Wayan is leaving for Paris!

Wayan, the brother of my landlord is heading to the airport today, leaving for Paris, France.  He has been going there to work at a zoo for a couple of months each year, for many years.

No, he is not a zoo keeper.  He is a woodcarver and he carves animals figures for display at the zoo.

My Balinese family: My landlord's mom, Wayan the brother, Made the landlord, Made's son.

and Deska.

Nyue Kuning is a wood carving village and almost every man can carve.  There are at least 4 men in my Balinese family who are carvers.  However you can not really tell that they are as they do not do that on a daily basis anymore.  They work either as a driver, villa manager or builder. 

A lot of the male Balinese are fine artists(some women too!) and some of them can not survive by selling their arts and crafts pieces, so they do something else. Is that upsetting? Sure. But they will tell you it is what it is, accept it, work around it and make life better.

Balinese live life.  They live the moment, do what they suppose to do, finish the task and call it a day.  Do they complain about lives?  Sure they do.  But again, they always just look at what is presented in front of them, they get the job done and move on to the next.  They seem to be contented at the end of the day.

Coming from a big city where I used to run from one place to another and doing godzillian things at once, my Balinese friends have inspired me to just simply live life.