Bali Business

I have been offered a job in Bali by our CEO and have negotiated Saturdays off and enough annual leave. This will hopefully allow me working in combination with studies preparation and other plans, and that's the reason for which I have postponed the part-time idea thus far and taken up the upcoming challenge.

the lobby of the Segara Village - company taking care well of me upon the first official visit

When I flew to Bali for a first training on November 4th, Be's birthday, which we had celebrated a day earlier, with  Bud's ice cream and new soccer shoes as a present, it was the first time that I flew without a surfboard. And it was a strange feeling, as if something was missing. I arrived in the evening and a nice colleague picked me up at the airport and brought me to the Segara Village in Sanur, a beautiful small hotel, one of the older generation, family-run, very lovely; biography has been written about the owner who led an interesting life. This evening, a week later, a wedding will be held at the resort for one of the family members. I am sitting by the pool, on a sunny afternoon, the sea breeze is blowing, chill-out music is dazzling, and people are preparing the chairs, a stage, lights, in the tropical mist of the afternoon and beautiful people in traditional dress and bringing offerings and all you need for a dream wedding by the ocean.

Main Pool at Segara Village

Host & Guests: Kebaya, Bikinis & Children

This morning I woke up early to take a lesson in standup-paddle, and I loved it much. The instructor took me to South Sanur, close to Serangan Island. After a one-kilometer paddle out to the reef, waves were breaking gently, and we took some of the crests. At this wave size, with a SUP board, you can drive down the wall kneeling and then stand up and ride sideways. Even when the wave is already small and slow, the wide board and the paddle allow for long rides. This will definitely become a regular activity, and it may become a very good reason to wake up early in the morning instead of staying up late nights. It will allow for some fresh air, fitness, mindfulness and at least an hour or two of sun prior to long office-days. There are probably a few more breaks to discover along the long strip of beach, and several of them may be ok for recreational and meditative surfing or stand-up paddle.

future home beach of Sanur is not the island's greatest beach and surf is far out,

but it's a laid-back and relaxed one…thus a great place to work

Balinese lady carrying offerings

After that I had a walk through Jalan Kesari, to look for accommodation, at least for the first weeks and months on the island to come. I met this lovely old lady in one of the alleys, walking gently with a plate of offerings. I stopped to take her photo, hoping I would not offend her. She was a bit irritated. But later on when I met her again we gave each other a big smile, almost flirtingly, and both even looked back after passing each other, again with big smiles - so funny with that old lady. She must have been beautiful when she was young, and even now she was. Whether in Bali, Vietnam or Germany, it is often the older generations who are the way I like it. When I did my civil service in the old people's home it was the same. The retired, they have seen all in their lives, good times and wars, they have time to reflect, to be more spiritual again, they are not running behind business, money and all the things that let people far often forget that after all we are humans and for this reason should humanity rule instead of greed for worldly powers and possessions.

Going for a small simple room, an apartment, a Balinese compound, a house or a villa? All overpriced when it needs to be central. What will be the best value for money?

A Jackfruit Tree with wrapped fruits - a method to prevent damage through pests and diseases

In fact the lady had made me walk into an alley, and I found a nice Balinese compound where Ibu Wayan has rooms for rent. There is the option for one or two rooms plus bathroom. The kitchen is outside and shared. However, the place is with 400 and 500 USD / month quite expensive for the small rooms without privacy. If Hang and the kids came over it would for sure be a great option to have some Balinese people around. But at that price? Farther away from the beach it is much cheaper but less nice, and I am afraid of the Bypass road, as people here drive like mad. Or shall I go for the once-in-a-lifetime (who knows, maybe multiple- or long-time-…) experience of living in a villa instead? This would be also much money and farther outside, however, it would be spacious and comfortable - a real home and a place to retreat. As I have just seen once more, Bali is expensive and I am afraid that the surplus in salary in my new position may be nullified through higher costs at the same living standard. Of course, Bali offers a lifestyle that a city as Ho Chi Minh cannot offer, and insofar this is a gain. Yet, the plan was to live at low standard as always, spend and spend money on more important things than lifestyle consumption and entertainment but save and invest for the future instead.

booking system training for the team

La Pau - Padang food restaurant on Bypass Road in Sanur near office

one of the many favorite and very old-school drinks in Indonesia: a chilled bottle of Teh Botol

The week was busy from Monday to Friday with long hours in the meeting room and training on our booking system. My colleague from the Bangkok head office did a great job, and despite having been working with the system for two and a half years already I just got to know many functions that I had never understood. It will be a lot of work when I move here in January, and even though it's not the first time on this beautiful tropical island, and also not the first time for longer, the move will not be easy. People ask me whether I am excited, and in fact I am not. I am more afraid recently, as I will be leaving a country that got my second home and very familiar, and people who are family or at least close to what can be called a family. I hope that the kids and Hang will visit me soon, and we can see whether they like it here. Bali is not the same as when I came fort he first time. There are traffic jams, and weird people on the street now. Reading the media, many negative things are reported. And the environment gets worse. The task for the next half year will be to build a new home-environment, get settled at a new place, find the right balance between work and life, and start working on the next projects.

Skywalk at Beachwalk - the newly opened mall right at the beach, with endless retail, F&B and

a cinema showing the newest Bond…

…many of the shops with very nice interior on offer, as always in Bali.

Also this week there was opportunity to have meals at several nice places. There was La Pau, which is a favorite Padang food choice in Sanur. I could enjoy one of my favorite drinks in Indonesia, Teh Botol. We had dinner with the colleagues on Sanur's night market. And we went to cinema with half of the office to see new James Bond. We had meals in local Warungs and at restaurants with ocean view. We had long discussions in French (which I don't understand; but this is what you have to accept when working with French people) and in English about many topics related to working in tourism and living in Asia. On the last evening I met Jeff in Denpasar, whom I hadn't seen for ages and we spent long hours talking about our journeys. On the way back I had a cheeseburger at Mc Donalds's, then packed my things to wake up early on the next morning to take the flight back to Saigon via Singapore.

departing on my fav airline SIA from Ngurah Rai Airport with Kuta Reef below

The old man, the old woman, and the sea

Cua Dai Beach in Hoi An

Neuwied

Flying Turkish Airlines: Istanbul-Attatürk Airport with the Bosporus in the far background

Smoking Kills - what a nice little coffin nail gallery, as my friend Peter would call it.

Seen at duty free shops in Istanbul Airport.

It was a short visit of just a week in August to Germany with the major purpose of meeting my parents. I took the train from Frankfurt airport through the Rhine Valley with it's castles and vineyards (which I hated as a child but meanwhile regard as beautiful) via Mainz, Koblenz to Neuwied. There was this peculiar tranquility in the train through the valley on this beautiful summer afternoon. With the suspension bridge of Neuwied in view, my thoughts went to my friends, foremost to Richard, who is also having a holiday right now in 'Down Under'. Back in my home town, nothing much has changed. It feels like a trip to the past. This small town deserted of people, where on the only day you make it to the city center you run accidentally into your best friend's father.

A shop in the Markstraße in Neuwied selling special cars

…wonder whether there is a market for such toys in town

I had dinner with my family, father, mother, brother and his girlfriend, at a small beer garden on the river banks in Leutesdorf on Sunday. I lay on the sun bed on the balcony, surrounded by green trees and the neat lawn, in this tranquil neighborhood, of my parents' huge house, which by general Vietnamese standards (to which I compare them now from the perspective of a country I have meanwhile spent almost 5 years in) would already be called a villa, reading a book by Paolo Coelho. I had just the day before red an interview with him, on his life and the book, in the train from the way to Frankfurt airport to my home-town. Having red the interview in which Coelho says that you need to have a big ego to be successful with your ideas has encouraged me further to move on. Even Germany became suddenly a consideration again. One finds abandoned newspapers in trains with quality reading, people are working on their university assignments on laptops, and at least some of the conversations around are so much more thoughtful than the crap you hear everyday in Vietnam. Not only for reasons of career but also for other aspects of life, such as parents and friendships, quality of foods, comfort of life, healthcare, education, ethical issues in daily life. It would be a great place for the kids. I saw immigrant families (probably asylum seekers) in the train, and was a bit jealous while at the same time admiring that they had made their way to a better place. It was the first time after many years that I enjoyed Germany really much. And it was because of my parents, brother, and because of friends. It was because I have seen what I was actually missing. I have realized where my home (the first one) really is. It is a place I belong to, even though I am not living at it. A reason was also the summer, and I wonder whether it would have been differently if it was winter, like earlier this year in Berlin. I have spent most of the time in my parents' place, reading booking, catching up with old private mails in my inbox, using social media freely without TOR browser, jogging in the fields, and just enjoying the food, supermarkets with bio- and vegetarian- options and the environment in my home town.

Leyscher Hof - a Biergarten in Germany with good food and a nice location by the

river opposite the town of Andernach

It doesn't look nice taken with the camera of my mobile, but it was most awesome to have some good toasted bread with nice salami, fresh cheese and home-grown tomato after years

I just wonder if I'd sooner or later become the typical German with this slightly negative attitude that every minute in German everyday life seems to prevail. "Life is so bad here in this luxury county", the people seem to believe. I do not know whether it is caused by over-individualization, over-specialization, the weather throughout two thirds of the year, or the recession or just because people are used to be taken care of by a state of development, and a government and political system that others just can dream of. I grew up in a world of luxury, and that has enabled me to become a person of thought. In the flat business environment that I am now embraced by I feel deprived of these features. As often discussed with my friend who feels similar issues, it seems that am a niece person and need to find the right nice profession. What I am doing now, and where, is probably just for a while, and I need to make sure that I will not be leaving my plans behind and that I am not advancing too slowly, not to realize that I haven't achieved what I really want to once it may be too late.

I have been visiting teachers Dai and Phuong, with whom I had lunch in the canteen (Mensa) and coffee at Café Spitz in the centre of Bonn. Again it felt like time warp. Time is running, and at the same time, the years had given me so much of experiences. Youth in Neuwied with great parents and friends, studies in Bonn with backpacking across Asia, and now expat-life, being single and having family at the same time. I always wanted everything, and here I go, as it seems. Having nothing in a way, and still so much. I have no reason to complain and despite all difficulties, life has been good to me. I should probably be less afraid, and happier as well. There is maybe less to fear than I always think. And isn't life great if one has friends in many places, to share pieces of the way? In Bonn I also met my friends Armin and Tina. We had a small barbeque on the river banks like many years ago when I was a student. We remembered old stories and had a nice evening near the northern bridge. I took the train back home on the next afternoon, remembering my time commuting to my old private school in Bad Honnef where I took the last two years of my high school and to Bonn where I also went by train often. On the day before I had taken the train on the other side of the Rhine, just to get another perspective which I used to have when using the car.

Runners on the northern bridge in Bonn upon a summer evening

Sunset over Solarword

Barbeque in the meadows on the river banks opposite my old dormitory, like in old days as a student

Grafitti and light effects from the cars on the highway at the Nordbrücke in Bonn

Rhine by night with the Nordbrücke in Bonn, seen from the meadows

The university again seemed to me like an Ivory Tower. Everything seems to be done in a very exact way, slow, totally different from the way things in my business and in the country I reside in would work. I had even some negative thoughts of the people I saw in the station or on the train. They seem to live a "subsidized" relaxed life. They can afford to work slowly, short hours, for good money. They are protected by their government. I am not sure whether I even make a connection to them being able to live this standard of life because other people work harder for less benefits in other countries around the world, to which certain production and services are outsourced…for example when they make holidays…an activity I am involved in…and when they ask for lower prices, while to me it seems that the price of their tours is already low, and that guides, drivers and hotel staffs should actually earn more...the developed world as forerunner of corporate business and the new colonization.

This would apply of course also to the academic world, to the people who work as professors, maybe in some softer sciences, they seem relaxed, not stressed out as the people in business. I would love to work in a relaxed way and work with reflection and thought. But I am also afraid of it. Because I wonder how they create value. One of my professors had once answered to my concern that in academics cognition as such is already value. I agree to it, however am still afraid that we have arrived in times in which no sponsor for such activities that are not purely economic can be found. Today, even education becomes more and more commercialized. So I am afraid, that there will be less and less space and funding for such kind of research that actually does not create economic value but rather works on the other end of the chain and seeks to gain knowledge to protect public goods and helps making things not only more sustainable but rather more equitable. I am thus also of this world and of daring to do the things that would interest me.

Some small achievements, publications generated throughout the last two years

Childhood memories in Waldbreitbach…

…revisiting the Scheid'sche Ölmühle, which belonged to the family of a friend I met in Saigon

On the last evening I cooked for my family. On the menu was garlic bread and herb butter bread with pesto as appetizers, noodle ham broccoli gratin as main dish and banana curd as dessert. I got sad that it was just such a short time I took for my parents and family and for Germany in general, friends, people at the university, old books and things I could have caught up with, such as scanning old photos and so on. After all, I still haven't really re-learnt yet how to make time again.

Farewell dinner for my parents and brother

I am looking desperately for excellence in Vietnam and more and more become aware, that here fake smiles and everything that sparkles seem to be gold, and that - over-generalizing - it is more a country for people to work who elsewhere cannot perform rather than one for excellence. It is time for moving on and I am preparing this now. I will do a surf-, book-writing- and studies-preparation-trip soon. I had plans to work part time after that, teaching, looking for a new job and trying to get accepted for a PhD and respective scholarships. The decision had already been made and it should be just a few months to go from now. Some things have changed and I will be postponing the part-time plan for another one to two years, as a new opportunity came up, which I will post later.