Help Nila Tanzil!

Posted by Internet at Every Where on 8:19 AM

When I wrote about Tourism Queensland's brilliant marketing campaign a while back, promoting the Best Job in the World, I had no idea that someone familiar might actually get it.

It's basically a stint blogging from a gorgeous island off the Great Barrier Reef. Snorkel, scuba, hike, fish, and write about how great your life is, thereby promoting the wonders of Australia. Oh, and you get $100,000 a year too. Not a bad gig.

Anyhow, it looks like the terrific Indonesian blogger Nila Tanzil actually has a shot at it. She's been writing about her travels for ages, so it's a perfect fit. Of course there are others who want it, too, and apparently there's public voting involved. So go to this link, and vote your ass off for her. It'd be fabulous to see a worthy Indonesian came out on top of an intense global competition.

Good luck Nila!


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Obama snacks and postmodernism

Posted by Internet at Every Where on 1:25 PM

Somehow I love the fact that "Obama snacks" are hitting the Indonesian streets. Not because they're nutritious (I assume not) or even legal (ripoff of likeness), but because they're a perfect distillation of messed-up postmodern society.

Something real, hopeful, and meaningful transformed and reworked into something cheap, throwaway and probably harmful. A powerful image taken over and destroyed by being associated with typical consumer emptiness. Postmodern theorists like Jean Beaudrillard might posit that nothing in our society is real or meaningful anyways (viz. his book The Gulf War Did Not Take Place), so a takedown of a particularly hopeful image - that of the new leader of the free world - by a little street-level capitalist hustling is perfectly appropriate.

If everything these days exists in a media simulacrum, a mirror of a mirror of a mirror of something else, a clever pastiche of things that were once original, isn't an Obama-branded snack part of that glorious and totally degraded mosaic?

A bit heavy, I know. But kudos to the Obama snack-sellers for their unintentional but brilliant contribution to postmodern debate.


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Kalla: Indonesia's Cheney

Posted by Internet at Every Where on 6:48 AM

Media wags have long called him Indonesia's version of Dick Cheney, but VP Jusuf Kalla's decision to take on President SBY is taking his Cheney-ness to a new level.

American VP Cheney demonstrated a certain Machiavellian brilliance, nominating himself to be George W. Bush's VP after supposedly leading the search. (Um, I decide ... on me!) Once in office, he essentially ran the White House, thanks to his deep knowledge of how to work the bureaucratic levers of government. Poor old Dubya didn't have a chance.

But even Cheney didn't have the brass balls to take on the sitting president who had made him VP in the first place. But such is the goal of Golkar's Kalla, who modestly claims that provincial leaders came to him in supplication. Nothing to do with his own ambition, of course.

The Greek tragedies all had core lessons in hubris, or overweening ambition, that ultimately brought down their heroes. Given the latest polls, Kalla is going to get a brutal lesson in the dangers of hubris very soon.


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Spotlight: Hotel Sedona Manado

Posted by Internet at Every Where on 8:12 AM

Time for a guessing game. The newest winner of Indonesia's best resort, from the World Travel Awards?

Seems I gave it away by the title of the post, but it's the Hotel Sedona in the diving Mecca of Manado, beating out a number of better-known luxury chains. Those rival general managers must be gnashing their teeth.

Perched at the top of North Sulawesi, far from Jakarta's bustle and smog, Manado is known mainly by scuba divers and snorkelers for its rich undersea life. The hotel and its 247 suites are only a couple of years old, part of a hotel network that's prominent in Asian locales like Myanmar and Vietnam.

I don't know much about the Sedona chain, but given that its Manado resort fronts a fabulous private lagoon, and boasts diving that's perhaps unparalleled on the planet, I can only assume that the World Travel Awards know what they're talking about.


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Let's create an Indonesia bubble!

Posted by Internet at Every Where on 12:08 PM

As the Dow sinks into oblivion today, it strikes me that the only real money is ever made during ridiculous asset bubbles. The dot-com bubble of 1999-2000, the home-price bubble of 2002-2007, the grand old South Sea and Dutch Tulip bubbles. As long as you got out in time, you made serious coin.

After all, regular savers always seem to get shafted. The Protestant ethic of work-hard-and-save seems to have been blown apart in this latest meltdown, when savings-account interest rates have approached zero and stock portfolios have been totally obliterated. Bubbles even destroy those who haven't really participated in them.

Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Let's create a crazy asset bubble, and then get out while the getting is good. And why not Indonesia? Let's pump the idea that Indonesia is the Next Big Thing, drive the Jakarta Index into the stratosphere, and then cash in our chips and go live on a private island somewhere with a lifetime supply of mai-tais. Who's with me?


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Random musings on rice for breakfast

Posted by Internet at Every Where on 11:41 AM


I like to think of myself as pretty attuned to the Indonesian psyche ... as much as any white Canadian can be, anyways. But one leap I was never able to make: Having rice for breakfast.

Now, I know it's far healthier than any sugar-laden product from Kellogg's, or the deadly bacon-and-eggs combo that clogs up most Western arteries. But I could never wrap my mind around rice in the morning. In fact I was so psychologically damaged after my first stint in Indonesia, that I couldn't eat (or even look at) rice - at any time of day - for at least six months afterwards.

Now, I suppose since much of the country is around or below the poverty line, you eat what you've got. Which, with that climate and terrain, is usually rice. Understood. And perhaps one day I'll get beyond my biases, and enjoy some basmati or jasmine varieties as the sun comes up. But until then, nasi goreng in the a.m. is one cultural bridge too far ...


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