June 19, 2021

 In Indonesia, nearly 10,000 new COVID-19 infection were recorded on a single day recently. The increased number is being attributed to the Eid al-Fitr holiday at the end of Ramada when millions of Indonesians ignored the nationwide travel ban and insisted on travelling to their home villages to spend time with family and friends. This returns the level of infections to a point not seen since February. One step forward, two steps back. 

At Kerobokan prison in Bali, twenty-one female prisoners drank a mix of disinfectant liquid and Nutrisari orange drink, with one among them dying from the cocktail. On first reading this story, I thought  that maybe they were trying Trump's prescription for COVID treatment, but no, it turns out that they thought the mixture would get them drunk. It didn't. 

The awesomely annoying practice of teens and young males in Bali of having the exhaust systems on their motorbikes engineered such that they become extremely loud may be coming to an end, as Bali police have begun to take strict measures against the practice. Motorbike workshops in particular problem areas have been instructed not to modify motorbikes, and motorists who insist on using these exhaust systems may have their motorbikes seized by police. Praise God, I say, and better late than never, for there is really nothing more irritating than these screaming motorbikes on the road.

In a certain village in Gianyar, residents have been complaining about a stench of waste coming from the sewers within their village. As it turns out, this was revealed to be 100 percent a homemade problem and the villagers are actually complaining about the stench of their own waste. The back up of sewers became a problem when villagers clogged the flow by discarding their own household rubbish therein.

In American news, a Cape Cod lobster diver was swallowed by a whale. "All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black," he said. "I could sense I was moving, and I could feel the whale squeezing with the muscles in his mouth. I thought to myself, 'there's no way I'm getting out of here.'" The man  began struggling within the belly of the leviathan, and the leviathan began shaking his head, ultimately spitting the man out, having in a helpful sort of way risen to the surface first. So you see, everything in the world does eventually happen if you wait long enough.