Latest on Fri, 09:25 am
Kommunikasie
Trouble is ahead.
The reverent at the Church wedding in Lampung had told us so: it is all about “kommunikasie”. He meant between husband and wife. But I know by now it goes for the relationship between granddaughters and granddads also.
Devica Esha is starting to speak. Well, most of it is still incomprehensible to everybody except her mother. Though last month I also recognized a score of separate one syllable words. At this moment I even believe to discern several more lengthy ones also. Most of them Dutch. But a few others are Bahassa Indonesia.  Her vocabulary is still very small obviously, so that she has no option but to use the limited number of words she has at her disposal without distinguishing between one language and the other. Which causes misunderstandings on my part. Like when she got angry at me the other day because I didn’t do that what, as it turned out, she apparently was demanding: “Granddad, I wanna go feed the ducklings in the pond with you”. Only with the help of her mother’s translation I found out:
She said bebek. While I say eendje. Read More
Newsflash: Muchdi Purwoprandjono cleared
Human rights activist Munir Said Thalib was murdered. Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, former Garuda pilot, has been convicted for the murder. But, as the JP reported today, the man who allegedly instructed the murderer, was cleared by the court’s president, Judge Suharto (sic). But then, what else could have been expected since this was Muchdi Purwoprandjono, a retired army general and former second in command of BIN?
Munir’s widow Suciwati will appeal.
Not a really happy start to the New Year neither for human rights nor for her. I wish her all the luck she needs to get justice done in ’09.
Smoke 3
Some of my fellow heathens here complain that the bigots have taken over. They do have a point, I´m afraid.
Some twenty years ago, when I visited Singapore, there were rumors that the pretty autocratic government of the city-state planned a ban on smoking in public. At the time I said: no sweat, I don’t smoke and I don’t live here. But I was wrong. The disease proved to be contagious. And now the situation got disconcerting: all over the world patronizing authorities – schoolmasters, experts, officials, clergy, heads of state- tend to forbid your pleasures for your own good.
Smoke 2
Indonesia can be found this month in one of the articles of PNAS (“Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”). It deals with the large scale fires in Kalimantan, West Papua and Sumatra.
It takes the authorities off the hook- to a limited degree that is. Their responsibility is relative, because in it’s summary the authors from the University of Amsterdam en the University of Wageningen a.o., conclude that alternating periods of relative drought and relative high precipitation have a most important impact on the amount of carbon emissions and by consequence on climate change. El Nino years (dry) are 15 to 30 times worse than El Nina years (wet).
The worrying part is that as a consequence of global warming the number of dry years in the archipelego probably will grow significantly. This may equal more drought and a rapid acceleration of deforestation. Which is a gloomy prospect for the remaining Indonesian jungles.
“The World is Indonesia Now”
Indonesia has been there before.  And it took the country nine years to recover.
The wise and sensible Paul Krugman’s said: “the world is Indonesia now”. He was referring to Indonesia’s economical crises, which did hit Asia and particularly Indonesia, a decade ago. Like the US and Europe now, in ’97 it also was all about going for the quick buck , dealing in derivatives, speculation (against weak currencies then, against weak system banks now) and mismanaging the risks. Even the concept of crony capitalism may be applied in both cases: there is only a thin line between membership of boards of banks and membership of governments in Western capitals, like there was only a very thin line between the Suharto family and business.