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.

On the move again

My wellness check put a few worries to rest (Doc: Do you worry a lot? Me: Yes. Doc: I thought so.), though I need to follow up on a couple of things. I picked up a bad chest cold this week, so for someone who is "one of the healthiest people" the doc has seen, I feel like shit.

Patrick arrived for a four-day look-see at Kuching and loves it.

Today I'm heading to Ubud, where I'm going to hunker down for two months and focus on getting through my workload and eating really healthily.

The big news over the past nearly two weeks is the missing Malaysian plane, MH370. I'm leaning towards the view that it diverted from its course and towards the airport at Langkawi because of an electrical fire on board, with the crew then being incapacitated. I hope my MH flights today are incident-free. It's a tragic event for everyone involved, and also for Malaysia in "Visit Malaysia Year". 

To good health!

In two weeks when I leave Kuching and head back to Ubud, I'll have spent ten weeks here. My longest previous stay has been a month. I've been able to work with a very good physiotherapist, Ganesan, to increase the range of movement of my arm, thanks to Sam who has been ferrying me to and from my appointments. I'm also partway through a wellness check. I've had a complete health assessment here in Kuching in 2011, 2013 and now again. In addition, I'm seeing another orthopaedic specialist. Who knew this year was going to be so much about health, mine and other people's?

My workload has been heavy, so I haven't been doing much besides walking a few mornings a week with Jackie or Sam, meeting runner friends for occasional breakfasts, watching a few movies, working and trying to mend. I've had to come to terms with a big change in my life, and that's been a challenge. I've been lucky to have the support of friends here, and I hope that I'm able to give something back to them.

Sadly, two friends made since I first visited Sarawak in 2010 have died just recently: my friend Mas's husband Jun, who took me to karaoke a few times; and Molly, in Miri, whom I met twice when I went to meetings of the Society of Sarawakians Writing in English and who was a Facebook friend. On a more positive note, friends made in New York since I started my peripatetic life have had babies and weddings.

After a couple of months in Ubud, I'll be taking a mid-year break back in Oz to see family and friends.

Getting back on the "horse"

It’s the first day of the Year of the Horse. Yesterday and last night were very noisy, with firecrackers going off all over town. They are illegal, but a blind eye is turned at Chinese New Year. It’s an appropriate theme for this next period of my life, during which I will need to get back on the “horse” after taking a fall.

My recovery continues. Every day I’ve been able to see progress in terms of mobility. Pain is still an issue, which is affecting my sleep. Each time I move or turn, I have to try and find a comfortable position for my arm. I feel very tired. The staples (33) have been removed and I’ve started physiotherapy with DBC (Documentation Based Care). Sam has been incredibly helpful, finding time in her day to ferry me around town to appointments. I’ve been thinking of friends who have had to learn to use parts of their body again after accidents: Martyn, Patrick, Gary, Sue.

I won’t be able to run again until I have more balance than I have currently. I’m hoping that will be in a month’s time, which would give me two months to train gently towards a half marathon at the start of May, followed a week later by the start of proper marathon training. Jackie (owner of Batik) and I have a date on Thursday mornings to walk along the waterfront, and Sam and I walk on Tuesdays.

Min is running well. He and I are entered for the Kuching Marathon, to be held on 17 August. Some others in our little group are also doing the full, and quite a few are doing the half. I’ve met with one of the organisers and will try to help them promote it. I’m really hoping Di and Frannie will come up from Albury for it.

Since I’ve been staying back at Batik I’ve started to organise film nights in the courtyard, which we're calling “Friday Night Flicks”. Our first one was the week before Chinese New Year. We showed “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”. Next week is “Moonrise Kingdom”. It’s for guests and friends, and hopefully will become a regular Friday night event. I can still help organise it even when I’m not here, in terms of selecting films and writing the flyer copy, if there is interest in keeping it going.

A new friend made in the past couple of weeks is Fran, a well-travelled psychology professor/author from Massachusetts. When she visits New York City she stays just a couple of blocks from where I stay, so we’ll catch up there later in the year. We’ve had dinner at Bla Bla Bla and Mango Tree, and went with Jackie to see the Joaquin Phoenix/Amy Adams/Scarlett Johansson film “Her” at the new Cineplex at CityOne Mall last week.

There are always interesting people staying here. I enjoyed meeting a freelance travel writer and book author from New York, Bruce Northam, when Jackie asked a bunch of us out to dinner at a seafood restaurant over on the coast at Damai.

Caught up with Rita and Kah-Yee for a meal one evening. K-Y wants to write a book about her experiences of living with a very challenging physical disability. She’s a lovely woman, a qualified pharmacist. She wants to work in a community pharmacy in Melbourne. 

Made a return visit to Junk, my favourite restaurant in Kuching, with the Wees and Swee, Ivy and the boys, Nick and Kieren, for a pre-Chinese New Year dinner. Sara is back for a few days from her National Service camp and looking fabulous. Her new boyfriend is ridiculously good-looking.

Spent some time this morning with Emily’s family, who hosted an “at home” for the new year and invited me and Fran. Em’s dad has just had a knee replacement, and her mum had broken her wrist, so we three compared our scars. Traditionally, the children – Clarence, Emily, James and Darroll (a sister is away in the Genting Highlands) – honour their parents with tea and lucky red packets. As guests, Fran and I received red packets, too. I’ll take all the luck I can get, thank you!