe a street sweeper or housekeeper.  Many of the housekeepers I've met work extremely hard every day only to go home and start a fire under a large pot of water so they can cook rice and beans for dinner or wash laundry by hand.  They spend their entire weekends cooking and cleaning without any chance to have any fun.  They spend 40 hours a week in our homes using tools and appliances that must seem so luxurious to them but seem like torture devices to me at home - vacuum cleaners and washing machines.  They go to school until the age of 14 or 15 and simply learn enough to go into people's houses to clean or, for the men, to drive people around.  I spend more money on groceries in a week then most of the street sweepers or housekeepers will make in a month.  And I am a little embarrassed about it until I realize that this is acceptable to them and they don't seem at all upset by it.  In many cases the people believe in a religion that states if they live the best life they can in this life they will come back to better things in the next life.  And they truly believe this in the same way that Christians believe in God without question or kids believe in magic.

I have a choice in my religion and my beliefs - and more often than not I choose to be undecided because there is just so much I am still trying to learn about different beliefs that I don't feel I am educated enough to make a choice.  I try not to blindly believe in anything and I am thankful that I am able to educate myself and make these kinds of choices. I am also thankful that I can change my mind.  

But, I do believe in magic.

Happy New Year everyone!  May 2014 be even better than 2013.