Cats and Dogs - and other snippets

In Bali, it is much better to be a cat than a dog.  Cats are sacred.  Dogs are a nuisance.  If you run over a cat in the road, you need to stop, pick up the dead cat, bring it back home, bury it in the yard, and make many offerings.  If you run over a dog, you toss it in a ditch and wash off the road.  Similarly with geese and ducks.  Geese are sacred and cannot be killed.  Roast duck is delicious.

The cats in Bali are very small.  Full grown cats look like thin kittens.  One evening Dewa was driving us along a busy street when a cat darted across the road right under his car.  He was immediately very concerned.  I told him that I had seen it make it across the street.  But he stopped another car and verified with the Balinese driver that the cat had indeed escaped unharmed.  We could see that Dewa was tremendously relieved.

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In Bali, speed bumps, or humps, are called "sleeping policemen".  It's a nicely descriptive name.  Not only does it capture the passive law enforcement role of the speed bumps, but the bumps here are a little wider and flatter on top than the speed bumps back home and readily bring to mind the image of a policeman laying across the road, asleep.

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Shortly after we arrived in Bali, I opened a bank account at a local bank.  I thought I would need one, but I haven't really.  A customer service woman at the bank helped me fill out the application form, asking me for each piece of information and then writing it down.  All was going smoothly as we went went through the usual information - name, address, ID.  But I wasn't prepared for the next question, which was 'Your Religion?'.  Not a question you usually get asked by the bank back in the US.  I said "Jewish".  She looked at me blankly, and then thinking I hadn't understood the question, helpfully suggested, "Hindu, Muslim, Christian?"  When I repeated "Jewish", she figured out the correct response-  "I'll mark 'Other'".