Monday 15th Dec, a Happy Monday!
No Rain but No Surf either today;
Woke late this morning feel tired from surfing all day, spent much of the day with alocal surfboard tailor/bag manufacturer helping to design a few items handy for travelers and surfers eg, small wallet and passport waist bag for travelling. He has some cool fabrics nylons and trimmings so today was a fun day on sewing machines and a computer updating my Blog. not much in the way of waves today and the email connection has been real slow.
RE; Balinese moped Grandprix
I never mentioned in yesterdays Blog that as I was driving along the main by pass two locals on a moped came off pretty hard the driver was catapulted over the handlebars, he was wearing a helmet . The passenger a heavy young Indonesian lad hit his head clean on the floor and was out cold, the fact he was not wearing a helmet did not help his situation. His eyes were rolled back into his head and there was a stream of blood pouring out his head. I heard the impact but did not see the actual slam. Pulled over to help move the bike out the road, did not really want to move him but he was lying in the middle of a merciless dual carriage way, I saw everything up close, he was in a pretty bad way. Some locals literally ran to his aid and just dragged him out the road to the dirt on the side and placed him in the recovery position with no concern to possible damage to his spinal coloumn. Luckily for him the Hospital was on the other side of the road so no doubt he will be fine. To his benefit the ambulance only took 3 mins to arrive.
A Warning to myself on my moped;
life seems cheaper here in some way, hard to explain but maybe its the belief in reincarnation the locals hold or just the fact it is so densely populated, I am not going to attempt to articulate this statement with acuity at this juncture but it is just a feeling you get when you see the organised chaos on the roads. If people drove cars here instead of mopeds I am sure nothing would function at all.The mopeds run around like ants and if each one was a car like in the uk It would be complete gridlock all day everywhere, alway, so there is some sense in it all somewhere..
Afro / Indo Percussion Session;
Met a drum maker today so I stopped to check out his crafts, I was invited to sit down and play, so we spent an hour having a percussion session in his shop with about four of us playing, Great fun on locally made mahogany djembe drums, great sound for a djembe drum. They liked my playing which was a compliment and I have been invited to come and play with the shop owner and his band in Bondi Bar tonight, Legian Street (the main Street in Kuta for Boutiques and Nightclubs) I may just go and see how that works out as I have spent many years playing percussion and having percussion lessons, so it could be fun.
Emirates;
are arranging delivery of my Nikon camera that I left on the plane to Jakarta for tomorrow afternoon, $60 us to be hand delivered, I am looking forward to getting it back so I can document the small details of my day and the things I experience. This is to share with you all on my blog. My Digital SLR feels to big and a bit too valuable to be taking around Kuta as I am still a bit worried about losing it at this stage.
Today was a mellow day no surf, organised a few things, getting a coldsore tingle on my lip, feel a bit run down having surfed in the sun for a few days running. A day of rest.