Grateful for:
- Making breakfast for 6 people. My love of cooking for others get exercised daily.
- Receiving an urgent work assignment just as we were all dashing off to the ceremony. I was so sure something like this is going to happen as usual after weeks of relative silence exactly on the wedding day I must have manifested it. Still the ability and successful execution of an urgent web task on the way to and in between various parts of the wedding makes me feel like a web dev superwoman that I am.
- The wedding itself will forever go down in history as the most unusual wedding I have ever been too. The setting: high cliff overlooking the ocean. Weather: the stormiest winds that have been blowing anything and everything away and a spot of horizontal rain from which I was gallantly shielded. Balinese traditional ceremony that was peppered with too many funny symbolic moments to mention, and of course my best friend’s non stop beaming face made for the most memorable of moments. Seeing someone I know since the age of 7 get married it touched me deeply and changed something ever so slightly in the fabric of my world.
- Sharing left overs of ceremonial bride and groom’s wedding dish between 10 people while the photo session took place. Thanks goes to my bottomless ever ready bag which stored a set of travel utensils that made this feast possible. The various bits and pieces were simply delicious and if that is traditional Balinese food, makes me wonder, what exactly was I eating before?
- Spending a day visiting far away picturesque island gems: waterfall and a lake with lots of driving around the mountains in between.
- Seeing the craziest serpentine roads of all I have witnessed today. As a life long motorcycle rider I can appreciate this kind of thing and also appreciate that they were so twisted I would actually be scared to ride here.
- Taking photos amidst the spray of the waterfalls, dancing on the tiny rickety bridge and hugging the bride over the ocean cliff.
- Eating bananas and guavas from the back of the car and drinking local herbal port wine from the back of the car during pit stops.
- Having a good hear to heart with a friend inspired by the topic at hand: the weddings. As someone who is attempting again to stay single, I really appreciated the words of wisdom from the “other side” from someone who stayed single for 2 years: once you stay single and arrange your life accordingly it becomes really hard to give up your habits and time with dear friends to attempt a connection and relationship with someone, it is a sort of a trap. I have heard this said before already but only now it made sense. That is why people rush off to get married in their early twenties, to instil the habit of a relationship and being with someone on a day to day basis. Because otherwise if the habit of singledom is instilled and a few emotional scars are accumulated along the way it becomes harder and harder to not just create space, but give up ones OWN life for the sake of “OUR life together”. Myself still counted in the “almost always attached” camp, I can not yet resonate with these sentiments but it was a welcome counter opinion to the prevailing advise directed at me of late to stay single for at least 1 year to “discover myself”.
- Abandoning the plans for a dinner at the fishing village restaurant on the beach for the most welcome late night dinner at our favourite restaurant a few blocks away. It solved not only a waning wedding budget dilemma but also provided a memorable in its uniqueness and “unexpectedness” finale to the grand day of celebrations and love.
- Ordering 10 dishes between the two of us while waiting for everyone else to arrive and then being served those 10 dishes around a large table to the questioning eyes of the rest of the restaurant. The traffic turned out so bad outside that we had to sit with those dishes for quite some time and managed to steal a few pieces of potatoes from each one once own meals were over.
- Going on to finish off the celebrations at the local night club which ended with another heart to heart at 3 am in the morning. I dish out some sound advice but probably need to work on a less brutal delivery… or not.
- Ending the night by copying music and photos across 3 PCs which seems to be my common farewell procedure by now. My friends are off on a little post wedding trip and I will be leaving for Melbourne before they get back.