Na zdraví!

My Czech friend Ales told me this Christmas that whenever he's in India he drinks a shot of hard liquor in the morning when he wakes up, and in the evening before he goes to bed. He says he's never had any gastric problems when in India, even eating the food at street kiosks. I've taken to heart his good suggestion and will gulp down a shot of Gin before and after my swims at Praya's murky swimming pool. My swimming sessions are now probably harder training for my liver than my arms.

Oh and Na zdraví! to my Czech friend Anna who got married this week.

There I was...

There I was... parading with my BAPPEDA office friends and thousands of Sasak at Nyale Festival this Wednesday in Kuta. Nyale takes place every year in February in commemoration of the Princess Mandalika who, a long time ago, when faced with a cohort of enamoured princes who all wanted to marry her, threw herself into the ocean off the rocks at Pantai Seger.

She thereby forestalled the possibility of war between the rivaling and potentially discontented parties, and ensured that she would be there for everyone and always... in the form of the waves that roll in and out of the beaches bringing in swarms of Nyale worms once a year. The Nyale worms are the corpses of little spaghetti-like oceanic creatures that, after spawning out at sea, get washed onto shore on 1 or 2 days a year. If you think about it, geo-biologically speaking, Nyale is really quite a remarkable event. A good Nyale harvest (the Sasak like to wade into the water at dusk and collect the worms) is also said to herald good agricultural harvests for the coming year.

Note the mascara on me.

We were all lined up and ready to stroll in procession But we had to wait two hours in the sun until the Vice-Buppati arrived. The costumes were very hot. When I saw the masquerade of small kids strolling through the finish-line some 3 hours later, I felt so sorry for them, they were so tired. Although we were all pretty tired due to the heat and long wait, the parade was actually really fun. There were even parashooters falling from the sky.

I grew up in the Rhineland, and the Nyale parade yesterday and the vibrant energy on the street reminded me a little bit of the "Karnevalszug". But yesterday, I couldn't help noticing comically, how we were more people in the parade than we had spectators.

Feisty ants

In that photo you see ants climbing around on an electric cord . The photo was taken minutes before they died. But I am manifestly still a vegetarian.

I am perfectly tolerant of the ant populations in my house, I regularly leave scraps of foods or dead cockroaches for them to feast on. And they are mostly tolerant of me. But this red worker ant population in the photo, they are feisty.

Basically these ants forgather on my extension cords. I don't know what's so special about the cords. The extension cords weren't sugar-coated by the manufacturer, not to my knowledge at least. Maybe they like live wires. Anyways, when I need to move the cord I nudge the ants gently away, but they won't have any of it and go all berserk on me.

Let me tell you about the time huge male ant populations invaded my bed. It happened weekly. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of it but you must believe me that it really happened. The sheer number of them was maddening. They were all male ones, and they were peaceful which was good. But they decided that my pillow was their front yard and a good place to loiter. They were climbing all over my naked back and shoulders.

I know ant colonies must reproduce. But do they have to do it so often? Do they have to do it in the evenings, behind my back, while I am reading a book or watching Lord of the Rings? Ants aren't nocturnal, couldn't they fornicate during the day while I'm at the office? Most of all, couldn't they do it some place else?

I don't know what Queen Ant actually looks like. But I know this tribe lives under my pillow, in the bamboo bed structure. She and the rest of her kin.

I have seen unusually big black clumsy ants around the house as well. They had wings but prefered to wander around. In fact, they were caravaning out one ant-hole in through another. They looked lost. An ant colony may have several queens or reproductives. I think that was them reproductives doing a random ant migration.

Gaddafi, Berlusconi, Mubarak and the BBC

I'm a big fan of the BBC. I catch the BBC broadcasts on short-wave radio as much as I can. It's my antenna into the world.

The BBC does serious and thorough news reporting.

But when it comes to sensationalism, the BBC has had its guilty share. Yes, the BBC just loves a good racy anecdote.

Year after year, the BBC reports on Colonel Gaddafi's official visit to Italy. The visits are only newsworthy because Gaddafi holds en-mass Islam conversion parties, to which flocks of Italian glamor models are bussed.

In November 2009, for example, while attending a UN food summit 200 Italian lovelies were invited. In July 2010, 500 models (!) were rounded up by an Italian model agency. He also invites said models on all-paid-for trips to Libya. Nobody knows how much success he actually has with the Islam conversion, but it obviously makes the headlines. And the BBC thinks it's a story the world can't get enough of.

I don't know if you knew, but Gaddafi will trust only a cohort of female soldiers to be his close bodyguards. In the picture above you see Berlusconi admiring one such. (And the old pope in the background waiting just next in line.)

There's no question that Gaddafi's counterpart, Berlusconi, is a buffoon too. The BBC is currently reporting on his sexual larks involving a 17 year old prostitute called “Ruby” and whether the evidence for the case amounts to enough to bring him to court.

Berlusconi's antics are many, and you wonder if and when the Italian public (the other half; not those who don't already) will have enough. But apparently for the BBC, Italy's political system is in such utter hopeless chaos, it doesn't see it fit to report on the screws that need to be set right for the economy or state. Instead, it's all about Ruby.

Ruby was arrested for theft once and held in a police department in Milan. When Berlusconi heard about it, he made a couple of phone-calls to important people and the police set Ruby free again. Berlusconi maintains his innocence and that he thought the girl was actually the daughter of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Which brings us to Mubarak and the protests in Egypt. At last, we have the news.

Times when I hang my head in shame

Sometimes you admire a public figure that goes off and does something stupid that isn't admirable. At all.

Tony Blair could be one such public figure. I think we all liked him. Until, of course, he lied at the British people and the rest of us about the wrong reasons to invade Iraq. And, you know, everything else thereafter. But women were fond of him, I hear.

Or Naomi Campbell and her “No Furs” agenda, while it lasted. And what was she doing opening her hotel door at 3 a.m. to accept blood diamonds from an aide of Charles Taylor?

James Brown with 8 arrests and 3 convictions.

Michael Jackson. Nuff' said.

Songwriter Neil Young, who first defended President Bush and gave him credit for “sticking to his vision of how to lead America.” Then, some years later, rescinding his support with the unambiguously titled song "Let's Impeach the President."

Billy Bob Thornton, who besides being a great actor may also be a great singer/performer, but while on tour in Canada, gave a stampede of ill-mannerism in a live interview on CBC radio. Among other discourteous things he said was that Canadian audiences were like “mashed potatoes without the gravy."

For me it's Janine Turner. She is one of those stars that for a glimpse of a moment I might have fallen in love with. Janine Turner starred in the television series “Northern Exposure” which aired in the early 90s. It's a great series in which she plays an Alaskan bush pilot and ex-girlfriend of various oddly deceased lovers (one died during a picnic, another was hit by a satellite plunging out of orbit), mostly irritated by her love-hate relationship for the protagonist, Joel Fleischman. I'm quite addicted to the series at the moment, I must confess.

Until I found out Janine Turner was a tea-partyist and fervent supporter of Sarah Palin. Helllo!??!?! My first reaction was denial of course, it isn't true. But it's true. She is. That woman is absolutely nutty. What happened to her? I thought she and I were of kindred spirits.

How can anybody support Sarah Palin? Sarah Palin believes the world is 6000 years old and that dinosaurs were around then. And let's not mention the macabre gun crosshairs on her website.

My assorted tropical fruitbasket. And a misunderstanding involving banana gluttony and the death thereof of a person in a single person household.

I was born in Thailand and we lived there until I was 2 years old. My mom sometimes goes down memory lane and reminisces what our Bangkok lives were like in the early eighties. Mostly she talks about the culinaric delights, the lush variety of tropical fruits one could buy there for next to nothing: papaya, litchis, mangoes, longan etc.

I was too young then to remember what our fruit dishes looked like. I grew up on apples and pears in Germany. Though I've always been fond of coconut milk.

But I've finally made it to the tropics now. And maybe it's my turn to brag. My motley fruit collection comprises: papayas, rambutan, mangoes, various types of bananas, young coconuts, mangosteens (which were a REAL discovery), snake fruits, dragon fruits, durian and many more, some of which I don't even know the names of.

I sometimes ask Ibu Nunik to go down to the local market and buy fruits for me, like bananas. Bananas grow in bunches or “hands”. They can only be bought in “hands” too. You can't buy single bananas in Praya. I tried it, and everyone looked at me bewildered. Then they laughed (as they always do about us “bules”, foreigners).

Anyways, a bananas “hand” counts about a dozen bananas. That's quite a lot of bananas to eat, even in a small banana world. I ate up the first bunch of bananas very quickly so that they wouldn't start rotting.

Enter Ibu Nunik again. She figured that I was so fond of bananas she would buy me more. The next time she bought me 25. Again, I hurried to eat them before they spoiled. So then Ibu Nunik figured 25 wasn't enough and she scaled up. We're now at 45 bananas, to be eaten in under a week, which comes to over six bananas a day. I hope we put a tap on this gluttony soon, or it's death by banana for me. And no more bragging.

That's just not right

Yes, the cover image is fine but the image on the back of the package? That garlic bread photo, it just doesn't look right. I don't know. Did they have nothing else in NZ to choose from? Like more cows and pastures? The first time I was looking at that butter package, it fell out of my fridge door, I picked it up and... it made me homesick. I like our German butter packaging so much better.

Doing the boogie BYOT.

My private disco nights in Praya are back on. I missed them while in Berlin. Berlin, contrary to its perhaps well-deserved reputation as Europe's best clubbing capital, has never elicited my own disco fever. I've always harbored feelings of dislike for the oh-I-am-so-cool-hanging-out-at-an-illegal-party-in-an-industrial-complex-loft-this-club-has-no-permanent-address-keeps-moving-venue-and-my-name-was-on-the-guestlist disco crowds. I have been dragged along to a handful of such parties in Berlin, and I've never left them feeling beguiled.

Over Christmas, boy, did I miss my disco nights in Praya. Firstuval, in Praya the air humidity and heat are so high, it only takes looking around the room and you've worked up a little sweat already. Maybe you snap your fingers a couple measures long, bend your knees a little, go hi-lo, you're really breaking into a full sweat now. You follow this routine along, skid across the room a couple of times, solemnly hoof along in Limbo style, mix in Shakira's signature shotgun hip-flick and you're sweating from every pore of your body. In profusion. It will feel like waterfalls run down your spine. This party is BYOT, bring your own towel, you will really need it.

I have ranted to a couple of people about my semi-legendary Praya disco nights already. They've apparently gained some recognition, and the stories have inspired my friend Janine to present me with a small disco bowl over Christmas. I've brought it back from Germany and during day-light, the disco bowl dangles demurely in the room. But when night falls, and the lamp shades dance on the terrace, the pack of dogs outside howl like wolves, she, the disco bowl, is cajoled into a light swaying of her equatorial hips, and when the wild colored lights come on I give her a spin to the wild side.

One of these days I'm gonna ride Kylie Minogue's locomotion right into the streets of my kampung.

Young professionals.

My friends Sophie, Katharina and I have started a swimming group. A very informal one. I am very excited about it. The downside is: we don't train together. That's because we live in different cities. I thought about our swimming group and how it's not working out and then it dawned on me: incidentally, and just by the way, the three of us have become so-called "young professionals". Who would have thought? Not me. 2 years ago we were all happily and idly (well, sometimes) living the student life in Berlin, wondering what we'd do with our lives. And now we are all three young professionals, with different jobs in different cities, and our personal lives to balance. But we can still swim together. If we all enter the water in Berlin, Hamburg and Lombok, respectively, at the same time, well, that would constitute a swimming group I think.

I don't know if our trainings are synced exactly like clockwork yet. When I swim here in the afternoons, Sophie and Katharina would have to swim in the early mornings for us to be swimming “together”. Morning swims are not for the light-hearted. Sophie and I both missed our new year's morning swim, which was due to start around 10 am on a Sunday of this new year I think. The upside about training apart is that no-one has to wait for the other at the street-corner and wonder “will they show up?”

When I swam my 10k last weekend I kept having to think about the rotation of the Earth, and there I was, the first of our swimming group in the water that day (which was a beautiful and warm day in Lombok), depositing the first laps into the bank. In the middle of my swim, some time in the afternoon, I was wondering if Sophie and Katharina were finally in the water too.

My life in Pink

I bought myself some bedsheets a long time ago. The choice wasn't big, so I settled for “Strawberry”, perhaps reminded of the Beatles song “Strawberry fields”. And wouldn't it be beautiful to fall asleep every night in strawberry fields? After buying myself these pink strawberry-motifed bed sheets (the alternatives were Barbie and Manchester United), Ibu Nunik has ventured out on her own accord to buy more pink things for me. She must have decided that I was fond of pink. I now call myself also proud owner of a pink plastic book shelf and a pink plastic etagere in the kitchen which at the moment makes me happy because it is weighed down by some Christmas-special Guiness pack that, because it's past Christmas, makes me feel like I got it at a bargain price. Ibu Nunik also prefers to write messages to me in pink. I kid you not. I've added to my pink collection a set of guitar strings and a key fob which I go swimming with. And a pink bathroom door which I insisted must be installed after long negotiation with my new landlord.