Bali
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HECTOR’S DIARY Bali Advertiser May 29, 2013
His fortnightly diet of worms and other non-religious experiences Family Time The ties that bind otherwise widely disparate families and characters into a familial network are very apparent in Bali, as in many other cultures. They are decreasingly visible in western societies where the state has long since taken over the role of matriarch (or Continue reading
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WHIMSY Music to Drive By
Everyone knows I like a jam session. That is, I like it when it’s music that’s involved and it’s not just another Bali traffic snarl. South Bali’s traffic is now legendary for all the wrong reasons. Anyone who doubts this from afar, not having actually experienced the joys of eight lanes of traffic in a Continue reading
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HECTOR’S DIARY Bali Advertiser, Sept. 5, 2012
His fortnightly diet of worms and other non-religious experiences 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 Continue reading
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HECTOR’S DIARY Bali Advertiser, July 25, 2012
His fortnightly diet of worms and other non-religious experiences Oh Yes, It’s Paradise Here Some days you just want to sit down and cry. It’s not the crowded crassness of mass tourism that does this, or even the mindless self-absorption of the Rave ‘n’ Groove sector; though both can cause intense irritation if you Continue reading
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HECTOR’S DIARY Bali Advertiser, June 13, 2012
His fortnightly diet of worms and other non-religious experiences Stir Slowly, Drink at Leisure The May edition of the 2012 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival newsletter made it out with a week to go before it was June – it popped into the Diary’s in-box on May 26. And since it was leading off with Continue reading
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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 Continue reading
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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. Continue reading
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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 Continue reading
8º of latitude 