Japanese musical chairs...

I guess the Japanese heard of this popular American game that all youngsters know from youth... and, in true Japanese form, put their own spin on it!?!

These ultra-swank toilets are truly cutting-edge!

I had my first encounter with these musical chairs on a stopover in Narita airport on my way home for Christmas, and of course, I played with all the buttons - and of course, I couldn't figure out how to shut it off!  So everyone in the washroom was probably laughing their heads off when I came out of the stall sopping wet, having had a full-fledged shower with the bidet, and the flushing sound stuck on with the volume set to high...

I'm sure that in the deluxe model there are a variety of noise buttons... For your personal 'sonic privacy', you can choose from a number of different tunes, as well as the classic flushing sound; the length and volume is completely at your discretion.  As is that of the bidet - if I'd read the instructions before just fiddling, I'm sure it would have been a very pleasurable experience... you can probably even choose the temperature of the water as well as the water pressure!?  Anyway, lesson is, RTFM.

They even provide an entire, somewhat cryptic instruction manual on their use, right in the stall, for your reading pleasure.

They hadn't yet programmed them to sing Jingle Bells for the holiday season!?

notice anything different???

nope, not a new sound... a new LOOK!

i figured out how to add titles to my posts - YES, another technical challenge complete.

Nice to meet you Mr. Village Coconut!

People often tell me how they enjoy my anecdotes and funny language-learning stories of my time here in Indonesia... I realize I should have been writing a series on this all along!

The best one to date, and thus the one I will start this series with is how I went around for an entire year, being introduced to the most important people in the villages in the Raja Ampat archipelago, and greeting them as the "Village Coconut"!

You see, kelapa (coconut) and kepala (head) were easily interchanged in my brain, got mixed up early on, and took a long time to sort out!  So the head of the village became...

"I'm so honoured to be here, Mr. Head Coconut"

"Pleased to meet you, Sir Village Coconut"...

What baffles me is, A) that no one ever let on that anything was amiss... no one cracked so much as a smile!? and B) that they let me go on saying that for AN ENTIRE YEAR without tactfully letting me know!?!

"Oh isn't that nice, little Johnny, so when you grow up you want to follow in your dad's footsteps and be the Village Coconut, too!?!"

Paint me a Song

On Tuesday evening, Helen and I ventured over to 'the other side' for an event - reknown Dutch artist Theos Sijrier (I'll be honest as well, the name didn't ring any bells for me, either, but I'll admit I'm not an abstract art buff) was doing a live painting to the music of Moko Blues Band. They call it an 'action painting performance'!?

The whole thing was set up to raise funds for disabled kids in Bali, and was hosted by Mannekepis in Seminyak.

We arrived, had a very nice, leisurely, dinner (I definitely recommend this Belgian restaurant) and drinks, and at 9 the show started. It turned out there were two artists there doing their thing... painting 6 meter x 2 meter canvases to musical accompaniment. Theos is an abstract artist, and quite a showman... he was fun to watch. It was really interesting watching the paintings evolve, and appreciate the motions that go into the creation of these works of art. I don't have the extra dough (or a wall to hang anything on for that matter), but I think it would be kinda cool to own a painting that you WATCHED being created.

The idea was that at the end of the evening, the painting would be cut up, and each piece would be auctioned off (proceeds to go to the disabled children's unit planned at the Sunrise School in Kerobokan, near Kuta)... BUT what I heard actually happened (we were too zonked to actually stay through until the end) was that one woman was so enamored with the piece as a whole she bought it on the spot!

A unique evening...