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!

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.