On Episode 532: Same Same but Different: Katy Visits Bali we discuss what sets different places apart In a world that is becoming ever more homogenized. What are the blaring indicators that communicate we are in a place vastly different from anywhere we’ve ever been before?
After a magical and sometimes maddening week in Bali, Katy lays out the ways the island delighted and surprised her, the aspects that felt wholly different from what she is used to, and discusses with Tiffany how they compare with the cities of Rome and Seattle.
You can listen to the episode right here, or find the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and elsewhere.
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Episode 550 Life Lessons from Japan
Episode 490 Just Across the Border: Austria vs. Italy
Episode 341 Around the World in Twelve Months (with Cyndie Burkhardt)
Episode 298 VIETNAM
Episode 288 CHINA VS BALI
Episode 264 TRAVEL ANXIETY
Episode 254 NOTRE DAME
Episode 224 DOLOMITES
Episode 174 RALLY (with Scott Gurian)
Episode 112 EXPLORE (with Clare Brown)
Bittersweet Moment #210: Belgium: Europe’s Best-kept Secret
Five key takeaways from the episode:
- Tiffany and Katy discuss the differences in morning sounds, smells, and overall atmosphere between Bali, Rome, and Seattle, highlighting how diverse the world remains despite globalization.
- They compare attitudes towards pets in different locations, noting that in Bali, dogs and cats roam freely during the day, while in Rome and Seattle, pet ownership practices are more controlled.
- Work-life balance varies significantly, with Bali having no concept of weekends and long work hours, contrasting with the established weekends in the US and Italy.
- Religion plays a more visible role in daily life in Bali and Rome compared to Seattle, with religious symbols and practices more openly displayed in public spaces.
- The hosts reflect on how traveling to different cultures provides perspective on one’s own culture and lifestyle, reminding them of the diversity that still exists in the world.
Full Episode Transcript:
Katy
Hey there, it’s Katy. Have you noticed as you listen to podcasts lately that there are a lot more ads? And sometimes those ads sound just like something that you would hear on commercial radio. They’re loud, they’re done by actors. They are discordant with the rest of the show that you’re listening to. And sometimes an ad even interrupts the show mid sentence. There are tons of companies who are offering to litter our episodes with ads, but time and time again, Tiffany and I have said no. I mean, the reason why is pretty basic. It’s because that kind of advertising is annoying. And we want this show to be a refuge from all of that. We want this show to be a conversation as if you were having it with friends. And friends are never interrupted mid sentence by an ad that said, we do need to make money to keep this show on the air. If we cannot pay our bills, that’s it. That will be the end of the show. And our hope, and our hope is that you will appreciate this place away from all that frenetic commercial activity and show your appreciation by supporting the show with a financial contribution. Five bucks. That’s all it takes. Five dollars a month? Less than one cup of coffee these days. At least if you’re living in the United States and you’re gonna get something for that five bucks, too, you’re gonna get bonus episodes, at least two a month. And soon, maybe more online meetups once a quarter where you can say hello and help us record an episode. And soon you’ll even be able to text us directly. And of course, you’ll get a handwritten thank you note in the mail with special gifts included. That’s because you’re important to us. You’re not just some nameless donor. You’re who you are. And that matters to us. I don’t just stick the five bucks into a spreadsheet. I actually think, wow, this person loves the show so much, they actually want to help us keep it going. And that’s why I want to write to you. I think of you as a friend. And we do have a goal. It’s a relatively modest one. We would love to have enough people pitch in to get us over $1,000 a month. That would really help us get on a much more solid footing than we currently are to keep the show going. With all of our other obligations in life and work, we have just got to outsource some of the weekly work. We need audio editing help. We need marketing help, but we have no budget for these things. And yet we are hoping that you will hear the call, that you’ll become what I like to think of as a Bittersweet Lifer, part of an inner circle, a group of smart, seeking, brilliant people from all over the world who come together for this show. And through this show, if we can get to over $1,000 a month consistently and actually sustain that amount for a few months, I’m going to reward you with a really fun listen. I’m going to let you hear the super-secret pilot for the podcast I created that’s called the Ex-Files. If you’ve been a listener for some time, you might remember that I won a contest, it was kind of a Shark Tank type event to create a new podcast called the Ex-Files. It’s where two people who were once in a relationship and aren’t anymore share their individual perspectives on what went right and what went oh, so wrong. And then we edit their two accounts together and we see where their memories line up and where they do not. The pilot and the very brave couple that is in it is absolutely fascinating. You will not believe some of the memories that don’t line up, things that you would almost take as fundamental. And I am going to release it once we cross that $1,000 mark that $1,000 threshold and maintain it for a few months. So I hope if you love this show, you will hear my appeal. I hope you will become a Bittersweet Lifer today, become a part of our inner circle. You can visit patreon.com/thebittersweetlifepodcast to pitch in. You can find the link in the show notes patreon.com/thebittersweetlifepodcast that’s patreon.com. If it confuses you, if you have any trouble and you still want to pitch in, just send us a note and we’ll help you out. All right, on to the show. $5 a month at a minimum. Of course, you can pay more if you’d like. We will be forever grateful to you. And if you contribute, I’ll be writing you soon, Bittersweet Lifer.
Katy
Welcome to Rome. This Is The Bittersweet Life with Katy Sewall and Tiffany Parks. Hello. This is the Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Tiffany in Rome. Katy in Seattle. Katy, though, just back from Bali, Indonesia, a kind of impromptu trip that I certainly wasn’t planning on. You know, Tiffany Howe. Oftentimes during our end of the year, we’re kicking off into the new year episodes. One of the things I often say is, here’s to all the good things you can’t see coming. Well, that was one of them. The trip to Bali was the good thing. I couldn’t see coming because I was not expecting to go. I had no plans to go, to be honest. Bali wasn’t even on my list of places that I was hoping to go. And yet my sister texted out of the blue that her friends had bid on an auction to have this villa in Bali and had found that they were unable to go year after year after year. And the villa finally wrote to them and say, look, you either use it this week or it’s forfeit. Like, it’s been three years, you know, that’s it. And her friend couldn’t go. And so she just wrote to my sister and said, can you take this? I know you have a remote job. Maybe you’re more flexible than me. And my sister’s like, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Tiffany
I’ll go stay in a villa in Bali, sure.
Katy
And so she invited me and Derek to go along, as well as her husband and her husband’s sister. And so the five of us went and stayed unpredictably in Bali for the week. And we just got back. So as we’re recording, I’m still not completely over the jet lag, but for today’s show, I wanted to kind of reflect on the thought that I was having there. And I thought it would be kind of a fun back and forth, and I’ll. I haven’t told you anything about it, so I’m just gonna lay it on you. So the idea I was thinking about is how so often with the Internet and with social media and with, like, the advent of smartphones and the fact that major corporations are spreading all over the world. Even you and I have talked about Starbucks appearing in Italy. And yes, there was a Starbucks at the airport in Bali also. But with all of this kind of, like, homogenizing that it seems like is happening by what we see on the Internet, there’s this feeling, I was having this feeling at least, that the world is becoming more and more the same. And when I was in Bali, I was very much reminded that that’s not always the case, that even though we all live on the same planet, the feeling I was getting down there was that we all live in, like, thousands of different worlds in different realities, completely different cultures, completely different temperatures in the air, different attitudes, different approaches to life, and just fundamentally, completely different landscapes and sound around us, different smells, different feelings And I just was reminded of everything different because Bali is so different from. From Europe, so different from certainly Seattle or the United States. And so I thought it’d be kind of fun to explore the idea of the differences, the sounds, the feelings. And we can look at Rome, we can look at Seattle, and we could look at what Bali was like. And I think one of the things I kept thinking about was I would see these kids. Like, one morning I took this walk. I got driven up the hillside away from where we were staying, and I just walked back down the hill through the countryside, through the area where people are actually living. And I kept seeing all these little kids. And I was thinking, yeah, when you’re a little kid, whatever atmosphere you’re living in is just the world. Like, that is all there is. You know, When I was a little kid in Minnesota, I didn’t question, like, why am I having to wait in negative 20 degree temperatures in a snow suit for the bus? That was just, like, what I had to do. That was just the world I lived in. And only until you get older do you realize, oh, there’s lots of different ways that the world could be. It depends on where you live. And so I was looking at all these little kids and I was thinking, this is their landscape. This is the only world they know. And I’m only in this landscape for a week, you know. And so anyway, I thought it would be fun to kind of explore the different things. So I don’t know, I kind of wrote down a few different categories. And of course, I thought we should start with what the world sounds like in the morning. And of course, you know, me, I recorded on my phone what Bali sounds like in the morning. But the morning sounds. I think the morning soundscape is something I’m always very interested to find out what a place sounds like when I arrive in a new place. And Bali was like. So where I was, I should mention, was not in some of the deeply touristed areas or in the big city. I was on the far eastern side. I was in a. The closest town to me was a fishing village called Ahmed, which is fairly new to tourism. From what I read, there wasn’t a road, a main road, that reached it until around 20, 18 or 15, somewhere in there. And so. And so, yeah, it’s mostly still, like, locals who live there, but there’s great snorkeling there and there’s, like, beautiful sunsets there. So the tourists are starting to figure it out. But it wasn’t like, on a big tourist track. And I Actually didn’t visit most of the main touristy areas while I was there. I kind of stayed in the small village. So maybe my sounds are different than they would be if I was in town, but I was kind of in the valley between all these hillsides. And what it sounded like in the morning was roosters first and foremost. And when there are hundreds of roosters, thousands even, I’m not sure what they sound like in the distance are like the battle cries of an incoming horde. You know, it sounded almost like. It sounded like almost triumphant cries from the hills from the attackers that are about to come. And then there are hundreds of dogs, and the dogs would be kind of barking here and there along. So, like, it’s almost like the dogs are with the gathering hordes. But then in the foreground are all these little brown birds that are chattering. So it’s very, you know, very kind of tropical, jungly sounding in the foreground. I mean, that was the sound of Bali waking up. Sometimes you’d hear music coming from a nearby store, you know, and just the general passing of a motorbike from time to time. So contrast that to me with what it sounds like for Rome when. Like, what are the things that you hear when you first wake up in Rome?
Tiffany
Well, I mean, I live out in the suburbs now, pretty much the sub. We think you could call it the suburbs. And so I hear birds. I don’t hear the traffic sounds as much as I used to. So I think probably this time of year, particularly in spring, the first thing I hear are the birds. When I lived in the center, I would say, yeah, motorbikes for sure. People walking up and down the street, clackety clack on the cobblestones. Another morning sound of Rome that I wouldn’t necessarily hear as I’m waking up. But you’ll hear it when you’re out in the city in the morning, the clatter of espresso cups on saucers.
Katy
Oh huh. Yeah.
Tiffany
A sound that I’ve always loved and Aurelio also loves. He loves that sound people having their coffee brought out to them or putting it down on the countertop. And yeah, I would say those are some of the, you know, the scooter for sure, is, like, iconic, but definitely not. I mean, there are roosters. You know, where I used to hear roosters was when I was very, very, very first living in Rome at my distant relative’s home. They were further out into the extreme edge of the city, even further out than I am. And you could hear roosters from there. But just like, one rooster.
Katy
Yeah. Not a thousand, not a horde. Did I think of church bells also in the morning of Rome?
Tiffany
Church bells, sure, sure.
Katy
But do you know what birds it is that you’re hearing? Because, I mean, that’s the other thing is like, these little distinct. Like, you know, even the birds are different based on what we hear, of course.
Tiffany
Yeah. I mean, I hear. I definitely hear blackbirds, because I think. I think a blackbird has a pretty easily recognizable warble. So I hear those. I hear the parrots, but not necessarily in the morning, but, you know, you can recognize that for sure.
Katy
I was thinking about that, too, with Seattle, because I also live in. Not really the suburb of Seattle, but my neighborhood is pretty quiet compared to some Seattle neighborhoods. And I wake to the sound of the bus passing a lot in the morning, the giant bus clattering down the street. Like the pavement. Our pavement’s very uneven, so it’s very loud. And then, of course, chickadees are one of the first birds I hear every morning. And also, I’m under a flight path, so one of the first things I always hear is the giant UPS plane, coastal delivery service plane coming in, flying super low, about to land. And it is just the loudest plane in the world. And I also live by naval. Naval stuff. So sometimes those planes are even louder. But yeah, so those are kind of the sounds of Seattle. All right, moving on to a next category, the smells. Because I feel like a smell can really bring you back to a place. And it certainly.
Tiffany
Sure. And I think a smell. We’ve talked about this on our smell episode, or scent made with scent. I can’t remember who called it scent or smell, but that’s one of the. I think the most distinctive things about a city or about a place in general can be. Not always, but it often is. The smell is. So that’s this place. You don’t smell that smell anywhere else.
Katy
Yep. And I feel like Bali was that times a thousand, because they ritually light incense at least twice a day in the morning and in the evening. So the air just smells like incense when you are getting up and when you’re going to bed. And it also kind of is mixed with the smell of a wood smoke and then kind of the just heat of, like, jungly vegetation and those things mixed together. I mean, I just started to love the incense smell in the air. It’s just. It’s unusual because what. How many places have you been where you walk around outside and incense is the predominant smell?
Tiffany
Then outside Definitely not.
Katy
I know. Yeah. Yeah. Because they burn it outside.
Tiffany
So.
Katy
Yeah, that’s what I would say there. I mean, Seattle, I think, is pretty easy right now, especially in the spring. It’s basically the salt of the sea air. Like, it really smells like the ocean. And it also smells like a lot of flowers right now. A lot of flowering trees, a lot of grass. Grass, flowers and the salty sea air. It would be Seattle, I think. What about Rome?
Tiffany
Rome. There’s a certain. I know I’ve mentioned this on a. On an earlier podcast, but there’s a certain smell of Rome, that of Italy in general. It’s not just Rome that I. I don’t smell it as. I don’t recognize it as much, because when you live in a place for a long time, as I’m sure you know, you. You don’t pick up on those things as much. But I think what it is is this smell. Smell of pasta sauce being cooked, because, you know, you smell in apartment buildings.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
And that particular smell would always bring me back. So that, for me, is probably the biggest Rome smell. I mean, there are probably so many more. You always said that there’s, like a smoke smell in the air for you.
Katy
There is. Yeah. And I still haven’t figured out what that is.
Tiffany
I don’t pick up on that.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
I mean, I smell cigarette smoke quite a lot, but that’s. I don’t think that’s what you’re talking about.
Katy
Yeah, well, and I think you’re right. Like, when I came back from Bali and I was driving in the cab to my home late at night after hours and hours and hours of travel, because Seattle to Bali, let me tell you, is really far away. One of the first things I noticed was the fact that I could smell the ocean. And I don’t know that I would have necessarily known that Seattle smells like the ocean. You know, I might track it at certain moments, but I think that week of being away, I was just like, wow, you can really smell the ocean. I was by the ocean in Bali, and I didn’t really smell the ocean, I guess. I don’t know. Kind of interesting. All right, should we move on to a different.
Tiffany
Well, one more thing about smell.
Katy
Okay.
Tiffany
Just a funny tidbit about incense since you mentioned it. I personally don’t really like the smell of incense that you come across in, like, a yoga studio, this sort of Indian incense. I’m not totally against it, but it’s just not. I don’t find it. Enjoy an enjoyable smell. What I do really like is the incense you get in a Catholic church.
Katy
Oh yeah, that stuff’s great.
Tiffany
I really love that smell. And Aurelio is now an altar boy and Sunday afternoons, his head smells like incense. I mean, like his hair just smells like someone’s been waving a sensor right over his head, which is what they have been doing because he stands up there and he. He has the little bowl of what they put into the sensor that gets burnt and that’s like his little roll. So he’s always got that thing swinging over his head and he smells like incense.
Katy
And so then you make him just sit on your lap and smell, smell his head for the rest. I do love the smell of incense in Rome because that Catholic incense smell is so distinct. I actually, it is. I actually have a. I’m a big. I incorporate incense into my life a lot, actually. It’s sort of a way that I get in my headspace to work every morning as I light a stick of incense and then I work and I have a lot of different smells, like a lot of different scents. Many of them are from Japan. But I do have one in particular that smells exactly like the incense in Rome. And that particular one is the most expensive. So I only allow myself to use that one when I want to be in a particularly, I don’t know, reverent kind of mood, a quieter mood, because it reminds me of the kind of deep, big stillness of a Catholic church. And so sometimes whatever I’m working on feels like it needs that big dark stillness of a Catholic church this morning, you know, and so I’ll use a stick of that one. But otherwise I. The other scents are a little bit more light hearted perhaps, I don’t know. Okay, here’s another category. The attitude towards pets. So why don’t we start? I mean, Bali I thought was very interesting, but why don’t we start with Rome? How do people treat their animals there?
Tiffany
I do have to say I’ve seen a transformation in the 20 years I’ve lived here. When I first moved here, people did not keep cats as pets. I mean, I’m sure some people did, but it was much less common. Like cats were seen as stray animals that you might take care of, you might feed them. But it wasn’t like it was your cat, you know, and you still see that a little bit. But I think that has changed. I think people are much more, you know, people keep cats. My sister in law has a cat who is her house pet and does not go out, you know, is always at home. Although you still do See a lot of cats roaming. We do have a couple cats in the neighborhood that we think belong to somebody because they seem very well fed, but they’re always sort of in the garage or on the street, and we name them. We have names for all the cats in the neighborhood, and almost all of them are food names. Pasta.
Katy
Pasta.
Tiffany
No, they’re all sweets. There’s KitKat, there’s cake, and there’s Cookie. And then the pool where Aurelio goes, which is part of a larger gym for some reason, they have, like seven or eight cats that just hang out there. They’re always there. They’re in. Sometimes they’re in the swimming pool area just lying around. I don’t know. They’re just there. So that’s cats. Yeah. Dogs, I think, are definitely more. Have been, you know, for a longer period of time. There’s been the tradition of having dogs since the pandemic, and I think this is probably universal. Everybody has a dog. I mean, it’s insane how many people in our neighborhood have dogs. Like, I think there are more dogs in the neighborhood than kids. And it’s. And it’s a pretty. There’s a lot of kids.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
It’s like every other person has a dog.
Katy
How do they treat the dog? Did they treat the dog, like, any differently than you would think people treat a dog in the U.S. i think.
Tiffany
It’S more or less the same, with the only exception being that it is less common here to spay and neuter.
Katy
Okay.
Tiffany
That goes for cats as well as dogs. People are starting to do it. Responsible pet owners are doing it. But there is sort of this lingering notion of, oh, I’m not going to neuter my dog, poor dog, that’s cruelty. Which I feel like in the States, people don’t think that way.
Katy
I think here in the. At least I can only speak for Seattle. But, yes, dogs. Certainly in the pandemic, a lot of people ended up getting dogs. I feel like just walking around, I feel like dogs are getting smaller and smaller. In Seattle, I’ll see people out walking a dog that is smaller than my cat, you know, and it just feels like, how is that creature even outside? You know, I feel like it’s so little. It’s just like the size of a parrot or something. But I feel like dogs are coming with more accessories now than they used to. I haven’t had a dog. My dog passed away in 2005. I haven’t had a dog since then, but I feel like, you know, all my dog had was a collar And a leash. That was it, you know, and you put the leash on or the collar on and that. That was his getting dressed up. Now, I feel like dogs have jackets, they have shoes. You know, every time. A dog doesn’t need shoes, for goodness sake. It’s an outdoor animal. But, okay, they have shoes, they have strollers.
Tiffany
I’ve seen. I saw one, like, just the other day, and I.
Katy
Two people.
Tiffany
Yesterday, I was out of my walk, and I saw two separate people carrying their dog in, like, what we would call in Italy a marsupial, which is, like, usually for babies. You know, you strap it on and the baby is in front of you. So I saw two people with dogs like that.
Katy
I mean, is it because the dog is too small to walk any distance?
Tiffany
Well, to be fair to the dog owners or the dog walkers, because I’m not sure if they were owners or walkers, but in both cases, the person had, like, three to four dogs total. Okay, so if you’re a dog walker or you have multiple dogs and one of them is significantly smaller than the others and gets exhausted, I suppose that that would make sense.
Katy
Okay. I have walked around Green Lake, which is a popular walking trail here in Seattle, with a person with a small dog. And eventually, halfway around, they just had to carry the dog because the dog was absolutely exhausted. But, I mean, it goes back to the dogs getting smaller and smaller. But anyway, so in Bali, it couldn’t be more different. I mean, I think Seattle is also kind of 50, 50 on the cats. Not in that they just think of them as outdoor animals like Rome used to. But people are kind of 50, 50 in whether or not they’ll let the cat out of the house or not. The tide seems to be turning a bit where people are starting to feel like a cat should stay inside because they kill too much when they’re outside. They’re killing too many birds and other wild animals. But it’s kind of a 50, 50 mix, I would say. But okay. So in Bali, and I thought this was kind of lovely, to be honest. A lot of people own cats and dogs. They’re very popular pets. It’s very common to own one. However, in the morning when you go to work and you let the cat out, you let the dog out, too. And both animals just go on their own adventure for the day, and then, you know, return at night for food. And so all over the streets and everywhere in the jungle, everywhere, are dogs and cats on their own adventure. And sometimes the dogs, if they’re from a particular place, will all be wearing the same color collar. So if you were a local in the neighborhood, like, I passed two dogs, one quite small, one quite large, that were both wearing like a little red tie, very jaunty tie tied around their necks. And I thought, well, they must be from the same house. Those two guys are hanging out together. But, you know, and then I was told that there were also these dogs who were free ranging, but they were wearing pink. None of them are wearing collars like you imagine a collar. It’s almost like something is just sort of tied around their necks. But I was told that the ones that are wearing like a certain color pink don’t belong to anybody, but they are being taken care of by something, by someone like an organization. So if they’re wearing pink collar, than they, they’re free range dogs. But I did think that was kind of an interesting attitude of, you know, you go to work the dogs and they cat, they go outside and they’re going to do.
Tiffany
I can see why that would be problematic. But on the other hand, it’s like paradise for the, for the dogs, I would assume even the cats. Like, especially the dogs, though, I know.
Katy
Not just sitting at home looking out a window sadly waiting for your owner to return. I did, however, see a dog get hit by a car while I was there. And I do think that they, I mean, I thought their ability to avoid all the dogs that are in the road was astounding, to be honest. And I was actually quite shocked when this dog got hit because I had seen so many dogs get swerved around. And so it was kind of a tragic ending to my time in Bali because I do not think that dog survived. But I did think that attitude was kind of cool. And I mean, the same goes for, you know, the chickens and stuff. They’re just walking around, you know, they’re just chickens, free range chickens. Their chickens are so thin compared to an American chicken, you know, that you get like a chicken leg and it’s just like, you know, a thin, dainty little narrow. Because this chicken has been running around the jungle for its whole life.
Tiffany
Well. Well, yeah. And I mean, American chickens are stuffed full of hormones to make them become gigantic.
Katy
Yes. Food is a whole other category that I don’t think I’m even going to go into because it reminds me.
Tiffany
What you’re saying about Bali reminds me a lot of how India is in India. There are dogs everywhere as well. And they’re, they’re generally on the smaller side, not tiny, but they’re not like huge Dogs that, you know, you’d see on the street and you’d be afraid of. They’re. They’re kind of quite small, cute little mutt type dogs.
Katy
Yeah. But they’re.
Tiffany
They’re kind of everywhere. And then, of course, in India, you’ve got this extremely odd thing that you’ll just see cows walking down the street all the time because, you know, because they’re sacred and you can’t kill them. They’re just there. You’ll just be walking down the street. There’s a cow side of the road on the sidewalk. It just. I never got used to seeing cows.
Katy
I did see quite a few cows, but they were usually tucked up into the forest somewhere underneath a little hut, keeping them protected from the sun, I guess. All right, let’s talk about work life balance.
Tiffany
Ooh, I love this topic.
Katy
Yeah. Now, we don’t have to get deep into it because we know that we could talk work life balance for an entire episode, and maybe we should, but, I mean, the general attitude is that people in the US Work too much. However, it was in stark contrast what was happening in Bali. So thank you, United States unions, for getting us the weekend, which, you know, we didn’t have until the 20th century. There is no weekend in Bali. So from what I heard in talking to various people, staff members who are working at the villa, certainly that they. And they don’t really have a lot of established holidays. They have certain holidays that come about for religious reasons. But the people who worked in the villa that I was staying at are there seven days a week, and they got there by about 7am every morning, and they didn’t leave until 9. Wow. And that was just every day.
Tiffany
Typical.
Katy
Yes, that was just everyday life and no weekend. And I asked about kids going to school, and they said that school kids go to school six days a week. They start a little later. They start at age seven, rather than what we. We do like five, four or five. And they only go a half day until they are like middle school age. But even still, they go six days a week. I don’t know. I mean, do they have summer vacation? I don’t think so, but I didn’t ask, honestly. So they all are required to learn traditional Balinese dance as a part of their education, which I thought was interesting. Both boys and girls. Amazing.
Tiffany
That’s amazing.
Katy
But, yeah, so that’s like. So I was really thinking, like, wow, we do think of Americans as being obsessed with work. And I wouldn’t necessarily say I got the impression that Balinese people Were obsessed with work, but they certainly spend a vast majority of their life doing it. And maybe Americans are the same, but we at least have a break built in. Whether or not we use it is another matter. But I did think that was an interesting contrast and something I think, frankly, that we really take for granted. And those of us who live in countries where there is a weekend, yes.
Tiffany
Not only take for granted, but I think a lot of people don’t even know that it was the unions that got us those weekends.
Katy
But, yeah, and Rome also has a weekend. So it’s like another thing that we, you know, just think, like, this must be universal, that everybody has time off. But.
Tiffany
Yes, but kids. Some kids. Some schools do have Saturday school on Saturday. Claudia went to school on Saturday. And it’s usually, I think, the way that it works, and, I mean, I think this is dying out, but in some smaller towns, I think it still exists. You can choose to either send your kids to school a shorter day plus Saturday, or they’re there for the longer day and no Saturday. You know, they’ve got to get a certain number of hours in. And, I mean, I famously complain every year about how long the summer break is for these kids. This year, he’s getting out on June 7th. That’s his last day. And I looked at the calendar, I was like, oh, God, how does the calendar fall this year? And it looks like he won’t be starting back until somewhere around the 16th of September. Wow. So, like, you get to August, and you’re like, okay, we’re in the home stretch. It’s August. And if you’re like us and you. You do your most of your summer traveling in July, as we often do, instead of August, you know, that August seems like. Like a desert that you’ve got to get across. And it’s. It’s not easy, especially because it’s so hot. And you’re like, what are we gonna do today? Sit inside and just be in the air conditioning and play a board game? Or are we gonna brave the city and try to actually do something? You get to the end of August and just like, I’ve just got to get to the end of August. And you get there. Oh, you got two more weeks.
Katy
Yeah. It is a little excessive.
Tiffany
It’s so excessive. The only thing. The only thing that I feel like makes it okay is how hard they.
Katy
Work those kids during the year, like.
Tiffany
Just how much work it is. And, you know, obviously, the older they get, the worse it is. So I guess. I guess they do kind of deserve It. As far as work ethic, I mean, I think everyone kind of knows the stereotype of the Italian work ethic. I will say that in my experience, there are. I don’t know if it’s 50%, 30%, I don’t know what the number is, but I feel like there is a percentage of Italians who are carrying the load for the other Italians. And they’re. They’re do. They’re working a ton and they’re like, picking up the slack for a lot of people who either. Who either don’t work or maybe they work, but they just don’t work hard. Like, they just kind of skate.
Katy
Yes. I remember talking to my friend Ugo, who lives in Rome and works in a newsroom, and he’s kind of in a leadership position, and I asked him once about the lifetime contracts and how that works. If you’re a news reporter, which is kind of an interesting. You’re in journalism for life. Because Italy, of course, has the lifetime contract. And he said that about 25% of the newsroom doesn’t really do anything anymore. They just are dead weight, basically. But it’s such an ordeal to get them fired that they just accept that 25% of the reporters aren’t doing their job. It’s just astounding. That would just so not fly here in the U.S. but, I mean, that’s one of your most unique things, I think, in Rome and in Italy is the idea of the lifetime contract. It’s a. It’s an insane idea that you can get a. You can get a job and it’s nearly impossible to let you go. Like, it’s such a pain to let you go that people just don’t even bother.
Tiffany
Yeah. It is kind of crazy. It is. And I think it’s. I don’t. Yeah, it’s a whole other topic. Like you said, we can’t. We can’t go too far afield, but.
Katy
All right, let’s do one more.
Tiffany
Let’s do it.
Tiffany
But I do want to say that there are a lot of Italians who work their butts off.
Katy
Yes.
Tiffany
And who work extremely long hours and who do work really hard.
Katy
Your husband included.
Tiffany
Like my husband. Exactly.
Katy
All right, one. Let’s do one more briefly. Religion and daily life. So one of the things that I found kind of goes along with where we started, with the smell of incense. One thing I found interesting and impressive with the Balinese, the Indonesian people, and the way that they incorporate religion is it’s just habitual. It’s almost like such a part of Normal life that I don’t get a sense of, like, how much do they consider it? But they have this kind of reverence that’s happening all day long. So it starts with them laying out an offering every morning with incense, but then they also put together these beautiful little offerings. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen them, but it’s often like a folded banana leaf with a little pile of rice. And in different quadrants on the leaf will be different colors based on, from what I understand, what they’re appealing to. And. But it’s like different little flower petals. They’re just gorgeous little things. And then tucked in with incense. And you see them all over the ground. You see them on. In front of every store. You see them on altars up and down the streets. You. You see them even I saw them in a construction site that was active. It’s just. There’s altars that are laid out every morning, and I asked them about these beautiful little offerings because over the course.
Tiffany
Of the day, it’s hot.
Katy
Bali is so hot. I haven’t been somewhere that hot for a while, but it is basically sitting right below the equator. But it’s so hot, you know, it’s just muggy. People are coming and going on scooters and motorbikes. The birds really love that rice. And you will get in there and just fling the little offerings around. And I said, well, what is. Like, what is. How important is it to be reverent with these little creations that you create? You know, are you trying to preserve them throughout the day? And they’re like, oh, no. If they’re not whisked away by the wind or thrown apart by the birds, you know, we just sweep them up with the other general detritus at the end of the day and put out a new one in the morning. So, you know, it’s just also just. It had a casualness to it that was interesting. But then the entire landscape is made of it. You know, at every single crossing, at every single bridge, every street corner, there’s a statue of something. A statue at the points of conflict, as one person put it. If there’s a potential point of conflict, there’s some sort of God there just marking the way. So it’s just the whole landscape. And I mean, that’s kind of what Rome is like, too. The whole landscape has, like, dots of religion. And. And it’s not that the United States isn’t the same. We have churches every which way. But I can speak for Seattle. There’s nothing that we do that is like generally marking a specific religion in day to day life. I mean, it might be something that we personally do. Like you might get up and read the Bible every morning, but it’s not like you’ll see it spilling out into the streets. Unless it’s kids going to Catholic school, walking home in their uniforms, things like that, or a special parade for a special day. Otherwise it’s very much like individual inside of a building. What I’m doing at home, what I’m doing on Sunday mornings within the church that I go to, it doesn’t spill out into the day to day life like it does where I just was.
Tiffany
Interesting. Yeah, well, in Rome for sure, it’s much more like Bali. And definitely it’s not that intense anymore. Religious life is not as much a part of daily life as it was, but it’s certainly more a part of the culture. You’ve got the churches on every corner. You’ve got mass happening every day, morning and night, seven days a week in the vast majority of churches around the city and people going. You’ve got religious processions happening in the streets on a regular basis. Not, you know, it’s not daily, but it happens regularly that, you know, you’ll be walking through Justivity and you’ll see the Madonna being carried down the road or something. And there’s also the edicole, which are on the corners of a lot of buildings in Rome. I mean, I would say like maybe they’re on the corner of a tenth of all the buildings in the city, which is a, which is a lot, which is. And sometimes they’re very, very simple. Just sort of like an oval shaped bit of. I don’t even know what you would call it. Like it looks like an oval shaped painting that’s been stuck on the wall, but it’s actually part of the wall and there’s a painting there or sometimes a sculpture, a relief sculpture is generally the Virgin Mary and child, although sometimes you’ll get other saints. And some of them are incredibly beautiful and ornate and some of them are very simple and they usually will have a light of some kind on them. And they’re everywhere.
Katy
Yeah. And I do feel like if you get into other parts of Italy, I mean, I remember this being in the Dolomites in particular when I was up there, walking around a lot that you would see like little roadside altars, sometimes like a candle in there and like a Mary statue maybe inside some sort of enclosure on a post. And that would be relatively common. To come across. It was refreshing to me to feel. And particularly, I think, you know, it had been a while since I’d been anywhere, you know, and I was definitely starting to feel a little dull of mind here in Seattle. And so it was. It was very refreshing to go somewhere and have it be so different. You know, I also had this thought because, of course, we’re getting ready to go on our Rome trip in October, and I start to think now of Rome as being quite familiar. But Rome is also so different from, like, day to day life in Seattle. And somehow, like, going to Bali reminded me of, oh, wow. You know, as much as, like, we feel like we’re all becoming more and more the same, we are so different. And sometimes it’s. I don’t know, it was just great to be reminded of that and then to be living in a culture for a week that was just so different than mine. It always is a good thing, too, to step outside yourself and think, like, yeah, some of the stuff that we get kind of wrapped up in, in whatever culture we’re living in can be kind of absurd when you step out of it for a week. Like, you know, one of the things that struck me is, you know, I come back to Seattle and read the paper and it’s been like the Met Gala week. It’s all about, like, the costuming and the fashion and. And I, you know, I’m all for a great fashion exhibit at a museum, but, you know, when you go to somewhere as hot and tropical as Bali, where people are just sort of working all day long, what are they not thinking about on the whole fashion? In some cases, it was like, you know, I felt like what people were wearing was like, shirt and pants, whatever they grabbed off the top. And you’re like, yeah, in general, hardcore working life, fashion becomes absurd. Of course, I’ll come back into going like, oh, that person looks so fashionable. But it was nice to get that perspective where you think, like, how dumb that we are. We so, so privileged now that we’re thinking about, like, you know, how you can’t wear ankle socks because it’s out of fashion. You know, I mean, it’s ridiculous.
Tiffany
Our ankle socks already out of fashion.
Katy
That’s what I hear.
Tiffany
I feel like I just. I just stepped into that fashion now it’s gone already.
Katy
You just bought your big pack of ankle socks.
Tiffany
I didn’t. I didn’t. But I was… I literally had the thought, like, recently I was like, how great that now you can wear high heel shoes with ankle socks. Like, that’s just so cool.
Katy
You can. I don’t even. I missed it entirely.
Tiffany
Yeah, that was a thing that was happening. And I mean, I saw it in Italy way, way earlier than I saw it in anywhere else. It was in the catalogues of Calzedonia, which is like the best stocking shop in Rome. And I remember seeing the pictures of these women in their mini skirts and their strappy high heel sandals with ankle socks on. I was like, what the hell is that? And I never really adopted it, but I was kind of just finally ready to.
Katy
It was arbitrary anyway. Right. All right. Well, we will leave it there. We are going to Rome in October. We do have spots left on our big trip to Rome. October 6th to the 12th. If you are interested in maybe joining us on an epic adventure, walking through the streets of Rome and seeing all the differences from where it is you come from, please join us. You can send us an email bittersweetlifepodcastmail.com to get information. And we are here to answer any question, even those of you who have already signed up. If you got questions, we have answers always. Just email us at bittersweetlifepodcast@gmail.com and it really is going to be an epic adventure where you will be walking around, noticing things that you have never noticed before and seeing culture spilling into the streets that perhaps you’ve never witnessed before. So I can tell you from experience from being away last week, very refreshing. Very refreshing to go somewhere else for a change. All right, well, we’ll leave it there. And until next time, this is the Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Join us again. Bye.