Nasi Campur

Komang is a driver I know. He speaks pretty good English but sticks with Indonesian with me, always teaching me and helping me with it. He's also positive and a nice guy. He drove me and two others to the Vipassana retreat last month and when we stopped to eat he ordered nasi campur, rice with a mix of other food, a very common dish here and usually quite inexpensive. He said he eats that three times a day seven days a week. He's got a lot of company.

Sweeping

Here in Bali a common sight is to see people stooping and sweeping with their brooms made from coconut tree leaves. They don't seem to care about nearby trash strewn around though. Just the immediate area that's theirs to sweep.

Fave Fruit

We keep hard shell purple mangosteens and hairy red rambutans in bowls on the porch. They're both in season right now. Mangosteens or mangis to them is one good reason to be here and golf ball sized rambutans another to my taste.  Mangosteens can get four times bigger than that. They're opened by holding in both hands and pressing hard between the heal of the hand - pops em open and the succulent juicy white fruit is there. If it's too hard to open it's gone bad and don't bother. Rambutan can be opened with a knife or teeth - the inside comes right out and is like lychee. Lychee (lici here) looks just like it without the hair. If it's juicy, if any liquid comes out, it's going bad.

They is Right On!

‘They’: the singular pronoun that could solve sexism in English - from the Guardian
I posted this comment on this guardian article: Agreed. I've been using they this way in songs, books, articles for decades, on my web sites since 98 - to get rid of gender and because I preferred the sound (I disliked both he and she when we don't know). - dc (cuke dot com)

Free Dental Floss ad

Ran out. And I only want Glide because my teeth are so close together. Can't find it anywhere here. I blew it. Since Guardian in Kuala Lumpur has it I figured that Guardian here would. Someone's bringing me some in a couple of weeks. Found the type with a short stretch of floss between two forks at the end of a plastic toothpick and the toothpick is excellent in that it's fine and curved at the end, but the floss on it is too thick for me. Will go check one last time in my storage area.

Daydreaming myself in a spotlight

Hillary Clinton will be 69 this year. I'm two years older. She'll be asked obscure questions like how we should relate to the president of Turkey and she'll say that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a good friend and so on. I imagine if I had to answer all those questions all the time like her that I'd go, "Uh... uh... his name's on the tip of my tongue..." and so on like that - and I mean even if he was a good friend. So I guess a requirement for running for office in the US is not to have that nominal aphasia problem or to have a press that will help you along like Reagan had - or a receiving box on your back and earpiece for help from Rove et al like the Shrub. - dc 

Don't pet dogs or cats in Bali

That's right. Better not. They're not used to it here and might bite or scratch you and then you've got to get a rabies shot because there's rabies here and it's too late once there are symptoms and it's the most lethal virus there is. Almost no cases ever of recovery. But some dogs and cats are okay.