???

After months without wifi, posting has been near impossible. We are still here, settling in and with wifi now, but do I continue to blog? Maybe it's too late ... I will leave this here as an explanation for the silence and think about whether to persevere.

PechaKucha or, put away those boring slides

I don’t seem to have talked about PechaKucha before, which is surprising. We have been to a few PK nights and told lots of people about them, but not here. Time to do so.

The first Ubud PechaKucha night for the year was held last Tuesday at BetelNut. Numbers in attendance seemed down on last year, possibly because a charge was levied for the first time. Not a huge charge, so it’s a pity that people were deterred as these nights can be some of the most stimulating events around.

If the word sounds Japanese, that’s because PK is a Japanese concept, born from a design studio that was looking for a different way to pitch ideas to each other. Short, snappy and entertaining is the key. No more doze-off PowerPoint slide shows.

PK presentations can be on any topic. Just under seven minutes (6 minutes 40 sec to be precise) is allowed with 20 slides at 20 seconds per slide. On automatic, so no cheating. The more engaged the presenter is with their topic, the better.

Ubud PechaKucha, organised by the Hubud Creative Space, has six presenters on each PK night. Topics can be anything. Anything at all. as long as the presenter has some expertise and a whole lot of passion. Tuesday night’s presenters covered a bamboo reforestation project in north Bali that is bringing economic stimulus to the community (Kadek Gunarta, founder also of the Bali Spirit Festival); Rili Djohami talked about the reefs of the coral triangle initiative and the threats and opportunities faced by the various interest groups; and the frightening statistics of HIV and AIDS in Bali were outlined by Tono Permana who also talked about the work that is being done to educate communities and care for those affected.

Also on the program were Mynoo Blackbyrn whose interest in miracles and personal experiences have led to her begin to realise an ambitious vision to create an amazing space to foster spirituality while Italian artist Marco Cassani talked about his art practice that demands interactivity from the viewer, with fascinating results.

Final speaker was Ubud identity Janet deNeefe, businesswoman and restaurateur, who paid tribute to the Balinese women who inspired her and whose food businesses predated hers by decades. Ibu Oka, Ibu Murni and Ibu Okawati were some on whom she heaped praise and affection in a talk that rounded out the evening beautifully.

Looking forward to February.

Sounds of the village

On online advice forums, it is not unusual to see requests from expats seeking ‘quiet’ accommodation. Complaints about noise involve not so much traffic, but the sounds you would expect living in what is still essentially a rural community. Roosters and dogs of course, but even the cheerful frogs get complaints. It’s hard to imagine what these visitors expected, unless their experience has previously been a sanitised resort.

Our current location is not so very different from the nearby guesthouse where we have spent many months over previous years. We are not resort people. But still, how could we not have thought through the implications of having a neighbour who breeds fighting cocks. He has more than 100, he told us yesterday and our first night here was, shall we say, restless. But it only took the one night and now we are as inured to the crowing as we might become used to living near a train line in a city.

In the week we have been here our ears have become attuned to the subtle sounds as well as the more blatant ones. We hear the sepeda motor (motor bikes) whizzing their way to work from about 7, but we also hear the swish of the besom broom as the leaves that have fallen overnight are swept off the paths. The lovely calls of geckos and frogs sing to us at night. Yesterday at about 8am something was happening over a loudspeaker. At first we thought it might be electioneering as the Presidential vote takes place in April, but it was too playful for that. Something in the temple across the rice fields perhaps. Whatever it was sounded like fun.

Earlier in the week we needed to visit a notaris (lawyer) to start the negotiations for our lease. As always in professional offices we were kept waiting. Suddenly an almost-forgotten but unmistakeable sound could be heard from behind a desk. Clackety clickety clack, ting. A typewriter! It brought a smile and vivid memories of typing pools.

We have been so busy that there has been little time to stop and smell the cempaka. That will come.

Image of Balinese fighting cocks courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

We're baaaack (nearly)

Just testing. It's been a while. We return to Ubud in a week (15 January) and people have been asking me if I will be maintaining the blog. I guess the answer is yes, so watch this space.