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.
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