I was supposed to be interviewed on a breakfast TV show, and had to wake up at 0530 for it. When we arrived at the station, we found out that everything had been pre-empted; the prosecutor in charge of cases against people who participated in the Bush-sponsored attempt to overthrow Chavez had been killed with a bomb in his car. This act of terrorism was most likely carried out by some of the same people that Bush supports. But there are no plans to respond by abolishing civil liberties, as has been done in the US.

On Sunday I went for lunch with Sergeant Torres, who has converted many of the Venezuelan Army's servers to GNU/Linux. He brought his wife and son; his son is something like 8 years old and already starting to use free software.

For dinner I went with some Venezuelan free software activists to a restaurant near the top of the mountain ridge that separates Caracas from the Caribbean. We couldn't see the sea as we sat down to eat, around 540pm, because clouds were in the way. The appetizer, a soup, was marvelous but the rest of the dinner was not quite as good.

After dinner we went to sit at a table just outside the restaurant to have coffee or tea. I felt like doing something else, so I played a Bulgarian tune on the recorder. A person sitting at another table nearby said, "That sounds Celtic, or Breton."

It is very common for people who are not accustomed to Balkan folk dance music to think it sounds Celtic, but few say something so specific as "Breton." So I played a Breton dance tune and said, "That was a Breton dance, Kost-ar-c'hoed." Then I realized the man was speaking Spanish with an unusual accent, so I asked him, "Etes-vous français?" He said that he was, and in fact from Brittany. We got into a conversation and I explained free software to him and the man with him, who turned out to be the restaurant's owner. Since he was interested, my friends then joined the conversation. Meanwhile, by this time the clouds had dissipated and we could see the shore and the sean, beautiful 6000 feet below.

The following day I went to Colombia. The strength of the free software community there really surprised me. I met with people from several user groups, and on Tuesday met with enthusiastic representatives of Colombiás major universities as well as the Mayor of Bogota, to whom I suggested that the most important way to support free software was to switch to it in the city's schools. We agreed they would have a plan ready when I return in March.

On Wednesday I flew to Veracruz, Mexico, along with my Colombian friend Tania who was not feeling very well. The connection in the airport in Mexico City was a truly disgusting experience. The instructions stated by the flight crew about where we should go after landing were hard for me to follow, so we stopped at an information booth to ask what to do. They said we had to go through immigration and customs there in Mexico City. Getting to immigration was not easy, as it was a long distance and Tania's head hurt when she walked. She used the moving walkways as opportunities to rest. When we finally got there, the line was long and slow; we had to wait for around 40 minutes, and there was nowhere she could sit down. But we finally got through, and had to walk back and forth through a long hall to find the right baggage claim. It was downstairs. We took the elevator down. Our luggage was not there.

People working there told us it had been sent straight through to Vera Cruz, and we had to go to Hall 15. I could not entirely follow their directions, but we had to go back up where we had come from. We decided to take the elevator. We called the elevator and waited, and waited, and waited. Nothing.

I went upstairs, called the elevator, and it came. So I went in and took it downstairs, whereupon Tania could get in and ride up. I guess one does learn something useful from playing adventure-style games. I told some people who appeared to work in the airport that the lower-floor elevator call button was broken. Since people rarely have an occasion to go up, it could be broken for months with no one noticing.

We also asked some of the staff people there how to get to Hall 15. They said, go out here and turn right. We were going out through the line of immigration control booths. Surely that couldn't be right, could it?

It was. Apparently we had waited for 40 minutes in that line for nothing. We went out, back into the hall that opened onto the many gates.

Tania was feeling really bad then. There were some seats there, so I suggested she sit down while I go look for Hall 15 and verify it was really the place we should go. I went a short ways, and did not find a Hall 15, but I did find a set of immigration booths with hardly anyone waiting. I told our story to a person working there, who said that Hall 15 was past these booths.

I returned to Tania who said she needed water. I went and got two small bottles for about 4 dollars. (The price of nearly everything in that airport is outrageous.) We walked slowly down to the immigration booths and asked the way to Room 15. They told us "straight through, that way". But it was impossible to walk straight through, since the way led to a zigzag waiting line for a hand-baggage xray machine. After we walked back and forth through it, I explained all our troubles to the man working there, who was pleased to hear we were headed for Veracruz; he said he came from a town near there. Then he told us that the place we really had to go was Gate B.

A little ways down the corridor was a restaurant. I suggested Tania sit down while I hunted for Gate B to see if was the right place for us to go. At this point I was skeptical of everything they told me. I moved on down the corridor quite a ways, and found Gate B, which was not a gate at all, but rather a large waiting room with some airline agent kiosks. The Mexicana agent said that we didn't need to do anything except go to the right gate for our flight, but that there would be no announcement of the proper gate until 1620. She suggested we both wait in Gate B.

That could have been an easy thing to do in an ordinary situation, but Tania was finding it painful to walk, and it was a long way to Gate B, and we had no way of knowing whether our flight's gate was in the other direction. We could walk to Gate B only to learn we had to retrace our steps. So I suggested she remain sitting in the restaurant; at 1620, I would find out where the gate was, and we could go there, without doing extra unnecessary walking.

However, at 1620 the monitor continued to say "B" for our flight. At 1630 it continued to say "B". Something was wrong. Did this mean the flight was delayed?

I figured out that the part of the airport on this side of the immigration booths was the domestic part. So I checked the gates between us and the end of the domestic section. They had other flights, which meant they could not be for our flight. It followed that we could start walking (slowly) in the other direction, and checking the gates as we went.

We got as far as the monitors, which still said only "Gate B" for our flight. At 1640 they finally told us to go to gate 14. We proceded down there--it was directly opposite Gate B--and found almost all the passengers had entered a rather crowded shuttle bus. "How is it that so many other people are already here, when the monitors only just started to list the gate?" I asked. The staff said, "We announce flights in Gate B. The monitors are run by the airport, not by us, and they post the information when they feel like it."

I have never seen a worse system in an airport.

When we got to Veracruz, we had to go through customs, which caused a few minutes' delay. What happened next was nothing: nobody was waiting for us.

Tania went to sleep on a bench, with her head on my computer bag, while I found a way to phone the event's organizer, Miguel. He eventually got there and met us, explaining that he had sent someone else to meet us, but that person reported said we didn't arrive. I guess he didn't wait long enough to make sure.

The bed in the hotel was quite hard, so when it was time to go to bed I inflated my air mattress. As I lay in bed, starting to drift off to sleep, I noticed that the mattress wasn't as full as it ought to have been. The thought came to me that there must be a hole. I reinflated it and fell asleep, but it didn't last long.

I managed to sleep until morning, but both shoulders were hurting by that time. In the three days there, I found a patch and used the hotel swimming pool to find the hole. I patched it, inflated the mattress, and it still lost air. Using the swimming pool again, I found another hole on the other side. (I wonder how this happened.) This morning I patched it, but I could not try inflating it again for several hours. If it has another hole, I will have to search for another swimming pool.

But it turns out that that was during the cool season. Now it is the hot and rainy season, and Ubud too was unbearably hot for me. I had to tell the host (who somewhat remembered my previous visit) that I could not stay there this time. We went back to Denpasar and I stayed in a hotel that Deepak, organizer of my visit, often uses. I was rather sad about that. But next day we found a place in Ubud with air conditioning that I could stay in. We also went that evening to a professional dance and music performance, which Ubud has many of. This performance started much later than the announced time, which we didn't think was surprising.

The next day we asked around, "Where is there a temple ceremony?", but we could not find anything for that day--only for the following day, in Tegallalang, around 20 minutes drive away. So we decided to go to the performance of Sekar Semara Ratih, which is a professional group that often plays interesting recent compositions. We had about 30 minutes before the official starting time, so we decided to have a quick dinner first. If we didn't get there on time, well, they'd probably be late.

Unfortunately we got lost for a while driving around eat, and it took a little longer than we thought. And this group started precisely on time, or so it seems, so we missed a couple of pieces. But we saw most of the performance, and the dancing was exquisite.

That evening at around 11, alone in my hotel room, I felt like drinking something other than water. So I went out of the hotel, and across the street I found a cafe that was still just barely open enough that I could get bottles of iced tea. While drinking them, I pulled out my computer to start doing email. This led to a conversation with the waiter, Gusti, who studies computers in his spare time, and I explained the ideas of free software to him. (This was the first time I had explained it in Indonesian, and I felt quite proud of being able to do it.)

When I told him about my plans to visit the ceremony in Tegallalang the next day, he offered to take me there on his motorcycle. I thanked him, but I said there was a difficulty: Indrio, a student from Java, was also visiting with me, and we were planning to go there together. Gusti said that was no problem; his friend would go with us, and together they would bring us both.

The next day, Indrio was surprised when I told him that I had already found transport. We all went to Tegallalang, and there we learned that we needed certain kinds of ritual clothing in order to be able to enter the temple. We were not prepared. It took a certain amount of time for us to find ways to buy or borrow what we needed, but eventually we were able to enter.

The temple was an amazing crowded scene, packed with many groups of making various sorts of contributions to the ceremony. In one spot, a gamelan was playing; in another, there was wayang; other groups were singing. They did all these things independently, and so close that they interfered audibly with each other. Some people had brought animals that would be eaten after the ceremony, including goats, ducks, geese, a pig, and a large turtle which I hope is not an endangered species. These animals were finely decorated.

After leaving the ceremony, we visited a field which contained a large tomb (people who died fighting for independence from the Dutch, Gusti said), but was mainly used for soccer.

Gusti's friend Wayan invited me to a ceremony his family was having in a couple of days, and I was supposed drop in at the cafe before 11pm the next day to get back in touch. However, I didn't make contact for this. That evening Indrio got in touch with some students who brought me to a ceremony in Payangan, another town, and we got back too late.

Although this time I had some of the necessary ritual clothing from the previous time, it wasn't enough. The village police, who were sheltering from the rain in a little hut outside the temple, told me I needed some more; one offered to go get what I needed while the others invited me to sit in their hut and wait. I spoke with them for a while, then answered more email.

Once I had the necessary clothing, they helped me put it on, and we joked about whether the sarong was too small or my belly was too big. Then I was able to enter. A gamelan was playing, and twice processions arrived from other temples, carrying idols of two gods, who were visiting this temple for its ceremony. I listened and hoped that at some point there would be dancing as well.

As I waited, I saw two western women enter along with a Balinese woman. She seemed to be explaining things to them in English, so I asked if I could listen. She said I was welcome. She mentioned that she had visited Java for a dance competition and that her group had come out very well. The western women asked if she were married, and she said no, that nobody wants to marry her. She said that whoever married her would have to live in her house, and nobody wants to that. I was dazed by her beauty, but not so much I couldn't recognize that she was also incredibly sweet, intelligent, and apparently talented as well. It seems unbelievable that there is any man in Bali who doesn't want to marry her. She gave her name as Kade and suggested that I come back the next evening, and said that she would be dancing at 9pm or 10pm. Then they left.

It ultimately turned out that there would be no dancing this night until 2am. We didn't want to wait that long, so we went back to Ubud. We got back at midnight, and Gusti was no longer at the cafe. I asked the one person there to tell him I had come looking for him. In fact, with the rush of events, I never had another chance to see him. I would have liked to say goodbye and thanks, at least.

The next day, I gave my speech at Udayana University in Denpasar, and also obtained the rest of the necessary ritual clothing. I made sure to get back to Ubud by 8 so as to get to Payangan by 9. Deepak came along this time. Two groups of girls danced, the first ones around 7 years old, the next group around 13. The first ones were just beginners, but they were still able to contribute to the ceremony by dancing. In the west, girls that age might be learning ballet or some other kind of dance, and the school might give them a chance to put on a performance, but it's just a school thing. These girls were real participants in a real ceremony.

Finally, two women arrived in rich costumes. I couldn't see them very well, as they sat down in a dark area behind a cloth screen. but I thought one was Kade. When she entered and began dancing, I was sure. This dance was combined with singing, and told part of a story. (They spent hours presenting just a few episodes; they didn't try to do the whole thing.) The effect was beautiful, but the singing was in Balinese, not Indonesian, so I didn't have the slightest chance of understanding it, and neither did Deepak who grew up in Java. And then two comic actors came out and began kidding each other in Balinese. The crowd was soon laughing out loud, but the only part I could understand was when they switched to Indonesian and started briefly joking with me. (Like most of the audience, I was just a few feet away from them.) It got to be boring, and I knew it could easily go on for an hour. After a while I got tired of waiting for it to change, and decided to move.

However, I saw that people were freely going to speak with the dancers who weren't currently on "stage", where they were sitting on the other side of the cloth screen through which they entered and exited. It screened them only from the stage area.

So I said hello to Kade and told her, "I think I understand now why nobody wants to marry you and live in your house. There must be a raksasa (mythical demon) living in your house. Nothing less would be enough to discourage men." When she understood what I was saying, she thanked me for the compliment.

She explained the story to me a little, and what would happen in her next scene. Then it was time for her to enter for another scene, so I walked a few feet away where I could see the "stage" better. After she exited again, I stopped by to say farewell. Another actor/dancer exited, and said hello to me, asking where I was from; she told me he was her father. "So you see in my family we all have the same hobby", she said.

The following day was my last complete day in Bali. I went with Deepak and a Balinese computer professional on a trip to the mountains. They felt it was necessary to head south to Denpasar in order to get the right road north; they worried that the East-West roads might not be good enough. (The roads I saw in Bali were all ok.) On the way Deepak checked his mail and found that my absentee ballot had still not arrived. I won't be able to vote this year. (I've read reports of many delays in sending absentee ballots, and reports that in some states this happens only in places likely not to vote for Bush.)

We visited a place near the north of Bali where there are several large lakes among the mountains. We drove to a long ridge just north of the lakes; look south and you see the lakes below and the mountains behind them, their tops lost in clouds; look down to the north and you see the coast, except there was a cloud in the way everywhere that day. There were clouds in some of the valleys to the south also. It was beautiful, and I wanted to take a picture, but my camera had ceased to work. New images simply came out black.

So we sat around for a while, and I tried the camera again. This time it worked. I quickly took all the photos that were possible from there, and we moved a little ways to a small hotel where we sat and I had tea. Then it was time to return. As we drove down from the ridge, we passed a troop of monkeys that lived off food that people gave them. We stopped to watch them, and some came over to us, so Deepak handed them crackers which they took with their hands. It would have made a great photo, but my camera had once again gone dead.

I'm editing my draft of this article in a hotel in Singapore. A few days ago a newspaper printed an an article saying I was going to give a speech here about "intellectual property". People need to learn to recognize the deception in that phrase.

During the first week there I was contacted by someone who knows the parents of Hans Bakker, who died in the accident returning from Paris. I got their address and sent them a message of condolence, which was not easy to write. Although the minister said he would meet with me, it seems this won't happen--there is only one occasion I could arrange to be in Paris between now and the vote scheduled for a month from now, and he can't make it then.

Half-way through my visit, Australia held a general election. The conservative "Liberal" party, which supports Bush and the treaty, gained support after a campaign based on lies. Howard lied to them about the war in Iraq, too.

Their previous electoral campaign, three years ago, was based on lies that boat people were throwing their own children into the water to force a rescue. After the election, navy personnel testified this was because their boat was in the process of sinking. So I was not really surprised when, a few days after the election, I heard on the radio that their optimistic economic projections were exaggerated and would not come to pass. Just goes to show, if you tolerate a government that lies about minor things like human rights and refugees and war, soon they will start lying about your money too.

The election outcome could give them control of the Senate, which could mean that Australia wastes its second chance and approves the treaty.

I spent much of election day going to visit a lorikeet named Scratchy, who I had had a wonderful time with on my previous visit several years ago. However, Scratchy was not in a friendly mood this time--he was in love with his bell, and didn't really want to play with anyone, and tended to nip at people.

Just before leaving Australia, I visited a couple of cockatiels that sat on my hand and shoulder and chattered. I tried to teach them to say "Are you a bird?", but it must take more time than that.

I spent two days in Malaysia, where I had my first chance to try conversing in Malay (it is pretty similar to Indonesian, which I have been studying), and a chance to try the particular food tradition of people of mixed Malay and Chinese descent. My host said it was the only one likely not to be too spicy for me. However, one of the dishes that the waiter said was "not spicy at all" turned out to be too spicy for me to eat.

The next day was my speech, which went well. In the evening I visited the twin towers of Kuala Lumpur, which were beautiful. In the photos I took, they appear to curve towards each other--I think that is due to distortion in the wide-angle lense that I needed in order to get the whole of them into one photo.

The following day I managed to converse a little with the taxi driver on the way to the train to the airport. When I arrived in Jakarta, I was surprised to see a man with a sign with my name on it waiting at the exit from the jetway. It turned out he had been sent there to help me get through immigration and customs easily. Everything went completely smoothly with his help, and I was able to converse with him too. Also with my hosts that were with me in the car coming back, and at lunch. Most of them didn't eat, they just watched, as it is Ramadan. I took the opportunity to explain to them in Indonesian that MacDonalds' "fast food" is meant for helping people fast--not for eating.

It was quite a pleasure to feel that I can now speak a fourth language. However, it is a constant effort and I can only do it when I am feeling very awake. This morning I am finding it hard to handle sentences that yesterday I could handle easily.

We went to an outdoor dinner at the university where I am speaking, with many of the students involved in free software there. Bats were flying around just above our heads, as we had an appetizer which I first thought was made of broad and thick mushrooms soaking in coconut sauce. But they were not mushrooms, they were a sort of pancake that only looks like a mushroom to me. I sang the free software song.

Then a musical group began playing and singing in a style called campur sari, which is a fusion of western and Javanese music that I gather is rather popular; but it is too much western pop for my tastes. For a while they stopped and some girls performed a dance in a style from Aceh, mostly sitting down either each separately or in a line, involving a lot of clapping and moving in different synchronized groups that move through each other. That was interesting.

Then a singer came out and began singing "You're just too good to be true". I don't like American popular music terribly much, so I decided to flirt/tease by catching her eye and pretending I thought she was talking about me.

I was surprised by the response: she motioned for me to come and sing with her. (I should not have been surprised, because I've read about that custom.) Partly I tried to sing along with her, to the extent I remember that song (I'd never wanted to sing it), and partly in humoristic response, saying "You'll learn more about me soon".

Then she asked me to dance along with her, so I improvised a dance, combining my Balkan folk dance experience and what I've seen of Indonesian dancing. It was a big hit. But after about three minutes I was worn out and had to sit down. At that point I was a bit too tired to figure out how to explain this to her in Indonesian (she wanted me to continue). I had to say it in English, and then I felt disappointed with myself. She invited a few others to dance. Later several of us danced together. It was a lot of fun. I chatted with her (in English) for a while after her performance was done, as I waited for people to try to solve a network problem that prevented me from doing ssh to the GNU servers. The problem was impossible to solve, so I had to go to another building to do that mail transfer.

So various people began trying to find a way I could get there early enough to do this. The last flight in the evening was too early, we discovered on Wednesday morning. There was a train leaving at 2020 which I could have taken if I ran out of the speech a little early and canceled my invitation to dinner. I was thinking of doing that when someone had the idea that people in the free software community could drive me to Paris. Ultimately we chose that solution. Three free software enthusiasts met me after dinner, borrowing my host's car.

Departure was scheduled for 10pm, but was delayed because my halo was missing. It had fallen out of its bag while that was in the back of a car, and rolled under a seat, where we did not see it. After looking in the other possible places such as the room where I had spoken, and not finding it, we searched the car thoroughly.

We should have dropped me off in Paris around 330pm, but we got lost there. They were following a navigation system in the car, and it got confused. When I recognized where we were headed and give directions, there was a misunderstanding that got us lost again. Eventually we ended up at the Etoile, and the navigation system started working. We got to Francis Muguet' apartment and they dropped me off. The three people from Amsterdam headed back, but did not arrive. They had an accident.

Despite the many things I had to do, I got about 3 hours of sleep before I had to go and speak. I gave a good short speech to a workshop (perhaps a third of the conference), and then Francis for me to do more. The French Minister of Industry was scheduled to speak that afternoon; he is the one who decides the French policy on software patents. It was arranged that I would be able to ask him a question for certain, if he accepted any.

While walking into the conference room, and discussing with Francis what I should say in my question, I received a phone call telling me that the car had crashed and one of the men who had driven with me was dead.

This was a sobering thought. I did not feel personal grief, because it was not a personal loss. The three were strangers who had helped me for the sake of free software, rather than personal friends, and we only barely had begun to be acquainted. However, it was weighty to realize that someone had died because he had helped me get to Paris for this meeting. I did not feel guilt about his death--I did not cause the accident--but I felt a responsibility to make his death count for something.

I asked the minister whether France would sustain the European Parliament's vote against software patents. His answer showed total incomprehension; he spoke about the virtue of copyright and the "principle" of "intellectual property" (thus illustrating why people must reject the use of this term). I felt a sense of total failure. Francis told me he cried at this point.

As the minister was leaving, I had a chance to exchange a couple of sentences with him. He really did not know how patents affect software developers. Francis says that the minister wanted to talk with me further about the issue. I am on my way out of France right now, and may not have a chance to be back in Paris until it is too late. But maybe we can find someone else who can follow up on this contact.

It was only later, when I saw there had been some public discussion of whether I was in the car at the time of the accident, that I realized that I too had had a somewhat narrow escape. If the accident had happened two hours earlier, I would have been in it.

My speech yesterday was something I rarely do: a debate. The first speaker was a patent lawyer. The organizers said it would be easier to set up the event if they could invite him too, and this person wasn't a cunning orator, so I took the risk--and I wiped the floor with him.

His speech presented fine examples of all the common confusions that I like to explain in my speeches about software patents. Not that he himself was confused--he was only trying to lead the audience astray. For instance he referred to "patenting software", which implies that software idea patents cover entire programs. He also described software idea patents as a way to "protect software", from which one would never guess that the main effect of software patents on software developers is to put them at risk of being sued. (See softwarepatents.co.uk for more explanation.)

I'm told that an assistant to the relevant minister was there. Perhaps the speech will do some good. We are trying to ask various EU countries to change their votes on the issue; just a couple more small countries will be enough to win the battle.

This morning I woke up for no particular reason before 8am and could not get back to sleep. So I was willing to travel to the University of Luxemburg, where a newspaper interview was supposed to occur. Reportedly a control-freak PR person at the university had decided to make both me and the reporter go there, even though it would have been more convenient for both of us if the reporter had come to the place I was staying.

After that interview I took a few trains, and now I'm in Essen, Germany. After my speech here I have to take more trains to Amsterdam this evening. "Essen" means "eating", so it's delightfully ironic that my visit here is so short that I won't have time to eat.