By Hector We hold no brief for drug runners or the low-life scum who organise them; or for terrorists who avoid being blown away and are thus forced into a system of jurisprudence that really should have nothing to do with them. And we concede that the death penalty argument is a particularly fractious one [...]

By Hector The Diary spent last Friday night and much of last Saturday unplugged. The internet was inaccessible, as well as inexplicable when your high-priced provider only provides online support in business hours. It was all eventually sorted out – or it sorted itself out – but this process took place without benefit of explanation. [...]

Rabies is a frightful disease best dealt with, should it appear, with draconian measures. Before the present outbreak caught everyone by surprise – including the local authorities and the first victims of it, who went to their graves never knowing what had killed them so horribly – Bali was officially a rabies-free area. Whether it [...]

By Hector It was amusing to read recently that the Krakatoa Festival in Lampung, Sumatra, had been less than a total success. Apparently, organisers forgot all about Krakatoa and instead focused on lots of singing and dancing; that was fine. And on heaps of boring speeches from local luminaries; which was not. There are two [...]

By Hector The Diary generally avoids KLS (Kuta-Legian-Seminyak) on a Friday night, because of the parking difficulties, the overcrowded venues, the danger of running into a lot of loudmouths and the generalised distemper that inevitably follows this trio of woes. There are exceptions to this rule. One is when Sophie Digby asks you out (we’ve [...]

By Hector It’s by no means clear that conservationists in search of a headline have any capacity for lateral thinking; or that they care about collateral damage; or that they understand that the term non sequitor (it means: it doesn’t follow) applies to logic as well as grammar. We raise this thorny issue because, in [...]

By Hector It might seem a reasonable question to put to the organisers of this year’s Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. They seem to be in Melbourne, where the publicists reside, and Umalas, from where the energetic Bali-based but otherwise chiefly elsewhere-focused social media outfit water&stone operates. (It does so very well, incidentally.) UWRF 2010 [...]

By Hector There are, it is said, none as blind as those who will not see. To which one might add: And none so immune to the possibility of another point of view than one-eyed campaigners for high-profile causes. The cause of Schapelle Corby is one such minefield for any who suggest – reasonably – [...]

By Hector From Ungasan to Canggu, and from Kuta to Sanur, via much of Denpasar and scattered blots about Ubud, the Blight of Bali grows ever worse. That’s noise we’re talking about. It’s an issue of absolutely central concern. It comes from dogs – you’d think they’d keep a bit quiet at the moment, given [...]

By Hector It is not exactly clear why the deficient and frankly sometimes criminally inclined Not Blue Bird Group taxi companies and cooperatives in Bali think they have a licence to wreck the island’s only user-friendly service. It would be unfair to tar all the non-Blue Birds with the same brush, since they are not [...]

By Hector Our many web readers, like The Diary, no doubt breathed a sigh of relief on reading earlier this week that the drugs-in-socks man, Robert Paul McJannett, had ceased being a drain on local resources and had gone home. We have the story in this week’s print edition too, for readers who prefer newsprint. [...]

By Hector A DRIVE to Candi Dasa is always interesting; in recent months – and judging by progress identified thus far, and the scarcity of scenes of actual work taking place, for many more months to come – this interest level has been heightened further by the Australian-funded duplication of the splendidly named Prof Ida [...]