Louis Vuitton's Throw-Away-Your-Money- Bag

I wonder, what will be the next 'it' items after this?

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Wrapping Up Ubud

I missed a lot of interesting events in this Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. I missed Andrea Hirata's session and pre-launch of his fourth book, Maryamah Karpov. I missed book signings, street parade, book launch and priceless sessions. Business happened and I must bid farewell to the festival which just started to heated up.

On the first day of my arrival, I got the chance to joined a superb half-day workshop "Dramatic Ideas" by Tee O'Neill. My class is surrounded by picturesque hill view of Ubud. One just can't ask for a more pretty setting to start writing. Tee was such a supporting and kind teacher. I reached the peak of brain orgasm afterward.

my "classmates" scribbling

After Vikram Seth's session, I darted off to followed Camilla Gibb's Sweetness in the Belly book launch. It has been translated by Mizan Publishing into "Lilly:Pencarian Cinta Seorang Gadis Eropa di Etiopia". There, I met my favorite lit blogger, Sharon Bakar, whose splendid blog, I read almost daily. She kindly acknowledge my rambling blog and encouraging me to blog more about Indonesian literature.

On my last day, I managed to squeezed two sessions. Malaysians Making History with "Truly Asia" writers attending the session (Preeta Samarasan, Faisal Tehrani and Chiew-Siah Tei). With a still sleepy eyes and caffeine stirred-up brain, I went to the session and thoroughly enjoyed it. All three authors read excerpt of their work (I'm still, even until now, haunted by the harrowing excerpt on Preeta's book "Evening is the Whole Day").

Malaysian Making History session

The last session was just amazing. John Berendt, another star in this year festival, was such a charming persona. No wonder he managed to charmed his way to dig the eccentrics appeared in his books, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil & City of the Falling Angels. The session, Evoking a Sense of Place, John Berendt lucidly described his method of writing and in the way, throwing interesting anecdotes and jokingly called himself "state-of-the-art weirdo magnet". My moleskin is full of quotes. The other writer, Cameron Forbes, discussing his book "Under the Volcano: The Story of Bali". Both authors agreed upon the importance of setting to bring reader into their story.

Evoking a Sense of Place session

I was so upset upon leaving this amazing event of my annual brain stimulation. There can't be more perfect place to held this event than Ubud. Hopefully there won't be any incredulous thing preventing me to come next year.

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European Film Festival 2008

Annual European Film Festival is in town! Alliance Francaise Denpasar will play host to this year festival on November 8 & 9. Click here for schedule and synopsis.

Free entry. Be sure to arrive on time for there are only 30 seats available and enjoy.

For details, contact Alliance Francaise Denpasar (0361) 234143

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View from the Car

One beautiful reason to be stuck in the traffic.
Lodtunduh, October 2008.

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All About Eve

Since Retno has kindly tagging me in her blog, I have no other option than continue and so I kindly ask Nara, Li and Stephanie to continue this chain or for anyone, really.

1. I always have a book in my bag (unless my bag is a clutch). I don’t fancy staring into space and nothingness so I read everywhere, very much so until a friend joked that I should get a master for reading.
2. I’m a devoted dog person.
3. I believe in God but not religion because it is already fabricated by far too many people with their own agenda.
4. One movie I absolutely know words-by-words is Finding Nemo.
5. Literary character I feel I have special bond with and whom I think resemble me in many ways is Josephine March.
6. I read three copies of different Sunday newspaper during my late breakfast every week.
7. Each morning, I must get a cup of coffee before I can function properly.
8. I tend to gravitate toward generous, self-deprecatingly funny and open-minded people.
9. I learned about geography from my stamp collection.
10. My major splurge are (and will always be) books and glossy magazines.

When tagged, one must:

1. Link to the person who tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write six random things about yourself
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

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Halloween Extravaganza

Nobody take costume party as seriously as Heidi Klum, The Goddess of Kali.
or her hubbie, Seal, in:

"Mr. Hopefully-Soon-to-be-President- Barack Obama"

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Porn Mentality Bill

Today marks the day when cultural diversity, ethnic pluralism and freedom of expression will start its way down to the Valley of Perish. Despite the endless array of creative demonstration, endless discussion panel between various organizations and minor protest from few brave representatives, Indonesia now has a porn bill.

Kindly read the definition of Porn Bill (The Jakarta Post, Oct 31, 2008):

Pornography is drawings, sketches, illustrations, photographs, texts, voices, sound, moving pictures, animations, cartoons, poetry, conversations, gestures, or other forms of communicative messages through various kinds of media; and/or performances in front of the public, which may incite obscenity, sexual exploitation and/or violate moral ethics in the community.

So if a sexy and pretty lady in short pants take a walk around the neighborhood with her dog, she can be captured by the police because she “performs in front of the public, which may incite obscenity, sexual exploitation…” Can you imagine the sort of description the police has to written in his law suit document: The 21 year’s old woman was captured on Saturday evening, at 5pm, because she is wearing short pants and wiggling her b…ehind, while taking her dog for a walk and aroused man (policeman?) in the community.

What a stupid, stupid law for this already troubled nation! The next thing I know internet will be disbanded, publication and press would be censored and traditional dancers will have to wear black veil during performances because showing their bare arms and shoulders would be “violating moral ethics in the community “

We might as well go back to Dark Ages by letting religious leaders controlled the country, having a group of fanatics capturing people on the reason of morality and underage marriages “to protect women from becoming the object of violence and rape”.

Visit Indonesia: We Don’t Do Diversity Anymore.

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