A Pleasant Change of Pace

 This past week I had the pleasure of meeting Eveline, a woman from the area of Jogyakarta whom I often chat with online, along with her delightful daughters, Monica and Michelle, 19 and 20 years of age respectively. The daughters have been living for some months here in Bali in order to attend university and a special yoga program, and so their mother had come to visit and made time to visit me as well. We went to the usual cafes in Sanur (though not usual for her, of course), strolled here and there on the beach, and just generally enjoyed the days. All are just very easy to be around, and the daughters reminded me so of my stepdaughters, Jamila and Ja'nat, at that age, the younger very outgoing, charismatic, and the elder more quiet and pensive. Now that mom has returned to her home town, along with the younger daughter, all seems very quiet and a little bit lonely. But hey, that's the life that I know, and so I'm sure I'll slip back into it like rain absorbed in the earth. 

I am a creature of habit, and habit, now, is pretty much all that I know. I am so habitual, in fact, that other people have "learned me" and know what to do the minute they see me. For example, the girls at the Daily Baguette know the instant they see me drive up to the curve that I'm going to want the usual cappuccino and slice of banana bread, so that by the time I walk in the door, they have already begun to prepare my order.

Speaking of habit, while I was talking to my online friend Darman the other day, it occurred to me that something felt very familiar about him. So I asked him to tell me about his day. 

"What time do you get out of bed?" 

"Four o'clock, for morning prayer." 

"And then breakfast?" 

"Breakfast is at 8." 

"And what do you eat?" 

"A banana and porridge." 

"Always?" 

"Yes, I like the banana and porridge." 

"And then." 

"Then I log into YouTube and get the news and so on."

My goodness, I have a doppelganger in Java!

Otherwise, life in the little town of Sanur meanders on. We learn from the Sanur Weekly that the required quarantine period for foreigners entering Bali has been changed once again, this time from the overly hopeful three days, a plan which lasted about one quick minute, to ten days now, to be spent at an approved hotel at the cost of the traveler. Not surprisingly, they are getting no bites at all from foreign travelers and not a single airline has scheduled a direct flight to Bali. 

We learn that Mt. Semeru in east Java, only 150 km from Bali, erupted on December 4th, claiming the lives of 14 and completely destroying more than ten villages. 

A Dane, having spent time in prison for the crime of blasphemy, has been released after seven months and sent home to Denmark. The Dane, as it turns out, did not commit the more usual blasphemy against Islam, but a blasphemy against Hinduism for damaging a Hindu shrine. Why he decided to damage this shrine, the paper does not say. 

A 33 year old Ukrainian resident of upscale Nusa Dua has been arrested for somehow "skimming" 2 billion Rupiah from a single ATM in the space of four days (which amounts to 140,000 USD). I have no idea how she managed this, or even what skimming is, but it is clear that she did not plan the crime very well.