House pets

We are a bit bleary eyed this morning here in the Beckett household.

We had a very nice day yesterday, lounging by and swimming in the BDI pool. We then went to the Beach House for tea.

We aren't tired because we had a busy day. We are tired because one of our house pets kept us awake. We don't have dogs, cats or fish. We have resident geckos. At about midnight last night, the gecko that lives in the light fitting decided to start making a 'chat chat' noise. We did not know what it was at the time so you can imagine the scene.

We evacuated into the lounge while we turned the lights on to find out what kind of monster was terrorising us. There he was, as large as life, on the wall by the ceiling - nightmare proportions of four inches in length. Happy that we were not about to be eaten alive by a giant spider or snake we settled back into bed. Just as we were dropping off, 'chat, chat, chat, chat'. Aargghhh!

Jeremy made me up a bed on the sofa and he went and snuggled up to Mr Pickle. About 10 minutes later the heavens opened and there was a rainstorm to end all rainstorms which kept me awake for the next 45 minutes. 

It felt like I had been asleep for about five minutes when Jeremy appeared by my side saying that Mr Pickle had asked him to leave his bed. By this point we were both exhausted enough to be confident that any amount of chattering by the gecko would not keep us awake. At 2.45 we went back to our bed and passed out. 

Neither of us were ready for the arrival of Mr Pickle at 8.15 am (technically this would have been a lovely lie in) beside the bed proclaiming it to be 'a bit morning mummy and daddy'.

Early night tonight with ear plugs if our little friend is feeling chatty. I am happy for him to be in our room as he eats the mozzies. As far as I am concerned, he can bring his friends too if it means I don't get eaten alive.

Christmas has arrived at BDI, Blok E-41

The tree is up and I have decked it with my home made Christmas decorations.

I have been showing mum my creations on skype and I am now ready to reveal them to the world on the blog! Mr Pickle helped make the round layered bauble (in the last picture) and much like Auntie Debs and the famous Squirrel Weathervane, I have pictorial evidence that it was all his own work!


Here are some Christmas trees that I've made for the sideboard:

This is Mr Pickle with some of the felt cirlces from his decoration:

Our Tree before decs:

Mr Pickle threading some baubles with hangers:

Mr Pickle loves the tree:

Here are some of my hand made decs:

This is our joint effort:

Goodbye Latif and hello Yuni

Our lethargic houseboy left our employment on Friday, last week. It was not a particularly sad parting and Mr Pickle and I are now fighting off his cold! Good job we eat lots of fruit and veg and my multivitamins arrived in the shipping box (ah, the never ending joy of the contents of the shipping boxes).

We now have Yuni working for us. Within the first hour of being in the house she had remade our bed (it clearly wasn't up to standard and I have to say having seen her made bed I totally agree), made Mr Pickle's bed (because I hadn't got to it yet), swept and mopped the floor and got on with some ironing. The woman is like a whirlwind of activity! 

Jeremy was so impressed that he felt he had to take some pictures to share with everyone.

When Oscar came in from pre-school for lunch he was very excited to see Yuni and insisted on showing her his playroom. This is the playroom prior to the unpacking of the shipping boxes (is anyone fed up of hearing about these shipping boxes yet?)

We were very fortunate to snap Yuni up.

Shipping Boxes have been opened

Hooray for the shipping boxes having arrived!

Mr Pickle now has more toys in his play room than he knows what to do with, so that is good because it means we can rotate them when he gets bored.

We have even managed to convince him that the brand new Lego Duplo farm was delivered to us by mistake and not to Father Christmas in the North Pole. It was always meant for Christmas but because I was so excited about the shipping boxes we just tore into them without thinking and there it was!

I have pictures to add into this post at a later date.


There was a casualty of the voyage. Button Garage Ding was bent out of shape and cracked! The one item that Mr P wanted to see above all else and it was damaged. I whisked it away while he was busy with the other toys with the promise that I would fix it while he was in school the next day.


We could set up a small ex-pat shop with the consumable contents of our shipping. 3 bottles of maple syrup, 20 packets of taco seasoning, 15 packets of flour and corn tortillas, 3 jars of marmite, 2 bottles of Worcestershire Sauce, 2 bottles of Sarson's malt vinegar.........the list goes on. I also have a picture of this!


I can also report that I managed to mend Button Garage Ding the next morning with a hairdryer and some electrical tape. As good as new!

Where are my shipping boxes? The next installment.....

Where are they? I hear you all cry.

They are in our garage. Hooray!!! Totally unexpected!

I got a phonecall from Jeremy telling me that a delivery had arrived for me to the office. I was very pleased because I presumed that either the book from the book depository, my thread cutter or my DMC threads had arrived. Jeremy then told me that Asa, the company's driver, would be delivering them to me this afternoon on his rounds. I was even more pleased as it meant I wouldn't have to wait until Jeremy arrived home to open them.

I asked what size the package was and Jeremy said 'quite big, you'll have to open the garage doors all the way'. I was very confused and said that I hadn't ordered anything that big. He lauged and then the penny dropped. The shipping boxes had arrived! 

Only yesterday I told someone that they were languishing in Hong Kong. How wrong I was. Mr Pickle is very excited and we are waiting for Jeremy to arrive home so that we can have the ceremonial opening of the boxes (mostly because I cannot actually move them).

 

Our little hasher

We went on the family hash run this evening. I can't remember if I have explained what hash running is on this blog. In a nutshell, the organisers set the course about an hour before the run and drop little bits of paper on the trail for you to follow. The trail winds it's way through the little bits of jungle that remain in Balikpapan and across interesting landscapes. Usually the hash is an all out run around the course to see who can finish first but the family hash is a bit gentler and you can walk if you want to.



We have been going to the hash run as a family for the last five weeks. Mr Pickle had to be carried for the first one we went on and cried quite alot that he was tired when he was walking. We almost thought that we would give this up as a bad job.


The next week his royal pickleness was keen to go along to see 'My Liesbeth' so we gave in with him promising that he would walk at least half of the course. He did just that. Over the last few weeks he has built up his walking to the point that he walked the whole way tonight.


Tonight we walked up hills, across big holes and through a little bit of mud. We are very proud of our little hash runner and we only had to bribe him on the home stretch with the promise of 'double fizzy' (two sprites) if he kept going. He can't drink that much so mummy helped him with his reward.

Not sure about the egg

I went out for local breakfast yesterday with some ladies who have taken me in as a waif and stray. One of the group is Indonesian and she selected the cafe where we would eat.

There is a local market where everyone buys their fruit and veg and the place was not far from there, just two doors up from the 'Happy Puppy' karaoke bar. Enough said.


We had yellow rice, noodles and a hard boiled egg for breakfast. I have to say that the rice was very tasty but I was too scared to eat the hard boiled egg and gave it to one of my braver companions! 


One day on and my stomach contents are still in place.

Where are my shipping boxes?

Our shipping boxes are still not here! Having packed them off with the shipping company mid August, I had ever expectation that by mid November they would be safely with us. The estimated time for shipping was 6 to 10 weeks. Mid November provided for the maximum time and then a bit more.

I emailed the shipping company again last week, I bet I am their favourite customer at the moment, and received a reply today that our 'goods' are currently residing in their hub in Asia. I am thinking that this is the standard response when the company has no clue where the boxes have gone.

I have sent a shirty reply with a request for a copy of the confirmation from the hub in Asia that our boxes are actually there and also asked where this hub is. For all we know it is here! Doubt it though. I have also asked the question 'have you actually misplaced our boxes'. I suspect that the reply will say:


'your goods are in our Asia hub and we will email you with details when we receive them'.

My hopes, that they will arrive before Christmas, are slowly being eroded away and I am very glad that we have bought Oscar a bike for his present as we told him the shipping, bearing his toys, would be here for Christmas. He will have stored that little gem away for production at a later date.

Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. 

Not so strange anymore

Balikpapan does not seem such a strange place anymore.

It is still a very random and odd place to live but the longer we are here, the less you notice the strangeness. I have been driving myself around and I don't even notice the crazy people on the roads because I have clearly become.........da da da.........one of them!

We have been Hash Running on the family day. It is not as hard going as the usual hash run and we can walk with Mr Pickle. We actually end up carrying him half of the way but it is nice to be out in the fresh air and walking about.

Yesterday I went to an 8 to Midnight sale at the local 'hardware store'. I found the best bike for Mr Pickle for Christmas from us and it was 50% off. It is green camoflage in colour, has a banana seat, a backrest, a basket on the front in the shape of a helmet and a little bear in a aeroplane on the handle bars that plays 'It's a Small World'. What more could a three year old boy want from a bike! Mr Pickle is going to burst when he sees it. For those of you who witnessed the garage ding excitement of last Christmas, we are hoping for a repeat performance.

I went on an adventure to find trimmings for homemade Christmas decorations with one of my new friends here. I bought 100 buttons for about £1 and whole rolls of ribbon for pennies. Food is expensive here though. We pay the same, if not more, for food as you would in the UK.

Another thing that is expensive here is bedding. You can't buy duvets, you buy a quilt but you cannot buy a flat sheet to use under it for less than £60. It takes ages to wash and dry this quilt once a week (now you all know how often we change our bedding) and we only have the one becuase a) they are bogging expensive and b) they are mostly gopping in colour/pattern. This was confirmed when one of my new friends came over for the grand tour and laughed when she saw we have the same bed set as her. Quite clerarly the only nice one in Balikpapan that we could afford without remortgageing.

We have had a work crew painting the front of the house and freshening up the wood work. The crew had a little mishap with our quilt on their last day with us. It was drying on the airer in the sun and they must have spilt  varnish on it when clearing up! They didn't tell us. Instead they took turps to our bedding and scrubbed it! So now our quilt smells of turps, even after the third wash. There is also a stain on it from the varnish and a faded patch where the furious scrubbing must have taken place. 

I was all for complaining to the rental agents but Jeremy thinks it is not that big a deal. I think that I feel so annoyed by this occurrence because we still don't have our shipping boxes and we haven't got many belongings here! I have decided that part of the issue is that it shouldn't have been being washed on such a regular basis. Flat sheets are a must.

Today we ventured into the textile quarter. We bought an offcut piece of carpet that has been stitched arond the edge for £18 rather than the £400 that the interior shops in town wanted us to pay. We also found a fabric 'shop' selling bed sheeting and I have made a king size flat sheet and pillow cases to match for about £10 and about an hour and a half of my time. Much easier on the pocket than £60 and a much better fabric.

We also had a full day without any accidents of the potty training variety.

Can I play with you?

Yesterday Jeremy and I went shopping to the local hardware shop to buy a Christmas tree. While I was trying to prevent Oscar from costing us a fortune in broken glass decorations (I presumed that the sign in Indonesian said ALL BREAKAGES WILL BE PAID FOR) an ex-pat family with a small boy, who looked about the same age as Oscar appeared and smiled as they walked by.

Jeremy was looking for door handles (mum - we've been having to huff on our hands to open the sliding doors) and he saw the family too.

We don't see many people who look like us and when we re-grouped downstairs we decided to go and introduce ourselves. We were still chatting with them half an hour later and had exchanged telephone numbers. They agreed with our thoughts that it is hard to met other ex-pat families.

In the afternoon we took Oscar to the swimming pool. There was an ex-pat family there too.

Bouyed by his earlier success, Jeremy got out of the pool and strode over to the family enjoying their snack and introduced himself. Once again, the family didn't whip out their pepper spray! 

It is a little bit like being five again when you're on holiday and don't know anyone. You have to be brazen and just go up and ask if you can play with any children that look like they are having fun.

Oscar played with their boys in the water for the next hour, we sat and chatted with the parents about how unsocial and lonely it is in Balikpapan and decided that we should go out for dinner together that evening to celebrate having found each other.

We met up at Balikpapan Super Block, had dinner at a restaurant and then coffee at Starbucks where I bought the coffee cups that Jeremy has been looking for for years. All in all a 100% successful mission.

Add to that the fact that in the morning I drove myself to the Tupperware shop (check out my motivation to brave the roads and crazies on them here) to purchase a drawer full of plastic to keep our food Tupperware fresh! Fabulous.

No Touchies!

Today we went to the Hypermart complex in downtown Balikpapan to buy groceries and a much needed DVD player to watch all of the DVDs that we have bought for about 70 pence each. I am sure they are real because they have been purchased from actual shops.


Mr Pickle got very worked up and upset today while we were out. Having endured day after day of local people trying to touch him on the face because he is both blonde and in one side of cute and out the other, he started to shriek at the person who was insistent on pressing his flesh. It had the desired effect of them pulling back in horror but it took me a little while and the promise of ice cream to calm him down.


We do not understand these people's need to touch our precious child or the fact that they ignore our pleas to leave him alone because he doesn't like it.


We thought about making a sign for his forehead that says either 'No touchies' or 'I Bite' but being a) in English and therefore not understood or b) ignored because these people cannot keep their hands to themselves, this would probably be a pointless exercise.


Instead we have gone for some karate for tots. This evening we ran through some drills with Mr Pickle and we are confident that the next time a hand comes in from the left it will be met with a 'wax on' coupled with the shout of 'TIDAK!' and a hand from the right will trigger the 'wax on' manouver. 
Maybe we should get a sign made that says 'I know karate' or maybe go for the Neo line of 'I know kung fu'.


We have explained to him that if he doesn't want the scary big stranger to touch him, he doesn't have to let them and it is fine to swat them away and say 'No' in Indonesian. He seems much more relaxed about the potential touchies.

Melbourne Cup and Cross Stitch

I went to a ladies day to watch the Melbourne Cup with the Balikpapan International Women's Association (BIWA) yesterday. We were all dressed to the nines and those who have been here a while were wearing appropriate head wear (think Ascot).

Before the race we had a fashion show. In the back of beyond, we were sat in the spacious home of the current president watching models (also members of BIWA) sweep down the huge staircase in couture (made by a member of BIWA). To say that it was surreal would be an understatement, it was also fabulous to be in the company of women in my position and in such a civilised atmosphere.

We all took part in the sweepstake, watched the race and then had a delicious three course lunch, catered by the local Novatel. I met some really nice people and we exchanged numbers. I also found out about the crafty sewing group which meets on a Wednesday morning.

I knew I had packed the cross stich stuff in my suitcase for a reason! I planned an alphabet sampler for our forthcoming baby way back when we didn't even know what flavour baba was coming. Today I put the first stitches onto the fabric. By the time Oscar is 21 he will have a lovely Apple Tree Farm picture for his bedroom.

I met a like minded stitcher today and I spent more time chatting than sewing, which is why it will take me a further 18 years to finish the sampler, and had a generally lovely relaxed morning while Mr Pickle was entertained in pre-school. Fabulous.

Mr Pickle and I spent the afternoon together making playdoh chickens for him to cut up while I chopped up our most recent purchase of poultry. Once again, I forgot to take pictures!

Oooooooo spooky

I managed to find a whole pumpkin in one of the local supermarkets. The person that weighs the produce and puts a sticker on it for the till was most perturbed that we wanted the whole thing and not a slice!

Clearly they do not get many people coming in for members of the squash family to carve into spooky effigies!

Mr Pickle did not want to help me with the pumpkin scraping, he was freaked out by the seeds inside and ran away shouting 'Nooooo' at the top of his voice after he had touched the slimy innards.

I hollowed out the pumpkin and then together we made our spooky ghoul. As you can see in the pictures, the pumpkin may have been small but was perfectly formed!

There was one snag. No candle! I tried to burn all sorts of things inside the pumpkin, eventually I got a sizeable flame from a combination of screwed up paper, tissue and cooking oil. Any children reading this should only attempt such pyromanic activities with a responsible adult present.

I have also made a perfectly formed pumpkin pie with ingredients scrabbled together from a number of supermarkets.

The shipping boxes still have not arrived and Oscar's halloween outfit is inside one of them. Once they arrive I am sure we will have a small skeleton running around shouting boo randomly. Maybe for Christmas! That's something to look forward to on the blog, a Christmas skeleton.

Water water all around

It has been very wet here over the last couple of days. That might be the understatement of the century.

Apparently the rainy season hasn't got into full swing yet. Last night we had a rain storm that started at 11pm and went on into the wee small hours. This morning, our 'garden' was under water!

This evening, the storm started at 8pm while we were driving back from downtown Balikpapan. Within 30 minutes there was about a foot of water on the road. The rain water was running down the ajoining roads like waterfalls and Mr Pickle was staring out of the car window in a mesmerised state. He asked if we were driving in the river, as the wake from the passing cars washed over his window. He was also very excited by the crashes of thunder and flashes of lightning.

It has stopped raining now, we are hopeful that the storm is over for tonight. 

We went swimming today. It was lovely, so there goes my plan to change the name of the blog to 'Will Mr Pickle and his mummy ever make it to the swimming pool'. 
The water in the swimming pool was warm and there were just enough people in there that we didn't feel isolated. Mr Pickle even plucked up enough courage to have a go on the slide set into the pool with daddy.

Call me, don't be afraid and just call me....

Oh, but you can't because we have just discovered that the Internet Speedy technicians, who managed to roll up at 3.15pm yesterday to fix the internet cabling, have cut the telephone line! 

What a very strange place we have moved to. By fixing one problem, you create another. It is like a whole industry in itself. No wonder things move so slowly round these parts.

Mr Pickle loved his trial session at the pre school and went back today for his first actual morning session. In his own words, he did dancing, helping, doing and painting a pumpkin. 


I spent my 'free' three hours ironing. I do not have the luxury of a maid/helper as many other wives and mothers do in Balikpapan because I have a house boy. That's all I'm going to say on the matter as I have talked about the virtues of said house boy already on this blog.


Although, to be honest, from the accounts of others, the maids/helpers sound like an absolute nightmare. Through genuine or contrived misunderstanding, on their part, it would seem that most wives end up continually showing the helper how to do things. This sounds pointless and time consuming, not to mention frustrating.


We have had a couple of people enquire about whether we have disappeared into a hole created by an earthquake or swept away by a tsunami. Rest assured, we are fine. Jeremy says that Borneo is the most stable island in the archipelago. If you would like a scientific explanation of the recent events please feel free to visit Jeremy's blog:

Jeremy's Blog 

Today, Mr Pickle and myself are sitting in the house waiting for the Indo Vision man to come and fix the satellite TV. So once again we will not be visiting the swimming pool. I have started to use the possibility of visiting the pool as a lure to speed up the number two stage of potty training and we had a successful delivery into the potty this afternoon. There is no picture to share with you.

As luck would have it, Mr Pickle will be swimming with his pre-school tomorrow and he thinks it is as a result of his success. All's well that ends well. 

I will probably have to spend tomorrow afternoon waiting for the telephone repair man to appear.

Christmas is coming

Christmas has started to trickle into Balikpapan. We saw three sad looking plastic trees for sale in Ace hardware a couple of days ago. The shops here don’t bother to dress them to sell them, they were bare and pathetic looking. I suppose it is a case of you either want it or you don’t.

It is strange not to be seeing the shops bursting with Christmas stock by this time of the year. There is also a distinct lack of pumpkin related paraphernalia.

I am suffering from serious withdrawl symptoms from the lack of internet. I am dreaming of Facebook and wondering what status updates await me. Sad but true. Along the Christmas theme, I am still going cold turkey! 

I have walked Mr Pickle down to the pre-school this morning. I was given a chair to sit next to him for the first part of the morning but he didn’t want to sit next to me. He ran around to the other side of the table and started to sharpen the pencils with one of the helpers. Having sat on the tiny yellow chair for ten minutes, being ignored by my little man, I decided to take my leave and get back to wait for the Internet Speedy man. 

He isn’t here yet. Maybe we will have the internet fixed for Christmas.

Fingers crossed Mr Pickle will love his trial at the pre-school and I will be able to plan mornings where I don’t need to have eyes in the back of my head and six hands.

Still no speedy internet man!