Alterity | Jakarta and Bali

saw this man stick out his neck with his binoculars intact He couldn't tell the right side of his brain Had just lost all interest in his left... > This Here Giraffe, by the Flaming Lips An Australian diver has discovered a new seahorse near Derawan island off Kalimantan island in Indonesia: Nothing special about that you might think except that this seahorse -which has been named Hippocampus Satomiae after its discoverer Satomi Onishi - is no larger than a pea, with a length around 14mm and a height around 11.5mm. By comparison, the world’s largest seahorse – according to Wikipedia – is the pot bellied seahorse with lengths of up to 35 cm (or about 25 times longer than the newly discovered Hippocampus Satomiae). Now this sort of got me thinking – why the huge difference in sizes? After all, wouldn’t nature have found a sort of “optimum” size for seahorses? And even more beguilingly, what about us humans? Is there any reason why we are between 5’5 to 6’5 feet tall and not, say,...

My first attempt at a very short art review. Here goes… In “Ghost”, French artist Kader Attia shows us the true face of organized theist dogma. And guess what? There isn’t much to see! Because once the inquisitive mind has been torn out, the humanity has been lost - and an empty shell is all that remains. But the zeitgeist moves on – aluminum the future fashion code. And as cloth shall become an anachronism, so will today’s theist beliefs. But what will come along next? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see!!

Yes you can visit Bali without a visa. But only if you are a citizen of one of the following 63 countries: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, China, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Laos, Latvia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Maldives, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Surinam, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan Territory, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the USA. (Besides these countries, it should also be noted that citizens from ASEAN countries do NOT need a visa to visit Bali of course) In the case of citizens of the 63 countries above, you will be asked to get a visa at the airport: either for a seven-day visit (at a cost...

It’s strange why things turn out like they do. A number of years back when I was at university in the 1990s we had an Apple Lab and everyone said that the Apple operating system would dominate the PC market in years to come. It didn’t turn out that way of course as the rival Microsoft Windows operating system became the dominate player with only a handful of graphic design geeks and fashion conscious young women using an Apple PC today. This didn’t happen because the Apple operating system is any worse (in fact, it’s probably better). It just did. Seemingly just by chance. Strangely enough luck was the reason why Apple didn’t die a slow death: for some unknown reason the company replaced Sony as the dominant supplier of portable music players. So where did Sony go wrong? Everyone had a bloody Walkman back in the 90’s for God’s sake, and it shouldn’t have been a big deal for such a huge company to complete the transformation to digital. But they didn’t. They screwed up and Apple now com...

I’ve received this email from Google. Have you too? Dear AdSense publisher, We apologize for the broken links in the previous email. Here are the corrected links for the new publisher feature and media planning tool. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate your understanding. Sincerely, The Google AdSense Team

Breaking news: Pope Benedict XVI has offered his support for the Palestinians' right to a homeland, during his trip to Israel and the West Bank... clipped from www.worldcat.org  

My previous blog post was my shortest ever - but was it the shortest blog post ever written? Most probably I reckon. Sure it’s possible that someone really has posted a completely blank page at one time or another, but, then again, why would they do that? After all, you wouldn’t write nothing to say something would you? At the other end of the scale are long blog posts. There aren’t many of them these days as attention spans get ever shorter. My longest blog post on abortion and logic runs a mere 930 words and the longest blog post I have ever come across on the net is in the region of 5,000 words. So could the 5,000 words blog post be the longest blog post ever written? Well I suppose it could, but it’s difficult to know for sure - although search engines will help you find almost anything, they are not yet able to show you specific posts according to criteria like length. So, instead, you’d have to read through all the hundreds of millions of blog posts that have ever been written. ...

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The Jakarta International Airport is named after the first President of Indonesia, Soekarno, and the first vice-president, Mohammad Hatta: The airport was built back in the 70s, and is a far cry from the glitzy high tech airports of Singapore or even Malaysia. As airline traffic has exploded in recent years, the airport now passes a striking resemblance to the Blok M bus station in south Jakarta. Designed to handle up to 25 million passengers per year, the airport already welcomes over 55 million passengers annually at its two domestic and one international terminal! Each day the airport handles around 1,200 flights. Scams abound. Be especially wary of unscrupulous porters and taxi drivers. To avoid being ripped off, only take Blue Bird taxis. You may have to wait a little while but it’s worth it for the peace of mind you get. If you are on a budget take one of the airport buses. They go to various locations including the Blok M terminal in south Jakarta and Gambir trai...

Be it a large city or a small provincial town, one thing is for sure – and that is one of its streets will be named Jalan Sudirman.  In Jakarta, Jalan Sudirman is the great thoroughfare which cuts through the heart of the city on a north south axis and which is lined by some of the cities most important buildings: towering skyscrapers, luxury hotels and plush shopping malls.  The man honored, General Sudirman, was the military commander of Indonesia’s armed forces during the country’s fight for independence from the Dutch in the 1940s. Sudirman’s appointment of Army Chief in November 1945 at just 30 years of age, made him the first and youngest general of the Indonesian army.   The first battle he led was the battle of Ambarawa (November-December 1945), which pitted his troops against the British and the Dutch who had ostensibly come to the Dutch East Indies to repatriate Japanese soldiers, Allied prisoners of war and former internees, but seemingly had the ulteri...

A socialist, a capitalist and a communist agreed to meet. The socialist was late. 'Excuse me for being late, I was standing in a queue for sausages.' 'And what is a queue?' the capitalist asked. 'And what is a sausage?' the communist asked. Sukarno of course went a little too far in tinkering with communism, and subsequently paid the price. Suharto took over and at least 500,000 people were killed according to some estimates. Most of those butchered were peasants who didn’t really have a clue about politics. But hey – that’s life. And death of course. The Americans did their bit, supplying names of those to be killed (how times change eh?), and the slaughter got underway. Read the account of a former CIA operative in Indonesia here . But Sukarno had had a good innings. Like most “socialist” leaders, he had accumulated a huge fortune and spent the nation’s money on elaborate projects like the Senayan Sports Stadium and Monas (a huge phallic monument honoring hi...