In the zone

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about comfort zones: are they a place or a state of mind?

I think they are primarily a state of mind, or a state of being, that comes with feeling comfortable within yourself. If you feel comfortable in your own skin, are at peace with yourself and enjoy your own company, then this becomes a comfort zone that you can take with you wherever you go and that isn’t dependent on a physical place. 

I have been roaming around the world for over four years now, and as time has gone on I’ve felt more and more that I’m in my comfort zone wherever I am. I’m not talking about always feeling safe. I’ve had accidents, and I’ve probably had many near misses of one kind or another. I try to be very mindful and aware of what’s going on around me, and I trust my instincts and most of my impulses. Life is a sexually transmitted fatal condition. Something is going to get me someday. I just hope that it’s not my destiny to have my life end in an appalling, frightening or painful manner, or way prematurely. I’m not sure how I got to be the age I am now, and I don’t want to waste a second of my remaining time. But I’m not going to wrap myself in cotton wool in a retirement village somewhere and call that my comfort zone.

I am in Budapest on my third visit in a year. I leave in a week’s time. I love the city and the people and my life here. I love that I’ve had an opportunity to share it with old and new friends. A part of me is now a Budapestian, if that’s the correct term. I will leave a part of me here, and something of Budapest will always be with me from now on.

I’m headed back to Dublin, where there is a running network I can tap into, a favourite café and cinema to visit, and a hair appointment to keep. Then I’m returning to New York, where I have my deeply entrenched New York life. I feel comfortable in both places. Part of that comfort comes from the familiarity of the physical place. I like to spend many hours walking around, getting to know a city from the ground up, so I gravitate to places that are pedestrian-friendly. I discover my trail, mark my way, find my own path through a city’s streets. I love routines: going back to places where I am recognised, visiting cinemas discovered during a previous stay, knowing where to find roti when I feel like having Malaysian food.

But feeling comfortable doesn’t depend on my being familiar with a place. I enjoy arriving for a week or a month in a new place and starting from scratch. It’s fun to search out places where I want to eat, to run, to see good art and fine films, to sit and watch this new world go by and start to get to know it.

Sometimes I make a connection with a random person in a new place. We might be standing in the same queue, running around the same park, drinking coffee in the same café, eating in the same restaurant, or visiting the same gallery or museum. If we talk and it feels right, I will ask to see them again. It doesn’t always happen. I don’t ever feel lonely. I have met many people in this way who have become treasured friends. I’m grateful for Facebook, which makes continuing to get to know new people so much easier than email allows.

So, while my level of comfort in many places may manifest as ease with familiar faces and places, with routines and the known, it also enables me to enjoy exploring the new and unfamiliar. Either way, wherever I am, I mostly feel happy, comfortable, safe and grateful. And it’s that state of mind that I think is my comfort zone.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve made quick excursions to Bratislava, in Slovakia, and Graz, in Austria. In Bratislava I got talking to a woman from Arizona while trying to get my bearings at the train station. We spent the afternoon together exploring the old town and the castle. In the evening I saw the wonderful film Boyhood (with Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette).

Store art in Bratislava

This week I took the train to Graz to spend two days with Jackie, my friend of four years from Kuching, who has partnered up with Austrian Michael who lives in Jakarta and was home on leave. Jackie, who owns the Batik Boutique Hotel in Kuching where I always stay, is a powerhouse and an inspiration. I love her dearly, not least for letting me choose films to be screened each week at Friday Night Flicks at the Batik even when I’m on the other side of the world.

A courtyard in Graz

Sue and Neil are special friends from my time in Albury. We shared seven or so wonderful years of dogs, art, films and fun dinner parties with a motley bunch of fabulous folks who became our mob. When Sue and Neil moved to the northern New South Wales coast back in 2008 or 2009, I briefly considered following them. I chose instead to become a nomad. We spent time together in Florence a couple of years ago and this week in Budapest. It was wonderful to share the place with them and to see it work its magic on them, too.

Old and new in funky Budapest

I have been incredibly fortunate in the people I’ve met over the years who have become my family. One of the latest additions to the mob is Jules, whom I met in Budapest last year. She and David are now ensconced here and are my Budapest folk, always open to the idea of food, film, fun and footwork.

Budapest is a most amazing city. It’s the end of summer and the place has a great atmosphere. I’ve been running on Margaret Island, around the streets and in the city park, where next week’s half marathon starts and finishes. I ran it last year as well. David told me about an arthouse cinema just five minutes’ walk from my apartment where I’ve seen about six films, including a few Hungarian ones, in the last couple of weeks, plus a couple at the Puskin and Urania cinemas. After a bit of a drought in the first half of the year I’m really enjoying seeing good films again. And I’ve been working. My full-time job as a freelance editor makes it all possible, which is a comforting thought.

Just say igen

The Hungarian word "igen" means yes. My life has become about saying yes to the opportunities that constantly present themselves. Sometimes the opportunity might be just the chance to say hello to someone. I did that in the immigration queue at Kuching airport a week ago today when I found myself behind three of the Kenyan professional marathoners who had competed in and taken honours at the inaugural Kuching Marathon. I asked them how they'd liked the race and then ended up having quite a long chat with Cecilia, age 26, a 2:50 marathoner who had taken third place that morning. A week later we are now coach and client, and I have a very daunting training program to follow starting 1 September that is intended to bring my half marathon time down below my personal best of 1:47 (1996 in Melbourne). (I placed 9th veteran woman in the Kuching half marathon with a slow 2:12:56 in my longest run since November of last year and even got a cash prize and a handshake up on the podium.)

Support was at hand when I suffered leg cramps following the Kuching half marathon

I keep saying yes to Kuching because of the wonderful people I've gotten to know there over the past four years.

Another opportunity to say yes was an impulse to call into the boutique hotel in Sultanahmet, Istanbul, where I had stayed for a month in 2011, when I was in the vicinity last week on a short stopover. I was greeted with big hugs and apple tea, and decided then and there I needed to spend more time in that amazing city.

The Blue Mosque

Pistachio and vanilla pudding from my favourite dessert shop

Now I'm in Budapest again, which is very, very high on my list of favourite places in the world. It's easy to say igen to just about everything the city has to offer: fabulous food, great arthouse cinemas, groovy street culture, wonderful architecture, fascinating history, funky art and design, fun friends made last year, and perfect late-summer weather.

My local cinema

Excess baggage

One of the real challenges of being a global nomad is living out of a suitcase. I’m lucky to be able to store some clothes in New York, which will have been my point of departure and ultimate destination whenever I’m not there, but I sometimes have to pack for different climates, different types of activities and differing amounts of time. When I next unlock the door of the apartment on the Upper West Side where I always stay when in New York, I’ll have been away for nine months. It’s far too long, and it requires that I take with me too much stuff.

I’m not overly concerned with having to pay excess baggage costs; what bothers me is the feeling that I’m being weighed down by things. I need both hands in order to manage a medium-size suitcase, a carry-on case and a laptop bag. That’s one hand too many. It limits my options and makes me vulnerable.

I’m now in my fifth year of global vagabondage and I still haven’t figured it out.

Having just spent two months in Australia and New Zealand, I realise I’m carrying a lot of excess emotional baggage, too. Old hurts weigh too heavily and serve no purpose in my new life. Even if I haven’t yet found a way to meet all of my sartorial needs with what I can fit into a carry-on case, I can try my best to lighten the psychic load I'm carrying.

After a quick visit to Melbourne and Bendigo to spend time with very special friends Martyn and Claire, Barb and Bill, Bill and Sal, and Gordon and Joanna, I’m now happily back in Kuching with my cobbled-together family of very fit and wacky Sarawakians.

Retro Rotorua

Whenever I'm in Rotorua, it's like stepping back in time. We spent a year living here just after I turned 13 and for me it's never really changed from that town. My father still lives here, and I have a friend from my schooldays I'm still in touch with. I've visited most recently in 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012 and now 2014. I've run two half marathons and a marathon here. On this very short visit to see my father I've been juggling working on the job that has consumed most of my time since March. But I've spent some stretches of hours with Dad, including a lunch with a bunch of his friends today to celebrate his 85th birthday. I've met some of them a few times over the years. Nice people!

Prior to crossing the Tasman I spent a few days at Bondi Beach, another place where I used to live. It wasn't primarily a social visit, but I was able to catch up with a few friends. Susan H I hadn't seen in over 30 years! Photographer friend Anne Z was in Morocco with our mutual friends there just recently. She and I caught up in the new gallery precinct in Chippendale. Debra and Tony and I spent last Christmas together in Seville, in Spain. We had a quick catch-up at Paddington Market on Saturday. And I spent a couple of hours earlier that morning walking to Bronte and back to Bondi with work colleague Catherine and former colleague/now friend and co-author of my book project, Katie.

My time in Albury has been spent working, seeing friends and trying to get back into regular running. It's harder than I'd expected. I'm sort of wondering what I'm doing there in the middle of winter for two months. I needed to be settled if I was to have any hope of meeting my tight work deadline, but I feel like I'm treading water. I want to get back to my real life... I especially miss New York!!!

Albury, Australia: To the manner born

You can take the girl out of Albury, but you can't take Albury out of the girl. And why would you want to? It's a great place: just the right size to have one of nearly everything you might want (and sometime two or even three, e.g. Thai restaurants). I'm happy to be back for two months while I focus on finishing a huge job I started in March. It's always great to see familiar faces, too: family, friends, former fur kids. It's winter, and I don't do cold very well, but Albury is beautiful at this time of year with autumn leaves still on the ground and generally clear blue skies.

I've started running again with the girls – mostly, Di, Frannie and Rose – but it's taking longer than I'd hoped to get back up to distance, let alone speed. I don't know what I expected after not running for over four months, but it feels very lame to be a beginning runner again.

I'm very excited about a new book idea that I'm developing with my friend Katie. The response from people we've talked with about it has been really encouraging. I'll update news on that project as it breaks.

I took down two stunning images of the Albury Botanic Gardens. I'll add new images soon.

Nowhere is perfect, least of all paradise

It’s been a challenge over the past six weeks to find an hour when I’ve had both the time and the inclination to update this blog. But it seems I finally have both, less than a week before I’m due to fly south for a few months. In this hemisphere at this time of year, south means winter, which is poor planning on my part as I don’t do cold very well. But one can’t have everything one wants all of the time. I’ve been basking in perpetual summer since early January, so it’s time for a change.

My two months in Ubud have flown by, though I also feel like I’ve been here forever. Some of my memories from this visit seem so old already! Was it only six weeks ago that Perth Di was still around, talking up a storm, churning up the water in my villa pool with her tumble turns, and linking me up with her pal Elizabeth, who has become a close friend? Has it been only a month since my oldest friend Jan came from Albury to visit for a week; since Sam, Sara and Ivy came from Kuching, and Joanne from Melbourne, to share my rented villa among the rice fields and enjoy the ‘village’ that is Jalan Kajeng?

Since my visitors have departed I’ve moved back to Cinta Inn, where I’ve hardly moved from my ‘office’ in the restaurant courtyard. My workload is daunting at the moment and will continue to be challenging right through until August. It’s been unrelenting daily pressure, and I’ve had to reduce my focus to working, eating, going for a walk and sleeping – and catching up every few days with Elizabeth.

Everyone is gearing up for one of the year’s biggest festivals, Galangan. The staff at Cinta are often busy with ceremonies in their villages, and I’ve had invitations from some friends here to visit their homes. I want to, and I keep meaning to carve out the time, but it’s just been too difficult these past few weeks.

The cultural and architectural attractions of Ubud are apparent everywhere; just walking around the streets offers glimpses of a way of life that dates back thousands of years. But the village has turned into a town that doesn’t have the infrastructure to support its growth. It has fantastic restaurants and cafes, but the footpaths are broken and dangerous and the traffic congestion is now a major problem.

I’m happy – and lucky – to be able to spend a very busy work period in Ubud, but it’s not somewhere I would like to make a permanent home. The same applies to Kuching: it embraces me every time I visit, and has given me family and many friends, but for the moment it doesn’t meet enough of my other needs to make my permanent home there.

No one place is perfect; and none of the places I’ve come to love over the past four years is perfect for me all of the time. I love to be able to spend a month living in Florence or Budapest, Istanbul or Lausanne, but I’m then ready to move on. Two months at a time is my limit in Kuching and Ubud. After a few months spent somewhere else, I’m then more than happy to return for another month or two, but I need time in places where I can have a different daily routine for a while, eat different food, spend time with other friends, catch up on visits to art galleries, cinemas, museums and the theatre, and go for long walks or runs again. I need to stretch my legs and my mind in different ways. I like routines – they’re efficient, they work for me, and I enjoy establishing them in new places – but they can also be counterproductive. I need to shake them up every now and then, and I do that best by spending time in different places.

Two places suit me especially well. I’m most fully myself in New York and am always sorry to leave it even after three months. Every part of me can come out to play in Manhattan: the runner and the flaneur, the film buff and the theatregoer, the recluse and the social butterfly. I have friends living there I’ve known for up to 30 years. Each time I visit, I’ve been lucky enough to meet at least one new person who makes a difference to my life. I run hundreds of miles in training and races, and I see dozens of films and documentaries. I have a life there that I step straight back into whenever I arrive back on the Upper West Side beside Central Park. New York blesses me over and over. I just don’t want to be there during winter!

I also love my hometown of Albury. I couldn’t wait to leave it at age 18, then found myself back there at 44, slightly frayed at the edges by life. I found a new life there, with family and new friends. I took up running again. I met a number of artists and started building an art collection. I bought a house and got a cat. Then the dog thing happened, which proved to be hugely creative and a source of many wonderful friendships.

I haven’t had to give up anything to accommodate the new people and new experiences I’ve had in the four years since I swapped my second house for a suitcase. My life has just expanded to accommodate it all. I don’t think I’m greedy (except when it comes to self-serve frozen yoghurt); I just don’t see why I can’t try to have it all and be gracious and grateful when inevitably I find I can’t.

Ubudilicious

With Gede, Ubud, March 2014

Wow, time gets away! I’ve been in Ubud three weeks and this feels like my first chance to poke my head up and look around and take stock. I was as sick as a dog with acute bronchitis for the first ten days, popping antibiotics after seeing doctors at Ubud Clinic and then Toya Clinic. I still have a cough, but it’s mostly just my normal cough. A bad habit, as much as anything.

I’ve had a heavy workload the whole time. Today was actually my first day off (apart from a couple of hours’ work early in the day) in I can’t think how long.

After staying for my first week at a guesthouse I switched back to Cinta, where I spent a couple of months last year. Everything works for me there, and I really like the people. I met an interesting woman at my first place, though, who has not only run marathons but cycled all through Europe, India, Sri Lanka and other places, and has had lots of walking adventures. I want to do another long walk. She and I met up a few times for meals and chats, and to see the ogog-ogoh statues paraded through the streets of Ubud.

My visit coincided, like last year, with Nyepi (Balinese New Year) and Silence Day.  It was my third new year for the year (so far), after seeing in 2014 in Spain, the Year of the Horse in Kuching, and now Caka Year 1936 in Bali. Very little has gone according to plan A so far this year, so that may be why.

I’m now in a villa by the rice fields owned by my new friend Kasey. We met last year at Cinta when she and her husband came to watch the Super Bowl and I overheard her say she had broken a wrist while trekking in Nepal. I broke my wrist while trekking in Nepal (in late 2008), so I felt I had to introduce myself. We have now become friends, and in fact suspect we might be twins who were separated at birth. I have also introduced her to my friend Di, and Di has introduced me to her friend Elizabeth, who runs Villa Kitty. Writer Cat, whom I introduced Di to four years ago and whose house and animals Di is minding, will be back from India next week.

A view from upstairs

I like the street leading to the villa. It has a very neighbourhood feel. It's good to see kids being dropped off at the school nearby, and to hear them singing during the morning when I'm working on the terrace.

Jalan Kajeng

I have visitors arriving from Oz and Sarawak from next week to share my villa, which will be fun.