Week #06
An exciting week, as two cement trucks, a pump truck, and a sizable crew poured the four walls for the future swimming pool. In addition, foundation walls and columns went up for the guest side of the living space. A…
Joyful Bali Breezes
The windy season starts in July and continues until September / October here in Bali. Especially along the beaches, and primarily in the afternoon, the breezes are gifts that keep on giving. If you’re Balinese, it certainly doesn’t mean chilling…
Week #05
This week was at least as productive as the others, although we were in Makassar for several days and didn’t see a bunch of the work that unfolded. Luckily a manager took photos and videos during the time we were…
Is Bali like a year-round Mardi Gras Festival?
There are two major trends at work behind this idea: the first is that the Balinese have many, many ceremonies — and parading and wearing special clothing is part of their rituals. Secondly, both the Balinese and a large number…
Week #04
This week over 75% of the holes were drilled to support the foundation for our future retreat. In addition, steel rebar “cages” were built and placed into the holes in order to increase the strength of the concrete. Unfortunately, the…
The Balinese & their Kites
The Balinese are an island culture, but one of their many unique qualities is that spiritually they look towards volcanos (skyward), instead of the sea. It’s not that they don’t like the sea. It’s just that the volcanos represent spiritual…
Pererenan Beach development project
We heard through the grapevine that some exciting developments we’re going to take place at our beach, and now the work has begun. First we heard that a bridge would be built that would connect Pererenan Beach with Echo Beach…
Digging deep for structural support
Because the building is approximately twelve meters tall (over 39 feet), we had to dig down to really hard ground in order to set the support columns. At four key locations we’ll have four rebar-enforced concrete columns right next to…
Travel Tips from the Frugal Five (@nytimes)
MG: I think I can actually boil my travel education down to two interrelated lessons: No. 1: The best way to be a frugal traveler is to learn to truly love the things that don’t cost a lot of money,…
A moment at the beach
On Sundays there’s quite a few food vendors at Pantai Pererenan, but the corn guy is an everyday staple (mostly), along with the combi cafe VW van. And now, here is your moment of zen:
Week #03 – Boundary walls rising high, workers settled in
This week the property began to have vertical dimensions, as some of the walls were constructed to their full height. It might be hard to visualize in the following video, but the entire property will require at least four feet…
Snack and drink lady finds our property
It was a pleasant surprise to see a snack lady selling drinks and snacks to the workers. She has figured out a niche business for herself. It speaks to the resourcefulness of the Balinese. They are a proud, hard-working, artistic and…