Alterity | Jakarta and Bali

Mong Tong are destined for cult status. That much I'm sure. For those fortunate to have attended the 2024 Joyland Festival in Bali, this was a gig that will be seared deeply into the memory for a long, long time to come. The setting was just perfect. Just imagine a sultry late night in the tropical paradise that is Bali with gentle waves caressing the sandy shores close to where the modestly-sized stage had been set up.  When the Taiwanese electronic duo emerged, they promptly tied black cloths around their heads to cover their eyes. Incredibly, they would play blindfolded!  Experiencing Mong Tong's music live is quite a different proposition to listening to their recorded songs, which although brilliant, are more subtle and laid back. Live, though, the music takes on a psycadellic dimension, being notably less melodic but far more intense and catharic. The music was so immersive that the past and future disolved into irellevancy for me and only the moment mattered. But time

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

One of the great things about democracy is that citizens get the opportunity to vote for the legislators who will represent them in parliament.  But with so many political parties in Indonesia, there are a huge number of candidates (caleg) to choose from.  So how can a political party select a caleg who stands out from the crowd and who resonates with voters?  By selecting a celebrity as a caleg of course!  To some this may be seen as a rather desperate move but some voters (particularly men) may be more likely to vote for an attractive actress rather than some boring old man they have never heard of. Celebrity caleg in the coming election include Krisdayanti , Diana Sastra, Tamara Geraldine, Kalina Oktarani, Desy Ratnasari, Rachel Maryam, Annisa Bahar, Nafa Urbach, Mulan Jameela and Lula Kamal.  Quite simply, take your pick!  

A week is a long time in politics. And four years since the last election is a hell of a lot longer of course. But this time around, the pendulum seems to be swinging firmly in Prabowo's favour.  I wouldn’t bet my house on it but since Gibran (the president's son) sided with Prabowo - and thereby giving him a lot of potential support from incumbent President Jokowo voters - the prospects for Ganjar and Anies have dimmed considerably.  This act of betrayal by the incumbent was something out of a Shakespeare novel and it really infuriated Megawati as she thought she could count on Jokowi's support for Ganjar. But that didn’t turn out to be the case. And she’s still picking up the pieces.  Prabowo is also galvanizing plenty of support from strongly partisan media (TV One owned by Bakrie, Detik.com by Chairul Tanjung etc) and more cannily social media, which influences the minds of so many people these days.  In particular, I noticed that Tiktok feeds are jam packed with videos

In my recent post I wrote about the cancelled Bring Me The Horizon (BMTH) gig in Jakarta and how that disgracefully organized event could have had some very unwelcome consequences indeed.   Yet despite this disappointment, at least I still had the 2023 Joyland Festival to look forward to.  Held annually in Jakarta (and in Bali as well), Joyland is professionally managed all the way from the ticketing process to the security and stage set-up with decent facilities also provided such as a beer tent (sponsored by Guinness!) and food stalls, etc. A particularly nice touch given that temperatures can soar in the tropics was the provision of free drinking water not far from the main stage.     I had tickets for day two of the 3-day event and was thrilled to see that the promoters had had the vision to line up some really top-notch bands - namely Glass Beams, Mildlife, and Squid - in addition to the main acts Bloc Party and Fleet Foxes.     By the time Glass Beams took to the stage, it was a

This is not the blog post I had wanted to write. I had long been looking forward to the Bring Me The Horizon (BMTH) concert and wanting to write about a fantastic gig by one of the world's best metal bands. But instead I am having to write about a total disaster that caused the second-day gig to be cancelled after the first-day gig ended prematurely. First of all, let me say I really like BMTH. There are few bands which can match their sheer emotional velocity in the rock world. To bring metal and even aspects of metalcore to a much wider audience by incorporating pop sounds into really well-written songs is pure genius.  Live they would be magnificent. Or so I had hoped to see myself. A lot has appeared in the media about what happened in the first day gig and why it ended prematurely. But let’s be truthful here: this was a shambolically organized gig. An absolute disgrace and we can only be grateful that a tragedy was averted. The problems To avoid writing a ridiculo