Susi Johnston Bali Blog

BRUNO PIAZZA: MASTERPIECE

My beloved husband Bruno Piazza died at home in Bali, at dawn on Friday the 28th of October, 2011 after a long and courageous battle with cancer.

Bruno lived an extraordinary and beautiful life, and (not surprisingly) he died a remarkably beautiful death. He was not an artist, he was Art. His life was his masterpiece. Now he has completed and signed that masterpiece, with a flourish, and it is beautiful indeed. It is perfect.

Please forgive me, and forgive Bruno, for our shortcomings, and for any oversights or mistakes we may have made in the past, and for anything we ever did or said that caused you or anyone else any pain or suffering. The evening I dispersed Bruno’s ashes in the Indian Ocean, I saw a new crescent moon. That  bright sliver of a smile in the sky was the sign of a clean, happy, new beginning for us all.

Hic et nunc was Bruno’s mantra. I am beginning to understand it better and better.

Do not be alarmed. Do not touch that dial. This is a test. This is only a test. This is a test of the emergency Sleeping Tiger broadcast system. The Sleeping Tiger has been granted amnesty for a lapse in blog-posting on the grounds of terminal illness in the immediate family. So this is a test of the emergency true friends broadcast system. True friends will stay tuned to this frequency.

Do not be alarmed. This is not yet an actual disaster. It is only a test. In the event of an actual disaster true friends of the Sleeping Tiger will be notified of where to go and how many major works of fiction, cupcakes and bottles of vodka to bring with them. Do not be alarmed. We will shortly resume our normal programming. Please stand by.

Ahem . . . that reminds me . . . when I was a kid in the 60s, and emergency broadcast tests (with piercing high tone sound) came on our TV (and they came with exactly the same screen image shown above, and please bear in mind that this was the time of the “Cold War” when our parents expected nukes from Russia arriving at a moment’s notice), my brother and I used to have a good laugh at my little sister’s expense by informing her that “PLEASE STAND BY” meant that she was expected to stand by the TV, meaning to get up, and position herself in a standing position beside that dusty, bulbous, hot black and green television set itself. She, of course, believed it, being several years younger than us, and would diligently get up and stand erect at attention in her flannel baby-sister suit (with rubber-bottomed feetsies), beside that old black and white television set, as if her life depended on it.

We laughed ourselves silly, thinking, “Ha! We sure fooled her!  PLEASE. STAND. BY. ! ! !  Har har har . . . stand . . . by . . . !”

What we didn’t realise at the time was has how devoted she became, as a result of this, to doing the right thing. What we did was only a test, and I must say she passed with flying colours, beside that black and white TV, time and time again. She stood . . . by . . . the TV set . . . because it was the Right Thing to do. It was the only thing one could do. And she has subsequetly been doing the Right Thing for more than four decades since. She is an emergency medicine doctor and veteran mountain patroller. She’s been on duty in the Congo, hung in Rwanda, stood by in Hisapniola, helped all comers in Idaho. And she continues doing the Right Thing. Standing by.

We unintentionally ingrained in her a sense of duty to all mankind, seen and unseen. Gosh. And we thought we were just getting a cheap laugh off a gullible three-year-old.

So . . . do the Right Thing . . . please stand by.

Here’s the weirdest, wildest and probably the best event of the Bali summer season: Empire of the Sun at Potato Head Bali Beach Club in Petitenget, 19 August.

Feeling a bit bored? Jaded? Nothing new to do? Under-awed by the faux-fabulousness of (yeah yeah) normal nightlife? Then pay attention. Read more…

Well, now we’ve gone and done it. HIV/AIDS thrives on ignorance and denial, and it’s thriving in Bali. A decade ago it was almost unheard of here; now it’s the stuff of headlines in the local Indonesian language newspaper almost every day. Today’s headline story, set off from the other news on page two of the Bali Post is “Condom Use Low in Bali”. Apparently this situation is the result of a “misunderstanding.” The story reads as follows. Read more…

Travel guides and glossy magazines call Bali paradise and wax poetic about the island’s glories, and how peaceful and spiritual a place it is. Of course, there is some truth amid all the hyperbole, but reading the local newspapers written in Indonesian gives a somewhat different impression. There is evidently some dissonance between the public image and the day-to-day realities of Bali, which is beginning to seem more like Paradox Island than Paradise Island. As a bellweather, let’s just take a look at today’s Bali Post, the local Indonesian-language daily, to see what’s up in this so-called paradise. Remember, this is just one day, and a day chosen completely at random. Yesterday was not dissimilar, and tomorrow probably will not be either.

Following are brief synopses of 13 news items prominent in today’s Bali Post (a broadsheet sized serious newspaper, with a total of 24 pages, four of them devoted to sport, two to classified advertising, and one to international top stories). Read more…

I haven’t posted on this blog for a while. Too busy trying to get something done about everything that’s wrong but doesn’t need to be. Apparently, resistance is futile. We will be assimilated by a sea of trash. Plastic trash. Chemical trash. Trash on four wheels. Trash on two legs. I can’t say, “I’m just saying. . . ” because it’s not me who’s saying it. The voice of global common-denominatorism, the purveyor of what we all already know, TIME breaks the silence.

Headline 1 April 2011 (and it’s not an April Fool’s joke):

HOLIDAYS IN HELL: BALI’S ONGOING WOES

And copyright laws notwithstanding, I post the article here in full . . .  Read more…

Brand-new blog Kitchen InSurgency comes stuffed with witty commentary and epicurean insights. Author and newbie blogger, Karen Waddell puts her moxie where her mouth is, sharing secret recipes, kitchen tips and food lore from Bali. She and her husband Gusky are the pair behind Bali Good Food Co, who brought us Batan Waru,  Terazo, Siam Sally, Cinta Grill and the Cinta Inn in Ubud. Yummy. I’m downloading Karen’s recipes immediately.

Biasa Artspace has been missing its mojo for months, during the extended absence of its founder, Susanna Perini. For most of 2010, a bevy of guest curators stepped in to keep the Biasa heart beating (“paddles, clear!”), with a round of satisfactory exhibitions – - most recently On Camera, a show by Indonesian photography collective MES 56.

While the show as a whole was out of focus, we found a few of the images oddly haunting. Foremost among them was Agung Nugroho Widhi’s Capturing a Moment in a Windy Garden Party, an archival print mounted on aluminium (detail above). Here tiny toys poignantly evoke the disaster of the Suburban Dream in poison plastic colours. The most cherished ideals of Indonesia’s aspirational middle class are exposed as nothing more than toxic trash, a sham, a cheap trick foisted on them by toy sellers. And the absence of people (or dolls) amid the tipped chairs and glasses smells like a neutron bomb. Read more…

Brand spanking new, and smack up against Biku Tea Room, here’s CARGA. It’s a retail emporium taking traditional Indonesian ideas and materials and throwing them sideways. In delightful ways. Tradition with a twist. Read more…

In case you were wondering what that big wall of old shutters is doing near the beach in Seminyak, it’s a multi-faceted development called Potato Head Beach Club brought to you by the makers of Potato Head Jakarta (above), a description-defying place that opened back in January 2009. The brainchild of Indonesian international art collectors, Ronald Akili and Jason Gunawan, Potato Head (Jakarta) is an arty party place (bar, resto, music venue, hang central) frequented by socialites, creatives and neo-yuppies. Akili and Gunawan founded Ark Galerie in Jakarta first, then exploded their ideas outwards into the world of food-bev-tainment with Potato Head, calling in cordon-bleu trained foodie Sandra Budiman as exec chef and co-conspirator. Rumour has it the same faces are behind the soon-to-launch Potato Head Beach project in Bali. And that’s what makes it so interesting. Read more…