Sunday, February 24, 2008

Bali Revisited

With DJ Shuriken and his girlfriend, Miss Moxy I went to see a Balinese dance and music performance at the Palace of Arts (Budapest, Hungary) last night. The ticket was a birthday present from my reclusive sister. A very nice present indeed. The performing musicians and dancers were not as good as those I've heard and seen on the islands of Bali and Java, yet they've brought back the memories of my travels to the magical islands of Indonesia, back in the 1990s. The music (gong kebiar), dance and wonderful costumes helped me forget - at least for a few hours - this Balkan bazaar/madhouse of a country I am presently wrestling with. About a year ago I started to translate my South East Asian travel journals into a book ('Malay Book' - the second volume of my 'The Southern Cross' trilogy) which seems to interest the Katalizator Publishers. If we can get some grant money they will publish the first volume of the trilogy - 'Caribean Book' - sometimes this year and hopefully the 'Malay Book' will follow it next year. The results of our grant application are due to come out in March, 2008. After some parts of it were very succesful on some popular internet portals (bahia.hu, korridor. hu - both of them has been shut down since) I've been trying to publish the 'Caribean Book' for many years. After much deliberations and stupid lying the manuscript was refused by a number of publishers (Enciklopédia, Magvető, Kalligram, Ulpius, Nyitott Könyvműhely, Index, Golyós Toll, etc.) so far. I hope that the book (and the whole trilogy - the third volume of it is titled 'The Book of Americas', it contains my experiences on the roads of the Americas) will eventually be published. Unfortunatelly these books are just too long and complex to be released in audio book format.

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