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It is vital to take note of the Bali visa requirements outlined below and also contact your local Indonesian embassy before going to Bali to see if there are any changes in the visa requirements as Indonesian countries can be very stern with regards tourists who over stay their visa date. Finishing off your holiday by landing up in a Balinese or any Indonesian jail for a foreigner could be a nightmare come true. With so many Bali tours and leisure activities available when on holiday in Bali it is easy to get tempted to stay longer that you initially intended, but it is truly not a good idea.

Although these countries are quite forgiving to the western way of doing things, you’ll be imprisoned if you can’t pay the hefty fine that may be imposed for overstaying. Overstaying your visa is charged at US$20 each day for over stays up to 60 days, anytime over 60 days are your will be liable to five years imprisonment or a fine of 25 million Indonesian Rupiah. If you do intend to stay longer than your visa allows, then you can fly to a nearby country like Thailand or Vietnam fairly cheaply and re enter Bali to renew your visa.

Before you enter Bali make sure you are familiar with the different money denominations. The local currency utilized in Bali is the Indonesian Rupiah (IDR), The Indonesian Rupiah money denominations are:

Paper Notes: 100, 500 , 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, 100,000.

Coins: 25, 50, 100, 500, 1000.

Short term visa free entry of thirty days is available to people holding passports of the following 11countries : Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Morocco, Peru, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore. Your passport must be valid for at least six months from the date of entry into Bali and you will need to show an onward of return ticket.

Short term visa on arrival (VOA), 7 day or 30 day visas are available for the following countries at a cost of $10 and $25 respectively. Once again a passport with more than six months left on it and a return ticket must be shown to get the visa. The countries are : Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Laos, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Maldives, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Suriname, Taiwan, Holland, U.A.E., UK and the U. S. of America.

All of the countries noted below will need to contact the Bali embassy in their country to get prior permission to enter Bali. Without a visa in advance you will not be permitted to go into the country. The countries are Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Cuba, Ethiopia, Ghana, Iraq, Israel, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.

Apart from the short term visas that are available, there are other more long term visas that may be applied for before traveling to Bali. It is better to make an application for these visas in your own country, even though they may be a little more expensive they will generally be processed faster. You’ll find a Balinese embassy in most countries that you can apply through. Some of the commonest long term visas that people make an application for are, business visa, social-cultural visa, job visa and limited stay permits (KITAS).

When you first arrive at one of the Bali hotels that you have selected to stay in contact your local government agency and tell them you have arrived and once again when you leave. This is recommended by all governments and it is just to ensure that you are safe and they will know if you haven’t left on the due date. This way at least you’d be contacted in the event you forget when you’re supposed to leave, you would be surprised how many times this occurs.

The United States was once seen as the emerging front of the diamond market. It was the land of the American Dream, mass-consumerism, and new money. However, the United States’ economy is lagging behind the high growth markets in the east, namely India and China. While demand for Diamonds in the United States fell after the global economic crises in the past decade, markets have in fact surged in the East, to the point where within a decade, Chinese demand for diamonds could reach the same level as the United States.

De Beers has long been the monopoly holder of diamonds in the world, amassing about 95% of the World’s supply of diamonds at one point. They source their diamonds from Africa and India, and release it through select avenues and retailers on a limited approval basis. In an interview this month with London’s Financial Times, the Managing Director of De Beers, Garreth Penny stated that “What we’re now seeing, with China growing as rapidly as it is, [is] annual double-digit growth compounded over a period of five years.”

However, it appears that the surge of the diamond market in China is not solely due to the solid performance of the local economy and stock markets. A lot of it has to do with the wedding culture and traditions in China. According to Penny, 20 years ago, it was rare for Chinese brides to receive diamond engagement rings. However, today about 50% of couples married in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong buy them.

The growth of the diamond market in China is significant, since in 2009, China only accounted for 6-7% of the global diamond market, while the United States accounted for about 40% of it. De Beers has forecasted the Chinese demand to more than double by the year 2016.

A similar trend is visible in India today, where “the diamond jewelry business has been showing a growth rate of about 15% at a time when [just gold jewelry] has shown negligible growth.”The diamond jewelry market in India has been surging, and is representative of similar activity in India. According to experts, this is because with gold prices at an all time high, consumers are moving from investing in pure gold to diamond jewelry.

According to latest figures, in May 2010 alone, India’s polished diamond exports rose 73% from last year, to almost $1.8 billion. India has long been labeled a major hub of diamond cutting and polishing, and has a hand in 9 out of 11 diamonds that are produced around the world. Apart from India, Honk Kong and Dubai are also emerging as key trading areas.

It will be interesting to see how the balance of power between diamond trading centers shifts over the next decade. While the diamond industry is rebounding well from the global economic collapse of the past decade, there are many issues the diamond industry must deal with over the next decade, especially a decline in the diamond supply in the future. According to Penny, “These great mines that were discovered 10, 20, 30 years ago are not being replaced today. According to the data that is out there, we’re going to see some significant declines in diamonds.”

‘International School’ is the term used to refer to an educational institution that promotes ‘international education in an international atmosphere’ by adopting a required curriculum or syllabus which differs from the country where the school is operational.

Such schools function mainly to teach students who are not nationals or citizens of the host country; they are ideally suited for children of people employed in foreign embassies or missions, international business organizations etc. Local students from the region around the school who wish to obtain a degree or suitable qualifications for further studies or a career, are also given admission into schools.

History

The concept of an international school began in the second half of the 19th century when they were set up in countries like Japan, Switzerland, Turkey and some others for families that travelled extensively, like missionaries, NGOs, embassies etc. These schools were set up with the help and assistance of the particular establishment that required the schools – e.g. defense establishments, scientific communities, diplomatic missions etc. – and based on the specific country’s school curriculum.

In due course, globalization and technology have created a spurt in schools around the world to cater to the increased movement of people around the world for work, business and other purposes; such movement has created generations of children living away from their country of origin and has necessitated the presence of international schools. In this context, improved national schools alone do not spell success; the benchmark for success depends on the educations systems that perform best internationally.

Criteria for an international school

In 2009, the International Association of School Librarianship decreed that an international school had to fit the following criteria:

• Multinational and multi-lingual student community

• A moving population of students

• Transferability of the student’s education – e.g. credits – across international schools

• International curriculum or syllabi

• International accreditation – e.g. International Baccalaureate (IB), Council of International Schools (CIS), University of Cambridge IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education), Schools Services etc.

• A multinational and transient teacher count and number

• Use of English or French as medium of instruction with the option of adding an additional language

• Non-selective student enrolment

Such schools have more or less the same curriculum as state and national schools – arts, humanities, information technology, language, mathematics, physical education, sciences etc. The method and mode of education is highly systemized and depends greatly on a technology induced classroom environment; periodical tests, assessments and grading of students are done on an ongoing basis.

These schools allow continuity in education for children of expatriate families, especially as they grow older. In many countries, relocation services and assistance agencies help expat families find the appropriate international school for their children.

The Day of the Jackal contains a superb scene that looks like a choice candidate to fulfill the requirements of someone looking for great stand alone scenes – I refer to when the Jackal buys a huge melon at the market, takes it into the woods, paints a smiley face on it, hangs it from a tree, and uses it for deGaulle’s head in target practice. I’m going to leave it alone and refrain from comment. Sometimes in appreciation the old adage that less is more certainly applies. So what I’m going to do here is approach this film in a roundabout, bizarre fashion. Please permit me this indulgence. I’d like to make a weird analogy between an observation a famous film critic once made about movies in general and a somewhat similar state of affairs created by the Jackal in the eponymously titled film.

To this day many consider James Agee to be the gold standard for popular film criticism in America, and I think a good part of the reason why is his empathic identification with the audiences that were reading his columns as he wrote them. In his inaugural column for The Nation on December 26, 1942 he wrote:

“I suspect that I am, far more than not, in your own situation: deeply interested in moving pictures, considerably experienced from childhood on in watching them and thinking and talking about them, and totally, or almost totally, without experience or even much second hand knowledge about how they are made.”

Wow. Of course, he was right. I’d like to put an unusual spin on this observation of Agee’s.

One wonders what Agee would have made of a film like The Day of the Jackal that requires at least some willingness on the part of the filmgoer to acknowledge a parallel between the kind of ignorance of moviemaking Agee references and the sorts of deceptions and illusions the Jackal (played by Edward Fox) creates and weaves throughout the film. Four of the people the Jackal crosses paths with in the course of his plot to kill deGaulle- the forger, the woman he meets in the hotel, Colette, the man who picks him up in the Turkish bath, and the landlady of the building from which he plans to shoot – he kills- the forger because of his attempt to blackmail the Jackal, Colette because the police are questioning her, the gay lover because the man has seen the Jackal, in disguise, identified on television, and the landlady because he cannot have anyone witnessing him inside the building. In other words, all four know too much. In one way or another the Jackal’s concealment of reality has been penetrated.. The fifth such person, the gun maker, is left alone without explanation. Maybe the Jackal trusts him, or perhaps intends to deal with him after he kills deGaulle. In any case, concealment of reality is the operating theme in the plot of the film as much as it is in James Agee’s remark, albeit within very different circumstances. The mysteries of filmmaking exist in order to entertain; the Jackal’s, in order to deceive.

A workmanlike film such as this could probably only have been made by a studio veteran of Hollywood mainstreamers, which is exactly what Fred Zinneman was. (Look, I’m just a casual watcher of movies with a humble, modest collection and by complete chance it contains four or five Zinneman pictures – simply by virtue of the fact that I try to represent various genres of Hollywood films well.) (We can safely disregard Andrew Sarris’ nonsensical observations on Zinneman in – bloviation such as “At its best, his direction is inoffensive; at its worst, it is downright dull.”)

The gun maker – “Gozzi” – is completely and totally aware that the Jackal is an assassin, ordering a gun to kill somebody with. The forger is not – he only remarks that the Jackal must “have a big job” in the works. Too, the Jackal emphasizes – in very threatening, forceful tones, that, once the work is done, he wants the forger to forget everything. Yet he does none of this with the gun maker, indicating that he must have quite a bit more faith in him than he does in the forger. Still, the forger does not take the Jackal seriously and attempts to sell him back documents he had originally agreed to give back for free.

Notice – when the forger attempts to blackmail the Jackal, the Jackal kills him. When the gun maker reveals he had to make the gun out of a totally different material than the Jackal had requested, barely a word is mentioned about it. The Jackal’s response is “Where can I practice?” When the Jackal learns that Colette has been talking to the authorities he kills her immediately, with no hesitation (as he did the forger). Ditto the gay man – the decision to kill him is arrived at with no hesitation whatsoever. Only the landlady’s killing seems to have been planned in advance. But whatever the situation, the concealment of reality is paramount.

“What’s all this got to do with James Agee?” I can hear you screaming. Only this – what would it be like to watch a film in which you got yourself totally emotionally involved – laughing, crying, scared to death – and then could suddenly see the director, the cameraman, the sound recordists, the lighting director, and the rest of the crew, as well as the actors, as the movie was actually being filmed. How would you feel? Would you view the film differently? Of course you would. The necessary concealment of reality that’s required for things to proceed properly would have been removed. It’s something to contemplate, isn’t it?

Most people don’t pay much attention to their credit score, which is easy to do when you’ve always been able to pay your bills on time and haven’t acquired much debt. But even the most responsible consumers can be hit with unforeseen circumstances such as a job loss or medical bills. Credit cards may be able to float the expenses for a while, but eventually the debt can mount up to a point where payments are no longer manageable. Missed or late payments can lower your credit score, but you may avoid bankruptcy, hoping to stop any further damage. However, sometimes bankruptcy is the correct choice, and there are things you can do to rebuild your credit score after filing.

Your Credit Report

If you have a pattern of late payments, filing bankruptcy can discharge many of your unsecured debts and put an end to those late payments. A bankruptcy will lower your credit score, but after you file, you’ll be given a “Discharge of Debtor” document that shows your debt has been forgiven. At this point, negative credit events stop, and you can begin establishing a positive credit history. First, you’ll need to request credit reports from the three credit reporting agencies: Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union. Review all of the information listed on your report to ensure accuracy, particularly that any debts included in your bankruptcy show a zero balance. You can correct any errors by contacting the credit agency.

Rebuilding

After ensuring you have a clean credit report, you can begin the work of adding positive elements. You will most likely receive credit card offers as soon as your case is resolved, but be sure you review the terms carefully before accepting. You may need to start with a secured credit card with high interest rates and steep fees. While this is not ideal, it’s a place to start, and you can avoid paying any interest by making only small purchases and paying them off completely, on time each month. You might even want to use the credit card for a small monthly bill and set up an automatic payment, essentially ignoring the fact that you have access to credit to avoid the temptation to overspend. As time goes by, you’ll receive better offers for new credit cards or may be able to renegotiate the terms of your current card. Soon, your credit score will improve and you’ll qualify for better and better options.

Moving Forward

Just like most negative events in life, ignoring your credit will not result in improved circumstances. It’s best to be fully informed about your financial situation and take direct action to make changes. If you’re in debt that you feel you’ll never be able to pay off, the first step is to determine if you can revise your budget to get back on track. If this isn’t possible, let me help you explore your bankruptcy options. After making this bold move, the opportunities to rebuild your credit will present themselves, and you’ll get back on your feet.