HECTOR'S DIARY Bali Advertiser, Oct. 31, 2012

It’s a Scream

Anyone who travels by plane – and who doesn’t these days – would be sure to get a giggle out of Indonesia AirAsia’s pre-takeoff briefing for passengers on the Bali-Perth run. The Diary had a sample on the latest SEB flit to the world’s most isolated capital city.

    Try this: “Everybody should know how to buckle and unbuckle a seat-belt. If you don’t, you should probably not be travelling unsupervised.” Or this: “If oxygen is required during the flight, a mask like this will drop from the panel above your head. Stop screaming and fit your own mask before assisting children or adults behaving like children.” Or this: “If there is smoke in the cabin, stop screaming, keep low and follow the floor lights to the nearest exit.”

     And then the killer: “This is a non-smoking flight. Should you feel an irresistible urge to smoke later in the flight, you’re welcome to smoke outside the aircraft at your own risk.”    

Tender Trap

Redevelopment of Bali’s Ngurah Rai Airport will necessarily change the way its tenants do business. This is seemingly not clear to hundreds of traders from the airport who protested outside Bali’s provincial legislature in Denpasar on Oct. 16. They are protesting over the decision by airport operator Angkasa Pura I to re-tender airport trade booths. Ngurah Rai Traders Association chairman Wayan Sukses said the airport expansion would displace traders who have made a livelihood at the airport for years.

     The issue is complex. But the bottom line – it’s one not often visibly present in complaints about changing times here or anywhere – is that business is business and trading concessions and rules-in-place cannot be assumed to be forever. The politicians who nominally have charge of the matter need to publicly acknowledge this singular, if uncomfortable, fact of life too. Commission I chairman Made Arjaya, who would like Angkasa Pura to postpone any tenders until after talks with existing traders, should note this.

     Tenders should be open and the process transparent. And of course a proportion of traders at Bali’s airport should present local products and services for selection by airport users.

     Several things are wrong with the way the airport has operated. The redevelopment is an opportunity to correct them. The extortionate taxi monopoly should go for a start.

Dish Update

Diana “The Dish” Shearin, who is hobbling and will be for a while after an accident in the shower – now recorded in history as The Mandi Incident – tells us she attended the Helen Reddy charity benefit at Anantara in Seminyak in mid-October as forecast and that she enjoyed the audience sing-along when Reddy performed the anthem of the 1970s women’s lib movement.

     The Dish tells us, and we’re sure she’s not joking, that she made up her own words: “I am Woman. My knees are sore. I went arse-up on a wet terrazzo floor...”

Zero Sum

Uli Schmetzer, globetrotter, author and journalist, was at this year’s Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. He had been invited to launch his latest book, on payment of US$500, but decided against allowing himself that privilege. He did however attend many of the events, noting that some of the panel sessions were good value, if you could sneak in without a tag.

      He wrote on his website about his experiences, saying that three methods always worked:               “Number One:  You clutch the Festival brochure against your chest and smile as you join the throng squeezing past the ushers at the entrance. The ushers are young volunteers, untrained, unpaid lovable local Balinese who would never ask you to show your (non-existent) tag beneath the brochure. That wouldn’t be polite in Balinese culture.                “Number Two: Rush in once the debate has started. Squeeze yourself into a seat. No usher has the courage to meander through the audience to challenge you for your credential. (Keep that brochure tugged against your chest).                “Number Three: Seat yourself on a balustrade, under a banyan tree or in a café on the premises where you can clearly hear the loudspeakers.                “This way one managed to attend everything worthwhile – with one exception. On the last day a beanstalk of a young Australian female usher kept signalling me across the audience to remove the brochure from my chest so she could see the tag. I kept smiling back at her which made her signal more frantically. Eventually I blew her a kiss which disconcerted her so much she dispatched one of her underlings, a young Balinese, to investigate. The guy knew I didn’t have a tag but he obviously thought I was entitled to listen all the same. ‘This is an important discussion about democracy in the Middle East,’ he whispered: ‘Everyone should hear this. Stay and enjoy.’ He was about one third of my age, but the boy has a bright future, though perhaps not as a sniffer dog at the W&R Fest. “

     Schmetzer these days divides his time between Venice in Italy and Torquay in Australia. He is the author of Times of Terror, Gaza, The Chinese Juggernaut – and The Lama’s Lover, 10 short stories from around the world. 

Big Screen

We missed the fun, of course, since we were enjoying the distinctly chillier ambience of south-western Australia’s allegedly spring-like beach weather, but it was good to hear that the 2012 Balinale International Film Festival, the sixth, went off well in its new venue – the Beachwalk cinema at Kuta – from Oct. 22-28. Co-founder Deborah Gabinetti and co-founder actress Christine Hakim announced the programme earlier in the month in Jakarta. In the absence of an international film festival in Indonesia, the Balinale has become the leading film event in the country.  Perhaps this might eventually prompt remedial, or at least catch-up, thinking elsewhere.

      The festival opened with the latest movie by director Salman Aristo, Jakarta Heart. As with his earlier film, Jakarta Maghrib, Salman’s latest offering consists of six short stories about the city of Jakarta from different perspectives.

      The movie will be released nationally on Nov. 8.

      Balinale also staged the international world premiere of the film Alex Cross from director Rob Cohen, whose work includes the box office The Fast and the Furious, xXx (Triple X), and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. His latest movie, a crime thriller, features some scenes shot in Karangasem, East Bali. A total of 34 films from 34 countries were screened at this year’s event.

     That other Hollywood movie, Eat Pray Love, premiered at Balinale 2010.

     Until this year the Balinale has been held at the Cinema 21 complex at Bali Mal Galeria at Simpang Siur. But that’s virtually a no-go zone while the lengthy Planners’ Nightmare Festival takes place around Dewa Ruci.

Spot of Lunch

On this Australian trip we had a very pleasant lunch at Bunkers Beach Cafe – it’s at Bunker Bay near Cape Naturaliste in WA, where the breakers on the ocean side come all the way from Africa if not beyond – that deserves being put on the record for several reasons.

     First, it’s right on the beach giving patrons a fine view of the crystal clear water and splendid surf, and of the magnificent sweep of the beach itself. It’s amazing what a clean beach and a litter-free wave line can do for the ambience. Not to mention the tourist trade: the place was packed.

     The Diary’s second delight was his choice of dish for lunch – a lovely tempeh with sweet potato and cherry tomatoes, spiced just right for the Asian palate.  Compliments were sent to the chef. They had earlier asked if the Diary was familiar with tempeh and warned that the dish was rather spicy. That’s probably sound policy in Australia, where there are sure to be lawyers around who’d offer to sue if you went to them with a tale of woe, or a lightly spiced tongue.

A Good Show

They’re raising funds for diabetes research in Australia and on Sunday, Oct. 21, we did the de rigueur five kilometres of fundraising walk that was staged in Busselton that day. It was a brisk walk – the breeze was a tad chilly though many of the locals apparently thought it was high summer – of just under 55 minutes. We were, we decided, the tail-enders in the breakaway serious walker cohort that led the way throughout. About 120 people walked and a substantial sum was raised for this vital cause.

     The beachside pathway (also a cycleway) system in Busselton features miniature road markings, possibly in an attempt to remind cyclists that their machines do have brakes. They also feature dinky little walking-figures and colourful feet impressed into the paving. It makes life interesting. It almost makes you want to go “vroom“as you step up your pace after slowing at a Give Way sign.

     We considered trying it on our morning walks here at home, after getting back on Oct. 29. But we thought better of it in the end. We don’t want to give the locals any more reasons to think we’re raving mad.

Hector's Diary appears in the fortnightly print edition of the Bali Advertiser, out every second Wednesday, and on the newspaper's website www.baliadvertiser.biz. Hector tweets @scratchings and is on Facebook (Hector McSquawky).

HECTOR'S DIARY, Bali Advertiser, Oct. 17, 2012

Bali be Buggered

The ruination of Bali at the hands of mass tourism and its high-end glitterati offshoot is a topic that periodically exercises many minds. Those of us who live here notice it chiefly from the strains it imposes on utterly inadequate public infrastructure. But the other side of the coin is that there are benefits too, mostly in the employment and incomes tourism generates for Balinese and other Indonesians, and these are the primary reason why tourism needs to be encouraged to continue growing.

     Nonetheless, there are significant problems, which are chiefly revealed to the world by observers who write for media elsewhere. Australian scribbler Deborah Cassrels did that most recently in The Weekend Australian of Sept. 29, with a piece that reminded our primary tourist market what a shambolic mess Bali has made of its best income earner.

     Cassrels homed in on the new Mulia at Nusa Dua. It’s an excrescence. How it got past any planner or regulator would be a mystery were it not for the fact that Badung (the regency) routinely gives provincial regulations the middle finger. Mulia has ruined Geger Beach at Nusa Dua in the name of commercial advantage without an apparent thought for the bigger picture (especially the beach and marine environments), the public status of beaches, or other, smaller and long established businesses around it, or for the future except as defined by corporate profit.

     Money talks, as the old saying puts it. And Big Money shouts. As always “consensus” – the quotation marks are essential – is achieved by measuring who has the biggest baseball bat. But on a broader argument, it is rather hard to criticise Balinese landowners for wanting some of the action; the bit not already alienated to Jakarta and Surabaya plutocrats, anyway. Bali’s dilemma is customarily sheeted home to rapacious foreign investors. But it’s the local variety that’s far more predatory and much more of a worry.

      It’s not just Mulia, though its demerits are many. Basically, everyone who can make a play is at it. At Jimbaran Beach, for example, down at the Four Seasons end, a big stone wall has been erected right on the high-water mark, altering the beach and high tide wave dynamics and just waiting for a bad weather episode that will create beach erosion havoc. Still, some fat-wallet tourists will get to enjoy the extra ration of sun lounges for a while.

     At many other places in southern Bali free access to the beach is effectively proscribed by private roads. This does every Balinese an injustice.

     Cassrels was not the only complainant on Sept. 29. Robert Schrader had a piece in the American-focused Huffington Post travel blog the same day, in which among other things he observed:

     “The tourists who visit Bali are the very worst types of tourists in the world: They viciously argue, without removing their Prada sunglasses, over 20 or 30 cents, without realising that employees in even Bali's most posh resorts are lucky to earn this amount in exchange for an hour of extremely hard work.”

     Allowing for a measure of dyspepsia – poor Robert apparently suffered the indignity of being abandoned by his boyfriend while he was here, though it eludes us why any of his domestic distempers are relevant – we wouldn’t cavil with his argument.

     Bali needs to get its act together, certainly. But frankly, so do tourists.

An Annual Rite

It was fun to be around this year’s Ubud Writers and Readers Festival and especially, for a diarist, at the two cocktail functions we attended. On such occasions we like to pretend we’re an aspidistra, so we can hear the chatter without necessarily having to bore ourselves rigid by taking an actual part in the serious frivolities. But not to be churlish, we also make an appearance from time to time, often in search of another nice red wine, and meet some nice new chums. We met some on this occasion, from Darwin, Alice Springs, Brisbane and Melbourne, a demographic that fairly sums up the ubiquitous Australian nature of the support mechanism for the festival. Expect to see a more visible ongoing presence by the Australia Asia Institute, a government funded body, in the future.

     People sometimes wonder why the Australian presence is so pervasive – not only in terms of the writers’ festival – but simple geography, national interest (on both sides of the Arafura Sea) and the generous level of aid funding available explain that. Many more Australian dollars come here than Australian tourists, after all. And provided this traffic is managed, and conducts itself in a mannered way, it’s a good thing.

     The Australian presence at the festival grows stronger every year, which is no bad thing given the need to create some lasting symbiosis in the Indonesia-Australia relationship. It also helps in the absence of a corporate naming sponsor, though why big business is so short-sighted on this front is a mystery.

      Janet DeNeefe’s PA, Elizabeth Grant Suttie, gave us a Villa Kitty bookmark. It proclaims “Proud to be a Bali Cat”. We’re happy to have it as a memento. One’s Kindle doesn’t need it, of course, since it cleverly, electronically, bookmarks your current page, but there is yet a place for actual books (thank goodness).

     

Sanglah Song

We hear good news in relation to the Sanglah-Royal Darwin Hospital link, something that formally came into being while former Northern Territory health minister Kon Vatskalis was in the driving seat. There’s been a change of government in that Australian territory since and Vatskalis is now experiencing the benefits of opposition (there are democratic benefits in this process). But he tells us he’ll be keeping a close eye on the Sanglah connection and that is pleasing.

     The new government in Darwin is strongly committed, but as Vatskalis points out, it is also committed to balancing the budget and fiscal paring is always a risk in such situations. Much is made in Australia of the fact that with the assistance of the link, Sanglah is able to treat many Australians who injure themselves or fall ill while here on holiday. Less is understood – since it is not really headline material in the Odd Zone – about the incremental health gains it promises for Balinese and other Indonesians on the island.

     That’s its real benefit.  And that’s why it’s really important.

A New ROLE

Ayana Resort and Spa at Jimbaran hosted a lovely dinner on Oct. 6 at which trainee chefs and other young local people cooked a spectacular menu list and served guests as the culmination of their sponsored training at the resort.

     It is an initiative of the far-seeing ROLE Foundation.

From the Art

Bali’s unique art and culture continue to fascinate scholars and others, which is great news in an environment in which so-called global culture is trying to get us all in a head-lock. It is a heritage that must be protected at all costs and advanced where possible. So it was good to see the launch of Adrian Vickers’ scholarly new book at the Hotel Griya Santrian in Sanur on Oct. 5.

     Vickers is professor of Southeast Asian Studies and director of the Australian Centre for Asian Art & Archaeology at the University of Sydney. He says of his book, which is titled Balinese Arts: Paintings and Drawings of Bali 1800–2010, that it is the first comprehensive survey of Balinese painting from its origins in the traditional Balinese villages to its present place at the forefront of the Asian art scene.
     He told the Jakarta Post’s dinky little Bali Daily wrap-round: “One of the things that I think was a problem with Balinese arts in the past was that when people published books, they didn’t necessarily choose to exam (sic) a lot. Part of my work over the last four years has been trying to get materials from museums in the Netherlands, private collections in Singapore and the US, where there are a lot of works that have never been seen.”

     It’s a book of considerable importance – not least because its text and glorious illustrations also form an online data base – and one that will look good in the residual print section of the library at The Cage.

We’re Away

It’s not just the unnecessarily maudlin song and dance that’s been made of the tenth anniversary of the 2002 Bali bombings that’s driven us away on yet another Short Essential Break. Though the fact that Bukit Jimbaran would be a virtual no-go zone while leaders (including the “Australian premiere” in the words of the screamer of a headline in a formerly sentient English-language weekly newspaper here) and bulk supplies of tissues were being distributed for the lachrymose crowds expected at GWK was certainly a factor. Oct. 12 was a good day not to be here.

     That’s not because we should now forget the outrage of 2002 or its smaller reprise in 2005. Both were abominations at the hands of murderously deluded terrorists, most of whom are now locked up or are, so to speak, no longer among us. Good riddance to them and their perniciously skewed catechism. We must never forget. But neither should we fixate on past horror.

     Next edition’s Diary will come to you from the splendid wine regions of Western Australia, where we’re going to pop a cork or two.  We’ll be back in Bali at the end of the month.  With Vegemite supplies.  

Our Heroine

Nengah Widiasih, the 19-year-old disabled weightlifter from Kubu, Karangasem, who represented Indonesia at the London Paralympics, deservedly won the Outstanding Achievement award at this year’s YAK Awards.

     Congratulations, Nengah. You make us all feel proud – and humbled.

The Diary appears in the fortnightly print edition of the Bali Advertiser and on the newspaper's website www.baliadvertiser.biz. Hector tweets (@scratchings) and is on Facebook (Hector McSquawky).

HECTOR'S DIARY Bali Advertiser, Oct. 3, 2012

Keep on Rolling

It was sad to hear of the death of Andrew Clark, late in September. We’d never met, which was a pity, but his skills in teaching English and his efforts to ensure English-language messages were rendered correctly in Bali – a Sisyphean task he nonetheless took to with gusto – were second to none.

     Clark, an Englishman, arrived in Bali in 1990 to teach and later to establish the delightfully pun-ish Full Proof Writing Agency.  He had an early association with Made Wijaya, he who we gather mistakenly believes that cockatoos are pregnant carp (well, he says Hector’s a twerp).

     He preferred Eng. (UK) as his dictionary language, abjuring Eng. (US) as an abomination and holding – correctly – that Indonesia’s official English variant was UK.  OK. He made this point with some force in a Siapa column in this newspaper in 2004.

     Since then, the ubiquitous spread of the American-dominated internet and the vacuously indolent belief that spelling and grammar are no longer important have together conspired to reduce spoken and written language to gobbledegook and the mob preference, such as it is, to notionally US.

     So we’ll have to muddle on without Clark’s attention, since he has departed for the great language school in the sky.  But some of us think Sisyphus got a bum rap and we’re still out there rolling that damn rock up the hill.

     RIP, Andrew Clark.

Gotta Have Sole

SoleMen Indonesia’s annual walk around Bali, which finished on Sept. 26, brought much needed help to the deprived people of Bali. It also celebrated the triumph of Balinese Paralympian Nengah Widiasih at a Return to Bali Celebration party at Bali Mystique Hotel in Seminyak that evening. 

     SoleMan Robert Epstone, who did much of the weeks’ long walk before being sidelined on doctor’s orders with holes in both his soles, tells us Nengah, from a poor family and in a wheel chair since she had polio when she was four, nevertheless managed to teach herself weightlifting and represented Indonesia at the 2012 Paralympics in London in August.

     The Sept. 26 party – it was a grand occasion and a great opportunity to meet Nengah – was to raise funds for a replacement bus and a second permanent staff member for 'YPAC' Home and School for Disabled and Mentally Challenged Children at Jimbaran, where she lives. There are 66 young residents at YPAC.

      Energetic charity weight-loser Christina Iskandar and friends happily promoted the event in the expat community and many Balinese also attended. Food at the function was provided by Biku restaurant and famed Russian violinist German Dmitriev played for 20 minutes in addition to appearances by other performers.

      Raffle prizes were donated by Tugu Hotel, Sardine Restaurant, Bambooku, Dijon, The Pelangi Estate in Ubud and many others.

Iconic Sangers

The villa next door to The Cage is occupied by a temporary resident, an old friend from Australia who’s here on an Australian Business Volunteers task to introduce the Udayana University-based Institute for Peace and Democracy to the arcane vagaries of relations with the press. Which is good; and not only because it provides an excuse – though none is needed – for several drinks to be taken, now and then.

     He’s getting to grips with the villa, whose absent German owners, residents of Hamburg, have confined themselves to holiday raids on targets nearer to hand while the Fourth Reich sorts out how to get the Greeks and sundry others in the European communion to work and pay for themselves. But he’s had a couple of culture shocks, including Vegemite at the equivalent of $13 Australian a jar.

     By way of extraordinary coincidence we had a note the other day from another Australian friend, Libby Callister, also on the subject of Vegemite. It’s an Australian icon of course, and very, very yummy.

     Libby and your diarist had an arm’s length association long ago – she was running media for a minister in an Australian state government of the opposite politics to those preferred at The Cage but the fellow, a great bloke with whom we were on very good terms, helped raise funds for cancer research by having his head shaved (in company) once a year. So, once a year, we crossed the thoroughly artificial No Man’s Land of Australian politics, knocked politely on the minister’s door, and handed over several crisp banknotes as our contribution to his sponsorship.

     Anyway, back to the point: Libby has a famous name. Cyril Percy Callister (1893-1949) invented Vegemite and now his grandson Jamie Callister has written a biography of this undisputed national hero. Libby’s media consultancy business is running the promotion campaign. The book went on sale on Sept. 24 and is being formally launched on Oct. 11 in Beaufort, Victoria, where the Callister of Vegemite fame was born.

     Vegemite had a tough early history. It was on the market in the British Marmite-focused Australia of the era for more than 15 years before it finally began to win wide acceptance. Says Jamie of his grandfather’s fortitude:  “It was particularly unpopular and at one time they changed the name to Parwill  ... “if Marmite, Parwill.” The Aussies used to like schoolboy puns until they turned serious and started banning all manner of good fun.

     They’re serving Vegemite sandwiches (kill for ‘em) at the Beaufort bash. By happenstance we’ll be in Australia on the day; by unhappy circumstance, the bit of Australia we’ll be in is nearly 3000km distant from the yummy sangers and a signed copy of the book, so we’ll have to give the show a miss.

iPod. Therefore I Am

By absolutely no coincidence, the latest MinYak to hit cyberspace featured Nicola Scaramuzzino, GM of Mozaic at Ubud and head honcho at Mozaic Beach Club at Batu Belig, where this year’s Yak Awards were staged (on Sept. 28).

     The Diary’s eye was caught by his answer to the standard Q “What's been heating up your iPod lately?” because it was apparent he and your diarist share much more than just a fondness for fine cuisine and discrete globetrotting.

     He said: “That's a tough one. I swing between moods quite quickly during the day and my iPod does reflect this. There is always music around me, I hate silence. If I'm working on accounting stuff, then classic Italian music is the choice.”

     We’re at one there. Nothing beats the mathematical brilliance of Vivaldi (per esempio) if you absolutely have to deal with numbers. He further says:  “If I have to work on some graphics and need to be creative then AC/DC is normally the choice, together with Metallica, Pink Floyd and Queen ...  the 70s and 80s music always cheers me up.”

     We might demur on AC/DC (they’re often better unplugged) but otherwise – Right on, Nicola! And we’re with him too in being able to state without fear of contradiction that Hip Hop is absent from our own little pod. He says: “I just don't understand that music – am I too old?”

     Too old for Hip Hop, certainly: But surely anyone sentient is?

We’re Willin’

Diary and Distaff had a lovely dinner recently with Marian Carroll, official mouthpiece of Ayana Resort and Spa etc, etc. It was at Dava, where visiting guest chef Willin Low from Wild Rocket, Singapore, was in the kitchen from September 21-23. He treated diners to exquisite dishes, including soft-shell crab, wagyu beef and yummy desserts.

     Singapore’s suddenly looking very good for a visa run. We’d be off like a Wild Rocket if one were in the wind.

     By the way, expect a long-awaited announcement from Ayana soon.

Go Pink

We do, very occasionally, if it’s in a good cause. So here’s a good reason: The Think Pink 2012 Luncheon and Fashion Show, organised by the Inner Wheel Club of Seminyak – the Rotary ladies, you might say, whose president is the redoubtable Barb Mackenzie – which is to raise awareness of breast cancer and funds necessary to carry that message forward. It’s endorsed by Bali Pink Ribbon (on whose annual walks the Diary consents to wear pink) and the Rotary Club of Seminyak.

      The event is being staged at Métis in Seminyak, which is surely reason enough to attend anyway, and is on October 26. It’s from 11am to 3pm, too, which should give everyone a chance to both eat and bid at the charity auction. Tickets cost Rp300K and are available at Métis. The event’s VIP sponsors are Bamboo Blonde and Think Pink Nails.   

Hear Her Roar

Helen Reddy, who galvanised the WomLib movement in the 1970s with I Am Woman (Hear Me Roar) is performing for charity at Anantara Rooftop in Seminyak on Oct. 19. One of the Diary’s favourite dishes, Diana Shearin, tells us she’ll be there (she wouldn’t miss the anthem of the movement or Delta Dawn, she says). But she won’t be dancing. She’s on crutches after an unfortunate altercation with a wet terrazzo floor.

It’s On!

The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival kicks off today (Oct. 3). It should be a good show as always, with plenty of chatter, erudite and otherwise. Be there – or you won’t be there.  The festival runs to Oct. 7 with various associated events around it.

Hector's Diary appears in the fortnightly print edition of the Bali Advertiser and on the newspaper's website www.baliadvertiser.biz. Hector tweets @scratchings and is on Facebook (Hector McQuawky)

HECTOR'S DIARY Bali Advertiser, Sept. 19, 2012

Tugu Tripping

We had a pleasant outing recently, to Hotel Tugu at Batu Bolong where the Rotary Club of Canggu meets and which, on that occasion, was inducting SoleMan Robert Epstone, a fugitive from Seminyak, as a member.  It was a horrendous drive to get there from the Bukit (we saw a sign en route, near the eager burrowing going on at the underpass site at Simpang Siur, which proclaimed “Road Works Ahead” and thought, with a sigh, “We wish”) but it was worth it.

     The decorative Hellen Sjuhada, Tugu’s bespoke mouthpiece, wasn’t there for the meeting, which was understandable but a pity nonetheless. By way of excellent compensation we had a lovely chat with Epstone’s engaging wife Shelley about this and that, including a comfy little ongoing narrative she’s putting together on behalf of one of her little pet dogs.

     Epstone (Robert) is trudging around Bali at the moment on the annual SoleMen charity walk for Bali’s children living in poverty (hint: it’s a place just outside the tourist enclave) and SoleMen is in the running for Best Community Services in the annual Yak awards. We declare both an interest and a cast ballot. They deserve it, so does Epstone, we’ve voted thus, and we hope to see the gong go to them at the 2012 Yakkers. This year’s über bash for the incredibly dressed is on Sept. 28 at Mozaic Beach Club, Batu Belig.

Carve It! Carve It!

The Canggu Rotary meeting was the first the Diary’s been to in years: For all sorts of reasons we shan’t canvass here. But the evening was enlivened not only by the Pinning of Robert (happily the pinner missed the vital arteries) but also a lovely presentation by underwater sculptor Celia Gregory.

     Gregory’s interest lies in enhancing coral regeneration. She is involved in the ongoing Pemeruteran project in North Bali and also in Lombok’s fabulous Gilis, where the Biorock process is helping to rehabilitate and re-establish fringing reefs. She creates sculptures – not actually under water, which seems a shame since the very thought of such enterprise makes one want to learn scuba – that are then placed as coral growing agents.

      One such entity now sunk off the Gilis is a female Buddha. There’s also a motorbike.

      Gregory is now in the UK raising funds for a coral regeneration project at Amed in Bali’s north-east. We’ll keep an eye on that.

You Can’t Kick the Bukit

The delightful Gibson Saraji, whose Gorgonzola restaurant and wine bar on Jl Raya Uluwatu at Bukit Jimbaran is a big draw (you can’t miss it; it’s just across the road from the immigration detention centre) has added another string to his bow. He now operates Gorgonzola Gourmet from the same premises. It’s a handy fruit-and-veg shop, has all sorts of other goodies and is now offering his own smoked meats as an additional incentive to drop in and be tempted by the best espresso coffee on the Bukit.

    Saraji, who is originally from Sumatra and likes to give his special friends a playful frisson of faux-fear now and then by reminding them that he comes from a long line of cannibals, also offers all-day breakfasts – a favourite with the Distaff– and nurtures a lovely orchid-filled garden with lots of shade. There’s plenty to graze on (from the kitchen) and free WiFi.  And there’s live music on Saturday evenings too.

Chip In

 A little further up the road, just beside the GWK entrance, is another establishment we’ve recently noticed: Anchor Fish & Chips. We kill for fish and chips! Owner Laura Lucas – she’s Bali born; her mother was originally Dutch and her father a sea captain – runs a nicely tight ship. Its entrance might challenge some, though not the Diary in search of fish and chips, since it involves several flights of stairs. But she’s placed inspirational notices on each set of stairs (“Come on Granddad”; “You’re Nearly There”; and “Don’t Give Up Now” are fixed in your diarist’s mind).

     From the terrace on top you get a wonderful sunset to complement your pre-dinner drinks. There’s free WiFi there as well. It is de rigueur nowadays, a fact some other Bali establishments should think about.

See You in Ubud

Janet DeNeefe’s fragrant annual rite, the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, this year from October 3-7, will be headlined by Australian author Anna Funder, winner of the 2012 Miles Franklin Award for her book All That I Am. Funder joins Australians John Pilger – the preferred worrywart-in-print of many media-watchers – and Nick Cave, who also sings and occasionally acts, and former Timor-Leste president Jose Ramos-Horta in a strong line-up.

     It’s been a good year for Funder, who also wrote Stasiland. She won the Independent Bookseller’s Award for best debut fiction, Indie Book of the Year 2012, the Australian Book Industry Awards’ Book of the Year and Literary Fiction Book of the Year, and the Barbara Jefferis Award 2012.

     The festival’s full programme includes supplementary events – they’re not “fringe events” as is the overworked custom at festivals everywhere nowadays: perhaps Ubud is regarded as fringe enough as it is – and has attracted a number of ancillary events that are swinging off the festival, so to speak.

     One lovely couplet in that line, that much attracts the Diary, is being staged by scribbler-guru Shelley Kenigsberg, who otherwise is found on the lovely Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia.  One is the Life Writing and Memoir course (a three-day residential affair at Taman Bebek in the Ubud environs from Sept.29-Oct. 1) and her latest Editing in Paradise retreat (Oct. 8-13) being held at her villa in Sanur.

     Kenigsberg, with whom we’ll definitely have a drink (or two) during the festival, has been a visitor to Bali for 25 years and says that she has finally found her dream island home, a place in Jl Mertasari in Sanur. She tells us:  “I found the place through a series of coincidences (I now know never to construe them as such) and I just love it. I've been wanting to spend more time in Bali in a place of my own...for... ooh, 15 or so years.  It is truly a little piece of paradise. And so that makes holding the retreats there even more special.”

     She adds, delightfully: “The retreats themselves ... well, a privilege I reckon, to spend time with writers/creators who are so committed to their craft, their writing and their stories. We have a lot of intense discussions about all things words-like. But we have a lot of fun too. “

Still Barking Mad

It’s World Rabies Day on Sept. 28. Perhaps on that occasion Bali’s human and animal health authorities might pause to consider the deadly record lying at their door since the disease was belatedly identified as present in Bali in late 2008, following several unexplained deaths in the southern Bukit region.

      Four years later, and after a tragic comedy of errors and do panic/don’t panic orders and counter-orders, around 150 people are dead (among other things they don’t do well here is keep accurate numbers). Six people have died so far in 2012; the latest reported (in July) a 55-year old woman from Ketewel near Denpasar who had not sought protective vaccination after a stray dog bit her. Last year, 11 people died. Falling death rates are being touted as cause for congratulation.

     But any death from rabies is preventable. So sorry, fellows, six deaths this year is a deadly fail.

Take a Bow-Wow

We should remember that dogs don’t deserve to get rabies either – and that it’s not their fault they get the disease.  Bali’s street dogs live in appalling conditions for all sorts of reasons, chiefly because the Balinese themselves don’t give a fig about them.

     So measures to help alleviate their collective distress are always welcome. The Bali Street Dogs association’s Victorian branch runs annual Bali Nights in Melbourne. This year’s event is on October 19 at the city’s plush InterContinental Melbourne The Rialto.

     Organiser Sue Warren – Victorian coordinator of BSD – tells us the cocktail party is the key source of funding for the year. It will be hosted by TV network Channel Nine’s Pete Smith and David Graham, better known to many Aussies as Farmer Dave. “Bali Nights is run by volunteers and we are auctioning only donated goods, so every dollar you spend will go directly to fund de-sexing, emergency and education programmes,” Warren says.

     Bali’s street dogs – and stray cats, another problem – need help and Melbourne people have historically been generous in supporting the event. We should all say a big thank-you.

The Big Chill-Out

The energetic Lloyd Perry of The Chillout Lounge in Ubud – golly, we’re back up that hill again – reminded us a few days ago that his fine establishment is soon to celebrate its first anniversary. He actually wrote that it was “coming up on our 1st year anniversary” but in deference to the English language as it is meant to be written and spoken, we won’t go there. An anniversary is just that – it’s a word drawn from the Latin for year, der.

    Never mind. There’ll be a big party at Jl. Sandat No. 4, Ubud, on Sept. 22 – it’s a Saturday – even though Lloyd’s baby isn’t a year old until the next day. The fun starts at 7pm.

    We haven’t managed to sample Lloyd’s wares at The Chillout Lounge yet, but we’ll be in Ubud over the scribblers’ fest and may need to escape briefly from Ernest and Ernestine and all the other navel-gazers. Chilling out up the road might be just the ticket.

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

HECTOR'S DIARY Bali Advertiser, Sept. 5, 2012

It’s a Disgrace

One morning recently we ventured beyond our usual perambulatory perimeter and out onto the Balangan road. The Distaff, from an earlier vantage point, had spotted someone jogging down a track that leads up a hill on the other side of the road and suggested there might be land up there. We decided not to audibly note that there would certainly be land up there. It was for all sorts of reasons one of those risk-of-domestic-thunder mornings and we were not going to encourage an inclement occasion.

     We haven’t walked down our little stretch of the Balangan road in years – literally – because it is the domain of scarred, ragged and diseased dogs of provenance unknown and, as everyone always knew would be the case, no one has yet been able to reduce rabies to a negligible risk. It’s much less of a problem to us than to the locals, since we have had the required full course of prophylactic vaccinations. But you’d still need to have the post-exposure needles if one of the dogs bit you, as a precaution, though not, thank goodness, the excessively expensive immunoglobulin.

     It was an interesting stroll. In the wet season the roadsides look lush and green and the undergrowth is impenetrable to the passing eye. But it’s been dry for some months now – the odd overnight shower excepted – and the thinning vegetation reveals the real roadside in all its appalling horror. There is endless rubbish, thrown away on each side of the road carelessly or by design, but in either case criminally. The time has long gone where we can all simply say that the locals haven’t got used to plastic yet. The problem is two-fold (leaving aside education which is a very long-term process). First, the local authority – in this case Ungasan Village – does nothing effective about rubbish collection or disposal and clearly couldn’t care less. The second is that local people (along with Indonesians from other islands and some expatriates) can’t be bothered either. One day the tourists, or possibly even people with money to invest, are going to say they won’t be back.

      (There was land at the top of the hill, incidentally, just as the Diary had quietly surmised. Nothing indicated that it might be for sale, but it did offer fine views of Tommy Town and Blot Beach. Oh, sorry. We meant to write Dreamland.)

Great News

Kathryn Bruce of Bali Pink Ribbon tells us that due to the overwhelming success of the Bali Pink Ribbon Walks and the encouraging support of many people, construction of the Bali Breast Cancer Support Centre is well under way.  It is being built in the grounds of Prima Medika Hospital in Denpasar and will provide a wide range of programmes, support services and information for all Balinese women living with breast cancer, and their families. The centre, Indonesia’s first, is expected to be operating in November. 

     Increased awareness of breast cancer among Balinese women has led to many women who suspect they have breast cancer now going to a doctor, where before it was often undiagnosed until very late in the progress of the disease. More than 200 are now diagnosed every year. Early detection and treatment is vital.

    Kathryn notes, in an email to supporters: “Without your hard work, generous spirit and compassion for those with Breast Cancer, the vision to overcome the problems faced by women in Bali for breast screening, education and support would not have become a reality.”

    It’s a privilege to help, Kathryn. We’ll even wear pink on your walks.

Lucky Dog

We know him as Mickey, though we’re not entirely sure that’s his name, especially since he never answers to it. He lives in the informal way pet dogs do here as part of our pembantu’s household and we see him every morning as we take our daily walk. He’s a quiet chap, and we like him a lot, because alone among all his local co-specifics he does not bark at us. In truth, he ignores us, affecting a distain that could easily injure one’s pride, if one let it.

     But recently he was limping. We asked our lovely pembantu (she thinks we’re quite mad, by the way) why this was so. “Sepeda motor,” she told us, with what we thought might be a wan little smile.  So Mickey, in the words of the awful joke, has joined the ranks of the lucky dogs of Bali. They’re the ones that limp after an altercation with a motorised conveyance. The unlucky ones are dead.

     Lately, he seems to have recovered, which is really good news. He is no longer limping, though he still ignores us in his own quiet way.

Annie Update

Little Annie, the eight-year-old from Sideman in Karangasem now being treated in Sanglah Hospital after being found disastrously malnourished and weighing under 7kg, is putting on weight and responding to proper care. That’s wonderful news. Robert Epstone of the charity SoleMen (and Rotary Canggu) told us late last month she is being fed porridge three times a day along with liquid food six times a day, as well as adequate drinking water, and at that time weighed just over 10kg. Annie is also severely challenged developmentally but is already responding positively to the nursing care and is developing trust with the nurses.

     Jimbaran resident Sarah Chapman, who with her Balinese friend Yuni Putu found Annie after seeing a story in the local Bahasa press, has been her regular carer. The good chaps at SoleMen Indonesia paid upfront for 24-hour professional care for Annie’s first 15 days at Sanglah, with four shifts a day, and with private donor assistance have allocated an extra Rp11.4 million to cover the period up to October 4. If Annie needs to stay longer in Sanglah before moving to Anak Anak Bali, another Rp30 million may be needed. Here’s a case where some digging into pockets is merited.

Roué Remembered

A fondly recalled echo of the past re-entered the Diary’s life in mid-August, when an obituary in the London Daily Telegraph newspaper recorded the passing of Ian Dunlop, wit, charmer, chancer, fantasist and pretender to the much disputed title of “last of the old Soho characters.” Obituaries are required reading, for they remind or possibly apprise you of all sorts of interesting things.

      In the 1960s London your diarist inhabited before sensibly sentencing himself to transportation for life to the antipodes (lest he find himself treading in similar tracks) Dunlop, then in his late thirties, was a growing institution in the low-life Soho of the day. Like many of his class, he had already been many things, including an officer in the Scots Guards, not something easily done.

      He came from classic stock. His father served in the British invasion of Tibet in 1904 and his aunt, Marion Wallace-Dunlop, was the first British Suffragette to go on hunger strike after being arrested in July 1909

      Dunlop effected a conversational rite that satirised and annoyed the pretentious, especially those of the Left. It was delightful to observe from the periphery of his circle. One sensed it was the last hurrah of an age long gone, but that only gave it added piquancy in a grey old town that sorely needed not only spicing up but also to hold on to its true patricians. He was a rogue, seeing himself as a ladies’ man. His particular interest was the ancient Ceremony of Lowering the Pants at Sunset, his own concoction, you might say, and it was performed upon whoever was his latest conquest in his portfolio of vulnerable ladies let down by feckless or faithless men. Preparations for the ceremony were fascinating rituals in themselves.

      Later, in his fifties, Dunlop came to be known as “The Greying Mantis” since, in the best traditions of his kind, he did not call off the chase. But by that time your diarist had long since departed for the land of sheilas, where the ceremonials at first had seemed oddly different. Still, a result’s a result, as they say.

      Dunlop lived an extraordinarily long life for someone whose scale of indulgence would have long since seen off a lesser man. He was 83 when he died in July. Perhaps he was indeed the last of the old Soho characters. He was certainly erudite – he wrote a book about an abstruse aspect of music that unfortunately remained unpublished – as well as reprobate in a deliciously old-world way. He never had money but he was much more interesting and challenging than the flashily inarticulate glottal-stop collectives that nowadays constitute celebrity in Britain and the new-age “English colonies” overseas.

One Small Misstep...

It was sad to learn of the death late in August of Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon. He was a modest character, not at all a self-publicist, yet (very literally) a high achiever. Armstrong played a minor part in your diarist’s early journalistic career. The job assigned to the young reporter on moon landing day in 1969 was to sit in front of a tiny black and white TV in the Press Association newsroom in London and take note of Armstrong’s first words. Sadly, they were as scripted. We had been hoping Armstrong would miss the last step on the Moon Lander’s ladder and say something unprintable.

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

HECTOR'S DIARY Bali Advertiser, Aug. 22, 2012

Bloody Hell

Your diarist is a blood donor. Well, he’d like to be, although it seems a rather difficult function to perform in Bali. He possesses a blood type that is very rare in this part of the world, and so has registered with the Red Cross blood bank at Sanglah in case they ever need an emergency contribution. It seems only fair to share under such circumstances, after all.

     Such an instance arose on a recent weekend and, when alerted to this by a handy Facebook post, a text message was immediately sent to the contact number provided. It said that if needed, an arm with the required type of blood in it could present itself at Sanglah within 90 minutes. A text came back immediately: Please come now.

     This feat was duly performed, despite it being national ride around blindly day or something. We eventually found a doctor at the blood bank. He looked at your superannuated diarist in the way most Indonesians do – you can almost see them thinking “Mengapa tidak orang ini mati?” (“Why isn’t this man dead?”). Then he made a delicate inquiry as to the age of the near cadaver that had somehow managed to get itself up the stairs and into the blood room. A-ha! Too old! He seemed to think that this was a relief, despite the ultra-emergency that was being responded to. Sixty is the cut-off point for donors in Indonesia. So it is, but in Australia, where your diarist’s blood managed to healthily regenerate itself over several decades and is still perfectly fine, thank you, it’s 70.

     He went off to consult his superior. He returned saying yes it was OK, provided all the vital signs were similarly in the green bit of the dial.  Oh dear. The stress of safely navigating to the middle of Denpasar from the faraway Bukit in the short timeframe required, amid the frenetic crowds of suicidal bods on bikes, dotty drivers of defective cars, and complete madmen at the wheels of smoky yellow trucks, had lifted the blood pressure a tad over the designated limit.

     There is still a year or two between your diarist and the western-standard don’t be a donor barrier. But on this performance we must judge it unlikely, unless levitation can be achieved, that he will ever get to Sanglah in possession of a “normal” reading.

     Of course, a nice quiet cuppa and a lie-down would probably have fixed the problem. But doctors don’t seem to go in for lateral thinking; and maybe they’d run out of teabags.

Blow-Ins

We were looking at our diary the other day and October is shaping up as a bumper month. Two lots of very old friends are due here on visits – one set for an extended stay – and of course there’s the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival as well, which as it happens is not unrelated.

     Plus the Diary has promised Antony Loewenstein – Australian blogger, writer, activist and verbal partisan for something approaching common sense in Israel/Palestine: he can’t make it to HQ Navel Gazing this year – that drink shall be taken on his behalf on the terrace at Indus, Janet DeNeefe’s culinary-literary headquarters. The poor chap says he loves that terrace.  Well we all do, which is precisely why we shan’t mind, at all, dedicating one drink to an absent friend.

     He will be in eminent company, albeit vicariously. Australian-born worrywart John Pilger, Timor-Leste’s former president Jose Ramos-Horta, and Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional film actor Nick Cave will be at the festival, along with (one hopes) a front-up-with-the-dosh naming sponsor.

     Lowenstein is most recently in formal print with a chum, Palestinian-American Ahmed Moor, with After Zionism, a tome that argues for a one-state solution to The Question.  The Diary is reading the book – thanks to London publisher Saqi Books’ grasp of new technology and to Amazon Kindle – and may have a public view about it later.

      At festival time we’re set to have a quartet of friends with us: Uli Schmetzer and his wife Tiziana (we mentioned them before; we gave them back their pushbikes in Beijing, remember) and Very Old Chum Bob Howarth and his wife Di.

     Howarth, whose journalism career has taken him to lots of places including Papua New Guinea (another shared destination) and Timor Leste, is due here on an Australian aid project education programme. We were in touch recently, about this and that. He drily reported that he was on Moreton Island where, that evening, the westerly wind would blow a dog off a chain. This oversized and perennially windswept sand hill is just across Moreton Bay – though the Diary prefers its mellifluous Aboriginal name, Quandamook – from Brisbane, Queensland, where August is famously a blowy month.  Local lore has it that this is because that’s when the city, Australia’s third largest, stages its annual exhibition (the Ekka).

     The Diary felt quite homesick, just for a moment.

We’re Unsurprised

BIMC tells us, in response to an item in the Diary last edition, that Sanglah Hospital’s precipitate ban on other hospitals using its under-performing medical waste incinerator came as a complete surprise. We’re very far from completely surprised to hear this, since the general rule here seems to be that you are told about upcoming disasters, emergencies, snafus and other discombobulations only after the event.

     This particularly applies to questions of equipment maintenance, which in Bali is widely practised only after something ceases to function. Preventive is apparently not a word in the local maintenance lexicon, even though it exists in the Bahasa dictionary (it’s pencegah; look it up, guys).

     Roland Staehler, marketing chief at BIMC, says that having your own medical waste incinerator is not cost-effective for a small operation and has nothing to do with international standards. We agree. We would merely observe that it’s probably not cost-effective, either, to have a generator at your house, or additional water tanks, or water purifiers, or a lot else. But in the absence – either total or to be expected on the basis of past non-performance – of adequate public infrastructure, the cautious might prefer to outlay a little extra to protect themselves from the promiscuous range of complete surprises you get here.

     Staehler adds that BIMC put alternative medical waste disposal arrangements in place immediately. We would never have doubted that for a second. And just so we’re clear: BIMC is our household’s preferred place of quality medical and hospital treatment, should those needs arise.

   

Far Canal

A dear friend bobbed up in Amsterdam recently, not long after departing Bali. Spotting this (isn’t social media fantastic?) we sent a quick message: Mind the blue roads. Somewhat naturally, this from-left-field response mystified the recipient, especially as her first language is Spanish, not English. She asked: “What?” We replied: “Old story, tell you later.”

     So here it is, Leticia. It’s one upon which we have allowed ourselves a quiet giggle over a number of years, though discreetly, since it involves the Distaff.  She it was, in Amsterdam on a business trip and contacted by mobile phone for the daily check-in, who said she wasn’t quite sure where she was (she knew she was in Amsterdam: that much at least was clear, which was a relief) and what were the blue roads on the street map.

     From the distant antipodes, all it was possible to advise was that they were probably canals. We forbore to add – though we were sorely tempted – that she shouldn’t try to walk on them unless she first got herself deified.

We Won

No, not that Olympic Games thing, which we happily managed – mostly – to avoid; it was the flag up the pole race that we won. It’s an annual event in the neighbourhood of The Cage, on the breezy Bukit where flags, and lots of the other things, flap madly. Last year we weren’t in residence: we were in Scotland (equally breezy but considerably chillier) for a family occasion. So the Bendera Nasional didn’t get to flutter in honour of Independence Day 2011 atop the makeshift bamboo pole we stick in a piece of poly-pipe tacked onto the outer wall of the bale.

     The Merah Putih is the only flag that ever flies at The Cage. We fly it there proudly, once a year, on and around August 17, because – despite everything – we’re proud of Indonesia and feel privileged to be part of its annually licensed contingent of temporary residents.

     Usually the kampung across the gully gets its flag up first – it’s bigger and on a proper pole, too – but this year they were tardy. Well, perhaps we were bit ahead of ourselves. Ours went up on August 7: First in, best dressed.

See the Light

Bali-based photographer Yoga Raharja has an exhibition at Tom Hufnagel’s lively JP’s Warung, in Jl Dhyana Pura, Legian, which anyone interested in photography as art should certainly take the time to see. It’s on until September 3. Yoga is from Ungaran, Central Java, and lives in Sanur.

     He tells us, inter alia, that his son is also taking photographs. We’ve seen some of them and they’re very good.

     We recommend getting along to Yoga’s show. It includes a photograph, of a Hindu ceremony on a beach, that is not only thoroughly spiritual in its composition but effects an ambience in its toning of which J.M.W. Turner, the 18th and 19th century English painter whose stunningly colourful portrayal of skies owed something at least to an Indonesian connection – the eruption of Mt Tambora in Sumbawa in 1815 – might well have been very proud.

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

HECTOR'S DIARY Bali Advertiser, Aug. 8, 2012

Oh Rats! Another problem

All of a sudden, The Cage has rats.  We are taking steps to eliminate the problem (and the rats) but the incident has prompted further intemperate thought about the vagaries, and difficulties, of life on Pulau Rusak. The rats in question appear to be brown (Norway) rats rather than ratus ratus – that’s the genealogical name, not pidgin Indonesian for hundreds of the beggars; our infestation fortunately seems to be in rather smaller numbers – and as well as trying to eradicate them within the household and its surroundings, we are trying to establish their provenance.

      Their initial appearance, unidentified by type at that time, caused some moments of mirth. Having lived in places where plague is endemic – it’s a zoonotic disease that generally affects humans in large numbers only when its animal vector is overstressed, exactly as rabies periodically breaks out and bites people – your diarist’s instant response, aside from acquiring poison, was to fly around madly spraying the whole house against fleas.

     This is not a deadly necessity in Bali, or at least it is not known to be. There are two listed foci of wild plague in Indonesia and both are in Central Java, said to be (though this may also be questionable) remnants of the great 1894-1925 China-India pandemic – which actually began in Burma – that spread around the world, fortunately for the most part in controllable outbreaks. A note on that: the last World Health Organization-recorded plague outbreak in Indonesia – it was only minor – was in 1997 and not in Central Java at all. It was at Pasuruan near Surabaya in East Java.

     As with rabies, of which Bali was “free” until the current (150 deaths and counting) outbreak surprised everyone by appearing in 2008, it perhaps pays not to be fooled into thinking that absence of reports of a disease equates with actual absence of the pathogen responsible.

      But guarding against itinerant rat fleas is still desirable, as well as necessary.  In Bali they can carry murine typhus, a much less deadly but still highly unpleasant disease. Rats are also vectors for a range of other unnecessary distempers. They thrive in filthy environments. We have redoubled our local efforts to get people to deal properly with their household rubbish. A tip: it won’t do to just toss it away in the bushes, or over the wall, and forget about it. The rats won’t.

Burning Question

Speaking of rubbish, readers may remember a story that surfaced in the Bahasa press a little while ago and was duly reported in précis in some of the local English-language media, concerning the problem of medical waste. The official incinerator at Sanglah, something else that’s apparently on the Rusak List, was no longer able to cope with the quantum of contributions from other hospitals, which had therefore been denied access to the facility and presumably were told to dispose of their medical waste as best they could.

      One of the hospitals named on the no-more-access list was BIMC at Simpang Siur. Since this establishment – it now has a sister hospital at Nusa Dua, opened in May – promotes itself as an international-standard health facility, it was surprising to learn that it had not hitherto been incinerating its own medical waste in infrastructure furnished at its own expense.

      We wanted to do the right thing by them, however, and asked for comment, hoping that we’d hear something positive. We’ve heard nothing yet.

Greener Pastures

Leticia Balacek, architect and artist (and The Diary’s Most Favoured Argentine) has flown the coop. She’s gone to Europe on a new venture – which we sincerely hope will be properly remunerative, since people here go ooh and aah about art and much else but are Scrooge-like when it comes to parting with their money (which despite appearances and assertions to the contrary many of them don’t have, unless it’s someone else’s) – and has left with strict instructions to keep in touch.  It’s not often you meet someone whose vibrancy level consistently exceeds the safe limit; it is tremendous fun when you do; and it’s not a good thing to let friends go.

     Balacek’s art, as we’ve noted before, has an attractively naïf quality and would look good in a collection, or even just on a wall. For her exhibition in 2011 that helped promote the then newly opened El Kabron, the fine watering hole on the cliffs at Bingin on the Bukit, she presented among other works Yellow Dog, a delightful ink and wash sketch that precisely captures the ambience of Bali.

      Yellow Dog is but one among many, but it’s our pick of the season.

More on Annie

Robert Epstone of Rotary Seminyak and – more importantly in this instance – the charity group Sole Men has given us a cheering update on little Annie, of Sideman in Karangasem regency. We reported in the last edition on this poor little mite, aged eight and at that time weighing 8kg, who was found living distressed, disastrously malnourished and at serious health risk and was immediately assisted by Jimbaran resident Sarah Chapman and her Balinese friend Yuni Putu.

     Epstone’s group took on responsibility for raising funds to help Annie as an individual case and got her into Semarapura Hospital for full assessment, which indicates she’ll need long-term rehabilitation – the works, in fact – since her family lives in abject poverty and Annie herself has significant medical and developmental problems.

     Epstone told Seminyak Rotarians in an update after his own visit to Annie:  “I have to say that yesterday was one of the most distressing days I have experienced – I have never seen a human being as close to being an animal as Annie who is the very sweetest little person totally damaged by her situation caused by poverty, ignorance and superstition in the community up where she lives. Thankfully due to veritable Angels like Sarah Chapman and her friend Yuni, little Annie may now stand a possible chance of rehabilitation but only with a great deal of time, work, therapy and no doubt ongoing costs involved as well as a HUGE amount of TLC.”

     Anyone who would like to help Annie or her family is welcome to drop Hector an email at reachme61@yahoo.com and we’ll put you in touch with Chapman and Epstone. If you’re on Facebook, you may want to friend Indonesia Sole Men.

     By the way, Sole Men have their fourth Barefoot Walk coming up in September, a major element of their fundraising and awareness-raising effort. They’re looking for sponsors. In July they distributed copies of their Child Protection and Safety book – partly sponsored by Rotary Seminyak – to children, parents and teachers at schools, orphanages and villages around Bali during medical checks and health presentations.

A Sad Loss

Jack Daniels, of Bali Discovery Tours and Bali Update, lost a very good friend recently and has The Diary’s deepest sympathy. He wrote a lovely piece about him, so touchingly that it made us sad we hadn’t known him too. Bobby was a Labrador, but according to Daniels, was probably the best editorial assistant he’ll ever have. Among his many self-selected office jobs was to ensure that piles of newspapers did not fly away in the breeze. He was very good at lying on them, Daniels writes – and even under them, if the leaf-through-and-discard process was under way.

     Apparently Bobby was a dog of several significant other talents too. He was often to be seen following the gardener around with a bucket or some other implement he deemed essential to the task at hand.

    No pets reside at The Cage. One of us is a cat person, the other is a dog person, and this domestic political schism – now of three decades’ standing – has never been resolved and indeed may never be so. But we have neighbour pets whose days, we hope, are enlivened by our visits.

Here’s Cheers

We hear some good news from Voyager Estate, the winery in Western Australia’s Margaret River region that offers attractive Cape Dutch architecture and magnificent roses along with a wide range of very superior plonk.

     After extensive planning and renovations, they have opened their new Wine Room, saying it offers a completely different wine experience in Margaret River. Their email magazine e.magnum (neat!) tells us it’s all about the discovery and celebration of wine, whether you’re a wine aficionado,  are keen to learn more, or just enjoy tasting and comparing wines.

     We must make a date with sommelier Claire Tonon on our next visit to the wine country, scheduled for October when – we hope – the chills of southern WA’s unusually cold winter will be long gone.

And Jeers

The wicked price of alcohol in Bali has always had a capacity to astonish anyone who comprehends that tourism is an essential element of the island’s economy. There are the mark-ups, of course, which tend to rise in concert with the level of class drink-serving establishments award themselves. But then there’s the availability, licensing and excise and other duties components to be put in the mix.

      It’s a hefty cocktail, and one that periodically gives everyone a headache. At the latest industry grumblefest about it, Rizki Handayani, director of MICE and special interest promotion at the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy, promised to follow up on the input with related agencies at the ministry and other institutions, including the Trade Ministry. “This is valuable information to be shared with the minister,” Handayani said.

     Is anyone holding their breath on an outcome?

Hector's Diary appears in the Bali Advertiser newspaper, out fortnightly (and online at www.baliadvertiser.biz). Hector is on Twitter @scratchings and Facebook (Hector McSqauwky)