Bali Hi There...

We're now in Bali, Indonesia.South Pacific... Bali Hai and all that. Happy, Happy Talking Happy Talk. The motorbikes and Bemos buzzing by amid the constant caterwaul of the Balinese Gamelan music. A Gamelan is a tuned percussion ensemble, usually a couple of bamboo marimbas and maybe some gongs that sound like so many oversize metal ashtrays, with their long ringy overtones that sustain in the air long after they are struck... and I am struck by the way that Liza and I are only now getting a little complacent in the face the constant beauty, palm tree burnout, is it possible? Like a guy has a right to complain about that sort of thing, too much paradise? Isn't that some kind of Heavy Metal Power Ballad title? 'Too Much Paradise' a duet between Lita Ford and Eddie Money or something... anyway we're only half burned out, maybe just a little road weary, maybe just homesick even though we arent sure where 'home' is anymore....Have you ever heard of the 'AFT' syndrome? It stands for 'Another F**kin' Temple'. Someone told us this one in India and even then it was true. And that was months ago now. But our spirits have been kicked up considerably by the arrival, via some sort of scheduling miracle, of our good friend Linda. Liza's best friend since grade seven and one of my best friends since, well since I met Liza, some fifteen or so years ago. But before I tell you all about the fun we're having here in Bali, I should document some of the later parts of our time in the big big city of, sing, Singapore. As I probably mentioned in the last posting, Singapore is a big, cosmopolitan city. Lot's of big buildings.Lots of people. Consumers consuming a wide array of consumables in constant consumption mode. Our initial forays into re-civilization, in Malaysian 'cities' such as Penang and Kuala Lumpur, only half-prepared us for the major attraction, Singapore. But first I must tell you about our hotel room there. We stayed at Singapore's Hotel Strand, a clean but not too fancy hi rise hotel near the Orchard Road shopping district. Being that S'pore is a rather pricey town, our room was not too cheap compared to other stops on the trip. The room was kind of funky though. Let me explain. Well, the first thing I noticed when entering the room, was the faux-tiger skin ottoman and that the walls where painted a very dark shade of mauve. Funky. But then I walked in further and, whoa there, the bathroom wall is MADE OF ONE PIECE OF GLASS. You can SEE your significant other showering and doing, um the other significant bit of business that one would do in said room. Kinky? Maybe. Funky? Definitely. Weird? You betcha. The glass walled bathroom resembled, to me anyway, the control room of a recording studio, the glass of the booth separating the booth from the 'live' area of the studio proper. I was alone in that assessment, fancy that? Anyway, the open view toilet was the first detail. Then we walked out into Singapore. Starved as we were for Western or at least for European culture, we started walking up the shopping street which was lined with Mall after Mall, of varying priceyness and class. Some of the malls were quite shabby and others were designer chic, so it was endless and endlessly amusing also. There are many cinemas, with English language films playing in them, in S'Pore. Liza and I duly bought our tickets to see the Johnny Depp cocaine saga 'Blow' and proceeded to the popcorn and soda stand. By the way Johnny Depp's performance, along with that of co-star Ray Liotta, is superb and it was nice to see Paul Reubens in such a serio-comic, bitter sweet role. Penelope Cruz? Nice to look at but her performance...ouch. Overall we quite enjoyed the diversion. tragic as it was. Not the feel good movie of the year, etc. Then it was off to a BORDERS SUPERSTORE. Bought TWO issues of Q magazine, my beloved British rock mag. Ate at a nice modern restaurant called Nooch, just above Borders. Had a diet Coke with crushed ice in the glass, it felt safe to eat the ice here. It turned out to be okay. Went to Starbucks on the way back to the hotel. It's weird, I'm always tempted to compare places when I go away. I wanted to say that Singapore was like New York because of all the high rise, and high rent and high society shopping. But it's not strictly like that. It's so damn clean to begin with. And the tree lined streets, well they are SORT OF like London, England but then again no...(as Elton John might sing) These trees, you see, are jungle trees. This is a city built on a rainforest. The city has grown on top of the jungle, only nobody told the jungle. So it grows. Do I compare it to Toronto? Nope. So I am left to tell you that Singapore is like no place on earth. And yet, in that homogenized, cosmopolitan, Starbucks McWay it's everycity. In KualaLumpur at least I found some semblamce of Malaysian culture, stashed in among the Jumbotron televsion screens and Manchester United boutiques (Man United, that British soccer club, have easily the most high end merchandising schemes going and I wonder if they make more money from the boutiques than the gate receipts at old Trafford...and I thought US sports was overbranded!)

We went to a really cool zoo though. The Night Safari at the Singapore Zoo. It is what it sounds like. A zoo at night. You get there around seven pm, as the sun has just gone down. There are electric tram trains that stealthily cart tours through the cleverly lit grounds where nocturnal animals, fooled by the simulated 'moon' lights planted amid the jungle canopy, come out to play and feed. This was very well done, very respectful to the animals and very conservation minded. There are no 'cages' per se. Sure, some of the Mangrove bats had to be in a fenced off enclosure and there was a glass retaining wall between us and the leopards, which was a GOOD thing I thought. But overall, any boundaries were neatly concealed and one felt as though one was chancing upon night herds of Rhinos, gazelles and coyotes. It was not at all tacky and I found that comforting. Liza had dragged me up there, I assure you I did not want to go all the way out to the suburbs of S'pore, first on the ultramodern subway and then on a very long city bus ride, but once we got there, I thanked her for insisting. It seems that I'm often thanking Liza for insisting that we make an extra effort to see something unique and/or special. So here we go again. Thanks Liza. The other thing that I thank Liza for insisting upon was our trip over to Singapore's island playground and sort of theme park, Sentosa island. The really cool thing about getting there was that we took this really unique cable car from the 14th (i think) floor of a high rise building on the waterfront. This cable car route actually goes through the building and the line stretches from Mount Faber all the way down to Sentosa. It's all rather breathtakingly dramatic, like landing your own personal helicopter. You get to really appreciate the organized and antiseptic clutter of the Singapore dockyards. Sentosa is a nice place to while away the afternoon and the Aquarium, with its plexiglass tunnel under the sharks and other marine life, is a must see attraction there. We actually payed to see the dolphin show and did the touristy thing. We lined up and, ever so respectfully, touched a pink dolphin. And NO I did not touch his blow-hole. I may be stupid enough to have spit in the streets of Singapore but I wouldnt stoop to touching a dolphin's blow hole. Gimme a break. Another monorail took us oh so slowly around Sentosa and we ended up eating at Burger King... sorry folks but I loved it. On one of our last evenings in Singapore, we went to the Singapore Museum of Modern Art, or something like that. A modern gallery with contemporary Asian artists work, mostly paintings and the like. This was a highlight and we were lucky enough to be there on a Friday night when the gallery admission was FREE. Cool idea. Quite liked the gallery. The art was all rather good too. The only other Singapore highlight that I want to share was the Singapore airport, Changi Airport by name. The Airport is, as it turns out,the mall to end all malls. Fabulously soundproofed, like a great hotel lobby, with much to see and do and nice places to sit and watch nice flatscreen televisions with variously sponsored programming of BBC World, CNN, CNBC Asia, and others, in chairs that have stereo speakers built in. And speaking of speakers. I finally bought a little stereo tape recorder in the singapore airport. A sony analogue tapecassette recorder with a little stereo microphone attachment. Now I can start recording some of the songs I'm writing on this trip. And I can also, for the first time on this trip, listen to other tapes in headphones. I can buy cheap cassettes of new music now. Just bought the Aimee Mann 'Bachelor No.2' re-release (even though I have the CD in storage 'back home')I was gonna go buy a cheap Minidisc recorder but I really only wanted a cheap reference recorder and this is the ticket...came out to about 45 US dollars at a place in Singapore airport...But as I said before, we're in Bali now. Lot's of gamelan music and assorted percussion. Let you know more later. Must go eat too much food now./