PLAY: Second Update from Interior Design Central

Finally I had the time and energy last night to upload and sort out some of the photos I have been taking. 2 full days have passed since my last entry - first of which I spent walking around my village, bumming on the beach and then having dinner at the officially hip KuDeTa (certified by the fact that it has its own soundtrack of electronic lounge music - all three volumes of it!) - the chef crafted a bunch of outstanding veggie dishes off the menu - after which I barely had enough wind in my sails to walk back to my hotel before passing out. Today I did a mini tour to Ubud, the art and cultural capital of the island, with a stop at the elephant cave and the monkey forest. Finally some serious flora and fauna a.k.a. photo opportunities galore. Since I woke up at 2:30am yesterday morning (possibly the most ridiculous jet lag I've ever had - on the bright side it gave me a chance to watch CNN for 5 hours and catch up on all the DNC stuff and my favorite op-eds, yay!), I spent the 2nd half of the day glued on the beach until it was time for dinner - this one at Chandi - modern Indonesian cuisine run by a guy who worked at a bunch of NYC restaurants.. lot of tempe and tofu, peanut and tamarind sauce, mango and papaya in everything, oh so delicious.. not to mention yumy ginger cocktails :)


On a different note, I have been reading the book Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali - and the woman is seriously amazing. She was raised in a strict Muslim family only to escape to the Netherlands, denounce Islam, become an MP, and then had have her citizenship taken away when she became too controversial even for the Dutch after she wrote the script that was made into a movie Submission by Theo van Gogh who was assassinated for making it. Not exactly a fluffy beach read, but so interesting.

Lastly, speaking of the Convention, what a joke. Reading today's columns from Dowd and Friedman side by side, I can't help but feel like the Democrats are so unduly obsessed with themselves and - to use a severly overused term - "out of touch" in a world where there are so many much more pressing problems.. Anyway, at least they finally nominated Obama, Hillary did her long awaited speech (which I have yet to see), Bill wraps it up tonight, hopefully not producing any juicy material for the networks to obsess about, and we can move on from the silly theatrics.