Peter Hoflich

On Friday I had errands to do downtown, I thought I’d also go along and check out the new Downtown Line, which includes a stop very close to my place of work, Asia Square (which is the Downtown station, actually). I got on at Chinatown, and noted that access to the two lines Chinatown services is very near to the street level entrance. Basically, you go down a short escalator to the ticket wickets, pay to get in, then go down another escalator and you’re at the platform. Great! To my delight, Downtown station is just as convenient!! Other stations, of course, require you to go down several escalators, walk along a long tunnel, and then finally enter the paid area.

For some reason, the day I rode, the tunnels were fully illuminated, so you could see all the cabling on the walls, etc. The front and back cars have huge windows, which means you can see all the ups and downs and turns (and shunts) in the system. Good fun for the kiddies.

The trains only have three cars, so they’re mini-things. The line’s not designed for huge capacity – I wonder what they’re going to do if demand is huge.

Naturally there are announcements every five seconds, and in four languages to boot. I would go crazy if I had to ride it every day. They have little TV screens that show public service messages – move to the centre of the car, remove your backpack when on crowded trains (that’s a new one – I like it), give your seat up for those who need it more than you do… even if they don’t want it, etc.

Saturday Naoko and Zen and I walked downtown along the old Malaysia train line, and we had the opportunity to try it again, so we did. This time the tracks weren’t illuminated, I wonder why…

Had a great year-end holiday this year, got to do a lot of fun stuff, like reading, hiking, watching movies, laying chess with Zen, and exploring Singapore. Went out for lots of meals, such as to No Sign Board at East Coast Park, Karu’s Indian Banana Leaf Curry, and Jing Hua in Tanjong Pagar. On Sunday, December 22nd, I played four songs at the Hard Rock Cafe open mic. Zen and Naoko were there to cheer me on; I had been encouraging Zen to come up on stage with me to sing backup on some songs, but he was too shy to do it (this time). On the 23rd, we went to Zen’s new school to register him and to buy his books and uniforms. On Christmas Eve we saw the new Hobbit movie, then went home and ate cheese fondue! I played guitar a lot, focussing mainly on memorizing Leonard Cohen songs, and perfecting my own original songs. It was great to have 11 days off, including two weekends, to see movies, and to chill out and relax.

Books I read:

- Ministry: The Lost Gospels According To Al Jourgensen, by Al Jourgensen –
- I’m In The Band, by Sean Yseult –
- The Death Of Superman
- A World Without Superman

Movies I saw:

- The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
- Elf
- Doctor Zhivago
- Duck Soup
- The Simpsons, Season One
- The Rocky And Bullwinkle Show, Season Two
- Hellboy
- The Adventures Of Rocky And Bullwinkle

Activities:

- chili crab!
- cleaning the apartment
- hiking
- Christmas shopping
- guitar!
- rode the downtown line
- visited Zen’s school
- seeing bands playing in town

Oh man, we had a GREAT trip to Bali!!

It didn’t start so hot – we had a late afternoon flight, and then a three hour delay (two hours were KLM’s fault, one hour was due to heavy rains in Singapore), which meant that we only arrived at our gorgeous Motama Inn suite in Bali’s Ubud town close to midnight! But, in view of the other KLM horror stories I’ve heard since, I think we got off lucky. Zen and I took our guitars, and I was traveling with the cowboy boots and cowboy hat, so it was full style. Nice.

Our first morning, Sunday, was spent chilling out in our gorgeous Motama suite, with the cool breakfast that they served, and then Naoko and I went to wander the town, while Zen enjoyed the cable TV. We found the football field, and a nice little art shop that sold some paintings we fancied (we went back the next day and bought three small ones), as well as the village itself. The interesting thing about Motama is that, although Ubud is a thoroughly touristic town, Motama is the only tourist accommodation in the whole vicinity, so we got to observe plenty of Balinese village life, including a temple festival, a “tomb-sweeping” ceremony, and all sorts of other groovy stuff. Wow!!

In the afternoon we went to Ubud proper and wandered around, partly looking for the old guest house we stayed at in 1996 when Naoko and I visited Bali as backpackers, partly looking for new accommodation for December 2nd to 5th, when we were without a secured place to stay. We wandered all over Ubud, eventually discovering two nice places that we’d want to stay at – the luscious Second Honeymoon with its gorgeous gardens (for the evening of December 2nd and 3rd), and the quaint backpacker spot the Ganesha Inn (December 4th). In the evening we went back to Motama to have dinner served in our suite, and chill out.

Monday morning was spent chilling out some more, and also wandering around the rice field, and buying our paintings. We checked out, and went to Second Honeymoon. We wandered around and for lunch we ate babi guleng, which is traditional Bali pork dishes. Yummy, and great garden shop!! We found lots of shops and cafe and went back to our accommodation, Naoko went to a spa, Zen and I played chess and guitar on the front porch, and in the evening we ate pizza (yummy!) and saw a local parade. Cool!

On Tuesday we had our breakfast, and played chess and chilled out and went to visit Monkey Forest, and also booked our river rafting tour (Zen’s choice). We also ate lunch at an eatery overlooking rice fields. Great view… but the food was terrible!!! Oh well. In the evening we went for the same pizza place!

Wednesday was fun day – we went river rafting! A 10 kilometer course, that took two hours to complete. The driver picked us up, we drove 20 minutes uphill, got to an “arrival station”, got into our swimming gear and our life jackets, then we trekked into the river valley, where rafts were waiting for us. We got a quick course in how to follow our guide’s instructions, and off we went – four Japanese, a Canadian, and American, and a Bali dude. We went along the river, and very quickly hit our first rough patch, which we went down like a short roller coaster. It was fun. We went past many rocky sections, never with any problems except for getting stuck on rocks (that was the guide’s problem to solve). We often met other rafters along the way, and got to recognize a few of them again and again (they often splashed us with their paddles, just for fun). At one point we stopped at a place that had carvings inspired by the Hindu Ramayana epic. We stopped once at a little shack in the middle of the journey that served food and drinks for those that wanted to buy them, and rocks to dive off of for those who wanted to do that. I did it a bunch of times, and Zen even did it once! We also drifted along a beautiful waterfall, with the guide making sure we soaked in it. We also saw several great resorts in the river valley above us, probably something to look into staying at next time we go to Bali (which, we hope, will be soon). There were two points where we could jump into the river and float along next to the raft. Yay! At the end we got to a cool restaurant that looked out onto rice fields, there we chilled out again and had a nice brunch, while admiring the scenery. Lovely! Even better, it was only a 10 minute ride back to Second Honeymoon!!

In the afternoon we went to the Ganesha Inn to check into our room, and chilled out all day. In the evening we went to the amazing Warung Cafe – a beautiful Ubud cafe with amazing food. Loved it!!

Thursday we hung around Ganesha Inn a lot, then headed off for lunch down the lanes and discovered local eateries selling amazing satay! Nice chili sauce too!! Then we jumped into a cab and went off to the Hotel Grand Nikko in Nusa Dua, at the coast, and enjoyed our room, and the local Japanese restaurant (you normally don’t go to Bali to eat Japanese food, but this was a Japanese hotel, and the food was excellent). Nice!!

Friday we went to the beach, went to brunch, went back to the beach and pool (water slide!!), and then off to dinner in town at a local grill – Ulam, across the street from the Melia Benoa. Nice stuff!!

One funny thing I noticed about Bali is that there are a lot of convenience stores and small grocery shops, called “marts”. There was Alpha Mart, Cancer Mart, Dharma Mart, and Johnny Mart. Nice!

Saturday, our last day in Bali, we went for a stroll on the beach, had our brunch, then hung out in the room, had a late check out at 2:00 PM, hung out at the pool and beach all afternoon, had another amazing dinner at the restaurant, and then off we went to the airport. The flight was on time, and we got to Singapore with no problems. Great!

Sunday we got up early to meet Margaret and Larry and the girls for a nice breakfast… but that’s another story.