Thoughts over coffee

I'm here in Lombok. It's a four day weekend but most of it yesterday was travel and I leave early Sunday morning so it's really closer to 2.5 days when you think about it. Lombok is a fastboat away from Bali and the Gili Islands and I'm deciding if I want to go to Gili tomorrow to dive or surf Kuta beach. Just had a pretty good lunch of spicy tuna sandwiches and coffee (OK, I had some fries too) and now I'm cooling off in the AC of my hotel room which is small but comfy and has this killer outdoor bathroom with 7ft stone walls and netting to keep the outside out, if you'll allow. The view is of mountains and green, green, green. I've never been knocked out before by a bathroom but I guess there's a first time for everything. Now I'm just listening to some Charlie Parker and pondering going to the restaurant to order some more coffee for my room. (two minutes later....) OK, coffee on its way!

Lombok is a lot like Bali in terms of the geography but it's a LOT less touristy. That has its good and bad points. In Bali everything was brought right to you, almost in a pushy way. In Lombok it's here but you have to go out and look for it. The town of Senggigi is the only real metropolitan place if you can call it that. The airport is way out in the country and 90 minutes away from where I'm staying. It's new too, but I have no idea why anyone would build a brand new airport in the middle of the woods. It's damn weird but I maybe Lombok is a developing country and they have a lot more building to do. I suppose it is. It wouldn't surprise me! (my coffee just arrived!)

There's a lot of beautiful scenery here in Senggigi and there's cafes and what not but not much else. If you want to surf or dive or something like that you have to take a taxi or boat for an hour or two to those places. That's what tomorrow will be all about. As for today, I saw what I needed to see and now I've returned to my room. It's damn hot today. I don't mind sweat in the least but not over lunch. It's a vacation!

The most exciting/silly thing I've done was have a verbal jousting match with a couple of drunken PhD's from New Zealand. It was drew a bit of a crowd at the restaurant last night but it was good-natured and ended in a lot of laughs. More conversations should end that way. I held my own and if I do say so myself I probably won.

My birthday also passed two days ago and I hit the ripe old age of 43. I got tons of birthday wishes and congrats from friends and it made my day. On my 31st birthday I was looking at a ton of trouble and I thought my life was pretty much over. Unless you were there, you can't know. In a way it was, but more specifically the life I had been living was over and in its place over time this one asserted itself (with a lot of work from yours truly). I am lucky in a way that odds makers would only whisper about among themselves.