Showing newest posts with label Indonesia. Show older posts

Courtesy Facebook user Baakbakum

In Indonesia:


Image courtesy Megatriks99

In Indonesia this tradition of going home during the Eid holidays is called Mudik.

Tomorrow is Eid-ul-Fitri in Indonesia and the exodus has started a couple of days ago. 2.2 million out of a population of 9.6 million are expected to leave Jakarta this week.

This is a story of any developing country where the rich and powerful reign and the the people do not exercise or do not have their equal right.

I was surprised to see some street vendors trying to sell a photocopy version of an edition of Tempo news magazine (in Bahasa) . I did not understand what the vendor was saying but the news was allover in the media in the following days. It turned out that on 28th of June Tempo published a report on huge bank balances of certain high police officials and the cover showed a caricature of a policeman holding ropes tied around three pigs. The report titled "Fat Account Police Officers" analyzed central financial transaction reports and found that there are tens of billions of Indonesian Rupiah transferred from unspecified third parties in the accounts of at least seven high-ranking police officials.

The officers implicated in the article include Insp. Gen. Budi Gunawan, the head of internal affairs and a former adjutant to the president during the Megawati Soe-karnoputri administration; former Mobile Brigade chief Insp. Gen. Sylvanus Yulian Wenas and lecturer at the Police Leadership School Insp. Gen. Bambang Suparno and former National Police chief detective Comr. Gen. Susno Duadji.

What followed can be the plot of a thriller: the magazine publications were purchased outright by groups making the edition unreachable to readers and the police threatened to sue Tempo (which they dismissed later) on charges of disrespectfully making caricatures of them. The police interpreted the Tempo report as depicting the police force as animals especially swine, which is forbidden to Muslims. But people are cleverer than them - the photocopy editions were in circulation in the following weeks and Tempo decided to reprint the edition. Widespread protests followed and the president was under pressure to announce an investigation.

On 6th of July the corruptors divulged their power by throwing a number of Molotov Cocktails in Tempo office. The National police spokesman said that the attack was intended to shine a bad light on the police as if the staffs orchestrated the attack. Later in the month four 'Tempo" staffs were interrogated by the police as if they were the suspects. One staff received threat from a third party.

Not only that Tama Satrya Langkun of Indonesian Corruption Watch, who contributed to the report was brutally assaulted and stabbed.

According to public demand the police investigated into 23 suspicious bank accounts of police officers and only found 2 problematic accounts. Indonesian police also claimed that they have made progress in the investigation of the attack on Tempo magazine and the anti-corruption activist.

However people are calling for independent police probe to authenticate such claims. The president said there is no need to involve other organizations such as anti-corruption commission (KPK).

The conclusion of the story can be perceived by many. You can fill in the gap with your experience. Unless there are a radical upheaval of people asking for accountability, justice and equality, the rich and powerful will continue to do what they do and get away with their crimes.

Jakrtass, an expat blog from Jakarta usually posts some witty and satirical stuffs on Indonesia. Here is a snippet from a latest post which can be interpreted for many countries, including Bangladesh.

Moral paper Question:

1. Read the following passage and answer the question below:

There once was a country where everyone was a beggar. In the streets, the conventional panhandlers begged on bridges and sidewalks, buses and trains. At traffic lights they put their babies’ faces up at car windows and sang songs in the street. In the rush hour beggars stood in middle of intersections, directing traffic and asking for coins.

But these were just the visible beggars. The government stole from its own people and begged other countries for development aid. Whenever there was a natural disaster, and there were many in this benighted country, the local media, the television and newspapers, cried out for assistance from abroad. The regions begged for funds from the central government. Students begged foreign governments for scholarships, and local bureaucrats begged for grants to attend conferences abroad. When the economy collapsed in this nation of beggars, the government just looked at the IMF and stuck its hand out.

Following these examples, throughout the country, the young borrowed from their elders, who borrowed from their neighbours. The neighbours borrowed from their colleagues, who borrowed from their bosses, who ‘borrowed’ from the shareholders, and since no one ever repaid these loans they were all just beggars.

And then one day some one asked for his money back.

The government couldn’t pay. So it asked the regions to pay back their loans, and the regional governments asked the rich to pay taxes. So the rich, who were shareholders, asked the bosses to pay back the money they had borrowed, and the bosses asked the employees to pay off their debts. The neighbours went round to their neighbours and asked for their money back, until finally somebody couldn’t pay.

So they turned on the panhandlers in the streets and on the buses. Everyone needs someone to kick. (after Italo Calvino)

Which of these statements agrees with the opinion of the writer?

a. If you can’t steal, borrow. And if you can’t borrow, beg. It all boils down to the same thing anyway, and it’s better than working for a living.
b. There is absolutely no shame whatsoever in asking other people for money.
c. You can’t spend your whole life passing the hat around.

According to Hong Kong-based Political & Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC), Indonesia is the most corrupted country among 16 countries in the Asia Pacific. Here is the list.

If you have any doubts, I can vouch from my personal experiences.

Mall Culture: Mall Of Indonesia, Jakarta

"One can say that malls have replaced churches, community centres and brothels all together." - Sunday posts

In my brief period of staying in Jakarta my sources of information on Indonesia have been limited. I read the Jakarta post irregularly and sometimes browse some tv channels, but as I did not manage enough time to learn the language beyond counting numbers and directions (which actually helps me conduct my day-to-day affairs, including bargaining) I miss many things which are appearing everywhere.

But lately I have been subscribing to a number of blogs in English on Indonesia in my rss reader, most of which are of expat bloggers. I read them regularly and I must admit I learn a lot from them. I am sharing some interesting stories with you.

Yet another story of exploitation of natural resources of Indonesia:

Asia pulp and Paper/Sinar Mas Group's threat to Bukit Tigapuluh national park's (West Sumatra) forest and wildlife:

104,933 hectares in Tunu River, 98,577 hectares in Durian Jajar and 21,901 hectares in Kelumbuk Tinggi Baner, has all been converted into oil palm plantations. The rest of the non national park land has been given over to paper production.

Via Dilligaf

Bemo Reminds me of Tempo in Bangladesh:


(Bemos, image courtesy The Travellers Lounge)

Metro Mad Jakarta informs that Bemo, the three wheeled minivans which are an extended version of autorickshaws (Bajaj) and can take eight passengers will soon be phased out from Jakarta. Although they were outlawed in the Indonesian capital, about a thousand of them are still in operation and the city administration plans to get rid of them by 2011.

A familiar story on quality of education:

Jakartass questions the competence of the bureaucrats in charge of Indonesia’s schools because the national exam papers contain a lot of mistakes.

Are Indonesian women an export product?

Tatterscoops discusses a controversial proposed Marriage bill which requires the future ‘foreign’ husband to pay Rp. 500,000,000 (53,792 USD) deposit - allegedly to protect Indonesian women and this deposit is refundable on the tenth marriage anniversary.

This has enraged many Indonesian women who feel that they are 'being' sold by their own country.

Indonesia's president has ordered the beasts and other animals banned at street rallies..because:

The ban, issued Wednesday by Jakarta police, follows a demonstration last week in which protesters — who accused President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of failing to fight rampant corruption — tried to parade a water buffalo with Yudhoyono's name spray-painted on it through the city's main traffic circle.

Police removed the buffalo from the rally, one of a slew of protests held across the nation to mark the first 100 days of the president's second term.

Well that question did not come into my mind albeit I had troubles accessing my blog (which is on blogspot domain) yesterday.

Today when I could not access multiple sites on blogspost, I tried them via proxy and could access them successfully. Then I realized that something is wrong and started Googling for news. It seems only the Jakartass blog has the information. It reveals:

A few Indonesian ISPs - namely Fastnet, CBN and Smart - blocked Blogger yesterday, albeit temporarily. Why these three, and not the major ISPs such as Telkom and Indosat, interpreted a letter issued by the Ministry of Information and Communication (Menkominfo No 598/M.Kominfo/11/2009 tertanggal 19 November 2009) to mean a total ban on the world's largest blog host server, I cannot say, or even conjecture.

As far as I can make out - all my info comes from Indonesian language sites - one blogger, Nabi Muhammad SAW upset someone somewhere, possibly by expressing 'blasphemous' thoughts.

Read VivaNews for the thoughts of "blogger senior" Enda Nasution.

Well its working again and I am able to post this and surprisingly the targeted blogsite is also unbanned. So I wonder what was the point of this whole exercise?

I have started to learn Indonesian with the help of some great online resources. I scrapped the idea of taking classes after I found them. But self learning is sometimes more time consuming as you don't have deadlines and exams. So I haven't had much progress. But hope I will be able to speak decent Bahasa in three months time.

Here are the online resources for learning Indonesian.

Learning Indonesian - It is a product of a small family business run by Shaun and Cici. It has free resources like great audio guides for downloading and paid program with study texts.

Indonesian in 7 days - Michel Bordt & Liswati Serum

Flirting In Indonesian - Great online language resource even if you're not in the game of flirting.

Learn Indonesian - Language Guide

Beginning Indonesian - For practicing online

Indonesian Tutorial - by Vremita Desectia

Bahasa Indonesia study aid

Podcast: Indonesian Language Guide for your iPod

Indonesian Language Course at Wikibooks

Learn To Speak Indonesian - Free audio courses

Indonesian reading and Conversation materials

More links for online dictionaries and vocabulary aids

Hope these help those who want to learn Indonesian.

Last Saturday (October 24, 2009) I attended the Pestablogger 2009 conference held in the SMESCO building in Jakarta. Around 1200 bloggers from all across Indonesia participated in this third annual Indonesian bloggers gathering.

This year's theme was "One Spirit One Nation", which reflects the nation's unity and diversity. Iman Brotoseno, the chairman of the event tells:

"Blog and other social media are able to break through physical, religious and cultural boundaries to keep us united as one nation with one spirit."

(Click here to read the rest of this entry)

Earthquake in Indonesia have been so frequent these days that people don't bother. I was sitting in chair and I felt it was moving for a bit. I was deeply concentrated in work and I thought probably my head was spinning. Then the shaking was no more. I asked my family members who did not feel anything probably it was for a brief period - 5 seconds or so. No apparent damages in Jakarta.

And a while after a twitter message came up:

W7VOA: Another quake has just rattled Indonesia -- M6.4 prelim -- probably not big enough to trigger tsunami.

I searched the internet and saw in Detik news that the earthquake happened. USGS Earthquake Hazards Program confirms:

Magnitude	6.5
Date-Time	Friday, October 16, 2009 at 09:52:52 UTC Friday, October 16, 2009 at 04:52:52 PM at epicenter
Location	6.692°S, 105.153°E
Depth	55.6 km (34.5 miles)
Region	SUNDA STRAIT, INDONESIA
Distances	135 km (85 miles) S of T.-Telukbetung, Sumatra, Indonesia 185 km (115 miles) WSW of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia 185 km (115 miles) W of Sukabumi, Java, Indonesia 270 km (165 miles) W of Bandung, Java, Indonesia
Location Uncertainty	horizontal +/- 12.3 km (7.6 miles); depth +/- 17.5 km (10.9 miles)
Parameters	NST= 33, Nph= 33, Dmin=350.5 km, Rmss=1.41 sec, Gp= 76°, M-type=teleseismic moment magnitude (Mw), Version=7
Source	USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Event ID	us2009mva4

More Twitter messages:

RT @BrettMcGuire: 5 seconds in Pondok Indah. Hanging plants are still swinging #Jakarta #earthquake

I am amazed that because of Twitter I could confirm the news within 10 minutes.

Via Jakarta Daily Photo:

The owner of the biggest McDonalds franchise in Indonesia has converted all his McDonald’s counters into the new restaurant: Tony Jack’s. Apparently he’s pissed by McDonald’s decision to sell its majority franchise ownership of McDonalds Indonesia to the Rekso group.

Detik Finance reports that 13 McDonalds branches were converted to Tony Jack’s on the 1st of October. The new entity vows to offer different food items from the previous venture although still dominated by burgers and fried chicken.

Since the first day of opening, the packaging of food and beverages were prepared plain, without logo and name of the store.

Their tagline is "Better than that One", hope they can live up to the expectation.

Another earthquake in Sumatra Islands in Indonesia following yesterday's deadly one brought more miseries to Indonesians.

A second earthquake was recorded shortly before noon (AEST) today in Padang, Indonesia. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck 150 km south of the epicenter of last night’s quake. (source)

Wednesday afternoon's 7.6-magnitude quake toppled buildings and led to fires in Padang, home to nearly 1 million people on the coast of Sumatra, leaving the city largely without power and communications.

United Nations humanitarian chief John Holmes said 1,100 people had been confirmed dead and warned that the toll was likely to worsen. Earlier, Indonesia's social affairs ministry said at least 770 people were dead and 2,400 injured, 300 seriously.(source)

Many organizations have already started rescue efforts. One notable initiative is by Air Asia:

In order to help the brethren in Padang in overcoming this disaster, PT Indonesia AirAsia will provide relief flights from Jakarta to Padang and Padang-Jakarta on Sunday, 04 Oktober, 2009. Chairs will be provided free of charge for the flights with Boeing 737-300. Free seats can be booked only through www.airasia.com started 02 Oktober, 2009 from 08.00 am. In Padang, prospective passengers can be booked directly at Minangkabau International Airport. PT Indonesia AirAsia will also allocate cargo space with a capacity of 1.5 tons for delivery the help of medication, food and other goods needed to help the brethren in Padang.

Image by thomaswanhoff via Flickr

Update: The Tsunami warning has been lifted. But there are more bad news. The 7.6 magnitude Sumatra earthquake may have killed more than 1,000 as per latest reports.


The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center raised a Tsunami warning a while ago as a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit the Southern Sumatra Island in Indonesia. The predictions are as follows:

EARTHQUAKES OF THIS SIZE HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO GENERATE A DESTRUCTIVE LOCAL TSUNAMI AND SOMETIMES A DESTRUCTIVE REGIONAL TSUNAMI ALONG COASTS LOCATED USUALLY NO MORE THAN A THOUSAND KILOMETERS FROM THE EARTHQUAKE EPICENTER.


ESTIMATED INITIAL TSUNAMI WAVE ARRIVAL TIMES AT FORECAST POINTS WITHIN THE WARNING AND WATCH AREAS ARE GIVEN BELOW. ACTUAL ARRIVAL TIMES MAY DIFFER AND THE INITIAL WAVE MAY NOT BE THE LARGEST. A TSUNAMI IS A SERIES OF WAVES AND THE TIME BETWEEN
SUCCESSIVE WAVES CAN BE FIVE MINUTES TO ONE HOUR.

LOCATION FORECAST POINT COORDINATES ARRIVAL TIME
-------------------------------- ------------ ------------
INDONESIA PADANG 0.9S 100.1E 1022Z 30 SEP
SIBERUT 1.5S 98.7E 1103Z 30 SEP
BENGKULU 3.9S 102.0E 1125Z 30 SEP
SIMEULUE 2.5N 96.0E 1136Z 30 SEP
BANDA ACEH 5.5N 95.1E 1227Z 30 SEP
BANDAR LAMPUNG 5.7S 105.3E 1251Z 30 SEP
BELAWAN 3.8N 98.8E 1531Z 30 SEP
INDIA GREAT NICOBAR 7.1N 93.6E 1236Z 30 SEP
THAILAND PHUKET 8.0N 98.2E 1400Z 30 SEP
KO PHRA THONG 9.1N 98.2E 1444Z 30 SEP
KO TARUTAO 6.6N 99.6E 1512Z 30 SEP
MALAYSIA GEORGETOWN 5.4N 100.1E 1546Z 30 SEP
PORT DICKSON 2.5N 101.7E 1918Z 30 SEP

Yesterday's Tsunami in Samoa Island caused much famage.

I feel one of these days a big natural disaster is going to happen.