An old friend from my Bougainville days in New Guinea who now lives in Fairfield - no, not Sydney; Connecticut - and whose vocabulary of four-letter words had never ever included the word Bali, suddenly emailed me excitely:
"Have just watched 'Ticket to Paradise' with George Clooney and Julia Roberts. Really good movie, set in Bali. You should watch it too."
This from someone who, when we met again years later in Jeddah, seemed to suffer from Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSP) by again and again watching Walt Disney's "Bambi" and blaming it on his small son. Mark, if you're reading this, you never liked "Bambi", did you?
But back to "Ticket to Paradise": while new movies get pumped out as DVDs almost as soon as they hit the silver screen, after which they get quickly junked at the local op-shop, my local op-shop is still totally unaware of this movie, and I refuse to pay $24.95 - click here - for something recommended by a former (and present?) "Bambi" addict.
We've been to Bali too - several times, in fact - and I've even written my own blog about the place where it all began in 1999 - see below ...
... and, like my old friend's constant replay of "Bambi", our Bali story has been on constant replay with us for the past twenty-two years.
My friend's Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSP) has turned for us into fully-blown Munchausen syndrome and, like Baron von Munchausen, an 18th century German officer who was known for embellishing the stories of his life and experiences, we keep embellishing ours day after day.
