Archive for the ‘travel’ Category

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.
Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Posted on April 16, 2009 - by MG

Ubud-ists

Ubud-ists
We’re in the Holy Spring temple in the monkey sanctuary in Ubud.
Don’t stare the macaque monkeys in the eyes! (or they can get aggressive) Don’t feed them bananas! (they will snatch them out of your hands and woe betide if you keep some food in your pockets, they’ll jump on you and grab for it).

Originally uploaded by mgharris

Ubud-ists are wonderful artisans. So many painters, stone carvers, makers of gorgeous things.

This delicious sojourn is almost over. *sigh*
Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Posted on April 13, 2009 - by MG

Easter in Bali

Easter in Bali

Originally uploaded by mgharris

The hotel very kindly left us a basket of choccie eggs in case we felt homesick…meanwhile the Easter bunny left a trail of brightly-coloured foil-covered treats that our kids and their cousins hunted down in the early morning. We didn’t have long…they were already melting.
How come the Easter bunny knew to leave eggs in the hotel, our little girl asked. Yup, a good question. Will there be an unharvested trail of eggs back in our garden in Oxford? And anyway how does Fr Christmas get around the world in one night?

Meanwhile Bali is providing me with more pampering and luxury than anyone has a right to expect. The fact that it’s so undeserved only makes me enjoy it all the more. If we only enjoyed things we truly deserved in life then how could we enjoy anything nice? Its like the parable of the vineyard, I’m like the last worker to arrive at the vineyard, being paid as much as the ones who got there in the morning. And it feels pretty, pretty good!

That isn’t ‘Catholic guilt’, btw, that’s just plain old hedonism.
MG Harris

Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Posted on March 21, 2009 - by MG

Best. Rueda. Ever.

I think, after spending quite some time on YouTube looking for it, I have unearthed a vid of the best rueda ever.

Filmed in one of those shabby, dilapidated-yet-once-grand Havana buildings, it’s easy to miss how great this is (if you didn’t read the title), because of the lack of an audience and the very plain dress of the dancers – just crisp white cotton dresses for women and shirts and trousers for guys.

But watch for more than a minute and you’ll see what I mean. Unbelievably cool, stylish Cuban dancers full of AZUCAR! and SABOR! and incredble choreography.

Watching this, frankly, makes me feel like:
a) I have basically wasted my life so far by not being able to dance like this, with people like this.
b) The rest of my life will be wasted if I don’t drop everything so that I can dance like this, with people like this.

Not saying I HAVE wasted my life, or that I am about to drop anything. I’m just saying how it makes me feel.

If you adore Cuban salsa, you will understand. Also how badly it makes me want to go back to Cuba. WAHHH!

Posted on October 21, 2008 - by MG

Revelations in Oz

Brother-in-law Paul reckons it’s too cold to swim without a wettie. But Our Kid is tall and strong and lives in the mountains! Nothing can put him off!

Ah, mes braves, so much to tell about my visit to Western Australia, I don’t think I’ll have time.

Bullet point summary then:

• My sister’s new baby is awesome. I couldn’t get enough of holding him. 8-week old babies are delicious. They just lie in your arms looking up at you with their gorgeous little eyes.
• My sister’s whole family is awesome. When two very good looking people marry and produce children you get beautiful kids, but my nephews and niece are also clever, funny and adorable. I say this entirely without bias.
• Claremont is terrific. They know things about baking there that have long been forgotten in this country. The coffee shops of Claremont (and prob Australia in general) are several notches above what we are allowed in the UK. I still have fond memories of the passion fruit muffin I ate the last day I was there. With whipped cream on the side, and not the spray kind!
• The Indian Ocean looks fab but it’s devilish cold down in Perth, where Antarctic currents wash up on the beaches. It took me a whole hour to pick up the courage to swim at Meelpup Beach, despite the dazzling soft white sand and crystalline, turquoise water. Waters are sharky, too…Great Whites and tiger sharks munch on Western Australians all too often.
• Talked to almost 400 students at local Claremont schools. Great fun and some wonderful questions. Including one (of a long series of intelligent queries) from a Year 9 (= to UK Yr 10) at John XIII College.
  “Has becoming a writer changed you as a person?”
  Hmm, very perceptive to imagine that it might. The answer is a resounding yes. As I told the Year 9s at JTC, I used to spend precious little time on inner contemplation, the opposite, in fact. As a scientist and an entrepreneur I was quite sniffy at all the industries around self-help; NLP, psychotherapy for the mentally healthy, basically anything that encourages you to look into your inner self. Even now I’m uncomfortable with those things. An inner voice objects with the cry “Stop finding yourself so damn interesting!”
  But as a writer I’ve been forced to spend hours and hours mining my feelings and emotions and memories for material. Yuck! I had hoped I could write entirely without recourse to any of that. But I’m not clever enough to write intellectually dense yet emotionally spartan material. I’ve become rather contemplative. It’s all a bit embarrassing.
• A new friend, Daniel confirmed a long-held suspicion of mine; over a plate of slow-roasted, aged organic beef and a glass of decent Cab Sav, he told me that men fall properly in love only once. “Your first girlfriend kills you,” he said.
  In ZERO MOMENT I am currently enjoying tormenting poor Joshua’s tender young heart. Since I’m a girl I can only guess at what teenage boys go through. (Well I observe, remember and then guess.) Daniel’s comment was timely confirmation.

I encourage all my male readers to backup – or deny Daniel’s assertion. Does your first girlfriend spoil you for all those who follow?