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Day 7: Chakra Widia, Party

Vermiculture in progress
We left for Chakra's house at 10am. Chakra has a house close to Permana Cottage. He told us stories of his experiences, and his inventions. He was once chased by people in Aceh after he made them a stove. We met this guy he calls Tarzan that was apparently raised by dogs in the forest. Tarzan can listen to honey bees and know whether they are agitated or not. Tarzan made us some honey bee salad.
  • He makes use of what he calls 'appropriate technology'
    • Built a kiln/oven which dries rice in 1 hour. (superdryer)
    • Customized a diesel engine to use hydrogen for doing portable rice mills
      • Moves from village to village and mills rice for the farmers: 100k of unmilled rice produces 65kg of brown rice and 45kg of white rice

  • Permaculture: using wastes from one food process to feed into another process
    • Using smoke from burnt rice husks to smoke bamboo which helps to preserve
    • Using ashes from the burnt husks to spray on the garden to kill bugs
    • Using food remains from kitchens to make compost using vermiculture i.e. worms breaking down the food to make a juice which is then mixed with water and sprayed on vegetables in the garden
    • The worms also are used to feed fish i.e. aquaculture
  • Heritage vs green rev. rice
    • Heritage is longer, takes 6 months to grow; green rev. rice takes 3months and is much shorter; easier to thresh
    • There's more variety of heritage(traditional) rice
    • Most of the 200 varieties of traditional rice was lost during the green revolution; only 8 varieties remain
Once we left Chakra's house, I went and chilled at the cottage. Later, I went and bought two ornamental rings (one of Ganesha, and another of something else). I also got a Balinese massage: it was really good and soothing especially since my shoulders have been aching a lot lately.
Later, we had dinner after I took Jackson to buy his sister some baby clothes (she's having a baby in March)
The dinner was awesome; it was prepared by Sunday and his crew.  I especially loved the peanut sauce and duck.








Popular lager in Indonesia: Bintang

Later, we drank Bintang and danced to Latin and Afrocaribbean music by the pool.
An awesome day!
We also, decided on the activities for the following free day; I chose to join the guys going to the hot springs; some other guys would be doing a climb of Mt. Batur; others would remain in Ubud and chill.

A beautiful dusk

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