| Monday 25 September 2000. The big news is that Scot is to arrive this afternoon, just after 3. I don�t know who has been hanging out the most, his dad Chris, or his playmate Jay. I bet that they�ll both be there to meet the plane! The question of the day was, has he gone solo while we�ve been loafing around over here? He�s doing pilot training at Parafield Airport in Adelaide with, I think, the British Aerospace Flying College. His aim is to achieve a boyhood ambition to join the RAAF as a pilot. Chris thought that he would go solo the previous Wednesday, in a Grob G115, while we were having a quiet day of shopping and getting my sandals repaired on the steps of the Matahari. I want to hear about it straight from the horse�s mouth as it were. I remember my own, and want to re-live it a bit I think. For two years I have been trying to find, or re-locate, the supply of Bali Rock Crystal Deodorant. I picked up my first one quite by chance and was very impressed with it, until I dropped it on the edge of the hand basin in the bathroom, whereupon it shattered into unusable fragments. Most of the normal deodorants result in an itch from armpit to a-----e on me, or don�t do a damn bit of good, so I was very sad at its demise. I�d kept the little green cardboard insert from the cellophane wrapper it came in and regularly flashed this at shopkeepers in the vague hope that someone would just reach out a hand and � �voila!� � there it would be. So far no �voila�, but lots of interesting glances! Quite by chance I was down at the desk of the Inn this morning and as I opened my wallet, out it fell. The Desk Clerk picked it up and glanced at its aged and wrinkled form in curiosity. �Do you know it?� I asked. He looked more closely and slowly shook his head. �Why don�t you ring them?� he asked, pointing to a prominent phone number on the slip. Well now, you could have knocked me down with a feather. You can believe me when I say that I had never even noticed the phone number and certainly never thought of trying to ring anyone. �Would you like me to call them?� he asked. Well, would I ever! Yes please! Oh, thank you! So it came about that I located the very original source of it. A Furniture and Antique shop in Kerokoban, which we would pass through on our way north and a bit west going to the orphanage later in the week. (The �Barang Barang Shop�, No28X Jl Raya Kerokoban on the left hand side of the road as you come from Tuban/Kuta if anyone�s interested.) Everyone who has ever been to Tanah Lot Temple will have passed the Barang Barang Shop and probably never noticed it although it looks as though its been there since Tanah Lot was new. And if anyone thinks it strange that a second-hand furniture shop should also manufacture hypo-allogenic deodorant then you haven�t been to Bali. A second coincidence, or is it a third?, occurred when I was telling Tony Marrone the watch seller down the road later. �I�m from Kerokoban!� he exclaims, �I can get it!� and by now perhaps he has and you can buy it from him on Jl Wana Segara in Tuban. Claire went off to a massage this morning and was to bring back an order of scarves for some very old friends back home. But I was trying to be good and catch up on my exercises in the pool. Nell was doing a few laps just to show me up by going much faster, and Phil and Chris had gone down to the beach to meet Shayasta, our favourite Happy Hour cocktail mixer. He has recently become a proud father and the chance to show off his Number 1 son to old friends is too much of an opportunity to miss. It is a lovely morning in Bali. You might ask which ones are not, and I couldn�t answer. Yoyan, from ENI�s tailors, appeared at the desk while I was there and I checked him into the Inn. He would not move out of the lobby without an escort and I was happy to take him off to Nell�s room to start the fitting session arranged on the way home last night. For some reason I�m not invited although I�m pretty good at fits. We intended to get some watches from Fast Eddy in his new shop way round the corner of Jl Wana Segara, past the Pantai, where it becomes the Kartika Lane I think. Eddy, with the flashing gold tooth that was the symbol of his wealth, was once the master of the watch sellers in Tuban, always sitting on a bench opposite the driveway of the Inn unless he was off to Java to get a case-full of new stock for everyone. Eddy set the prices and distributed the various styles to the other sellers, with careful consideration for the market demands of their sites and with a fairness that apparentlynever ruffled feathers. When street selling was banned a bit over a year ago all the sellers had to have a shop base in an area approved by the government in Jakarta. Every one had to tout for their own sales and to advertise their trade and location through the now common business card. Eddy was lost! For some time we had known that he could add and subtract but he could not multiply or divide. If you bought nine watches at Rp45,000 each he had to add 45,000 nine times, and he seemed to be able to do it in his head. What we didn�t know was that Eddy could not read or write either. Those little rows of symbols on watches that made up a name were simply a mystery to him and he must have memorised all the name brands that he handled. He could not write a business card or an advertising sign for his little counter next to the Fuji shop. He was nearly beside himself with gratitude last year when I made him a sign in the Inn�s Business Centre. He still has it, wrapped in plastic film, on his counter. The young lads who were once his proteges had an advantage and were now able to topple the Master � and they did, not to take his place or to put him down but simply to survive themselves. Eddy is surviving but only just. He now sells from a quite poor site, way off the most used tourist walks, in the middle of a street replete with other watch sellers. He has had to sell his precious motorbike that gave him the mobility to oversee his empire, and to adapt to a much lower status amongst his peers. As I found out later, however, after others had failed, he still has the best contacts when a watch needs repairing. On my walk I found a woven Table runner thing that I have been searching for, for another very old friend. It came from a new market we had not seen before this visit, on Jl Kartika Plaza almost opposite the entrance to the Bali Bintang Hotel. There are a few goods of a different variety to those most often seen. Claire manages to fill a bag or two while I was doing nothing much except stand around practising my seven Bali phrases ad nauseam. Again it was obvious that the sellers are doing it hard. Not only those in newer markets like this, which have sprung up since street selling was banned, but also those in the more established places. These sellers were not really pushy, but every one tried hard to catch your eye with something and as you passed there were a stream of offers for this and that. If you bought something the word seemed to spread and you were besieged with offers for the same item all the way down the line of shops. While we spent about an hour in this market of perhaps 60 to 80 shops I can recall seeing only one other couple looking at the goods on offer. From the Inn�s Business Office I faxed an order for software to pcMac in Denpasar. As they would have to either make the discs or get them in I felt that a fax from the Inn would give them some assurance that I was a genuine customer. I gave the girl in the office a little felt kangaroo with spring grip paws. We had picked these up in long packs of about a dozen in Adelaide�s Central Market stores before we left and, again, it proved to be a very popular gift. When I got back to the rooms the cleaners were there and I gave them one each also. �Kandaloo� accompanies the little squeals of delight! Chris rang Scot just before he was due to leave and he confirmed that he had indeed gone solo. I was surprised that I got a real stirring of the blood when I heard the news. An empathetic adrenalin rush indeed. At the pool I had Spring Rolls and share champagne for lunch before getting organised to go out to the airport to meet Scot. We were early (or the plane was late, I can�t remember which) so there was a chance to have a look at the airport complex which we have only ever seen in the rush of disembarkation or the darkness of leaving. It�s really an interesting place, particularly the new departure building and the little shops along the outside walkway that I had never noticed before. I suppose that we�ve always had other things on our minds when we�ve been here catching a flight home in the past. I also noticed that lockers are available and things can be stored for Rp5,500 per item per day. At last Scot walked out the door, to such yelling that makes some obviously demure locals decide to move away from us just a little. Scot had a mile-wide grin, as did Jay who grabbed his mate, and as did proud Dad. The ride back to the Inn was full of talk and it was not too long before both Scot and Jay were leaping and wrestling in the pool. We eventually struggled off to the Pool Bar for Happy Hour and to program the evening. The heat of the last two or three days must have be getting to us and we concluded that we could only raise enough energy to struggle off to the Pantai for dinner. No one raised any arguments against the plan. Fransiskus Ruben came to greet us just as we were sitting down. I asked about little Ema and, proud father that he is, he launched into a largely unintelligible story of her latest antics. Normally his English is very good but Ema gets him excited and emotion took over his vocal chords and they just seemed to tangle while his tonsils tripped over themselves. I manage to get the message that she loved the toy white rabbit that we had brought for her. It was her favourite amongst the others. We had pink (red?) champagne from home for starters and our waiter wasted no time in getting a glass for his first taste of this delight. I got the impression that he was not delighted but was too polite to say so. My Crab and Asparagus soup was delicious although crab is not my favourite taste. This was followed by pork with mushrooms, both dishes accompanied by chilled Yalumba Riesling from a 2-litre cask. Phil swears that his hamburger was as good as he has had anywhere including the Hard Rock Caf� but he needed two seafood cocktails first to take the edge off his appetite, and those were not small entrees either. Chris had the Avocado Vinaigrette and simply licked his lips and smiled. Jay had fish fingers while Claire demolished Grilled Crabs, leaving the waiter in awe of her sparkling plate. I can�t remember when we have been even mildly dissatisfied with either the meal or the service at this restaurant, and the bill at the end never caused any ripple either. If only the toilets rated more than 6/10. But then, its not too far back to the Inn. 16.10.00 Oh, yes - the links are below as usual. |
| BALI STORY 2000 - Day 11. |
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| Serious Watching with Fast Eddy. |
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| Fransiskus Ruben of the Pantai with the Travellers. |
| Links - Back to Day 10. On to Day 12. Day 12 sees us off to Denpasar for ordinary (?) shopping and for computer software. Shopping Bali style at Ramayana. The Lotus Tavern. Look at the pictures again. Home Page for a new direction? |