There was a small library in my villa (look next to my head in the photo) that included the book “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert. I’m halfway through it and find it both relevant and irrelevant to my situation. It’s the personal journey of the author overcoming a divorce and depression to travel for a year. Four months each in Italy to learn the language and indulge in eating, India to stay at her undisclosed Guru’s ashram (that I’m easily able to figure out is Siddha, the same as my good friend Dian’s, where I’ve had darshan as well, at the ashram in the catskills), and Bali. I’m really glad it was here, as it seems a quite appropriate book to read.
Tony, Marita, Deb and I have been meeting on planning the big grand opening party on Jan. 1st. I am trying my best to be helpful with it and will take on as much responsibility as I can to help prepare for it, manage the sound systems for the entertainment and any other logistical issues. Sat. I went with Tony and Marita to Denpasar to shop for the event and do some personal shopping. We went to a store called Makro that is the equivalent of a Sam’s Club or Costco. That was pretty crazy. Then we stopped quickly at this ultra modern supermarket and mall called Carefour. It was a gigantic new building with parking lot and had several levels of small mall stores and fast food (both asian and KFC, A&W) and the whole top floor was like a fancy Super Walmart. It was filled with lots of westerners shopping. We then went to a party of some of their friends in a nearby area called Semenyak, just passed the similar area called Kuta. These are suburbs of Denpasar along the beach that attract the most tourism and are filled with shops, restaurants and bars. The streets are super narrow and confusing. We finally arrive at the party after sunset at this super modern minimal designed house that we have to walk cross the edge of a rice paddy to get to. Its owned by a couple from California that designed and built it after the house they originally got wouldn’t allow them to have their dog. The crowd was almost exclusively white and older than even me. The owner David was a furniture designer for TV shows and movies. Although the house was incredibly well designed and built, I really didn’t care for it, as it was ostentatious.
Sun. night we had a presentation and birthday celebration of one of the Villa owners here, Nicholas Guppy, who turned 83. I set up the sound and video projections for the presentation. He was an explorer in his youth of North Amazon rainforest and had a slide show of his photos from that time, as well as a variety of actual artifacts. He has written 2 books on it as well, and a friend of his did a short reading. There was a really nice gathering of all the people staying here. It stared to rain in the middle of it, so we were forced to relocate from the upper outdoor deck to the lower lobby area.
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