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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What I still don’t get is:

Why the country is used as a gigantic rubbish tip?

 Why many Indonesians believe that in the west sex is “free” – in the sense that you could just approach some random stranger of the opposite sex and ask them for a quicky and they would promptly agree?

 Why proper pavements aren’t made which people could actually walk on and not risk death or serious injury?

 Why there are zebra crossings at all considering it is suicide to use one as cars don’t stop?

 Why ONLY dangdut is played at street weddings?

 Why the busway lane is full of motorcycles every day and the uniformed chap standing there does NOTHING to prevent this?

 Why foreign doctors are not allowed to practice in the country given the poor level of health care which means rich Indonesians (mostly politicians and businesspeople) do a runner and get treated abroad, significantly draining the country’s forex reserves?

 Why foreign universities aren’t allowed to set up here to reduce the need for parents to send their kids overseas to gain a (very expensive) education which (as in the previous point) drains Indonesia’s forex reserves?

 Why the Indonesian school curriculum/system is so unbelievably shoddy - when they could easily adopt the Cambridge syllabus and exams – as Singapore has done?

Why gojek is considered “good” but uber “bad”? Because one has two wheels and the other has four?

 Why bigotry towards LBGT people raises its ugly head from time to time even though over 10 million gays live in the country and – so far at least – they have not tried to bring the country to its knees? Even during the authoritarian Suharto era, things weren’t as bad as they are now and a transexual named Dorce was a popular TV presenter, who, to her credit, ran “a number of orphanages that cared for thousands of children.”

 Why the traffic madness in front of Semanggi is allowed to continue given that it is entirely preventable?

 Why microlet always seem to be either empty or just waiting by the side of the road – and there are so many of them?

 Why every other car is a fucking Avanza?

 Why Jasa Marga cannot operate efficient toll road booths (by using real electronic ticketing) to prevent kilometer-long queues of cars trying to get onto the inner city toll road every evening?

Comments

  1. Dennis15 March 2016 at 16:46

    There's ugliness and beauty, and for sure room for improvements. Tell us your story of your contributions, it can inspire more than complaints.

    ReplyDelete

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