Blogspot sucks!

I know computers don't do what you want them to do, they only do what you tell them to do, but blogspot seems worse than ever. The font mess-ups on the previous posts are not my doing, nor do they show up in the html so .....

Also, the 90 degree rotated photos!!

Maybe its time to change free blog hosting?

Clive is Alive!

Welcome back after all these years. Almost three years in fact. 990 days to be exact.

Bali: it’s a reasonably big island, approximately 45 x 90km, but ‘our’ bit is quite small – 8 x 16km - and hangs on the southern tip below a thin, appendix-like strip where the airport lives.

The airport may be familiar because of the crash a couple of months ago where a Lion Air plane decided the runway was too short and went swimming. Everyone got off so that was nice.

I stayed in a hotel opposite Martini’s hotel (not allowed to stay there – company rules) for the first few nights while we house-hunted and gave the once-over to the beachside restaurants.

House-hunting, as usual, was frustrating, but eventually we let lucky whilst driving around in a taxi when Martini spied ‘a sign’. There’s always one somewhere. Lovely little secluded, private, almost gated, cul-de-sac’d, single street of 18 houses (nine each side) so no through traffic and we’re almost at the end so virtually no traffic at all - three bedrooms, three bathrooms plus a maid’s room and maid’s toilet. It was ‘finished’ d day before we saw it but, of course, some of the windows don’t close properly, all the shower heads leak and one toilet takes four years to refill. All standard, new house stuff.

The rent is extortionate: $4,600CAD per year! (£2,900, S$5,600, NZ$5,600). Martini asked if it was negotiable whereupon the wifey of the builder snapped, “No!” I said we should have replied, “That’s a shame, we wanted to offer more.”

Next thing shopping. For everything. Forever. I never want to go shopping again. Ever. Anywhere. For anything. Having said that, (hate that phrase) most everything is really well priced but the numbers frighten my brain. A ‘big shop’ ends up at Rp550,000, which is eleven blue banknotes. They’re the equivalent of $5CAD each (3/6/6) so it’s not a big deal, but dealing with hundreds of thousands and millions just doesn’t compute; to stem panic attacks I have to convert everything all the time as my brain still uses Singalong dollars as its base currency.

Take furniture: I ordered the following, all hand-made in solid teak (for some reason blogspot insists on these images being sideways even though they're the correct way round in 'real' life):

4 – high-back dining chairs

1 - splendid ‘captain’s’ chair with padded seat cover (guess who for)

1 - 90 x 90 cm dining table

1 – coffee table

1 – 2-seater settee + padded seat cover

4 – folding chairs

1 - reclining, sooper-dooper thingy chair with adjustable footrest

2 – 80 x 70 cm desks

1 – cue drum-roll …. da-dah … 2.5m x 70 cm desk FOR ME!!!

Total: Rp7,000,000 – that’s seven million! Actually its $720CAD (455/880/880). Most people agree with me that the drum-roll-da-dah desk alone would have been more than that in any other country I’ve lived in.

Another example: taxis. One of the girls in Singapore has been selected by Kenya for the World Junior Championships in Dubai at the end of August. Her Sing school is on vacation so she has nowhere to train. Singapore Sports School has refused he permission to train there either with the school groups, or by herself before or after the school groups (2 x 10-lane 50m pools sitting empty for most of the day; go figure the community thinking behind that decision.) The official decision was, “It’s not part of our core business.” As I pointed out to them when I left; the model is wrong! Anyways, being from all around the world, the family was having their 4-yearly get-together and had commandeered the whole of a resort in Ubud (think The Blessed Julia in Eat, Pray, Love). They contacted me to see if I could help. Sure, I’ll come up to Ubud and we’ll find a pool somewhere. Somewhere was a nearby hotel with a 30m x 1-lane pool with impossible-to-turn ends, but it was straight so it was usable. Ubud is a two-hour drive so I asked Sucipto, my tame taxi driver to take me and wait before bringing me back. Six hours in total - $46/29/55/55. Quite remarkable.

What else? Martini and I visited Klub Jimbaran as a possible venue for the wedding (apologies for the website – NEVER, NEVER, NEVER put ‘under construction’ on a website!!!). This is a new private club (klub?) quite nearby and it turned out to have a quite nice 6-lane, 25m pool. The brochures offer seven types of martial art lessons, three types of dance/yoga (not sure how they are synonymous but whatever), futsal, table-tennis, general fitness access etc. but only general access to the pool – no organized lessons, development or training groups whatsoever. So I have a meeting with them tomorrow to discuss the possibilities. As the Zen Master said, “We’ll see.”

Monday morning

The delegates at the annual Indonesian Barbi-doll convention waiting for their flight back to Hasbro headquarters.

Sunday evening

Blueberry Pancake House and Bar – the on-site restaurant at our Jakarta Pusat hotel features a warm ambience and beautiful furnishings on top of sumptuous dishes.

The furnishings really are beautiful; rich, warm, deep mahogany woods and deep ruby décor. The greeting waiter was friendly and pleasant (two different things?) and spoke English. Now that’s not a prerequisite for a waiter in Jakarta but it certainly is a bonus. Sports channel TV’s played Bolton vs. Liverpool but that could be excused as Man U had played the previous day. I guess, though, they could have showed replays of the real footy. As we approached the door a lurking weird-o tagged along behind and joined us at the bar. I snagged a menu and we escorted ourselves to a table of our choice. The weird-o tried to inject himself in-between myself and Martini, who was oblivious to his presence, but I cut him off with a lithe body-swerve and he slid, Gollum-like, out into the dark night.

The menu was interesting, starting with sweet pancakes, and then moving to savoury pancakes, then crescendo-ing to a carnivore’s delight with multi-choices of good, teeth-sharpening, protein-over-dosing steak and other succulent meaty things. I chose pepper steak and had a rare old time ascertaining what cut it was going o be.

“Steak,”

“Well, yes, it would be, but what cut? Fillet? T-bone? Sirloin?”

“Ah, you want sirloin? This said while crossing out the order for pepper steak.

“No, I want pepper steak but I want to know what kind of steak.”

This continued and was eventually brought to a conclusion by Martini intervening in Indonesian and telling me, “Tenderloin.” Now, that wasn’t too difficult, was it? I told you he spoke English.

Now to drinks; the menu listed Guinness but the Blueberry Pancake house and Bar must have had a reciprocal agreement with Ya-Udah because Guinness was “off” but the local brew, Bintar, was on and was “more”, so a large one of those, please.

As we were waiting for service, Martini said,

“Don’t look. Don’t look. At your one-o’clock there’s a strange …”

I cut her off, “Yes, I know, a weird-o looking through the window at us.” Then I told her the body-swerve story. We moved on to brighter topics. Shortly after I noticed someone weird at a table facing us on the far side of the room; our weird-o had returned. Laptop before him, EPL footy in direct vision, he was behaving himself as all self-respecting weird-o’s should but I didn’t see him eat. It did cross my mind that it was Haloween and, maybe, just maybe, he suffered from a case of pernicious anaemia and ate people, but I let it pass.

Martini had ordered ox-tail and it came in a sumptuous stew, cooked to perfection but with just, slightly, minuscule-ly, fractionally, less herbs, spices and seasoning than would place it firmly in the total, all-over perfection bracket. My steak came on a sizzling platter shaped like its donor cow, along with a large side plate of veggies and French fries. These were proper fries; crispy outside, slightly firm and floury inside, and of a size which begged to be dipped, uncut, into either the ox-tail stew or the pepper sauce. When I had finished it I observed that I could order exactly the same and eat it again. Not because the portion was too small but because it just was so, so tasty.

Definitely a place to return to (to which to return?) and maybe next time I’ll try the blueberry pancakes. Need to get rid of the weird-o though.

Sunday morning

Breakfast in the Bumi Johar is not an exciting time. The buffet choices are boring and lukewarm. The coffee tastes as if it’s been shipped in from the Ya-udah next door and, on this Sunday morning, 30 minutes before the scheduled finish, three dish choices were empty.

“Finish,” said the inscrutable waiter.

“Well, go and make some more,” I ventured, to which blank disdain joined inscrutability in a mesmerising cohabitation of Asian disregard for western dollars.

Martini ate three horse worth’s of whatever was left – soupy stuff, noodles, crispy things - and then we moved back to the Ya-udah to give it another chance. Sad, sad; expectations dashed on the rocks of eternal optimism. Will I never learn the lessons of life?

I ordered “Coffee and poached eggs on toast,” without looking at the menu, Martini also ordered poached on toast and an iced cappuccino which arrived with last night’s errant huge dollop of cream. It was to be the highlight of the Ya-udah experience. The espresso was dark, strong and slightly bitter, the coffee-milk combination excellently balanced and the creamy, slightly freezing ‘dollop’, suitably floating like a proud, silicon-implanted breast on the rib-cage of a precocious filly, guarding the refreshing drink just as it should. But not just as it needed, because the straw provided wasn’t long enough to reach the bottom of the glass so we (I insisted on sharing!) had to chose between leaving an inch or so of delicious cappuccino in the glass or risk spilling the remnants by tipping the glass and straw together. A small price to be paid for the best drink of the weekend.

The poached eggs arrived with the whites still transparent so I sent them back. When they returned they were suitably opaque with the yolks soft and inviting, in fact, perfectly poached, very fresh eggs. First time around would have been a good business strategy. The toast was made from a good, probably some kind of sour-dough, bread but between the eggs and the bread was ... nothing. Butter was requested, as was another missing ingredient; the “rich Hollandaise sauce” so deliberately described on the menu. Again, Martini was amazed at my recollection; I’d studied this menu in depth and detail. This was what had brought me back twice to Ya-Udah, giving it chance after chance to redeem itself and make realty and expectations coincide. It was not to be. The requested Hollandaise arrived weak, thin, lumpy, pale and lukewarm. Hollandaise emulsion is notoriously difficult to make but that’s why we buy it in restaurants where “professional” chefs can demonstrate their art. This particular sauce was a fascinating one because Hollandaise separates if the water over which it is whisked is too cold, and the eggs scramble if the water is too hot. This had both separated and contained segments of scrambled egg. The portions of butter added were obviously too large as the sauce had not thickened at all, and the total amount of butter also too large because the mess had curdled; quite frankly, a cosmic catastrophe of a sauce. Maybe that’s why they tried not serving it in the first place!

OK, one last chance because I had an appetite to feed; Grandma’s Apple Pie. According to the menu, "a must to round off your meal." Not bad, not bad at all. Not historic. Not exceptional, not outstanding, but fairly good. Maybe my expectations had hit rock bottom and this was a step up? The presentation was nice – a large flat plate with a soft-pastry’d pie in the centre, surrounded by a generous helping of custard and one dollop of vanilla ice-cream off to the side. The pastry had a slightly resistive, spongy feel to it and made me reminisce about my real Grandma’s pastry which was always historic, exceptional and outstanding. And she never measured anything, simply taking handfuls of ingredients and performing alchemy to produce pastry which transcended belief. Ya-Udah’s pastry’s ability to make me think of Grandma Bond’s pasty was a huge plus. Well done. The ice-cream was cold. “So,” you ask? Well, so was the custard, and I’m convinced it wasn’t meant to be. Nothing wrong with cold, lumpy custard and ice-cream when it accompanies my favourite - cherry pie – but I think this was supposed to be hot. If it was meant to be cold, it wasn’t cold enough and was thinking about threatening to consider melting the ice-cream.

Now the real black mark! Big, huge. This from the Ya-Udah website:

Our Smoking Policy

For smokers, we salute you: SMOKE! For non-smokers, please: NON-SMOKE!
We all get along as Ya-Udah is a classic indoor-outdoor restaurant, with a brace of ceiling fans to keep the delightful Jakarta air well-stirred. Smokers can carry on happily, without disturbing the non-smokers, who are in fact advised that if they are really serious about protecting their lungs from the dangerous effects of tobacco smoke, replete with poisons and carcinogens, that they pursue this line of logic to its natural end and refrain from breathing the air of Indonesia’s busy capital as well. Jakarta air is, one could argue, considerably more trying to the lungs than a few puffs of the heavenly weed.

Well, there you have it; total disdain for the comfort of customers, total ignorance of well-prepared food. Do, or do not; there is no try. Yoda was clear on the philosophy and the action. Ya-Udah is masquerading as a wanna-be Jedi-knight. The Force is definitely not with this one. “Sorted”? I think not. “Done?” The customers are being.