By
Jiminy, a GM
Ayana Resort and Spa, etc, which sits
decorously back from the cliff at Jimbaran to which the iconic Rock Bar clings
– and to which it is sometimes possible to gain access, if you have the inclinator
– finally has a chief man at the helm. It’s been 10 months since Charles de
Foucault departed for Mauritius where the ambience, not unlike some of the
Caribbean islands also formerly ruled by the Brits, is a kind of eclectic Faux
Français. It’s the sort of place where patrons can be heard intoning “Merde,
I’d kill for a beer.” Unless they’re South Africans, in which case some of them
might say, ”Shit, ek wil doodmaak vir 'n bier,” and completely fail to make
themselves understood.
The new man is Ed Linsley, who was selected in a process personally led
by Horst Schulze, founder and chief executive of Capella Hotel Group. Linsley has more than 22 years’ experience in
hotels and resorts – 21 of them with the Four Seasons group – and was resort
manager at 4S Bali Jimbaran (once home to the entertainingly enigmatic John
O’Sullivan, who these days wears a sombrero having decamped to a plush 4S
resort in Mexico) before going to Vietnam last year as general manager of The
Nam Hai Resort.
Linsley says he was drawn back to Bali by its people and the opportunity
to join the Capella Hotel Group. He rides Harley-Davidsons and he’s from
Pennsylvania. Ground Hog Days could be fun.
The
Good, the Bad, and the Plain Ugly
The Bali-based Institute for Peace and
Democracy has been busy lately, talking to delegations from Egypt and Myanmar
and selling Indonesia’s proud record of democratic advance achieved by digging
the military out of politics and business, and overseeing completion of its
monumental premises on the Jimbaran campus of Udayana University.
The institute is a project that carries the personal imprimaturs of
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard,
and is supported through various elements of Australia’s foreign aid programme
and those of other nations. We’ll be
hearing much more about it in the near future.
The IPD was closely involved in the recent Bali Peace Forum, a recurring
international gabfest that this time, and among many other (more valuable)
things, provided yet another opportunity for Iran’s chief curiosity, President
Ahmadinejad, to have a free shot at the Great Satan and sundry other lesser devils.
For ordinary mortals, or at least those of them who were trying to use
the roads between Kuta and Nusa Dua while troupes of rude police were shooing
traffic out of the way so VVIPs and VIPs could get wherever it was they were
going before their tea got cold, the forum was chiefly notable, as such things
invariably are, for its disruption of normal life.
It’s not over yet. Next year, when the APEC jamboree hits town with lots
of HIPs (Hugely Important Persons) along with the VVIPs and the ordinary VIPs,
it’ll be even worse. Note to self: Ensure you are away from Bali in November
2013.
She’s
a Champ
Christina Iskandar, luminary of note on the
glitter circuit (conscience division), has lost a lot of weight. This was
deliberate – a girl likes to look trim, after all, though the Diary has never
minded chunky if it comes along with brains, conversation and character – and
this feat has also resulted in more than Rp 200 million in funds for YPAC, the
children’s home at Jimbaran.
She told the world proudly via Facebook:
“We did it! Over 200 million raised for YPAC & new van very soon for
the kids, a 20 kilo weight loss for me & a new lease on life... a huge
thanks to the dedicated supportive amazing bunch of friends that attended this
event for such a worthy cause you are all stars, thank you Motion Fitness Team
and all the sponsors.”
Well done, Christina.
Fifty
Shades of Bleh
It was amusing to see veteran British
publisher Christopher MacLehose on Australia Network’s eminently watchable One-Plus-One
programme recently. He was courteously perplexed as to how show host Jane
Hutcheon could possibly refer to the blockbuster sex-romp novel Fifty Shades of
Grey as a literary work. He said she was the first person he had heard make
such a claim.
(We hear from friends, anecdotally, that the expatriate husbands of
Vietnam are passing the book around theirs and other’s expatriate wives for
serious study, apparently with mutually satisfying results. That alone supports
MacLehose’s reflective assessment of the book’s true value and titillating
purpose.)
MacLehose, a patrician Scot who reads in French – his wife is from l’Hexagone, as French people with an interest in cartography sometimes
call their hexagonal patrie – made a late career change
from mainstream publishing into publisher of foreign works in translation. He
gave the world The Millennium Trilogy, a true work of literature.
Originally written in Swedish by the late Stieg Larsson, the trilogy –
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who
Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – had been rejected by a series of publisher’s houses.
Apparently this was because the author was Swedish (and so not an English
language writer and therefore difficult to sell) and being unfortunately dead
was not going to be writing any more books, which precluded creation of further
career-enhancing income streams for publishers’ marketing people.
Planet Earth has long been made a better place by farsighted Scotsmen
(and women).
Fine
Fare
Australia Network is always good value. On its
summer schedule is a new Australian drama series, Miss Fisher’s Murder
Mysteries. This is a period piece, set in Melbourne in the 1920s. The network
suggests you should get yourself ready to sashay into the city’s back lanes as
Phryne Fisher sleuths her way through jazz clubs and other shady spots armed
with a pearl-handled pistol and a dagger-sharp wit.
It sounds fun. The 13-part series will be on the viewing schedule at The
Cage. It starts on Dec. 3 (at 9.30pm Bali time). Monday will be a stay-home
night for the following three months.
And
More Saxy Jazz
Sin City singer Edwina Blush is a regular
feature of the saxier parts of Bali, as well as an ambassador for Villa Kitty
cat refuge at Ubud, and we look forward to seeing her here again in the flesh
–attractive portions of it at least – when next her schedule allows.
She’s
been keeping in form for her much desired reappearance here by playing cabaret
style at the Camelot Lounge in Marrickville, Sydney (on Nov. 28) with a pared
down quartet and guests. The finely named Blush (she doesn’t, but others have
been known to) says of the show: “Refuse to run with the pack, take the cat to
the beach, comfort a surf widow, have an affair with your barista and surf a
tidal wave of love in the quirky comforts of the Camelot Lounge.” It would have
been fun to be there, but we didn’t have enough Qantas points to spare for the
trip.
Blush launched her latest album, Sea for Cats, in June. She describes it
as a lush retro cocktail with an over-proof kick and a hint of kitsch
indulgence. Clearly, it should be listened to even though The Cage hasn’t done
kitsch since ... well, forever. But Edwina says it’s saxy, so of course it must
be. The album is available on iTunes or through
the Edwina Blush website shop.
So
Very Sad
Little Ani, the eight-year-old severely
malnourished and physically challenged girl rescued from distressing conditions
in Sideman in Karangasem earlier this year by Jimbaran-resident British nurse
Sarah Chapman and her Balinese friend Yuni Putu, has died. She had been playing
happily at her new home, YPAC, on the morning of Nov. 17 but later that day had
to be taken to Sanglah Hospital with serious breathing difficulties. In spite
of truly heroic efforts by the Sanglah team, she died a few hours later.
Ani had become quite a Facebook presence – through a page called Friends
of Ani – and touched the hearts of everyone who had contact with her actually
or through the social media. Losing her is a tragedy, when she had been gaining
much needed weight, was beginning the process of socialisation in an adequate
setting, and was waiting for essential surgical correction of her cleft palate.
It is particularly hard on her immediate carers and on people such as Robert
Epstone of the charity Sole Men, who made strenuous efforts to win Ani a new
(and proper) life.
But Ani, like all who pass away, will live on in the hearts of those who
were her family and friends. Her last months were full of fun and love. She was
only eight, and could not speak, but she taught many people the real meaning of
humanity.
There’s a proposal to build a hospice in her name and in her memory.
Hector's Diary appears in the fortnightly print edition of the Bali Advertiser, out every second Wednesday, and on the newspaper's website www.baliadvertiser.biz. Hector tweets @scratchings and is on Facebook (Hector McSquawky).
No comments:
Post a Comment