Bali, Indonesia

After the successful (I hope) field interviews on East Java, I caught a flight to Bali for a few days before returning to Switzerland. I didn't really know anything about it except that it was known for surfing and maybe something with yoga - I did not have much of a plan except to meet up with Julio, a friend from my masters program who has been living there while working for an energy efficiency company. I was initially looking into some diving-surfing-yoga-spearfishing packages, but did not book anything before I arrived. At least it was good to know that there were so many options.

The day after I arrived, Jules picked me up on his moto-scooter and we headed to Ubud, the sort of yoga-hippie capital of (possibly) the world, - thanks in part to the role it plays in Eat, Pray, Love. You can buy vegan ice cream flavored with healing frequencies. My mom said she wants to go to Bali, but minus some of the waves and sand, Asheville is basically the same.

We went to the coolest, most intimidating coffee shop that I have ever been to (including those in Seattle). They were serious about their roasts and had so many gadgets/methods for brewing, but I was mostly impressed by the decor:

That cup and saucer! That water cup! That dainty banana leaf wrapped snack!

Plastic chairs transformed into  rocking chairs!

By some famous Ubud rice paddies!

Ubud was unexpected. I mean, when I landed in Denpasar I was amazed at the density and level of construction, especially compared with Malang, but Ubud was full on culture shock: yoga-bros on macbooks, a monkey sanctuary, burritos, spas, raw food...

I found a dive tour operator who had space for me to go to Tulamben, in the north of the island, to use my new scuba skills to check out a shipwreck! During WWII, a US Naval ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and then towed to shore (there were no casualties). It sat there for years, until 1963 when Mt Agung erupted and the lava carried the ship back into the water, but not too far.

Mt. Agung

To get to the wreck, we just walked in from the shore and saw a blue barracuda almost immediately upon going under the surface. On the first dive, I was so distracted and in awe of all the fish to my right, I did not notice the huge, coral-covered wreck to my left for a few minutes.

My first shipwreck and shore dive!
Blue water and lava rocks!

Near one of Bali's "sunset temples"
NB: The best shots weren't actually of the temple and the stairs that you have to receive a "blessing" to scale don't actually lead to the temple (or even a cooler view).

Back in Sanur, there were no fewer hippie options. Green smoothies and superfoods galore! Even opportunities to connect with the earth while inside.

These are grass mats that you can take with you into the restaurant to rest your bare feet on for at least 10 minutes. 

The instruction sheet for the grass mats reads:

benefits of earthing:

Going barefoot is grounding

Re-energizes you through the earth's natural electric currents

Clears your mind

Receive more Chi

Like a free reflexology session

Decreases anxiety & depression

Strengthen muscles & ligaments in your feet, ankles & calves

Decrease varicose veins.

POST your EARTHING MOMENTS share the (heart image)

#earthing

I caught a half day surf lesson on the morning of the day I flew out. It took a while, but I was able to stand up! It was really fun, but the aftermath was painful.  Despite what I thought was a through sunscreeening, the back of my legs got fried - so uncomfortable for the long flight home - and my hands and thighs were red and irritated from the board. 

Malang, Indonesia

While editing some of my interviews today at the office, I noticed that the photos I was adding were from "more than 7 weeks ago," which makes me wonder where the time has gone and feel a bit of guilt. (I wrote that before my recent two week trip to the US, so let's just round up to more than two months) After my conference in Kuching and stopover in Kuala Lumpur, I traveled to Malang, East Java to conduct a series of interviews with people involved with a vermicomposting network, which will be part of a larger series of case studies on "waste" recovery. It was a busy few days filled with culinary adventures.

First things first: there is krispy kreme in the Jakarta airport.

A taste of home, but with innovative varieties, like peanut butter and jelly!

My time in Malang was scheduled to the brim by my two student assistants from a local university, Dwi and Hana. They did a great job with the pre-interviews and tracking down people without addresses.

They wear Letterman-style jackets from their "Agritech Research and Study Club" and are currently in Japan on a research exchange.

I asked them to act like badass biker chicks next to their motos.

One of the many worm-growing groups who were gracious enough to talk to us about their experiences.

Such healthy worms. Perfect for turning into:

Food for baby shrimp,

Vitality Capsules,

Sports drinks (CHEERS!) and much more!

I was offered worms 4 times. I consumed them twice (sports drink and honey elixir), passed once (worm covered ginger), and brought one back to Switzerland (the capsules) for my friends to try. Two months of sitting on my desk and I have not had any takers, yet. 

Aside from the worms, I ate well. In addition to a stop at KFC in Anto's honor (an Indonesian friend from my master's program who introduced me to Indonesians' love for fried chicken and rice), I enjoyed bakso and other stews (kept and served hot).

A little hard to tell, but I love the presentation.

Also, I ate BRAINS at a Maskan Padang. So smooth!

Roti is basically an Indonesian (?) doughnut (baked, not fried). So good. On at least one occasion I just ate these for dinner after a long day in the field.

Switzerland - Zürcher Seeüberquerung

That is the crossing of Lake Zürich, which happened last week. Most frequently one would überquer a street--- or actually quer a street über, as it is a separable verb.

So scenic!

A friend from Germany was recently visiting me and we were talking about if I liked Zürich and why and a big part of my (somewhat flimsy) answer was the city's relationship with the water. With two rivers and a lake, the summer in Zürich is so chill. Go to a bar next to the Limmat, jump of the neighboring bridge and float down to the next one with your waterproof bag that houses your towel and wallet. So relaxed for a seemingly uptight city. Maybe it is because European cities were usually built next to rivers and lakes and that is not my experience from back home. Anyways, this event further exemplifies this notion.

Every summer (as long as the center lake gets warm enough {70F/21C?}, the city's sport department with several partners organizes a special day when anyone who feels physically capable can pay 20 francs and swim 1.5 kilometers across Lake Zürich from one public swimming area to another. The  course is set up with buoys and balloon towers to mark the way and kayaks and motorboats to keep other boats from crossing and to save anyone who gets tired.

The route: Mythenquai to Tiefenbrunnen.

I first heard about it last year, but it got cancelled because of the weather, despite the two make up days. This year I saw the advertisements in the tram, but didn't know my schedule and assumed it was something for which you needed to sign-up in advance and train (WRONG!). I was planning on doing it next year, with some proper training.

When I got to the office Wednesday morning, I received a group text to my frisbee team asking if/when they were meeting to do the swim. I had a pretty empty afternoon and thought Why Not? (I am trying to say yes to more things these days). Plus, who knows what the weather will be like next summer  - maybe it will get canceled again. I checked with my boss to make sure everything for our event the next day was set and then headed home to grab my suit and goggles at lunchtime.

It was even the nicer kind of swim cap (silicone) - that alone
is  worth half of the entrance fee.

The event website was very clear:

• This is not a competition! 
• There is no timing! 
• There is no registering! (The first ten thousand people who show up and pay are given a swim cap with a number which dictates your start time.... show up between two and six in the afternoon) 
• Decide for yourself, if you are in the right health state for this. Talk to your doctor if you aren't sure if you can handle it. 
• Included: swim cap, warm-up, gift, bag transport across the lake and risotto.
• Verboten: Cameras and flotation devices

On the bus ride there I was thinking about how I had not swum a lap since last September when I was rehabbing my knee (and that was only twice before I got a gym membership and switched to working out on an elliptical) and have not really been doing any sort of endurance workouts recently. I was relying on my experience swimming the 500 yard freestyle event for the high school swim team (almost 10 years ago!) to carry me through. I mean it is over a mile! But also shorter than you would typically swim in a swim practice (so totally doable)! But there is no resting or hanging on the wall! Back and forth in my mind the whole way there.

The crew. Changing the club charter to a swim club
 (or exploring opportunities in Water Ultimate... Underwater Rugby is already a thing, you guys)

I met my teammates (and a former teammate) at three, we got our start numbers, sun screened and watched the group before us do the warm-up. I thought warm-up meant there would be some part of the lake where you could swim a bit, but it was basically an aerobics class with music and an instructor and two backup dancers. So just imagine hundreds of people in bathing suits and caps stepping and dancing almost in unison. People who were just at the swimming area to escape the heat also joined in --- it was about 95F (quite warm for a country with very little air conditioning). When it was our turn, I didn't even fall over and mostly kept the rhythm.

The warm up from 2009 (Source: 20 Minutes {the free morning newspaper})

We started in heats of a few hundred swimmers (I don't know about our group, but the initial group was 800 people). The beginning was intimidating. The water was so cold and we all went in the water assuming everyone would be faster than us, so I was basically stuck behind layers of people swimming breaststroke without putting their heads in the water and chatting the whole time. I tried to squeeze between people to pass them so I could swim crawl (1500 meters of breaststroke - no way I would make that!) and was kicked in the ribs a few times. I made my way over to the fast lane, with no intention of being fast, but rather wanting to utilize the space that the fast folks left behind them. Life was much better over there!

View from the shore last year. "Fast swimmers" to the left of the balloons, "swimmers" to the right. (Source: postmedien.ch)

By the time I made it to  Buoy #1 the temperature was great and I felt accomplished for at least getting started and kept trying to do the math about how far I had left to go (they never said how many buoys there were). Luckily at 350m, 650m, and a few other intervals they posted the actual distances so I could gauge my progress. With each one I felt more confident that I could finish. I couldn't quite swim in a straight line, but it wasn't nearly as drastic as the time in middle school when I somehow swam under the lane lines (during backstroke?) and either finished or did my flip-turn in the (luckily empty) lane next to me. Leisurely freestyle with occasional directional reorientation and navigation around people, with no fatigue, in the sun- it was so nice and enjoyable.   

Even if your Swiss German is not tiptop, the video on this site will give you a good idea of the experience/scale.

I finished and went to the tent where volunteers were handing out drinks. I assumed that it was something like Gatorade, although at running races in Germany, I have seen them hand out beer and alcohol free beer. The cup was warm, but it was 90+F so I chalked it up to a lack of refrigeration and took a sip. BROTH! Soup. Not intuitively refreshing at all, but some how enjoyable enough that I went back for seconds while I was waiting for my teammates to finish.

We collected our gift water bottles, free risotto (it didn't have much taste, but to have dinner included at a sporting event that only cost 20 bucks was a nice touch) and carry-on sized sunscreen, then headed to a slightly less crowded and more shady area nearby for some swimming and a bit of a picnic. 

VERDICT: This was sooooo cool, despite growing up as a swimmer, I had never done an open water swim before. I think I would like to try to do more of it or just more swimming in general. I was on the faster side for this very causal event, but not for a competition - it would be nice to train a bit more seriously or at least with a goal in mind.

Also, talk about Swiss efficiency! Almost 9,000 people showed up at a the equivalent of a public pool (albeit with a very big lawn) over the course of 4 hours and made it across the lake with no preregistration. You would wait in a fairly short line (there were some surges when the nearby trams and buses arrived, but I don't think anyone waited more than 7 minutes) hand someone 20 francs in return for a cap that had a tag for your bag so you could pick it up on the other side, an instruction sheet and a meal coupon inside. 

This was on a mid-week afternoon-- that is a lot of folks skipping out on work (most of the people I was there with were teachers or PhD students, but that is still a pretty impressive crowd).

When I got home and checked my work email, I found out that more people had signed up for our workshop on Thursday and by the way we need you to moderate a workshop group. This caught me off guard, but my group ended up having a great discussion about sanitation supply chains :)

Enjoying a European summer so far! I'm off to Germany for a fun 4vs4 ultimate tournament next weekend, then hopefully a bit of enjoying/exploring Switzerland before a tentative Southeast Asia work trip in August.  

CLT+AVL, USA

Since I was in the proper earth-quadrant, I passed through North Carolina. Good thing I had this detour planned, because my parents are moving out of their house where quite a bit of my stuff has been living. I got rid of a lot of stuff, but can not bring everything to Europe with me. (Thanks for the continual storage space, folks!) I spent some time in the mountains fly fishing with my dad, then we headed to Charlotte for a few days of cleaning and hanging out with the whole family - the little sister was also in town. I was also fortunate enough to see my Grandma and an Aunt and Uncle - I didn't have time to make it to Raleigh, but will *knock on wood* be there in Autumn.

Asheville might be known for its beer, but the food that comes with it is pretty dope!

mole-mint lamb meatballs with cucumbers

Honestly, I ordered "the glutton" for the novelty value.
Fried chicken on a brioche doughnut with Gruyere and something maple. 

Back in Charlotte, I was forced to get a manicure with my Auntie B (Thanks! The "Game of Chromes" gel color I got to-go works great and I've gotten lots of compliments on it.) and was able to do some US American things like watching baseball and going to a bridal shower.

Family at the new-to-me downtown baseball stadium. So urban.

Technology can be difficult for the newly retired.

The lil'sis and me at her BFF's bridal shower.
Congrats, Emma! Sorry that I can't make it back for the wedding.

Gma aka my (probably) number one blog-reader.

Two sets of sisters. It  was great seeing all of you.

Haiti

I was in Haiti in April to help run an innovation workshop for a sanitation NGO and look at their operations in two Haitian cities. To learn more you will just have to wait for my dissertation to come out in a few years.

Post-its and ideas galore!

Poop-compost with an ocean view.
To get to this site, we drove through the city dump - basically a DREAM COME TRUE!
(not the way the dump worked, but seeing it first hand)

They are doing some experiments to determine what sort of benefits
come from using their soil additive. 

After all that intense learning and research, there was time for a day at the beach. A thirty minute moto ride from the city where I was staying + another 20 on a boat landed my friends and I on a picturesque beach. As we approached the shore, several fishermen paddled up in kayaks with their catch, which we could then have cooked on the beach. My friends had been there before several times and knew one of the cooks, so they had him negotiate with the fishermen for us. There was time for relaxing on the shore, volleyball, and  snorkeling. I saw coral and so many fish! I had sort of given up on finding a time to go scuba diving, but now I am resolved to make it happen.

Type of boat that took us the last stretch.

Yum :)

My list of sea-life that I saw. I will try to match up the descriptions to images later.
(My google search for "fish that look like pickles" yielded no useful results.)

The beach itself was kind of strange. For the past few years, Haiti has been added as a stop on one of the big cruise lines (rumor has it that they just tell passengers that they are going to Hispaniola Island). Basically the passengers have to stay in an enclosed area with a water slide, zip-line, jet skis and inflatables, but can pay extra to be taken to the nice beach where we hung out. They let non-cruise people go there on days when there is no cruise ship.

You an see the the huge water slide in the cruise stop area.

With a productive workshop, interesting field visits, and a surreal beach experience under my belt, I flew back to the US for some quality family time.

Window seat!

Boracay, Philippines

Since I was "in the neighborhood" at a conference in Vietnam, I decided to check out a well known beach ultimate tournament in the Philippines. It was pretty sweet. I picked up with a university team from Australia, which was going by the name Sharkbait for the tournament. The name comes from Finding Nemo, so there were lots of great movie references as cheers. There were also two Filipinos and a Canadian on the team. This was my first tournament back after having a bone bruise on my kneecap in August. I had only even been to two practices, but everything felt great! 

Lookin' good! Not that my eyes were open in any of the photos.

I met up with my team two nights before the tournament began for a strategy session.
We discussed tactics for 4vs4 beach - cutting patterns are illustrated above. 

Some of the team went snorkeling the next day - I spent it reading and getting a massage on the beach.

No the worst place to have a throw.

 The tournament has some teams at a high level, the home team was using it to train for the World Championships of Beach Ultimate, which are coming up next month, but there were still plenty of quirky elements that can be expected of beach ulty:

• Pulls had to be overhand throws  
• You could drop the pull as long as you were attempting a trick catch
• An endzone-to-endzone score counts as two points



Teammate coming down will a (poorly considered) 2 point huck of mine.
Photo from Diego Zuluaga via facebook (check out the whole series starting here)

• Instead of flipping, one player from each team stands together in an endzone and simultaneously throws a disc, aiming to be the closest to the other endzone line, without going completely over (I was really good at this. The fields were pretty much exactly as long as my hammer.)

Doing a throw-off against Hong Kong. Awkward posture. Photo credit: Bella

The tournament is known for its nightlife, which did not disappoint.
Photo credit: Ali

My team, along with future tournament winners, Bangerang!, are serenading me with Sweet Caroline.

These boys killed it on the drums on the slow march/dance parade on the way to the party on the last night.
It was a part of a Ati-Athihan Festival simulation that was put on for tournament goers. 

Ati-Atihan revelers. Photo: Ali

So much sun! Photo: Bella

So I over paid for this dope hat to stem the sunburn.
Although, the real star of this photo are the mango shakes!
Photo: Bella

Fun playing, fun people great food! All in all we won two games, both against the same team. One of my teammates made the mythical squad from our bracket (like the dream team) and I won a pair of flip-flops and a carved Boracay Dragons rock thingy for having the most Ds of the women in the B bracket - I felt so tall compared to most of the Filipino women . 

Wouldn't have worn the glasses, if I had known I'd be going up on stage. Photo: Diego Zuluaga via facebook

My leaving the island breakfast. A fantastic pancake with peanut butter, mango jam, and clotted cream.
I could only eat half of it.

Obligatory infrastructure photo :)

I don't actully know what islands those are.

I flew back to Zürich via Singapore. I had grand shopping plans for my layover, but was in the wrong terminal. I was really close to buying a a cell phone that looked like a mini calculator like 2x3 square inches and just a centimeter thick.

I was able to visit Mickey's Swiss chalet in the Singapore airport (the roof looked like a poptart!)

I landed to snow in Switzerland - not the sun and sand to which I had quickly grown accustomed.