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

Harley Davidson Motorcycles in Jakarta

A lot of people I know say Harleys are for tossers. The reason being that nowadays they are mostly bought by rich executive types who know nothing about bikes but a lot about showing off their excessive wealth (even if they only drive ‘em every second Sunday of the month). 

 Nonetheless, I’ve always loved these bikes myself. There’s something about the deep guttural roar of a Harley Davidson engine that you don’t get with high performance Japanese bikes – however fast they might be. And all that heavy chrome’s a bonus as well of course! 

 I’ve never owned a Harley myself – nor am I likely to - but have managed to borrow one on a number of occasions. 

Nothing quite like tearing along Jalan Gatot Subroto late at night – about the only time when it’s fun to ride one of these things in Jakarta – and then being pulled over by a curious traffic cop and showing him the ID of the big shot who actually owns the bloody thing! 

In the States you can get a decent secondhand 833 Sportster for five thousand bucks. But in Jakarta it will set you back at least twice that. The other models are much more expensive of course. And to get these machines into Indonesia in the first place isn’t exactly easy (they are classified as CBU or completely built up). 

So the bikes are fully assembled at the factory in the States and then taken to pieces before the parts are shipped across to Indonesia where the bike is reassembled again! 

They are also ****** magnets of course. I mean ride too slowly when you go past Sarinah dept store or through Blok M and the lovely things will virtually be throwing themselves onto the back of the bloody thing! 

No wonder some people consider the investment worthwhile! But then again they could be wrong of course...

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