“In Bali I am the BOSS….”, Bali, January 1st, 2012

If I can not spend Christmas at home I need to make sure that I can at least participate thanks to modern technology and that I myself have a good time in style. No better place than David’s apartment in Singapore. Him having left for the States, me taking care of his cat give the whole place to me and justifies the free stay on top, perfect. So my Christmas day was very simple, sleep in, watch TV, go shopping, take a dip into the pool, cook myself a steak dinner and be skype connected with the German family presents presentation – it took 3 hours – I thought we are not that many and not that rich but I guess we are.  Now do not even think “how sad, he was alone.”. I was not and I fell in love with my partner, so cute, so soft, so demanding and so giving.

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Some of David’s friends invited me for a Turkey dinner party which covered the 25^th and the 26^th (sleep in) of December. I try to return the favor by taking some photos of Jason’s quiet special place. Selfish me, I wanted to take them also to file some ideas for later projects in life, smile.

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Andre, an old McCain colleague and now a friend, I would not consider terrible spontaneous but he decided to spend new year with me, how cool is that. Arriving late the 26^th we spend 2 days catching up, enjoying life (mission impossible 4 is not that bad and the German restaurant “Brotzeit” fantastic) and exploring Singapore. Two attempts to get onto the terrace of the Marina Bay Sands hotel & casino failed (too late and already full) but still the view was impressive. Visiting the church I could not stop comparing third and first world. While some are happy with fans on the wall here the church is packed with air conditioning and flat screen TV’s, see photo below.

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Arriving in Bali on the 29^th we faced the mixture of 2 worlds squeezed into a short stretch of beach. Hundreds of Hotels offering high class comfort for wealthy westerners, thousands of touts trying to get the penny left over (“hey boss, want bike, want taxi, want girl, want tour……..hey boss, stop, ….want mushroom, want massage, hey boss, good price for you”) and millions of bikes jamming up an infrastructure which obviously can not keep up with grow. I am not sure if the bikes actually cause the jams or reduce them. I am sure that not wearing helmets and driving like crazy solves the time constraints and poverty of some quickly every day. Later a taxi driver would confirm to me the immense fatality rate on Bali roads. Anyway, Andre and I rented a car at the airport and it took us 3 hours to drive it back to the hotel, 14 km away. Instead of anger we had a good laugh, talking about our interesting batchroom. (see pic)

Despite the talking and party objective we still wanted to do some culture. Early morning we left to avoid traffic jams but the missing preparation in combination with missing road signs or an GPS led to another challenge of our patience. Again we managed with a good laugh and the day turned out to be fruitful. Temples, mountains, monsoon rain and the biggest temple of all in Besakih. Here we also had some fun with the touts.

Another traffic jam on our way to new year celebration. Not wanting to be in a taxi for the event, we jumped out. Not wanting to celebrate without a beer we ran into a mini market. Boom, midnight, that’s where Andre and I entered 2012, in a mini mart in Bali. Great. A few more hours of dancing in clubs and it was time to say good bye. How quickly a week passes by if you are with somebody you connect with. Now I had to make up my mind what to do in Indonesia …………………………

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