Pruney fingers and other pleasures

Today marks the first full week of living in the "hood" (guess I should say "pung" since we could be sort of considered a very upscale kampung - as you might remember a kampung is a village). Much like my experience photographing sports, being on the ground is a very different experience than being in the stands.

In our current location, we are a short walk from a grocery, a great coffee shop, a small(but nice)book store, a Mexican restaurant (will expand on that later), two beautiful flower stalls, a whole bevy of bajaj's (those little 3 wheel carts that I featured in an earlier post and yes there are two j's in bajaj), a school, and three home accessory store. Hard to grasp that all of that is a five minute walk from our new abode.

Our house has a pool. Well, our backyard IS the pool. This is the first time we have ever had a pool and so far we are enjoying it. Sweetie pie and I have the pruney fingers and toes to prove it. One of the nice parts of having a pool for a backyard is that we can literally open a door from our bathroom and step down a couple of steps and start doing the crawl. It is a bit odd not having a real backyard, but the pool isn't a bad trade off. So, I'll just have lots of potted plants on the patio instead to satisfy the need to have greenery around me.

Another interesting feature in our home is that we have what is called a wet kitchen and a dry kitchen. This is not an unusual set up for this side of the world apparently. My sister-in-law, Dottie, asked some colleagues about it and was told it is partly because the style of cooking here is rather messy so it is even more separated than in a normal kitchen. Maybe I have needed this wet/dry kitchen set-up for a long time. Hubby says I can dirty up more stuff while I am cooking than anyone he knows. What can I say? It is true, but sometimes creativity gets a little messy.

We have a kind of Balinese style bath. What that means is that it is open to the outside, sort of. It is an un-air conditioned area with a small rock garden off to the side. The rock garden area acts as a kind of exhaust shaft in that the warm air rises up and goes out the screened in top, which does have a small roof on it that kind of keeps out the rain (an issue we are going to have to figure out how to alter just a bit since when it rains it runs down the newly painted walls of the rock garden area and splashes on to the tiles of the main bath area).

No air conditioning vents in the bath sounds like it would be uncomfortable, but it isn't too bad. I have a floor fan to move the air around when we are showering and it keeps things pretty pleasant. However, I don't think it is very pleasant when I have to get up in the middle of the night to answer nature's call and the humidity level is about 95% and no air is stirring at all.

Also, with the bath open to the outside, you start your day with unobstructed participation in the call to prayer going on at 4:15AM. The bonus is that you get to hear the vendors with their own special little calls, and smell when someone is burning trash (that is not really a bonus) and the birds waking up and calling out. Sweetums equates it to camping in a very large tent. It is much like when I was little and most houses weren't air conditioned. Folks opened the windows in the summer to keep it cooler and you could hear the neighbors mowing the lawn, the birds chirping, and the kids playing down the street. Guess I have moved half-way around the world to re-live my childhood. That is what we call ironic.

The majority of the house has marble tiles on the floor. The baths have ceramic tiles. Since we have just moved in and have limited furnishings, it is a little on the loud side. We will get that taken care of soon as we begin to get settled and decorated.

It is a two story home which I swore I would not do again. However, it does give me a very pleasant view down the street from the bedroom on the front of the house. I can see the vendors pushing their carts around the neighborhood and the kids out playing with their nannies keeping watch. The guards, that most folks have, all like to stand and visit with the nannies and the vendors. As I mentioned before, it is a very social place here. Much like the way we were when we didn't have air conditioning and we sat outside to catch a cool breeze, snap some beans or shell some peas in the shade of a big tree. Many times the neighbor was taking the laundry down from her clothes line and you would chat and swap stories about mundane things, offer or be offered lemonade or icy cold tea. Before I get all "Prairie Home Companion", I will get back to our current life here.

We are in the process of hiring the previously mentioned multi-task guy. Right now he is working for another expat family bound for an assignment in Australia. Therefore, Warno comes twice a week to clean the pool and sweep-up leaf litter outside after he has finished at the other family's home. At the end of the month he will come and work for us full time. At the moment, Warno likes to show up before lunch and eat here. I find it all very amusing. Don't know if the grub is better or he is just feeling how things are before he gets in to this thing full time. We are hoping Warno works out and will mesh well with the other staff.

The house is bringing a new aspect to life here. There is lots to learn and figure out. I am enjoying having more room and seem to be personally trying to help the Indonesian government pay down any debt they might have by shopping for goods that I was unable to or just didn't have a clue to bring or have fried and must replace due to the difference in the voltage. Live and learn.