bachelor's breakfast

I've managed to get pretty healthy just eating a variety of fruit every morning around 7:30. nothing else except some yogurt once a week. papaya, mango, pineapple, watermelon or mangosteen, banana...yum. I get hungry again around 9:21 am. go figure. All I have to do is ignore that until lunch. easy now, hard when I started. The benefit is I digest easily, I feel better (swimming every day) and I've lost all my baby belly fat. ahh, little miracles.

3 squares a day

daily gourmet!

amazing food!

this dish is nasi campur (cham-purr)

-"mixed rice"

the wrapped items are a sweet rice roll with a savory/cumin flavored chicken. also shown, tempe manis -sweet sauce, crunchy flavor. also, in the banana leaf is a chicken dumpling. this is staple food.

Ginger Tea and Rolling Blackouts

Ginger tea is perhaps the finest tasting beverage i've had in awhile. The root is straight from the garden next to the kitchen, loaded with flavor and prepared perfectly. I could drink it all day long,

unless...

The rolling blackouts hit the land far and wide.

Let's set the scene,

I imagine a moist, tropical little municipal office deep in the heart of Bali's central city of Denpasar, the air thickened with plumes of clove cigarette smoke at night time. Inside are eight Balinese men preoccupied by a chess tournament that was started twelve days ago with the best of intentions; to decide the fate of the most corrupt among them. The loser will have to buy next time he collects. Laughter aside, their motivations are pure; live to protect number one. An effort that is completely possible with a little help for one's wife. Well, all the help actually.

Meanwhile, running concurrent to the goings-on within the corruption den is a series of events unfolding at a rapid clip next door under the Department of Redundancy Department. Little do the chess players know that due to a sluicing underground fire-hose shot of rice paddy runoff a deep hollow is collapsing beneath the DRD and this will soon form a chasm wide enough to swallow the Giga-Vector Watt Extrusion Contingency Device sent here by the Dutch to prevent rolling blackouts.

God help us all tonight, and please pray to the Hindu Gods of candles, flashlights, matches...and my internet access.

me and Ben's boys at Canggu beach

Canggu beach at sunset

nice end to a great day.

a little more crowded than usual due to the holiday weekend.

Durian

This is not advised;

eating durian, aka; "toe jam fruit" on a bike trip break. gross, creamy, custardy center, stinky as hell. ben made me try it.

sample of the good stuff

After diluting with water my friend Ben and the gardedner Joko will bottle, label and sell at nurseries and farmer's markets in Bali for $3 a bottle. You spray it on your soil along with a microbial mixture and never turn the soil. The microbes help you to improve crop production by a factor of ten. Guano is the best fertilizer.