Monday Musings…

I’ve been a little quiet of late, apologies, but there has been a lot going on. Firstly both of my daughters drove from Melbourne to Brisbane, to get my youngest settled into her new home up there and start her new life, so very far away from us. It took two long days of driving, but they finally made it safe, if not slightly annoyed at old Hover Mum, constantly asking for updates and checking on the survival rate. They know I do it out of love, but one txt did sound a tad annoyed, when I hadn’t heard from them in a while I got the rather terse response stating they were in the middle of nowhere and had no bloody signal. Her version was slightly ruder 😛

So once I got over that little drama we had a round of redundancies at work, not me (Worst luck), but it is worrisome for the people who are leaving and for the overall state of the company I work for. I have a job until Christmas, after that possibly……we’ll see.

I had picked up a contract job on the side, which I had to wind up before my holidays, so not stressful as such, but a little chaotic at times, on top of everything else.

Which then brings me to Bali…if you don’t know Bali has an active volcano, very active. Mt Agung has been threatening to blow its top for the past several weeks and it’s getting more and more likely its going to blow any second. But a volcano dripping lava is not really my major concern, they are quite slow, albeit a tad warm! So many other things to think and worry about, Pyroclastic clouds spewing poisonous gas into the air, hurricane force winds that level whole villages and throw debris. Bali is such a small island, there is really nowhere to go to escape this. Then, of course, are the tremors, now turning into mini earthquakes, these are also getting larger and more ferocious. This is not state of the art architecture here folks. Let alone the reports of the constant tremors are causing a lot of locals and tourist headaches and nausea.  Of course, when you had earthquakes and the ocean there is a small threat of a tsunami, but unlikely at this point. 130,000 local residents have been evacuated from their homes and villages and put in horrid evacuation camps, with reportedly not enough food and water and if course no livelihoods, diseases is already running rampant and quite a few of these people are still working in the tourist areas spreading it to everyone else.

Did I mention that many of the locals think this is all the fault of the tourists anyway, we have been so disrespectful of their country we have angered their Gods. Sure, they are still happy to take our money, but it is still our fault (I’ve seen some of the horrible tourists, maybe the Balinese are right!)

We are booked to stay in Ubud 501kms from the disaster zone, not so far. The Wedding we are going to Bali to attend is even closer, I believe. Many of the temples and areas I would have liked to visit are in the exclusion zone. And of course, there is the possible ash cloud, preventing us from flying in, but more importantly flying out! This has now been going on since early August, with no let up in sight. Last time Mt Agung went in 1963, it blew ash and lave for a year!

So my question is do we go or not? Travel warnings just say what is a possibility and to monitor it, but that is all, no flights have been canceled and at this stage, if we decide not to go, we lose all our money. Our travel insurance only covers us if it does blow and we are trapped or cannot get there, it does not cover us if we chicken out. Yay!

So Saturday was a frenzy of activity trying to arrange last minute necessities and travel money, I needed a couple more batteries for my new camera. Why are there always so many things to arrange, and we have left it all to the last minute? We leave very early tomorrow morning, that’s assuming it is not all canceled at the last minute. I am probably over thinking things…..I am a worry wort if you have not noticed. I did manage to do a quickie photo shoot with my Spring Cherry Blossoms, which are in flower, so pretty I adore them, I also know when it flowers, warmer weather is on the way.

So while I am away, I may be a bit quiet, will post if I can, but I will hopefully be back on deck in a few weeks.

~ Julz, xo

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