At first sight the title above seems to be written in Gibberish. That is, for people living outside of Indonesia and Malaysia. The only thing I did was use some words in ‘Bahasa Indonesia’, the standard language of Indonesia. Because of the Dutch colonization, many Dutch words were readily taken into the Indonesian language. The title has two of them: ‘koki’ is derived from the Dutch word ‘kok’ which means ‘cook’ and a ‘supir’ is a chauffeur. In Indonesia it is not exceptional to employ house staff. It is not at all a privi [View Full Entry]

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So we would start a small boutique hotel in Ubud. Then the child needed to have a name. A lot of the small hotels or guesthouses in Bali are called “ Villa So-and-So” where “So-and-So” has to be replaced by some exotic name. “Villa Hibiscus”, “Villa Cempaka”, “Villa Mahayani”, … So we could hardly call our little paradise “Misty Cliffs” or “Summer Willows”. We needed something oriental and a tad mysterious. frangipani tree We have two, one hundred and f [View Full Entry]

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We visited our friends in Sanur. They left Belgium two years ago, a decision they did not regret at all. They were the ‘mystery guests” that made an evaluation of ‘Mandala Desa’ for us. We reported about the failure of our project. They suggested we should talk to a Belgian man who had been living in Bali for a long time, knew the island well and definitely would give us advice. His house, close to Ubud, was said to be for sale. We made an appointment and had a nice conversation with an extravert and open person, who told us one [View Full Entry]

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Even at the end of the rainy season, pouring tropical showers are no exception. We enjoyed a lot of them during our stay at 'Mandala Desa'. The rains came down violently. The deluge didn't last long however and the raindrops felt warm. After the rain it smelled pleasantly petrichor and it was much cooler. We were assigned the villa at the end of the compound with a nice, rice paddy view. Sitting on our porch, we quietly observed the duckherd, watching his free-grazing flock feed in the uncultivated rice paddy. The herder guided his badelynge by signaling, using a long stick [View Full Entry]

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'Mandala Desa', the small hotel that was for sale, was fully booked at the beginning of our trip. We therefore first stayed at 'Puri Kelapa' in Sanur, a resort that consists of houses in Balinese style, in a tropical garden with a nice, common swimming pool. We rented a small house with a bedroom, a bathroom and a terrace for $US30 per night; this price even included breakfast! Very basic and not really the cleanest place we had ever seen, but what could we expect for a price like that. No wonder we met people from Holland who had been spending [View Full Entry]

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The past years have been tough. Health issues caused a severe mental blow. Personal problems with my business partner led to a stalemate that could have been fatal to the company that we had built in the previous 20 years. A Solomon’s judgment was needed to prevent the company from going bankrupt and approximately fifty employees from losing their jobs. During the long Ascension weekend of 2007, I decided to sell my 50% share in the company. On July 7, 2007, I was unemployed for the first time in 30 years. So what!? I would take a Sabbatical. It’s trendy and [View Full Entry]

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