44. Reunited with my besti speciality person! :D

My mum is without a doubt the most fantastic pencil.

She’s strong – and sharp – blunt and to the point. Forgiving – happy for you to erase things and rewrite the rest of the story. Begin again, by all means. Sometimes she’s hard, and sometimes she’s soft. But. She is always colourful – she comes in bright pinks and blues! She’s creative and is heaps of fun!

The only difference between my mummy and a pencil – is her heart. She has a heart the size of Uranus and makes me laugh more that Cameron in “Modern Family”

She’s my best friend. My constant rock, my sweet, loving.. pencil.

And I hadn't seen her for nine months – after leaving the country for the first time.. and here she was! Well – needless to say we didn't shut up – and jabbered into the wee hours – more like late morning ;)  the following day! But that’s us – so much to say so little time J Always J

Besides being in some alternate universe where every human is pumped with happy gas – because this is what we do to each other J we loved Ubud. LOVED it. It was not this “terrible, touristy, overpriced place” that so many people had told me it was. We found it to be cheap, and the food out of this world – peanut sauce is just a very happy thing for me.  And it’s SO clean – the people have so much pride in their place – taking great care of it. And they radiate bliss – smiling and friendly – always making sure to ask where you are going so that they can relax knowing that you are ok. All is right with the world. Constantly making offerings and praying to their gods. It’s a wonder.. They don’t seem to walk, they glide.. and I found myself biting my tongue – so badly wanting to ask – “Dude? what are you on?” If I wasn’t high off my mum’s happy gas I might of asked for some ;)

We had a “fun day” of missioning around – sussing the place out – we went to Monkey forest which was green and lush – monkey’s doing gymnastics in the water – that’s a sight I’ll never forget and went to the market – I showed me mumzi what a brilliant bargainer I am – she was proud J We found little places to eat and drink my new found friend “Bintang” It’s my best beer. BEST.

The following day we went exploring the rice paddies, forests and local community in Ubud with the charming “Putu” who was a world of information and always tried his best, constantly asking us if he was doing ok, if we we’re happy, if we understood him and so forth. And he was everything we told him he was, and more! We learnt a lot about the Balinese – how they work and how their families function and so forth, after which we had a delicious meal combined with great conversation.

All in all Ubud was so much more that we we’re expecting it to be – the people blew us over with their kindness and the place – with the orange mud covered buildings – so intricately carved – a joy to look at, peanut sauce galore and Bintang to boot!

It was a happy gas indeed!