Bali nights and microb-bites

pjdillon@attlgobal.net
Marvelous to take a break from the war for a few days, kibitzing in the gardens of the Hyatt Sanur in Bali, a curriculum involving full-contact mid-afternoon naps, lounging poolside 4.0, and several advanced courses in stuffing one’s face with seafood under starry skies.
Barely left the manicured jungle with its swaying palms, wok-sized pink lotus blossoms, nimble sandpipers, and several curious species of obese, thong-wearing and amorous German tourists.
Did slip out after Sunday’s post-wedding reception plunge into a Java Sea warm as breast milk, to quaff a few beers and over-iced double Black Labels at a nearby and empty bar/resto. Just when Bali starts to climb back out of the pit dug by a couple hundreds keys of ammonium nitrate back in October, along comes a war (and this SARS) to empty out the planes from Sydney, Singapore and Amsterdam yet again.
Also got it together to hop a pre-packaged, air-conned magic bus for the hour’s drive up to the artist’s colony in Ubud, though I’m not sure it is still accurate to call it that as much of what you can see is more of the same, smiling wooden cats with black and white striped scarves, hairy Balinese masks and poor-quality cotton and silk dresses. Regardless, swanned about the shopping area oblivious to custom before collapsing in a heap at a little bistro for some rejuvenating chilly malt liquor rehydration products and a chat with Daniel and his formidable new, sloe-eyed beau Natalie, fresh from Canadian foreign affairs in TelAviv.
The morning of their wedding, Dian and Josh performed the cleansing ritual known as Siraman beneath festive red and yellow umbrellas inside one of the hotel’s open-air spa rooms. I understand Siraman is practiced throughout Java though each regency has a slightly different twist, in their case of the Sundanese variety as that is Dian’s heritage.
Josh sat bare-chested in a fine red batik sarong waiting for his bride who entered walking on a length of cloth scattered with flower petals, her father in front holding a five-part candelabra “lighting the way to the future” followed by Dian, who was held close by and bound by a length of batik cloth to her mother. Together mum and dad lead Dian in meet her husband. She was wearing a sarong and beaded blouse with a “vest” made of woven, aromatic melati (jasmine) flower buds.
Together Josh and Dian bowed at their parent’s feet to ask for their blessings and then washed their feet, which sounds kinda cheesy but in fact was quite touching, revealing or perhaps creating the closeness and bond that’s often only found in ritual, divorced from the crash and bang of the ‘real’ world.
Once their parent’s feet were toweled off, the couple took their seats and one-by-one, from the nuclear center outwards to aunts and cousins, members of both families ‘bathed’ the pair with a simple coconut shell ladle dipped into a water and flower-filled pot (seven blossoms by custom).
Once the families had bathed them, Josh and Dian were deemed ready for the wedding proper, a stripped down Catholic affair on the beach at sunset, presided over by a Indonesian Jesuit priest.
Very nice, gentle affair in keeping with the couple’s low-key way. We ate, danced a bit and once the newlyweds booked for the evening, headed for a moonlight dip in the Java Sea.
Monday, J and I hung poolside, played a bit of ping-pong and got ready to head back to the Big Durian.
Though greatly looking forward to hooking up with my former work colleague of three years, Dave, (see www.surreyleader.com) who has been doing some swanning of his own these past five months, traveling throughout Asia on an ever diminishing leave-of-absence, yesterday’s return trip was sobered by the realization ground-staff in Jakarta were wearing white paper masks against the SARS being transported in by wealthy Singaporeans on their weekend sex and sun holidays on the Island of the Gods.
No small irony in the fact that the fear here in Indonesia is that infected businessmen from the Matrix-esque city state (stare at the steel and glass highrises long enough and they’ll start to shimmer and bend, ultimately disappearing to reveal Singapore’s true nature, methinks) are going to spread a virus that this country is simply not equipped to deal with. Of course, the same Singaporean businessmen and their local cronies are principally responsible for raping this country’s natural resources over the past thirty years so that they’re bringing another blight upon Indonesia might have been anticipated.
True to form, the government won’t respond until it’s too late ('Emergency response plan is ready and… will be announced in a few days' to paraphrase the Health Minister’s recent announcement) possibly giving the disease all the time it’ll need tear a hole in the most populous island on the planet.
The warnings gained new urgency today with the news that the first SARS victim to manifest in Jakarta – a Singaporean teacher – has died in the past few hours. I don’t think I’m being melodramatic. The epidemiologists and bug-hunters at the Center for Disease Control said a while ago that without immediate and drastic action (the slaughter of millions of fowl) the chicken flu in Hong Kong (1996, 97?) would have mutated beyond recognition very rapidly, for the first time raising the whole spectre of a global epidemic similar to that of the pneumonia winters of 1917 and 1918 when literally hundreds of thousands died in the space of a few weeks as the disease broke like consecutive waves across Central and South Asia. We’ve seen those grainy b/w pix from Philadelphia and Boston: hundreds of blanketed bodies stacked like cordwood in parks.
Am I the only one who’s got that queasy feeling we might be looking at a similar thing here?