Talk twenty one.
Bali, 25th December
- We came here, to the north-east end of Bali at a beautiful centre Au Naturel, to get some relaxation for three days after the hustle and bustle of Kuta and Saminyak,.
- What is it for a word „centre”? It must come from deep communist times. This here is a beautiful hotel with four luxurious bungalows, which is called a “resort – spa”, for those who want to relax running around naked in an
isolated from possible intruders place.
- Au Naturel – in a free translation means closer to nature. Such atmosphere provides our “spa place”. Since you don’t like “my” centre. Silence, peace, far away from shopping malls, restaurants. Close to nature, amongst singing birds and the evening croaking of frogs.
- I’d say chortling. Those who are interested have a gym and massage room to enjoy.
- This room in flowery colours, filled with delicate fragrance of herbs and spices, with slight breeze moving falling down curtains light like mist, and separating the massage table from a beautiful bath tub, and soft background music, right from the entrance, build a magic feeling.
- What would you comment about the masseur?
- You were peeping during my massage, weren’t you?! A very nice guy and a middling masseur. In his twenties, married with two kids, to make things clear.
- No other impression except the relaxation?
- You want to know whether I got hot during the massage, don’t you? Yes, I was lying naked and the masseur operated around all parts of my body. No arousal, though.
- Fortunately, the masseur and the service people don’t work naked….
- Once again, let me remind you that in the naturist centres the rules are clear: the employees aren’t supposed to be sex objects.
- It’s a pity, sometimes.
- What’s there on your mind! To sum up, it’s easier to appreciate the beauty of nature form the perspective of a luxurious resort, where everything is arranged to please a blasé tourist.
- We came here because I’d found the place in the Internet six months earlier. It was a bargain buying a package attraction on Bali. Doing so, I didn’t know much about what can meet us here. It was a good pick. I like it here.
- What I like here is the idea of a place for naturists, not only for gays. It’s advertised as a place with „clothing optional”. You can wear something or just nothing.
- What I also like is that five guests (us included) – an Australian couple and a guy from Timor are being served form morning till evening by a little army of employees. Always smiling and happy with their life.
- I was amused when Sharron – the Australian lady - told us that she’d found the place advertised in the Internet as „straight friendly”. Up to now I’ve heard the magnanimous „gay friendly”. It was the first time when I heard the expression „hetero-friendly”. At least this way we are equated in the rights of deciding who can be admitted to a secret circle. This time a secret gay circle.
- About the married couple of Sharron and Wayne we’ll be able to talk in Australia. They invited us to meet them there after the New Year’s Day.
- Anyway, the Christmas Eve spent with them at the spa Au Naturel had its charm.
- I’m glad that we, at least, had our sarongs on. Naked at the Christmas table would’ve been a bit too far, wouldn’t it?
- Our outfits were Indonesian. So was the food. But there was Polish hay and Polish playing card with a Polish Christmas carol on the table. Your Mum made sure we had some Polish customary Christmas features with us.
- Our Australians were pleased to have learned something about Polish Christmas Eve tradition.
- In Indonesia, and particularly on Bali, where Hindus prevail, pork and chicken are basic meat food.
- I didn’t like the lunch we had in one of the local restaurants IBU OKA which should’ve been very „local”, meaning cheap. It turned out to be a typical tourist trap with inflated prices.
- This type of restaurants is called „warung”. There’s supposed to be good local food. At IBU OKA or Suckling pig a local delicacy is served. It’s roast cuts served in various forms.
- It’s not my food.
- But we were supposed to taste it.
- Can’t we talk about your cooking?
- What an exciting subject!
- It depends for whom. At present, everybody cooks on TV screens and everywhere else. You are a good cook, aren’t you? Where did you get that skill? Is it pleasurable for you?
- During my first months in Sweden I was sentenced to eating dry food in a form of sandwiches and fried chicken at the best. I became tired of such food. Eating out was out of the question since I couldn’t afford it. Besides, Swedish bread was inedible for me because it was either two sweet or too white. So, I started with baking bread myself. I’d use yeasts and sour milk. By the way, Swedish sour milk is the best in the world. In the field of bread baking I was successful – all friends of mine loved it. I’d bake the bread every weak and freeze the excess.
- Baking bread is a complicated procedure but yet it doesn’t mean cooking.
- I started with stuffed cabbage leaves. My failure here was spectacular. I hadn’t known either what kind of meat should I put in there or the necessity of boiling the rice prior to making the stuffing. With great difficulty I’d make those cabbage wraps stuffing them with beef mixed with dry rice.
- No success?
- They were inedible. The cabbage was tough, the rice was undercooked and the whole wraps impossible to chew. But this way I took the first steps!
- What about the recipes?
- You have the Internet in mind, don’t you? I didn’t have a computer and the word „Internet” was alien to me. See, how old I am! Fortunately, my Mum sent me „Polish Cousine” which saved my life.
- Better said: your stomach. Don’t forget that I had my first computer in the mid-nineties, or later.
- I’m talking about the first half of the eighties!
- Nowadays you cook with recipes, don’t? Nothing creative? Nothing of yours?
- No, I’m not either an artist cook or a creator of new recipes. I mainly cook following the recipes collected during various trips or I take them from the Internet. The Internet always wins!
- You whizz around the kitchen like a professional.
- Don’t worry, we’re not going to open a pub! I agree, I like to cook for a party but I don’t get particularly excited with the kitchen commonplaceness.
- I feel the same when it comes to washing up after your culinary war.
- You are doing very well at the sink.
- Neither of your partners could deal with the kitchen?
- Oh, now it sounds as if I had countless partners.
- How many means: countless?
- Definitely more than three.
- How many did you have?
- Throughout my life, not the shortest one, you included, I had three.
- Who was the one from the Galery, „the one from the letter”?
- Jarek. A guy with imagination. Especially in the kitchen. Here you have the answer to your question set earlier. He’d cook, roast, and bake. Experimentally. And in huge amounts. Some smaller amounts wouldn’t appeal to him, wouldn’t have the same effect. Most of his experimental products were not good for consumption. They landed in the trash bin before I could taste whatever he managed to cook out. But he was never discouraged by his failures. He’d retry and sometimes he managed to prepare something edible. From time to time it happened to be delicious.
- Well, success!
- Once or twice only. The result was a matter of chance and the recipe was not to be re-created.
- What did the research end with?
- The total ban on his cooking. Or he’d start using cooking recipes.
- Was his cooking OK then?
- Nothing was OK. Artist don’t accept patterns. So, cooking on gas was over.
- What started?
- Another passion. The garden, actually, our little garden. He decided to start a botanical and dendrological garden in our backyard which was not bigger that 150 square metres.
- Was he a success?
- Yes, if you could call a success planting dozens of conifers, deciduous trees, bushes, perennials, bulb flowers, and many other plans which started exuberantly filling the garden long before they reached their target size.
- What a bush! I was still able to see the results of his passion.
- Although you came two years after he’d finished his creation.
- That’s maybe why the effects were then so impressive!
- My neighbours liked the garden. They appreciated the invested work.
- And your money.
- It must be said to his credit that Jarek dedicated a lot of time to his passion. Unfortunately, grubbing of the garden was some work for itself, as well.
- Did he have any time left for his professional work and extramural studies?
- Not much. Apparently, the work in the garden was a good excuse to run away from all other obligations. When I discovered the truth about his alleged studies, it was too late for everything.
- What was it too late for?
- For our further life together.
