Penang Butterfly Farm

Once again, I have too many photos, but this time it's of butterflies instead of flowers. While in Penang, we visited the Penang Butterfly Farm, and were astounded at the variety and density of the butterflies...

lucky

As we headed out last night to get some Penang street food for dinner, we got caught in a torrential downpour. We had brought an umbrella and I had a raincoat, so only our shoes got soaked, and we did get our yummy food (laksa, hokkien mee, fried noodles, and shaved ice) but it was annoying nonetheless.

When we got back, we heard about the massive dust storms in Sydney that had the airport closed to international flights:


It's scary to think we were just there...I guess we should really count ourselves lucky!

Bali & the Balinese

D and I just spent the last four days in Bali. During that time, we learned a lot about Bali and the Balinese, both from our tour guide, and from the museum exhibits that we saw.

I've jotted down some things that I thought were interesting (apologies if some are a little vague due to faulty memory):

- The Balinese live according to three principles of harmony. They aspire to live in harmony with the gods, with other people, and with the natural environment. As a result they are naturally concerned about environmental matters.

- Every day, people in Bali give offerings to the gods. These offerings include both food and decoration (flowers, etc.) and are given to both the "high" gods and the "low" gods. Often the food offerings are eaten by birds or other creatures, which the Balinese are fine with (see "harmony with nature" above). As a result, the flower growing industry is actually quite large.

- Karma and reincarnation are core beliefs and are commonly referenced.

- The Balinese have ceremonies, festivals, and celebrations all the time. In addition to the Gregorian and lunar calendars, they have a separate Balinese calendar which consists of 420 days divided into 12 months (each month is precisely 35 days). Each temple has a special "odalan" festival every half year (210 days) to "renew" the temple. Cremation is one of the most important ceremonies, with multiple phases. The last phase requires a visit to Pura Besakih (the Mother Temple), to retrieve the ancestor's spirit and bring it back to his/her home village.

- Bali has over 1500 "traditional villages", which are grouped by district. For example, the Ubud district has over 35 villages. The districts are further grouped into regencies, of which there are a total of eight. Bali has about 5-6 million people, of which 1-2 million are "temporary" visitors.

- The island is fairly small; you can drive around it in around a day. However, roads are not very wide and/or straight, so you can only drive about 50-60 kph on most roads.

- Ubud has no taxis, only "drivers" with which you must bargain before getting into the car. With enough haggling, the prices are very reasonable; we paid about 200,000 rupiah to travel an hour and fifteen minutes from Denpasar's airport to Ubud, and probably could have done better had we not been in a hurry.

- There are temples everywhere, and they enforce "traditional" dress, which consists of a sarong, a sash, and for men, a headdress. Women and men tie their sarongs differently, so the sarongs are cut slightly differently. Also, women tend to wear more flowery patterns, and men wear more abstract patterns.

- The Balinese are known for art, culture, music, dance, and other creative pursuits. As a result, there are lots of great museums and shows all the time. It seems like every person on Bali is involved in some form of artistry. For instance, our guide used to play one of the instruments used to accompany dance troups.

- There were actually many European artists who came to Bali in the early 20th century and ended up staying for long periods of time. These people ended up significantly influencing the local artists; for example, we noticed cubist tendencies in some paintings, and the use of pointillism in others, etc.

- There are 33 "clans" which are loose extended family groupings that are disjoint from village residency. For instance, there is a blacksmith clan, a mining clan, a royal clan, etc. Each clan has its own temple at Pura Besakih, the Mother Temple.

- There are five essential holy metals: gold, silver, steel, copper, and I think iron. These five metals were brought from the island of Java and buried at Pura Besakih, to found the Mother Temple and thus, Hinduism in Bali. There are some mineral deposits in Bali but it's forbidden to mine them, as locals believe one must not take from the land without giving back (hence burying the metals). For instance, to cut down a tree, one must plant a new one. I'm not sure how this works out as we were told a sandalwood tree takes 50 years to replace.

- Rice farming is huge in Bali; all around Ubud are tons of rice paddies. Ducks are set loose in the rice paddies for some positive reason which I've forgotten. As a side effect, the ducks also fertilize the land.

- They used to grow Balinese rice which is harvested twice a year (3+ months growing time) but now there is a hybrid rice strain which can be harvested three times a year (2+ months growing time). They also intersperse one growth of an alternate plant (water spinach or some such) per year. Birds are a big problem and there are lots of clever variants of scarecrows which flap and make noises when blown by the wind.

- Rice is the staple food, and traditionally the Balinese eat rice three times a day. However, chopsticks are not used. (We soon discovered that we're retarded at eating Asian food with forks.)

- Each village is generally known for a particular craft (e.g. wood, silver, a particular dance, painting, etc.).

- During special ceremonies the Balinese hang tall streamers which they decorate with flowers and other little items (kind of like how we decorate Christmas trees).

- Ceremony preparations often take weeks. The women prepare the offerings and the men build the temporary structures.

- Kite flying used to be a very popular form of leisure, but these days many Balinese kids prefer to play video games indoors, rather than hang out in the rice paddies.

- Rice terraces are harder to maintain than flat rice fields; if they are not shored up properly then they are susceptible to landslides.

- Bali does not have a problem with water shortages (as we noticed while we were there!) but some other Indonesian islands sometimes do.

- There are often purification fountains at temples. Each station has a particular meaning, which leads to long lines in front of particular fountains. Also, some are reserved for the cremation ceremony and are seldom used.

- Common food offerings include coconuts, rice, bananas, and other everyday foods.

- Odd numbers are considered holy, and the number eleven is considered the most holy. The most important pagodas at Pura Besakih have eleven tiers. There are also seven levels; I think that was to match the seven levels that the Balinese believe comprise the world.

- The Balinese appear to identify much more strongly with Bali than with Indonesia. For instance, they often refer to Balinese art, Balinese dances, Balinese puppets, Balinese-style kris (daggers), etc. They typically refer to themselves as Balinese rather than Indonesian.

- The women seem to carry everything on their heads. I saw some women with truly huge baskets and boxes balanced on their heads with no arm/hand support at all. I would more often see young girls using their hands, I suppose they needed lots more years of practice to get the balancing trick down.

- I'm glad that I'd read the Ramayana in high school; even though I'd forgotten a lot of it I vaguely remembered the overall story and knew who Rama and Sita and Hanuman were, and the fact that there was an ogre king. This was especially useful as there was an entire Ramayana-inspired area in the Neka Art Museum. However, I'd forgotten practically everything I knew about the Hindu gods, except that Ganesh was the main god (and looked like an elephant), and Shiva was pretty important too. Sigh.

how things work in Singapore

We met up with some friends in Singapore a few days ago, and sampled a wide variety of Singaporean dishes at the Food Republic in Vivo City, one of the newest and biggest malls in Singapore. Afterwards we retired to a nearby coffee shop to catch up and chat.

It was really interesting talking to Singaporeans about Singapore. Actually, one isn't even a native Singaporean; he grew up in South Africa and only moved about three years ago. Perhaps as a result of years of Johannesburg living, he seems to appreciate the extreme order (and personal safety) in Singapore even more than the native Singaporeans.

The government obviously plays quite a large role in shaping people's everyday lives, but Singaporeans don't seem to mind; they accept minor inconveniences as the cost of a high standard of living. The general sentiment seems to be that the government is run by the best and the brightest and "they know best".

Some interesting tidbits:
- Singapore is opening a casino soon, but they will charge 200 SGD admission for any non-foreign customers. This is likely to be a huge deterrent for the local population and is intended to prevent most gambling-related societal problems.
- Singapore's income taxes are extremely low (7%) and there are no property taxes. We spent several minutes explaining the concept of property taxes to them; at first he thought we were talking about a tax charged during the property transaction itself. As a result, Singaporeans have a huge amount of disposable income. However, they seem not to spend much of it; they have a very high savings rate. Empirically we've observed many people walking around in malls but not many people were actually in the stores buying things. People seem to be mostly using the malls to get from place to place in air conditioned comfort.
- Since they have a lot of cash, people in Singapore often buy cars and even houses outright. Also, the rate of home ownership is extremely high; I didn't hear an exact number but as they both said, "everyone we know" owns a home. Also, "government subsidized housing" has a whole different connotation in Singapore; since private housing is much more expensive (not only to buy, but to maintain), about 80% of owned homes are subsidized.
- Borrowing money is much less common than in the US. This probably helped Singapore through the recent recession; in fact many Asian investors are now snapping up prime commercial real estate in New York, London, and Sydney, since the values are depressed and they have the necessary cash in hand. Our friends were very confused about the notion of borrowing money on purpose (i.e. for a car loan) to "establish good credit". They argued (and I personally agree) that not ever having had to borrow money should be counted as a plus, not a minus, for a potential borrower.
- Singapore, like many Asian countries, is having a population crisis. To encourage couples to have children, the government has implemented substantial reductions to income taxes for couples with children. In fact, a couple with three children ends up paying no income tax at all. This policy was only recently implemented so it's hard to anticipate the long term effect, but it does not seem to be working as well as expected, as of yet.

orchids, orchids, everywhere

We went to Singapore's National Botanical Gardens yesterday and I of course took a billion more photos. Here are a few, mostly from the Orchid Garden:

last thoughts about Australia

Having left Australia, I wanted to mention a few final things that we noticed during our two weeks there...

Tipping is not the custom. In fact, it's discouraged. Many times I felt really strange leaving a restaurant or a hotel room or a taxi without tipping, but as far as I could tell, no one else ever left a tip either. We did end up leaving a small tip at Tetsuya's, but we had had extremely good service there.

All the outlets in all the hotels that we stayed at had on/off switches. I guess it's to save electricity? At first I thought it was inconvenient but I soon got used to it.

All the toilets (in the hotels, restaurants, airports, beaches, and other public places) had half and full flush buttons, even in the outback. Generally speaking I was pleasantly surprised by the level of environmental concern in Australia.

Several of our hotels offered "luggage collection service" where you tell the front desk what time you want the bell desk to pick up your luggage on the check-out day, and then you can just leave. The luggage will magically show up in the lobby at the later time that you specify. Did I mention there's no tipping?

All of our hotels provided stamps, and charged them to our bill. So simple, yet so useful.

Many restaurants charged for small things such as sauces (tomato sauce, tartar sauce, cocktail sauce) and bread. I was actually kind of happy about this, despite having to figure out beforehand how much sauce I would need for one order of fries. Lots of times when I get fast food in the US they just give you a big handful of sauce and it either sits in your fridge for forever, or you end up wasting it.

When you get your bill in a restaurant, most of the time there will be a business card or two tucked in there. I like to collect business cards because I'm forgetful (about where I've been), so this was great for me; it prevented me from having to make the effort to get one myself.

It seems like they're all good things, so I'll mention one bad (or at least neutral) one. There is this horribly confusing traffic rule in Melbourne called the "hook turn":


Basically, at major intersections, in order to turn right, you have to pull into the far left lane, go into the intersection, and then stop. You wait until the light changes, and then you complete your turn. I'm not sure what the rationale is, but more than once while riding in a cab or bus I had a "WTF is he DOING??" type of moment. (When trying to picture this, remember that Australians drive on the other side of the road.)

Singapore Airlines runs Linux

Halfway through my flight from Melbourne to Singapore, my personal entertainment unit rebooted itself, and I was confronted with this screen:

It appeared to be a variant of Caldera (!!), which I guess would explain why it had crashed.

Melbourne's Royal Botanical Gardens

D and I spent some time walking around Melbourne's Royal Botanical Gardens yesterday, and I took a whole bunch of photos...