Marriage, Alu, The offer of a Girl

Py

[b]Congrats!!![/b] Yeah, those alu have hysterical pitched battles with the neighborhood cats on my roof. I wish you and Dewi the very best. Time for the pendulum to swing!

behemoth

I wish you and Dewi great happiness in your life together. Please post some wedding pictures here! :D

JPB

[b]Your marriage[/b] Congratulations to you and Dewi. May all your troubles be "little" ones. Look forward to reading about the preparations for the wedding and viewing many photos. cheers

Py

Robert, shouldn't this be on the other thread, "Money, money, money"? This thread after all concerns a wedding announcement! Just a thought.

lantana

[b]Congratulations, Bert,[/b] on this wonderful turn-around of events. I wish you and Dewi the very best, the most beautiful of Bali futures. As I told you, I really value your voice here.... your fascinating insights, your jokes and your honesty. I am so glad to see you enjoy some tangible rewards/happiness....LL

Bert Vierstra

So I am going to marry Dewi, my 20 year old goddess. I am a cliche. The 45 year old naive guy, geeting ripped of by the bad people on Bali, falling for the young attractive girl. After Dewi's escapes from her family and talks with the head of the village and the religious head of the village, paying the debts of Dewi's father, everybody knows Dewi and I really love eachother and a marriage is needed. I have rented a house far from the ever gossiping village we live in, from a contractor that has no work anymore. They live in a garage for now. Dewi first needs a birth ceremony, she never had one. I need to become Hindu, including all ceremonies that are needed for that, birth, 3 months, tooth filing and such, this we we will this do on the same day. Pigs will be offered and lots of "banten" bought. We will look like a King and Queen with rented stuff. There will be Joged dance. May 30th. You are welcome in Pemaron. Don't worry, we are the real thing. Since I have only limited funds, I have to take care. So when Ayu, the younger sister of Dewi became ill and the doctor said, tonsils, operation next day, I said; "Ok I'll pay, but then no birth ceremony for Dewi, and the wages for the people that painted our new house will go to the operation", Ayu had to be cured with traditional medicines and many examples were handed to me of people with the same problems that were cured with those medicines. I am faced with the same problems that Bali people have everyday, money for ceremonies, or doctors, or neither, and must look at Ayu lying sick, while we make our marriage plans. Dewi told me that since she had met me she never had seen so many doctors; "Usually her family died, because there wasn't any money." This is a picture of a "Alu" or varane, or whatever they are called.

He or she is about 1.50 meters and kept wet and fed frogs by Panca the younger brother of Dewi. They caught him near her house, and lives on a rope around its body. I asked Panca when the Alu will die. He looked surprised. Read the story of the "Sri Kumala" to learn about the character of the Balinese.

robert

Well, yes Bert. You are posing a bit like a cliche [your own words quoted]. Being cheated in business and contracts, falling in and out of love, getting involved in local gossip, infatuated with local customs/adat. That would be number 204 within a few years at the idyllic Lovina area only. What's more important, in my opinion, is your contribution to website-organization in this area, your openness in communicating about what keeps you running and your never-ending energy all within less than a year. Lately you showed some signs of the common burning-out-syndrome. But you are still around and that's good news. That, by the way, is the reason I made an appointment with you for next Wednesday, don't forget! I sincerely hope all these efforts finally will end up in something. But the way you're doing it makes me sceptic: it's like a Cyber-bomb being dropped in the Bronze Age; or starting a Dutch Media Hype in Lovina Buleleng. Won't change a thing if you act like this is the village of Lisse in the XXIst Century, it still is Buleleng in the XIXth Century. In the area where you live for one year now, there is almost no place [be it restaurant, warung, homestay, hotel, business] which is not based upon corruption and cheating naive tourists/expats out of their money; it is euphemistically called "tourist-business". Based on real business [joint enterprise!], "love"-affairs, do-goody-ism, idealism or whatever you like to call it. Foreign victims normally keep bitterly silent about their losses, no one wants to advertise he is a sucker or a looser! Or they leave Bali forever, disappointed and frustrated. Oh yeah, their houses and ground and business and cars and motorbikes and assets they leave here, under the kind care of the ones who just have "lent their names". We all know that Indonesian law forbids foreigners to own ground, houses, business, cars, motorbikes or even subscribe to Indovision. At the same time Indonesian law doesnot protect the Ducks laying Golden Eggs....:on the contrary, if you make a problem [actually it is not you making the problem, of course!] you are deported; again loosing it all. That's what some bigot expats call "being a guest in this country"! Wellcome iin Bali Paradise; the ones that stay love it the way it is. That's it for now!