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This week a number of people have asked me to look at holes in the pavements (sidewalks for you transatlantic folk).
I looked.
There are rather a lot aren't there? I don't really know what else to say. There again I suppose a question does drift aimlessly across my mind:
Why is it that an island that depends so much on tourism and hopes to attract high level travellers from across the world doesn't repair the numerous huge holes in the pavements?
Perhaps the authorities just don't see there is a problem.
I remember years ago a British tourist arrived at Ngurah Rai airport, he travelled to Ubud and, late at night after a long journey half way across the world, arrived at his hotel. It was dark (it does tend to go a bit dark at night doesn't it?) and, wandering around the hotel in the blackness he stepped into an open well. The well was empty and he fell rather a long way to the bottom badly damaging his spine. He was medivacced out paralysed. We have to wonder why a hotel would have an open well hidden in a dark area where a visitor is likely to walk.
An open hole at ground level can be a tad dangerous on a dark night.
Pavements generally in Indonesia are not very “user friendly” are they? They make the kerbs about 3 metres high and the pavements rise and fall as they cross driveways making use of crampons and a rope mandatory in places. Then they cover them with concrete pavers with a non slip pattern so coarse that they trip you every step. But then if that isn't enough, just to make sure you are paying attention, they put an inspection cover every ten metres or so which either doesn't fit properly, is not properly in position or simply has gone missing.
Most pavements are made up of concrete slabs laid over the top of road drains. These slabs are built as scientifically as the bone in a witchdoctor's nostril. A plywood “mold” is made up where the slab will go, a bit of steel rod is laid in the bottom and badly mixed concrete is put on top and allowed to set. Unfortunately the steel is in the bottom of the slab, it doesn't strengthen the concrete much at all and is also exposed so that rust sets in. One day an unsuspecting grockle stumbles upon a weakened slab, the rust gives way and the tourist disappears into a black fetid orifice never to be seen again.
Often the slabs are damaged by a passing 10 ton truck carrying 300 tons of water bottles being driven by some orang who learned his driving skills while pushing a bakso cart. He has to deliver his water to that warung but his simple brain doesn't have the capacity to comprehend that a fully laden 300 ton truck placed on top of a feebly manufactured concrete drain cover is not a tenable situation. Have you noticed how often you see trucks with their rear wheels disappeared into holes in the pavements around these parts.
“A hole in the pavement!” Shock, horror, “they (that mysterious, ever present “they” who are expected to fix everything) should do something about it!” In our so called civilised western world, where even Bank robbers can sue the local authority for tripping over something while making their getaway, holes such as these would be very quickly repaired.
Unfortunately not in Bali. There appears to be a reluctance to repair holes in the pavements, many of which have been there for so long they have trees growing out of them.
So why are there so many holes in Bali's pavements lurking in the dark waiting to trap the unwary and ready at a moment's notice to swallow you hole?
Some say it is a holeistic tourism strategy devised to encourage people to stay a bit longer. You can hear the advertising straplines: “Visit Bali and enjoy the hole experience” or perhaps “come to Bali, put your feet up and relax in Sanglah's 5 star hideaway.”
More cynical types suggest it is the wealthcare industry that has taken a leaf out of the book of enterprising puncture repair men (you know, the ones that throw nails on the road outside their premises to “stimulate” business). It is rumoured that in the dark of night shadowy figures descend on the streets to set traps for the unwary that will inevitably lead to the parting of rather a lot of the folding stuff in the pursuit of a return to health and wellbeing. They recognise that holes are a touch wellness negative.
I have it on good authority that this is simply not true.
The hole is, of course, a gift from the spiritual realm. To repair it would be to interfere with the space time continuum of the universe and may alter the destiny of not only we insignificant mortals but of the very universe itself. Fate would be tampered with and Karma simply wouldn't get a look in.
It has been well said that everything in the universe is interconnected and the mere twitch of the sphincter muscle of a Siberian warthog can set in train a hole series of events which can lead to hurricanes in Hampstead and even ripples on the surface of Rupert Murdoch's bedtime Horlicks. This is, of course, known as the warthog effect.
But holes in the pavements have a much more important role here in the transcendental world of Bali where the spiritual world is forever engaged in an eternal battle between good and evil and the perpetual pursuit of harmony. The holes exist as reminders of the many holes in the pavements of our lives.
You see to fall down a hole in paradise brings about a behavioural cusp.
“A what?”
A behavioural cusp. It is a behaviour change that brings an organism's behaviour into contact with new contingencies that have far-reaching consequences. A behavioural cusp is a special type of behaviour change because it provides the learner with opportunities to access (1) new reinforcers (“buggar I won't do that again”), (2) new contingencies (“I should have taken out health insurance”) (3) new environments (“it's bleedin' 'orrible down here”), (4) new related behaviours (“I'll strangle the bastard that didn't replace that manhole”), (5) competition with archaic or problem behaviours (“I'll strangle every bastard that ever knew the milkman of the bastard that didn't replace that manhole”), and (6) it impacts the people around the learner (“god you stink”), and (7) these people agree to the behaviour change and support its development after the intervention is removed (“go and have a bath, you smell like fermenting warthog vomit”).
In short, falling down a hole in the pavement is a learning experience that, done once, is unlikely to be repeated.
Have you noticed? Indonesian don't walk on the footpaths. My wife refuses to, she feels they are dangerous, she prefers to walk in the road amongst the traffic. She always feels that the access covers are going to collapse under her.
You might have also noticed you can always recognise new visitors to Bali by the way they try and walk on the pavements, they stumble around tripping over things and tip toeing around obstacles. Eventually they will get the point.
Falling down a hole brings a welcome respite from our ever increasingly hectic daily life, a period of relaxation and reflection as a broken ankle mends itself or a fetid infection spreads up our leg. It brings us to contemplate the importance of physical wellbeing in a spiritual world and the very tentative nature of life itself. Basic biological issues take on a far more relevant perspective in the stark reality of a simplified life: “To wee or not to wee? That is the question.”
We are also brought to a place of realising that in our ever so safe closetted western lifestyle we have been lulled into a false sense of our security. We are brought to recognise the holes in the many pavements of our lives that we walk every day.
When it comes to health most people are finding the odd few holes of the past have multiplied at an exponential rate in recent years. To satisfy the voracious appetites of the banking fraternity of the wealthcare industry clinics and hospitals are reproducing like rabbits on viagra and charging prices that make wounded bulls (where on earth did that phrase come from) look like benevolent philanthropists. Suicide is starting to look like a very sensible option for ever increasing proportions of the world population. Will the insurance pay out? Are holes in the pavement a preexisting condition? Will pigs fly?
Similarly in the financial sector's of our world we have suddenly found holes where we never expected them. Cedric and Penelope put away money all their lives as they walked a pavement based on trust and long term security. Suddenly they, like many people across the world, have found their financial arrangements are so full of holes there isn't a pavement left anymore. Indeed the (w)hole of the financial world, which for generations has been a system based on trust, woke up one morning only to discover that they were surrounded by sharks and sharlatans. What future is there when no one can trust anyone else, when 80% of the world's wealth has no collateral to cover it and where wealth exists merely as digital entries in some hidden computer database? Is virtual wealth a negotiable currency?
2008 should have been a behavioural cusp but it wasn't and now 3 years later the pavement is knackered and no one can afford to pay for the repairs anymore.
I'm starting to wander into a hole new realm so I'd better finish. I'll leave you with some words of wisdom from a good friend of mine “A pavement in Bali is that where the sum of it's parts is less than the hole.”
Phil Wilson
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