What
Rubbish!
When we heard that “the authorities” – the
quotation marks are possibly essential – had suddenly demolished a number of
rather well known and heavily patronised watering holes favoured by the
Bling-and-Bolly and Boys-and-Girls-Behaving-Badly sets on the beach at Batu
Belig, a wreck and rampage event held on May 7, an unkind thought crossed our
mind. It was that “They” (the quote marks and capital T are definitely
essential) had mistaken the real task upon which a modicum of concentration is
required.
It occurred to us that a far-sighted official – Find that man! Give him
a medal! – must somehow have become aware of the real problem on Bali’s beaches
and directed the troops to clean up the rubbish, but that a critical wire or
two had got crossed while the order was being passed down the line. There is a
precedent for this, though sadly it too is a joke. An order “Pass the word
forward, we’re going to advance,” given to British infantry on the Western
Front in World War I was duly passed forward but got lost on the way. It became
“Pass three-and-four-pence, we’re going to a dance.”
It is asserted that Karma Kandara, La Barca and other outré
establishments were operating without the necessary permissions and permits.
They may have been. We don’t know. But
that’s not unusual hereabouts, particularly when if you do pay up you’ve often
no idea who is actually going to pocket the dosh.
Oh,
THAT Target
Meanwhile – surely to no one’s surprise –
environmental specialists are at loggerheads over how the Bali government’s
commitment to a plastic free Bali in 2013 can be achieved. The short answer is
it can’t be. The real political game is finding some smoke and mirrors with
which to claim it has been, or very nearly so.
This little shadow play has now produced a statement – from provincial
environment agency chief AA Gede Alit – to the effect that 2013 is just the
target for the initial commitment.
Dr
Wayan Arthana – of the Centre for Environmental Research (PPLH), which is
hardly an impartial player but never mind in this instance – says there is no
clear plan to achieve this. He is apparently shocked to learn this, which in
turn is shocking. We’re on Planet Bali, where clear plans are never part of the
picture. It’s true that Bali has a big waste problem. But even 10,000 cubic
metres of waste a day is not insuperable. At the moment more than half is left untreated
and scattered around the island. The 10 to 12 percent of it that is plastic
could certainly be managed under the right programmes.
Arthana is pessimistic about the target date. “I think it will not be
achieved,” he says. Gosh, if betting were legal here he’d make a brilliantly
successful bookie. It’s hard not to be
pessimistic about the entire project, frankly. A study by graduates from
Reading University in Britain found various impediments in the way, including the
behaviour of people who it seems – in the comfortable do-nothing fictions that
govern life here – “do not realise” that plastic is harmful to the environment.
Ooh,
Yummy
Alila Villas Soori, on the Tabanan coast
and somewhere we really must get one day, has a culinary treat in store for
guests in June. Michelin chef Tom Kerridge, whose Hand and Flower public house,
at Marlow on a picturesque Wind in the Willows-style stretch of the River
Thames in England is Britain’s only two-star Michelin-rated pub, will be
creating haute cuisine – some of it hot too, no doubt – in-house on his first
ever Asian tour.
He is said by some to be the finest chef in Britain today. As far as we
know, he’s not one of the rude ones, which is truly a blessing. Kerridge had a
hard childhood, a time upon which he reminisced in February in the London Daily
Telegraph newspaper. He recalled they were so poor – his divorced mum worked nine
to five and then after hours on the till in a pub to make ends meet – that
their usual Sunday Roast (a British tradition) was cheap sausage meat from a
supermarket rather than prime beef or chicken from the butcher.
He said: “I look back on that meal with really fond memories because it
shows my mum didn't give up. She worked hard to help me get where I am. Now she
comes to visit me at the pub, where we've just won our second Michelin star,
and I get to treat her instead.”
What a lovely fellow.
And that’s not all that Alila Villas Soori has on its schedule next
month. Its latest Artist in Residence is Raymond Wiger, a master sculptor in
the art of wire mesh, who will show a collection there in June including some
pieces inspired by and resulting from his residence at the resort.
Scat,
Cat
We heard this story from Villa Kitty, the
rapidly overcrowding refuge for deprived felines in Ubud. Apparently at
Champlung Sari, a resort property in Monkey Forest Road, unwanted or nuisance
kittens – the product of breeding age cats left unsterilized by unthinking
owners or the ubiquitous stray animals – are cleared from the property by the
cheapest method possible. Someone tosses them over the wall into a dirty little
watercourse that fights its way through the garbage to get where gravity would
otherwise like it to go.
Villa Kitty tells us a couple staying at the resort recently were upset
at seeing a kitten thrown over the wall in this manner and one phoned them up
in high distress. Further inquiry elicited the information from the management
that the guests had evidently failed to see the kitten then climb back over the
wall.
Is this a joke? Sadly it is not. But animal lovers and anyone with an
elementary sense of decency might like to get their essential Ubud experience
at some other accommodation.
A
Ra’re Treat
Hector’s ghost-writer was browsing through
his LinkedIn site recently when the ever-helpful People You Might Know feature
popped out the name of Angus McCaskill. Well, we don’t know Angus and neither
did we know his alter ego, the faux-Maori Willie Ra’re, when he was hanging
around the party scene snorting cocaine. That is, we didn’t know him except
vicariously as a result of the public notoriety he acquired on being arrested, charged,
tried and sentenced to jail on a drug charge. We shared this condition – though
ours was legitimate lack of knowledge – with a great many people who, after his
sad denouement in a supermarket, suddenly seemed not to know him either.
McCaskill went home to Australia last August after serving a year in
Kerobokan jail. He had originally been sentenced to seven years in one of those
over-reactive challenges to common sense that the courts here seem to like so
much.
He said at the time he was a changed man and that he had used his year
in the slammer to reconnect with the non-narcotics-enhanced side of life. We
wish him well.
LinkedIn tells us he is now business development manager at a
Melbourne-based leisure, travel and tourism outfit called DealsOnDeals and also
lists him as owner at the Wall Street Group of Companies. Now that might give
us the Willies; not to mention the Gekkos.
Eat
Up
Ubud, as befits its status as the centre of
myriad universes, many of them very strange places indeed, has plenty of spots
where, your head filled with pipedreams, you can also stuff your face. That’s
as it should be, even if it’s only a mungbean you’re after. So one more won’t
matter and it’s no surprise that Kuta fixture Dijon has wandered up the road to
open a café. It’s in tastefully eclectic Jalan Raya Sanggingan, just across the
road from a favourite Diary spot, the Beji resort.
Dijon Café officially commenced business on April 29, with all the pomp and
circumstance people seem to view as de rigueur when opening a new emporium (of
whatever variety) here. It was open – perhaps this was unofficially, or maybe
it was just softly – when we were staying in the area last December.
It’s not very far from Mozaic, which keeps getting noticed – the Diary
chiefly notices it for its prices – and Naughty Nuri’s, which being extremely
tiny is always overflowing with the I-Must-Be-Seen crowd. So it will be good if
Dijon cuts the mustard.
Vacant
Lot
The April issue of the Bali Peace Park
Association’s e-newsletter popped into our in-box right on deadline – ours, not
theirs, it now being May – with some fascinating thoughts on fundraising, land
acquisition, and building completion. It records that Man-With-the-Udeng Made
Wijaya, whose landscaping firm did the drawings for the Sari site development,
told them building the park facilities would take six months. Then it says
they’re on schedule for October, the tenth anniversary of the first bombings.
It’s May, so they now have five months. But they haven’t acquired the site –
and there’s not a brick in sight.
We’ll read more. Watch this vacant space.
Hector's Diary appears in the Bali Advertiser's print edition, out every second Wednesday. Hector is on Twitter (@scratchings) and Facebook (Hector McSquawky).
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