There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in
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2006 review

Like crack heads unable to get a fix, internet users in SE Asia – myself included - have been going cold turkey in the last couple of days after an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale badly damaged a undersea fiber optic cable in Taiwan, effectively cutting off Asia from the world wide web.
 
Amazingly though, and against all the odds, services have been resurrected (intermittently perhaps) in the last few hours or so. Which is just as well, cos much longer and I think the region’s E-heads would have started doing really stupid things like jumping out of windows and taking out their frustrations on anyone who happens to walk past. 

Anyway, as the year is coming to a close, I’m just gonna refer you to some of my favorite posts of the year that you might have missed. 

First off is the Tiara Lestari T-shirt that you can wear with pride. I'm not sure if Surya Paloh would wear one, but he likes giving jobs to beautiful young ladies. Be careful though as some have a nasty bite. Others you can find in high-rise office buildings in Jakarta. Maids have bucked teeth, foreigners go to Blok M and the Vietnamese couldn’t pull in a Surabaya brothel. 

Corby was largely forgotten about in 2006 and still has another 17 years on Paradise Island. So why not bring along some food and feed her in her cage? 

But you don't have to break the law to get high in Asia. 

Starbucks comes from America. And Bush came to Indonesia. But while Bush doesn’t like abortion this Golkar politician found it quite useful after he did a dangut singer with his second and much talked about bwelli button. 

Not sure what Peter Withe has got lined up but he has been spotted in Blok M. And so it goes on… Happy New Year!

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