Category: Hector’s Diary

December 10 2014Salad Days Hold the Mayoh We were surprised recently to read that Royal Pita Maha one among many resort hotels at Ubud was ldquoquite literally out of this worldrdquo News of this galactic shift had hitherto eluded us Fortunately it turned out not to be true We made urgent inquiries and were able to satisfy ourselves that the establishment remained on terra firma Moreover it was still located up the hill from the lovely Pita Maha Resort and Spa where we stayed a couple of times years ago in the days before there was a Royal Pita Maha when we were holidaying in Bali as payyourownway tourists The source of the easily disproved theory that Royal Pita Maha had moved to Pluto or some other planet was someone called Lisa Mayoh who wrote a puerile puff piece that appeared in Rupert Murdochs little asteroid belt of cyberpapers which litter Virtual Australia The version we saw courtesy of the dyspeptic blogger Vyt

November 26 2014Singapore Slingoff Its been a while since we were in Singapore so we had been quite looking forward to getting back there this month We had been amusing ourselves with thoughts about minding the platform gap again but the MRT was full of very pushy people on our two train rides and the whole experience was one of rather less than unalloyed delight Traffic also seemed to be much less well behaved than hitherto The unnecessary and noisy practice of sounding your car horn ndash for any reason or none ndash is gaining a growing toehold in the previously wellmannered and equable city state Worse ldquobig carrdquo syndrome is more and more obvious It is familiar to anyone in Indonesia and many other places where capitalism bureaucracy and fatwalletlawyer are synonyms for badmannered The bumptious practice of the cashedup mob in such environments is to assume droit de seigneur and to believe it is immutable fact that if

November 12 2014Shes Off Her Face Book Susi Johnston the longterm American expatriate whose situation in regard to the property she lives in at Mengwi is as disgraceful as it is well known has dropped off the social medium preferred by gazillions of virtual chatterers She has deactivated her Facebook She told us when we inquired that she was fed up with her situation who could blame her and was upset by what she sees as abandonment by former friends It is all very sad Her legal argument over title to her villa which she shared with her late Italian husband Bruno Piazza remains unresolved Some local grub name known to police decided that she should have it instead Johnstons house has been invaded She has been threatened with violent harm Her personal space has been violated She has been the target of people who have planted illegal products in her home so she would be charged with a crime But she is the victim and because