What's all this Dong , Deng, Dung, stuff Jimu? Have you lost the plot.......Well no, those are the pentatonic scale notes as pronounced by a Balinese Gamelan player to describe the sound they make!
I decided to revisit the cooking class material and make a Gado Gado sauce the traditional Balinese way, also the Jamie Oliver way, with the pounding of the bejesus out of herbs spices and spicey fried in coconut oil peanuts to a paste.
Quite involved and labour intensive, super spicy having to dull it down a bit with coconut cream!
Not sure if eating this meal created some reaction, but I was below par with a dripping tap for a nose for 3 days....even playing the sax was no fun..... the photo below says it all.
Three days later and course of anti biotics got me back on track.
Still this gave me the opportunity to sit around and draw flowers and marvel at the beauty that surrounds me here in Bali.
A new pathway in construction, the creative spirit is alive and well in Bali!
Six years ago the two story building called Pondok, left of center where I stayed had rice field views in four directions, now only one direction, with many houses sprung up in this area.
This little lean to caught my eye as a possible sketching subject, housed the farmers bullock, that he hand feed from grass cuttings on the many pathways and trips to Banana tree trunks, he no longer rears his own meat apart from ducks!
Ya gotta be coconuts to live around here!
This is how they transport them, using the natural husk fiber as rope.
Beauty at it's height!
Waiting for me to draw it......
Oops...to late!
Spider within 6 feet of my outside couch, didn't want to get much closer.
Ants are removal men from eons ago.
This guy was near my toilet seat, so I thought. I'd swat him, but he's faster than a NZ Bluebottle.
Luckily my seat was not visited again...though I certainly checked!
This is the view from the bath. I saw this view go from the last crop, to digging over (by hand) floated off to a sea of mud, and hand planted, this is less than a months growth!
Duk the Father, Sentana the son, who gave his name to the villa I stayed in for 3 months.
The Ubud Central Market is being knocked down and rebuilt, here is one of the team of bulldozers doing the Demo! This guy actually has boots, which is rare round here!
The Bali equivelant of the "Rawlies Man"
A "Fonz" mobile
Man...this is style...love how he's parked over the Bali blessings.
And yeah that is the footpath! Gotta be another Fonzie character!
Rubbish collection truck...with a huge smile!
Villa OM...is the home of an Austrian/German artist, beautifully decorated, and is vacant at the moment, can I put your name on it....or in local lingo... Yah...just looking, looking, looking....I give you good price...morning price.... how many you buy...why not you buy...why not you buy......?
Didn't see inside. but must have had that well that known German "ATTENTION" to detail.
My farmer friends bullock barn from another angle.
This was drawn in my nose dripping period, can you see any on the drawing!
At the local Library, I think they only have one in Ubud, they run hands on courses in Bali Arts and Crafts. I enrolled in Fruit and Vegetable Carving and Gamelan Playing, and had one on one instruction for both!
Here is the teachers hand and handy work, he works as a chef at one of the local restaurants and can spend all day carving fruit and Vegies for display only. This one is a watermelon.
I was so busy learning about Gamelan and recording it..I forgot to take any photo's. however I had taken my soprano along for a blow afterwards, and this local (Donald...yeah of Scottish heritage) came into the library while I was playing, to draw a honeymoon couple from Kaula Lumpur. So I sat at Donald's side and watched him draw very quickly, with amazing detail, using a special pencil. Donald attended art school for 5 years...ahem...it shows!
After he'd finished, we chatted and I showed him this recent drawing (also from my Nose period)
He said, here's one of my pencils, please draw me!......#@?
So while he drew Andy, the american guy, I blazed away on foreign ground...gee it was fun!
Apologies to Donald, time disappears when your having fun!
And my reward for diving of the deep end!
You don't even need to sharpen it...You peal it!
This is a mix of conventional pencils and Donald's
(now into the dry nose period)
Dancing and Music, a group from the Balak people in Northern Sumatra, visiting as part of the Ubud Readers & Writers Festival.
Two women dancers. one dancing and balancing 6 smaller bowls and one larger on her head.....quite a feat in bare feet too!
This is Joana and Nuno who I met in London in 2010 part of the warm showers network of touring cyclist. These two Portuguese have traveled by bikes huge distances and visited us in New Zealand months ago on the start of another epic journey, NZ back to Portugal. Perhaps taking 2-2.5 years, I had no idea they were in Bali and Nuno spotted me at the above event.
I convinced Anje a local hairdresser to go wild on my hair, however her version of wild and my version were staggeringly different
She had a lovely smile. but saxophone playing in the shop doorway was cover up time!
Sentana the 3.5 year old boy with his sister Inda, 7.5 years old... cuter than two buttons.
Three Crazy Amigos, Jose the spaniard a Fair Trade advocate and permaculture enthusiast of the extreme variety, says he will visit me in NZ...I say great and lookout NZ
Heading home across Australia in broad daylight, over Ayers Rock.
Awesome!
Wellington to Nelson, the prop shows the homeward direction!
Whew what a trip.....three months. allot of sax playing, massages, yoga, walking, drawing , photographing and healing, Bali is an amazing place, perfect for these activities and much more.
I pondered, and asked allot of questions to myself and of myself. Interactions with the locals were genuine, warm and playful. Many of the locals, work very hard for little pay, life is (my judgement here) more of a struggle for many that I saw, and they are cheerful and full of life.
I am humbled and grateful to have spent another 3 months in Bali, and appreciate New Zealands gifts and charms even more now!
I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings and blogs....Salumat Tingal, (Goodbye) Bali, you've affected me greatly. I will be Pondering on for some time, digesting and savoring this experience!
Blessing Peace Namaste
Jimu
PS the locals called me by many new names. Taxi, Transport, Massage.....I gave them many new names right back, which created smiles, for miles in both directions!
