HECTOR’S DIARY Bali Advertiser, July 25, 2012

Oh Yes, It’s Paradise Here

Some days you just want to sit down and cry. It’s not the crowded crassness of mass tourism that does this, or even the mindless self-absorption of the Rave ‘n’ Groove sector; though both can cause intense irritation if you let them. No, it’s the fragile, deadly, outer fringe of Bali’s already marginalised rural life that stings your eyes and makes you feel like a helpless fool.

      We heard a dreadful story the other day from a new chum, Englishwoman Sarah Chapman, who now lives here after many years of visiting as a tourist – a common provenance – and who has found a little girl in east Bali who she calls Annie.  She found her via a Balinese friend, Putu Yuni, who read about Annie in the local Bahasa press and told her the story. Yuni also went round her own friends and raised money to buy a mattress and some food for the family, and left the cash residue with them as well.

      Rotary Seminyak has come to the party too, we hear, by arranging for Annie to have a full suite of medical assessments. Rotary does such a lot of good work that is often unheralded.

      Annie is eight. She weighs – at last report – eight kilos, and that was after a three-week stay in Amlapura hospital. She may be deaf, since Chapman – an experienced nurse – tells us Annie seems not to respond to aural stimulus; she is given to screaming fits and tends to hit out at people. She lives in a hut in the Karangasem district of Sideman with her granny, another elderly woman who is apparently an aunt, an undersized (but otherwise OK) older brother who is 14, her grandfather, and her father, who is mentally ill. Her mother left the home when Annie was six months old, apparently because Annie’s father was violent.

      The family basically has no income and care for Annie – whom they love – as best they can. The little girl now has a mattress to sleep on – it was old newspapers before – and a few other things. More help is on the way, courtesy of a small but growing army of people who want to help – including, belatedly, the authorities.

      But there are questions here.  Where was the local Banjar on this? Why wasn’t it helping the family? Where were the village authorities? Had they been doing anything? What about the regency social welfare people? Did they care, before the story broke in the local press? What about the provincial authorities and Governor Pastika’s programme to assist the very poor? And for that matter, what about the central government’s duty of care to all Indonesians?

      We’ll keep you posted on Annie, who at last report was beginning to progress. If any reader would like to join Annie’s Army, drop Hector a line at reachme61@yahoo.com and we’ll pass the details on.

High Road

And now for some brighter news. We hear from two impeccable Bali-resident sources – Belgian travel and business adviser Marc Jacobs and Australian blogger Vyt Karazija – that the new IB Mantra Highway linking the crowded south with the less crowded east (the road provides travellers with a good idea of the extent of erosion on the Gianyar and Klungkung coasts) is now complete. Well, Jacobs told us 99 percent complete, and all the way to Goa Lawah. It’s long been a work in progress, funded by Australian aid, muddied by the truly Byzantine politics of this island, and doubtless bedevilled by the snafu factor and the ongoing belief hereabouts that making a road is just a matter of slapping a couple of centimetres of blacktop on some crushed rock.

     According to Jacobs it’s now just an hour from Sanur to Padang Bai. That would be if the trucks and the motorbikes kept left, presumably. We’ve avoided expeditions to the remote east for several long months, not having a tent in which to camp out while they made the highway, but we’ll take a look soon. We certainly need to check out Vincent’s at Candi Dasa again, and we do hope the Haloumi has been getting through to the restaurant.

     Karazija, by the way, was also able to advise us why the traffic signs telling trucks and motorcycles to keep left are universally ignored, on the new highway as elsewhere. We’re greatly indebted to him, because we hadn’t realised that Indonesian traffic signs use subliminal shorthand. Those KEEP LEFT signs actually say “KEEP doing what you’ve always done or you’ll be LEFT behind.” 

Airport Alert

The things you see: Angus McCaskill ,the Melbourne travel industry figure who used to double as Willie Ra’re, Bali party guy and drug convict, recently told a Facebook friend who posted a picture of her lunch at Kuta‘s Little Green Cafe (it did look good): “I so miss LGC and their delicious taste sensations... but I'll be back!”

No Jumping

The things you don’t see. On July 11 we noted the presence on Gili Trawangan of a revitalised AJ Hackett private retreat, Pondok Santi, now open to paying guests, and said AJ had a bungee operation in Bali.

    Oops: For has, read had. A little e-billet-doux from Nigel Hobbs in Cairns, Australia, where he markets Hackett’s operations, told us the Kuta venue was closed last year as the land lease was not being renewed. Apparently the landowner wanted to build a resort on it. So Kuta is down one unique tourist attraction and up yet another resort property.

     So, we’re sorry about that. If only we were into leaps of faith we might have joined up all the developmental dots and noticed that Hackett’s big plunger was no more.

Weaving a Tale

Textile-inclined bookworms  at this year’s Ubud Writers and Readers Festival  (October 3-7, don’t miss it) will have a chance to add another five days to their experience and join a tour of traditional weavers that UWRF and local not-for-profit outfit Threads of Life have organised.

     Ubud-based Threads of Life uses culture and conservation to alleviate poverty in rural Indonesia. The heirloom-quality textiles and baskets are made with local materials and natural dyes. With the proceeds from the Threads of Life gallery, they help weavers to form independent cooperatives and to manage their resources sustainably.

     The five-day sojourn takes in homes, studios and cooperatives in the Seraya area on Bali’s dry north-eastern tip, the lush rice fields of Sideman and the ancient village of Tenganan Pegeringsingan. Participants will be based at the rather-better-than-basic Alila Manggis, near Candi Dasa.

     That all sounds fun and could be a powerful restorative agent following the diet of pious platitudes likely to be served up at the writers’ festival itself by veteran scribbler John Pilger, the Australian-born journalist who has made a stellar career out of bashing PHIABs (People He’s Identified As Bastards) and who is the headline attraction this year.

     Incidentally, Janet DeNeefe who – when she’s not being determinedly insouciant about which well-moneyed corporation might agree to part with substantial readies and be tagged as this year’s UWRF naming sponsor – is officer in charge of coffee etc at a number of Ubud destinations for degustation, had a swish knees-up at Casa Luna on July 22 in honour of the establishment’s 20th birthday. Guests enjoyed fruits of the vine and canapés from 5pm-11pm.

Ethereal Tip

Australia Network, the visual voice of Oz in the region and rated required watching by the Diary, has joined the iPhone App revolution. Now, wherever you are on regional terra firma, you can get news updates and all that other gizmo stuff out of the ether as well as programme information; and you can fool around on Facebook and make a twit of yourself tweeting on the go.

      It also links you to AussieFunk. No, we’re only joking: we mean the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s emergency information service, which is a sensible must for travellers and overseas residents alike. The free application is available via iPhone download and at the itunes online store.

     Seriously, it’s good news. Perhaps we should get ourselves an iPhone.

Blight is Right

Poor old Blighty! The London Olympics are upon us and the Misty Isles’ summer (that’s the northern hemisphere summer, which is what happens when the important bit of the world is having its winter) is being its usual self: abominable.  We’re indebted – yet again – to James Jeffrey’s admirable Strewth diary in The Australian newspaper, which recently found time to report what one exasperated Brit said about it in the pages of the Guardian, a British newspaper for the meddling classes.

      Charlie Brooker’s tirade – published on July 16 – ended thus:  “It's got to the point where pulling back the curtains each morning feels like waking up in jail. No, worse: like waking up inside a monochrome Czechoslovakian cartoon about waking up in jail. The outdoor world is illuminated by a weak, grey, diseased form of light that has fatally exhausted itself crawling through the gloomy stratospheric miasma before perishing feebly on your retinas.”

       Well, that’s tough on the Brits, but it’s oddly comforting. It precisely describes the sort of weather that drove your diarist to desert hearth and home way back in 1969.

Easy, Now...

Suggestions that Tantric practices were first thought up by Buddhists – this ephemera surfaced recently in the chatterverse – prompt the thought that, properly considered, this could have led to someone writing the Calmer Sutra.

Hector's Diary appears in the Bali Advertiser, published fortnightly, and on the newspaper's website www.baliadvertiser.biz. Hector is on Twitter (@scratchings) and Facebook (Hector McSquawky).

HECTOR'S DIARY Bali Advertiser, July 11, 2012

My Hat, it’s Good to See You

A spell in Lombok can do wonders for the jaded soul, and thus it was recently when Diary and Distaff took some lovely Balinese friends from Nusa Dua, a family of five, to the island and to Gili Trawangan for a five-day break. We flew both ways, some among the party not being nautical types, and visited that other Kuta – the one on Lombok’s spectacular Indian Ocean coast – and Cemara near Lembar harbour.

     At Kuta we had a light brunch at Ashtari, the Australian owed place that offers a world-beating view along the ocean coast. Parties of little boys from the local villages were extorting traffic fees on the “road” – quotation marks essential – and Ashtari itself is for sale. Perhaps that says something about Lombok; we forbear to comment further. But the coffee was good and the view superb.

     At Cemara, later, there was an interesting incident. We’d returned across the narrow no-car bridge from a walk to the beach, where our friends had recently bought some land, to find our driver decamped. He was away getting a flat tyre fixed. We established ourselves at a little fizzy drink and high-cholesterol snack stall to await his return and fell into desultory conversation with a fellow customer, a local gent in a white skullcap who looked less than pleased that his afternoon had been disturbed by foreigners, even if most of the foreigners were from just across the Wallace Line in Bali.

     But he softened up eventually. And he broke into a huge and thoroughly bemused smile when, as we left, your previously chiefly silent diarist shook him lightly by the hand and said “Salam, Hajji.”

     Ah yes, not all Bules are ignorant infidels devoid of even a minuscule grasp of local culture, Islamic practice, and essential nomenclature.

Comfort Zone

We stayed two nights in Senggigi – one on the way in, one on the way out – and of course chose Puri Bunga, on the viewing hill opposite the art market, as our domicile. GM Marcel Navest is always good to chat to – even if he is no longer chairman of the Lombok Hotels Association, having quit late last year in pursuit of a less fractious life – and Novi in the restaurant was as lovely and attentive as ever at the breakfast table.  

     On Gili Trawangan – to whence we were conveyed by Dream Divers (the diary had a quiet moment at Gerd’s Rock at Teluk Nara to say hello to friend Gerd Bunte, who sadly is no longer with us) – we stayed at Martas, back off the party beach and the home of former diver Martas himself, his wife Jo and their delightful preschool daughter Ayesha. It’s a lovely little spot.

     By the way, Gili Deli near the jetty and food market has fabulous Guatemala coffee. It’s more addictive than any of the other substances offered locally, and far more pleasant.

     There is one Trawangan demerit to report. One afternoon, having been let out alone, your diarist was strolling down the lane from Martas towards the shore and was accosted by a gentleman of very dubious provenance who intoned “Want drugs?” and, on getting the standard dismissive no-thanks hand movement, came back with “Want a woman?

     It’s not a good look for the island (on which, by the way, you will now find police).

Do Drop In

Bungee king AJ Hackett’s plushly private Pondok Santi bungalows on Gili Trawangan, which are managed by the redoubtable Baz and Georgie from New Zealand, are now taking paying guests. Hitherto the happy little cabins have been camping unmolested in Trawangan’s best-kept green-grassed parkland, where AJ set up a holiday place for his family.

     We stumbled on this intelligence by spotting a “bungalows for rent, inquire within” sign on the gate on our first morning walk around the island. We made an inquiry without and discovered they are being marketed as a chill-out spot for jaded jumpers and others and officially opened for business this month. There are six bungalows (there’s a 12-guest maximum at the resort) equipped with Wi-Fi, iPod docks and other accoutrements among modern life’s must-haves. Also available is a very nice boat – we’ve been on it – that when fully equipped for those with fat enough wallets could surely carry you around the islands in the style one imagines an Ottoman vizier might have enjoyed so greatly that he decided to be generous that day and not have his most mealy-mouthed eunuch strangled.

    Hackett invented bungee jumping three decades ago, inspired by the intrepid tree-leapers of Santo Island in Vanuatu, and has since made a mint out of getting people to plunge off tall things attached to ropes they doubtless devoutly hope are just a bit shorter than the vertical space into which they launch themselves. There’s one in Bali, where tourists jump from a tower in Kuta.

     His Trawangan retreat is for more sybaritic pursuits. Hackett says of his newly available facility:  “It’s not your average resort. Pondok Santi is a sanctuary for people to come and play in one of the world’s most awesome spots.”    

G’day and Ni Hao

They’re still pouring in – foreign tourists that is. In the five months to May, 1,150,000 of them landed on our shores. That’s 9.31 percent up on the same period last year. The Aussies totalled 299,360 – my oath, that’s a whole lot of Bintang – which was up nearly 8.5 percent, but the standout performers were Chinese, whose 143,382 represented a 64.73 percent increase. (No, they’re not all in Pepito Express at Bukit Jimbaran at the same time; it’s just that it sometimes seems that way.)

     Bali chief of BPS, the national statistics agency, I Gede Suarsa, said when releasing the figures that 31,432 tourists had come here on cruise ships. The overwhelming majority of arrivals chose instead to experiment with chaos theory at Ngurah Rai International Airport.

     Interestingly four countries turned in a decrease in Bali arrivals: Japan, down nearly 11 percent; Taiwan (14 percent); France (2.15 percent); and the biggest non-performer, the USA, was down by nearly 60 percent.

     Last year a total of 2.82 million foreign tourists visited Bali, up 9.72 percent on 2010.

Tugu Times

The decoratively desirable Hellen Sjuhada, who is now promoting the Tugu Hotel at Batu Bolong, tells us of an event there on Sunday, July 29, that would be a delight to attend and indeed we might try to force our way through the traffic – the Bukit to Batu Bolong is not an easy ride – on that occasion. It is not one to lightly miss, since as well as gazing upon the ocean while lit by torches and candles and sipping languidly from a glass of wine (and being within sight of the delicious Hellen would add further lustre) you get the chance to lie back on pillows and watch and listen as Legong dancers and Gamelan musicians serenade you with tales of love and passion from old-time Bali.

     The event, which will set you back Rp250K if you just want cocktails and Balinese canapés or Rp450K for the full dinner – with an early-bird Facebook special offering 15 percent off – showcases an artistic spectacle that once upon a time was seen only in the courtyards of Balinese royal palaces.

     Pelegongan was very popular in the early 1900s and was revealed to the world by artists such as the Belgian painter Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur, Canadian composer Colin McPhee and German painter-choreographer-writer Walter Spies. Over time it was subsumed by more modern streams of gamelan, but today the tradition is kept alive by the Mekar Bhuana Conservatory, which has re-popularised court gamelan and dance traditions.

     Tugu Hotel has full details of the July 29 event if you’d like to experience the old Bali.

Colour Me Jade

Ubud is an eclectic spot, as it pays never to forget. But it is perhaps slightly less so at the moment with the absence from its many wondrous scenes of writer, blogger and passionfruit cowgirl Jade Richardson, who is in Ecuador. Never mind, she’ll be back in these parts within a month or so and, we hear, with a treat in store for scribblers.

     This will take place not at Ubud, however, but on Lombok’s magic Gili Air, where she’s organising a writers’ workshop in September. The Way of the Writer (Sept. 11-15) invites book writers, stuck novelists, blocked poets, memoirists, bloggers and those who wish to fall in love with the source of their written magic to retreat to a quiet island paradise to connect to the spirit of their story and learn the writer’s arts.

     Gili Air, along with Meno and Trawangan are renowned for diving and snorkelling, or if you prefer to relax without exertion, for dining, reclining and imbibing.

     Richardson – who told us by cyber-chat recently that she is enjoying the Andean cloud forest, though she admits it’s a tad frio – suggests you might want to dive deep into the soul of your writing. Great idea! We’ll have a Hemmingway on the rocks, thanks. You can contact Richardson for details and prices at http://passionfruitcowgirl.wordpress.com.

    

To the Moon and Back

Casa Luna, the Ubud eatery in which proprietor-doyenne Janet DeNeefe can often be spotted having a quiet cuppa, was 20 years old on July 10. My, how time flies. It must be 13 years, then, since your diarist first passed the doors of the establishment and stole a glance inside. That’s been a regular treat ever since.


Hector’s Diary appears in the print edition of the Bali Advertiser, published every second Wednesday, and on this Blog. The Diary also appears at 8degreesoflatitude. Hector is on Twitter (@scratchings) and Facebook (Hector McSquawky).

HECTOR'S DIARY Bali Advertiser, June 27, 2012

Raking it In

The lively Beat Daily, the online news update produced by the chaps behind the bi-weekly entertainment glossy, had an interesting item recently, sourced from the local Bahasa press, though not – read on – the Bali Post: the 2012 Top 10 corporate rich kids on the block, those earning between Rp100 billion and Rp1 trillion. It bears noting that this is corporate, not personal, wealth, lest anyone starts to get jealous, or overly socialistic, or is tempted to formulate invidious comparisons.

     In any case, there is nothing wrong with having a lot of money, provided it has been acquired lawfully and is made fully available to comply with whatever tax law applies in the jurisdiction in which it is enjoyed. Though one might add that therein lies the rub.

     It is no surprise that Kadek Wiranatha and his brother Gede Wiratha, the local success story writ large, again top the list. They own the Bounty Group and a diverse portfolio of companies operating taxis, food exports and property (and the newspaper in which this diary appears).

     Also no surprise to the Diary is that the Ramayana group, headed by Putu Gde John Poets and owner among other things of Pepito supermarkets and the Mini Mart chain, comes in at No. 2. Given the mark-up on Nescafé Classic instant coffee at Pepito outlets – nearly 27 percent on the price of the product at other retailers and even more than that at, for example, Hypermarket – it’s no surprise they rake in the local shekels by the shovel-load. It’s a bit rich because Nescafé Classic, while modestly aromatic and fully satisfying, is hardly a premium brand; it’s just your regular kitchen jar of instant partial nirvana.

      Wayan Kari’s Waka group was third; Ida Bagus Putra’s Santrian group fourth; and then in descending order Hadi Wirawan’s Suzuki empire, Ubud royal Cokde Tjok Oka Artha (Tjampuhan), Tomy Raka,  Kelompok Usaha Keluarga,  the Bali Post group, and Anak Agung Sukadhana (his AAA Kusemas group operates mines, petrol stations and a laundry business).    

Such a Shame

Serambi Arts Antida, the great alternative art space in Denpasar, has closed its doors. Apparently the two joint owners of the premises had different ideas about how to capitalise on it. One wanted to sell the property and no compromise could be found.

     It opened in 2010 and among other things hosted this year’s Bali Emerging Writers Festival – in late May – which is a spin-off from the annual Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. Organiser Antida Darsana used Facebook to tell everyone who’s going to miss the space created for artists, musicians and students how much he regretted “that a valuable space for creativity, art, and culture cannot be maintained in Denpasar.”
     He added: “We will surely rise again to continue our idealism to develop arts and culture in Bali. We may, for the moment, be homeless, but we have not lost our spirit.”

     Alternative arts need far-seeing sponsors. Are there any local fat-wallets around – the recent Rich List might point to a name or two – whose skill in acquiring billions of rupiah for their businesses could be turned (in a very minor way after all) to useful philanthropic effect?  

Onya, Sonya

The excellent Strewth diary in The Australian – both it and the newspaper, which (disclosure) we should note is run by Hector’s former colleague Chris Mitchell, are required reading for those with an Aussie bent, albeit online if you live outside the Odd Zone – had a lovely little item the other day. It was headed Transporting Type and is worth reproducing unabridged, without further comment:

     At an inner Sydney gig on Sunday night, musician Kim Sanders – a practitioner of world music, if you'll allow the term – had just finished wowing the audience with a piece of Sufi music on his ney, a type of Turkish flute. It was beautiful, bordering on the ethereal, and when he stopped, there was a sense the audience was still suspended in mid-air, held by the coils of the ney's voice. Careful not to break the mood, Sanders introduced the next piece in almost a whisper. One of his own compositions he explained, inspired by a poem whose intensity, longing and passion had moved his heart and his imagination profoundly. He'd read it only once, he explained, as it was written on the back of a passing bus – the 473, no less. He proceeded to recite it in its entirety: "Sonya, Sonya, let me onya." Which makes haiku look long-winded in comparison. Sanders got a great tune out of it.

Old Friends

We had old friend Ross Fitzgerald to lunch at The Cage recently. He was staying in Ubud – he and his wife Lyndal Moor have been Bali visitors for 20 years or more and always stay in the attractively royal ambiance of the Pura Saraswati hotel right in the middle of town – and drove all the way down to the Bukit (and back) for a bite and chat. It takes a true friend to do that, given today’s traffic conditions.

     Fitzgerald is a professor of history and author or co-author of 35 books, the most recent being Fool’s Paradise, a fictional rendition of political events in the Australian state of Queensland that was long in the making because when first written it was met with horror by publishers who didn’t want to be sued by the non-fictional moulds from which Fitzgerald formed his characters.

     Among the several tales told over lunch – they mainly concerned mutual colleagues and friends – was one lovely little story. He had to get back to Ubud early because he was giving a talk to a group of Indonesians (only men and from Bali and Java chiefly) who had recognised that they were addicted to alcohol.

      One of Fitzgerald’s books is My Name is Ross, the story of how he beat potentially lethal alcoholism. He hasn’t touched a drop in more than 40 years and still attends meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous regularly.

      He was giving his talk, he said, because Indonesians here don’t attend AA meetings, or not in significant numbers, and the chap who organised the meeting got the idea from reading a review of Fitzgerald’s book written some time ago by none other than your diarist. It was in Another Newspaper.

      We’re sure the talk went well. Fitzgerald is an amusing raconteur.      

All A-buzz

Marie Bee, who writes for the French-language monthly journal La Gazette de Bali and continuously demonstrates that she made very good use of her university days in Aix-en-Provence, is not a person on whom it would be wise to waste a fallacy.

    So it was interesting to read in the June edition of La Gazette, in her Ubud column, that she had been to Anand Krishna’s ashram there and found a lingam in residence. The busy little Bee pointed out immediately, lest Francophone readers get quite the wrong idea, that it is not there in the sexual sense that so fixates people today – lingam massage being billed as the art of penis worship – but in its original meaning: the creative power. 

Cleaning Up

World Ocean Day on June 8 got a welcome boost worth US$10,000 – that’s around Rp90 million give or take an exchange slip or two – from Blue Season Bali’s effort on the day that helped clean up the Sanur beach and raised funds through a fun scheme (though perhaps not entirely novel in Indonesia) under which people could bribe their way out of jail. The jail operated at the evening BBQ and was guarded by a local police officer who played the role of jailer. Guests paid for their “friends” to be thrown into jail and they then had to raise money to “bribe” the jailer to be released.

Captain Who?

We were planning to end this edition’s diary with a little joke, just to give readers a giggle. We had one all set – don’t worry, it won’t date – when the thought occurred that there was a real joke we should tell instead. It concerns Captain Emad, real name Ali al-Abassi, the well known Iraqi people smuggler who when he arrived on one of the boats from Indonesia that he’d organised fooled the gullible Aussies into believing he was an asylum seeker. They gave him a visa (of course) and, not to gild the lily, a measure of public assistance.

      But – shock, horror – the poor dears are now thinking of cancelling his refugee visa after he was outed by the ABC TV current affairs show Four Corners as still, shall we say, somewhat active in the illegal business of putting desperate people on leaky boats to Australia, land of plenty.

      The day after the programme aired he left Australia, the plods conspicuously not in pursuit. Oddly, though, he was already a person of interest. Police had raided his home some time before armed with a drug warrant.

     But we can tell them that well before the Four Corners exposé, he was seen in Senggigi, Lombok, with a group of fawning Iranians who seemed all to be hoping to pin little kangaroo badges on themselves soon, and that this was reported. Our source was not official and the sighting was reported through civilian contractor channels, not direct to the authorities. But we are confident the circumstances were as described. It is also clear no one in authority in Australia bothered to check effectively.  8degreesoflatitude

Hector’s Diary appears in the print edition of the Bali Advertiser, published every second Wednesday, and on this Blog. The Diary also appears at 8degreesoflatitude. Hector is on Twitter (@scratchings) and Facebook (Hector McSquawky).

HECTOR’S DIARY Bali Advertiser, June 13, 2012

Stir Slowly, Drink at Leisure

The May edition of the 2012 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival newsletter made it out with a week to go before it was June – it popped into the Diary’s in-box on May 26. And since it was leading off with a bit of a blurb about the Bali Emerging Writers Festival (which had been advertised as scheduled for May 25-27) one assumes deadlines in festival-land are as notional as any on this island.

     But never mind. BEWF is beaut, even if acronyms are as prevalent as litter. This year’s was the second and organisers said it presented a more colourful line-up than the inaugural acronym last year. Said UWRF community development manager Kadek Sri Purnami, and we quote verbatim (it’s not our grammar): “We are trying to present as diverse and colourful voices as possible. These young writers, some write with words, some with lights and images, will take the audience into the kaleidoscopic world of contemporary Bali.”

      We’re sure it was a blast – and we’re glad about that too. Perhaps the 2012 UWRF Newsletter for June, which apparently should reach us just before it is July, will give us some idea of how it actually went.

     The festival took place (May 27-29) at Serambi Arts Antida, the hot Denpasar alternative art space.

      Meanwhile, festival founder and fragrant coffee drinker Janet DeNeefe is being as shy as ever about the international programme for this year’s big show, scheduled for October 3-7. A little note in the aforementioned newsletter coyly states: “While the list of international authors for the UWRF 2012 is tightly embargoed, several of the authors on that list were featured at the Sydney Writers Festival, recently concluded.”

      We do know of one author invited to participate: Uli Schmetzer, who lives half the year in Venice and half in Australia and the Philippines. He and his lovely Italian wife Tiziana, who cooks the most marvellous pasta, lent us their pushbikes in Beijing 20 years ago (we gave them back) as well as their driver, a redoubtable fellow called Fang who knew but one word of a language other than Mandarin. Unfortunately this was “nyet,” which did not get us very far. Well, only to the nearest bit of the Great Wall.

      As to other internationals, well, just for fun, we’ll scribble out a list, blindfold ourselves, and play a literary version of pin the tail on the donkey.

Help the Cause: Buzz Off

As noted above, a diarist’s reading must be very wide. Or else you miss all sorts of things that give you a huge laugh. So we propose to share with you some other advice recently to hand – we found it online and it would be amusing to suggest this resulted from a tip-off – that urges women to select a vibrator that is eco-friendly

     It notes – this was a surprise to the Diary – that there are more makes of vibrators on the market than there are models of cars on the roads. Gee, that intelligence hits the spot. It’s a wonder poor old Gaia hasn’t been knocked out of her orbit with all the under-the-counterpane buzzing that must be going on. And it says that choosing a brand, let alone a single product, can be daunting; it kindly offers to help narrow your search.

     It suggests you choose a rechargeable vibrator for maximum sensation with minimum ecological footprint. Apparently a typical user can deplete up to four batteries a week on a battery operated vibrator – that’s more than 200 dead batteries a year. (How many extinct libidos, we wonder?)

     Oh yes – and we’re thinking that would have to be the Big O – it also says that responsible manufacturing is important for your vibrator (they are sentient as well as sensory?) and suggests you seek out companies that share your values. Perhaps you should just look for one that gives you a nice warm buzz.

Or Otherwise...

A diarist also needs a quick eye, as well a deep appreciation for delicious double entendres. LinkedIn’s handy People You May Know feature – which as we noted recently unearthed for us poor Angus McCaskill, who is no longer counted among our population – popped up another unknown name the other day. We won’t name the fellow, since he seems to be a Canadian and might therefore respond by saying “Eh?” or else entirely miss the joke.

     But he’s the manager of a mining industry outfit whose name might cause an involuntary appreciative intake of breath among any number of distressed gentlewomen hereabouts: Cougar Drilling Solutions.

Fame à un Prix

Those among us who like to follow the risible side of Australian politics – it’s a broad field of study – have been transfixed of late at the thought of supersized Queensland mining magnate Clive Palmer running for parliament, though not for the Whirling Dervish Party, which is such a pity. He’d like to be a Liberal MP instead, which he’d surely find is absolutely no fun at all. Apparently he’s serious about it all but the idea went straight into our Too Silly file, along with some of Palmer’s other titanic ideas.

     As well as desiring to pay no tax on his mines (paying tax is for wimps and non-whirling dervishes) Palmer wants to build an “unsinkable” modern version of the Titanic that some people – Céline Dion, Kate Winslett and Leonardo DiCaprio prominently among them, one imagines – will clearly remember was also unsinkable but which nevertheless sank on its maiden voyage in 1912 after running full-pelt into an eminently avoidable iceberg. He also wants to build a Zeppelin, though he promises it wouldn’t be a Hindenburg exploding one.

     It was therefore fun to find in a recent edition of the fine French satirical newspaper Le Canard enchainé – it had been donated to The Cage by some kind French visitors – a little item by Jean-Luc Porquet, who writes a lovely column aptly named “Peouf!” It was headlined “Trésor national vivant” (“Living National Treasure”).

     The piece primarily concerned the discarded Nicolas Sarkozy who was recently unelected as President of the Republic. It was Sarkozy’s titanic political misadventures which principally informed Porquet’s pointed prose. But unfortunately, while Palmer’s Australian national treasure feat may be recognised in France and be of some peripheral utility to satirists having a go at poor M. Sarkozy, his living clay is less well known.

     Porquet called him Clive Barker. Perhaps he was thinking of Ronnie, the Brit comic who was nearly as round. But he could just have been joking. He seems to share the widely held view that Clive Palmer is barking mad.

More Sax Please

The delectable Edwina Blush will soon be back in Bali, which is good news for Villa Kitty at Ubud – of which she is an ambassador – and people, like your diarist, who love saxy jazz and the (unfortunately now largely notional) concept of smoky bars and attractively accommodating company.

     She’ll be playing a six-week gig here with her Balinese sextet at Three Monkeys Sanur after the June 15 launch in Sydney of her latest album, Sea For Cats. We’ll get along to a session or two. The album’s available from various download sites including iTunes, the Diary’s preferred legal provider. Half the proceeds of sales go to Villa Kitty to provide veterinary care and – as Edwina unblushingly puts it – much needed population control measures (she adds: “Frisky little darlings”).

     Villa Kitty is on Facebook, by the way. Founder and Chief Meow Elizabeth Grant Suttie would love to hear from you.

Fiesta Time

El Kabron, the cliff-top watering hole at Bingin on the Bukit where host David Iglesias Megias tempts patrons with all sorts of delights, including Catalan and other Spanish treats, celebrated its first birthday with a great little party on June 10.

     It was a good chance to catch up with old friends – though none of them are old in the literal sense – including our Most Favoured Argentine, artist-architect Leticia Balacek, who has recently been in Shanghai. We buttonholed her at the do and asked if, as a result of her Sino experiences, her word was still her Bund. Sorry.

No Kidding

We hear from the delightful Alicia Budihardja, chief spruiker at Conrad Bali where Frenchman Jean-Sebastien Kling is now general manager that the property is going after the kids in a big way. It has launched a new family package that offers free meals and recreational and cultural activities to youngsters while their parents are enjoying the definitely more relaxing and possibly more cerebral aspects of the place.

      Kling wants to help parents unwind on an ultimate getaway.  That’s a nice thought. They deserve a break. 

Hector's Diary is in the fortnightly print edition of the Bali Advertiser, out every second Wednesday, and on the internet HERE. Hector is on Twitter (@scratchings) and Facebook (Hector McSquawky).

HECTOR'S DIARY Bali Advertiser, May 30, 2012

Oh Wow! Things Work!

Two weeks in Phuket can work wonders for you. Especially when it’s raining, on and off,  which it is at this time of the year, the reverse (almost exactly) of Bali’s seasons: Phuket is seven degrees 53 minutes North, Bali eight degrees 39 minutes South.

     It is wondrous to shelter, street-side, from a sudden monsoon downpour and watch the efficiently engineered and properly cambered road surface deal with the flood of water; and the drains, unclogged by careless refuse, dispose of the resulting rush of runoff. Among other things the Thais comprehend – and moreover seem to care about – is that water flows downhill. It makes you believe, all over again, that if Bali could only put its mind to it, the same felicity would be within our reach.

    And it fully refreshes the soul to be somewhere thoroughly tropical and to find that the electricity grid delivers a constant 230V – within the international standard plus or minus 6 percent tolerance – and that in consequence one’s rechargeable electric razor actually fully recharges and, moreover, closely shaves the morning bristles.

     There are other things about arriving in Phuket that might amaze (we’ll get to some of those that amuse). These include the airport, which has a car parking, taxi, bus, drop off and pick up system that works. And an arrivals system that does too. Seventeen minutes from stand-up-and-rush-the-plane-exit to kerbside car pick-up was a treat.

     And in case the director-general of official excuses should chance to read this, or more likely have it read out to him, since he’d surely have an official excuse for not bothering to directly inform himself about anything much at all, this was not because the airport wasn’t busy.

Magic Spell

Thai script, drawing its origins from (among others) ancient Aramaic and about as intelligible and dating from 1283 when King Ramkhamhaeng the Great formalised it, and the way of writing for some 65 million people, means that the Roman alphabet that the main European and other languages (such as Bahasa Indonesia) use is functionally beyond most Thais.

     This leads to understandable confusion, most obvious to the casual passer-by from street-side signage. One little spot we passed often on the first part of our Phuket holiday (in Kata where we stayed at the delightful – and delightfully named – Lae Lay Suites) had a sign outside that proclaimed “No Panking.” A little further on, past a few more interestingly disreputable bars containing small collectives of bored, chattering girls of an evidently willing nature but unknown character, to say nothing of provenance, another sign said “No Paeking.”

     Hanky-panky is impolitic and peeking impolite; besides, we were not driving and had no need of parking. We managed thereby to avoid total confusion.

There’s the Rub

Massage, as in Bali, is the ubiquitous offering made to passing tourists. Some of it is legit. A Thai massage, for example – the Thai style of massage, we mean, which we also sampled later in plush comfort at the Twin Palms resort at Surin – is a great way to discover that you actually can, if gently encouraged by your masseuse, just about get your right big toe into your left ear. This feat – no, we’re not just crassly attempting a poor pun – is much the better for being performed with clothes on and without the sometimes dubious benefits of sticky oil.

     Others are, or may be, not quite as legit. Phuket’s tourist areas, after all, like Bali’s, are places of sexual resort for male tourists whose brains are defective or damaged, or anatomically misplaced. But even if legit, sometimes the names of massage establishments raise an eyebrow. There was one we spotted, into which the Diary dared not enter, that proclaimed itself to be the Tum Rub Massage.

Not So Petit Dejeuner

It is a Sunday at the exclusive beach club. Guests – regrettably some appear to be rather poor jests – are at play. Or maybe they are at lunch, since it must be at least an hour since they vacated their breakfast table.  It’s an eclectic crowd, as befits exclusivity, beaches and clubs, in Phuket as much as in any island playground. Many of its members are French, adding zest and joie de vivre to proceedings and some amusement – not necessarily of the cruel variety – to the day of the watching diarist.

    Overheard on this particular day, they seemed to be saying “donc” to each other with implausible frequency. In its conjunctive form, it means “therefore,” and we surmised that they were explaining things to each other, or possibly explaining themselves. One party in particular prompted us to think that France, having just elected a socialist president who offered a series of spectacularly speculative promissory notes, had now convinced itself it is fully insulated from both the global and Euro crises.

     Since we had not been introduced and such a social opportunity was unlikely to eventuate, we gave them names: Floppette, Flippette, Crevette and Asperge. As far as we could tell Flippette was with Crevette and Floppette with Asperge.  It was interesting that Floppette and Flippette displayed complete disinterest – such sangfroid! – while Crevette and Asperge disported themselves in the hefty little monsoon waves of the Andaman Sea equipped with body boards and fins.

     Lest it be felt we are being unnecessarily unkind in singling out persons of the French persuasion, we note that at the same time some jests from Oz were on the beach. Tosser and Wozza were accompanied by their squeezes, Screecher and Mona, or so it seemed. It takes all sorts.

It’s Not Kuta

Or Patong, Phuket’s equivalent; and thank goodness for that. Surin is a quiet little spot – very quiet in the low season – and the better for that beneficence. There’s a surprising variety of good little restaurants (if you like real pizza, you’re certainly in the right place) including some nice locally run beach eateries that, unlike those at Jimbaran, for example, allow you some light to eat by and forbear to incinerate the fish.

     We found one particular little place off the beach, a short stroll up a gentle hill from the Twin Palms resort. It’s called CC’s and is accessed by some stairs at a building next to a pharmacy. It’s locally owned – by a surfer-biker-philanthropist-entrepreneur from nearby Kamala – and run by another nice Thai surf fan, known as Jay. There’s a very well stocked bar and the massaman curry was the best we’d had in a long while.

Just in Time

Fortunately we were back in Bali well ahead of the next Ganesha art opening. We always try to get along to these little soirees since gallery manager Luh Resiki is such a dear and John O’Sullivan’s Four Seasons operation generally presents some decent wine.

     And on June 7 it will be more of a pleasure than ever, since the artist whose works are going on show is Dutch-born Marijke Lambregtse, who has achieved the impossible dream: she lives half the year in Bali and half in Queensland, Australia.  There but for a Lotto win go I, as a superannuated cockatoo might say, if lightly pressed.

     Lambregtse began her artistic career in Holland as a dancer, choreographer and teacher and then moved to Australia in 1987, where she lectured in ballet in Melbourne and Brisbane.  In the mid-1990s she studied art, painting and design, and her talent won her prizes, exhibitions and commissions.

      Her Ganesha exhibition, from June 7-July 30, shows a collection of canvasses representing the broad theme of Lost and Found, from which the exhibition takes its title. These explore two themes: awareness and protection of the environment, and the crucial role woman can play in
bringing positive change by active participation.

Get Along There

Lloyd Perry’s Chillout Lounge at Ubud is making its mark. A recent “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” night raised Rp2.2 million for a very worthwhile charity, the Sacred Childhoods Foundation. Another fund-raising night took place on May 25 and they will be run monthly.

     Chillout now also features a live music and art night every Saturday from 7pm.  Perry tells us a great Jam band plays and any musicians present are welcome to join in. Twelve took part in one recent event, several of them from Ubud. And if you’re feeling musical but can’t play (the Diary studied piano and the clarinet several eons ago, to no lasting effect; shame it wasn’t the sax, we’d surely have remembered that) then you could try painting to music instead. Watercolours and canvas are available for anyone who wants to have a go.

Long Story

Marian Carroll, chief spruiker at The Ayana Resort at Jimbaran – home of the famed sunset spot the Rock Bar – is now sporting a longer title. She is now Director of Public Relations & Marketing Communications (Resort & Residences). We do hope that comes with enhanced rummaging rights at the cookie jar.

     The resort has just completed a large-scale refurbishment.

Hector's Diary appears in the Bali Advertiser's fortnightly print edition, out every second Wednesday. Hector is on Twitter (@scratchings) and Facebook (Hector McSquawky).

HECTOR'S DIARY Bali Advertiser, May 16, 2012

What Rubbish!

When we heard that “the authorities” – the quotation marks are possibly essential – had suddenly demolished a number of rather well known and heavily patronised watering holes favoured by the Bling-and-Bolly and Boys-and-Girls-Behaving-Badly sets on the beach at Batu Belig, a wreck and rampage event held on May 7, an unkind thought crossed our mind. It was that “They” (the quote marks and capital T are definitely essential) had mistaken the real task upon which a modicum of concentration is required.

      It occurred to us that a far-sighted official – Find that man! Give him a medal! – must somehow have become aware of the real problem on Bali’s beaches and directed the troops to clean up the rubbish, but that a critical wire or two had got crossed while the order was being passed down the line. There is a precedent for this, though sadly it too is a joke. An order “Pass the word forward, we’re going to advance,” given to British infantry on the Western Front in World War I was duly passed forward but got lost on the way. It became “Pass three-and-four-pence, we’re going to a dance.”

      It is asserted that Karma Kandara, La Barca and other outré establishments were operating without the necessary permissions and permits. They may have been.  We don’t know. But that’s not unusual hereabouts, particularly when if you do pay up you’ve often no idea who is actually going to pocket the dosh.

Oh, THAT Target

Meanwhile – surely to no one’s surprise – environmental specialists are at loggerheads over how the Bali government’s commitment to a plastic free Bali in 2013 can be achieved. The short answer is it can’t be. The real political game is finding some smoke and mirrors with which to claim it has been, or very nearly so.  This little shadow play has now produced a statement – from provincial environment agency chief AA Gede Alit – to the effect that 2013 is just the target for the initial commitment.

     Dr Wayan Arthana – of the Centre for Environmental Research (PPLH), which is hardly an impartial player but never mind in this instance – says there is no clear plan to achieve this. He is apparently shocked to learn this, which in turn is shocking. We’re on Planet Bali, where clear plans are never part of the picture. It’s true that Bali has a big waste problem. But even 10,000 cubic metres of waste a day is not insuperable. At the moment more than half is left untreated and scattered around the island. The 10 to 12 percent of it that is plastic could certainly be managed under the right programmes.

      Arthana is pessimistic about the target date. “I think it will not be achieved,” he says. Gosh, if betting were legal here he’d make a brilliantly successful bookie.  It’s hard not to be pessimistic about the entire project, frankly. A study by graduates from Reading University in Britain found various impediments in the way, including the behaviour of people who it seems – in the comfortable do-nothing fictions that govern life here – “do not realise” that plastic is harmful to the environment.

Ooh, Yummy

Alila Villas Soori, on the Tabanan coast and somewhere we really must get one day, has a culinary treat in store for guests in June. Michelin chef Tom Kerridge, whose Hand and Flower public house, at Marlow on a picturesque Wind in the Willows-style stretch of the River Thames in England is Britain’s only two-star Michelin-rated pub, will be creating haute cuisine – some of it hot too, no doubt – in-house on his first ever Asian tour.

      He is said by some to be the finest chef in Britain today. As far as we know, he’s not one of the rude ones, which is truly a blessing. Kerridge had a hard childhood, a time upon which he reminisced in February in the London Daily Telegraph newspaper. He recalled they were so poor – his divorced mum worked nine to five and then after hours on the till in a pub to make ends meet – that their usual Sunday Roast (a British tradition) was cheap sausage meat from a supermarket rather than prime beef or chicken from the butcher.

      He said: “I look back on that meal with really fond memories because it shows my mum didn't give up. She worked hard to help me get where I am. Now she comes to visit me at the pub, where we've just won our second Michelin star, and I get to treat her instead.”

      What a lovely fellow.

      And that’s not all that Alila Villas Soori has on its schedule next month. Its latest Artist in Residence is Raymond Wiger, a master sculptor in the art of wire mesh, who will show a collection there in June including some pieces inspired by and resulting from his residence at the resort.

Scat, Cat

We heard this story from Villa Kitty, the rapidly overcrowding refuge for deprived felines in Ubud. Apparently at Champlung Sari, a resort property in Monkey Forest Road, unwanted or nuisance kittens – the product of breeding age cats left unsterilized by unthinking owners or the ubiquitous stray animals – are cleared from the property by the cheapest method possible. Someone tosses them over the wall into a dirty little watercourse that fights its way through the garbage to get where gravity would otherwise like it to go.

      Villa Kitty tells us a couple staying at the resort recently were upset at seeing a kitten thrown over the wall in this manner and one phoned them up in high distress. Further inquiry elicited the information from the management that the guests had evidently failed to see the kitten then climb back over the wall.

       Is this a joke? Sadly it is not. But animal lovers and anyone with an elementary sense of decency might like to get their essential Ubud experience at some other accommodation.

A Ra’re Treat

Hector’s ghost-writer was browsing through his LinkedIn site recently when the ever-helpful People You Might Know feature popped out the name of Angus McCaskill. Well, we don’t know Angus and neither did we know his alter ego, the faux-Maori Willie Ra’re, when he was hanging around the party scene snorting cocaine. That is, we didn’t know him except vicariously as a result of the public notoriety he acquired on being arrested, charged, tried and sentenced to jail on a drug charge. We shared this condition – though ours was legitimate lack of knowledge – with a great many people who, after his sad denouement in a supermarket, suddenly seemed not to know him either.

     McCaskill went home to Australia last August after serving a year in Kerobokan jail. He had originally been sentenced to seven years in one of those over-reactive challenges to common sense that the courts here seem to like so much.

     He said at the time he was a changed man and that he had used his year in the slammer to reconnect with the non-narcotics-enhanced side of life. We wish him well.

     LinkedIn tells us he is now business development manager at a Melbourne-based leisure, travel and tourism outfit called DealsOnDeals and also lists him as owner at the Wall Street Group of Companies. Now that might give us the Willies; not to mention the Gekkos.

Eat Up

Ubud, as befits its status as the centre of myriad universes, many of them very strange places indeed, has plenty of spots where, your head filled with pipedreams, you can also stuff your face. That’s as it should be, even if it’s only a mungbean you’re after. So one more won’t matter and it’s no surprise that Kuta fixture Dijon has wandered up the road to open a café. It’s in tastefully eclectic Jalan Raya Sanggingan, just across the road from a favourite Diary spot, the Beji resort.

     Dijon Café officially commenced business on April 29, with all the pomp and circumstance people seem to view as de rigueur when opening a new emporium (of whatever variety) here. It was open – perhaps this was unofficially, or maybe it was just softly – when we were staying in the area last December.

     It’s not very far from Mozaic, which keeps getting noticed – the Diary chiefly notices it for its prices – and Naughty Nuri’s, which being extremely tiny is always overflowing with the I-Must-Be-Seen crowd. So it will be good if Dijon cuts the mustard.

Vacant Lot

The April issue of the Bali Peace Park Association’s e-newsletter popped into our in-box right on deadline – ours, not theirs, it now being May – with some fascinating thoughts on fundraising, land acquisition, and building completion. It records that Man-With-the-Udeng Made Wijaya, whose landscaping firm did the drawings for the Sari site development, told them building the park facilities would take six months. Then it says they’re on schedule for October, the tenth anniversary of the first bombings. It’s May, so they now have five months. But they haven’t acquired the site – and there’s not a brick in sight.

     We’ll read more. Watch this vacant space.

Hector's Diary appears in the Bali Advertiser's print edition, out every second Wednesday. Hector is on Twitter (@scratchings) and Facebook (Hector McSquawky).

HECTOR'S DIARY Bali Advertiser, May 2, 2012

Building for No Future

Among the many wondrous things that fix one’s attention in Bali is the question of building permits. It has been raised – again – as a matter of public interest by people who are objecting to the construction of yet another lodging place, allegedly without benefit of permit, in Jl Drupadi at Seminyak, which not many years ago was a quietly meandering little street where residents had rice fields to gaze upon. It is still a meandering little street, but concrete view-blockers have replaced the rice fields and silence is a notional, relative thing. This, of course, is progress.

     It is not necessary to completely oppose development to be outraged by the cavalier attitude of many developers to dangerous impediments to their own wealth-garnering, such as building regulations. “I should get a permit? Well, I asked for one and you said no, so I’m building my nightmare project anyway. I’ve called it Excrescence, by the way; somehow it seemed apt.”  This statement is of course fictional. The actual statement, were one ever to be made, would probably be unprintable.

       We have hotel developers – and other entrepreneurial types – who build what they like, where they like and how they like without bothering with building standards, licences, permits, or even drainage plans. (We know too that getting building permits is often a process fraught with costly problems but that’s not the point.) Few are effectively countered. It’s not just in Bali, of course. Indonesian law insists (well, suggests is more accurate in actuality) that you consult your neighbours before building, but hardly anyone ever bothers with that nonsense either.

      If Bali is to escape eventual tourism ruin and have any chance of protecting its heritage, architectural and other, something needs to be done urgently. Reform could start with amendments to the devolution law so there is no longer room for argument over whether the provincial or district administrations have legislative power over building regulations. It could usefully then continue with cast-iron rules enforcing those regulations.

     Bali has benefited hugely from tourism and related developments since the mid-1980s. Thousands of people have jobs they once could only dream about. Money has flowed – and is flowing – to local people like never before. All that is good, yet we face a dreadful problem, one that relates to virtually unfettered development and to the Balinese (and national) habit of ignoring both regulations and common sense.

And a Further Thought

Here in Bali we have by-passes that aren’t anything of the sort – because the instant someone builds a traffic thoroughfare it is built out and traffic-jammed by an epidemic of retail and other premises. We have intersections choked by vehicles and motorbikes whose drivers and riders simply ignore the rules.

     We have traffic police who sit – for example in the little sponsored box at the McDonald’s lights at Jimbaran – sipping their coffees and Cokes and ignoring the tailbacks caused by people intending to turn right but sitting in the left-hand (through) lane because they’re so selfish or ignorant that they’re not prepared to queue.

     There’s little money in it for the cops, of course. No “tourists” (even those who’ve lived here for years) do that. It’s home-grown idiocy and if it were penalised at all it would only be at concessional local rates.

In the Pink

Last October your Diarist – along with a chum who was visiting from Queensland, Australia – donned pretty pink to take part in the annual Bali Pink Ribbon Walk. It was a fun show, once the masculine genes had got over being paired with pink, and in a very good cause. We even did the full five kilometres, something that was apparently beyond many of the other walkers who, without benefit of marshals, cut a few corners.

     The 2012 event is on May 26, retimed to take advantage of the less humid conditions and slightly lower temperatures of the season. Sadly, we can’t make it; we’ll be flying back from an overseas trip on the day and won’t be back on Bali soil until after walk time. But everyone else should, so put it in your diaries.

      Gaye Warren, who initiated the Walk in 2009 and who as a breast cancer survivor is a leading light in the UK events, tells us that this year they’re providing optional design pink tees for chaps, with a black collar and the chest-legend “Real Men Wear Pink.” Nice try girls; only on special occasions, we fancy.

      The Walk starts at 4.30pm on May 26, from the grounds of the BTDC headquarters at Nusa Dua with registration from 3pm. There will be the usual tasty morsels available from international food stalls and this year’s entertainment programme is being provided by a wedding planner. That’ll go without a hitch, surely?

      Funds raised this year are going towards the building of Bali's first Breast Cancer Support Centre in Denpasar. Bali Pink Ribbon works with leading hospital Prima Medika in a joint endeavour to identify breast cancer in Balinese women who otherwise might not notice the symptoms until the disease is far advanced. Around 200 women a year are diagnosed with breast cancer in Bali.

      Details are at www.balipinkribbon.com.

Conrad Calling

There was a lovely soiree at Tanjung Benoa on April 11 when the Conrad Bali turned eight, said cheerio to inaugural GM Michael Burchett and bonjour to new GM Jean-Sébastien Kling, a native of France who joins us here on our island from the Hilton Maldives Iru Fushi. Kling joined the Hilton group in 1996.

     We’re not losing Burchett, though, which is good news because he’s a good bloke. He’s staying in Bali to run his own consultancy business.

Non! Cela ne peut pas être vrai!

No! That can’t be right! A poll conducted by international travel search site is said to have revealed the French as the rudest people on earth. Apparently they were thus rated by 19 percent of those polled. It’s true that the French are historically known by their European neighbours for an abrupt and curt nature, especially when dealing with foreign tourists – those who don’t speak classic French, for example, such as Quebecois from Canada, or (even worse) don’t speak French at all. It is further alleged that this is often taken by visitors as rudeness.

      Paris is a difficult city. But the people there are nearly in Seine, so that’s no surprise. In other parts of France your diarist, among thousands or more likely millions of visitors, Francophone or otherwise, has experienced no trouble at all getting along with the locals.

Scratch Him

Here’s a thought for the graspers among us, courtesy of Villa Kitty Ubud founder Elizabeth Grant Suttie. She recently asked (on Facebook) this reasonable question:  “How can an expat living in Ubud in a comfortable home with his own graphics business think to bring in three tiny kittens and not offer a donation?”

     We’d say the answer is obvious.

That’s the Spirit

It was Anzac Day on April 25 – the Australian and New Zealand day to honour all those who have served their countries in the armed forces – and as usual there was a traditional Dawn Service organised by the Australian Consulate-General.

      The Diary was there (as always); and this year was wearing his Australian Army tie for the occasion. It rained, rather heavily. But as Consul-General Brett Farmer reminded the large crowd present, given the occasion marks the bloody Gallipoli landing in World War I, we could put up with a little inconvenience.

Smile, Genius

The Diary’s current MFA (Most Favoured Argentine) Leticia Balacek, architect and artist – she had a lovely ink-wash sketch called Yellow Dog in her exhibition at El Kabron at Bingin Beach late last year which the Diary would covet for a wall were space available – has been spreading her wings. She had an exhibition of 47 mix-media works, Crossing Borders, at the Cemara 6 gallery in Jakarta from March 28-April 12.

     Now, five of her manual colour screen prints are to go on show at the Indonesian Contemporary Art and Design ICAD by Artura, also in Jakarta, from May 5-June 15. Balacek, who has the sort of effervescent personality that makes you want to hug her, will also present a short animation stop motion film.

     This year’s Design ICAD theme is Genius. Buenos Aires native Balacek tells us it’s about the genius we all have inside. Well, some among us do.

Unrevealing

The Bali Times, which has been published weekly since 2005, failed to appear on Friday, April 20. There was no announcement that publication had been suspended, but you expect that here.  It is bad news – any descent into a catatonic state preceding death by any newspaper is – but is unsurprising given the difficulties the paper has had, particularly since November 2010 when the editor decamped to Ireland.

      Revealing the real Bali – the paper’s masthead boast – was probably always going to be a little difficult from as far away as one of the Euro zone’s least effective economies. 

Hector's Diary appears in the Bali Advertiser, out every second Wednesday. Hector is on Twitter (@Scratchings) and Facebook (Hector McSquawky). The Diary is also posted at 8degreesoflatitude.wordpress.com.