Build Diary 61 – Happy New Year! (My walls are leaking!)

Welcome to 2025! 

Hello Friends and welcome to 2025! I hope you had a great holiday and celebrated the new year with your loved ones.

Here at BI HQ, we visited Soulshine to ring in the new year. It’s such an awesome experience that this was the third year in a row we have done it. Soulshine is the creation of my friends Michael and Sara Franti. It has an incredible and fun family-friendly atmosphere that feels like a mini-festival. 

There were wonderful Kecak and interpretive dance performances, as well as the annual burning of the numbers to welcome the new year. My kids roamed freely, went down the water slide 100 times, and occasionally joined the adults to hit the dance floor to the sounds of local favs The Muchies, as well as Michael playing too. Good vibes guaranteed! 

Bali traffic can be very annoying, especially in the rain, and even more so during the big holidays when so many domestic and international tourists flood the island, so it was an extremely pleasant surprise to encounter no traffic on our way there or back. Perhaps living just outside of Canggu, and Soulshine being just south of Ubud, meant that we avoid the major congestion areas. 30 mins door to door – I’m not complaining!

My Rookie Mistake

I made a rookie mistake in Bali recently. As you may know, I recently moved into a local house and I’ve been slowing renovating it. I got sick of my bare walls with random jagged concrete patches in them, so I decided to have them painted a gorgeous limewash paint. It looked fantastic and I was pleased as punch……..until the rainy season began. 

You see, I had made an error. I’d thought that as the house had remained unscathed after a few random rain showers, that it was waterproof. And boy, was I wrong! 

We’re in the middle of a particularly heavy rainy season. And while my garden loves it, my walls don’t. It turns out that while my roof seems quite waterproof, my walls are not. Many of my exterior walls are clearly letting water in, which is travelling through the concrete and brick and then damaging my internal wall. There are so many wet patches on my walls that it looks like a weird abstract pattern! So it seems like the exterior wall needs to be re-waterproofed (which involves breaking off the exteriors cement, adding a layer of waterproofing, then re-cementing with a mixture that includes waterproofing, and then finally waterproofing the final wall). Well, that’s what my tukang tells me. We’ll see if it works! 

Unfortunately, it takes a few days to do each section of wall and I need those days to be sunny. I don’t think we’ve had 3 sunny days in a row for the last month, so I can’t do it now. I’ll have to wait until the end of the rainy season and then start the process. Then, repaint the affected interior walls. Lesson learnt! 

Bakso boy 

My son Phoneix says he feels more Indonesian than Australian. After moving to Bali when he was 6 months old, he’s probably right. He certainly is if you look at his eating preferences. 

He’s much rather eat with his hands in a local warung than in a cafe or a restaurant. He  would happily eat rice 3 times a day if he could.

But his absolutely favourite is Bakso. Bakso is a clear soup with spongy ping pong sized meatballs in it. He loves it! 

He woke up on new year’s day with a sore stomach and needed some comfort food. Bakso to the rescue! 

I didn’t even know he ate it regularly, until one day I saw his nanny Wayan in our local little street next to the local bakso cart. Phoenix was sitting by the side of the road with Wayan, happily slurping down some bakso. I knew Wayan took him out every afternoon to explore the rice fields and play with the local kids, but I didn’t know he was eating street food at age 1!  

Since then, his love of bakso has only increased. Sadly, when I make it at home, he shakes his head and mumbles that the street bakso is better.

And what better way to show his love of bakso than to dress up as a bakso man for Halloween. His sister joined the party by dressing as a Grab driver. You can certainly see where these kids grew up! 

Wishing you a great 2025! See you soon

Sheila

See below for Phoenix’s bakso love over the years!