BOOK REVIEW: The Best of Stranger in Paradise 1996 – 2008, by Wiryawan Paritranaya

Published in http://kandangnulis.blogspot.com

An Expatriate Weird-Diary—Stranger in Paradise

Book: The Best of Stranger In Paradise Bali 1996-2008

Author: Made Wijaya

Editor: Rachel Greaves

Publisher: Wijaya Words

Pages : 380 pages

Year of Published: 2008

Have you had a question in your mind about what have been done by expatriate community in Bali? Did you think they just spend their life with having some fun, or may be building villa as much as they can? Do you think so? I don’t think so. Well, I mean some of them may be just what I have been told to you before. Nevertheless, I know one of the expatriate who surprisingly has a big eagerness to preserve Balinese culture, when reading a book entitled “The Best of Stranger In Paradise Bali 1996-2008”. This book is written by Made Wijaya an Australian who have been live in Bali since 1973 after had dropped out from Sydney University’s School of Architecture. He was actually named Michael White but after living in Bali with his rural Brahmanan family in Gria Kepaon he changed his name. The book its self is about his journey or diary exactly, around Bali and another sophisticated town in Indonesia while he was ’enjoying’ the culture there. You can find some article and picture which show how much he ‘enjoying’ the Balinese culture as the first smoking male condong ever, he have done it well.

As a book using English as the language of writing, it must be hard to follow for some people who do not able in English. Then Made Wijaya is different . He stick on such a big number of pictures, so that if you cannot follow the words you may follow the pictures. This is a style that is rare found in most of all the writers. Besides, he also arrange the writing very well as good journalism product. It is no wonder because actually at ‘the ancient time’ he was a contributor for some news papers and magazines in Bali. Well, as I said before that he is very different with other expatriates in Bali. He is a kind of people who is freaking inspiring to me as his book reader. It is because by reading a book of him (he got a lot of book that have been published), it opens my mind that actually much more things that I can see in Bali. It’s a lot of part in Bali that is never exposed, than is exposed in this book. Just like cultural or international marriage that usually done by some people in the palace, binan(bisexual orientation) community in bali, palaces around bali, and some others culture outside Bali. It was so informative, but it is not the best part of this book. I think the best part of this book (for me) is the REJECTED chapter. This is a chapter that presents you some articles, drafts, and caricatures of Made Wijaya that is never published before. This is a funny chapter but also weird, so I know why those things are rejected. Then, I also realize some of them are worth to be published. One of it is entitled “Bali’s Moslem Kampung”, this is an article that shows how good is the relations between Moslem community and Hindu community in Kampung Islam Kepaon. Moreover, I found some nice pictures and you may think this as a weird one where a moslem boy sell Canang and a holy tomb of Balinese Moslem princess Raden Ayu Siti Khotijah which is decorated in Balinese way complete with its Prada and Canang Payasan.

Do you a bit curious with this book? Let your desire speak up. Say yes, and don’t miss this book. This is one from hundreds worth books that deserve to be collected and read. This thick book will surprise you with its own way that could not tell by any words. “Don’t ask Don’t Tell” (Stranger In Paradise page 236).

BOOK REVIEW: The Best of Stranger in Paradise 1996 – 2008, by Melanie Morrison

as published in KABAR AIA News (Australia Indonesia Association) June – August 2009

For those of you who know of celebratory expat, Made Wijaya, or have read his legendary columns published in newspapers and online, his latest collection of diary entries - The Best of Stranger in Paradise, The Next Generation 1996 – 2008 - will not disappoint. It’s all there: the wicked humour, sharp insights and keen devotion to the Balinese culture. For over 30 years Made or ‘the Stranger’ (a sort of nom de plume), has recorded his vibrant life through erudite and revealing journals, written in an amusingly candid and culturally intriguing style that is distinctively ‘the Stranger’.

***

First a little background on the author. Sydney born Michael White journeyed to Bali by boat in 1973, swam ashore and fell in love with this island paradise. The then 20 year old tennis pro and architecture student was adopted by the Brahman family of Ida Bagus Anom of Griya Kepaon. He became known by his Balinese name, Made Wijaya, and went on to embrace the complexities of Balinese culture, religion and language.

Made’s career as a tennis coach and English teacher gave way to his fascination for traditional Balinese architecture. After learning from local artists and builders he started gardening and has since built a successful landscape architect empire. He works with a 300-strong team of Balinese architects and gardeners and his landscape creations spread from Bali to Mumbai and Singapore to Mustique. Aside from creating hundreds of gardens, he’s written half a dozen books on traditional and modern Balinese architecture which Made sees as one of the world’s great dynamic art forms.

Despite Made’s phenomenal success in the gardening business, he sees himself primarily as an artist and a writer. His commentaries are his soap-box – which, he jests, have a huge following in that lane behind Roma’s leather ware shop and in East Balmain!

Recording the details of his life and turning them into handsomely bound publications might seem a tad self-promotional but it’s ‘the Stranger’s’ signature journals that have contributed to his iconic status. His life is so illustrious and flamboyant that rumour has it Miramax Film is looking into re-shooting a documentary film, featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman as ‘the Stranger’.

‘The Stranger’ column began in 1979 in the Sunday Bali Post. Answering a couple of my emailed questions via his blackberry as he flits between Bali, Bangalore, Mumbai and the Maldives, Made explains that Stranger in Paradise was “just a campy title” when he lobbied for a weekly diary column in Sunday Bali Post. “It was very much a diary of my life as a tourist guide cum English teacher at the kokar dance academy cum tennis coach cum Hindu goy toy for the village of Kepaon”. At the time, Made was a young Bali-convert and felt compelled to enlighten visitors to the magic of the island’s life and ceremonies. Highlights from his early years were published in 1995 in Stranger in Paradise – the Diary of an Expatriate in Bali.

The Best of Stranger in Paradise - the Next Generation continues to be both highly opinionated and overflowing with the colour of Balinese rituals. But Made sees himself as more of a vigilante in this latest edition. His acerbic social commentary and gossipy style takes aim, as he explains in the preface to the book, “at mass tourism, tacky advertising, cultural prostitution, the under-dressed, the over-pompous and those who try to package, brand or otherwise attempt to own Bali” … to name a just a few of his gripes.

Needless to say, Made is an irreverent writer, poking fun not only at crass development and narrow minds but also at his friends and acquaintances. At times he even turns his pen on himself the ‘Tjokorda Bule Aga’ which he says sums up the pompous but amusingly animistic nabob he’s become since his humble beginnings as a Kuta hippy.
‘The Stranger’ takes the reader on a 12 year journey, from the ‘reformasi’ period through to the Bali bombs and beyond. The journey is exciting and intimate, sensitive and playful. He exposes the reader to his enviable lifestyle and a host of high flying friends including Balinese and Javanese royalty, the ‘bule aga’ set, film producers, actors, models, painters and diplomats. He provides unique insights into the inner workings of Balinese society and the beauty and strength of its people. As ‘The Stranger’ takes the reader on his crusade against the greedy real estate developers, sensationalist journalists and ‘the culture of tourism’, he educates us about the rights and wrongs of inappropriate behaviour, tourism and development. Made’s love of Bali is intense and when his paradise is misunderstood or abused by the ignorant or self-serving, he takes this affront personally.

With an uncanny ability to combine frivolities with tenderness, depth and sharp political insights, ‘The Stranger’ manages to elicit an array of emotions and thoughts. At the time of the first Bali bomb (October 2002) he writes: “In Kuta the Australian grief counsellors are complaining that some of the Balinese are trying to sell them real estate.” He then goes on to talk about attempts to sideline ‘The Stranger’s’ regular column. “My story filed before the bomb was judged too ‘irreverent for post-traumatic stress tourism’. I convinced my beloved editor that Bali goes on, ‘the Stranger’ goes on and on, and on and Hello Bali will, after a brief spate of soul-searching, go back to the whole-hearted promotion of bungees and beaded pubes.”
A couple of days later he writes: “For a few hours I immerse myself in the ongoing preparations for the re-awakening of the village’s rangda mask, the Balinese equivalent of Kali, the goddess of destruction and recycling. . The Balinese have taught me to lose grief in a crowd of ritualistic activity, something unattainable in my native land. The anger of my countrymen seems hinted with intolerance, but it is the same ‘Aussie anger’ that led to the heroic liberation of the people of Timor Lorosae.”

‘The Stranger’s’ diaries, of course, would not be complete without a touch of brazen naughtiness – which has led to the censuring of his columns over the years. In January 2006, for example, he assisted in the design of a float for the Sydney Mardi Gras. The winner of the office wide contest was a jungle-inspired design with three attractive Balinese and ‘the Stranger’. It was entitled “Where there’s a willie there’s a wayan”. (Very cheeky)

The hefty 379-page book is impressively produced with a vast collection of eclectic graphics and photos. There are photos featuring the who’s who of the Bali and Jakarta, photos capturing the vibrancy of ritual life, the carnage caused by the bombings and photos of ‘the Stranger’ at his best. Most of the photos were taken by Made although there is also a striking collection of historical reproductions.

The Best of Stranger in Paradise, The Next Generation 1996 – 2008 comes in both hard ($80) and soft cover ($50) and is available through Wijaya Words (http://www.ptwijaya.com/Wijaya-Words.htm), from Bookoccino in Avalon (Te:l 9973 1244) or at Periplus stores in Indonesia.

For those hooked on ‘the Stranger’s’ columns or who would like a little taster of his work, his regular updates can be accessed on www.wijayajournal.blogspot.com or www.strangerinparadise.com.

Book review on The Best of Stranger in Paradise - featured in Bali Advertiser (April 09 Issue) by Bill Dalton.

The Best of Stranger in Paradise 1996-2008 by Made Wijaya

Michael White first visited Bali in 1973 with the intention of taking only a short sabbatical from his architectural studies at the University of Sydney. Then destiny intervened. Smitten by the island's extravagantly rich pageantry and culture, he soon moved in with a Brahman family in the laid back fishing village of Sanur. Shortly thereafter, he assumed the Balinese name for first-born son, Made Wijaya.

Then in 1980 Made had the stupefying good luck of being invited to revamp the gardens for the Bali Hyatt Hotel in Sanur and the Bali Oberoi in Seminyak. In what was to become his day job for the next two decades, these initial assignments ultimately led to a long and illustrious career as a landscape architect with more than 800 gardens all over the world to his credit.

Yet, in spite of earning a surfeit of recognition as a world-class designer, Made prefers to think of himself more as a writer. As a recognized authority on tropical gardens and South East Asian architecture and design - his own garden Villa Bebek in Sanur was chosen in 2008 as the finale in BBC’s “Around the World in 80 Gardens” - Made has written five books on these subjects - his literary milieu.

The quality of his writing and his genius for self-promotion has made his encore career as successful as his first, carrying with it perhaps even more social impact. Indeed, it can be said that the famous landscapist has gained an even wider reputation for his perennial column “Stranger in Paradise: The Diary of an Expatriate” than he has artfully moving rocks and dirt around.

Inaugurated in the Sunday Bali Post in 1979, it was these articles documenting life and times on Bali that first established him as a cultural journalist to be reckoned with. For more than 13 years his signature column has been appearing monthly in first the Bali Echo, then Hello Bali, and currently in BALI NOW! as well as tri-monthly in the Jakarta Post. Each issue now commands a devoted following throughout the country.

Made’s most recent literary endeavor, The Best of Stranger in Paradise 1996-2008, launched at Warung Enak in Pengosekan in January 2009, is a collection of the crème de la crème of his opinionated, irreverent and often startlingly original columns such as “Wham Bham Thankyou, Nyoman,” "Carry on Kuta," and "Ocean Views are Overrated,” covering a pivotal 12-year period in the social and political evolution of modern Bali.

During this span of time the author witnessed the tumultuous reformasi era, the rise of the Hindu vigilantes, the Bali bombings, the growth of gay Seminyak, the flamboyant 2004 elections, a burgeoning real estate industry, the birth of Super Bule personalities such as Peter Watts (Project Manager of the Four Seasons) and the advent of Bule Aga culture experts Diana Darling and Jean Couteau.

This voluble and versatile penman can hold forth with equal facility on the follies and hypocrisy of the media, the degradation of Bali’s environment and spiritual sanctuaries, the crass commercialization of the island’s ceremonies and dances, the niceties of Balinese court customs, minimalist architecture, arcane Indian philosophy, etymological derivations of Indonesian language usage, contemporary fashion and apparel, the proliferation of Bali’s boy bands, as well as more mundane subjects as security measures, airplane etiquette and terrorist executions.

This update of Made’s previously published The Complete Stranger in Paradise 1979-1981 is essentially a selection of the author’s columns released to the public in the intervening years. Such compilations are significant benchmarks in a literary career because they show that the writer’s work has reached such a volume that there continues to be a high demand for it.

Made Wijaya’s writing at its finest is charged with a heady mix of wit, erudition and eloquent acerbity. He is unabashedly romantic, hedonistic, sensual. His sense for detail – colors, sounds, movement, fragrances – is vivid, often bordering on hallucinogenic.

The language is resonant with self-confidence and authority, revealing a man comfortable in his own skin, even as he openly admits to adopting a Balinese feudal approach to business management. Few journalistic voices in Indonesia are so laden with righteous outrage and a captivating intimacy at the same time. These diary entries are an insider’s view of Bali’s cultural sinews and maddeningly complex social hierarchal structures.

Besides giving pleasure as a lively read, the book is as well a bibliophile’s collector’s item which must have cost a king’s ransom to produce. Its 373 glossy color pages are crammed with hundreds of eye-popping images, quirky illustrations with dialog balloons, comical and bizarre montages, vintage photos of Balinese royalty, lavish funeral and cremation rituals, candid shots of fashion models and lifestyle icons, captioned line art, as well as a generous number of images of himself as befits this iconic contemporary figure and internationally recognized authority on all matters Balinese.

The Best of Stranger in Paradise 1996-2008, Made Wijaya, edited by Rachel Greaves, Wijaya Words 2008, ISBN 978-979-95003-1-1, softcover, 373 pages, art direction by Agus Setiawan, illustrations by Dewa Juane and Komang Wiramajaya., glossary, index.

Available for Rp 440,000 at Periplus Bookshops in the Bali Galleria, the Matahari in Kuta, Made’s Warung in Seminyak, Ngurah Rai Airport, Gramedia Bookstores, at Ary’s and Ganesha Bookshop in Ubud, at the new Ganesha@Biku in Kerobokan, or order via wwords@indosat.net.id."

Book Review

EDITOR’S CHOICE:
Finally our loyal Scribe has come out with a cock-block-buster!!!


Lengthy Encounters with the Stranger in Paradise

by Jamie James

The essence of a great column is the voice. It should be the voice of a friend, a smart, well-informed friend, full of original opinions, sometimes a bit irritating, perhaps, but always fascinating – the sort of friend you would want to get together with for a nice, long chinwag over sundowners. When I read the Stranger in Paradise, it’s easy for me to hear that voice: Made Wijaya is my friend, and we have those chinwags over drinks at our favorite beach club in Legian, whenever we’re both in Bali. And every time I see Made, he is either finishing up a column or starting a new one, and there he is, sitting right next to me, trying it out.

Indeed, Made is in a more or less permanent state of starting a new column. The reason he has perfected the chatty, sparkling voice of his Stranger in Paradise columns is because that’s the way he composes – like Homer and 50 Cent, it all starts with the spoken word. I can tell when he’s on to his next column. It starts with a wicked glitter in those baby-blue eyes of his, then he’ll come out with his latest aperçu, a neat way of expressing some concept that’s been eluding him, a vivid phrase or image that puts it just so. Then he’ll add, “Hey, that’s a good one!” He doesn’t say that unless it actually is good. He’s not trying to convince you it’s good; it’s just the spontaneous delight of having got it right, like a tennis player shooting his fist in the air after he’s aced his opponent.
Once the words have been spoken, the piece slowly works its way into print, by devious and at times deviant electronic alleyways: first the SMS’s, elaborating on the original concept, variations on a theme, like a Bach cantata. Then the broadcast e-mails start thundering through the ether, as often as not originating from India or Belize or Miami. After that come the follow-ups, as the reviews from his circle of editorial advisers get circulated round and round like a game of Chinese Whispers – or an ancient manuscript, with one scholar after another inditing learned commentaries in the margins of the sacred parchment.
Finally it ends up in written form, a neat sheaf of print-out which he brings along to our next date at the beach club. Sometimes, if he’s in a hurry, Made will send ahead the manuscript for me to read, but if there’s time, he prefers to read it out loud, delivered with the feeling and oomph of a vaudevilian trouper – yet always with a critical eye and ear, pausing to interrupt himself to make a quick correction when he thinks of a slightly edgier, funnier way of putting something.
Much is made, and rightly, about Made Wijaya’s encyclopaedic erudition about every aspect of Balinese culture and history (specializing in the skeletons in everybody’s closet), but for me his greatest accomplishment is that voice: Long may it natter on!