8degreesoflatitude

Who Let the Dogs Out?

HECTOR’S DIARY

HectorR

Bali Advertiser

Wednesday, Jul. 19, 2017

EATING dog is something we would never do. It disgusts us, for all sorts of reasons. We also understand that this is largely a cultural issue. Eating man’s best friend is not generally a practice of people whose conditioning originates from what is now Europe.

The issue has surfaced again because of Australian media reports last month that tourists may have unknowingly eaten dog from saté carts. Among other things, it was another opportunity to do a bit of Bali bashing. Tourists do a lot of unknowing things, including, in the case of some Australians, not even knowing where they are. It is a belief held by some, apparently, that Indonesia is a place in Bali.

Nonetheless, governments have a duty of care to all who fall within their purview, whether temporarily or not. This may be a novel concept too, in some parts of the world. So it was pleasing to hear that in response to reports of saté dog, the Bali authorities set off at a fast trot to check whether this was so. Animal husbandry chief I Putu Sumantra said on Jul. 9 that so far no evidence had come to light. Doubtless the word got around the saté cart sector pretty smartly. Never mind, Pak Sumantra’s dog squad is still on the case. He’d also like to find whoever it was that sparked the saucy story, which, as ever in such circumstances, is a little too piquant for local bureaucratic tastes. Shoot the messenger is always good policy, especially for policymakers without a policy.

There are several things that can be said about Bali’s dog meat trade, once you’ve taken your anti-nausea pills. Some estimates suggest 70,000 dogs a year are the unwilling victims of this market. The dogs are usually killed horribly – there’s some suggestion that poisoned dogs are in the mix too, which would very clearly be a human health risk – by people who plainly have no conscience and who, by practising cruelty and theft, actually are breaking the law. Most dog meat is consumed in restaurants specifically serving dog. It’s not illegal to do so, though restaurants have to be licensed. Well, notionally, in the way of things here.

It’s very clear that animal protection laws must be strengthened. Indonesia’s largely date from the Dutch era, which ended three generations ago. Any tub-thumping nationalists who also feel responsibility for other species – ants come to mind, for some reason, in this context – might like to do something about this. The laws here are chiefly concerned with wild life and domestic stock, in the manner of colonial policy. Dogs are not specifically mentioned and so effectively are not animals for the purposes of the legislation.

It’s not only western foreigners or animal welfare organisations that are up in arms about the dog trade here. Indonesians are too. For one thing, their family pets are just as much at risk in the epidemic of abductions by thieves looking for a quick profit from a meat trader as anyone else’s. It’s not something the authorities here can just do a little rain dance about and then forget. So that’s one SOP that’s useless in the circumstances.

Who let the dogs out is not the issue. Running Bali, rather than running around in circles, is what it’s all about.

UPDATE: Since this column was written, a meeting of stakeholders has taken place at which a plan was formulated to deal with the illegal aspects of the dog meat trade. We’ll keep an eye on how that progresses.

Added Spice

CHRIS Salans isn’t a man to let the grass grow under his feet. He’d rather put it in the pot to augment the already zesty fare that he serves at Mozaic, his flagship restaurant in Ubud.

The culinary world is one of constant movement, of subtle shifts, and occasional seismic moments. One such moment has just occurred at Mozaic, where the premises have been upgraded and renovated by Lloyd Hassencahl of Design Solutions, with a stylish lounge and dining room. It’s like dining in Salans’ own house, with drinks before dinner in the living room, according to the blurb.

Along with the new ambience is a new set of menus, which offer a choice of six or eight courses. The eight-course menus are new and come with wine pairing.

New Kevala chinaware and wood and stone service wares have been brought in to give a more organic feel. The food service is “more interactive” and food is served at the table rather than brought there. The signature item is the Table Top Dessert, served from a side table.

Mozaic’s style has always been “French cuisine, Balinese flavours” and this is still the case, but, according to Salans, even better. There are three new tasting menus: “From Our Local Farmers”, “A Trip Around the World”, and “Our Vegetarian Tasting Menu”.

Salans also operates the Spice chain of gastro-bars in Ubud and Sanur, and has now opened one in Seminyak. That’s where the other in crowd goes, if it can get through the traffic.

Farewell

IT’S sad to have to note that on Jul. 11 long-term Sanur identity Peter Dawes died. He had been ill for a little while, but his death came as an unpleasant surprise to his friends.

Fellow scribbler Vyt Karazija, tells us this:

“Peter was one of the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet. I knew him only slightly, but liked him immensely. A good natured and tolerant man, his great sense of humour, his kindness and generosity attracted many friends who will mourn his untimely passing.

“If he knew you were a reader, he would offer to lend you books. If you were interested in motorbikes, he would happily demonstrate his incredible ‘Bali Harley’, a chop-shop masterpiece that had started life as a humble Mio. If you needed to talk, he would really listen, and not just wait for his turn to speak. I never heard him say a bad word about anybody – a rare and precious trait. And he was a big fan of Magnum ice creams, which, for me, immediately put him squarely into the Good Guys category.”

RIP, Peter Dawes: as Karazija also notes, he will be greatly missed.

Jog On

BRITON Tom Hickman, entrepreneur and coach, who also scribbles for a crust, has been keeping us abreast of preparations for Bali’s first coast-to-coast ultra marathon on Aug. 19-20. We have to say we’re impressed. Coast to coast here, if it’s North-South, which in the case of the ultra marathon it is, involves running up some pretty high hills.

It’s the sort of thing we might possibly have contemplated back in the day when we did all sorts of fitness things so we could properly serve the interests of HM The Queen (lovely lady, wears many hats, and the Brit Floral and Aussie Fly-Cork ones were applicable in our case). But not any more: too old, you see, even to donate blood, which is shocking. Hickman tells us he’s slimmed down a bit as the training for this run kicks in. If we slimmed down any more, we’d disappear.

We digress. So back to the point: the ultra marathon is to raise funds to pay the way through primary school for seven children in Bali. It’s a good cause with some great sponsors.

Java’s Great

WELL, drink up. Apparently two new international studies have found that coffee may prolong life. That’s good news for Java (coffee) as well as for people who apparently want to live forever. It may not be so beneficial for Bali’s oppressed luwaks, but that’s another matter. Two or more cups of coffee a day are said to reduce the risk of death by 18 per cent, if you’re male. At the rate The Diary drinks coffee, we’ll win the Methuselah Cup.

We quote from a rather breathless Sky News Australia item on the topic: “But the latest research bodes better for men than women with one study of more than half a million people across 10 European countries finding men who consumed at least three cups a day were 18 per cent less likely to die from any cause than non-coffee drinkers…Women, on the other hand, drinking the same amount benefited less but still experienced an 8 per cent reduction in mortality.”

Grammar Police Note: Bode is an English verb, of Germanic origin. It can bode well or badly. It’s unclear whether it can legitimately do so “better”, at least grammatically (although in that sense it may be “very unique”). But never mind, it was on Sky News after all, which so frequently proves its worth as a risible source of misinterpreted information and mangled language.

Hector’s Diary in the Bali Advertiser is published every four weeks. The next will appear on Aug. 16.

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July 12, 2017

Belt and Braces

HECTOR’S DIARY

HectorR

His regular diet of worms and other non-religious fare

The Cage, Bali

Wednesday, Jul. 12, 2017

DONALD Trump made a remarkable speech in Warsaw ahead of the economic summit he attended later in the historic Hanseatic League city of Hamburg, where he demonstrated exactly why the Group of 20 is now the G19 + 1. It was a good speech, too, well crafted, though redolent of former times or perhaps vainglorious hopes for the future. To his credit, he stuck to the script. A juvenile tweet-storm it was not.

The world has been asking Donald for some time where his trousers are. So it was fun in a way to see him turn out in Warsaw in both belt and braces. He is six months into the most profoundly dysfunctional American presidency since, well, we can’t think when, as the forty-fifth holder of that elected kingship. His office was created by the Founding Fathers of the American revolutionary union and it has been causing difficulties ever since. We should never say that America is in no position to teach the world anything. Its system of national government, formed as it is on the basis of rival electoral bases (for reasons that at the time were completely understandable) is a prime lesson in how not to run a country.

Predictably, the preserved-in-amber Western triumphalist cohort got a fit of the rah-rahs when it heard what Trump had said. It was helpful that Trump for once stuck to the script. We wonder who wrote it. But while a good speech can be good politics, it’s not necessarily good policy. And that’s where it comes unstuck.

These are difficult times, and that’s not just because No. 45 seems to be stuck in a time warp of his own fake making and to be determined to reintroduce both American isolationism and the Monroe doctrine. These are elements that are applauded by the American right-wing columnist Mark Steyn – who is still a Canadian citizen and really should know better – and the flagship of Little England’s Brexit misadventure, the London Daily Telegraph, among others.

Sense and Insensibility

NICK Cater is a thoroughly responsible journalist with whom we once toiled, which was nice, and with whom we share a fondness for North China cuisine, which is lovely. He’s now executive director of the Menzies Research Centre, named after the founder of the Australian Liberal Party, which as current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull reminded everyone this week is not a conservative party. Turnbull was speaking in London where he had gone after not being a headline act at the G19+1 summit, for talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May, whose party is Conservative.

Cater had a piece in The Australian this week (Jul. 11) in which he had a go at the good-thinking folk who would like to rearrange Australia, its workplaces, its pastimes, its society and its culture, by means of ethnic and other quotas, whatever Australians think about that. It’s a mad idea, we agree.

So he made a good argument – the piece was headlined “Curing our country of whiteness” – though it seems to us “whiteness” (whatever that is: last time we looked we were a sort of mottled beige) is itself a matter of subjective perception. We guess it’s banal code for “We’re Aussies”. That said, Australia does need as a nation to return to common sense and an understanding of what (beyond self-interest) really drives human responses.

We had a laugh on the way through a serious subject. Cater cited American academic Joan C. Williams’ belief – she makes a point of it in her somewhat dense book White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America – that cultured homosexuality began as transgressions among 19th-century European artists.

Sappho and a few other prominently ancient Greeks, not to mention Persians of equal antiquity, would be surprised to hear that.

Java’s Great

Well, drink up. Apparently two new international studies have found that coffee may prolong life. That’s good news for Java (coffee) as well as for people who apparently want to live forever. It may not be so beneficial for Bali’s oppressed luwaks, but that’s another matter. Two or more cups of coffee a day are said to reduce the risk of death by 18 per cent, if you’re male. At the rate The Diary drinks coffee, we’ll win the Methuselah Cup.

Hector writes a diary in the Bali Advertiser newspaper. The next appears on Jul. 19.

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July 5, 2017

It’s a Scream

HECTOR’S DIARY

HectorR

His regular diet of worms and other non-religious fare

The Cage, Bali

Wednesday, Jul. 5, 2017

THERE are many ways to judge a man’s character. The gender is specific in this case, and the point is pertinent to the activities of the current president of the United States and, in this instance, his Indonesian associates. These people are of course his corporate or commercial associates, not political, although given that the two polities engaged are America and Indonesia, the distinction is moot. Read on.

Donald Trump’s corporate mate in the archipelago, Hary Tanoe, was recently banned from travelling outside Indonesia pending inquiries into aspects of his business and financial affairs. Tanoe is engaged with Trump’s business empire, which isn’t in escrow while he’s in office, as you might expect of anyone with an appropriate view of public service, but is being managed for profit by his family. The Trump empire has two major projects on the go in Indonesia.

One is a theme park near Bogor in West Java – we’ve seen the concept drawings and done a Munch – and the other is the takeover of the property at Tanah Lot in Tabanan previously managed by Pan Pacific and now to be demolished in favour of some Trumpist excrescence.

The Bogor project is now back on track because the government has taken over the stalled project to build a toll road to the area, without which Trump said he wouldn’t proceed. The land value of his holdings has thus increased by extortionate proportions.

At Tanah Lot, where the Nirwana property has members with purchased rights to holiday accommodation whose entitlements are now under question because of the buyout, the issue is different. Trump’s proposed redevelopment requires more land, but local landowners are apparently holding out for better prices. The workforce at the property has been paid out – by what quantum is unknown – and the entire superstructure is to be demolished.

It is also unknown how Trump and Tanoe will deal with the issue of compensation for strata title owners. The precedent set by Trump in a similar instance, with his golf resort in Florida, doesn’t bode well. Basically, there, the members were screwed. That’s how Trump does business.

Which brings us back to the cautionary point: character. A quote attributed in 1972 to the magazine founder Malcolm S. Forbes is apposite. He said, “You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” An aphorism published in 1948 by the novelist Paul Eldridge goes along the same lines: “A man’s character is most evident by how he treats those who are not in a position either to retaliate or reciprocate.”

Trump’s known business practices fail the “nice” test, and his personal behaviour breaches many of those implicit in the two quotations above. In Indonesia, some in the national business elite (and here in Bali in both the local and the expatriate business community) have a very well developed grasp of how to benefit themselves at the expense, if necessary, of anyone who gets between them and a buck (or a rupiah).

The Four Corners program on Australia’s national broadcaster the ABC this week screened an exposé of Trump and Tanoe’s business connections here. It didn’t say anything much that’s new, but it did collate the available material rather well and it was certainly compelling viewing. More character studies are indicated.

Feisty Gal

MARA Wolford, who makes organic soaps and surfs a lot – she’s in the Mentawais at the moment – posted on her Facebook this week an item reprising the incident a year ago in a Bali bar that fortunately ended as well as it could have, but which could so easily have not.

Her drink was spiked. She’s sure it was Rohypnol, nowadays the spiking agent of choice of low-life men who can’t get consciously consensual sex from a woman their poisonously defective little minds have told them they fancy, or can’t be bothered trying to; or whom, as she notes, have marked her as a robbery target. If it’s sex, it’s chiefly a power thing, not lust, and it’s a disgraceful element of male stupidity, sexual power, and arrogance. Those who do that sort of thing richly deserve a session with a sjambok. We do wish we’d never given ours away.

Wolford puts it this way:

“One year ago today, people I didn’t even know tried to kill me. They either wanted my diamond earrings or they wanted to gang rape me for several days, it’s up in the air. Two drinks double-dosed with Rohypnol nearly did me in. Dear friends, a strong constitution and a bit of divine intervention saved me. I made this event public, with 21,000 shares on FB. Mostly, I got called a dumb bitch for not knowing better. One thing I do know is that the last thing I am is a dumb bitch. Trusting, perhaps. Willing to believe in best intentions, certainly.

“I was absolutely furious that a man would feel the need to render me physically helpless in order to take from me what he couldn’t allow me to decide to offer, or not. I don’t know what kind spineless cretin would do that, and I don’t know what kind of world we live in when that is considered normal behaviour that I am expected to know to protect myself from.”

The bar in question was subsequently shut down by the police and – Wolford notes – another upside is that drink spiking has dropped off in Bali since the publicity about her case in Canggu last year. That’s great.

Dumb bitch, she isn’t. Feisty gal, she certainly is.

It’s such a shame that Rohypnol became the “date rape drug” in the hands of low-life losers. We used to use it back in the day as a travel pill, when it was legally obtainable. The Distaff, who did a lot more solo international business travel than the Diary, swore by it as her tailored sleeping pill. Quartered, a pill gave her two hours of sleep; halved, four hours; and the full monty, eight. It was just the job, she always said, if you had to leap off your plane at your destination fresh as a daisy and ready for work. Or, occasionally, play.

Oh, Come On!

THE annual Walkley Awards may mean very little to anyone outside Australia – or even outside the Australia media – but they are locally valuable as recognition of excellence in journalism. Until now they have included an award for foreign reporting.

Given that global distempers now visit everyone’s lounge room via the gigantic flat-screen TV, when the footy’s not on, that’s good. Those who inform from dangerous places (or even just interesting ones) deserve recognition. And we know, by many means ranging from pub talk to blogs and even official government advice, that according to Australians the outside world is an alien and unquiet space.

The Walkley organisers have announced that they’re dropping the international category from the awards. It’s one of four categories cut as part of a review of the awards. It’s an odd decision, because while it’s certainly true that journalism is rapidly changing, so too is the impact of international affairs on Australia. These certainly need to be covered with an Australian perspective, and (reasonably) to be recognised in the country’s premier media awards. Doubtless, as the organisers say, international coverage can still be nominated within other categories. But given the parochialism that thrives in Australia, to its detriment, it might be hard for carnage in Aleppo to beat best pumpkin at the Bega Show for a gong.

We’ve added our voice to the chorus suggesting that the Walkley people should change their mind.

Training Runs

WELL, not runs, really. We mean our morning walks on the Outanback Track, the rudimentary road that notionally links The Cage with the rest of the limestone Bukit. It’s a rough trot, our “road”, and steep in parts. There are two nasty inclines on the outbound leg, which we’ve pinned on our smart phone map as Little Dragarse and Big Dragarse. After a glass or three of premium Aga Red the evening before, as is our custom, they’re … difficult.

We’re trying to get walking-fit for a forthcoming European sojourn that will take us on footpaths and other public utilities of the sort that are rare in Bali, and at rather more length than the modest 2400 metres that form our usual morning gasp.

Never mind. It’s worth it. We think.

Hector writes a diary in the Bali Advertiser. The next appears on Jul. 19.

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June 28, 2017

Statuary Declaration

HECTOR’S DIARY

His regular diet of worms and other non-religious fare

HectorR

Candi Dasa, Bali

Wednesday, Jun. 28, 2017

TEN days in the blissful zephyrs, beside the azure briny you get in the better parts of the archipelago, can do you a power of good. Such a break provides time to read books – or re-read them – instead of wading through 24/7 news reportage and grim analysis suggesting that Armageddon is next week, and all sorts of other things that would turn your hair grey if you had any left. We tore ours out long ago.

We read, among other things, Us, a novel that dissects marital and other human disorders, by David Nicholls; The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (which we should have read ages ago); and a fast-paced and thoroughly predictable American crime novella written in the “this is a film script” mode so popular in the pulp fiction market these days. It was called Beyond Suspicion and was by someone named James Grippando, of whom we hadn’t heard.

The environment suited reading. We were at Sea Breeze at Mendira, a lovely spot and much to be recommended, where we breakfasted daily in the al fresco fashion beside the pool and then retreated to long chairs under umbrellas to contemplate the sea view, or the universe, or anything else to hand. There is statuary present that falls into the latter category and which several times brought to mind a Florentine garden, or possibly – traversing Italy at upper thigh level (it’s so much more fun than lower down) – one of the more outré among the Venetian renaissance master Titian’s supposedly recorded thoughts as he was mixing rose madder while his model reclined on a ladder.

There are several stone maidens who might easily be Titian’s models around one of the pools at Sea Breeze, in very decorative states of dishabille. Their daily task is to continuously pour water from the bowls they carry back into the pool. This makes a lovely tinkling sound, which is probably designed to be cooling. Among the more mature within earshot, however, it is a frequent prompt to revisit the facilities.

Tidy Town

CANDI Dasa has always impressed us as a place where the words Bali and rotting rubbish do not necessarily go together. The place is an example that many others could follow and should, perhaps especially those in the crowded south where the bonds and discipline of traditional settlement have weakened, injuring civic pride and sensibility.

Mendira, in Sengkidu a little towards the Pertamina fuel facility at Tanah Ampo, and Padang Bai, has really got the business down pat. Our morning walk route has been a joy: four kilometres of it because it’s flat and there are properly made roads to walk along, with space to get properly onto the verges if something with more than two wheels comes along. We’ve barely seen a carelessly discarded lolly wrapper, far less stinking piles of over-stuffed plastic garbage bags. It’s been great to be able to gaze at the lovely banyan trees as we pass them at a brisk trot without having to worry about stepping in anything.

Haloumi Heaven

NO visit to Candi Dasa can be regarded as complete unless it includes Vincent’s, the eatery and jazz bar named for that fellow Don McLean sang about, the guy who painted irises and other things and then cut his ear off before topping himself. Many artists are troubled, but relatively few go all the way with Vincent van Gough.

There’s live jazz at Vincent’s every Thursday evening.

On our visit this time we dined at the bar. It’s near the door, where smoking is still permitted, and close enough to get the full flavour of the jazz action. There’s no smoking in the main restaurant area, which is a good thing, and while the garden area at the back is great, it doesn’t suit on live jazz nights or if it’s raining.

Aside from the Haloumi, there was a special unscheduled treat on this occasion. A visiting troupe of jazz performers from Yokohama (where they are well known it seems) turned up with their instruments and played a very lively set, complete with a lissom performance dancer whose interpretation of Balinese dance was … interesting. It was all a delight. Also delightful was the broad smile that lit up the oboist’s face when after the performance we waylaid him as he returned to his seat and said “Domo arigato”. It wasn’t quite a Midnight Diner moment, but it came close. And it was nice to say thank you.

Coffee and Ice Cream

WELL, what could be nicer, especially if you’re on a seaside break? Mendira House, conveniently en route to Lu Putu’s desirable garden restaurant from our hotel (it’s a 13-minute walk: we timed it) is open from 8am to 8pm. Its coffee is not to be passed up, its ice creams are divine, and the gift shop is full of stuff you’d buy as a tourist – though we aren’t of course – and a handy source of bric-a-brac you might pack in your bag to take to relatives when you next travel.

Lu Putu has great food; it’s home cooked by Lu Putu herself. It also has a lovely, quiet garden restaurant area we’d recommend to anyone who wants the real deal.

There are many gems in the Candi Dasa area. These are two you shouldn’t miss.

Jailhouse Blues

FOUR prisoners left Kerobokan Jail recently on self-awarded tickets of leave, via a drainage tunnel that took them conveniently underground and out of sight the fifteen metres to the street outside. Two were recaptured in Timor Leste, whence they had fled. The headline act of the foursome, an Australian of questionable human value and of clearly criminal character by the name of Shaun Davidson, was still on the run when we scribbled this diary. A Singaporean convict was also still on the run. Davidson had only seven months of his sentence left to serve and the theory was that he didn’t want to return to Australia. The police there are keen to chat with him about skipping bail and the drugs charges on which he had of course obtained bail in the first place.

The incident provided another of those welcome comedic breaks you get here. The prison governor said the prisoner concerned had recently grown a beard and a moustache, perhaps to alter his appearance. No shit Shakespeare! The chief of police said it was thought an international crime syndicate had had a hand in the escape. By this we assume he means they had outside help, as opposed to inside assistance. A torch had been found in the tunnel, close to where there was access to the street. It must have been the light at the end of the tunnel.

Kerobokan is vastly overcrowded. It was built for around 300 inmates but these days it houses 1,300. Only 10 guards are on duty at any one time, because of staffing restriction, and none of them was in the watchtower that overlooks the spot where the escapees would have emerged and where he might otherwise have been able to point his trusty weapon in their general direction and shout “Surprise!”

#44 … The Man

THE expatriate bit of Bali does agog very well, being celebrity-fixated. And so it was when Barack Obama and family arrived here for a little downtime at the Four Seasons Sayan. The Ubud hinterland is good for the soul, and of course Four Seasons provides very comfortable digs for those whose wallets stretch that far.

He also dropped by a Bukit haunt that’s on The Diary’s Most Favoured List, El Kabron on the cliff at Bingin. It was an unscheduled and brief visit, we hear, but it’s the best place to sample Catalan cuisine and hospitality that we know of in Bali.

We didn’t join in the “I saw Barry” parade. He’s the former president of the USA, speaks quietly and with consideration, tweets rather nicely, has a functional family, and deserves to be left alone. These are all qualities his successor in office, #45, does not possess. Ah well, that’s Electoral College democracy for you. How sad. Never mind. Carry On.

Old Friends

ONE among these told us recently she’d missed us at a reunion of journalists and photographers and held, amidst much reminiscing, at the Pig ’n Whistle in West End, Brisbane. It would have been nice to be there.

Our informant tells us there were 60 or so Formers present, and much grey hair. Time waits for no man, as it is said, while the hair changes colour or falls out. It reminded us that in three months it would be 21 years since we left a note for Rupert on our desk saying, “Gone to the Dark Side”, or words to that effect.

We didn’t add, although we might easily have done so, a line to the effect that a rude letter would follow. Judging by what has taken place in the print media world since we furled our News Ltd quill and took off, we think we made the right decision in a timely fashion.

Hector also writes a diary in the Bali Advertiser. The current rendition was published on Jun. 21. The next will appear on Jul. 19.

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June 22, 2017

Hit Parade

HECTOR’S DIARY

HectorR

Bali Advertiser, Jun. 21, 2017

IT’S always good fun to read the local Bahasa language press, as well as informative. Some people like to criticise the media – well, no, everyone likes to do that – and that’s no less common in Indonesia than anywhere. One of the things about critics is that they always know how it could have been done better, or that you’ve missed the real story, possibly on purpose. In an earlier life, one of the Diary’s jobs was to write back to critical readers and gently massage their egos while telling them politely to go get a life. It was often a challenge and helped to fuel an addiction to caffeine from which we know we shall never recover.

For those accustomed to western newspaper reading – a dwindling band indeed – there is also the issue here of upside-down stories. Telling the story in the first eight paragraphs is essential for western readers. Most won’t even get that far these days, of course. But Indonesian journalism is far more circuitous. You often find the story in the last eight paragraphs.

So it was interesting early this month to read Radar Bali and other media on the great Akasaka Club drug raid. The police found 19,000 Ecstasy pills when they swept into the premises on the afternoon of Jun. 5. They had previously swept into the premises, on Jl. Teuku Umar in Denpasar, on several occasions to far less effect. But this time it was the real deal. The police chief, Inspector-General Petrus Reinhard Golose, said no one was above the law. This will have come as shocking news to the people who operate the Akasaka Club and those who, on all the evidence, have hitherto been protecting them.

It’s good news for everyone else, though, unless they’re also running drug dens. It’s a sign that Bali is no longer the un-policed bad lands of the drug-wild west, or at least that this is the intention.

One of the fictions that some people here are fond of circulating is that the drug abuse epidemic is a tourist thing, or at least that, like the rubbish used to, it comes from Java. It’s nothing of the sort, of course. It’s an element of modern Indonesian consumer life that, like the poor, will always be with us. But it can be curtailed by effective police intelligence and action, and certainly should be. Pill-poppers are not all low-life adults. Some of them – foreigners and locals alike – are basically still children. That’s where to stop it. This requires parental supervision of offspring as well as official deterrence.

It’s true that the misbehaviour envelope in shaped rather differently in Bali, given the island’s transient overburden of tourists and its unpleasant overlay of a cohort of expatriate residents who are here gouging money because they couldn’t make a buck (or anything else) in their own countries. So cutting out the supply chain, or at least radically reducing it, makes sense.

Bali’s circumstances also make the island a convenient staging post and supply centre for drugs destined for other places in Indonesia. It’s probably always going to be that way. But at least the Akasaka action will signal that open slather – the situation up to now, which everyone who could be bothered to know about knew about – is no longer something that will be just winked at or tolerated.

Four people, including the club manager, have been arrested and police investigations are continuing. Take a bow, General Petrus.

Giddy Aunts and Others

THE Bali DIVAS’ lunch at Cocoon, Seminyak, on Jul. 9, seemed to go off with the verve and pizazz we’ve come to expect of that décolleté collective. We weren’t there but some of our favourite ladies who lunch tell us MC Kerry Ball was on his best and most restrained behaviour. He is reported to have said “oh my giddy aunt” a couple of times, we gather. But that’s an expression that flies well below the social sound barrier. It won’t have shattered any windows.

Entertainment was by Sydney drag queen Polly Petrie and a friend, Marzi Panne. We’re told that Polly mislaid his eyelashes at one point, but you expect a bit of ungluing on lively occasions such as these and we’re sure he recovered his customary discomposure quickly. It’s the sort of thing for which giddy aunts, and drag queens, are renowned.

Debbie Amelsvoort tells us it was a fabulous day full of fun, laughs and – most importantly, as she puts it – incredible generosity from divas at the do. That’s what it’s all about, after all. The event was to raise funds for the village of Songan, at Kintamani, where a landslide in February killed 12 people, including two children.

The money will go towards long term improved education opportunities in Songan.

Well done, ladies. Christina Iskandar can feel justifiably proud of the DIVA enterprise she started and which now has an international dimension. A Gold Coast DIVAS do was held on May 26, cementing the Queensland holiday resort city into the DIVAS’ Australian charity catchment, which also includes Sydney and Melbourne.

No Show

WHAT a shame President Joko Widodo was unable to open the 39th Annual Bali Arts Festival on Saturday, Jun. 10, due to other commitments, that always- utilitarian spanner in the works. It must have been chucked in at the eleventh hour. News that the presidential abort button had been pushed became public knowledge on Jun. 10. Maybe he couldn’t find his udeng. He sent minister Puan Maharani instead.

It must have been by coincidence that around the same time the presidential office released a lovely little map of the archipelago showing all the places where he’d dropped in – and apparently left a pin, Google Maps style – on his unscheduled blusukan visits.

It brought to mind a song written by Australian Geoff Mack in 1959 and later made famous by Johnny Cash, among others. I’ve been everywhere, man.

Top Aussie

A NAME that most Indonesians probably wouldn’t naturally associate with Australia, if they heard it at all, since it’s not Brett or Bruce and doesn’t come with a Bintang singlet, a stubby-holder, and a sharp (or slow) drawl, got an honourable mention in the 2017 Australian Queen’s Birthday Honours List released on the official make-believe birthday of Her Maj (her real one’s on Apr. 21) on Jun. 12: Professor Mohamed Hassan Kadra. He got an AO (Officer of the Order of Australia) for distinguished service to medicine in the field of urology as a surgeon, clinician and mentor, to rural and remote medical education, and to literature as an author and playwright.

Professor Kadra is a leading Sydney urologist, but his interests are far wider, including in an enterprise that trains people in IT in other countries where their circumstances might not otherwise give them that opportunity.

Most media interest centred on the AC (Companion of the Order) given to the actor Cate Blanchett, but veteran economist Ross Garnaut also got a very well deserved AC, the highest award now that the Aussies have again dropped that daft Knight of Australia thing. The AK – it’s a gong, not a gun, and there aren’t quite 47 of them – was resurrected as a “captain’s call” by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and quietly pushed off the track and back into the ditch by his successor, Malcolm Turnbull.

Leading lawyer and death penalty abolitionist Julian McMahon, who is locally of Bali Nine fame, also got an AC, and former Labor Party minister Robert Tickner got an AO for distinguished service to the community through leadership roles with the Australian Red Cross, and to the Parliament of Australia.

The full list is here for anyone who’s interested.

Candi Dasher

REGULAR Diary readers will know that the Diary has a soft spot for Candi Dasa, and this scribble comes to you from that fine little seaside town in Karangasem. We’re having a break there again, this time at Sea Breeze at Mendiri Beach in Sengkidu. Wearing another of our hats, we have some serious writing to do. And lovely views of Nusa Penida and the Lombok Strait (rippling Wallace Line included), delicious ice creams just up the road, and a selection of fine little eating places handily close by, are helping tremendously with that project.

We’ll drop in at Vincent’s in Candi Dasa itself at some point, quite possibly on one of their live jazz nights, for another go at the Haloumi.

Hector’s Diary in the Bali Advertiser appears every fourth Wednesday. The next is due on Jul. 19. He writes an occasional intermezzo diary here at 8degreesoflatitude.com between times.

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June 7, 2017

True Glue

HECTOR’S DIARY

HectorR

His regular diet of worms and other non-religious fare

The Cage, Bali

Jun. 7, 2017

LONG-TIME Indonesia hand Keith Loveard has a fine column in the July edition of GlobeAsia, the Lippo Group business magazine. He wrote it on Pancasila Day (Jun. 1). It’s titled Pacasila and why it matters.

He noted that it was a public holiday but that his children had been to school for a ceremony to mark the day, though a lot of their classmates hadn’t turned up. He wrote: “This appears to be not because of any deep-seated disagreement with the state ideology but because their families couldn’t be bothered… Their mothers had been complaining on their WhatsApp group that it was a holiday, why should they have to go to school. One mother suggested that the holiday should have been switched to the Friday, instead of the Thursday, so everyone could have yet another long weekend.”

In one sense, that’s fairly typical of the “new Indonesia” of the growing middle classes. It addresses none of the real issues that beset the miskin, the poor on whose backs others are getting rich. The western sickness of selfish advantage has firmly taken root.

But that’s beside the point, in this instance. The Pancasila principles, first enunciated by Bung Sukarno as the leitmotif of newly independent Indonesia, are a glue that can help bind together the disparate peoples and cultural traditions of the archipelago. Without them, as Loveard notes, Indonesia would almost certainly fracture. Balkanisation is a bad idea, fraught with danger and promissory of nothing other than riches in some parts and abject deprivation in most of the others.

Pancasila has become tainted in some eyes by its invitation to practise mind control on one hand, and on another, to deflect the aim of the Islamists.

Loveard writes: “In the nearly three decades in which I have been privileged to observe this remarkable country, there have been many changes. That of greatest concern is the gradual loss of identity. Indonesia has been consumed by Western-style materialism and more recently by a process of Arabisation. While they rush off to the shopping malls that dot the landscape like noxious landmines, Indonesians have increasingly adopted the dress codes – and the intolerance – of Saudi Wahabbism. This has been accompanied by the profound hypocrisy of those who promote austere beliefs for political ends. The spiritual essence of beliefs rooted in thousands of years of tradition and individual experience is now being dismissed as unholy by those who appear to have a minimal understanding of what religion should be about: the personal search of the individual to make peace with the universe. This has been replaced by an insistence on narrow formality.
It is entirely appropriate that the government should be launching a drive to re-awaken the appreciation of Pancasila as a guiding tool for the maintenance of the nation. Yet is this too late?”

Bali, among many other component parts of Indonesia, must surely be hoping that it is not too late.

Zakat Puasa

WE have our rubbish taken away from The Cage, more or less regularly, by a lovely little fellow and his wreck of a truck. He takes it away to the official dump. He has a number of customers in our area (though sadly most people, Indonesians and foreigners alike, continue to dump their trash over the wall where it’s out of sight and therefore out of mind, or burn it and its poisonous plastic willy-nilly). We pay him the monthly going rate, which isn’t much, and he sometimes forgets, mid-month, that we’ve paid him at all, and needs a smiling reminder that we have.

This month it’s Ramadan, so we gave him a bonus. He was surprised to hear the words “zakat puasa” uttered to him at the house of a Bule; almost as surprised as was the Hajji we ran into in Lombok a year or so ago to whom we said “Salam Hajji”. Bules (“white” and assumed to be practising Christian foreigners) are widely held not to know about such things. It is known that we are People of the Book (though a better transliteration of the Arabic ′Ahl al-Kitāb gives you “people of an earlier revelation”) but in the 21st century a large preponderance of western dhimmis are dummies about that too. Such is the sickening polarisation of the Abrahamic religions these days.

In the wake of the London attack on Jun. 3, and the many heinous events that preceded it, it was good to be able to reflect on the essential community of the human spirit. We know, from our own Muslim friends, that what many Muslims see as the dissolute lifestyle of the west offends them, though they also know that it’s none of their business. Actually, a lot of western dimness offends us too, and we’ve made this point to them, and others, now and then, in conversation.

There is absolute agreement, incidentally, on what to do about terrorists. It’s what the British police did so brilliantly on the evening of Jun. 3. In eight minutes, all three were shot dead. It’s a policy that strikes us as a perfect fit. You can talk to anyone, of whatever view, and seek solutions – except to armed terrorists who have already killed people and are intent on continuing their mad action. They are like rabid dogs that should be put down instantly.

Oh Yes, Rabies

WE allowed ourselves a hollow laugh – we briefly considered a mad bark, but reminded ourselves in the nick of time of the old adage that discretion is the better part of valour – when we read that Bali’s deputy governor, Ketut Sudikerta, told a meeting of Indonesian and American academics in Denpasar on May 30: “Rabies continues to be a problem for all of us. I hope that all the academics can seek a solution and devise concrete steps to combat rabies based on careful study and research.”

He can’t be challenged on his first assertion. Rabies certainly continues to be a problem in Bali. His wish that academics can seek a solution and devise concrete steps to combat rabies based on careful study and research deserves another classification.

After rabies was identified here in 2008 – that’s nine years ago, in case anyone’s still bothering to count anything – a pilot rabies suppression program using globally proven methodology was implemented by the government in partnership with a locally based animal welfare charity. It was successful through stage one of the program. Then it was handed over to the government. And then it went nowhere.

It isn’t done, here, to point out such demerits. There are sensitivities (see “mad bark”, above) as well as matters such as community education. There are also around 160 people (on official figures of doubtful veracity) who are no longer with us today because they’ve died of rabies, either quietly or furiously, depending on which symptomatic variety of that preventable disease they’ve had the misfortune to contract. People, and dogs, are still dying of rabies, though not at the peak levels of earlier years. None of them have been foreign tourists, or Indonesians with enough money to fly away and get proper post-exposure treatment immediately.

Dogs are the rabies reservoir here. Any dog can get rabies (some people seem to think it’s only certain breeds or cross-breeds) and indeed, any mammal. That’s why humans are at risk. We’ve noted before that nowhere in Bali can safely be regarded as free of rabies, including right in the middle of crowded tourist areas. It only takes one rabid dog to kill people. Just saying.

Perhaps the academics from Udayana and the University of Minnesota, enthused by the deputy governor’s clear grasp of the direction and effort that Bali needs to make to eradicate rabies as a statistical risk, will choose to revisit and recommend the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization’s proven methodology. Bali has tried these approaches, as the deputy governor and others will remember. It’s very effective in the field, if those doing the legwork are also effective.

Splash Out

IT’S World Oceans Day on Jun. 8, celebrated unofficially on that date since its original proposal in 1992 by Canada’s International Centre for Ocean Development (ICOD) and the Ocean Institute of Canada (OIC) at the Rio Earth Summit. Locally, the ROLE Foundation has taken a leading role in efforts to reverse damage to Bali’s marine environment caused by lack of waste management on the island.

As ROLE founder Mike O’Leary notes, the informal nature of waste collection has led to mountains of illegal landfills, burning waste and just dumping it in the ocean. ROLE is building Bali’s first Zero Waste to Ocean Education and Demonstration Centre on the southern Bukit near Nusa Dua, to educate and encourage tourists and locals to be environmentally responsible with waste.

On Jun. 8 it’s organised an event with speakers, a debate on the topic “By 2050, there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish”, drinks, networking opportunities and more. It will also kick off the Clean Oceans Diveathon – a reef clean up by scuba dive centres. An online auction associated with the event closes at 6pm (Jun. 8). Visit the bidding site here.

The Zero Waste to Ocean Education Centre is at Jl. Celagi Nunggul 101, Sawangan (Nusa Dua).

Hector also writes a monthly diary in the Bali Advertiser. The next will appear on Jun. 21.

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May 31, 2017

Beggaring Belief

HECTOR’S DIARY

HectorR

His regular diet of worms and other (usually) non-religious fare

The Cage, Bali

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

FAITH is a personal compact between a person and his or her deity. The faithful, of any ilk, should be honoured for their commitment to a life beyond secular concerns and for the higher calling that this condition imposes. Those who study their religious texts and who seek to live within the strictures these impose, are honourable people.

In the secular west – fundamentally these days a godless society – these things, and the various deities in whom a great many people believe, are often scoffed at or made the topic of comedic intervention. That is wrong, when the objective is only to get a cheap laugh. It’s possible – or it should be so in a rational society – to debate the existence of God. It’s plain rude just to slag off at people who believe, if you yourself don’t.

The three Abrahamic religions, each of which sprang from the Levant or its contiguous desert interior without any intervention from Europeans until after their invention (a seminal fact that Europeans should note and really should try very hard to comprehend) share syncretic theologies, a melange of mythologies, and, in the Old Testament, a common liturgical origin. Yet each has historically been at war with the others (and often with themselves) forever, philosophically if not actually.

That’s a rather cursive way to get into a matter of current concern in Indonesia, but it’s necessary to set the parameters of debate and to avoid stepping unnecessarily on possibly angry toes. Of course, the problem is far wider than just the archipelago. Islam’s sectarian schism leaves the former fatal fractures within Christianity for dead, so to speak.

In Indonesia, where, except for Aceh, Islam has traditionally adopted a Southeast Asian rather than an Arabian face over the half a millennium of its establishment here, a more fundamentalist mind-set is taking root. That cannot be denied. Neither can its future risk to the integrity of Indonesia if it flourishes.

The proselytes of Indonesian Islamic fundamentalism assert that theology is the driver of their intentions. It’s perfectly possible to encourage deeper religiosity in the faithful, and to prescribe firmer and more restrictive patterns of social behaviour for them, from a philosophical standpoint. It’s when the boys with the bother boots take to the streets that problems emerge. There’s very little that’s philosophical about a mob armed with sharpened sticks and intent on enforcing their own interpretations of Ramadan rules, after all. These actions may be clothed in Islamic cloth, but their purpose is political – it is to manoeuvre government policy – and thus is plainly secular.

There’s an interesting article in The Diplomat, written by Benedict Rodgers – for context: he’s East Asia team leader for the human rights organisation Christian Solidarity Worldwide – that illustrates the point. He instances a broken long-term friendship between two fifteen-tear-old girls at a Jakarta high school, one Christian, the other Muslim. Rodgers reports that the Christian girl got a phone call from her Muslim friend telling her: “We can no longer be friends. My God does not allow me to be friends with people like you.” It sounds almost apocryphal, or would if the messages that are coming out of the mosques weren’t couched in similarly simplistic and fundamentally threatening terms.

There’s much more than this to Rodgers’ article, which is very readable. He cites the conviction and imprisonment of now former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok), a Christian Chinese-Indonesian, for blasphemy; and Aceh, church burning, death threats and other signals of restrictive intent. He warns that Indonesia could become Pakistan.

That’s a bit dire, and Rodgers says so himself in the article. Indonesian culture is very far from those of the sub-continent and (like anywhere else) Pakistan is what it is because of its own cultural mix, not someone else’s. But it’s understandable that other Islamic sects, moderate Sunnis (the great majority) and other religious communities should feel deep concern.

The real risk, and the real warning that needs to echo through the rainbow archipelago, is that doltish insistence on Islamic exclusivity will ultimately risk fracturing Indonesia. Political figures whose vision fails to extend beyond the next convenient deal and endless machinations to buy votes should consider that. Seriously.

That said, there is some brighter news. Rizieq Shihab, head of the Islamic Defenders Front (the FPI), faces arrest when he returns from Saudi Arabia if he fails to answer his third summons from police – he ignored the first two, of course – to answer questions about alleged breaches of the anti-pornography law. He wanted the porn laws and he influenced their scope. What an interesting case this will be.

It’s That Man Again

THE unedifying spectacle of Donald Trump shoving through the throng and shouldering lesser leaders out of the way to get to the front of the photo opportunity at the NATO summit last week, and then posing, Mussolini-like, complete with superior grin, is further evidence that real-estate shysters and reality TV hosts do not necessarily make good leaders.

They said of No. 45 that he probably needed time to become presidential. Time was not the only thing he needed, as events and growing awareness that they’ve been duped among many who voted for him last November now show. Some character would have helped. H.L. Mencken, who in the 1920s predicted that profane and populist politics meant that America would one day have an imbecile for its president, would be rolling his eyes if he were not rolling in his grave.

Trump still has a cheer squad, of course, not all of it confined to America where he’s making things grate again. We saw an Asia-based Australian observer’s view this week that suggested his hard line on NATO funding and self-reliance had paid off, because German Chancellor Angela Merkel had said publicly that America’s allies needed to do more.

They do. You get what you pay for. But the obverse of that coin, for “the leader of the free world” (whatever that is) and his country, is a proportionate reduction in America’s clout within NATO. That mightn’t be quite what the master of the universe is looking for, but it would be no bad thing, since the Custer gene remains ascendant.

Sent Home

SCHAPELLE Corby, 39, the Australian woman who was convicted of drug trafficking in Bali in 2005 and spent nine years behind bars before being paroled three years ago, was deported from Indonesia on May 27. Immigration authorities put her on a plane to Australia. That is all.

Hector writes a diary in the Bali Advertiser. It appears monthly. The current diary was published on May 24 and the next will appear on Jun. 21.

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May 23, 2017

Talk to the Ants

HECTOR’S DIARY

HectorR

In the Bali Advertiser

May 24, 2017

JEWEL Topsfield, the Australian Fairfax newspaper group’s Indonesian correspondent, wrote a lovely piece recently after an extended interview she had with Prabowo Subianto, who probably likes to think of himself as president-in-waiting. We’ll have to wait until 2019 to find out, but in the meantime he’s an interesting subject.

Some people seem to think that he’s the fifth horseman of the apocalypse. He’s not, of course. He’s a former army general with some unanswered questions on his record and an Indonesian politician, ditto. He’s far from being in a class of his own on those scores. He possesses the same auto-response mechanism as exists in any Indonesian (and people of other countries too) where it is imagined that a slight has been offered. Foreigners are not meant to criticise, and will be glowered at or worse if they do. There are no surprises in that, locally, politically or otherwise. Nor is Indonesia a western liberal democracy. It never will be.

Prabowo doesn’t think Indonesia will ever become a fundamentalist Islamic state, either. Indonesians like music and dancing, he noted. He’s right. The archipelago is very much its own cultural petri dish, whatever the small local contingent of Arabian adherents might think and seek to promote via their hired nasi bungkus mobs. On that point, taking the argument a little further, it seems silly to get all het up about hijabs. My granny would never go out without a head covering, and she was as Christian and English as you could wish to meet. Times, fashions, and social and religious observances change. The human story is one of constant flux.

Prabowo, who has been criticised – largely outside Indonesia – for talking with the unfunny fundamentalists of the FPI, is more interesting still on quite another aspect of his character. He negotiates with ants, citing the example from Islamic texts of King Solomon. The ants in Solomon’s day did a deal with the palace, staying out of it so as not to be crushed by his soldiers’ boots.

Ants are a eusocial species: they form cooperative groups, often in very large numbers, and create caste systems and practise instinctive altruism in the interests of the community. Bees, wasps, termites and some other insect species do the same. Prabowo told Topsfield he wouldn’t have any living creatures harmed on his property – they were talking at his ranch in the hills of West Java – and that he always takes a special interest in the welfare of the ants there. We do the same at The Cage, especially around the infinity edge of our small swimming pool, where many of them live at risk of disruption or worse when it rains and the water level rises. Everything has its place. Human hubris has sadly sidelined this essential fact of life.

There’s Always a SNAG

SOME men just don’t get it. Well, most, probably. The masculine gender seems to have particular difficulty keeping pace with cultural and social advance. This is not just a western thing. It often seems that there are only two races on Planet Earth: Female and Male.

The Shirley Valentine holiday sector is quite large, therefore, as a result of many things, including but not limited to misogyny. Generally, and beneficially, most people keep their private affairs private. But the “holiday fling” has a long history and certainly predates the social liberation of the 1960s, now sadly under threat again from Those Who Think They Know Best.

It’s a mystery why the romantic affairs of others should be so prominently and pruriently a public interest. Surely, that’s what erotic fiction is for; or porn, which of course is illegal in Indonesia, like so many other things that nevertheless go on willy-nilly here?

So our eye was caught by an article in a recent online Seminyak Times post that drew on a story in an Australian newspaper relating to the activities of SNAGs in the more mannered portions of the companion trade here. That’s SNAGs as in Sensitive New Age Gigolos: Kuta cowboys who’ve worked out that it’s nice to shower, to have a capacity to communicate in more than grunts, and to look a little kempt. The Seminyak Times article quoted a SNAG called Steven, of mixed Balinese and Japanese heritage, who says he sees around four clients a month, from the Australian-Japanese-Korean-Russian cohorts of the female traveller market, and that only about half of them want sex as part of the deal.

Well, women have always been more sensible than men about such things. Dinner and a laugh, flirty or otherwise, is often much more fun than a clumsy grapple and some probably unsatisfactory rumpy-pumpy. For men as well, we note, those of the sentient variety, at least. It’s different at beer-goggles time, naturally, but who wants to go there?

Though we repeat: it’s a mystery why private arrangements outside the realms of fiction are of any interest to other people. Being nosey is nasty, and being proscriptively judgmental is a waste of time. So carry on girls – and boys.

It Won’t Go Away

WE’RE used to traffic congestion in Bali. There often seems no reason for the giant tailback in which you find yourself before you have an opportunity to consult the map app in your phone and plot an escape route, if you can. But Slow Motion Melee is a fact of life here.

Some traffic jams are for a good cause, though, such as the one that gridlocked much of Sanur on Sunday, May 7, when there was another mass protest over the plutocratic plan to turn Benoa Bay into Port Excrescence in hot pursuit (surprise!) of capitalist profit. The top-down nature of politics here reflects the culture of the island – as it does throughout Indonesia – but the guys at the top seem to have forgotten the grassroots democracy that has always informed local life. You can be the Big Panjandrum, if you’re in the now modified governing elite, and it’s your turn, or something. But ultimately you must do what the people want, or that they can be persuaded to desire. If you don’t do that, eventually you’ll be out of a job.

There’s no sign that the mass of Balinese want Tomy Winata’s desecration of Benoa Bay to proceed. The demonstrators, their organisations (including ForBALI whose flags are everywhere) and the local communities aren’t going to shut up. They shouldn’t, and more power to them for insisting that they won’t, and for continuing to point out that Bali’s provincial government is on the wrong tram.

On Your Bike

THINGS must be a bit flat at the wink and nod end of the massage trade here. The Diary, while defiantly young at heart and – to the astonishment of many lovely local people – still perfectly capable of standing up and moving around, even at a fast trot if necessary, is nevertheless in no way a spry youth, and has never been a middle-aged lair. We would not, we’d have thought, be in that cohort of temporarily present foreign gentlemen on whom the rub-and-tug ladies would want to waste their marketing time.

So it was a surprise the other day when, strolling down Jl. Danau Tamblingan in Sanur, we were accosted by a man on a motorbike, who executed a perfect stop-on-a-Rp1000 coin manoeuvre and asked if we’d like a massage. “Not on your bike,” was our first, unuttered, response. “Not on your life” was the second, also unexpressed. It doesn’t do to be rude. Neither would we want to obstruct anyone’s business of the day. There’s a market for that sort of thing. We’re just not in it.

We smiled instead and said, “No thank you.” He looked disappointed, poor fellow, but he smiled back and waved – it’s that sort of thing that makes living in Bali such a joy – and rode off in search of more likely quarry.

We reported the incident to the Distaff. She likes a giggle. We’d been on our way to Chic salon to collect her after a coif and had only minutes before left Randy’s, the nice little place on the bendy bit towards the northern end of Tamblingan that we often visit when we’re in Sanur. There, we’d had an individual apple pie and ice cream (Canadian individual size: we’d struggled as always, but it was worth it) and several short espressos. “Where is your wife?” the lovely waitperson had inquired as we sat down. “Hair salon,” was our response. “Ah,” said the waitperson, with a little smile. She knew there’d be orders for several espressos.

Hector’s Bali Advertiser Diary is published monthly. He writes a blog diary between times.

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May 21, 2017

So There!

HECTOR’S DIARY

HectorR

His regular diet of worms and other non-religious fare

The Cage, Bali

Saturday, May 20, 2017

THE Bali High Court has added a year to the sentence given to Australian woman Sara Connor, who was convicted over her part in the killing of Kuta policeman Wayan Sudarsa on Aug. 17 last year. The prosecution had appealed, saying that the original four-year sentence was too lenient. It did “not reflect the sense of justice”, the prosecution said in its appeal.

Well, five years for being culpable after the fact of murder (unlawful killing in the circumstances adjudicated by the trial court) hardly seems excessive. Connor might argue that she couldn’t stop the fight that erupted between her lover David Taylor, aka Nutso, and a policeman who on all the evidence had acquired her handbag in unexplained circumstances while she and Taylor were sleeping off the combined effects of alcohol and a round of horizontal folk dancing, but destroying evidence after the fact is not a defensible act. The extra year will effectively add about ten months to her jail time.

The Bali High Court is now led by the judge who presided over the trial of Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok), the Christian Chinese Indonesian who was accused of blasphemy for citing the Qur’an in a political pitch to voters. Ahok lost the April gubernatorial election (which was always a likely outcome anyway). He was then sentenced to two years in jail.

Perhaps the prosecution in Ahok’s trial, which had sought a fine and a probationary penalty, would like to appeal the severity of the subsequent sentence. On any objective analysis it fails to reflect the sense of justice, after all, and the presiding judge is now suddenly out of the way. Ah well, just a thought.

May 23 UPDATE: The prosecution has in fact appealed against the sentence; it had sought a suspended sentence on a lesser charge. My original item above ought to have reflected these facts. Governor Ahok has withdrawn his own appeal, filed by his legal team.

The Circus is in Town

NEXT week Schapelle Leigh Corby is due to be deported from Indonesia following her three-year parole and previous prison time for the celebrated boogie-board drug crime of 2005. Immigration authorities will formally detain her, on or around May 27, before she is taken to the airport and put on a plane home to Australia, a trip she will make with her sister Mercedes, the gouge artist and Ralph Magazine topless cover girl. Presumably her passport will be stamped prohibited to enter Indonesia. We wish her well with the difficult process she will face in re-immersing herself in Australian life after twelve years away. Corby will celebrate her fortieth birthday on Jul. 10.

Ahead of all this activity, the Australian media is assembling for the feast. It brings to mind that line from Hotel California – they stab it with their steely knives but they just can’t kill the beast – because of the singular, self-interested focus the Americanised tabloid rags and TV infotainment bring to what used to be the sentient process of gathering news and reporting it. Thank goodness for the serious press.

We could blame the Kardashians, whose money and astonishing self-belief has been responsible for many woes, but that would be churlish. Or serial bankrupt property boosters, prevaricators and locker-room humourists, but President Trump apparently only listens to himself. He probably gets fewer raised eyebrows that way. So while they drone on – in Mark Burrows’ and Network Nine’s case literally, we hear; their little aerial spy-cam has been flying circuits over Schapelle’s place – we’ll just get on with our day.

Mercedes Corby, by the way, has managed to put off the next court hearing of the AVO (apprehended violence order) case brought against her by a former friend, financier and business partner in a failed eats and drinks establishment on Australia’s Gold Coast, the Corby family’s stamping ground, where she’d done all the dough again. The hearing date conflicted with her familial duties, we’re told.

A Fine Time

IT has always surprised us that VIN +, the very fine dining venue just back from the beach at Seminyak, is not on many more most-favoured lists. It doesn’t offer a view of the waves or the sound of crashing surf, of course, but it doesn’t get blow-the-food-off-your-plates sea breezes either, which is surely a plus. Its open-plan architecture provides conversational impetus for even the most challenged of small-talkers, its eclectic ambience is nothing short of brilliant, and the victuals and potable substances are first class.

So when we got an invitation from Shelley Epstone to join a table of eight for a Villa Maria Wine Dinner on Friday (May 19), we were very happy to go along. So was the Distaff, who also likes a party, and probably enjoyed being the only dinkum Aussie at the table (The Diary was an “authorised arrival” 46 years ago). It was a lovely evening. We chatted with chief Yakker Sophie Digby, shoeless Sole Man Robert Epstone, and Ines Wynendaele, who is top of our Most Favoured Belgians list.

Chef Ronald Tokilov’s menu was superb. It featured es timun (the honey green chilli sauce was divinely piquant), lobster bakso, tuna and es rujak, a nice duck confit (the sambal kelapa was very tasty) and dodol to die for. The Diary is a chocolate cake tragic, after all.

The New Zealand wine pairing was good. A 2015 Villa Maria Private Bin Dry Riesling with the es timun, 2013 Private Bin Sauvignon Blanc with the lobster, a 2015 Private Bin Chardonnay with the tuna, a nicely understated peppery 2014 pinot noir with the duck, and a 2014 cabernet merlot with the chocolate cake to finish. It was a doddle.

Minor Triumphs

THE Cage is in the midst of the latest minor works program and the spring cleaning that must follow. These are regular occurrences designed to keep leaks to a minimum, repair the damage caused by sneaky termites who manage to evade the defensive perimeter we have in place (obviously it’s not a Mexican wall) and replace loose bits of timber and tiles that have dropped off the building. Or, like the trellis over the garage below the pool, were threatening to do so. Such is life in Bali, where even strontium 90 would have half a half-life.

But we did get the red-for-hot dot on the relevant kitchen tap. Sometimes the gods of little things smile upon you.

35-Stretch

MONDAY (May 22) is a big day: The Diary and The Distaff mark thirty-five of married bliss, excusing the normal vicissitudes of life. That’s worth a drink or three.

Hector writes a diary in the Bali Advertiser. It is published monthly. The next appears on May. 24.

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May 14, 2017

A Dog’s Life

HECTOR’S DIARY

HectorR

His regular diet of worms and other non-religious fare

The Cage, Bali

May 13, 2017

THERE was a revolting instance of animal cruelty in Denpasar this week, which thanks to quick-thinking and wonderfully caring local people swiftly swamped the social media, where it attracted an immediate chorus of shock and shame. The event and its tragic aftermath – the poor dog that was the victim died not long after being reunited with its distressed local owner – was videoed. We’ve seen the footage. It makes us wish we’d never given away the rhino-hide sjambok that we possessed many years ago, in a previous life, on another continent. (There’s an Indonesian connection, from cambuk, imported into South Africa along with Malay indentured workers in the 1800s.)

Two men on a scooter hooked the dog with a wire lasso in Jl. Teuku Umar in the dark of the pre-dawn morning and dragged it away behind their bike. It was plainly intended for the dog meat trade. They were chased and brought to a halt and eventually agreed to hand over the bloodied dog. Its rescuers comforted the animal while others found the owner. This incident should be instructive both for illegal dog meat hunters and the authorities. Indonesians don’t like it – it’s not just nuisance foreigners who complain.

It is not illegal to eat dog meat in Indonesia. It’s just disgusting. But it is illegal, and subject to criminal sanctions, to practise animal cruelty. It is that area of the law that most urgently needs to be enforced. Governments at all levels need to do that.

Unkind Cut

THE language of the gourmet chef world is a little beyond diarists who live in garrets they call The Cage and who exist on bread and water – well, not quite, but you’ll get our drift. So living vicariously is fun now and then, as a leavening, so to speak, and what better way than to virtually attend the annual Ubud Food Festival? It was held this week.

After the opening night feast on Thursday we saw a note on Facebook that told us the prawns prepared by Locovare (an excellent restaurant, by the way) were decimated. We were intrigued by this intelligence, since decimation was a Roman military method of reducing legions, for fiscal and other administrative reasons, and sometimes for tactical purposes. Every tenth man was removed from the ranks.

We inquired whether nine prawns were served instead of ten. It seems there was no printed menu from which to check this, though Cheflish, an interesting language garnished with misapplied superlatives and drizzled with inventive gourmet-speak, may have given decimated yet another meaning. What that might be eludes us, but presumably it does not refer to the sharp decline in prawn stocks in fisheries around the globe.

Anyway, never mind. The food festival – another initiative of Ubud luminary-in-chief Janet DeNeefe, whose Bali recipe book has just been reprinted, and who is also founder of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (Oct. 25-29 this year, don’t miss it) – is an excellent show. Selamat makan!

Chump Towers

IN World War Two the embattled Brits entertained themselves with a wonderful radio comedy show called ITMA (It’s That Man Again). No Names, No Pack Drill, but a clue: It wasn’t Charlie Chaplin; it was a far less funny little fellow with a ridiculously tiny moustache and a Führer complex.

It may be time to reinvent the show, as we trudge unwillingly ever deeper into the swamp that Donald Trump has no intention of draining. He wants to divert its sludge to his own purposes. We know, from a series of earlier incidents it would be nice to forget we’d ever heard about, that Trump is a prize chump. Nearly everyone says so, to amend the sort of comment he likes to make about himself whenever he’s had another brain-snap.

In an interview with The Economist – he could perhaps have got away with it in the Dry Gulch Clarion, which is required reading in the Republican congressional caucus these days – he decided it would be nice if people believed he had invented an economic theory, pump priming, which is 78 years old. This might astonish, if we weren’t all living in that alternative universe where a rapacious property tycoon and low-grade impresario was last year elected the 45th President of the United States. He’s 70 (and will be 71 on Jun. 14).

Perhaps among his yet to be disclosed elements of unquestioned genius is the fact that he invented time travel, scripted Dr Who, and was Galileo’s first tutor. We did hear a rumour recently – it was from the locker room, naturally, where lairs like him like to hang out in the hope that their embellishments will attract acclaim – that he very nearly got into hot water in Athens once. Apparently he’d tried to get into the bath with Mrs Archimedes.

Top Marks

WE heard the other day from a friend, François Richli, a lovely story about the Indonesian health system and how it works efficiently, effectively and cheaply to take care of people who are sick. Two tourists – an American and his Portuguese wife – were visiting Borobudur when the woman was struck down by a bacterial infection. They got themselves to Yogyakarta and went to a local hospital.

There, to the great surprise of the tourist from Donald Trump’s America, where they are busy dismantling affordable health care in the interests of corporate profiteers, the hospital immediately admitted his wife, put her on an IV drip and conducted a series of blood tests to determine whether her condition required treatment with antibiotics. The blood test results were done in 15 minutes and indicated that antibiotics were needed. These were administered and she was able to leave the hospital less than two hours later.

It all cost US$23. Says the grateful American tourist: “I have never experienced such fine health care anywhere and the entire staff were sweet, attentive, extremely capable and oh-so-efficient. I was amazed. Sad that this can’t happen in the USA.”

Blunder Zone

MEANWHILE, from that largish island to our southeast, the one that’s that special biosphere we’re always being reminded about, though sometimes it seems more like a sheltered workshop, we hear that the blunder bus has been about again, causing chaos.

It seems that a consignment of irreplaceable plant specimens imported from France for scientific research was destroyed by the quarantine service – the guys who glare at you and growl “got any fruit mate?” when you’ve finally retrieved your baggage from the arrivals carousel – because an email address didn’t match the documentation. Plainly picking up a phone is something else that’s in the too-hard basket there these days.

An inquiry has been ordered, now that it has been confirmed that the stable door was open, the horse had bolted, and that the lights were on but no one was home.

Say Cheese!

THE Diary’s preference is to ignore most reports on things that’ll kill ya, ya know; those that later research invariably suggests won’t. Life eventually kills you anyway. Enjoy the scenery on the way to your destination seems to be the best rule.

So it was pleasing to read that new research shows consuming cheese, milk and yoghurt – even the dreaded full-fat versions, which some say will strike you down almost on the spot – does not seem to increase the risk of a heart attack or stroke.

Of course, the researchers could be quite wrong. We’ll ponder that possibility over our next cheese platter or three.

Hector writes a diary in the Bali Advertiser. The next appears on May 24.

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