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South East Asia revisited againFor the second time in full-scale we now head out to work from yet another exciting and inspiring place. We have homed in on Bali and are therefore heading back to South East Asia. Yes, both flippers and laptops are with us on the trip. November 1 - January 3
After some sweet leisure time in Thailand it was time to roll up our sleeves and get down to business on Bali, Indonesia. Settling downIt was surprisingly easy to hook into the intricate network of houses that are available for rent here in Penestanan (in the outskirts of Ubud). We didn't have to look for houses - they were looking for us. Most of them look the same; two level houses with two bedrooms, one bathroom, porch and a balcony. But as any real estate agent would say - "it's all about location, location, location". The quest was to find a house in a surrounding and with an atmosphere that had some classical oumpf. Preferrably without neighbours keeping obnoxiously small and loud dogs. I don't like to work in a kennel. The price range was, apart from those ridiculously expensive places that must have been equipped with AC pumping imported air from the French Alps, between 3-7 million rupiah per month. The house we chose to open OurEgo's Balinese office in landed at 4.5. That is with house cleaning and complimentary slowbaked duck-dinners. Not too shabby... ElectricityBali is a small island, dwarfed by its big neighbour Java, and as they developed Bali it seemed much easier to pull a cable over the strait between the islands instead of building a powerplant on the little sister. Which is fine, of course. However, every Tuesday at 6pm somebody on Java pulls the plug for a few hours. And sometimes he does it on Sundays. Believe me when I say that it is really dark here then in the outskirts of Ubud as we are probably not considered to be worthy of the few drops of current that still flows to Bali. At least the power company is kind enough to inform about these blackouts on their website... Getting connected in UbudGetting online in Ubud proved to be a greater challenge than we expected. There are quite a few restaurants that offer free WiFi or ethernet cable for working nomads like us but this solution tends to lead to vast amounts of money being spent on fruit juices, snacks and coffee. And as our house doesn't have a telephone line, meaning a regular modem was out of the question, we were left considering mobile connections like our cellphones, 3.5G modems and a vast array of different operators. When we went to Kuala Lumpur, the haven for geeks and technology freaks, we shopped around and got us an unlocked 3.5G modem packing every possible mobile transfer technology (CDMA, HSDPA, EDGE, GPRS and other acronyms that mean complicated stuff). After returning to the OurEgo HQ in Ubud with this little puppy it was time for a benchmark test of different network operators. It didn't take long to settle a winner as a properly configured SIM-card from Telkomsel allowed us to get a download link at 0.65 Mbits/s. Other operators like Indosat, XL and Axis didn't give us more than 100 Kbits which didn't invoke any smiles... Considering that we're working from the balcony, surrounded by rice fields and cool creatures I have to say that our 0.65 Mbits/s is pretty damn good. What else?What more is there to say at the moment? Well, Ubud (or more specific - Penestanan) is a wonderful town to be in. Inspiration and creativity can be found everywhere around here, and it is easy to tap into these positive flows of energy. However, the temperature here is still a challenge as our brains are not accustomed to function at a high level when temperature and humidity reach the silly end of the scale. Shadow, plenty of hydration and a relaxed office dresscode has been the best way to cope with it so far. | ||
