Back Home To Bali’s Best Charms And a Bit Of Silence
HOME at last. A month away is a long time. You worry about what’s been happening. Such as whether the renovations next door have (a) finally finished; (b) changed tack again; or (c), caused your house to collapse. It would be just like someone to [...]

Why the Misty Isles Are Still Best Missed
LONDON
A WEEK in Britain certainly reminds exiles why it was that they chose exile in the first place, even as long ago as 40 years in The Diary’s case. There’s the weather for one thing: it hovered in The Diary personal most-hated zone all week – around 5C [...]

Their Bark Is Loud and Incessant; and Wide off the Mark
THE be-nice-to-doggies lobbies have been chewing our ear again over what you should and shouldn’t do in the face of a dangerous outbreak of rabies that – for whatever reason – seems to be running well outside the norms of what sensible people would assess [...]

Welcome Home the AirAsia Way
THE Diary stepped aboard AirAsia from Denpasar to Perth last Friday, en route to a necessary reconnection with the residual Australian elements of life that seem mandatory for expatriates from the Great Southern Land. It’s not so much the Vegemite – now Indonesia has worked out that it is not actually [...]

What’s in a Name (1)? Well, a Nice Little Row, For One Thing
MANY of the entrepreneurial types you see around Bali – and in Lombok, similarly enthused by the prospect of selling something to a bule – have given themselves “English” names. Sunglass sellers are among these, most ubiquitously; though buying a set of ready-to-fracture [...]