Category: General Interest
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Bali’s Silent Day: A Time for Contemplating Navels – But Only Your Own
Friday this week (March 23) is Silent Day in Bali – Nyepi, the Balinese Hindu New Year. It is called Silent Day because for 24 hours, from 6am on the nominated day – the date varies, being on a lunar calendar – until 6am the next day, everything stops. Well, not quite everything. Since Bali…
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HECTOR’S DIARY Bali Advertiser March 21, 2012
Banking on it Janet DeNeefe, doyenne of dinners and instigator of that annual Ubud fixture, the writers’ and readers’ festival, has been busy lately. That was in Melbourne, where she did a stint demonstrating the cuisine of Bali to residents of that alternatively cold, hot, wet, dry city at the southern extremity of continental Australia.…
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HECTOR’S DIARY Bali Advertiser, March 7, 2012
Dolts Rule It’s always fun visiting the Odd Zone; it’s the very best of your diarist’s former domiciles, for all sorts of reasons, most of them a cause for wry smiles or irritated grimaces. There’s the traffic, for one thing. It largely obeys the road rules and even stays in lane; what’s more, at traffic…
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AMERICAN POLITICS
From the American Prospect (Monday, March 5) on Super Tuesday. A fine little aide-memoire: CORONATION TUESDAY Super Tuesday once was super. Progressives of a certain age will never forget the fun of the first edition in 1988. Conservative Democrats had dreamt up a March day of nine Southern primaries that would guarantee no “unelectable”…
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The Carr That Skittled Kevin
Appointing Bob Carr as foreign minister-designate – ahead of the New South Wales parliament formally electing him to the vacancy caused by the unexpected departure of no longer faceless man Mark Arbib – may be just what Prime Minister Julia Gillard needed as a circuit-breaker. There are certainly signs the Liberal opposition thinks so…
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SOME NECESSARY INFORMATION
28 February 2012 Statement Australia supports Indonesia’s territorial integrity Australia is fully committed to Indonesia’s territorial integrity and national unity, including its sovereignty over the Papua provinces. This is a fundamental obligation of the Lombok Treaty between Australia and Indonesia. The meeting being held by the International Parliamentarians for West Papua…
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HECTOR’S DIARY Bali Advertiser, Feb. 22, 2012
A Fine Weekend Brad and Siska Little’s Bali Life Foundation is getting a giant helping hand from Karma Kandara Resort at Ungasan on the Bukit. On the weekend of February 24-26 the resort is hosting its first Bali Life Foundation Weekend in support of a children’s home – founded by Australian surfer Brad and his…
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How to Regulate the Currency
Super Idea Proposals for a redenomination of the rupiah which have resurfaced from Bank Indonesia are essentially sensible and should be welcomed. There is however one difficulty with the proposal – insofar as the details are known – to knock three zeroes off the currency under which Rp1000, Rp2000, Rp5000, Rp10,000, Rp20,000, Rp50,000 and…
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