Weather is Entertainment

Day 62 - I knew I was tempting the weather gods by recently posting all the photos of sunsets.





This afternoon it got really dark and we knew a storm would soon be upon us. It came all right! It's hard to imagine so much water so quickly. This put to shame any Vancouver pineapple express during February. It was a torrential thunderstorm. Buckets of water were pouring off the roofs. The area in front of our building turned into a 10cm lake. Ear-splitting thunder roared and next-door lightning flashed

The tropics stay green for the abundance of sun AND water.

After 40 minutes, it finished. There's now no water coming down and very little evidence anything out-of-the-ordinary occurred. I'm glad I saw, heard, and experienced this afternoon's rain. I do love the tropics!

It's 2019. I Retired in 2014.

Day 61 - After realizing we had only a few more days to view a Bali sunset, I agreed with Jay to walk to the beach in the evening. Taking photographs of beach sunsets seems like a common pastime in these parts. I dutifully carried on the tradition by taking a photo of someone else taking a photo of the sunset.



I don't feel guilty that this and my other photographs may be the most important activity I accomplished today. Living a life where every minute belongs to us seems second nature now. I may pay for our personal free time with a reduced income, but hey, I seem to have enough to take pictures of people taking pictures of sunsets. That's as much as I need.

I don't limit myself to images of our 'old sol'. Here's a photo taken yesterday. It's not art, but I think it is interesting enough to merit a short glance or two.

We're Always Home

Day 60 - Earlier this evening, we experienced an electrical power outage. It wasn't just us; the whole neighbourhood went dark. For nearly an hour, I relaxed by the pool on a reclining chaise lounge looking up at the stars. How peaceful things seemed! We'd had a few daytime glitches but never a blackout when it was dark.



It seems difficult to believe our time here is nearly over. To us, these two months in Bali have been a nice experience. Now we're gearing up for three months in Kuala Lumpur, from the beach to the city, so to speak.

We constantly run into many people who wonder how we can stay away from 'home' for so long. On many occasions, I've tried to explain that Jay and I feel at home wherever we are. Many people just cannot understand that fact. And I cannot truly understand those people.

Got to Experiment More with 360°

Day 59 - I hadn't tried taking a 360° image for a long time. In fact, I wondered if I had the necessary camera app on my current phone. Then, I remembered that the Google Street View app, itself, allows one to take VR-ready photos. That company wants so badly for us to upload our images to Google Maps! In fact, the way it is designed, it's hard *not* to press the upload button.

Taking a shot is dizzying as one has to line up the dots to ensure the phone has all the data needed for the complete picture. After, I downloaded the raw image and wondered what would happen if I uploaded it to Flickr. It took a second to load but I was able to mouse the image around. So next, I've embedded it here. It seems to work in Firefox on our Win10 travel machine. Other results may vary.

The image was just a test shot without perfect stitching. It's damned hard to line up objects, especially when they're relatively close to the lens. However, I guess I'll keep it. As we'll be leaving our studio apartment in Bali on Monday, keeping this photo, although it's not perfect, seems a no-brainer. I've swum in this pool for nearly two months now.

I'm a Title Champ

Day 58 - I've had a lot of practice making titles. This blog has had thousands of entries and for nearly a decade and a half. I've been creating one each day. That makes for quite a few titles.

Also, Flickr photos can be titled. It makes viewing the page more compelling than a mere sequential number generated by the camera. There are times when I 'bulk name' by using the date for a general descriptor. However, when I do include individual titles, I shine. For example, these were added this evening after our walk to the beach.

A Cushy Sales Job


Sunset Time (Literally and Figuratively)


It's Complicated

Finding Amed

Day 57 - Gede, our driver, was waiting for us when we got to our front door. Today we'd requested a day for another road trip. We were heading across the island again, but this time we stayed closer to the eastern edge.

Getting through Denpasar, the capital, takes a bit of time, even though traffic wasn't bad at nine in the morning. Other than a rest stop, our first real stop for the trip was to visit Tenganan village. Near the resort town of Candi Dasa, Tenganan Pegringsingan is as close to an original Balinese village as possible. It predates the arrival of Hinduism on the island. The layout of the village, its ceremonies, and crafts today are a reminder that before the 1970s this was a society little affected by the outside world.

Strolling around the live community was pleasurable on a hot sunny day.






We continued with a brief stop in Candi Dasa. As the hotel strip is sandwiched between the road and the sea, we went into a little resort hotel saying we were interested in a future visit. It would take an hour and a half from the airport to get here, but for some reason, we liked the area. We can't quite remember if we stayed in this town during our jeep journey in 1992.






We do remember the vista point which Jay was able to see during online research. In 1992 we explored this bit of Indonesia on a summer trip. I have a picture in a blog post added years ago, in fact more than a decade ago, which shows an old scanned photo. I wondered whether we could locate the spot after nearly 27 years.

We did! In fact, the Jemeluk viewpoint looks down at Amed's volcanic-sand beach. The fishing village had grown modestly. The hilltop location now has a restaurant at which we had lunch.




We wound back on the same mountaineous highway and were home by 4:30 pm. The scenery was 'pure Bali' and it was nice to see there's still much more to the island than some visitors get to see from Kuta beach.

In Search of Sunsets

Day 56 - We figured there wasn't going to be a proper sunset tonight, where the fiery orb appears to slide into a watery horizon. So, we walked to Double-Six beach early to catch the sun before it slipped behind a curtain of clouds.



We've really come to appreciate our time spent near an ocean. I've mentioned it before, but we do gravitate toward beaches which boast a sunset rather than a sunrise. Perhaps it's our life near the Canadian Pacific, or our first retirement winter in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Maybe we spent much more time in western Sri Lanka than on the other side. For whatever reason, we do find ourselves with a preference.

We are already starting to contemplate places where we can spend next winter. We have to start at about this time to ensure we can rent places from November 2019 through Christmas and New Year 2020. A lot of clever people grab the holiday season very, very early. We are fortunate to be able to consider literally any place in the world. We've heavily considered a few and will keep them as options as we do more research. Agadir, Morocco seemed good but the nights might be too cool. Durban, South Africa ticks off many boxes, but is expensive to get to. What about Rio de Janeiro? That city has always been a bit of a bucket-list destination for me. I'd welcome your suggestions.

The Last Day of Galungan

Day 55 - It seems as though the local holiday, which began on the day after Christmas came to a close today.

The decorations displayed along the streets suddenly got a lot of sprucing up. Interestingly, much of the crafts are organic. We've noticed loads of palm leaves headed towards homes for folding and preparation. Around the island of Bali there are many half-naked palm trees nowadays, but they don't mind at all.

The last day is called, Kuningan. Balinese believe their ancestors' spirits have been visiting during Galungan. However, today they've headed back to heaven. The festival is over so tomorrow things will get back to a more normal pace.

How Soon One Can Get Acclimated!

Day 54 - Yikes. We were walking back from the supermarket when I suddenly remembered our remaining time in Bali is growing short. I snapped the picture to remember the type of thatched temple roofs so prevalent here.

Today, we brought the towels and sheets to a laundry for cleaning but as we're leaving in ten days, we'll probably not do so again. Unlike most places we've stayed during winters, this studio apartment provides no access to a washing machine. Yet, there are tons of little laundry services around our neighbourhood. We pay Rp 17,0000 per kilo for washing and drying. That converts to about US$ 0.50 for each pound. It comes back nicely wrapped in plastic and smelling of fabric softener.

However, I'm starting to think in terms of lasts. We head to Kuala Lumpur increasingly soon, on January 14th specifically. That will be our base until we return home in mid-April.

No W,X,Y, or Z.

Day 53 - The weather seems dark today; however, it remains warm. Jay met up with our driver, or I should say, the driver we used on our recent cross-island journey a few weeks ago. Gede called last night while we were at dinner. They arranged that Jay would meet him to discuss a trip next week. He's coming to pick us up for a day trip on Monday.

The 2013 picture below indicates I finished that little task I assigned to myself. It was taken in a boat in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.



On December 28, I started a new Flickr album. I wanted to create a listing of countries I've visited. Rather than text, I figured it'd be more interesting to find a single photo representing the country or territory. Of course, it had to be a personal photo which popped. There are some places we've visited multiple times or stayed for months, so the selection was no easy task. I noticed that the names are fairly spread out through the alphabet, with a preponderance of places starting with the letter C, M, and S. The end of the alphabet is not at all well represented.

I'm pretty happy with the results. In the frame below, you may click through these photos by the selecting the arrows to the side of the image. Note the location is displayed on the bottom, left-hand side of each image. If you directly click the image, its full page will open on Flickr.

'Sky Garden' is a Habit

Day 52 - How can this be just the second of January? It feels as if we've already had a whole week of 2019, doesn't it?



Back at the Sky Garden, it was delightfully empty early on with more staff than customers. Later, it picked up a lot and by 9:00 PM, I had to wait in a queue for drinks.

After getting there, I 'whatsapped' Carlos and he and Stewart were headed for dinner there too! It was a lucky chance to meet up as they leave tomorrow. On our visit to the Sky Garden, last Saturday, we met these guys from our very own city. It seems strange we had to travel to Bali to meet them. We will try to see them again when we get back to New Westminster in April.

Double Six Beach on New Year's Eve

Day 51 - I guess I can write about last night as it was well into today before we walked home. We wanted to see what was happening at the beach.

It seems that locals and visitors frequently flock towards the seashore, often making for a crowded beach at most sunsets. We assumed that sort of habit would spill over on New Year's Eve. It did.

By 10:45 PM we were fighting the crowds in order to move! I never saw such a number of motorbikes in one place in my life. We walked up the Double Six road. The next hour and a half were spent, squeezing through motorcycles and pedestrians, listening to loud music thumping, and avoiding the sparks of live fireworks. We walked to an area with a few packed gay bars and returned to walk along the beach to ring in the actual stroke of midnight.

Drinking in public is allowed and, of course, people were. Some lots. I hadn't seen fireworks for sale, but they are also allowed, not just little firecrackers but huge rockets for multiple displays. Everywhere up and down the beach, was the firing zone. I wondered a little if combat feels the same. The fireworks display went on for hours both before and after midnight. These factors made for a very interesting evening. We saw not a single policeman or security officer during the night. As we left, the crush of cars, motorcycles, and people was large but all proceeded along towards home (I presume) smoothly. People's actions rather than laws and restrictions made for a safe evening.

Last night was one 'change of year' that I'll not soon forget.

My Own Flickr News

Day 50 - A new year isn't the only thing I found that's just around the corner.



I've implemented a few changes involving Flickr and this blog too.

Firstly, if you're reading this text in its web browser version, there are a few changed details above. The eight photos appearing along this entries' upper edge now load from my current Flickr album only. Presently, the small, square images are a random selection of images from Bali. Many of these photographs may have appeared in blog entries over the last seven weeks. If clicked you'll be taken its dedicated Flickr page. I will move the selection to new albums as I create them.

Secondly, one tab, found in the row above my mugshot picture, has also changed a bit. If clicked, the Flickr tab now lands one on my Flickr Collections page. The growing number of albums may be a bit confusing, so the collections move these into six categories now.

Remember, the look and function of 'my eJournal and images' on a mobile device is a simplified version.

Stay safe this evening!

Scene Captures

Day 49 - Last night, we had a lot of rain and today the grey continued into the morning. The gloomy skies didn't affect me as much as those in Vancouver simply due to the fact the accompanying temperature is 27°C, rather than 7°C.

During an afternoon walk, I brought along the Nikon. We didn't really traverse any new pavement but carrying my camera ensures that I keep an eye out for 'the art to be found in the ordinary'. To me, photos don't have to showcase beauty; rather, they should catch something visually interesting. Photographers sometimes use the word, 'capture' to describe their images. Here are four captures from our walk:

We Often See Canadians Abroad

Day 48 - I was in a queue for the buffet and a drunk fellow stumbled up to me and looked me square in the eye. I said, "I know you," perhaps out of discomfort. He said that it was his birthday and asked where I was from. I said, "Canada. Vancouver." He then went along to other things.

A bit down the line after I'd added my fish, salad, and created a steak burger, another fellow asked, "So, you're from Canada?" "I just met a woman from Toronto. Where in Vancouver do you live?"

As it happens he lives in New Westminster, our city for coming up on 23 years! In fact, he lives about a half a kilometer from our apartment. He is in the neighbourhood near one of my favourite parks, a place I head when wanting a walk. We had to fly sixteen hours to meet neighbours. They're in Bali for less than a week more.

"A" is a Good Start

Day 47 - This afternoon, I took this picture of a hibiscus flower growing by our poolside. That is not really unusual as we're in Bali. Yet, I thought to myself these flowers might be following us around. Paranoid, me? They were present in Puerto Vallarta during our first early-retirement winter. Luxor, Egypt had them growing in our garden too. I'm pretty sure that we saw many last winter in Penang, Malaysia / Siem Reap, Cambodia, as well. See, they have been following us around!

This, of course, led to a new idea. I can always think of ways to make myself busy when there is an Internet connection! In September I tried to count all the countries I had visited in a blog posting. The list grew to 72 places because of a few trips last fall. However, as I've had a renewed interest in photography, wouldn't it be great to choose a single, personal photo from each country or territory for display?

It's okay if it takes a while. I have created a new album on Flickr. I will work alphabetically. I added the first four.


Albania


American Samoa


Austria


Australia


Do stay tuned for more!