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

Budi, teruslah main bola

Good to see XL giving the two-pointed fingers up to the terrorist loonies in this defiant piece of advertising:

Budi, teruslah main bola
But advertising in Indonesia is not always this sharp, and sometimes they come up with stuff that is so wide of the mark that the other team would get a throw-in rather than a goal kick. 

A good example of this being HM Sampoerna’s slogan for its recently launched super slim kretek cigarettes "Sampoerna Avolution": Begin what Next 

Er, you what? You what, you what you what? 

Completely baffling even to native English speakers (including those with Philosophy and Linguistics degrees), I can’t imagine what Sampoerna thought the average Indonesian dude was going to make of it: that confusing consumers with indecipherable slogans is a good way to get them to buy the company’s cigarettes, perhaps? 

Another really bizarre piece of advertising that I came upon recently was on an absolutely huge billboard in the Tanah Abang district of central Jakarta:

kopi kapal api iklan Nope – means nuffin to me - and I don’t think I’m the only one in Indonesia who isn’t freezing his butt off either!

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