The most powerful element for me in Bali’s magnetism is the music. The gamelan orchestra is absolutely unique in its sounds. Indeed the Ariadnean threads drawing me to Bali are woven throughout of this music. Let me say if you have not heard a gamelan orchestra I dont think you have lived your life to [...]
Bali exists on the Web in many incarnations. The site, ‘The Best of Bali’, though inclined towards the tourist in its pages, has several fascinating articles about Bali. In particular the following link, here, will take you to images of Bali from early in the 20th century, the ‘old’ Bali. They date as far back [...]
A post about biodiversity, miracles, and nature in The Morning of the World:
Truth often is stranger than fiction. Bali, and Indonesia included, that area of the world, seems to be teeming with life, and opportunities for life, in the same way only other so-called hotspots of biodiversity are; these hotspots, to quote the subtitle of [...]
A sketch of some meanings, effects, and reflections on biodiversity and life… Fist this absurd piece of news from The Daily Telegraph:
“A LIVE squirrel sent in the mail from Bali has sparked raids on two Sydney homes.
Customs and Quarantine officers raided two homes in Harbord on Sydney’s northern beaches after they intercepted a live squirrel [...]
… Just as if I was escaping the minotaur of the so-called modern world, not really traveling back in time, but more like stepping sideways, across some threshold that distracts our ordinary attention from the direction where the real world stretches off into eternity, and discover at my feet many threads leading off into the distance, beyond the [...]
Indonesia, and of course Bali, are part of the so-called Ring of Fire, an area of frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions encircling the basin of the Pacific Ocean. Some 90% of the world’s earthquakes, including at least 80 % of the very largest ones, occur along the Ring of Fire. Part of Indonesia, from Java [...]
There are a number of expatriate sites on the web. Bali Pod is one of them. A forum for Bali expatriates from all over the world it is home to some fascinating exchanges and comments such as the following from Py:
“… To live here is to ‘be’, that is to ‘be’ who you are as [...]
Kite Flying is a very popular pastime in Bali. Its not unusual to find huge kites secured by large guage strings and wire. They are also the cause of numerous power outages and believe it or not constitute a threat to aviation as well. So much so that Air Bali helicopters have had to make [...]
Thanksgiving is, of course, primarily an American holiday. Canada does have a version of it but its not our Thanksgiving. There are perhaps 30,000 expatriates living in Bali from a variety of countries. The estimate is that maybe 10% of this number are Americans. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there in Bali!!
The nearest [...]