last night. We keep in touch with our friends and SMS them at least once a week. Last night sent usual SMS with gossip, news,and aked how thing were going work wise. Warsi works for Garuda Orient HOlidays, and is one of their BEST tour guides. In fact, when she took her leavina exam, she came 3 out of 150! (I reckon that's pretty impressive)
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I'll quote this directly:
No luck yet.1 Oz friend is is Bali now and she told me of a rather sad news, said that Oz r 2 scared 2 come 2 Bali now as they're told terrorist's attack is now in other way, not by bombing, but kidnapping....but actually kidnapping doesn't happen in Bali. She said Indonesian gov were about 2 give away 5000 free tickets 2 Oz so survey was done in Oz n 60% corresponden say NO, they wont come 2
Baku even if it's free! So Bali will never be the same as b4."
What do you say to that? All I felt I could do was to tell her exactly how the free ticket give away was working, which seems a little dopey to me, at best.
I pointed out how surveys can be so easy to manipulate, you generally get the answers you want/expect.
I told her that the kidnapping threat, had been warned by the Indo government, but was directed at important people, before December.
& the last thing I was able to say was that I'd just been talking to PUtu LEs, who felt that things were really picking up, that there had been LOTS of interest.
It was so hard, because you can't sugarcoat it, no matter how much you'd like to. But, if you give in totally to depression and hopelessness, what then? All I could say was to follow Winnie Churchill's advice 'never, never, never give up'. SOmetimes sheer stubborness is the only thing to carry you through.
Any advice would be really appreciated.
Although Warsi is very not the average Indonesian, she's educated herself, has been VERY careful, saved money, bought property as a back stop, what the hell is happening to the average person on the street?