First and last

As promised, here is a blurb on some of the food I ate in Bali.

I think in my previous life, I must've been some type of Asian. I ate Asian food non-stop for a week and loved it. Club Med in Bali must have one of the best Asian buffets in the world. You can choose from Chinese, Japanese, Balinese, Indonesian and Korean food at every meal.

The first lunch I had in Bali was stingray accompanied by Balinese wine. The stingray was good. The wine, not so much. I also had jackfruit stew. I first ate raw jackfruit in Vietnam and didn't know you could turn it into a savoury meal. Cooked jackfruit looks like shredded chicken.

This is a photo of one of my last breakfast in Bali. It is kimchi fried rice, a salted duck egg, a century egg (the black one) and sugared banana. It took me the whole week to pluck up the courage to have the century egg. Unlike what it's name suggests, the egg isn't 100 years old. It is made by preserving duck, chicken or quail eggs in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime and rice hulls for several weeks or even months! Still a long time. This process makes the yolk dark and creamy. The egg white goes dark, translucent and jelly like. The egg is supposed to be accompanied by a smell of sulphur and ammonia which I didn't smell this when I had it, thankfully.

Bom Bom!

I went rafting on the Telaga Waja river in Bali this week, 14 km of non-stop rapids. Despite being only grade 2 rapids, it was something I didn't want to miss out on. Carin, Darren and Geralyn, who I went to Bali with, didn't want to do it, so this was my solo adventure.

Things I will remember about rafting on the Telaga Waja:

• Debbie and Lisa: Two Taiwanese girls who I shared a raft with and who shrieked with pleasure and fear the whole time.
• "Bom bom!": The guide, Nixo, screamed this every time we hit a rock or the side of the gorge which happened all the time.
• Waterfalls everywhere: I must've seen more than 100 waterfalls on that stretch of river a lot of which fell directly into the water (see the waterfall behind me and Nixo).
• A white water rafting highway: I have never seen so many rafts on one river at the same time.
• Drinking water out of palm leaf cups and eating "home made cake" aka deep fried banana.
• Impossibly tall trees
• Feeling so happy being back on a raft again after so many years.

Now!

Finally, it is now. I am getting out of Johannesburg. I am going to warmer weather. I am going flying. I am out of here. Tomorrow, I leave for Bali for a week. Bali is in Indonesia. I know everyone has heard of it but I bet you don't really know where it is (go Google it if you need to). Here's a map of Bali island itself. I am going to be staying at the ClubMed resort in Nusa Dua right in the far south.

Watch this space. The next few posts will be about what this blog is supposed to be mainly about; my travels, much better scenery and most probably a lot about the food I eat there too. Selamat tinggal!

Rice milk is no substitute for dairy milk

One of my new years resolutions is to cook more. Because it is Winter, I decided to master soup making. I was given this recipe book as a present to encourage my interest and tried my hand at making a cauliflower soup yesterday. Delicious, creamy, rich cauliflower soup flavoured with home-made garam masala. Yum! Because I am lactose intolerant, I made two separate soups; one with dairy milk (the proper way) and one with rice milk. The dairy milk cauliflower soup was amazing (the couple spoonfuls I tried). The texture was thick, but not too thick and light and slightly foamy from blending. The rice milk cauliflower soup came out brown, sweet (?) and, over all, very average in comparison. You can see the rice milk soup in the pot in the photo. Rice milk is no substitute for dairy milk.

Lactose free cauliflower soup...fail.

City Education

I attended an interesting exhibition opening last night in Braamfontein. Called Re-educating the City, this exhibition is not by an artist or even several artists but a group of Architecture Masterstudents from the University of Johannesburg. It's a project that explores the spaces, buildings, and land that has been used for inner-city schools, areas that weren't necessarily designed to be used as such. Here's a link if you would like to read more about the exhibition itself. This is me drawing on the feedback chalk board. Students who presented also designed a postcard that represented their work. A very different and interesting concept of art and what art can be and worth a visit.

Freedom to choose

My brother is a lodge manager at Singita Grumeti Reserves in the Serengeti in Tanzania. He sent me this photo on Saturday. If you can't see it clearly, those are thousands and thousands of wildebeest. It is the view from his office, the view from his room, the view as he walks to and from his room and his office, the view when guests arrive, the view when you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, the view from every guest room and the view when guests leave. He sees it every year and if you are there to see it, you are incredibly lucky. Singita gives people access to animal kingdom heaven. 

I decided to make my own luck and investigated flying out to visit him and the entire Serengeti gnu population this week, tomorrow. Why not? There is no reason not to go apart from needing to be back in time for my flight to Bali.  

My reasons for not going are irrelevant. The point is I had the freedom to choose, to consider it, to make it happen or not. I have the chosen to have time.

I'll start with some wine

Enough with all the introspective stuff. What have I been up to for my first few days of unemployed life? This is a photo of me after I completed the Cape Wine Academy Introduction to South African Wine course. It's a very informative and enjoyable course and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn wine basics (the history of wine, viticulture, how to taste wine etc.). 

You also come away with lots of new wine jargon like "the nose and legs" of a wine (who knew wine had limbs?) and phrases like, "this wine has a full bouquet" (what?). 

Energy

How does it feel?

It hit me in the face that first Sunday of this halcyon state. That day, I felt different. That day, I no longer needed conserve energy for the coming work week. I could breathe in the whole day; I could make of it what I wanted. If I wasted it, only I was to blame.

It was a shock, it was a reality check, it was a new idea of being that I haven't ever known.

It was glorious!

Friday 13 May

 

My final day at work was on Friday 13 May (great choice of date, huh). After a week of farewells, handing in my laptop, exit interviews and handovers, I drove out of the office park, access card-less and completely overwhelmed by what I was doing. Although the right one, this is the most extreme decision I have ever made. Making the decision to go to university after school? That was easy. Deciding what to study? Easy. Deciding on business school? A no brainer. Deciding where to work? Not a problem. Deciding that temporary retirement is the right thing for me to do now? Off the charts.

Carly sent me this photo when she knew that I struggling with the new reality that I had created for myself on Friday 13 May. 

That feeling

This has been a long time coming but there was one specific moment some where in the middle when I realised that something had to be done; I had to make the decision, take control and change my life. This picture shows me on the back of a motorbike in Hue, Vietnam, on Christmas Eve 2010, whizzing down narrow roads between paddy fields. I couldn't believe the photo when I saw it (Thanks Giles), because I knew it captured the exact moment when I was feeling like there was no place on Earth I would rather be and nothing else I would rather be doing. I realised that I need to strive to have those kind of moments every day.