Jakarta #Frombadtogood

So things didn't get off to the best of starts. I had a terrible overnight flight from Abu Dhabi to Jakarta due to delays and generally being in economy overnight with spitballing Indonesians, and despite getting my visa-on-arrival absolutely free (still unclear why) I managed to leave my brand new gold activated-for-Indonesia with a higher credit limit credit-card in the ATM after withdrawing cash. 

It was so stupid. The cash came out before the card did (which doesn't happen in Europe anymore) and I just wasn't paying enough attention. I assume the machine swallowed it within a few seconds but I had to cancel the card, just to make sure. And of course my backup British credit card that had not been authorised at all wouldn't work. And despite AO (amazing Oma) being on the case, it was a UK bank holiday on Monday, wasn't it. So I finally managed to pay today. Thanks Oma!

Yay I'm a millionaire!

Seriously though, the money is a bit crazy here. 15,000 rupiah is just 1 euro, so everything involves mad calculations. Plus I'm in and out of a taxi a hundred times a day so I really need to make sure I'm not handing over a note with a couple of extra zeros...

Today has been a bit calmer with only 2 meetings, but yesterday I had 4 meetings: 4 meetings of 1 hour each, and almost 6 hours spent in a taxi in traffic. The traffic here is abysmal - there is no metro or MRT as in Bangkok, so everyone moves on wheels (it's too hot, dirty and unsafe to really walk anywhere except perhaps in the mega-high-end CBD district where you connect from mall to mall). One mall leads right in to the Indonesian stock exchange and the World Bank. Here is the view from their offices:

 

Jakarta is huge but the people are really friendly, and apparently excellent drivers. Despite the bazillions of motorbikes taking over every available inch on the road and zipping in and out of cars and lorries and buses that won't stop for anyone, I haven't yet seen a single accident.

The food here is pretty spicy but terrifically yummy and rice/noodle based. The portions are teeny tiny so maybe I'll even lose a kg or two haha. 

This is the view from my floor-to-ceiling hotel window. I'm in Central Jakarta and this view is facing towards north Jakarta, but most of my meetings are around here and South Jakarta. What you can't see so clearly is the road directly beneath the hotel. It's not even a major road - just a side road really, but the traffic builds up on that around 5am and doesn't stop all day until around midnight. It's just crazy.

I would love to get out for a walk but I really can't, so I walk around the pool area instead..it seems to be a sort of hotel hobby...most people seem to go for their evening constitutional around the pool edge where there is less chance of getting mown down I suppose...and if you do (by a fellow guests) it's into something cooler and cleaner than the huge gutters that line most of the streets.

Tomorrow we're off to the fish market, which I love, even though they are stinky. But first, a huge thank you to all the photos I'm being sent of Small Fry and Fingerling's adventures without me. They make my day!

A week of adventure #4cornersoftheearth #Pitstop

Well, wasn't YOUR first mother-son trip a flight to Abu Dhabi?!

So that's it, I am writing this from Abu Dhabi. I survived the manic 24 hours before we left when almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong (including the internet crashing, lightbulbs blowing, Fingerling falling out her high chair and landing on her head etc etc), and had a lovely flight with Small Fry this morning. He is super excited to be here and is now sleeping upstairs with his cousins.

So thank you Boyds for taking care of Small Fry for the next week and thank you El Puma and Moon for taking care of Fingerling. Now I need to go and take care of myself: I'm going to kip for a couple of hours in these comfy surroundings and then head back to the airport to catch my 3am flight (ugh) on to Jakarta. Now I really wish I was flying business...!

Like Mother Like Son #Matchingmoles

Look at this! Kinda weird right? Small Fry and I both have tiny moles on the edge of our right hands. 

Apparently it's quite unusual to have moles near the palm of the hand. According to the Chinese it's rather auspicious, but I'm more interested in the mechanics of it.

Are moles genetic?!

Anyone got any idea how this happens? I'm pretty sure he wasn't born with it...

Anti-gravity #Youonlyturn39once

As El Puma's tastes have changed, so has my birthday cake production for him. First it was cheesecake, then it was chocolate cake, and finally 'give me a surprise' cake. And here it is:

A little bit of magic and a lot of sugar

I didn't even know they were called anti-gravity cakes until a friend sent me a link. So there you go: defying gravity when you're 39. 

Blowing out his one candle

Baby rock star #rockin'it

Singing Kettle #Scottishtelly #30yearsold #Stillawinner

The Singing Kettle were a folk music group who were well known for performing traditional children's songs with a distinctly Scottish flair. They were so good in fact, that during the holiday in Scotland all 5 of us were able to still sing Little Bunny Foo Foo.

Their heyday was probably in the 80s and 90s when they wrote new songs (all with numerous actions) and rewrote the words to well-known tunes. The 3 or 4 band members were all Scottish, spoke Scottish and sang using lots of Scottish terms.

They have made a bit of a comeback in our house - mostly because it's the one show that both Small Fry and Fingerling can agree on watching, plus the singing and actions get them involved so I'm happy, plus I can sing along to the whole CD word for word.

Here Fingerling learns the catchy jingle. Little does she know that it will never leave her memory.

If you're a prayer-er #FlyingFamily #ExtendedKellingClan #Livinginhotspots

Let's pray for protection!

As short as it gets #Summerhair

Long weekend #sunseasand #finallygettingMayweather #totalbreak

Another week goes by...another holiday. This time, we were celebrating Pentecost. Or more accurately, celebrating the glorious long-weekend weather by going to the seaside.

We had gone to Nantes for the weekend to catch up with Mamie, Moon, Abuelo, Tonton Le Druz and Maëlle at Mamie's house, and on Sunday we travelled the 90km or so from Nantes to Piriac-sur-Mer, a little seaside town on the South Brittany coast.

And it was beautiful.

The sun was hot but the wind was cool so we* stayed wrapped up to both stay warm and protect ourselves from the sun. We had lunch on the beach round the coast and then an ice-cream and drinks at the port.

A change is as good as a rest they say, and we feel like we've been away for a week!

*I say we, but that means everyone except Druz and El Puma who actually SWAM (as did some locals). And then promptly got burnt as they dried (c-c-cold wind).


Instead of boring seaside pictures I thought I'd try playing a bit with the filters on my iphone. The results:

Getting out and about #bikeride #freshair #forest #zoo #togethertime #sunnyweathermakeseverythingbetter

The kids had just finished two weeks of holidays for their 'Easter' break, went back to school for 3 days and then had the long weekend of Ascension. Ascension fell on a Thursday but all schools and crèches shut on Friday too, even though businesses don't close (obviously), which kinda forces parents to take a holiday too or find an alternative childcare option for the day. Some of our friends didn't even bother coming back from holiday and just stayed away for 3 full weeks.

Anyway, we came back, we took Friday off and decided to make the most of it all by going away for a night. Apparently half of Paris had the same idea and all the trains were fully booked (and Paris was left 'emptier than during the holidays' according to our local market traders). Some friends kindly loaned us their car and El Puma eventually found a gîte available in the Parc natural régional de la haute vallée de la Chevreuse, which is basically a protected area in Île de France, about 40km from Paris.

While El Puma took Fingerling to pick up the car, I and my American friend Blaire took Small Fry and her little boy Zak on the train to the vast forest of Rambouillet, which has a train station right in the middle of it. 

They love each other so much they even have to share the same seat. Small Fry is looking slightly cross as he didn't get the window part.

Once El Puma arrived everyone got their gear on:

Zak was too heavy to go on a bike seat so he travelled in a trailer. We also got a trailer plus a bike seat so that we could swop Small Fry and Fingerling around and have a place for them to nap if required. 

After biking for about an hour we decided to head to a little lake for lunch. To our surprise we found a beach on the lake, but it was privatised and so we decided to eat for free at picnic tables in the forest beside the lake instead. But you know, it was the first sunny weekend of the year (first sunny weekend in 6 months really), temperatures were climbing to 26 degrees and we could see that the café sold ice-cream. So in we went and had a fabulous time.

We left only because Blaire had to catch a train back and because I was afraid I was going to get sunstroke. I actually managed to leave the house without a hat or a long-sleeved shirt (I just didn't think it would get that hot).

Biking back through the woods I played about a bit with the filter on my iPhone while biking and the kiddies slept.

After returning the bikes and Blaire and Zak to the train, we drove through Rambouillet and on to our little gîte in Auffargis, about 10km away. It had a huge garden and wasn't far from a crèperie: big pluses. Big minus: we were there with the kids who preferred our bed to theirs.

The next day was due to be another scorcher and we didn't feel like going back to Paris. We had thought about staying away for another night but it seemed like far too much effort to try and find an available gîte. So we drove on to Thoiry, 25km back towards Paris. And got about 3km away when this happened:

That is one big long traffic jam created by everyone else who also wanted to go to Thoiry.

And that's because Thoiry has a beautiful castle and an amazing zoo within the castle grounds. It's so famous that it receives over 400,000 visitors every year, about a quarter of whom went on Friday with us.

The zoo was opened in 1968 and has won many awards for how it looks after its animals. One if its attractions is the safari park, where you drive around in your car and spot over 20 African vegetarian species such as elephants, giraffes, ostriches, hippos etc. Small Fry has seen them all before but Fingerling was beside herself with excitement.

This could partly have been because we were actually moving. It had taken us 1.5 hours of queuing to travel the last 3km to the zoo, and then another full hour to enter the safari park. As El Puma commented: "it's like the Périphérique here". 

But it was still worth it. Once we'd done the safari trip we then parked and entered the actual castle grounds and the zoo itself. Within the main zoo are all the animals that would like to kill you if they and you had been roaming free in the safari part of the set up.

We arrived just in time for feeding time at the zoo, boom boom. Actually, we arrived just in time for feeding the Tigers, so dashed down from the entrance to the tiger enclosure. All the bumping jostled Fingerling to sleep and so she missed out on a pretty amazing experience. A glass tunnel has been built within the enclosure; the tigers can just jump over it, but it means that as a visitor you really get up close to them. And they are magnificent creatures. 

We also visited the lions and other big cats before finally calling it a day with another ice-cream. 

What, isn't this what YOU wear in 27 degree heat? This is me attempting to protect my head from the sun and especially my shoulders, chest and arms after I picked up a slight sunburn during our bike ride yesterday (despite sun cream but we were just out in the sun longer than I thought we would be).

To visit the big cats we were on a tree-top walkway, which provided another unique perspective - close but not in range.

 The main castle:

All in all, it was a brilliant weekend and a lovely little break from muggy Paris. Actually, we could probably have been anywhere and with the weather as it was, would have had an amazing time. Initially I was disappointed to not be able to get to the south of France this weekend, but the sun kind of made the south come to us.

On the way home we drove past the Forest International School where Small Fry spent 2 days last week. It's nestled on the top of a hill in Mareil-Marly and is an incredible campus with a view over Paris and the Eiffel Tower. If only we could afford those 20,000 euros a year school fees...

So, back to an actual full working week. But only one week: next week we get another day off. Vive la France!