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

RIP Inong Haris

Strange goings on at ungodly hours. This time a bunch of the scraggiest alley cats you have ever seen gather outside my house – in that twilight zone of around 3.00-4.00am – to give a passable rendition of Oasis’s What’s the Story Morning Glory?



Feeling in a charitable mood, I gave the poor blighters what they wanted – some leftover bandeng presto fish (*) - and they soon departed, bellies full.

* while looking for a bandeng presto recipe I came across the blog of Indonesian blogger Inong Haris, who despite being only 32 years old tragically passed away in Singapore. God bless her. It’s eerie visiting her blog, as if time suddenly stopped still. Even so, her blog still seems to be very popular. This made me wonder: could it be that blogs will become to be seen as a way of offering a permanent legacy to ordinary people, something in the past that only the rich and famous could hope to attain?

We shall live on forever. Well at least in the internet…

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