We, tourists and residents both, just have different points of view looking at the same subject.
For the visitor this is a place that represents two weeks(?) of unparaleled liberty and exotic sensorial experience. It is a breakaway time, far flung from the orbit of the daily grind and all that entails.
For the resident, this is the grind, this is life. We don't only deal with the face presented to the buyer of paradisiacal images/experiences. We deal with the full, multi faceted nature of the beast in all its moods and incarnations. Some are not so pretty.
Something as annoying as the ridiculous traffic scenarios here can seem to the visitor, rinky-dink, laughably quaint or dangerously third-world and definitely something for the stories back home. To the foreign resident, particularly one who has grown up in a well thought out civic infrastructure, this is the day in, day out reality that colors a lifetime.
It is natural that somebody who views a place through the prisms of pleasure and play would look at the writings of someone like Bert and wonder in baffled horror. I have actually directed several expat friends to this site in order to read his stories and they all found them vastly amusing, but more to the point, they echoed much common experience. Yes they are dark, yes they are morbid, but this is the essential point. If they were published, say, in Australia, they would be seen for what they are, and different tastes would respond in accordance to their individual whim. To live here is to 'be', that is to 'be' who you are as a living, breathing creature between birth and death, and always in response to your immediate environment. To visit here is to live a delicious but fleeting moment as a joyous construction of ones own fantasy. It is also a compressed absolution of a pent-up back-log of incrementally built up frustrations.
The expatriot inevitably sees the 'groping', 'ignorant' and 'gormless' tourist as 'lightweight'. In turn, the visiting tourist sees the 'holier than thou' expat as willfully standing between them and the 'real Bali' they strive for, all the while reminding them, school bully style, of their reduced status. Not pleasant or desired. They are both, in mutually distinct ways, threatened by one another.
Certain things on this forum will appear absurdly inappropriate to the more casual Bali visitor. Those that partake regularly on this forum right now, are for the most part somewhat isolated in odd and far flung corners of the province. Zontius, for example, lives on the Island of Nusa Lembongan and god only knows how remote that must feel in the off season. Gloria and Bert both live in the north, not exactly a hot bed of international exchange. I, in turn, live in my studio and often kick around the www. waiting for paint to dry. We are all to some degree displaced twice and though we have chosen this diasporas life, there is 'always' a need to create a society and a culture of sorts. Some need to write, some to kvetch, some just be heard in a familiar cultural language.
That a rather juvenile and persnickety competition should have evolved between two forums is, certainly from any distance, rather silly. I am as guilty as the next in abetting this outcome. I will stop. This forum was never going to be fast, no one ever thought otherwise. It can become what it is best suited for and has seeming already started in that direction. It has not yet been advertised nor set up with the necessary conduits that will feed it new blood, this will happen in time.
The fact is expatriots, for the most part, don't have, nor do they want to give, answers to questions concerning room rates and drivers. I personally have no Idea and it just makes me think of masses of pink people who appear at various times of year. Recent and regular visitors have this information fresh on their minds and can recall it in an instant and what is more, they probably take a certain nostalgic pleasure in the sharing of it.
The truth is that what we regulars on both of these forums have in common is compulsion and an addictive personality. That certain individuals have a natural chemical friction with others is as old as time and deeply inscribed into the very success of life itself. That is not of importance here. What is impotent is that expatriots and visitors should sometimes see at cross purposes is ultimately inevitable. It is not bad, but it is inevitable.
So let us allow this forum be this forum and the BTF be the BTF, a sometimes mundane chain of repetitive questions, sometimes highly informative and well intentioned and periodically a beehive of amusing and adrenalized repartee. I would like to think all are welcomed on each.
For the visitor this is a place that represents two weeks(?) of unparaleled liberty and exotic sensorial experience. It is a breakaway time, far flung from the orbit of the daily grind and all that entails.
For the resident, this is the grind, this is life. We don't only deal with the face presented to the buyer of paradisiacal images/experiences. We deal with the full, multi faceted nature of the beast in all its moods and incarnations. Some are not so pretty.
Something as annoying as the ridiculous traffic scenarios here can seem to the visitor, rinky-dink, laughably quaint or dangerously third-world and definitely something for the stories back home. To the foreign resident, particularly one who has grown up in a well thought out civic infrastructure, this is the day in, day out reality that colors a lifetime.
It is natural that somebody who views a place through the prisms of pleasure and play would look at the writings of someone like Bert and wonder in baffled horror. I have actually directed several expat friends to this site in order to read his stories and they all found them vastly amusing, but more to the point, they echoed much common experience. Yes they are dark, yes they are morbid, but this is the essential point. If they were published, say, in Australia, they would be seen for what they are, and different tastes would respond in accordance to their individual whim. To live here is to 'be', that is to 'be' who you are as a living, breathing creature between birth and death, and always in response to your immediate environment. To visit here is to live a delicious but fleeting moment as a joyous construction of ones own fantasy. It is also a compressed absolution of a pent-up back-log of incrementally built up frustrations.
The expatriot inevitably sees the 'groping', 'ignorant' and 'gormless' tourist as 'lightweight'. In turn, the visiting tourist sees the 'holier than thou' expat as willfully standing between them and the 'real Bali' they strive for, all the while reminding them, school bully style, of their reduced status. Not pleasant or desired. They are both, in mutually distinct ways, threatened by one another.
Certain things on this forum will appear absurdly inappropriate to the more casual Bali visitor. Those that partake regularly on this forum right now, are for the most part somewhat isolated in odd and far flung corners of the province. Zontius, for example, lives on the Island of Nusa Lembongan and god only knows how remote that must feel in the off season. Gloria and Bert both live in the north, not exactly a hot bed of international exchange. I, in turn, live in my studio and often kick around the www. waiting for paint to dry. We are all to some degree displaced twice and though we have chosen this diasporas life, there is 'always' a need to create a society and a culture of sorts. Some need to write, some to kvetch, some just be heard in a familiar cultural language.
That a rather juvenile and persnickety competition should have evolved between two forums is, certainly from any distance, rather silly. I am as guilty as the next in abetting this outcome. I will stop. This forum was never going to be fast, no one ever thought otherwise. It can become what it is best suited for and has seeming already started in that direction. It has not yet been advertised nor set up with the necessary conduits that will feed it new blood, this will happen in time.
The fact is expatriots, for the most part, don't have, nor do they want to give, answers to questions concerning room rates and drivers. I personally have no Idea and it just makes me think of masses of pink people who appear at various times of year. Recent and regular visitors have this information fresh on their minds and can recall it in an instant and what is more, they probably take a certain nostalgic pleasure in the sharing of it.
The truth is that what we regulars on both of these forums have in common is compulsion and an addictive personality. That certain individuals have a natural chemical friction with others is as old as time and deeply inscribed into the very success of life itself. That is not of importance here. What is impotent is that expatriots and visitors should sometimes see at cross purposes is ultimately inevitable. It is not bad, but it is inevitable.
So let us allow this forum be this forum and the BTF be the BTF, a sometimes mundane chain of repetitive questions, sometimes highly informative and well intentioned and periodically a beehive of amusing and adrenalized repartee. I would like to think all are welcomed on each.