We don’t need no education

This morning Mr Pickle and I managed to visit the pre-school. 

Thankfully we were right about the half term closure last week and there was a session in full swing when we rolled up to the door. We got inside and Mr Pickle nearly burst with excitement as he ran over to another little boy and started to play with him and the puzzle he had spread out around him. Then he spotted the ride-on toys and I thought I would never manage to winkle him out. We caused chaos because his squeals of delight drew the rest of the class away from their quiet activity into the play area.

He is going to have a trial morning tomorrow but I think he will be very happy there as there are only six other children in the school with three staff members, which means lots of attention for him. Not sure how much learning he will actually do, who needs formal education at the age of nearly three anyway.

After a quick snack back at the ranch we went out for a walk to the club, where the swimming pool can be found. We had a look through the gates and had every intention in going for a swim after lunch. 

On the way back from the swimming pool area we found the park from Lost! It is a bit scary looking but actually quite fun to play on. Jeremy thinks it looks aged because of the weather here. Me, not so much.

We never made it to the pool, we rearranged the furniture instead. This activity was not by design, we were waiting in for the Internet Speedy technician, we are still without internet. Check out the name of the internet company. Quite clearly there is no such thing as the Trade Descriptions Act here. When the Speedy man arrived, he couldn’t do anything and has said he will return tomorrow morning at 9am to look at the phone lines outside. 

We will definitely go to the pool tomorrow afternoon. I feel a theme to this blog arising, I might have to rename it.

This evening we went to the Balikpapan Super Block, known in our house as the Super Plop. I managed to pick up three pairs of shorts for Mr Pickle for £9, bargain, in a shop called Matahari. These are needed as there is still no sign of the shipping boxes, with the rest of our clothes, and potty training requires more pairs of shorts than we have in the wardrobe. After that we went to Dunkin Donuts for pudding and coffee. 

As far as I can tell, you can shop until late every day of the week, including Sundays.

We’re not in Kansas anymore Mr Pickle

We have now been two days without the internet! I feel like a part of me is missing. I’m not sure how I functioned as a human being before it was rolled out into our homes. How did our parents manage?

All of the recipes that I use are on the internet, I download my emails using the internet and Mr Pickle and I play games from the CBeebies website. Jeremy has just used the phrase ‘the next time we have internet...’ We are losing all hope that it will ever return into our lives.

One obvious concern about this situation is whether I will ever manage to see Strictly ever again whilst living in the back of beyond, never mind the fact that we can’t use Skype to talk to our nearest and dearest! 

And another thing......No TV! You know what that means.....No MTV! We lost the satellite system days ago and still haven’t managed to get that sorted out either. Thank goodness for Peppa Pig and Charlie and Lola on the computer. 

The three of us, as a family which it is very nice to be again, went to a local market this morning (although by the time I manage to post this it will probably be three weeks ago). We bought lots of fruit and veg for very little money, experienced the smell of the fish stalls and went to a funny little shop called C V Central where we bought a HUGE bin for the kitchen. It looks a bit like a red darlek and has ‘push’ written on the swing lid which makes me think it was designed for a public place. All other bins that are to be found in Balikpapan are teeny weeny.

We also bought some blue Fanta, not yet sampled but very exciting. 

Driving back from the shops the realisation hit that we are now living in a very world! Quite clearly, we are not in Kansas anymore.

Anyway, the plan was to go to the swimming pool in the afternoon but once we had eaten lunch and sat down, Sunday lethargy hit and we didn’t manage to leave the house again. That obviously doesn’t change from place to place in the world, the only thing missing was Antiques Roadshow.

Alot of dough

Mr Pickle appeared beside my head this morning with his a very informative greeting 'mummy it's light out and it is morning'. As it was 7.30 am, I couldn't really argue so we made our way into the kitchen to make breakfast.

Awaiting me was a great big wobbly, blobby and bubbly mass in a saucepan on the work top. I started to make french bread the night before and it is a two day process! As I do not have many kitchen implements, a mixing bowl being one of the missing items, I had to improvise by using a saucepan instead. Last night I mixed up a batch of lukewarm water, flour and yeast and left it on the side in the kitchen to 'grow'. My science experiment was a success and my mixture had tripled in size.  

While Mr Pickle ate a very exotic breakfast of a cup of milk, three baby bananas, a yoghurt, two pieces of toast and a handful of cocoa pops, I got on with making the dough. Having read the rest of the instructions, there was more waiting to follow. I mixed up the full batch, kneaded the big bubbly ball for eight minutes and then let it sit in the saucepan for a further two hours. 

Mr Pickle asked 'is it play doh?' Bless him and his one track mind.

The dough doubled in size again! You don't get to see this happening in a bread maker. After a further knead and stretching into shape I had two french loaves. 

Thank goodness the gas supply was fixed yesterday! I baked then in the oven for 30 minutes and we had two, not quite as golden as I would have liked, french bread loaves.

Might try and make pizza dough next.

This afternoon we were taken shopping into one of the many shopping centres in town. In preparation for tomorrow's trip to the pool I have bought a new swimsuit. There was a wide choice on sale if you were looking to be covered from neck to ankle! I didn't mind, it was just nice to be out and about taking in the sights and smells of Balikpapan. This particular shopping centre is situated on a waterfront that smells a bit like Angle beach on a hot day. 

We ate the bread with a homemade lasagne and some Balikpapan friends. 

Wave a chicken in the air

Yesterday Mr Pickle and I took a whole chicken and cut it up into it's component meaty parts to freeze. He had a great time watching me disect it, whilst pointing out the various body parts to him.

After I had cleared away the mess and put the bones, skin and cast off bits into a pot to make stock, we set up the play doh on the dining table. Instead of making the usual worms, spaghetti and cut out shapes, Mr Pickle made a chicken carcass out of the doh and proceeded to cut off wings, legs and breast from the little shape with his plastic knife. I wish I had thought to take some photographs before he cut it up!

You may have noticed that I haven't talked about many other people other than just us. That is because we have not met many other people yet. We have spent most of our first week in the house amusing ourselves with lego, colouring pens, play doh, activity books and Dora the Explorer.

I have had three failed attempts, over the last couple of days, at visiting the local kindergarten. It appears that we have managed to coincide our arrival with half term here. This also means that the ex pat mothers have taken their ex pat children away to places, like Bali, for the break. Mr Pickle reached the point of desperation to play with children of his own age today.

Thankfully I had a sticker book and stickers in reserve for such an occasion. Apparently everyone should return from their holidays over the weekend, Mr Pickle will be able to enrol in kindy and make some friends to play with.

The challenge thrown at us today was to get the gas supply fixed. The failure of the hob to light this morning, to boil the kettle for a cup of tea, was a lovely surprise.

Jeremy was going off to a rig this morning for an overnighter so this kind of happenstance was expected on my part. Thankfully, Jeremy's company have a multitude of helpful people on the payroll who dutifully trooped through our house trying to fix the problem. As it turned out, it wasn't the regulator, as the house boy had thought (who had trecked to the shop to buy a new one before disappearing off to work), it was a blocked pipe. All sorted now. At 3pm I had my first cup of tea from the kettle.

While we had no hot water to shower, we scrubbed the bathrooms so that they are now shining and smell inviting. I flushed out a family of milipedes from one and enough hair in another to make a toupe. Nice.

I've got the power

It has been a funny old day today! Mostly funny peculiar and a little bit ha ha.

Jeremy went off this morning to Jakarta for a meeting leaving me and Mr Pickle to amuse ourselves. Mr Pickle started his day by having a lovely swim in our paddling pool sized bath tub with his bath toys and a cup of milk on the side of the bath. It looked a bit like the baby version of the Club Tropicana video (that would be a song by Wham for those of you who are too young to know what I am referring to, have a look on Wiki).

I was making toast in the kitchen when the power went out. My initial thoughts were that I had fused the house by using the toaster. No such luck, we were having a power outage. We waited 10 minutes, at which point I decided that we needed the air conditioning back on. I managed to start our generator and flick the power across to it first time. Go me! I had to do this myself because the house boy works elsewhere in the day. 

Meanwhile, I am getting myself and Mr Pickle ready to go out with one of the members of the Balikpapan International Women's Association (BIWA) for a drive around the locale when there is a knock on the side door. Who should it be, not the lady from BIWA but the house boy, who should be elsewhere, working. 

He proceeds to tell me (with gestures, etc.) that the gardener is here to do the front and the back garden. That is funny ha ha because the garden is comprised of two strips of manky looking grass, which is so coarse you could mistake it for astroturf, and a few potted palms. It was such a hard job that the house boy stayed to 'assist' the gardener in his efforts.

I was a bit confused as I thought Jeremy had told me the house boy was going to do the garden. I was then railroaded into paying the gardener for his 'services'. Jeremy will be on the case to find out what is going on there. 

Having rung Jeremy about the issue above, we realised he had gone off with my means of purchasing anything worthwhile, e.g. shoes in the mall. I am sure this was an oversight.


Due to all the shenanigans with power, gardeners, house boys and phonecalls to Jakarta, my hair dried all on it's own without the assistance of a hair dryer (which definately would have fused the house) and I looked a right mess for meeting someone for the first time.

The lady from BIWA was very nice (and didn't comment on my appearance) and we visited the afore mentioned mall, the Balikpapan Super Block. I would like to share photos of this on the blog but I haven't worked out how to do it yet so I will save a detailed account of shopping there for a day when I actually manage to shop.

I tracked down some bread flour with the help of a shop assistant who was gone so long we think he was actually milling the flour himself. Jeremy thinks he ran to another shop! I will be sharing my bread making escapades in future blogs. That's like a cliff hanger right there!


After lunch we went on a play date and Mr Pickle managed to fall off a tricycle three times, eat two chocolate biscuits, drink two glasses of water, develop a sweat rash on his forehead and have a thouroughly enjoyable and tiring time. When we came home he ate all his tea, watched a bit of Dora the Explorer, had a story and fell asleep with a huge electrical storm raging around us.


As I shut his bedroom door, everything went black. Hooray, another powercut! Luckily the house boy is here and before I could find the torch, the lights came back on and I didn't have to lift a finger. I did have to reconnect the internet to post this blog.
 

In the jungle, the mighty jungle

We visited an area of Balikpapan called the Beach House today. It is a little piece of the jungle that has been developed into a resort type area. In amongst the banana trees, palm fronds and birds of paradise flowers tables and chairs have been dropped to form a restaurant area with fountains and little paths down to the beach. 

There were also some very odd four poster beds dotted around for sitting in to watch the waves rolling in.

The beach was not particularly nice but there were a large number of shells for Mr Pickle to pick up and throw into the sea.


I am going to take Mr Pickle down to the Kindergarden tomorrow for a look. Hopefully we will be able to get him a place quickly so that he can have a change in company from me!

We're here

We arrived in Balikpapan a couple of days ago now. I have been much to tired to even think about posting until today.

We were allowed to take the buggy onto the plane free of charge. Hooray!

We had a tearful farewell at Heathrow with mum and dad and we ventured through the security area where I asked the a member of staff if there was anyone who could assist me through. I had already asked the check in desk who said I would have to ask for help at each point.


This is the response I received:


'No. You should have brought a bigger buggy to hang everything on or travelled with someone to help you. Maybe you can find another passenger to help you.' Like that was going to happen!!


Nice! This stopped me feeling quite so upset because I was so annoyed. Despite her comment, as soon as I got to the end of the scanning queue, the staff there came up to me, asked me if I was travelling alone with my toddler and prmoptly provided two members of staff to assist me through and I got to queue jump into the bargain. Quite clearly the first woman was a complete jobsworth and on a power trip.


At the gate the ground crew helped us onto the plane. So I thought all would be well.


We settled into our seats in our little bank of two, watched some telly and waited for the in flight meal to be served. When the air stewardess reached us she asked whether we wanted the chicken or the beef. I opted for the chicken and asked whether Oscar (aka Mr Pickle) would be having the child's meal. I was met with a long stare and a request to see our boarding passes. 'You haven't booked a child's meal, he can have an adulats meal, chicken or beef?' Fabulous, i had even checked the online check in screen for a place to book a child's meal and couldn't see one.


The chicken was very spicy so I opted for the beef meal. He ate the breadroll. 

Considering the posters and banners around Heathrow proclaiming that 'It's official. Ethiad are the best airline in the world', I find this very hard to believe from a cattle class customer's perspective. They crew seemed overworked and understaffed. They did not seem interested in making our flight as painless as possible and it felt like we were flying the long haul equivalent of Ryan Air. Kirst - they needed you there to show them what customer service in the air means!


All the stewards and stewardesses were in business class as much as they could manage and our cries of 'stewardess, we know we are ugly and you are beautiful but please help us' fell on deaf ears.


We changed at Abu Dhabi and got onto the next flight under our own steam. There were people in our seats, a young couple with a screaming toddler, with a stewardess asking them to move. They vacated our seats and I thought phew, they are going to go and sit somewhere else, unfortunately the somewhere else was the row in front of ours. The child screamed the entire flight. All eight hours without stopping for breath. I think there is an opera singer in the making there.


Oscar managed to sleep for about two hours on and off and kept asking me to stop the noise. If only I could have! I managed to sleep for about an hour. I have nothing further to add about this flight other than the fact that the service was worse than the first flight and the food was terrifying. I ate a croissant and Oscar ate nothing.


Jeremy met up at Jakarta, which was a very nice surprise and a huge relief. It would have been a nightmare getting across from arrivals to departures on our own with all the baggage.Mr Pickle was very pleased to see him.


We boarded our flight and Mr Pickle was asleep within about five minutes. This was a Garuda flight and the service and meals were streets ahead of Ethiad.


It was very late when we arrived at the house so we all went to bed and woke up late the next morning. On the bright side, the lack of sleep on the Ethiad flight has meant that we got over jet lag quite quickly as we had no problem sleeping all night. Mr Pickle is struggling a bit with his stomach's request to eat dinner at around two in the morning (about seven pm in the UK). Hopefully tonight he will sleep through this as I am packing him full of food today.


We haven't seen much of Balikpapan so far but I am sure with the weekend coming we will get to visit some sights.