It’s Been a
Poor Show
from the
World of
Whickerers
AMID all the whickering about global warming and what the dirty industrialised giants are doing to the atmosphere and the icebergs, we hear at last a sensible perspective. Unusually, this comes from an opinion poll. It states quite clearly that poverty is viewed by most people globally as the most serious problem facing the world, well ahead of climate change, terrorism and war.
So much for Copenhagen, then, and all those other soap-box opportunities that have blighted the world since someone noticed it was marginally hotter than they remembered it being – tell that to the Europeans, North Americans and North Asians who have been beset by a very cold and snowy winter – and set up a New Age religious cult to make a noise about it.
It is said that politics is the art of the possible. Those who have worked in politics, if they are realists and objective, define it rather differently; by placing “im” in front of the “possible.” Too often modern politics is about magician’s tricks and the appearance of activity. Real leaders eschew rhetoric and actually do something.
The problem for global politics – and politicians – is that reducing poverty is an even harder task than persuading the climate to vote your way. It is an incremental process. Positive results are recorded, but over a timeframe that does not suit the television news grab or (in places where there are meaningful elections) the electoral cycle.
Beyond strict and extraordinarily finite limits, it is not possible to eradicate poverty – or even to reduce it – by means of concessional or free loans, international grants or any other prophylactic measure. Reducing poverty means creating productive jobs for increasing numbers of people – and that means creating economies that can sustain growth.
It’s interesting that in the GlobeScan poll conducted for the BBC last year, the details of which have just been released and which interviewed 25,000 in 23 countries face-to-face or over the phone or on line, found that 71 percent thought poverty was the most serious problem facing the world. That contrasts with 64 percent who cited the environment, 63 percent rising food and energy costs, and climate change and the world economy 58 percent. How much greater would that figure have been had the pollsters been able to access the truly poverty-stricken? They are mostly out of sight, rarely have a phone within reach, and live such precarious and marginal lives that being “on line” is science fiction.
Talk to the Trees
HOW pleasing it is, therefore, to record that the United States and Indonesia have begun discussions on a second debt-for-nature deal to save precious tropical forests. We hear this through the US embassy in Jakarta.
Ambassador Cameron R. Hume said on January 15, announcing the talks, that it was a practical way to work together through the US Tropical Forest Conservation Act (TFCA) to protect important forests and mitigate the effects of climate change.
The first TFCA agreement, signed on June 30, 2009, will reduce Indonesia’s debt payments to the US by nearly US$30 million over eight years. In return, the Government of Indonesia will commit these funds to support grants to protect and restore tropical forests in Sumatra. The agreement was the largest debt-for-nature swap under the TFCA thus far and was made possible through contributions of $20 million by the U.S. Government and a combined donation of $2 million from Conservation International and the Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation (Yayasan Keanekaragaman Hayati Indonesia or KEHATI).
To date, 13 countries have entered into debt-for-nature agreements under the TFCA. Over time, these debt-for-nature programmes will together generate over $218 million to protect tropical forests.
Domesticity Unplugged
HOT on the heels of Roxxy the Sex Robot – typically, an invention of the curious Japanese mind – comes news that South Korean scientists have developed a walking robot maid which can clean your house, put dirty clothes in a washing machine, and heat up food in the microwave.
It has a human-like body with a rotating head – gosh, wish we could do that; it would really help when driving on Bali’s roads - and plus arms, legs and (oddly) six fingers, plus three-dimensional vision to recognise chores that need to be tackled. The Koreans, being boffins devoid of any sense of humour, have called it Mahru-Z. Chief boffin You Bum-Jae of the cognitive robot centre at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology says the robot’s most distinctive strength is its visual ability to observe objects, recognise the tasks that need to be completed, and do them. Mahru-Z recognises people, could do you a nice toasted sandwich, and cleans up your mess. It stands 1.3 metres tall and weighs 55 kilos.
The Diary prefers the fully human interface that comes with the diminutive and pleasingly non-robotic pembantu (housekeeper) who does the daily chores at The Cage. Her name is Wayan and she’s a sweetie.
No Termorrer
GRAEME Dobell’s lovely memoir on Abdurrahman Wahid – it’s in The Interpreter, the online blog of the Lowy Institute, and in The Bali Times this week on the Editorial page, reminding us that Gus Dur was a humorist of considerable note – brings to mind a lovely put-down of Pommy pomposity dating from the killing fields of the western front in World War I. It is possibly apocryphal. But it’s too good not to retell.
Australian impatience with the English upper classes (though the upper class is largely a notional concept nowadays, filthy lucre having finally won pole position) is both legendary and a national trait. It’s surprising it’s not actually taught in schools as part of the core curriculum. Or perhaps it is.
Anyway, this little tale has the local general in command on whatever sector of the front it was deciding to visit the Australian formation newly arrived in the trenches to give them a bit of a spirited rev-up. He duly turned up, resplendent as generals of those days were before they worked out that visible signs of importance tended to make them sniper targets, got on his soapbox, and began his oration:
“Have you come here to die?” he shouted (decorously of course, and with a plum in his mouth no doubt). From somewhere in the back of the ranks came this unscripted response: “Nah. We come 'ere yester-die.”
Without a Clouseau
THE Pink Panther is a classic movie (the original version with Peter Sellers, not the clumsy Steve Martin remake). It is one of those rare productions that implants itself in the mind and periodically gives you a giggle.
The Diary, when pressed, can do a very passable party-time rendition of Peter Sellers’/Inspector Clouseau’s “It is a berm.” Indeed in recent years a facility to identify such objects has become an essential life-preserving skill.
So it was amusing to read the other day that a 66-year-old French man had been jailed in Abu Dhabi after making a bomb joke on an Etihad aircraft on which he foolishly chose to book a ticket from Bangkok to Paris via Abu Dhabi. Evidently he had forgotten that humour has been proscribed in the air, especially now we have no grounds for confidence that the worldwide security apparatus will have identified among our fellow passengers some silly dude who is secretly clad in the very latest fetish wear, exploding jocks.
Pensioner Jean-Louis Lioret was arrested after cabin crew at Abu Dhabi overheard him using the word bomb in an exchange with his co-passenger, his brother Michel Lioret. Michel had asked Jean-Louis to keep a packet on the other seat next to him as it was empty.
His jocular response “I hope it's not a bomb” - which The Diary would like to think was rendered as “I 'ope eet is nert a berm,” while recognising that it was probably just your plain old run-of-the-mill “J'espère que ce n'est pas une bombe” - was overheard and set off alarm bells.
The packet contained cigarettes. These days, of course, that’s nearly as bad.
For Nothing
HALF an hour with that estimable publication, The Economist Style Guide, is always worth it. A Sunday browse – The Diary was awaiting the morning’s oatmeal, which had been delayed by a domestic crisis of no reportable standing – chanced upon this sound advice, sadly necessary for a great many people in the media, especially the ersatz glitzy bit of it, these days:
“Free is an adjective or an adverb (and also a transitive verb), so you cannot have or do anything for free. Either you have it free or you have it for nothing.”
Speaking of glitzy, ersatz media, the volume also points out that Frankenstein was the creator, not the monster. Unfortunately the style guide forgoes an entry for “ignorance.”
SCRATCHINGS appears, as The Diary, in print edition of weekly The Bali Times, out every Friday, and on the newspaper's website at www.thebalitimes.com. The Bali Times is also available worldwide via Newspaper Direct.
A fortnightly diet of worms and other non-theological experiences
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
HECTOR'S BALI TIMES DIARY [for Jan. 15, 2010]
An Aussie
Travel
Warning
With a
Difference
CARTOONISTS often get to the nub of an issue with a few deft strokes of their artistic pencil or paintbrush. A cartoon can neatly and with brevity encapsulate a point visually, instead of the 1,000 words the old saw says is needed to tell a story. They can also get it horribly wrong: witness how the crude misrepresentation of the Prophet by a Danish cartoonist caused trouble around the world in 2006. That problem still resonates in a profoundly unhelpful way.
In the same way the recent stabbing death in Melbourne of an Indian graduate student there has resulted in India-wide media frenzy and a cartoon that invites Indian readers to view Australian police as Ku Klux Klan types. This is not only unfair (most Australian police probably could not spell Ku Klux Klan) but also profoundly unhelpful. It is easy – especially in the environment created by earlier obviously racially based assaults on Indian students in Melbourne – to characterise a street crime as somehow race-based. It may have been. But it is not possible to say so definitively until those responsible have been arrested and questioned, and have given their side of the story. Generally speaking, that judgment is made by a court, in a courtroom.
None of that matters, of course, to distant cartoonists seeking an eye-grabbing moment, or to media – in India in this instance – more concerned with headlines than with judgment, or indeed facts. It is therefore something that should not necessarily ruffle the waters of diplomacy, where everyone’s interest is served best by calm reflection even if the ducks on the pond are paddling furiously beneath the surface. That too is as it should be, between two essentially rational countries. India and Australia share a heritage of British justice (that strange construct in which an alleged offender is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt) and of sound, focused international relations.
Even though the row will blow over – whether or not the unfortunate victim of fatal assault in Melbourne was targeted by racially motivated thugs or just by the ordinary, run-of-the-mill criminal thugs that blight the place – there is one minor smile that we can gain from it.
Indian students have been warned that Australia is a risky destination. It’s true that the warning is unofficial, coming from student associations rather than the government. But nonetheless, it is sadly amusing that Australia, which has built a travel advisory industry out of Australians’ ignorance and unwillingness to take responsibility for their own safety overseas (if a terrorist attacks them it’s their government’s fault), is now the subject of an alert warning of clear and present danger.
In Plain View
AMID all the fretting about South Bali’s overcrowded status, road congestion, and all manner of other ills, we tend to forget that much of our island is not like that at all. When you strip away all the fanciful rhetoric, unless you’re trying to get around Kuta (our advice: don’t try), reach the airport in time to catch your plane (our advice: go a day early and camp at Ngurah Rai overnight if you’re lucky enough to get through the traffic snarl in better than even time), or desire to sample the simple-minded madness of Denpasar’s kamikaze drivers and riders (our advice: it can be fun if you’ve remembered to take your heart pills), things are pretty much OK.
As regular readers of The Diary know, your diarist has a deep affection for Candi Dasa. Well, give or take the flat-to-the-floor driving habits of the Killer Yellow trucks and plutocrat SUVs that occasionally thunder through town, one set of wheels either side of the thick and continuous white line. We were there again this week, with some Australian friends. It rained, but then it does during the rainy season ... um, think that’s why it’s called that ... though not generally for very long. There’s something very restful about gazing at the sea, taking the long view of things: Nusa Penida and Lombok, for example. Unless the intermittent rain wipes them out.
Bank on It
SPEAKING of smiles, it was amusing to read that Little Miss Lift-It, otherwise known as Esti Yuliani or Julie Edmond, now of Kerobokan jail but previously of the late and unlamented business advisory outfit Kantor Kita, had her own bank. The smile is because the story reminds one that Bali – and indeed Indonesia – is a place of heroic dreams and Mitty-like plans.
It is of course immensely galling that people like Yuliani get away with things as they do for so long, and then get away with a slap on the wrist: two years for filching US$2.5 million works out at $3,424 a day before discounting for time off in lieu of the pre-trial confinement.
Yuliani’s former bank – she sold her controlling share in it when she was arrested last year - was of course not a large one (though normal caution should lead one to assume she would have had plans to make it bigger through further application of client funds to her private purposes). The thought occurs, however, that a marketing opportunity was missed when she set it up. The Australian Commonwealth Bank – which operates in Bali with its now trademark Vegemite-on-a-Biscuit logo – used to market itself with a catchy little come-on: Which Bank?
Had Yuliani’s acquisitive eye been on the ball instead of on her curiously non-escrow client accounts, Bank Kita could so easily have spun a nice little line out of this concept: Witch Bank.
Capital Sentence
DONE the crime? Doing the time? Well if you’ve still got the loot, you can do it in comfort in Indonesia’s otherwise horrific jails. We read with interest a story in the Jakarta Globe – great paper – this week that reports the head of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation, Patra M Zen, as saying prisoners with money live like royalty in Indonesian prisons, enjoying just about anything their hearts desire.
It could be treats as small as a bag of methamphetamine, or an air-conditioned cell decorated according to the occupant’s wishes and furnished with an exercise machine — or even a guest to take that lonely chill off your sheets.
The data collected – by Justice Ministry officials who conducted a surprise inspection of the Pondok Bambu Penitentiary in East Jakarta on Sunday, and who one assumes were not surprised by what they found – does not of course relate directly to Chateau Schapelle (Kerobokan jail), even though similar elective improvements (including a Jacuzzi in one instance) are reported to have been made there by well-moneyed residents.
Plans are afoot to reform Indonesia’s jails. Abolishing the national rule that money can buy you anything would be a great place to start.
Off the Rails
NEWS that the proponents of a high-speed new-technology railway linking Cirebon in West Java with Jakarta’s international airport have plans to suck up hundreds of megawatts of power from the Java-Bali electricity grid should remind Bali of precisely where it rates in Java’s priorities: somewhere well short of a visible radar blip.
We shouldn’t worry too much, however. If the proponents think their US$3 billion 357-kilometre concept will be operating in two years with minimal impact on the environment or the land over which it will pass – apparently in monorail fashion – they’re living in Pipedream, Mittyland. It’s a very crowded address, that one: full of the crowds of wannabes who so engage us with their flights of fancy.
Catch That Bus!
JACK Daniels went on a New Year cruise, we learn from his Bali Update which (along with Daniels, we are invited to assume) claims to have become a Bali institution. The sea air must have got to him. He said the provincial government will have a busway – a la Jakarta’s – up and running by 2007. (He seems to have caught up with his calendar later: by Tuesday it was saying November 2010.)
Readers of The Bali Times (in print and on line) got the story first in last week’s edition of the newspaper. In the print edition, which we’re sure Daniels reads, it appeared on Page 2 with appropriate prominence.
Slipped Disc
THE Diary’s preferred DVD supplier, an establishment in Kuta just across the road from Discovery Mall, is a must for visitors: Mr and Mrs Hec always take their VFRs there. As they did, again, late last week: Such is the pace of the current round of visiting friends and relatives that frequent customer privileges must surely be in the offing.
Unfortunately the establishment was tutup (closed). Apparently it had lately been raided by “the police from Jakarta” – well that was what the helpful pavement-based employee told us – and would reopen in due course, actual date unknown. But Indonesian enterprise knows no bounds. A list of available DVDs was proffered, along with advice that our selection could be delivered to our hotel.
SCRATCHINGS appears as The Diary in The Bali Times, Bali's only English-language newspaper, every Friday and on the newspaper's website at www.thebalitimes.com. The Bali Times is also available in print through Newspaper Direct.
Travel
Warning
With a
Difference
CARTOONISTS often get to the nub of an issue with a few deft strokes of their artistic pencil or paintbrush. A cartoon can neatly and with brevity encapsulate a point visually, instead of the 1,000 words the old saw says is needed to tell a story. They can also get it horribly wrong: witness how the crude misrepresentation of the Prophet by a Danish cartoonist caused trouble around the world in 2006. That problem still resonates in a profoundly unhelpful way.
In the same way the recent stabbing death in Melbourne of an Indian graduate student there has resulted in India-wide media frenzy and a cartoon that invites Indian readers to view Australian police as Ku Klux Klan types. This is not only unfair (most Australian police probably could not spell Ku Klux Klan) but also profoundly unhelpful. It is easy – especially in the environment created by earlier obviously racially based assaults on Indian students in Melbourne – to characterise a street crime as somehow race-based. It may have been. But it is not possible to say so definitively until those responsible have been arrested and questioned, and have given their side of the story. Generally speaking, that judgment is made by a court, in a courtroom.
None of that matters, of course, to distant cartoonists seeking an eye-grabbing moment, or to media – in India in this instance – more concerned with headlines than with judgment, or indeed facts. It is therefore something that should not necessarily ruffle the waters of diplomacy, where everyone’s interest is served best by calm reflection even if the ducks on the pond are paddling furiously beneath the surface. That too is as it should be, between two essentially rational countries. India and Australia share a heritage of British justice (that strange construct in which an alleged offender is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt) and of sound, focused international relations.
Even though the row will blow over – whether or not the unfortunate victim of fatal assault in Melbourne was targeted by racially motivated thugs or just by the ordinary, run-of-the-mill criminal thugs that blight the place – there is one minor smile that we can gain from it.
Indian students have been warned that Australia is a risky destination. It’s true that the warning is unofficial, coming from student associations rather than the government. But nonetheless, it is sadly amusing that Australia, which has built a travel advisory industry out of Australians’ ignorance and unwillingness to take responsibility for their own safety overseas (if a terrorist attacks them it’s their government’s fault), is now the subject of an alert warning of clear and present danger.
In Plain View
AMID all the fretting about South Bali’s overcrowded status, road congestion, and all manner of other ills, we tend to forget that much of our island is not like that at all. When you strip away all the fanciful rhetoric, unless you’re trying to get around Kuta (our advice: don’t try), reach the airport in time to catch your plane (our advice: go a day early and camp at Ngurah Rai overnight if you’re lucky enough to get through the traffic snarl in better than even time), or desire to sample the simple-minded madness of Denpasar’s kamikaze drivers and riders (our advice: it can be fun if you’ve remembered to take your heart pills), things are pretty much OK.
As regular readers of The Diary know, your diarist has a deep affection for Candi Dasa. Well, give or take the flat-to-the-floor driving habits of the Killer Yellow trucks and plutocrat SUVs that occasionally thunder through town, one set of wheels either side of the thick and continuous white line. We were there again this week, with some Australian friends. It rained, but then it does during the rainy season ... um, think that’s why it’s called that ... though not generally for very long. There’s something very restful about gazing at the sea, taking the long view of things: Nusa Penida and Lombok, for example. Unless the intermittent rain wipes them out.
Bank on It
SPEAKING of smiles, it was amusing to read that Little Miss Lift-It, otherwise known as Esti Yuliani or Julie Edmond, now of Kerobokan jail but previously of the late and unlamented business advisory outfit Kantor Kita, had her own bank. The smile is because the story reminds one that Bali – and indeed Indonesia – is a place of heroic dreams and Mitty-like plans.
It is of course immensely galling that people like Yuliani get away with things as they do for so long, and then get away with a slap on the wrist: two years for filching US$2.5 million works out at $3,424 a day before discounting for time off in lieu of the pre-trial confinement.
Yuliani’s former bank – she sold her controlling share in it when she was arrested last year - was of course not a large one (though normal caution should lead one to assume she would have had plans to make it bigger through further application of client funds to her private purposes). The thought occurs, however, that a marketing opportunity was missed when she set it up. The Australian Commonwealth Bank – which operates in Bali with its now trademark Vegemite-on-a-Biscuit logo – used to market itself with a catchy little come-on: Which Bank?
Had Yuliani’s acquisitive eye been on the ball instead of on her curiously non-escrow client accounts, Bank Kita could so easily have spun a nice little line out of this concept: Witch Bank.
Capital Sentence
DONE the crime? Doing the time? Well if you’ve still got the loot, you can do it in comfort in Indonesia’s otherwise horrific jails. We read with interest a story in the Jakarta Globe – great paper – this week that reports the head of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation, Patra M Zen, as saying prisoners with money live like royalty in Indonesian prisons, enjoying just about anything their hearts desire.
It could be treats as small as a bag of methamphetamine, or an air-conditioned cell decorated according to the occupant’s wishes and furnished with an exercise machine — or even a guest to take that lonely chill off your sheets.
The data collected – by Justice Ministry officials who conducted a surprise inspection of the Pondok Bambu Penitentiary in East Jakarta on Sunday, and who one assumes were not surprised by what they found – does not of course relate directly to Chateau Schapelle (Kerobokan jail), even though similar elective improvements (including a Jacuzzi in one instance) are reported to have been made there by well-moneyed residents.
Plans are afoot to reform Indonesia’s jails. Abolishing the national rule that money can buy you anything would be a great place to start.
Off the Rails
NEWS that the proponents of a high-speed new-technology railway linking Cirebon in West Java with Jakarta’s international airport have plans to suck up hundreds of megawatts of power from the Java-Bali electricity grid should remind Bali of precisely where it rates in Java’s priorities: somewhere well short of a visible radar blip.
We shouldn’t worry too much, however. If the proponents think their US$3 billion 357-kilometre concept will be operating in two years with minimal impact on the environment or the land over which it will pass – apparently in monorail fashion – they’re living in Pipedream, Mittyland. It’s a very crowded address, that one: full of the crowds of wannabes who so engage us with their flights of fancy.
Catch That Bus!
JACK Daniels went on a New Year cruise, we learn from his Bali Update which (along with Daniels, we are invited to assume) claims to have become a Bali institution. The sea air must have got to him. He said the provincial government will have a busway – a la Jakarta’s – up and running by 2007. (He seems to have caught up with his calendar later: by Tuesday it was saying November 2010.)
Readers of The Bali Times (in print and on line) got the story first in last week’s edition of the newspaper. In the print edition, which we’re sure Daniels reads, it appeared on Page 2 with appropriate prominence.
Slipped Disc
THE Diary’s preferred DVD supplier, an establishment in Kuta just across the road from Discovery Mall, is a must for visitors: Mr and Mrs Hec always take their VFRs there. As they did, again, late last week: Such is the pace of the current round of visiting friends and relatives that frequent customer privileges must surely be in the offing.
Unfortunately the establishment was tutup (closed). Apparently it had lately been raided by “the police from Jakarta” – well that was what the helpful pavement-based employee told us – and would reopen in due course, actual date unknown. But Indonesian enterprise knows no bounds. A list of available DVDs was proffered, along with advice that our selection could be delivered to our hotel.
SCRATCHINGS appears as The Diary in The Bali Times, Bali's only English-language newspaper, every Friday and on the newspaper's website at www.thebalitimes.com. The Bali Times is also available in print through Newspaper Direct.
Friday, January 08, 2010
HECTOR'S BALI TIMES DIARY [Jan. 8, 2010]
Farewell To
A Wonderful
Friend of
The World and
Its People
ABDURRAHMAN WAHID, ubiquitously Gus Dur to friend and foe alike, left us on December 30. Anyone’s passing is sad, but that of Gus Dur is sadder than most. He brought so much of immeasurable value to Indonesia, to Islam, and to the world.
He was Indonesia’s first elected president, taking the reins when the Suharto regime finally staggered to its inevitable end. But more than that – much more than that – he was an Islamist (in the true sense of the term) who embraced plurality. He saw no inconsistency at all in promoting the immense values of his religion while at the same time genuinely honouring the place of other faiths.
He was a Suffist scholar and a humanist – we should all be humanists, whatever our personal religious beliefs – who led by quiet example. He argued strongly for his beliefs, but accorded the same rights to others, without declaring these a casus belli. In short, his was an intellect and a modulated conscience of precisely the kind of which the world needs more.
At a time when hotheads rule – on all sides of the drum-beating religious-statist divide that human frailty has brought upon us – and the gun (and its pernicious companion, the bomb) threatens us all, we would do well to ponder the wonderful legacy that Gus Dur has left us.
In Western democracies, politicians like to say that more unites their people than can ever divide them. It is a refrain repeated so often that it has become trite. But it is nevertheless a fundamental truth – and it extends beyond largely artificial national boundaries. Among us all, all the peoples of the Earth, much more unites – leave aside genes and DNA – than divides.
It’s a Blast
IN Bali, as in the rest of Indonesia, one gets accustomed to nonsense. For this reason, then, for long-stay visitors – by which classification all resident expatriates should be defined – an absence of nonsense for longer than normal becomes curiously discomfiting. Humans are creatures of habit, after all, as well as beings whose every fibre is enriched by rumour and delicious thoughts of disaster. If nothing goes wrong here for more than – oh, say two days – then clearly something is seriously awry.
We should therefore record our deep gratitude and sense of debt to the American embassy in Jakarta, which on receipt of a nice little note from Governor I Made Mangku Pastika on New Year’s Eve that said, basically, we’ve put tremendous security in place but, look, you know, you can’t be too careful, alerted Americans – and regrettably as a result of this the media, which gets off on looming disaster real or imagined – to the threat of an “immediate terror attack.”
Many things about America – and Americans – are risible. The astonishing fact that the putative Nigerian underpants bomber was on a watch list of Al-Qaeda operatives yet was still able to board a plane in Amsterdam and thankfully fail to fully ignite his undergarments on approach to Detroit is a laugh, in a hollow sort of way. Get Smart should be an instruction, not an invitation to sit through endless re-runs of old television comedies.
The Moon’s My Balloon
THAT Ubud luminosity Janet DeNeefe, who spent Christmas in Australia, returned to Bali just in time to outshine the Blue Moon that lit up the world on New Year’s Eve. We hear she kicked up a storm at her Indus restaurant that evening. (The Diary was having a great time at the Jazz Café. See below.)
DeNeefe, who by now will be beginning to worry about the 2010 Writers and Readers Festival (well, we hope so) had just appeared in that other Jakarta newspaper with a New Year piece that declared Bali to be the ant’s pants in places to be – we agree – yet managed to conflate several disparate issues, including PLN’s inability to organise anything much at all, into one Purnama (full moon).
This passage caught The Diary’s eye: “In bygone days there was no new order, just cosmic order of the niskala, unseen, kind. Is there is a lesson to be learned by imposed blackouts, and do they provide greater wisdom or vision? And while the lights might be off, what shines inside all of us are deeper issues of conservation, saving the planet and quality of life. Could ‘switched off’ be the new switched on?”
Click!
Doom and Gloom
WELL, not really. But readers of The Australian, the Odd Zone’s national newspaper, were invited to consider whether Bali was committing commercial and social suicide by failure to manage development, in a thoughtful piece by writer Deborah Cassrels published – as these things tend to be – over the New Year weekend.
It’s hard to argue with Cassrels’ thesis (that everything is so disorganised that virtually no sensible planning ever gets done and that rampant development threatens the island’s environment) or with the inference readers were invited to draw, that developers are in general a pain in the neck and the nether regions. Yet we need a little perspective. It’s true that KLS – Kuta-Legian-Seminyak – is a mess and it’s a complete mystery why anyone would actually want to live there. It’s true, too, that lots of people with more money than sense are buying overpriced blocks of land from robber barons on the waterless Bukit; and that, elsewhere, coastal areas have apparently been conceded as free-fire zones for lookalike get-rich-quickers. It’s certainly true that traffic gridlock is a daily fact of life in much of South Bali and that everybody – it’s not just the Balinese – turns rivers and beaches into garbage tips.
There is, therefore, much for the provincial government and the Green Governor to do. It must be done quickly. It must be done in a rational way and it must be done – consistent with overarching national policies – by the provincial government, which somehow must work out with Jakarta who is actually responsible for what.
But there is a lot more to Bali than just the concrete jungle in the south. There’s the rest of the island, folks. The bit with the other sort of jungle (well, sort of). What’s happened in the south is irreversible. We must all just make the best of it that we can. A few usable roads and even a rudimentary public transport system would help (hint, GG). Mass tourism brings in the dollars, which virtually all Balinese quite naturally want to get hold of. Quality tourism – and we do not mean more wannabe rich and famous tourism – ultimately provides them in far larger quantities. That’s the real imperative.
Idyll Lot
GILI Trawangan, off Lombok, is increasingly an adjunct of Bali, at least so far as its supplies and direct tourist traffic is concerned. So are its less crowded companions, Gilis Meno and Air. Fast boats now link them directly with Bali, leaving the mainland alone to its government’s dream of an impending Middle Eastern tourism boom fuelled by the new airport – under construction in the usual shambolic fashion – and a heroic belief that Arabs rich enough to fly away on hols will forsake the casinos, bars and other fleshpots of the Mediterranean and thoroughly liberal Europe for the shared Islamic heritage of distant Lombok.
According to a travel article just published in Britain, Trawangan could be next Ibiza. It is said to be just like that island in the Spanish Balearic Islands used to be before it wasn’t any longer. Trawangan is the party island, helped along by the fact that its community government won’t have police there and a range of engaging characters, among them Angelo Sanfilippo of Dream Village, who won a deserved mention in the article. It’s a relaxed place where everyone mucks in and gets along.
We’re not sure about it being the new Ibiza, but it’s certainly a magic spot; and a fine place to stage a personal idyll.
What a Hoot
THE Diary and party spent New Year’s Eve at the Jazz Café in Ubud. There’s always an eclectic crowd there – even when you’re not counting down the minutes to a new year – and never disappoints. And there’s nothing like jazz and the chance to dance to brighten up your night.
Some minor misbehaviour must be conceded. After the witching hour – which the Jazz Café’s management contrived to mark a tad early: but it would have been churlish to cavil over a mere eight minutes – The Diary’s party returned to its overnight accommodation armed with party hooters, the better to blast passersby with in celebration of 09 becoming 10.
Let There Be Light
PLN, whose plug-pulling skills are second to none, should be leaving the lights on round the clock one week from today. That’s if its promise that Bali’s rolling blackouts that were imposed in October because of its own incompetence and extended by one month-plus from December 10 for ditto and which are now due to end on January 15 proves unusual in that it will be kept.
But don’t hold your breath. And we would advise against selling your candles.
SCRATCHINGS is published as The Diary in The Bali Times every Friday. The Bali Times www.thebalitimes.com is also available as a print product through Newspaper Direct.
A Wonderful
Friend of
The World and
Its People
ABDURRAHMAN WAHID, ubiquitously Gus Dur to friend and foe alike, left us on December 30. Anyone’s passing is sad, but that of Gus Dur is sadder than most. He brought so much of immeasurable value to Indonesia, to Islam, and to the world.
He was Indonesia’s first elected president, taking the reins when the Suharto regime finally staggered to its inevitable end. But more than that – much more than that – he was an Islamist (in the true sense of the term) who embraced plurality. He saw no inconsistency at all in promoting the immense values of his religion while at the same time genuinely honouring the place of other faiths.
He was a Suffist scholar and a humanist – we should all be humanists, whatever our personal religious beliefs – who led by quiet example. He argued strongly for his beliefs, but accorded the same rights to others, without declaring these a casus belli. In short, his was an intellect and a modulated conscience of precisely the kind of which the world needs more.
At a time when hotheads rule – on all sides of the drum-beating religious-statist divide that human frailty has brought upon us – and the gun (and its pernicious companion, the bomb) threatens us all, we would do well to ponder the wonderful legacy that Gus Dur has left us.
In Western democracies, politicians like to say that more unites their people than can ever divide them. It is a refrain repeated so often that it has become trite. But it is nevertheless a fundamental truth – and it extends beyond largely artificial national boundaries. Among us all, all the peoples of the Earth, much more unites – leave aside genes and DNA – than divides.
It’s a Blast
IN Bali, as in the rest of Indonesia, one gets accustomed to nonsense. For this reason, then, for long-stay visitors – by which classification all resident expatriates should be defined – an absence of nonsense for longer than normal becomes curiously discomfiting. Humans are creatures of habit, after all, as well as beings whose every fibre is enriched by rumour and delicious thoughts of disaster. If nothing goes wrong here for more than – oh, say two days – then clearly something is seriously awry.
We should therefore record our deep gratitude and sense of debt to the American embassy in Jakarta, which on receipt of a nice little note from Governor I Made Mangku Pastika on New Year’s Eve that said, basically, we’ve put tremendous security in place but, look, you know, you can’t be too careful, alerted Americans – and regrettably as a result of this the media, which gets off on looming disaster real or imagined – to the threat of an “immediate terror attack.”
Many things about America – and Americans – are risible. The astonishing fact that the putative Nigerian underpants bomber was on a watch list of Al-Qaeda operatives yet was still able to board a plane in Amsterdam and thankfully fail to fully ignite his undergarments on approach to Detroit is a laugh, in a hollow sort of way. Get Smart should be an instruction, not an invitation to sit through endless re-runs of old television comedies.
The Moon’s My Balloon
THAT Ubud luminosity Janet DeNeefe, who spent Christmas in Australia, returned to Bali just in time to outshine the Blue Moon that lit up the world on New Year’s Eve. We hear she kicked up a storm at her Indus restaurant that evening. (The Diary was having a great time at the Jazz Café. See below.)
DeNeefe, who by now will be beginning to worry about the 2010 Writers and Readers Festival (well, we hope so) had just appeared in that other Jakarta newspaper with a New Year piece that declared Bali to be the ant’s pants in places to be – we agree – yet managed to conflate several disparate issues, including PLN’s inability to organise anything much at all, into one Purnama (full moon).
This passage caught The Diary’s eye: “In bygone days there was no new order, just cosmic order of the niskala, unseen, kind. Is there is a lesson to be learned by imposed blackouts, and do they provide greater wisdom or vision? And while the lights might be off, what shines inside all of us are deeper issues of conservation, saving the planet and quality of life. Could ‘switched off’ be the new switched on?”
Click!
Doom and Gloom
WELL, not really. But readers of The Australian, the Odd Zone’s national newspaper, were invited to consider whether Bali was committing commercial and social suicide by failure to manage development, in a thoughtful piece by writer Deborah Cassrels published – as these things tend to be – over the New Year weekend.
It’s hard to argue with Cassrels’ thesis (that everything is so disorganised that virtually no sensible planning ever gets done and that rampant development threatens the island’s environment) or with the inference readers were invited to draw, that developers are in general a pain in the neck and the nether regions. Yet we need a little perspective. It’s true that KLS – Kuta-Legian-Seminyak – is a mess and it’s a complete mystery why anyone would actually want to live there. It’s true, too, that lots of people with more money than sense are buying overpriced blocks of land from robber barons on the waterless Bukit; and that, elsewhere, coastal areas have apparently been conceded as free-fire zones for lookalike get-rich-quickers. It’s certainly true that traffic gridlock is a daily fact of life in much of South Bali and that everybody – it’s not just the Balinese – turns rivers and beaches into garbage tips.
There is, therefore, much for the provincial government and the Green Governor to do. It must be done quickly. It must be done in a rational way and it must be done – consistent with overarching national policies – by the provincial government, which somehow must work out with Jakarta who is actually responsible for what.
But there is a lot more to Bali than just the concrete jungle in the south. There’s the rest of the island, folks. The bit with the other sort of jungle (well, sort of). What’s happened in the south is irreversible. We must all just make the best of it that we can. A few usable roads and even a rudimentary public transport system would help (hint, GG). Mass tourism brings in the dollars, which virtually all Balinese quite naturally want to get hold of. Quality tourism – and we do not mean more wannabe rich and famous tourism – ultimately provides them in far larger quantities. That’s the real imperative.
Idyll Lot
GILI Trawangan, off Lombok, is increasingly an adjunct of Bali, at least so far as its supplies and direct tourist traffic is concerned. So are its less crowded companions, Gilis Meno and Air. Fast boats now link them directly with Bali, leaving the mainland alone to its government’s dream of an impending Middle Eastern tourism boom fuelled by the new airport – under construction in the usual shambolic fashion – and a heroic belief that Arabs rich enough to fly away on hols will forsake the casinos, bars and other fleshpots of the Mediterranean and thoroughly liberal Europe for the shared Islamic heritage of distant Lombok.
According to a travel article just published in Britain, Trawangan could be next Ibiza. It is said to be just like that island in the Spanish Balearic Islands used to be before it wasn’t any longer. Trawangan is the party island, helped along by the fact that its community government won’t have police there and a range of engaging characters, among them Angelo Sanfilippo of Dream Village, who won a deserved mention in the article. It’s a relaxed place where everyone mucks in and gets along.
We’re not sure about it being the new Ibiza, but it’s certainly a magic spot; and a fine place to stage a personal idyll.
What a Hoot
THE Diary and party spent New Year’s Eve at the Jazz Café in Ubud. There’s always an eclectic crowd there – even when you’re not counting down the minutes to a new year – and never disappoints. And there’s nothing like jazz and the chance to dance to brighten up your night.
Some minor misbehaviour must be conceded. After the witching hour – which the Jazz Café’s management contrived to mark a tad early: but it would have been churlish to cavil over a mere eight minutes – The Diary’s party returned to its overnight accommodation armed with party hooters, the better to blast passersby with in celebration of 09 becoming 10.
Let There Be Light
PLN, whose plug-pulling skills are second to none, should be leaving the lights on round the clock one week from today. That’s if its promise that Bali’s rolling blackouts that were imposed in October because of its own incompetence and extended by one month-plus from December 10 for ditto and which are now due to end on January 15 proves unusual in that it will be kept.
But don’t hold your breath. And we would advise against selling your candles.
SCRATCHINGS is published as The Diary in The Bali Times every Friday. The Bali Times www.thebalitimes.com is also available as a print product through Newspaper Direct.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
HECTOR'S BALI TIMES DIARY [for Jan. 2, 2010]
The Law
Moves
In a
Mysterious
Way
A NUMBER of things irritate those who do business here, or try to. Among them is the risk of running into a bent lawyer or one of those business advisers whose business, it turns out, is to enrich themselves at their clients’ expense.
Esti Yuliani, better known as Julie Edmond to those she famously ill-advised while passing herself off as a lawyer, is serving a two-year sentence imposed by judge Nyoman Sutama (less time served while awaiting trial) for omitting to mention that the Kantor Kita escrow account she got a business client drop a lazy US$2.5 million into was in fact an open account to which she had access; and then lifting the loot.
(It’s interesting, for contextual comparison, that just before Christmas the same judge Nyoman Sutama in Denpasar District Court sentenced Billabong Indonesia sales and marketing manager I Wayan Suanda to two-and-a-half years in prison, less time already served (he was detained last May) for embezzling company materials. Suanda, with an absent co-defendant – Christopher James, who unsurprisingly is in Australia – had removed pictures and other promotional materials from 34 stores without the permission of another company, CV Bali Balance, with which Billabong is in a commercial dispute after terminating a long-standing business arrangement. It was alleged by CV Bali Balance that Suanda’s actions cost it US$115,000.)
The Bali Times reported on page one of the December 18 edition that one of the bar associations that looks after lawyers here – that grammatical construction is deliberate, by the way, lest anyone miss the point – struck off one of its Bali members for taking $250,000 from a British client and not doing the paperwork for which the money had been provided. Why such embezzlement is not automatically a police matter – and why the gentleman concerned, Rizaldi Watruti (who is either acquisitive or indolent; it’s not entirely clear which), got only a year off instead of being tarred and feathered and told never to darken the doorway of a lawyer’s practice ever again – can only be described as an Indonesian mystery.
Caveat emptor remains the only sensible advice in circumstances where astonishing malfeasance appears to be a regular occurrence rather than an unpleasant exception; the preference is to wink at such instances unless someone makes a lot of noise or sufficient (further) money changes hands to oil the legal and judicial wheels. It’s not only stupid Bules who are the victims. Indonesians do it to themselves regularly. And the perpetrators are not only Indonesians, either. Too many of the expatriates who have set up in business here seem to have done so because they’d be in jail if they tried it in their own countries, or anywhere with an effective criminal investigation and prosecution service, a rock-solid legal system and a judiciary that sees judgment as a jurisprudential outcome and not as an income stream.
It’s true, of course, that in land matters particularly Indonesian law makes a messy porridge of any transaction. Land title is often unclear and can be subject to rival claims years later, and the situation is complicated by the fanciful notion that if foreigners owned freehold title they would dig up the land and take it home. Selling land to foreigners is not specifically an Indonesian problem. It is only relatively recently, for example, that the silly burghers of The Great South Land managed to convince themselves that allowing non-citizens to buy freehold title would not mean they’d wake up one morning to find large parts of their very special biosphere had disappeared.
Author! Author!
ONE of the benefits of a week off (from diary writing among other things) is that you can do things you otherwise put aside for lack of time. So it is that a lengthy book review in the British journal The Spectator – like most things, read on line in Bali – caught The Diary’s eye. It was written by Ferdinand Mount, who was reviewing a book by Frank Kermode (he’s 90 not out, good on him) on E.M. Forster, the English Edwardian author.
Forster wrote A Passage to India and Howard’s End, most notably; though in a long career he penned a lot more than that. Kermode has made a life’s work of dissecting Forster. He has done this so exhaustively that he must be the only person not exhausted by his effort. Mount writes that as he read Kermode’s latest causerie, he came to the conclusion that he liked Forster a lot. So does The Diary.
It’s true that Forster is a curiously enervating writer, but read deeply he is very far from bland and in fact is a much more penetrating inquisitor and prompter of questions than most. Besides, he must be all right. Anyone cauterised for literary demerit by Virginia Woolf – whether or not played for hours by the annoying Nicole Kidman in a false nose – is surely to be praised.
That he was a moneyed homosexual with fantasies about being roughed up by lower class lads is beside the point. Sadly, these days he is read much less widely than he should be. This is because he presents arguments that require effort to fully appreciate and leaves the functional side of sexual congress where it should be left, unless you’re writing pornography: to the reader’s imagination.
Sponsored Fun
READERS will have noticed that our pre-Christmas edition was sponsored by Oceans 27, the beachside entertainment venue in Kuta. The Diary got an invitation – well, vicariously by Facebook, at least – but did not attend the Russian Bikini Pool Party put on by our sponsors for the young and disgracefully undressed on December 19. Superannuated cockatoos look very scary in pink bikinis.
We hear it was a good bash, as all such parties should be. Thoroughly tasteless, gauche, loud, ill-mannered ... all the things that your diarist remembers (well vaguely; read on) from the flush of youth.
Young people always think that theirs is the time of innovation; that no one (especially their parents) can ever have had this much fun. It is part of the insouciant insolence and ignorance of youth. But this is not the case and never has been. Eventually most of us grow out of it; it can be a shock, that process. It is not confined to party animal misbehaviour. Winston Churchill, an indifferent scholar but a powerful intellect, once said that when he was 16 he had been embarrassed by his parents’ ignorance, but at 21 had been amazed at how much they had learned in the past five years.
The Diary had one youthful episode of exceptional note (in the party context). It was in London, where you have to play hard just to keep warm. The details are understandably vague, though it must have been an excellent affray. There’s a whole week missing from the record.
Too Precious
JOURNALISTS - among whom your diarist publicly counts himself, having long ago given up his quest for greater respectability by telling people he plays piano in a brothel – should not be too precious. They dish it out (or they should) so they must be able to take it, too.
The case of Jakarta woman Luna Maya’s Twitter outbursts – if you can get past the deliciously whacky inference to be drawn from the lady’s first name – is one instance of this rule. One of Indonesia’s journalists’ associations has reported her to police. Journalists prattle on forever about defending free speech. How, then, can they possibly use a repressive, ridiculous and offensive law – the defamation provisions of the Electronic Transaction and Information Law – to attempt to punish someone who expresses a view of journalists that is not something you’d want to put on your name card?
Luna’s opinion may be loony (well, it is). Albeit she appeared to be targeting “infotainment” journalists – that natural oxymoron – about whose utility we might all profitably ponder. Perhaps prostitutes and murderers will now also complain that they have been profoundly and (thanks to ridiculous legislation) criminally insulted.
Journalism is not for the faint-hearted, or for those who cannot see the hypocrisy of protesting on the one hand against repressive laws and seeking to use them, on the other, when their pompous little egos have been dented. Freedom of speech means having to put up with the ravings of all manner of twits.
Christmas Ritual
A LITTLE while ago The Diary attended – and came sixth in – a Bloody Mary making competition at the St Regis Resort & Spa, Nusa Dua. It was an evening arranged by Geetha Warrier, the property’s comely communicator. The reward (apart from dinner afterwards and the fame of finishing far higher up the list than usual where demonstrations requiring practical application are concerned) was two vouchers for a Bloody Mary Inspired Ritual at Remède Spa.
The vouchers were redeemed on Christmas Day. The Diary and Mrs Diary enjoyed 180 minutes of the finest pampering, in a wonderful ambience. It involved various preparations including tomato, pineapple, wasabi and parsley, administered firmly by superbly qualified therapists who understood that “strong” means strong and whose skills were unquestionable.
It was a far cry from the usual – very pleasant and more than adequate – Bali-style pampering places generally patronised by the less than obscenely over-moneyed, and a very nice Christmas present.
THE DIARY is published in the weekly print edition of The Bali Times on Fridays and appears on the newspaper's website at www.thebalitimes.com. The Bali Times is also available in print through Newspaper Direct.
Moves
In a
Mysterious
Way
A NUMBER of things irritate those who do business here, or try to. Among them is the risk of running into a bent lawyer or one of those business advisers whose business, it turns out, is to enrich themselves at their clients’ expense.
Esti Yuliani, better known as Julie Edmond to those she famously ill-advised while passing herself off as a lawyer, is serving a two-year sentence imposed by judge Nyoman Sutama (less time served while awaiting trial) for omitting to mention that the Kantor Kita escrow account she got a business client drop a lazy US$2.5 million into was in fact an open account to which she had access; and then lifting the loot.
(It’s interesting, for contextual comparison, that just before Christmas the same judge Nyoman Sutama in Denpasar District Court sentenced Billabong Indonesia sales and marketing manager I Wayan Suanda to two-and-a-half years in prison, less time already served (he was detained last May) for embezzling company materials. Suanda, with an absent co-defendant – Christopher James, who unsurprisingly is in Australia – had removed pictures and other promotional materials from 34 stores without the permission of another company, CV Bali Balance, with which Billabong is in a commercial dispute after terminating a long-standing business arrangement. It was alleged by CV Bali Balance that Suanda’s actions cost it US$115,000.)
The Bali Times reported on page one of the December 18 edition that one of the bar associations that looks after lawyers here – that grammatical construction is deliberate, by the way, lest anyone miss the point – struck off one of its Bali members for taking $250,000 from a British client and not doing the paperwork for which the money had been provided. Why such embezzlement is not automatically a police matter – and why the gentleman concerned, Rizaldi Watruti (who is either acquisitive or indolent; it’s not entirely clear which), got only a year off instead of being tarred and feathered and told never to darken the doorway of a lawyer’s practice ever again – can only be described as an Indonesian mystery.
Caveat emptor remains the only sensible advice in circumstances where astonishing malfeasance appears to be a regular occurrence rather than an unpleasant exception; the preference is to wink at such instances unless someone makes a lot of noise or sufficient (further) money changes hands to oil the legal and judicial wheels. It’s not only stupid Bules who are the victims. Indonesians do it to themselves regularly. And the perpetrators are not only Indonesians, either. Too many of the expatriates who have set up in business here seem to have done so because they’d be in jail if they tried it in their own countries, or anywhere with an effective criminal investigation and prosecution service, a rock-solid legal system and a judiciary that sees judgment as a jurisprudential outcome and not as an income stream.
It’s true, of course, that in land matters particularly Indonesian law makes a messy porridge of any transaction. Land title is often unclear and can be subject to rival claims years later, and the situation is complicated by the fanciful notion that if foreigners owned freehold title they would dig up the land and take it home. Selling land to foreigners is not specifically an Indonesian problem. It is only relatively recently, for example, that the silly burghers of The Great South Land managed to convince themselves that allowing non-citizens to buy freehold title would not mean they’d wake up one morning to find large parts of their very special biosphere had disappeared.
Author! Author!
ONE of the benefits of a week off (from diary writing among other things) is that you can do things you otherwise put aside for lack of time. So it is that a lengthy book review in the British journal The Spectator – like most things, read on line in Bali – caught The Diary’s eye. It was written by Ferdinand Mount, who was reviewing a book by Frank Kermode (he’s 90 not out, good on him) on E.M. Forster, the English Edwardian author.
Forster wrote A Passage to India and Howard’s End, most notably; though in a long career he penned a lot more than that. Kermode has made a life’s work of dissecting Forster. He has done this so exhaustively that he must be the only person not exhausted by his effort. Mount writes that as he read Kermode’s latest causerie, he came to the conclusion that he liked Forster a lot. So does The Diary.
It’s true that Forster is a curiously enervating writer, but read deeply he is very far from bland and in fact is a much more penetrating inquisitor and prompter of questions than most. Besides, he must be all right. Anyone cauterised for literary demerit by Virginia Woolf – whether or not played for hours by the annoying Nicole Kidman in a false nose – is surely to be praised.
That he was a moneyed homosexual with fantasies about being roughed up by lower class lads is beside the point. Sadly, these days he is read much less widely than he should be. This is because he presents arguments that require effort to fully appreciate and leaves the functional side of sexual congress where it should be left, unless you’re writing pornography: to the reader’s imagination.
Sponsored Fun
READERS will have noticed that our pre-Christmas edition was sponsored by Oceans 27, the beachside entertainment venue in Kuta. The Diary got an invitation – well, vicariously by Facebook, at least – but did not attend the Russian Bikini Pool Party put on by our sponsors for the young and disgracefully undressed on December 19. Superannuated cockatoos look very scary in pink bikinis.
We hear it was a good bash, as all such parties should be. Thoroughly tasteless, gauche, loud, ill-mannered ... all the things that your diarist remembers (well vaguely; read on) from the flush of youth.
Young people always think that theirs is the time of innovation; that no one (especially their parents) can ever have had this much fun. It is part of the insouciant insolence and ignorance of youth. But this is not the case and never has been. Eventually most of us grow out of it; it can be a shock, that process. It is not confined to party animal misbehaviour. Winston Churchill, an indifferent scholar but a powerful intellect, once said that when he was 16 he had been embarrassed by his parents’ ignorance, but at 21 had been amazed at how much they had learned in the past five years.
The Diary had one youthful episode of exceptional note (in the party context). It was in London, where you have to play hard just to keep warm. The details are understandably vague, though it must have been an excellent affray. There’s a whole week missing from the record.
Too Precious
JOURNALISTS - among whom your diarist publicly counts himself, having long ago given up his quest for greater respectability by telling people he plays piano in a brothel – should not be too precious. They dish it out (or they should) so they must be able to take it, too.
The case of Jakarta woman Luna Maya’s Twitter outbursts – if you can get past the deliciously whacky inference to be drawn from the lady’s first name – is one instance of this rule. One of Indonesia’s journalists’ associations has reported her to police. Journalists prattle on forever about defending free speech. How, then, can they possibly use a repressive, ridiculous and offensive law – the defamation provisions of the Electronic Transaction and Information Law – to attempt to punish someone who expresses a view of journalists that is not something you’d want to put on your name card?
Luna’s opinion may be loony (well, it is). Albeit she appeared to be targeting “infotainment” journalists – that natural oxymoron – about whose utility we might all profitably ponder. Perhaps prostitutes and murderers will now also complain that they have been profoundly and (thanks to ridiculous legislation) criminally insulted.
Journalism is not for the faint-hearted, or for those who cannot see the hypocrisy of protesting on the one hand against repressive laws and seeking to use them, on the other, when their pompous little egos have been dented. Freedom of speech means having to put up with the ravings of all manner of twits.
Christmas Ritual
A LITTLE while ago The Diary attended – and came sixth in – a Bloody Mary making competition at the St Regis Resort & Spa, Nusa Dua. It was an evening arranged by Geetha Warrier, the property’s comely communicator. The reward (apart from dinner afterwards and the fame of finishing far higher up the list than usual where demonstrations requiring practical application are concerned) was two vouchers for a Bloody Mary Inspired Ritual at Remède Spa.
The vouchers were redeemed on Christmas Day. The Diary and Mrs Diary enjoyed 180 minutes of the finest pampering, in a wonderful ambience. It involved various preparations including tomato, pineapple, wasabi and parsley, administered firmly by superbly qualified therapists who understood that “strong” means strong and whose skills were unquestionable.
It was a far cry from the usual – very pleasant and more than adequate – Bali-style pampering places generally patronised by the less than obscenely over-moneyed, and a very nice Christmas present.
THE DIARY is published in the weekly print edition of The Bali Times on Fridays and appears on the newspaper's website at www.thebalitimes.com. The Bali Times is also available in print through Newspaper Direct.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
HECTOR'S BALI TIMES DIARY [for Dec. 18]
Welcome
On Board,
This is
Capt Gila
Speaking
THE Yogyakarta air crash, in March 2007, was a shocking event. All air crashes are. But the circumstances of the disaster in Yogyakarta in 2007 made it more shocking than most, because of the expert evidence presented in the aftermath that the Garuda captain in command of the Boeing 737 flight from Jakarta that fateful morning had ignored 15 separate automated cockpit warnings that he was approaching too fast and that his landing speed – on the airport’s short runway – was far too high.
Captain Marwoto Komar landed well outside the operational limits set out in the manual – and outside the limits of common sense, another essential cockpit qualification. His aircraft ran off the end of the runway and immediately caught fire, killing 21 people. Scores were injured.
Even if he were utterly blameless, you’d think that the horror of what he had participated in as captain of the aircraft would have given him pause for thought. Not a bit of it. He took some time off; perhaps to get his captain’s uniform dry-cleaned. Later he was charged with manslaughter and was dismissed by Garuda. The charge was subsequently reduced to criminal negligence. He defended himself by appearing in court in his Garuda uniform – despite having been sacked – and by having his defence lawyers present the usual compendium of inventive excuses you tend to hear from the criminally negligent when their crimes catch up with them.
Marwoto’s instrument of death was not a machine-pistol, though it might just as well have been. His excuse for being the person in charge when 21 people met their untimely deaths in an aircraft he was flying and which he then crashed was tantamount to saying he didn’t know the gun was loaded and that no, he had no idea where the safety catch was.
His argument in the first court hearing was less than persuasive. The district court found him guilty as charged and imposed a two-year jail sentence. That appeared to many people to be little enough in the circumstances.
He immediately appealed and was released on bail. Last week a High Court appeal bench, sitting in Yogyakarta, quashed the charge against him and overturned the verdict and the sentence. The judges said criminal negligence could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt. The bench, in reaching this decision, rejected the expert testimony on which Marwoto had originally been convicted; or at least, seems to have decided that ignoring 15 audible cockpit warnings relating to approach speed did not constitute provable negligence.
Marwoto claimed the aircraft’s flaps – which control descent and airspeed – malfunctioned. No expert evidence has been presented that this was the case. But even if the flaps did fail, it is possible to land a Boeing 737 in most circumstances without them. Not at the sadly deficient and short-field Yogyakarta airport, granted, but diversion to somewhere with a longer runway would have been an option. How failure to apply common sense, as the captain of an aircraft, does not constitute criminal negligence is a mystery.
Never mind. Marwoto now has an obvious career opportunity ahead of him. (It probably won’t be flying; not even Garuda would contemplate letting him anywhere near a real cockpit again, surely?) But he could easily set up a consultancy and put together some useful course modules for would-be airline pilots (a three-part course under the topic heading Go Gila seems apt):
(1) How to Land Your Flying Machine Very, Very Fast Indeed. (2) Why Automated Cockpit Warning Signals Can Be Safely Ignored. (3) Wearing Your Uniform: Handy Tips to Fool People into Thinking That You Know What You’re Doing.
The Yogyakarta crash was the final straw for observers of Indonesian aviation practice overseas. The European Union banned all Indonesian carriers from its airspace. (That ban was recently lifted for four Indonesian carriers, one of them Garuda.)
Tiger Loses Stripes
THE world is an unkind place. Humans are naturally voyeuristic and of course the peccadilloes of others are the basic building blocks of the tabloid media and waiting room magazines. So it is that poor Tiger Woods, who plays really good golf, has unaccountably wrapped his nine-iron around his nether regions and given himself a frightful bruising.
Unsurprisingly, in this cruel, hypocritical and self-serving world, several corporations which have paid him handsomely to be their public face so that they can in turn make even more money, have told him to go away. There is very little that is more nauseating than money-making corporations masking their horror at losing some by taking the high moral ground.
Woods’ inability to manage his natural urges – or to distinguish between the felicity of scoring a birdie on the field of play and the infelicity of doing so elsewhere in the literal other sense – is pathetic (well, maybe) but it is surely not unusual or for that matter of more than merely venal demerit. After all, for many men – and though we’re not supposed to think so, a lot of women – sex is the most powerful driver in your kit. Tiger did what many men dream of doing and many women wish men would.
Woods’ skill as a golfer is beyond compare. His present difficulty, as a man, is sad, but sadly common. Most philanderers are not public figures. They can grub away as they wish without any fears other than of the saucepan that might collect their cranium if the wife finds out. Such is the human condition.
Sadly, too, hubris being what it is, the thought of becoming a bar-room joke is often the worst pain of all. Few of us wish to become the object of music-hall stand-up routines. We should let go of this Tiger’s tale – and allow him to reconstruct the silly mess he seems to have made of his life.
It’s a Saga
SOME people we know, who live in the otherwise peaceful surroundings of rural Ungasan, have a sorry tale to tell about the perils of renovation. It’s not their place that’s the problem – though their own renovasi after buying their modest villa two years ago had its own little difficulties – but the place next door.
It used to be a separate residence, except when the wind blew and the rotted alang-alang roof it sported migrated en masse to their swimming pool. But as part of its conversion into a dream residence – nightmare seems a better word – by some absent (and possibly absent minded) Jakarta people, it now conjoins.
The extensive rebuilding, which seems to be a project contracted out to two little fellows with one hammer, who take it in turns to tap away from time to time but on no discernable schedule, has co-opted their structure. Perhaps our friends’ villa, built to what is loosely described in Bali as “western standard,” is required as a load-bearing support.
For 16 months, while the interior has been gutted, three Jacuzzis installed (well, the new owners are Jakarta people; perhaps that’s why they aren’t bothering to replace the rotted alang-alang roof) and expensive glass erected, the tap-tap-tapping of whoever is the duty hammer man at the time has resonated – and reverberated, since there is now a “common wall” – at will. Siestas are rarely feasible. Having friends to stay is impossible.
But there is a silver lining. Our chums now have (one) brand new exterior sun blind for their trouble. This was provided, following extensive discussions, because the new wall of the now adjoining residence actually butts onto their own and made it impossible for the previous blind, custom made for the space, to fully deploy.
Maybe it will all be over sometime in 2010. Well ... maybe.
Thoughts on the Season
YOUR diarist is not devotional, having decided long ago to leave organised expressions of faith to those who have need of such things. But devotional music remains a passion, and this time of year is a great time to indulge a taste for such things. And it’s so easy nowadays. Last weekend, a pleasant hour was spent listing to ABC Classic FM on live stream on The Diary’s laptop – OK, it should have been diary-writing at the time, but even diarists have to relax now and then – and enjoying Medieval Christian music.
The meter, the timbre, the cadence and the inspirational message of intellectual faith from so long ago that one derives from listening to such music is a treat. Christmas comes but once a year, as the old saying has it. When it does, it is nice to remember times past; both personal – so short a timeframe: in your diarist’s case, one that started only 155 years after verifiable temperature recordings on which we are now supposed to base our fears for the future began – and historical. Antiquity, viewed as it should be, provides a corrective to one’s moral compass. It’s a shame there is such profound ignorance today of both the facts and the lessons of the past.
In the modern Western tradition, Christmas is a secular celebration – of the illusory benefits of the consumer society among other things – that owes very little to its religious origins. But it’s as well to remember that Christmas, celebrating Jesus’ birth, is the old pagan midwinter festival of Europe, rebranded; just as Easter, the most solemn of Christian festivals, occurs, entirely without coincidence, coincidentally with the old northern hemisphere festival of Eostre, marking the new life that Spring brings to cold places that have growing seasons. The Greek god Eostre is also the root of the English word oestrus. Except by traditional misunderstanding and mythology – and faith – it has nothing to do with Wafat Issa.
Happy Christmas anyway; see you in the New Year.
SCRATCHINGS appears at The Bali Times Diary in the print edition of the weekly newspaper every Friday and on the newspaper’s website at www.thebalitimes.com. The Bali Times is also available as a print product through Newspaper Direct.
On Board,
This is
Capt Gila
Speaking
THE Yogyakarta air crash, in March 2007, was a shocking event. All air crashes are. But the circumstances of the disaster in Yogyakarta in 2007 made it more shocking than most, because of the expert evidence presented in the aftermath that the Garuda captain in command of the Boeing 737 flight from Jakarta that fateful morning had ignored 15 separate automated cockpit warnings that he was approaching too fast and that his landing speed – on the airport’s short runway – was far too high.
Captain Marwoto Komar landed well outside the operational limits set out in the manual – and outside the limits of common sense, another essential cockpit qualification. His aircraft ran off the end of the runway and immediately caught fire, killing 21 people. Scores were injured.
Even if he were utterly blameless, you’d think that the horror of what he had participated in as captain of the aircraft would have given him pause for thought. Not a bit of it. He took some time off; perhaps to get his captain’s uniform dry-cleaned. Later he was charged with manslaughter and was dismissed by Garuda. The charge was subsequently reduced to criminal negligence. He defended himself by appearing in court in his Garuda uniform – despite having been sacked – and by having his defence lawyers present the usual compendium of inventive excuses you tend to hear from the criminally negligent when their crimes catch up with them.
Marwoto’s instrument of death was not a machine-pistol, though it might just as well have been. His excuse for being the person in charge when 21 people met their untimely deaths in an aircraft he was flying and which he then crashed was tantamount to saying he didn’t know the gun was loaded and that no, he had no idea where the safety catch was.
His argument in the first court hearing was less than persuasive. The district court found him guilty as charged and imposed a two-year jail sentence. That appeared to many people to be little enough in the circumstances.
He immediately appealed and was released on bail. Last week a High Court appeal bench, sitting in Yogyakarta, quashed the charge against him and overturned the verdict and the sentence. The judges said criminal negligence could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt. The bench, in reaching this decision, rejected the expert testimony on which Marwoto had originally been convicted; or at least, seems to have decided that ignoring 15 audible cockpit warnings relating to approach speed did not constitute provable negligence.
Marwoto claimed the aircraft’s flaps – which control descent and airspeed – malfunctioned. No expert evidence has been presented that this was the case. But even if the flaps did fail, it is possible to land a Boeing 737 in most circumstances without them. Not at the sadly deficient and short-field Yogyakarta airport, granted, but diversion to somewhere with a longer runway would have been an option. How failure to apply common sense, as the captain of an aircraft, does not constitute criminal negligence is a mystery.
Never mind. Marwoto now has an obvious career opportunity ahead of him. (It probably won’t be flying; not even Garuda would contemplate letting him anywhere near a real cockpit again, surely?) But he could easily set up a consultancy and put together some useful course modules for would-be airline pilots (a three-part course under the topic heading Go Gila seems apt):
(1) How to Land Your Flying Machine Very, Very Fast Indeed. (2) Why Automated Cockpit Warning Signals Can Be Safely Ignored. (3) Wearing Your Uniform: Handy Tips to Fool People into Thinking That You Know What You’re Doing.
The Yogyakarta crash was the final straw for observers of Indonesian aviation practice overseas. The European Union banned all Indonesian carriers from its airspace. (That ban was recently lifted for four Indonesian carriers, one of them Garuda.)
Tiger Loses Stripes
THE world is an unkind place. Humans are naturally voyeuristic and of course the peccadilloes of others are the basic building blocks of the tabloid media and waiting room magazines. So it is that poor Tiger Woods, who plays really good golf, has unaccountably wrapped his nine-iron around his nether regions and given himself a frightful bruising.
Unsurprisingly, in this cruel, hypocritical and self-serving world, several corporations which have paid him handsomely to be their public face so that they can in turn make even more money, have told him to go away. There is very little that is more nauseating than money-making corporations masking their horror at losing some by taking the high moral ground.
Woods’ inability to manage his natural urges – or to distinguish between the felicity of scoring a birdie on the field of play and the infelicity of doing so elsewhere in the literal other sense – is pathetic (well, maybe) but it is surely not unusual or for that matter of more than merely venal demerit. After all, for many men – and though we’re not supposed to think so, a lot of women – sex is the most powerful driver in your kit. Tiger did what many men dream of doing and many women wish men would.
Woods’ skill as a golfer is beyond compare. His present difficulty, as a man, is sad, but sadly common. Most philanderers are not public figures. They can grub away as they wish without any fears other than of the saucepan that might collect their cranium if the wife finds out. Such is the human condition.
Sadly, too, hubris being what it is, the thought of becoming a bar-room joke is often the worst pain of all. Few of us wish to become the object of music-hall stand-up routines. We should let go of this Tiger’s tale – and allow him to reconstruct the silly mess he seems to have made of his life.
It’s a Saga
SOME people we know, who live in the otherwise peaceful surroundings of rural Ungasan, have a sorry tale to tell about the perils of renovation. It’s not their place that’s the problem – though their own renovasi after buying their modest villa two years ago had its own little difficulties – but the place next door.
It used to be a separate residence, except when the wind blew and the rotted alang-alang roof it sported migrated en masse to their swimming pool. But as part of its conversion into a dream residence – nightmare seems a better word – by some absent (and possibly absent minded) Jakarta people, it now conjoins.
The extensive rebuilding, which seems to be a project contracted out to two little fellows with one hammer, who take it in turns to tap away from time to time but on no discernable schedule, has co-opted their structure. Perhaps our friends’ villa, built to what is loosely described in Bali as “western standard,” is required as a load-bearing support.
For 16 months, while the interior has been gutted, three Jacuzzis installed (well, the new owners are Jakarta people; perhaps that’s why they aren’t bothering to replace the rotted alang-alang roof) and expensive glass erected, the tap-tap-tapping of whoever is the duty hammer man at the time has resonated – and reverberated, since there is now a “common wall” – at will. Siestas are rarely feasible. Having friends to stay is impossible.
But there is a silver lining. Our chums now have (one) brand new exterior sun blind for their trouble. This was provided, following extensive discussions, because the new wall of the now adjoining residence actually butts onto their own and made it impossible for the previous blind, custom made for the space, to fully deploy.
Maybe it will all be over sometime in 2010. Well ... maybe.
Thoughts on the Season
YOUR diarist is not devotional, having decided long ago to leave organised expressions of faith to those who have need of such things. But devotional music remains a passion, and this time of year is a great time to indulge a taste for such things. And it’s so easy nowadays. Last weekend, a pleasant hour was spent listing to ABC Classic FM on live stream on The Diary’s laptop – OK, it should have been diary-writing at the time, but even diarists have to relax now and then – and enjoying Medieval Christian music.
The meter, the timbre, the cadence and the inspirational message of intellectual faith from so long ago that one derives from listening to such music is a treat. Christmas comes but once a year, as the old saying has it. When it does, it is nice to remember times past; both personal – so short a timeframe: in your diarist’s case, one that started only 155 years after verifiable temperature recordings on which we are now supposed to base our fears for the future began – and historical. Antiquity, viewed as it should be, provides a corrective to one’s moral compass. It’s a shame there is such profound ignorance today of both the facts and the lessons of the past.
In the modern Western tradition, Christmas is a secular celebration – of the illusory benefits of the consumer society among other things – that owes very little to its religious origins. But it’s as well to remember that Christmas, celebrating Jesus’ birth, is the old pagan midwinter festival of Europe, rebranded; just as Easter, the most solemn of Christian festivals, occurs, entirely without coincidence, coincidentally with the old northern hemisphere festival of Eostre, marking the new life that Spring brings to cold places that have growing seasons. The Greek god Eostre is also the root of the English word oestrus. Except by traditional misunderstanding and mythology – and faith – it has nothing to do with Wafat Issa.
Happy Christmas anyway; see you in the New Year.
SCRATCHINGS appears at The Bali Times Diary in the print edition of the weekly newspaper every Friday and on the newspaper’s website at www.thebalitimes.com. The Bali Times is also available as a print product through Newspaper Direct.
Friday, December 11, 2009
HECTOR'S BALI TIMES DIARY [for Dec. 11]
They’re Filthy
Rich; And We
Should be
Filthy About
It...
THERE’S something obscene about vast wealth. It’s never earned – as in being a fair return for a fair day’s work – and it’s almost always offensive in terms of the excessive habits and lifestyles it makes possible for those upon whom the fates have smiled in that way.
It’s a global phenomenon. The gross wealth of some Arab oil sheikhs who by happenstance have dynastic control over otherwise worthless patches of sand cries out for correction. The excess of American capitalism and the pretentious vacuity of European “old money” are similarly nausea-inducing.
The defence of philanthropy is often advanced as an excuse for vast wealth: Look, I give away a lot of this. Many rich people do; they are the ones with consciences, and good for them. They might not have the camel’s difficulty in passing through the eye of a needle when their time comes and they find they can’t take it with them.
Indonesia is pretty small beer in the global greed list, even though corruption and illicit enrichment are ingrained elements of the social psyche. But the latest Forbes magazine rich list - it came out last week; an annual emetic – nonetheless presents reading that might enrage, were one disposed to rage, and which certainly disturbs.
In a country where nothing works (that’s right, nothing) and where the vast majority of people scratch by for a year on what the rich might spend on a cheap night out, we see that Indonesia’s 40 richest people have doubled their wealth in 2009. This has chiefly been fuelled by global demand for natural resources. More than a third of the top 40 make most of their money from coal, palm oil or oil and gas. Indonesia now has 12 US dollar billionaires, combined wealth $28 billion, up from seven in 2008.
It would be invidious in a polemic to run the list of the infamously rich. It’s in Forbes magazine if you can afford the cover price, or are sufficiently interested.
But we do note that Aburizal Bakrie, who recently bought himself the Golkar presidency, has benefited from leaving executive politics and returning to business and Bumi Resources as his principal focus. He has regained his billionaire status.
Who Flicked Up?
CALL us conspiracy theorists if you like, but there’s something strange about the fact that PLN was told one day, in no uncertain terms, to end the Jakarta blackouts, and the discovery virtually the next that Gilimanuk’s appalling maintenance mismanagement had ensured the plant could not be repaired before “tools” are acquired from overseas. Why? On all the evidence, PLN has enough tools of its own without flying in more from other places.
It would be interesting to get answers from PLN (we never will of course) on these questions:
(1) Why the Bali blackouts that started in October and were to end on December 6, but then were to “end early,” on November 26, because “everything was fixed,” then failed to end on either date; and why we were told on December 3 that PLN was going to give Bali a very special Christmas gift of another month-plus of power cuts (up to January 15)? Do these people have any idea what they’re doing?
(2) How much additional power is required to keep all the lights on in Jakarta so that the leadership cadres in their plush accommodations are not inconvenienced by disquieting thoughts of public unrest?
(3) Where is this extra power coming from?
(4) How much power is currently being supplied to Gilimanuk via the allegedly lightning-prone (Mendacious Excuse No. 365) undersea cable?
(6) What are the qualifications for being appointed Bali spokesman for PLN? Is it a requirement that you must have graduated summa cum laude in post-modern fiction, majoring in farce?
There’s a seventh question. It’s to the national government: Fellas, do you have any actual interest in ending Bali’s immediate power problems?
To the Point
DANCE is such an important part of Balinese – and indeed Sundanese – culture, and of course also a draw for tourists. It is evocative, plainly erotic if not actually sexual and a distinct embellishment of any cultural experience to be had just north of the Austro-Eurasian fault line.
So much of it depends on the feet and specifically on pointed toes.
It was thus a disappointment – well, that and the “modern” interpretation of the traditional musical accompaniment – to see a performance at a Kuta restaurant recently where the dancers’ toes were securely out of sight, contained within little black leather – or possibly synthetic – shoe-socks.
They looked faintly ridiculous pointing their feet in this gear; as did the other dainty little performer who, wearing a rather sheer white dress which would have been significantly alluring, in a wholly cultural way, in other circumstances, was very clearly wearing sturdy black Lycra beneath.
The Lights Are On
BUT as usual, no one is home. How thoughtful of the traffic police to begin enforcing the daylight lights-on rule for motorbikes. It will make it so much easier to see riders behaving like lunatics.
The lights-on rule, which we believe began life in Sweden or one of those benighted Scandinavian places where it’s miserably dark for half the year, is being promoted as a safety measure. A far better safety measure, however, would be to enforce the licence rule (for more than corrupt personal revenue reasons) and to ensure that people can actually ride (or drive) before they are let out on the road.
It would be even better if the police could find a way to notice that, especially around school hours, a large proportion of motorbike riders appear to be people who are far too young to have a licence anyway.
And then there’s the farce of the helmet law. And the fact that many motorcyclists don’t bother with lights even when it’s dark.
Put a Sock in It
WE heard a sad tale the other day. An expatriate woman with a good knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia and a sensible interest in preventive health tried to persuade a group of young people at a bowling alley that, when hiring bowling shoes, they really should heed the requirement – well publicised – to wear socks with them. The general idea being you can really do without acquiring other people’s skin ailments and other complaints.
The answer, from the young crowd who apparently had forgotten that Indonesian culture emphasises politeness and respect for others, not to mention elders, was less than encouraging: You’re an Orang Bule, so f--- off.
Christmas Treat
READERS who will be on the other side of the Wallace Line – in Lombok – over Christmas may want to sample the delicious roast duck traditionally served (by the equally delicious Sakinah Nauderer) at Senggigi’s Asmara Restaurant. It’s an annual treat that, sadly, The Diary will miss out on again this year.
The roast duck is on the menu on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Through to New Year’s Day, if you’re not there on the duck days or water fowl does not appeal, Asmara offers prawn pate, jumbo prawns thermidor and mango ice-cream.
Sakinah tells us Santa has scheduled a call into Asmara at 1.30pm on Christmas Day to astonish junior patrons; or at least those whose mums and dads have said will be there.
Lip Gloss
THE pretty woman, Julia Roberts, lately a comely feature of the landscape in Bali while location shooting for her latest movie, Eat, Pray, Love, has been named the new face of cosmetics firm Lancôme. She will hold this onerous and high profile position for 2010, according to Lancôme boss Youcef Nabi, who said last week, announcing the appointment:
“By her remarkable personality and career, Julia Roberts is an emblematic woman of her time. Her exceptional talent, her radiance and her strong commitments perfectly echo Lancôme’s values. We are convinced she will embody the brand in the most sublime way possible.”
Just thought you should know that.
Silly Farts
SOMETIMES you spot something worth reading in the Jakarta Post – though The Diary much prefers the Jakarta Globe as daily fare – and such was the case recently when we came across a story about two neighbours who ended up in court over a fart.
The men – identified only as OB and HS, perhaps under the privacy provisions of the flatulence suppression regulations, and from Cirebon in Java – had a fight after OB vacated his dwelling to pass wind in the open air, sadly failing to notice that his neighbour HS was seated outside, enjoying the evening’s mildness, only 12 metres away.
As a result of his exposure to this unwanted and noxious emission, it is said, HS attempted to strangle OB. HS’s wife, the apparently fearsome YS, ran to join the fray and is said to have bitten OB on the hand.
After this affray the men decided to sue each other for assault. Apparently they were immune to a suggestion from presiding judge Setiadi that they should instead be sensible and forget about the whole thing.
HECTOR'S DIARY appears in The Bali Times, out ever Friday, and on the newspaper's website at www.thebalitimes.com. The Bali Times is also available via Newspaper Direct.
Rich; And We
Should be
Filthy About
It...
THERE’S something obscene about vast wealth. It’s never earned – as in being a fair return for a fair day’s work – and it’s almost always offensive in terms of the excessive habits and lifestyles it makes possible for those upon whom the fates have smiled in that way.
It’s a global phenomenon. The gross wealth of some Arab oil sheikhs who by happenstance have dynastic control over otherwise worthless patches of sand cries out for correction. The excess of American capitalism and the pretentious vacuity of European “old money” are similarly nausea-inducing.
The defence of philanthropy is often advanced as an excuse for vast wealth: Look, I give away a lot of this. Many rich people do; they are the ones with consciences, and good for them. They might not have the camel’s difficulty in passing through the eye of a needle when their time comes and they find they can’t take it with them.
Indonesia is pretty small beer in the global greed list, even though corruption and illicit enrichment are ingrained elements of the social psyche. But the latest Forbes magazine rich list - it came out last week; an annual emetic – nonetheless presents reading that might enrage, were one disposed to rage, and which certainly disturbs.
In a country where nothing works (that’s right, nothing) and where the vast majority of people scratch by for a year on what the rich might spend on a cheap night out, we see that Indonesia’s 40 richest people have doubled their wealth in 2009. This has chiefly been fuelled by global demand for natural resources. More than a third of the top 40 make most of their money from coal, palm oil or oil and gas. Indonesia now has 12 US dollar billionaires, combined wealth $28 billion, up from seven in 2008.
It would be invidious in a polemic to run the list of the infamously rich. It’s in Forbes magazine if you can afford the cover price, or are sufficiently interested.
But we do note that Aburizal Bakrie, who recently bought himself the Golkar presidency, has benefited from leaving executive politics and returning to business and Bumi Resources as his principal focus. He has regained his billionaire status.
Who Flicked Up?
CALL us conspiracy theorists if you like, but there’s something strange about the fact that PLN was told one day, in no uncertain terms, to end the Jakarta blackouts, and the discovery virtually the next that Gilimanuk’s appalling maintenance mismanagement had ensured the plant could not be repaired before “tools” are acquired from overseas. Why? On all the evidence, PLN has enough tools of its own without flying in more from other places.
It would be interesting to get answers from PLN (we never will of course) on these questions:
(1) Why the Bali blackouts that started in October and were to end on December 6, but then were to “end early,” on November 26, because “everything was fixed,” then failed to end on either date; and why we were told on December 3 that PLN was going to give Bali a very special Christmas gift of another month-plus of power cuts (up to January 15)? Do these people have any idea what they’re doing?
(2) How much additional power is required to keep all the lights on in Jakarta so that the leadership cadres in their plush accommodations are not inconvenienced by disquieting thoughts of public unrest?
(3) Where is this extra power coming from?
(4) How much power is currently being supplied to Gilimanuk via the allegedly lightning-prone (Mendacious Excuse No. 365) undersea cable?
(6) What are the qualifications for being appointed Bali spokesman for PLN? Is it a requirement that you must have graduated summa cum laude in post-modern fiction, majoring in farce?
There’s a seventh question. It’s to the national government: Fellas, do you have any actual interest in ending Bali’s immediate power problems?
To the Point
DANCE is such an important part of Balinese – and indeed Sundanese – culture, and of course also a draw for tourists. It is evocative, plainly erotic if not actually sexual and a distinct embellishment of any cultural experience to be had just north of the Austro-Eurasian fault line.
So much of it depends on the feet and specifically on pointed toes.
It was thus a disappointment – well, that and the “modern” interpretation of the traditional musical accompaniment – to see a performance at a Kuta restaurant recently where the dancers’ toes were securely out of sight, contained within little black leather – or possibly synthetic – shoe-socks.
They looked faintly ridiculous pointing their feet in this gear; as did the other dainty little performer who, wearing a rather sheer white dress which would have been significantly alluring, in a wholly cultural way, in other circumstances, was very clearly wearing sturdy black Lycra beneath.
The Lights Are On
BUT as usual, no one is home. How thoughtful of the traffic police to begin enforcing the daylight lights-on rule for motorbikes. It will make it so much easier to see riders behaving like lunatics.
The lights-on rule, which we believe began life in Sweden or one of those benighted Scandinavian places where it’s miserably dark for half the year, is being promoted as a safety measure. A far better safety measure, however, would be to enforce the licence rule (for more than corrupt personal revenue reasons) and to ensure that people can actually ride (or drive) before they are let out on the road.
It would be even better if the police could find a way to notice that, especially around school hours, a large proportion of motorbike riders appear to be people who are far too young to have a licence anyway.
And then there’s the farce of the helmet law. And the fact that many motorcyclists don’t bother with lights even when it’s dark.
Put a Sock in It
WE heard a sad tale the other day. An expatriate woman with a good knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia and a sensible interest in preventive health tried to persuade a group of young people at a bowling alley that, when hiring bowling shoes, they really should heed the requirement – well publicised – to wear socks with them. The general idea being you can really do without acquiring other people’s skin ailments and other complaints.
The answer, from the young crowd who apparently had forgotten that Indonesian culture emphasises politeness and respect for others, not to mention elders, was less than encouraging: You’re an Orang Bule, so f--- off.
Christmas Treat
READERS who will be on the other side of the Wallace Line – in Lombok – over Christmas may want to sample the delicious roast duck traditionally served (by the equally delicious Sakinah Nauderer) at Senggigi’s Asmara Restaurant. It’s an annual treat that, sadly, The Diary will miss out on again this year.
The roast duck is on the menu on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Through to New Year’s Day, if you’re not there on the duck days or water fowl does not appeal, Asmara offers prawn pate, jumbo prawns thermidor and mango ice-cream.
Sakinah tells us Santa has scheduled a call into Asmara at 1.30pm on Christmas Day to astonish junior patrons; or at least those whose mums and dads have said will be there.
Lip Gloss
THE pretty woman, Julia Roberts, lately a comely feature of the landscape in Bali while location shooting for her latest movie, Eat, Pray, Love, has been named the new face of cosmetics firm Lancôme. She will hold this onerous and high profile position for 2010, according to Lancôme boss Youcef Nabi, who said last week, announcing the appointment:
“By her remarkable personality and career, Julia Roberts is an emblematic woman of her time. Her exceptional talent, her radiance and her strong commitments perfectly echo Lancôme’s values. We are convinced she will embody the brand in the most sublime way possible.”
Just thought you should know that.
Silly Farts
SOMETIMES you spot something worth reading in the Jakarta Post – though The Diary much prefers the Jakarta Globe as daily fare – and such was the case recently when we came across a story about two neighbours who ended up in court over a fart.
The men – identified only as OB and HS, perhaps under the privacy provisions of the flatulence suppression regulations, and from Cirebon in Java – had a fight after OB vacated his dwelling to pass wind in the open air, sadly failing to notice that his neighbour HS was seated outside, enjoying the evening’s mildness, only 12 metres away.
As a result of his exposure to this unwanted and noxious emission, it is said, HS attempted to strangle OB. HS’s wife, the apparently fearsome YS, ran to join the fray and is said to have bitten OB on the hand.
After this affray the men decided to sue each other for assault. Apparently they were immune to a suggestion from presiding judge Setiadi that they should instead be sensible and forget about the whole thing.
HECTOR'S DIARY appears in The Bali Times, out ever Friday, and on the newspaper's website at www.thebalitimes.com. The Bali Times is also available via Newspaper Direct.
Friday, December 04, 2009
HECTOR'S BALI TIMES DIARY [for Dec. 4]
How to Swan Around and be Disappointed
THERE’S a British lass around – or there was recently – who says she got to Bali on her way to Australia and was underwhelmed, silly girl; she blogged about it on an English newspaper’s website. And so it is that The Diary is apprised both of her disappointment and of her naive and dismissive assumption that you serve your travelling interests best by not bothering to do any pre-arrival research.
From her we hear that Kuta is an unpleasant surprise; that its pavements are not all they might be; that fast food is everywhere; and that KuDeTa – in which Bali’s prominent business coup d’état man, Kadek Wiranatha, has an interest and a Jaguar-sized parking spot – is not worth the whacking great bill you get at the end of an otherwise thoroughly forgettable experience. The girl was apparently expecting to be immersed in traditional Balinese culture in the midst of the predominantly tawdry sun-sand-and-sin cycle for which KLS (Kuta-Legian-Seminyak) is globally renowned.
The real Bali is easily accessible to anyone with the time to explore and an interest in finding out a few of the crucial details first. It is a wholly absorbing and wonderful place. It is not to be missed: unless, that is, your name is Jo Thompson, you’re on something called the Oz Bus, you’re out of sorts and you’ve got a blog at the London Daily Telegraph that needs to be fed.
Oh, Not Again!
AUSTRALIA Network, the satellite television service run with government money to present an Australian face to the region, serves up some reasonable fare to its viewers. Its news coverage is good. Well, it is if you want to get up really early to catch the breakfast stuff, because its flagship show, News Hour, struggles sometimes at 10pm.
Insiders - or those who may once have been and occasionally wish they still were - like to watch Insiders: it provides a pleasantly political Sunday morning interlude. Some of Australia Network’s drama is a bit gritty. The occasional Kiwi stuff needs subtitles. And as a general rule, you’d think that if much of the dialogue needs to be bleeped out, it might be better not to screen the thing at all.
But these are mere quibbles. There is one irritant of exceptional virulence: the number and frequency of repeats of little cameo spots. These might have been interesting the first time (although often the point is moot) but by the tenth or so rendition they have lost any redeeming qualities they might once have possessed.
If The Diary sees Tobias making his ridiculous matchstick models in Kuala Lumpur on some incomprehensible art scholarship one more time, or Willow, who buys sticky buns and plays the saxophone in Shanghai (and buys and buys; and plays and plays) there is likely to be an explosion.
Similarly, although Maggie Beer’s a dear and Simon Bryant a mild amusement, one more visit by the cook part of The Cook & The Chef to the lustily ersatz Germans of the Adelaide Hills or that truffle farm in Western Australia may bring on sudden, involuntary projectile vomiting.
In the same vein, Simon's asinine astonishment that the climate and vegetation of tropical North Queensland are a teensy bit different from those of Adelaide, where he chefs, is entirely enervating when repeatedly replayed.
Then there’s Global Treasures, a European buy-in by the ABC, which presents politically correct travelogues. The Diary has been to Ha Long Bay in Vietnam. It’s beautiful and should be on everyone’s bucket list. It’s nice to see it again on television; if you can ignore the unctuous voiceover. But even the astonishing limestone formations that produce its exquisite vistas get a bit passé when served up in surfeit.
Guys, buy some new material ... please.
Life’s a Beach
THE delectable Devina Hindom, a fixture in the marketing communications efforts of the Ritz-Carlton-now-Ayana at Jimbaran for seven years, has changed her sea-view perspective. At Ayana, unless you’re at the Rock Bar – yum – or the Spa or that jetty thing where your food must surely come with real sea salt, the ocean perspective from atop its substantial cliff is rather lofty.
Hindom, who latterly has been number two to communications director Marian Hinchliffe, has moved on to the new Alila Soori, near Tanah Lot in Tabanan, where the sea view tends to be the surf and not Madagascar. She started there, we understand, on December 1, as a new part of the small but perfectly formed executive team. And we wish her all the best.
Her new property is much smaller, more intimate in a very svelte way, and, we’re sure, a lot of fun for people whose shoes are not scuffed, down at the heel or not worn at all.
Alila does not advertise its wares to the common herd. But it does Tweet them nowadays – The Diary had an item on that a little while ago – by employing contracted marketing twits to do so. It’s a growing thing. Whole swathes of expensive rooming houses have adopted the practice. They still expect the media to swoon over the glossy puffery they occasionally send out in lieu of advertising, of course.
And So to Bed
NEWS that a South Korean court has revoked a law under which men could be jailed for tricking women into bed with false promises of marriage is certainly cheering. Jurists and the law should stay well away from the bedchamber.
That’s not to say the firm belief of many women that all men are bastards is necessarily over-cautious as an approach to life. Trickery is ubiquitous where that thing we all think about but if sensible never write about is concerned.
The South Korean constitutional court was responding to petitions from two men imprisoned for the offence. It passes understanding that in any free society anyone should be in jail for breach of promise or, more accurately, for successfully pressing a case for unmarried sexual congress.
The court ruled that the 56-year-old law placed unnecessary restrictions on individual rights and ignored a woman's right to make her own decisions about who to have sex with.
It also said it forced “traditional, male-chauvinistic morals” on women by protecting only those of that gender the law deemed had “no penchant for debauchery” and that the law had also been exploited by women who used it to blackmail men - threatening to sue after sex, claiming they had only gone to bed with the men after they had proposed.
There you go. No matter whose slippers are hotly kicked under the bed, life is not only a cabaret: it’s also a two-way street.
Well-Deserved Honour
INDONESIAN jurist and Islamic scholar Siti Musdah Mulia has been named Woman of the Year in the annual award made by the Aosta region of Italy since 1998. It recognises recipients as women who have really made a difference in their own communities and hence to the world.
Mulia is no stranger to controversy – though she advocates a moderate view of Islam than is far more cerebral and much less newsworthy than others that attract the attention of the west and, sadly, some of its politicians – but this makes her more worthy of recognition.
In 2007 she said of the Malaysian style headscarf she chooses to wear that she wore it because she was comfortable doing so and not because it was mandated by Sharia rules or anything else. Mulia views Islam as a faith and a way of life that embraces diversity and encompasses pluralism. So it does, of course, as the truly sentient have always understood.
The 2009 award was made in Italy last Friday night. There were 36 candidates for the honour.
Thanks, Guys
THE Australian Consulate-General, which does these things very well, organised a get-together on Thursday night for 60-70 guests, most of them the 20 AusAID volunteers currently working around Bali and representatives of the community organisations with which they work. It was to mark International Volunteers Day, which is on Saturday.
The volunteers work in a range of fields, including education, environmental management and health services. The event was to support and show appreciation of the work done by volunteers in the community and to underline their importance in the close Indonesia-Australia relationship.
Hear, hear. Unsung heroes are almost always the best.
Charity Work
IN most mythology and tradition, angels are charity workers. So it is unsurprising that a jewellery exhibition at Celuk, organised by designer Irwan of California, opened last Friday and proposing to share some of its proceeds with charity, should have been titled Paintings by Angels.
Among the many works on show and for sale at the exhibition – which runs until January 14 – is a necklace, named Blessings Upon the World, formed from chrysacolla and 24 carat gold plate on sterling silver.
To mark the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, proceeds from the exhibition will support the continued advocacy on children’s rights by UNICEF Indonesia.
You can see it all at Jl Jagaraga 66, Celuk, Sukawati, daily from 9am-5pm.
THERE’S a British lass around – or there was recently – who says she got to Bali on her way to Australia and was underwhelmed, silly girl; she blogged about it on an English newspaper’s website. And so it is that The Diary is apprised both of her disappointment and of her naive and dismissive assumption that you serve your travelling interests best by not bothering to do any pre-arrival research.
From her we hear that Kuta is an unpleasant surprise; that its pavements are not all they might be; that fast food is everywhere; and that KuDeTa – in which Bali’s prominent business coup d’état man, Kadek Wiranatha, has an interest and a Jaguar-sized parking spot – is not worth the whacking great bill you get at the end of an otherwise thoroughly forgettable experience. The girl was apparently expecting to be immersed in traditional Balinese culture in the midst of the predominantly tawdry sun-sand-and-sin cycle for which KLS (Kuta-Legian-Seminyak) is globally renowned.
The real Bali is easily accessible to anyone with the time to explore and an interest in finding out a few of the crucial details first. It is a wholly absorbing and wonderful place. It is not to be missed: unless, that is, your name is Jo Thompson, you’re on something called the Oz Bus, you’re out of sorts and you’ve got a blog at the London Daily Telegraph that needs to be fed.
Oh, Not Again!
AUSTRALIA Network, the satellite television service run with government money to present an Australian face to the region, serves up some reasonable fare to its viewers. Its news coverage is good. Well, it is if you want to get up really early to catch the breakfast stuff, because its flagship show, News Hour, struggles sometimes at 10pm.
Insiders - or those who may once have been and occasionally wish they still were - like to watch Insiders: it provides a pleasantly political Sunday morning interlude. Some of Australia Network’s drama is a bit gritty. The occasional Kiwi stuff needs subtitles. And as a general rule, you’d think that if much of the dialogue needs to be bleeped out, it might be better not to screen the thing at all.
But these are mere quibbles. There is one irritant of exceptional virulence: the number and frequency of repeats of little cameo spots. These might have been interesting the first time (although often the point is moot) but by the tenth or so rendition they have lost any redeeming qualities they might once have possessed.
If The Diary sees Tobias making his ridiculous matchstick models in Kuala Lumpur on some incomprehensible art scholarship one more time, or Willow, who buys sticky buns and plays the saxophone in Shanghai (and buys and buys; and plays and plays) there is likely to be an explosion.
Similarly, although Maggie Beer’s a dear and Simon Bryant a mild amusement, one more visit by the cook part of The Cook & The Chef to the lustily ersatz Germans of the Adelaide Hills or that truffle farm in Western Australia may bring on sudden, involuntary projectile vomiting.
In the same vein, Simon's asinine astonishment that the climate and vegetation of tropical North Queensland are a teensy bit different from those of Adelaide, where he chefs, is entirely enervating when repeatedly replayed.
Then there’s Global Treasures, a European buy-in by the ABC, which presents politically correct travelogues. The Diary has been to Ha Long Bay in Vietnam. It’s beautiful and should be on everyone’s bucket list. It’s nice to see it again on television; if you can ignore the unctuous voiceover. But even the astonishing limestone formations that produce its exquisite vistas get a bit passé when served up in surfeit.
Guys, buy some new material ... please.
Life’s a Beach
THE delectable Devina Hindom, a fixture in the marketing communications efforts of the Ritz-Carlton-now-Ayana at Jimbaran for seven years, has changed her sea-view perspective. At Ayana, unless you’re at the Rock Bar – yum – or the Spa or that jetty thing where your food must surely come with real sea salt, the ocean perspective from atop its substantial cliff is rather lofty.
Hindom, who latterly has been number two to communications director Marian Hinchliffe, has moved on to the new Alila Soori, near Tanah Lot in Tabanan, where the sea view tends to be the surf and not Madagascar. She started there, we understand, on December 1, as a new part of the small but perfectly formed executive team. And we wish her all the best.
Her new property is much smaller, more intimate in a very svelte way, and, we’re sure, a lot of fun for people whose shoes are not scuffed, down at the heel or not worn at all.
Alila does not advertise its wares to the common herd. But it does Tweet them nowadays – The Diary had an item on that a little while ago – by employing contracted marketing twits to do so. It’s a growing thing. Whole swathes of expensive rooming houses have adopted the practice. They still expect the media to swoon over the glossy puffery they occasionally send out in lieu of advertising, of course.
And So to Bed
NEWS that a South Korean court has revoked a law under which men could be jailed for tricking women into bed with false promises of marriage is certainly cheering. Jurists and the law should stay well away from the bedchamber.
That’s not to say the firm belief of many women that all men are bastards is necessarily over-cautious as an approach to life. Trickery is ubiquitous where that thing we all think about but if sensible never write about is concerned.
The South Korean constitutional court was responding to petitions from two men imprisoned for the offence. It passes understanding that in any free society anyone should be in jail for breach of promise or, more accurately, for successfully pressing a case for unmarried sexual congress.
The court ruled that the 56-year-old law placed unnecessary restrictions on individual rights and ignored a woman's right to make her own decisions about who to have sex with.
It also said it forced “traditional, male-chauvinistic morals” on women by protecting only those of that gender the law deemed had “no penchant for debauchery” and that the law had also been exploited by women who used it to blackmail men - threatening to sue after sex, claiming they had only gone to bed with the men after they had proposed.
There you go. No matter whose slippers are hotly kicked under the bed, life is not only a cabaret: it’s also a two-way street.
Well-Deserved Honour
INDONESIAN jurist and Islamic scholar Siti Musdah Mulia has been named Woman of the Year in the annual award made by the Aosta region of Italy since 1998. It recognises recipients as women who have really made a difference in their own communities and hence to the world.
Mulia is no stranger to controversy – though she advocates a moderate view of Islam than is far more cerebral and much less newsworthy than others that attract the attention of the west and, sadly, some of its politicians – but this makes her more worthy of recognition.
In 2007 she said of the Malaysian style headscarf she chooses to wear that she wore it because she was comfortable doing so and not because it was mandated by Sharia rules or anything else. Mulia views Islam as a faith and a way of life that embraces diversity and encompasses pluralism. So it does, of course, as the truly sentient have always understood.
The 2009 award was made in Italy last Friday night. There were 36 candidates for the honour.
Thanks, Guys
THE Australian Consulate-General, which does these things very well, organised a get-together on Thursday night for 60-70 guests, most of them the 20 AusAID volunteers currently working around Bali and representatives of the community organisations with which they work. It was to mark International Volunteers Day, which is on Saturday.
The volunteers work in a range of fields, including education, environmental management and health services. The event was to support and show appreciation of the work done by volunteers in the community and to underline their importance in the close Indonesia-Australia relationship.
Hear, hear. Unsung heroes are almost always the best.
Charity Work
IN most mythology and tradition, angels are charity workers. So it is unsurprising that a jewellery exhibition at Celuk, organised by designer Irwan of California, opened last Friday and proposing to share some of its proceeds with charity, should have been titled Paintings by Angels.
Among the many works on show and for sale at the exhibition – which runs until January 14 – is a necklace, named Blessings Upon the World, formed from chrysacolla and 24 carat gold plate on sterling silver.
To mark the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, proceeds from the exhibition will support the continued advocacy on children’s rights by UNICEF Indonesia.
You can see it all at Jl Jagaraga 66, Celuk, Sukawati, daily from 9am-5pm.
SCRATCHINGS appears, as THE DIARY, in The Bali Times every Friday and on the newspaper's website at www.thebalitimes.com. The Bali Times is also available through Newspaper Direct.
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