Monthly Archive: March 2011

Is this the Ultimate Touron?

So I am sitting in the pizzeria which is my regular local base for “work”. Or, more accurately, that mixture of social media, gibbering quietly...

Homework, AKA Shouty Time

“Do you have homework tonight?” “Yes. It’s quite hard.” “Oh.” We are in our local pizzeria, for a change. The homework thing, after a year...

Water apples amid leaves.

The Sunday Six: Amazing Asian Fruits

1: Water Apple Probably the single prettiest fruit in Asia, these scarlet beauties have a mild, dilute taste and scent that’s like a combination of...

Class lesson on snakes: children handling a reticulated python.

Back to School!

Can You Take a Child out of School for a Year? I recently came across a parents group arguing against longterm family travel on the...

In Conversation

Her voice catches me first. It’s actressy, well-honed, modulated, and, my lord, it carries. It’s like Princess Diana in her “three people in this marriage”...

The Sound of Silence

On Saturday, town was so quiet you could literally hear the silence. Not the usual raucous night-time non-quiet, the squawking yabber of geckos, the surprising...

pantai putih, the white sand beach near bug-bug in bali, looking, frankly, greyish.

Learning to Love Our Motorbike

It didn’t take sharing a road with the Bali Merzy Motorcycle Club, arguably the best-behaved bikers on the planet, to teach me that there’s nothing...