2010
All Well Here Amid The Rice Fields
5 October 2010
I have been admonished by one recipient for not keeping you regularly enough informed re the state of the rice crop - she claims the bulletins need to be up to the minute or she gets worried she is missing something urgent. Well, I can report the rice has grown several centimetres in the last 48 hours - I won't describe it in such corny terms as ‘high as an elephant's eye’, but maybe as high as a Bali dog's pointy ears as it races through the paddies. And as green as the eyes of those of you who wish you were here in Ubud for the festival like me and Cathy. (A good thing I am not attempting to enter the Festival's poetry slam competition, I hear you say!)
Cathy is fit and well again after a miserable 24 hours. She slept most of Sunday, (while I swam with Gab at Puri Saraswati's pool). She was well enough to have dinner last night in the rice fields cafe called Sari Organik with Alex and the very extended family who'd arrived in Ubud exhausted at 3.30am that morning. Good to see them all, Fleur, Alex's mum, Barb, her aunt and the boys' two girl cousins. We met before sunset at the start of the one kilometre track up into the fields behind Ubud - a track where I often take people on early morning walks. The section to the cafe now has a narrow strip of cement between the irrigation channels so customers can be picked up by motor bike - Alex's kids rode their bikes - Yoga too with Alby on the back. The rest of us walked except for Cathy, still in a weakened state, who went up with the owner on his motorbike. It is a lovely walk at any time of day. Up there the crop is at different stages in each paddy - some almost ready for harvesting, though with all this unseasonal rain how will they get the sawah (paddies) to dry out.
Lovely dinner - organic veges grown by the owner, an Israeli - I met him years ago through Jazz’s mum, Petra - a friend of Josh's too. The only meat on the menu is organic chicken, and the rice is crunchy brown rice. Great juices too. The meal averaged $6 a head. Cathy was able to keep down a vege soup and a soothing ginger tea. No spectacular sunset that night but a cool breeze - and it was magic in the candlelight (once you had struggled to read the menu!) The walk back was slightly hazardous - one of the cousins fell off her bike into a ditch - I had my mobile phone torch so kept its tiny beam fixed on the narrow strip of concrete. A sleeping little girl had to be ferried on a motorbike wedged between the driver and her granny.
Yesterday Cathy and I took a vehicle to Kamasan - my second visit to Siobhan's painters’ village where she is doing her PhD study on classical Balinese art. We stopped on the way at the famous Klungkung courthouse whose ceilings are covered in the classical paintings of gods, demons and hellish tortures - a warning to those who commit earthly or spiritual crimes. We looked in the excellent textile markets there too and couldn't resist a little shopping. In Kamasan we visited the same artist I had met on an earier viist, Nyoman Mandra, and Cathy bought a beautiful painting done by his wife, of Saraswati, the goddess of Learning and the Arts. Also saw the home/shop of another artist, where Siobhan's landlady was working that day - it was a much more commercial set up, a shop full of trinkets decorated in Kamasan style. Ibu Kartini was working on a huge traditional painting, but the other woman was painting hundreds of green goddesses on bookmarks, a commission from an Ubud Hotel! Pretty, but not what the gods had in mind for their artistic expression, methinks! But then there are also motor cycle helmets available painted in Kamasan style, covered in gods and demons! We had lunch in a little warung on the main road into town - basic menus of nasi goreng, mie goreng (noodles) and cap cai (stir fried veges) with iced orange juice. The meal for three came to Rp.40,000 - $5.
Lovely dinner - organic veges grown by the owner, an Israeli - I met him years ago through Jazz’s mum, Petra - a friend of Josh's too. The only meat on the menu is organic chicken, and the rice is crunchy brown rice. Great juices too. The meal averaged $6 a head. Cathy was able to keep down a vege soup and a soothing ginger tea. No spectacular sunset that night but a cool breeze - and it was magic in the candlelight (once you had struggled to read the menu!) The walk back was slightly hazardous - one of the cousins fell off her bike into a ditch - I had my mobile phone torch so kept its tiny beam fixed on the narrow strip of concrete. A sleeping little girl had to be ferried on a motorbike wedged between the driver and her granny.
Yesterday Cathy and I took a vehicle to Kamasan - my second visit to Siobhan's painters’ village where she is doing her PhD study on classical Balinese art. We stopped on the way at the famous Klungkung courthouse whose ceilings are covered in the classical paintings of gods, demons and hellish tortures - a warning to those who commit earthly or spiritual crimes. We looked in the excellent textile markets there too and couldn't resist a little shopping. In Kamasan we visited the same artist I had met on an earier viist, Nyoman Mandra, and Cathy bought a beautiful painting done by his wife, of Saraswati, the goddess of Learning and the Arts. Also saw the home/shop of another artist, where Siobhan's landlady was working that day - it was a much more commercial set up, a shop full of trinkets decorated in Kamasan style. Ibu Kartini was working on a huge traditional painting, but the other woman was painting hundreds of green goddesses on bookmarks, a commission from an Ubud Hotel! Pretty, but not what the gods had in mind for their artistic expression, methinks! But then there are also motor cycle helmets available painted in Kamasan style, covered in gods and demons! We had lunch in a little warung on the main road into town - basic menus of nasi goreng, mie goreng (noodles) and cap cai (stir fried veges) with iced orange juice. The meal for three came to Rp.40,000 - $5.
When we got back that evening unannounced visitors came pouring in - Josh does not have to arrange a social life, his home is the hub of a circle of friends and older women. Last night there was a woman called Sarina and her little boy, along with a French man from Byron Bay - both horse trainers. It had been Sarina's birthday the day before and she had brought goodies to eat - We had had G and T's already but Cathy thought the birthday was a good excuse to open her bottle of white carried from Oz. Janma rocked in too, plus her son, Josh's mate, Puri. In no time we had a trilingual party swinging on the back verandah- the landlord turned up too to discuss chicken prevention measures. Never a dull moment.
We had called in twice at the festival box office on the way to and from Kamasan to book our tickets - not yet open in the morning and in the afternoon not handling the demand very well. No matter what system they put in place it seems a slow and cumbersome process which will be chaotic when the real crowds start turning up. Took well over half an hour there to get our two "Bookclub Breakfast" tickets with Louis de Bernières and Cate Kennedy. Got tickets to a one-woman play, "Tolstoy's Wife" on at Amandari - my favourite of the 5-star hotels here, built over 20 years ago – thatched-roof style in a spectacular setting overlooking the Ayun River gorge. I want Cathy to see it.
Today is the last day before the festival begins so will be busy. My Open High School teacher friends are back from their trip up north so will try to see them later. They are off white water rafting today I think - but I decided not to go with them as I fear it might be more of an adventure than I bargained for after these massive rains of late- and Cathy did it already last year
One of the highlights for the festival for me will surely be the launch of my first major novel translatio, Mirah of Banda, that Lontar, the publisher is putting on.
We had called in twice at the festival box office on the way to and from Kamasan to book our tickets - not yet open in the morning and in the afternoon not handling the demand very well. No matter what system they put in place it seems a slow and cumbersome process which will be chaotic when the real crowds start turning up. Took well over half an hour there to get our two "Bookclub Breakfast" tickets with Louis de Bernières and Cate Kennedy. Got tickets to a one-woman play, "Tolstoy's Wife" on at Amandari - my favourite of the 5-star hotels here, built over 20 years ago – thatched-roof style in a spectacular setting overlooking the Ayun River gorge. I want Cathy to see it.
Today is the last day before the festival begins so will be busy. My Open High School teacher friends are back from their trip up north so will try to see them later. They are off white water rafting today I think - but I decided not to go with them as I fear it might be more of an adventure than I bargained for after these massive rains of late- and Cathy did it already last year
One of the highlights for the festival for me will surely be the launch of my first major novel translatio, Mirah of Banda, that Lontar, the publisher is putting on.