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
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KLM revives the Amsterdam-Bali route!!!

The first time I ever came to Indonesia was on a KLM flight way back in the early 1990s, so news that the Dutch airline has revived its direct flight from Amsterdam to Bali brings back a few memories.

As I recall, the KLM plane I was on - which was on its final leg of the journey back to London - was virtually empty, and as I sat in my seat contemplating a return to “normality”, I lit up a Gudang Garam Surya cigarette and puffed away! Do that today of course and you’d be dragged away screaming once the plane landed to some awful little room where they interrogate suspected terrorists and probably slapped around a bit.

 And the fact that I also had a bloody sharp celurit from the island of Madura (as a souvenir) in my hand luggage also probably wouldn’t have worked in my favor! How times change eh?

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