Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

Try saying that quickly. It doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, does it, yet it is now a word to say along with Tambora, Krakatoa and Merapi, just three of the estimated 76 active volcanoes in Indonesia.

The eruption of Krakatoa on August 27th 1883 had a significant impact on the world's psyche and I closed my post commemorating that eruption by suggesting that planet earth could do with another massive eruption in order to reverse some of the effects of global warming.

I doubt that the massive amounts of ash being flung into the atmosphere by Eyjafjallajokull will be that significant climatically, but it may. After all, volcanology is not an exact science and the Icelandic volcano is belching from beneath a glacier.

I can find no reports of deaths, yet many tales of inconvenience. Most of these are in my view inconsequential in the greater scheme of things.

European tourists stranded in Bali should be able to enjoy a few more days of r'n'r but need to be careful. Now that incoming tourists and non-Indonesian passport holders resident here have to be finger-printed upon arrival, it is obvious that local Immigration Dept. officials are becoming more – erm – officious, so they may be rubbing their Scrooge-like hands at the thought of the fines they can levy for those folk whose tourist visas expire whilst they await their flights home.

Those few teams still involved in European football, and those highly paid Formula 1 teams needing to get back from China to Spain face difficulties, but, much as the airlines will suffer, the railway companies will benefit.

Another benefit is that folk who live beneath the flight path of Europe's airports (but why?) can now enjoy the sounds of birdsong. Lucky them; there are very few free-range birds in Jakarta so even though Jakartass Towers is not beneath the airport's usual flight path, we very rarely hear cheerful chirruping.

However, there is one factor which has not been commented on – globalisation. Whilst airlines complain that they may lose a combined $130 million a day from cancellations and rerouting, because of grounded flights farmers growing cash crops in Africa are laying off workers and dumping rotting vegetables and flowers .

Flowers? Yep, Kenya's flower council says the country is haemorrhaging $1.3m a day in lost shipments to Europe. Kenya normally exports up to 500 tonnes of flowers daily – 97% of which is delivered to Europe. Horticulture earned Kenya 71 billion shillings (£594m) in 2009 and is the country's top foreign exchange earner.

Advocates of globalisation should now consider how feeble their man-made machinations are when up against the globe, Planet Earth.