The Misfortune of I Cekal

 I Cekel was a young orphan who made tuak for a living. Tuak is a kind of liquor obtained by cutting the sugar-palm flower and catching the liquid dripping out of its cut drop by a drop. Then he would go to the market to sell the sugar-palm liquid or tuak, the earnings were so small that he could only afford one meal a day.

One afternoon as usual I Cekel climbed up a sugar-palm tree to get tuak. Whistling, he set up the bumbung, a container used to catch the dripping liquid of the sugar-palm flower. Having done his job, he rushed back to his home before it got dark. The following morning I Cekel left home to get the tuak. He imagined a full bumbung and expected to go to the market and get some food for the day.
How shocked he was when he got to the tree to find his tuak bumbung completely empty. He was so furious and disappointed that he did not know what to do. “Somebody has to pay for this!” he grumbled. Then he decided to hide in the bushes nearby to spy on the thief. He didn’t care about the biting ants and mosquitoes that made him itchy. He also didn’t care about the rumbling in his stomach calling for food. He was very determined to find the thief.
As dusk was falling, an enormous bat emerged and approached his bumbung then greedily drank the tuak from the bumbung until it was finished. I Cekel was so angry but he made a plan to catch the culprit. Having learned the thief’s identity I Cekel then looked for a poisonous sap and poured it into the bumbung . After hanging the bumbung back to its place, I Cekel went home.
The next morning, I Cekel eagerly rushed back to the sugar-palm tree where the bumbu was hanging. Quickly he climbed up the tree and checked the bumbung. He found the enormous bat fluttering and squirming painfully. So glad he was I Cekel burst out laughing saying “You’re dead damn bat! Ha-ha-ha…this is your payback for stealing my tuak!”
I Cekel then caught the dying bat and kept laughing when he said “ I’m going to make ten sticks of satay out of your meat and sell it to the market” He imagined the ten sticks of satay would be worth as much as ten thousand rupiah. With that money he would purchase a hen. The hen would breed about six chicks and if he sold them he would get as much as sixty thousand rupiah and he would spend it on buying a female piglet.
When the piglet grew she would breed as many as twelve piglets. I Cekel would sell all the piglets and he would trade them with a cow. The cow would breed many cows and they would make him so rich that he would be able to buy himself the most beautiful girl in his village to be his maid. Then when they got married, the wedding would last for seven days and seven nights. Then…he hadn’t come up with the end of his daydreaming when suddenly the bat bit his hand. He was shocked and lost his balance then fell down from the tree, hitting the ground. He broke both his legs, and cracked his head. He cried out for help.
Luckily there was a man passing by looking for firewood. The man rushed to I Cekel . “What happened? Why are you calling for help? My god you’re bleeding!” said the man. I Cekel grinned “If you would be so kind, please carry me home.”
“What happened to you anyway?” asked the man astonished. “I just fell from the tree” I Cekel replied. “Alas…how high is the tree” asked the man wondering. “How should I know? I haven’t had a chance to measure the tree since I fell down!!!” I Cekel replied harshly raising his large, sharp knife against the man. The man got so frightened that he ran like the clappers.
Then I Cekel was totally alone. With both of his legs broken he couldn’t get anywhere from there and his head was bleeding more and more. The next morning when a villager happened to pass the spot, he saw I Cekel lying dead on the ground. So much for a bumbung of tuak.   (Retold by Gung Man)

Balineselife

Basket Handicrafts

Villagers are fairly adept in the art of bamboo handicrafts. Some of their belongings and utensils are made from a combination of materials they can easily get from their surroundings, such as bamboo, ata and palm fibre. They use these materials because they are easily created into items and they are durable. 

Baskets for example are made from natural materials, but kitchenware may now be made from other materials. 
In general, basketry can be categorized into kitchenware, items for offerings, things for fishing and accessories. Kitchenware is the most common. Baskets can be used for cocking rice, storing food or ingredients or for filtering rice before cooking. Balinese call this kind of basket a sok. There are many kinds of soks such as bodag (large basket container), sok nasi (basket for containing cooked rice) and small basket for containing tape (fermented cassava). The last one is usually found on Java. 
Offerings use the Keben, which is the commonest basket used for this purpose. The strings are very thin and firmly plaited, and the maker usually colours the strings to make a motif. Some also paint the outer side with floral ornaments or styles of wayang. While those pertaining to fishery are dungki (fish container) and bubu (fish trap with many variants). 
There are some other baskets that are not included in the categories above. Baskets can be also a versatile frame that is used to make structures of ogoh-ogoh (demon statues from papier-mâché), part of barong and boma (kala makara figure) on the bade in a cremation ceremony. Baskets that are made of bamboo strings are easier to form to make what kind of structure is wanted. Like in the making of ogoh-ogoh it is made to follow the body so it will need less paper and other material for covering it. (Punia)

Bogem, The Traditional Food Container

Formerly a bogem or a wooden food container meant to protect the food and other dishes against insects like ants, flies and cockroaches. Such kitchenware is made from a wooden log through the process of a spinning wheel. The process is rather the same as that of making dulang, the base of fruit and cake arrangements for offerings. Bogem actually consists of two parts, a base and a seal where the base is the same as dulang. 
Nowadays it is fairly difficult to find a bogem because they are rarely used, replaced with some more modern piece of kitchen equipment.