Had a good sleep from 9.30pm to 1am last night but couldn’t sleep after that. It’s OK, I’ve been up workin’ on this addictive machine for a few hours. I’m fiddling with the screen resolution because the native 3840 x 2160 pixels makes some programs text far too small. I’m now at the usual 1920 x 1080 HD resolution and that fixes the problem for those two programs, but I much prefer the Ultra HD native resolution. The makers of those two programs (ACDSee Ultimate 8 Image Browser and Xilisoft Video Converter) should make their text scale properly. Fat chance.

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Problem: my right hip and the area behind it (right lower back, upper bum) is now so painful that I can hardly walk. I’m wincing with nearly every step and often gasping and crying out with the jabs of pain.

Huh. When I approached the reception desk this morning in obvious pain and difficulty, young Sabrina (yes, that’s her name and she lives up to it – nice pair! 😉  ) said, “Good morning Mr Croft, how are you?” I said, “Not good, I’m in a lot of pain.”  I may as well have said I was turning into a coconut because she completely ignored my pain and continued to ask me what I wanted with a big smile. (It was batteries for the TV remote, by the way, which I got.)

I’d ignored the hotel breakfast buffet at Rp85,000, $8.50, and gone to the warung just around the corner for brekky.

Mixed fruit, mie goreng, lime juice and coffee came to Rp114,500 or $11.45! I’ve learnt that lesson – use the hotel’s breakfast, it’s much better value.

So anyway, this hip pain is a big problem. What am I going to do? One good thing is that water-walking in the pool is completely painless, so I can do that for exercise. It’s enjoyable as well.

It occurred to me that if I were brave, I could rent a motor scooter to get around on. I think I could cope with it. They’re light and step through and have electric start these days. Hmmm.

But at the moment, I’m a bit confined. The pool beckons.

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Interesting article on the ABC about the US election, and it points out that in the USA:

the real wages of most workers have been stagnant for the past 50 years, but S&P 500 company CEOs now earn 204 times the pay of their average workers …  [ABC News]

It’s another obscene situation. The rich are just plain greedy. The more they have, the more they want, and it’s at the expense of ordinary employees.

I don’t advocate militant unionism where union leaders take out their frustrations on companies, but I do advocate a much stronger union stance to force companies to pay proper wages and to keep them up with inflation. If that means industrial action, strikes, so be it.

In my former employment, we engineering staff suffered a 25% reduction in real terms over the 1980s to early 1990s and we never regained it. I wanted to take a tougher stance, but so many of the guys wouldn’t join the union. If we’d gone on strike, these guys would have undermined us, even though they were in the same wages position as we union members. I was pretty angry at times. But it’s all in the past now.

It was interesting that several of the guys who didn’t want to join the union before all the redundancies happened in 1999 changed their views and joined when they were under threat of being laid off. Yeah. And a couple of the guys who were adamant that they wouldn’t have anything to do with unions still took the redundancy payout package that the union negotiated for members. Oh no, when money was involved, they abandoned their principles and took the cash. I spit.

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This is frustrating. I got an Amazon offer email for the above watch at US$99.99. I find it fairly attractive, especially as it has a compass function. It’s called the Invicta Aviator.

I stewed on it for a few days and this morning I thought I might order it. But when I went to the web site, the offer was gone and the price has doubled to US$200. Sorry, no, that’s too much. Missed it. Booger.  Anyway, in the specs it says it’s 12mm thick and weighs 16 ounces. That’s half an inch thick and half a kilo in weight! I think it would have been a bit much.

I was in the big shop at the Galeria on Tuesday and came across the Tumi bag section. Why is it that we are so attracted to carry bags? It’s not just a women thing with handbags, it’s a man thing too. I’ve got about a dozen all up, I’d say, including two specific camera bags. I bought a Tumi bag at Xmas which I’ve realised ain’t that useful, and now I’ve got the hots for another one. It’s like this:

But not this one – I couldn’t find a picture of the one I saw, but it’s much better. Phwoooaaar. I want it. Phwoooaar, it’s expensive. US$335. I’ve got to resist. I’ve got to go back and have another look …

But I’ve also got to remember that the bag I use all the time although it’s 26 years old is the best bag I’ve ever had. There’s no way I’d ever throw it away. I bought it at Tangs in Singapore in 1990 for about $50 or thereabouts and it’s lasted all this time. Hmmm.

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5pm: I’ve been into the pool and I did 18 laps of water walking today, a lap being up and back. It’s not strenuous exercise, I’m not huffing and puffing, but it stretches the muscles and makes ’em work. Not bad.

While I was there, I had to listen to three Aussie blokes and a sheela (honorary bloke), all wearing the obligatory Bintang singlets and with tattoos, sounding off about Oz and the world to a Dutch guy. Of course, hyperbole was in order and house prices were “nothing less than a million dollars” and cars are “real expensive”.

Well, they’re not, actually. Wheels did an article last month pointing out that cars are about 25% to 45% cheaper in real terms than they were 20-25 years ago. They gave specific examples, which I can’t remember here, but you can buy a Yaris or a Micra or other small cars brand new for around $16,000. That’s very cheap by any standard.

But then the conversation got on to refugees and how Germany was destroying itself by taking so many Syrian refugees. They all get given a house, ya know? And then they all group together – implying that they form ghettos full of crime and no-go areas for whites.

All get given a house? Bullshit. Bullshit! What a load of tripe. But they know, y’know? Like, it stands to reason, y’know? Sick!

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5.30pm: Dang, I’ve just been down the street (very slowly and painfully) and I broke my own rule: I didn’t carry a camera. I saw two great shots; one was of guys dismantling a huge barong or legong figure from the parade yesterday. It was like they had murdered it and were chopping the body up. You’ll have to take my word for it.

The other was two young boys double-dinking (Aussie term) on a small bike, but having great fun at it. Missed the shot. That’s my rule, always carry a camera, because ya never know.

I was looking for a mini-mart with an ATM, but I found the first without the second. I had to use my VISA card. It was OK.

One very interesting thing: a small shop called Bag-cool (I think — something cool), “A Museum of Vintage Bags”. How unusual. That’s the great thing about Bali, it’s full of surprises, nice ones.