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<\/a><\/p>\nMy Bali internet connection speeds are glacially slow\u2026 at least when I am able to connect. There\u2019s a lot of dropping the connection, both on WiFi and on my Sprint International Roaming. I suppose one could say it\u2019s dropped like it\u2019s hot; this is because, well, it *is* hot. And humid. My weather app which had shown temperatures topping out at 80 degrees and lows at night around 65 must\u2019ve been fed false information because that is NOT what\u2019s happening here. It\u2019s no Da Nang but dang! it\u2019s not far off either.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m writing stuff here and there, trying to capture the flavor of the moment and the experience. And while perhaps I should use this opportunity to embrace a more text based approach, I can\u2019t seem to quit the overuse of digital photos to try and convey things\u2026 and to obscure the many, may literary shortcomings of the prose itself.<\/p>\n
So what I thought I might do is post a quick bit of verbiage and maybe one or two photos when possible, a sort of teaser campaign or behind the scenes to at least put something into the inter-verse while saving the bulk of updates for when I get a more stable and robust connection.<\/p>\n
This is already creating paradoxes though as I spent this morning drafting a wordy blog post that somewhat encapsulates a few of these points while prattling on and on about the prior day\u2019s 12.5 hour tour. But I\u2019m not posting that as it really does need some photos to sell it and thus there will be this weird repetition and d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu when I do ultimately get it up and online. Meh. The three of you who read this thing will just have to deal with it in your own ways. I recommend copious amounts of gelato. Like this one:<\/p>\n
Yeesh. That is one bad photo, Harry. To be fair, I had just gotten off a white water raft.<\/p>\n There\u2019s your behind the scenes pic for August 25, 2017.<\/p>\n And here\u2019s one for August 26, 2017.<\/p>\n Today I went to the Bali Marathon packet pickup, promised a 21st century experience that would redefine the modern marathon expo. You know what that meant? They handed us wristbands that we could load money onto as points to buy food and merchandise. My take on this? That\u2019s some bitcoin bullshit in more than one way. First, you couldn\u2019t actually use paper money \u2013 you could only load amounts onto the wrist band via a credit card or debit card. And the money wasn\u2019t money, it was converted to points, valued at 10,000 Indonesian Rupiah. And so everything at the expo was priced in points\u2026 or occasionally priced in Rupiah making you THINK you could pay in cash but no, you needed to go to a cashier and get \u201cpoints\u201d loaded onto your wrist band to buy the food\/shirt\/coffee\/beer\/etc.<\/p>\n I had already converted once from US dollars to Rupiah. I wasn\u2019t about to convert more US Dollars into Rupiah equivalent Points that were only valid today at this expo. Oh, and there was a minimum 50,000 Rupiah \u201cbuy in.\u201d That would\u2019ve been easy to spend on the items in question \u2013 a Coke Zero was 2 points or 20,000 Rupiah, less than I paid at the Elephant Safari but way more than at the local supermarkets (a can goes for 7,000 Rupiah or equivalent \u201c0.7 points\u201d; a 1.5 L bottle is 14,500). I opted instead to wander around a bit outside the expo and though I paid more than my dinner last night (which cost the same as that 1.5 L Coke Zero) but was a pleasant way to spend some time.<\/p>\n I could post a shot from that lunch but instead here\u2019s a shot of me winning a tee-shirt from a vendor. To spin I had to correctly identify two industries the company was involved in. The hostess pointed me to the signage behind her for \u201chints.\u201d The problem was, it was all in Indonesian. She gave me one in that they did hotels\u2026 I puzzled out a word that kinda looked like \u201clibro\u201d and guessed they were into books or publishing. They were so I got to spin\u2026 and avoided the whammy of nothing to pocket a t-shirt that only has Indonesian text on it. I suspect it says, \u201cI won this shirt at the Hotel\/Book Booth of the Bali Marathon.\u201d If it doesn\u2019t, that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to tell everyone it says and unless they use their babel fish\/google translator I should totally be able to sell that.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n