On my recent, and first, trip to Hanoi, one of the highlights was a visit to the Ho Chi Minh Museum. In particular I was taken by an installation of images that apparently represent the ideas, personalities and events from...

 This year’s Ubud Writers and Readers Festival’s tribute went to I Gusti Nyoman Lempad, the first UWRF tribute to a son of Ubud. It was particularly fitting that the tribute took place in front of one of the temples that...

Made Wijaya, a.k.a. Michael White, convened, chaired or provoked (we’re not sure which) a house rocking panel at the Left Bank earlier today. Invited/seduced/coerced (again we’re not sure which) to join were Balinese Putu Semiada and Wayan Juniartha, beyond-honorary Balinese...

      Fund raising for Sita, born with Rubella syndrome resulting in  profound deafness.  Penggalian dana untuk Sita, lahir dengan Rubella Syndrome yang menyebabkan gangguan esktrim pendengaran.   This is the story of the second child of my friend...

Well here I am, post monsoon Bali, early monsoon Thailand – and the rainy season hit Miyazaki today. urgh. But now I know why they have umbrella locks in this town – felt like grabbing an umbrella myself!!!

So many people think that to travel constantly for work is glamorous. Yep, all those security checkpoints, the moving goalposts of international safety, the crazy taxi drivers, and in Bangkok all the exercise getting to the waiting lounge. Not to...

One day a friend of mine, David Travelian, showed me some simple oil painting techniques which I applied to some photographs I had printed on canvas. It was a big buzz for me, years ago I had tried my hand...

My Interview with Daniel Ziv as he goes to the Busan International Film Festival to premier the theatre version of his documentary feature JALANAN as an official entry in competition..

As an Indonesian born in the 1950s, I found watching the three hour director’s cut of Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary “The Act of Killing” (executive producer Werner Herzog) deeply disturbing. Though it revealed nothing factually new per se about the horrors of the...

Originally published in the Huffington Post It’s been a busy fortnight in Indonesian politics. The inhabitants of the capital Jakarta just voted in a new governor, Joko Widodo a.k.a. Jokowi, of the PDI-P party with the significant support of the upstart...