BMTH live in Jakarta 2024

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This time around Ravel gets it right and BMTH (Bring Me The Horizon) are headlining the Nexfest festival in Jakarta which also features Babymetal. In this format there is no seating - which makes for a much more intimate experience - although you do have to arrive really early if you want to pick a spot right up close to the stage.  We arrived about six hours before BMTH were scheduled to start their performance and bought plenty of drinks to stay hydrated in the tropical afternoon heat (mind you, some of those were Iceland vodka mix!) This was a gig I had long been looking forward to - especially after the debacle last year. Not everyone likes BMTH of course. For deathcore fans the band sold out. For metal heads the band is not purist enough. And for the wider mainstream audience, the band is too heavy. You can't please everyone of course but there are few bands in the rock world which can match the sheer emotional velocity of BMTH. To bring metal and even aspects of metalcore t...
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Indonesia now worth more than 1.8 times Google!

Beware of geeks bearing formulas. 
~Warren Buffett 

5 years ago someone pointed out to me that one single US tech company - the behemoth internet stock Google – was worth more than ALL the companies listed on the Indonesian stock exchange! 

This is an incredible fact: that one single company from the US - which operates in cyberspace and with no “real” assets - is worth more than all the listed Indonesian banks, coal mining companies, CPO producers, retailers, property developers, and telecommunications firms put together!!! 

But if you believe this doesn’t make sense, then it could mean two different things. Either that Google is highly overvalued. Or that the Indonesian stock market is highly undervalued. 

As it turned out, Indonesian stocks were highly undervalued and with the Indonesian economy growing by more than 10 percent annually in nominal terms, Indonesian share prices have made strong gains in the last five years. 

So how does the value of Google compare to Indonesia at the end of 2011? Well, Google had a reasonably good year and its share price rose 6.9 percent, giving rise to a total market capitalization of US$205.2 billion (up from US$192 billion at the end of 2010):

Google vs Indonesia 2011 
 
Indonesian stocks, by comparison, gained 6.4 percent over the year in dollar terms. As a result, Indonesia’s market value rose to US$385 billion at the end of 2011, or up from US$346 billion at the end of 2010. 

What this means is that Indonesia is now worth 1.87 times Google - and not far below the 2 times level! 

NB: the valuations of tech stocks is utterly insane. The estimated value of Facebook for example is put at a mind blowing US$100 billion!!! – up from an estimated US$42 billion 12 months ago. 

And as for Twitter? That’s worth an estimated US$8.4 billion (up from US$3.7 billion a year ago and more than 30 times Twitter's projected 2012 ad revenues. 

Huh? How does that old West Ham song go? I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles / Pretty bubbles in the air / They fly so high, / Nearly reach the sky / Then like my dreams…

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