I blew out a flip flop and needed a replacement pair. The front desk at the hotel told me that the resort store had them, but although they had other beach apparel they offered no sandals. The cashier informed me that I could find some at the market and directed me there.
I walked along the beach road for ten minutes or so and found a typical market. This one catered to locals, there was not a tourist to be seen. That may be a consequence having no desire to purchase their wares or the fact that all the vendors only spoke Indonesian.
I searched in likely stalls myself but saw none on display. After having made the rounds twice I started to inquire. I have been in many situations in my life employing non verbal communication so I gave it a shot.
My act was to point to someones sandals, push forward money and pantomime taking their sandals. Then I would point at their sandal and smile and give a thumbs up and at my hiking boots and frown and give a thumbs down. Then I would point to stalls and uplift my hands in a gesture of which?Many got it, many did not, many were just amused. I got every conceivable answer but the one I sought. A big no, which might mean the don’t know or that nobody has them and I got pointed to stalls that didn’t. Finally I tried the act with various vendors and one guy smiled and pulled out a rice bag filled with sandals and offered me a pair. They were not of a desirable style and they were half the size of my feet. I pantomimed bigger. He got it and reached in the bag took out a pair, put it down and repeated that several times until he pulled a pair that would only be a a couple of sizes too small.
Finally he shook his head no, He had divined the balance of the contents of the bag.
All right, I walked back to the hotel and one of the taxi drivers that rotates through servicing customers indicated that he knew of a surf shop that might have big sizes. We went all the way to Densapar, a pretty good drive. The traffic is merely very busy as opposed to the chaos of yesterday with the motor biking fiasco.
The largest they had was 42, but I bought them anyway. They appeared high quality and were priced like something upper end. Well I probably won’t be able to do any better.
As we had come this far I asked him where the nearest Apple store was. He took me to one then another and finally I found a Mac Air 13” Retina Screen and plunked down $1,500 for something that sells for $1,000 in the states. I guess that would be import duty for an American product made in Asia. I don’t know, but I am loving it.
With a 12 hour run time on battery, I should be able to blog on trains, buses and airplanes and the picture editing software sure beats what I was using on Linux.
So back to the hotel sitting in front of the pool, I plunked myself in front of a machine with an interface I had never used, googled up a couple of tutorials and was off to the races. I took some disk drives that I had laying around and set up one as an encrypted Time Machine drive, which is there term for a special kind of backup. I took another drive and set it up to store things. This box has 128 GB of flash drive and no hard drive.
I have 140 GB of pictures of my travels I have already posted.
Then I started a couple of backups of my software development in expectation that I would never need any of the code I had developed ever again, but that if I failed to do this that I would get an email within a month from somebody who wants an Aerospace Distribution Solution.
Having fun learning, take care. A lot more posts will be coming, both of my current activity in Bali and running backwards through the reportable parts of the Philippines.
Jonathan Allen LaFleur