Meeting old time Bali expats in Seminyak Bali

This evening I met with a frequent Bali visitor / expat from Isreal, to help her with a website, that she is is having made here in Bali.

Her guys are using a customizable template they’ve made, which allows a customer to have a pretty nifty site, with drop down menu’s, shopping cart, own logo’s, headers, navigation etc.

They are charging her 70m rp plus a hosting package lasting a year. It all sounded okay except their attempt to lock her into their hosting for basically ever, saying some crap about the
‘master file’ would be hard to change and they control it. I told her that she is the owner of her site, nobody else. If someone tries to pressure you, by telling you your new site is controlled by them forever, tell them adios.

While we were chatting in a Seminyak restaurant, the owner came along (to remain nameless),. We all talked about life in Bali, life in other places and 9/11. Once again chatting with a longterm expat who has seen it all, was very enlightening. To put it mildly, he didn’t like Balinese people that much and gave extended examples of how situations went bad.

I can see there are a lot of frustrated expats out here. The other night I was in an internet cafe, and one older lady was cussing about the service. Getting up to leave, she had one final dig at the staff, who let her pass, before giggling. “He crazy,” one girl said to me, “he always angry.”

One common thing I’m hearing from these old timers, is their daily frustration, at simple things not happening the way they want them too, whether its getting something fixed, or waiting for service. Life in paradise can be challenging. Hope I don’t come across as a crusty old pessimist.

• Expat friends in Seminyak Bali
• Expat websites for living in Indonesia
• Getting your own website in Seminyak Bali
• Houses, Malaria, Expats
• Candi Dasa expats: Big fish in a small pond-part II

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