Posted on May 2, 2009 - by MG

Wish I was here

Wish I was here

Originally uploaded by mgharris

I am blogging this lying in bed and typing on my BlackBerry, for the simple reason that I can’t face another minute at my computer which is anyway turned off.

The photo is of some frozen daiquiris at the bar at Bali’s Grand Hyatt Nusa Dua. I have been missing the bar every night since leaving. Many was the evening we enjoyed there with my sister and her family, watching the sun set over the Indian ocean.

Going on holiday to places like that is exquisitely painful in that it gives you a temporary but still ridiculous sense of entitlement to a lifestyle of luxury.

Then comes the inevitable readjustment when you get home…(not that I’m complaining, it’s a nice home…)

My Australian brother-in-law, who as a biotech entrepreneur is at least partly on track to serious wealth, would scoff at my lack of confidence that we’ll always be able to afford to meet in Bali. In fact, in his worldview he and my sister will one day end up living like that every day…

He’s a biotech entrepreneur! Only the optimistic ones survive. Cheerful at having rescued his company from a funding crisis due to the markets current apathy, Paul was in a great mood. And of course so was I. Joshua Files is doing well, and I have some lovely author events coming up.

Yet I can still make myself prematurely nostalgic for evenings in a hotel bar in Bali. Will I one day look back, perhaps as an aged and lonely widow whose children never call, and realise that those nights in Bali were our golden time, never to return?

Or will we still be there, my sisters and brother, their spouses and us, and will we still sip daiquiris until the end of our days?

Gosh, I hope so.
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