Let Knowledge Be the Food of Love

As I look out over the stunning city view of Boat Quay and the Singapore river, the Fullerton Hotel and the latest developments of the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resorts Hotel from my office in Singapore, it's hard to believe that I have the other tropical, jungle like 'Green Life' in Bali. During my month long stay in urbanisation, I breathe a sigh of relief while residing on the 10th floor of a hermetically sealed, air conditioned office which is bug, reptile and vermin free. I don't have to deal with snakes, rats, mice, frogs, termites, pre-historic looking insects whose trajectory just happens to coincide with mine, nor the latest outbreak of moths come to devour our clothes. Fed up with the sight of all my daughters wearing grungy tee-shirts with holes like emmental cheese, I've swapped them for brand new tee-shirts that for now will stay fresh looking in Singapore and yet will eventually take on a grey, off-white appearance when they return to their rural existence in Bali.

I'm loving this sense of urbanised security where I know that we'll all scrub up clean, I won't be surprised by  unfamiliar tropical creatures, power cuts or intermittent internet where the signal comes and goes as if it's dependent on the wind (which it most probably is).  When I have moments of comfort and pleasure like this, I wonder what possessed us to move to Bali in the first place, and yet I know it has been one of the best learning experiences we have ever had. After 9 years of living in in Singapore, I became very comfortable with my lifestyle, so much so that I took its efficiency for granted. The antithesis of Singapore, Bali has given me the new found expereince of taking nothing for granted, dealing with the unexpected and being flexible when things don't go according to plan. Bali has taught me that you never stop learning. We are all still 'green' and there is always new knowledge and wisdom to discover. It's often when things go wrong or not as you had planned, when you learn the most.

Continuing the theme of new knowledge, our Indonesian team assistant gave me a wonderful Christmas gift. She gave me a wooden sculpture, hand made by the gifted, local Balinese craftsmen. The sculpture was of Saraswati, the Goddess of Knowledge and Arts. What a perfect gift.  My assistant knows my voracious appetite for reading topics on personal development, knowledge and wisdom. She puts up with my moaning, sighing and somewhat impatient incredulity when peculiar things happen such as the vanishing snake catcher, who six weeks after the first sighting of a snake has still not turned up at our home, versus a 10 minute wait for 6 men in a van when a 12 inch, harmless snake was first spotted in our garden in Singapore!  Perhaps the snake catcher has had an unfortunate accident in the course of his work. There's also the peculiar situation where our internet provider can not understand why for the last couple of months our connection comes and goes and we have to go slow for 20 or 30 minutes in our working day, while we wait for the connection to come back to us again. Will we ever get to the bottom of this?  I do not know. Maybe a miracle will happen. Our assistant stays remarkably calm and it's as if she knows that I will eventually learn from all these happenings.

Saraswati has four hands representing four aspects of human personality in learning:-

• Mind
• Intellect
• Alertness
• Ego

Saraswati holds sacred scriptures in one hand, a lotus the symbol of true knowledge in the other and with her two other hands she plays the music of love and life on a string instrument called the veena. I'm beginning to wonder whether my helpful and knowing assistant is Saraswati herself!

Adding to Shakespeare's words 'Let music [and knowledge] be the food of love'. We are never too old to stop learning. No matter what happens to you, whether good or not so good, accept the flow of wisdom and knowledge you gain and continue to grow as a person.

As my eldest daughter's (currently clean) tee shirt says:-
"Don't let today's disappointments cast a shadow on tomorrow's dreams."

Merry Christmas and have a NoLimits 2011!

Janet

The Snakes and Ladders of Life

Life can sometimes feel like a game of snakes and ladders.  One moment, life is looking good and it feels like you are making progress up the ladder. The next moment, it can feel like you’ve come hurtling down a slippery snake and gone back quite a few paces. Just when I was thinking that the Bali wildlife of rats, mice, lizards, beetles, cockroaches, ants and pesky mosquitoes didn’t faze me anymore, snakes of different shapes, sizes and colours have turned up at our home. Over the last couple of weeks, there have been eight sightings of different snakes, from babies to adults and poisonous to non-poisonous varieties. I was most alarmed when my five year old daughter told me that she saw a baby snake reading one of her books in her bedroom and that she and our Balinese helper killed a long, green poisonous snake in our garden as if it were merely an everyday occurrence!

We've also witnessed a death in the family - Buddy Bird, a baby, who was rescued from drowning himself in the pond. Instead he gently passed away in a make do nest built by my daughters out of a cardboard box and a bed out of cotton wool. We looked up on the internet how to feed him and made some bird food out of egg and bread which he seemed to enjoy very much. We left him in the capable hands of our eldest daughter and her friend, while we braced the Bali traffic and did some errands at the weekend. By the time we got back he was pronounced dead. He died of severe haemorrhaging and we think our Bali cat, Mango, may have had something to do with his ailing condition. When I asked my daughter and her friend if they had buried Buddy, their response was 'no'.  They had thrown him in the river and if he hasn't been eaten by a snake or some other wild Bali resident, his corpse will be floating in the sea by now. He had exceptionally long legs, so must have been some type of wading bird and being thrown in the water was most probably the best way to go. Our girls bemoaned the fact that he only had a short life, although they understood he was now out of pain and they learned the life lesson, how precious life is.

Apart from the customary power cut and internet failure, I discovered that even though I have plans A, B, C, D and E and 6 staff in Bali who work at our villa and for our company NoLimits, I have no staff to cover me next week when it is both a Muslim and Hindu holiday in Bali and I have a workshop to run in Singapore where there are no public holidays during this time. I was told that maybe I need a Christian house staff member so that I'm covered for all eventualities! The joys of running a company in Singapore and living in Bali. My patience was finally tested when my 3 girls were sent home from school with hand, foot and mouth disease. Because next week is a long holiday, they will be off for 9 days before going back to school!  Oh the joys of being Mum and juggling work responsibilities! As leadership guru John Maxwell says:-

“You don’t overcome challenges by making them smaller. You overcome them by making yourself bigger.”

Even though we have experienced quite a few snakes recently, there have been ladders too. My daughters and I had a wonderful sleepover with a friend and her 3 daughters in Ubud - we had a memorable girls’ weekend and our children learned how to do Batik painting. My friend is a fellow Brit, she recently moved from Singapore to Bali with her husband and family, and we can joke about all our ‘snakes and ladders’ in the usual British self-deprecating manner. We happily talked non-stop until 2am Friday night / Saturday morning! I've learned that in spite of my attempt for order, structure, and contingency planning, things don't always go according to plan. Sometimes it's a case of simply finding an alternative ‘ladder’ to reach our outcomes.

Another 'ladder' has been watching the TED Video on the Green School by visionary founder John Hardy. I'm proud that our girls are experiencing the Green School, a once in a life time opportunity for them and a wonderful, creative way to learn. We've met some fascinating people who have broken the traditional corporate ‘ladder’ approach and are travelling through Bali on their world trips, have taken time out for their children to experience the Green School or have innovatively set up their own businesses either in or outside Bali. I was fortunate enough to be working with a young group of ‘techies’ in Singapore this week, who seemed to think I was 'cool' by living in Bali and running a business in Singapore. A great compliment for a middle aged woman who is old enough to be their Mum!

I have learned from the sad demise of Buddy Bird, life is too short to get stressed about snakes, no internet, not having enough staff to cover public holidays. As perfect timing to my 'what could go wrong next?' thoughts, I came across a quote that inspired me:-

"Make each day your masterpiece."
John Wooden, American Basketball Coach

Make something a masterpiece in each of your days and you’ll easily overcome challenes by being bigger than those snakes.

Janet

Click on the following link to hear John Hardy talk about the Green School:-
john_hardy_my_green_school_dream