Recently watched movies

Pursuit of Happyness – When you think your hard work will pay off soon, but it didn’t, kind of make you frustrated right? Just don’t let it break you.

Borat – too vulgar, sure was a waste of time

Bad Education (Gael Garcia) – rather disturbing gay movie, portrayed how life can be really shitty when you keep on making the wrong decision

Tsotsi, African movie – simple touching movie where one can still change even if it seems impossible. Give it more twist, it’s a baby that changed you

Little Ms. Sunshine – love the story, btw pretty darn scary to see little girls dress up like tante girang

Blood Diamond – kinda make me think do the jewelers really care where the diamonds came from? What about the customers? But to be honest, it does give me something to be certain, no rocks for me! Hehee..

The beach is not my playground

It must be more than 15 years since the last time I swam on the sea. Or make it 20? Could be, could be more.

I often go to the beach in Bali, but I only sit on the beach, under the shade and read a book, or write, or eat, or doing other things except swimming and sunbathing. So this weekend was different. I’ve been going to some beaches with my friend and she told me the stuff she’s done. Parasailing, learning to surf, swimming with boogie board (body surf) or simply swimming. The stories really get into me it raised my interest in swimming in the sea again. So we decided to go.

Dreamland is one of many surfers’ paradises in Bali. The beach is wide, the sands are white, the waves were furious. Especially after full moon, water tide could last until noon. We reached the beach around 7.20 AM. Quite, tranquil and people were still asleep. We stationed our bags and stuff, changed and ready to hit the waves. We managed to rent a couple of boogie boards, and did some warming up.

Just when I thought I was ready, we approached the waves and only 1 thing came into my mind, this sure was a helluva lot of water!

Embarrassing, but I have to admit I didn’t last long. The salty water made me thirsty; I kept hoping I could reach for water (mineral water) whenever I come out from the sea. The sun came too early and it was bright already before it was even 9, so I decided to sit under the shade. Sure wish I could be more like the people there who seem to have a friendly relationship with the waves, as if it was only playing with them and will not harm them.

Well, I guess 15 (or 20) years was a long time of absence, can’t really expect me to be familiar with it after 10 mins on the water. I’m not afraid of water, but you know the feeling when you’re in the sea you have nothing to grip on, the waves can just take you, the current can suck you below, and pretty much, that’s the end of you.

Serangan island (BTI)

Time to explore another part of Bali, this time we chose Serangan island. It’s a small island in southern part of Bali, an interesting island that has its own feud (no detail provided).We only wanted to see what this island has to offer, and as we circled the island following an artificial line of canal we saw a sign of Turtle education center. We decided to give it a shot and drove inside the area. It’s a simple turtle farm (conservation should be the word, I guess).

It has simple reception area, six 2x2 pools with total of 200 turtles (90% are young, around 2-3 month old).Two of the turtles were interesting as they would be the freaks in human world, 1 is a 8 month old turtle that has a hunch back, another one is 2 year old with an opposite deformation, which is sunken shell on its right side. I don’t know whether to feel pity for it, but sure was quite intrigued, is it only the shell or also its inner body? I would think both. What about its internal organs, were they fully developed? Any vet in the house?

The rest of the island was quite barren. Good thing the community was aware of the garbage dump needed to be managed properly and to maintain the mangrove forest. Can imagine the damage to the environment if they had cut all those mangrove trees. Sure is a long project to make Serangan a tourist object, continue the work they started but now stalled.

(In)convenient truth

While Jakarta’s busy with extra debit of water the past 2 weeks, Bali’s still waiting for rain to fall. The rainy season came later this year, it already started in some parts like Ubud but still rare in the beach area.

Still remember the dread of rainy season in Bali. It was not as bad as Jakarta, thank God (and thank God my family are doing OK there), but the street area especially in tourist area were filthy. The garbage people throw in the drainage (mostly their used canang that were used for ceremony) were floating on the street and when water finally dried up it created left over garbage along the street. It happens every year and I don’t understand why the government let such mess happen in tourist area.

Anyway what does it have to do with Al Gore’s movie? Not much, won’t even resonate his message on the film. Try to find the movie and watch it. It does make sense we are experiencing changes to weather and climate, and of course human has some part of it, but still questionable as to what extent? Some scientists argued that he over used some of the terms like green house gas. Well it could serve at least to raise level of awareness for the environment. Recycle, reduce use of plastic, use less energy.

What can 1 person do to make a change? Well without being too extreme on this subject I’ve done the least I could do I guess. No, not to make me feel good, it’s just if I do otherwise it’s simply a waste.