The Enemies are....

the neighbours' dogs and children.

As opposed to Surabaya's many cats, neighborhoods in Bali are full of dogs. Dogs are cute and Vincent and I love them. In fact when we feel we have more time to put affection to one, we will get a dog.

But when there is at least one dog in every house of an alley that has perhaps 50 houses cheek to cheek, it may not be a good idea. Add at least one child in every two houses to it. And these are the noisy children who ran back and forth, shouting and scaring the dogs out.

Result: the most noisy morning (or afternoon, or evening, or night).

Vincent almost lost his temper (as usual) last weekend. He took a few small rocks, put them on the balcony of our bedroom upstairs and said to me, "If these evil dogs bark again, I'll throw these rocks onto their house!"

I tried to cool him down that there is no point of making enemies here. But he was like, "But they started first!"

And very quickly as we talked, the dogs started barking again. In a blink of an eye, Vincent jumped out to the balcony and threw one rock on top of the roof where the dogs were.

Coming back inside the room, he said, "One more bark, I'll aim at the window."

He's unbelievable!!!

I mean I'm disturbed, too (though not as bad as he is, since I was brought up with a 24-hour noise - cats meowing every night), but I really don't see the point why we have to attack them for what the dogs have done. True they could have educated the dogs. True they could have silenced them since they were really disturbing the neighbours. But who would really care to do that when the other neighbours also have dogs and they don't silence them either?

This is what I was worried about before we took the house. Not the house itself, but the surrounding. Vincent didn't get it back then. But now he does.