More monkey business

Just some photos from the monkey park in Ubud, Bali.

Motorcycle training in Denpasar

Vehicles in Britain tend to avoid each other. Perhaps it's something to do with our reserve, valuing personal space, or just a natural desire to not crash and die horribly every time we take to the roads. Bali's different - lane discipline is along the lines of "the more the merrier", drivers see the slightest gap in traffic as an opportunity for faster progress, and your blind spots are likely to contain at least one motorbike, a couple of dogs and a taxi.

To get us used to the slightly different road conditions here, we've done a weekend's training with VSO staff and guys from the Bali Riders' Club. We've done the usual pootling round a carpark avoiding traffic cones (you never see a traffic cone in Denpasar), riding over dirt tracks, and along a 30cm wide plank as slowly as possible. All very useful - I'm looking forward to the time that I'll have to negotiate a bridge formed from a scaffolding plank slung across a ravine. I hope I'm joking.

But as you might expect, it's the traffic that was most entertaining. For a biker used to European roads, it's disconcerting to be overtaken on either side by a scooter carrying two adults, two kids and possibly the dog too. There are some consistencies though - everybody obeys traffic lights, everybody ignores zebra crossings, and everybody wears flip-flops. I'm surprised you don't see more severed limbs and blood on the roads - but everyone seems to get along fine.

Takes me back to the feeling of negotiating Bristol's ring road when I first learnt to ride. Can't wait to get back out there though.

A trip to the Kantor Pos

Today's challenge was to post a birthday present to my friend Helen in England. After negotiating the busy traffic in the administrative centre of Denpasar on my bike (and meeting the little chap in the photo in a street on the way), I arrived at the post office, took a queue ticket and sat down to wait. For about an hour.

Fortunately it was air conditioned, and even more fortunately a very kind staff member came over to me and gave me the correct form to fill in while I waited. I'm slightly surprised that the form didn't ask for the names of both parents and my religion (most other forms seem to) – but perhaps the post office is trying to cut down on bureaucracy.

After a bit of confusion (and laughter) over their few words of English and my even fewer words of Bahasa Indonesia, it's in the post and I've been charged what I think is the official price. Result – I now have that sense of achievement that can only be gained through a successful trip to the post office. I might buy some commemorative stamps and a dog licence next time.

[Opinions expressed in this post may be subject to change if the package doesn't arrive].
[Update - the package has arrived!]

I've also found my favourite Warung so far – can't remember its name, if it has a name – that serves the best Mie Goreng (fried noodles) and ice tea I've had in Indonesia. All for about 70p. It also had the Indonesian version of “Who wants to be a millionaire?” on the TV – great for learning a few more words. I can't help feeling that this show is a bit of a con – 1m Rupiah is about 80 quid - perhaps we shouldn't take the name of the show literally.

Saya sedang belajar Bahasa Indonesia

[I am studying the Indonesian language, for those of you who don't speak Indonesian.]

In 1972, President Suharto announced certain orthographical changes to the language. One of these was to proscribe usage such as hati². Now in Bahasa, which doesn't have plurals as English speakers know them, doubling the word is use to indicate a plural, a comparative, or to add emphasis. So hati-hati would mean "be very careful!", and could be written hati-squared.

I rather like the use of exponents to add emphasis - and would be tempted, before 1972, to use higher powers. Hati³ in especially dangerous situations, for example.

I've converted to Buddhism

27-09-2010 18:36

[I've been writing some blog postings offline, so they'll tend to come in waves when I get internet access - so the dates above may not match.]

To obtain an Indonesian work permit, we have to declare our religion. From a list of 5: Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist. So atheist is not an option. While I'm not happy about this, I've chosen Buddhist as being closest to atheism - I just need to remember I've registered as a Buddhist and not make any accidental conversions during my placement.

The VSO staff have been great here - we've been chauffered around by Ujang, our Balinese driver, and shown around the local bars and restaurants by other VSO volunteers. They've been excellent at providing information, looking after our visas and work permits, and generally removing any minor hassles. Meaning we can concentrate on getting acclimatised and learning more about the programmes that VSO work on in Indonesia.

The VSO office also has one of the nicest smoking areas I've ever seen.




VSO staff and volunteer up on the roof terrace.

Greetings from Bali

I've arrived in Bali for in country training before starting my VSO placement proper.

First impressions of Indonesia? It's true, everyone is very friendly. Even the immigration officers at the airport were smiling and joking - compare that to the stony faced gatekeepers at any UK or US airport.

Met by VSO staff and volunteers at the airport, whisked to hotel and then local fish Warung - grilled snapper, rice and some mental chilli sauce, for about a pound. Hostel looks stunning even in the dark - rooms open onto a palm filled courtyard with chirping crickets and birds.

I've met some of the other volunteers on our 6 week language course - sharing a room with Paul, a genial dutchman working in disability. Beach games have been organised for tomorrow - let's hope I can withstand the enforced jolity.

So far no massive culture shocks, and I don't want to come home yet. So far, so good...

I'm in love with Xubuntu

I've just installed Xubuntu 10.04 - and it rocks. It's based on the Xfce window manager, which while it can do all the fancy stuff associated with KDE and GNOME, defaults to boring. So nothing fancy, just a classy looking interface with multiple workspaces.

One of the things I like about GNU-Linux is that the operating system tends to be far less CPU and memory hungry than other commercial OS, leaving your PCs power to be used on the stuff that matters (like the applications), rather than on a nice animated file transfer monitor, for example. But recent linux windows managers have included more and more of these bells and whistles, hoovering up CPU and RAM. What's worse, in Kubuntu the window compositor appeared to cause the system to hang sometimes.

In the 90s I was working with fairly simple IRIX and Solaris (and even Sun OS!) systems - in those days an operating system provided the ability to open windows, use multiple workspaces, and a clock, which is pretty much all you really need. Xubuntu provides this, in an uncluttered and accessible format - no plasma dashboards, cashews or pop up notifications.

[I still find it extraordinary that the concept of multiple workspaces hasn't been taken up by Microsoft - but then it did take them an extraordinary length of time to steal tabbed browsing from Mozilla.]

There are some advances in functionality too - wireless access works out of the box, rather than requiring 2 days of faffing about with wpa-supplicant as it did with Kubuntu 9.04. Perhaps most excitingly, I can now watch my best of the Two Ronnies DVD with Gnome MPlayer, which previous players have stubbornly refused to read.

There's a live CD downloadable from here - recommended.