Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

A lot of what you read here is the result of diligent research. Something I read or think about can set off a train of thought which leads me to hitherto unsuspected information and possible solutions to life's dilemmas.

Take the issue of Jakarta's traffic woes.

Today's Post informed us that the previously unheard of Presidential Work Unit for Development Monitoring and Control (UKP4) has given the Jakarta administration a failing grade in its implementation of 17 plans of action designed to ease Jakarta’s worsening traffic.

UKP4 head Kuntoro Mangkusubroto said, "“If you ask me, the progress in the 17 plans, I will have to say that it is bad news … and why is it so hard to put them into action? The root of the problem is that there’s no coordination at all.”

17 plans? That many? Apart from a couple of elevated roads causing immense jams, the truck ban on toll roads through the city, the opening of a couple of long-delayed Busway routes, the opening of a kilometre and a half of bike lane from nowhere to somewhere unimportant and …. what are the other 13?

I don't think it's that difficult to come up with a simple solution or two.

How about providing safe unobstructed pavements – or sidewalks if you prefer – for pedestrians?

Ah, but that's too easy by half/

My researches have lead me to this bit of research pertaining to the Tokyo rail system.

Transport networks are ubiquitous in both social and biological systems. Robust network performance involves a complex trade-off involving cost, transport efficiency, and fault tolerance. Biological networks have been honed by many cycles of evolutionary selection pressure and are likely to yield reasonable solutions to such combinatorial optimization problems. Furthermore, they develop without centralized control and may represent a readily scalable solution for growing networks in general.

We show that the slime mold Physarum polycephalum forms networks with comparable efficiency, fault tolerance, and cost to those of real-world infrastructure networks—in this case, the Tokyo rail system. The core mechanisms needed for adaptive network formation can be captured in a biologically inspired mathematical model that may be useful to guide network construction in other domains.

"Slime mold"? Thats' a good description of City Hall bureaucrats if ever I heard one.

That thought lead me to research whether swearing is actually good for you. The answer is that of course it fucking is, especially when in pain.

Although a common pain response, whether swearing alters individuals' experience of pain has not been investigated. This study investigated whether swearing affects cold-pressor pain tolerance (the ability to withstand immersing the hand in icy water), pain perception and heart rate. In a repeated measures design, pain outcomes were assessed in participants asked to repeat a swear word versus a neutral word. In addition, sex differences and the roles of pain catastrophising, fear of pain and trait anxiety were explored.

Swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing. However, swearing did not increase pain tolerance in males with a tendency to catastrophise. The observed pain-lessening (hypoalgesic) effect may occur because swearing induces a fight-or-flight response and nullifies the link between fear of pain and pain perception.

Continuing my delve into clinical trials i came across the Barf Scale, which we Brits call the Puke Portraits.

Of course it wouldn't be a clinical trial if the resulting report was in plain language.

This pictorial (Baxter Retching Faces) scale for measuring nausea severity has convergent and discriminant validity, and detected change after antiemetic treatment. Its use in the clinical and research setting may assist in nausea management in children…. To our knowledge, this is the first scale based in part on patient drawings.

Additional studies will be required to determine if the stylized emesis anchor will decrease endorsement of the maximum nausea choice by patients with severe nausea but no emesis, based on concrete thinking that ‘If I am not actually vomiting, I cannot choose this face’….

Future studies need to be performed to determine if there are age, gender, culture, ethnic, or language variations in the validation of the BARF scale.

There are periods in a year when seemingly nothing much happens, so the medai have to pad out their pages with nothing of great importance. In England it’s called the ‘silly season‘

I don’t know if there is such a colloquialism in Indonesia, but you may be interested to know that in many languages, the name for the silly season references cucumbers.

The following was published some forty years ago in London’s Evening Standard: The Thames pleasure launch Princess Elizabeth nearly sank today.

That’s all it said; there was no mention of ‘how’ or ‘why’ and my mind has been boggled ever since.

Here are a few silly boggles I’ve gleaned this week.

1. You may have missed it, but according to Harold Camping, an 89-year-old doomsday prophet in California who reads the Book of Ezekiel in the Bible and likes mathematics, the world was supposed to end last night at 6pm.

Apparently, those who believed him would have gone straight to heaven whilst the rest of us would have been doomed to die in loads of earthquakes and fire, presumably from volcanic eruptions. That’s Indonesia doomed then.

Incidentally, he says that another of the signs that judgment day was nigh was the growth of ‘gay pride’.

That’s a bit rich coming from a man called Camping – a term often associated with male female-impersonators.

2. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a demonstration by residents who live in the streets near the British Embassy. They had parked their cars to protest five – why so many? – new security road gates that restricted access to their homes. Their demonstration “made it difficult for embassy staff to enter the embassy compound“.

A few days later, I received an email from the embassy stating that “due to circumstances specific to the security arrangements for the site of the Embassy building. rather than a specific threat, [they] had to close the main Embassy building.”

On Friday, the roadblock was removed, and a moveable concrete has been erected, creating two lanes, which will allow local residents access to Jl. Sudirman.

I have yet to hear whether the Embassy closure is still in force. Anyone wishing to know, and I really don’t, can read the online but outdated travel advisory.

This issue can be considered as a storm in a teacup, or making a mountain out of a molehill.

3. With an election due next year to elect, hopefully, a new Jakarta Governor. The current one, Fauzi Bowo, in a rare demonstration of what a governor should do, has stated that despite disapproval from the transportation minister. City Hall will continue with the trial ban, until June 10, on container and oversized (illegal?) trucks from accessing the inner-city toll road ,

“We have decided what’s best [for the city]. I don’t know what the transportation minister took as consideration for his disapproval. He hasn’t communicated with me,” he said on Friday.

Earlier, presumably in an effort to demonstrate solidarity and to gain public sympathy, the Jakarta branch of the Organization of Land Transportation Owners (Organda) called for a truck drivers strike.

That’s called biting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

(This site is not silly, but it is of little use except possibly in planning your journey through Jakarta. Using the CCTV cameras now dotted throughout the city, it gives you live streaming of the traffic jams.)

4. Finally, here is some news you might have missed. I’m including it because sitting in a very expensive car in a traffic jam is, well, very silly. Still, if you do want a new Rolls-Royce in Indonesia, and the sales are expected to increase this year, you could check out Tanjung Priok docks where there a couple of second hand ones in containers (which can’t be trucked out in daylight hours).

A Rolls is a vehicle to be admired, even by non-drivers such as me. They have a distinctive front radiator grill and the front bonnet is adorned with this sensuous figure which is, and you wouldn’t believe it to look at her, is 100 years old this month.

What few will know is that the model was Eleanor Thornton, the assistant to Lord Montague, and they had a passionate affair. He suggested to Rolls and Royce that their brand would sell better if they had a mascot; and that Charles Sykes should design it as he had already created a sculpture of his lover. It was a striking image of a curvaceous young woman with her index finger pressed to her lips, her robes flowing suggestively around her. It was known as the Whisper, though those close to the Lord often referred to it as “Miss Thornton in her nightie”.

                Spirit of Ecstasy

That's what they say about pictures, and why I'm not saying much this time.

Nor are these people
There are just two people left who can speak Ayapaneco fluently. Manuel Segovia, 75, and Isidro Velazquez, 69, live 500 metres apart in the village of Ayapa in the tropical lowlands of the southern state of Tabasco. – but they refuse to talk to each other.

And only four people speak Lengilu, a language from the north-eastern area of Kalimantan, Indonesia.
 

1. This is a genuinely striking photo

Jozsef Tari chose the profession of printer, which is the "source of my attraction to little books. My collection is growing since 1972, and at present day it consists of 4000 pieces.Most of my books are Hungarian, but I have several books in other languages. I have books e.g. from Canada, Mexico, the USA, Australia, Indonesia and Japan, and from almost all European countries."
 

2. I don't think this is an Indonesian book.

Whose tennis player's shadow is this?

This is the time of year when audits of the previous year are published. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what the following figures add up to.

1. According to last year’s census, the population of Jabodetabek, the Greater Jakarta Metropolitan area of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Bekasi and Tangerang reached 27.9 million, a growth rate of 3.6% over the past 10 years.

2. According to the Jakarta Transportation Agency, traffic congestion cost the city up to Rp.46 trillion (US$5.2 billion) last year, up 25% from 2009.

3. Three weeks after I first commented on the hold up at the Merak and Bakauheni ports, gateways between the islands of Java and Sumatra, the congestion continues with just 19 out of the 35 ferries operating.

4. Ten years ago, the Regional Autonomy Law was enacted. Since then, the number of provinces, regencies and mayoralties has more than doubled.
- The Finance Ministry has found that more than 80 percent of 145 new regions it assessed had failed miserably in attempts to improve the people’s welfare.
- Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi said that more than 155 regional heads, including 17 governors, had been named corruption suspects (to which we can now add one of his predecessors, Gen.(ret) Hari Sabarno, who was arrested yesterday by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) for his implication in the alleged corruption of state budget funds connected to the procurement of fire trucks.)

5. Last year, the Supreme Court handed down heavy punishments to 35 judges, moderate punishments to 12 judges and light penalties to 60 judges.

(If the Supreme Court can act against their own, it should surely not be beyond their authority to ensure that their judgements, such as the case I won on appeal, are fully enacted.)

6. Education Minister Muhammed Nuh suggests that Indonesia may have 300,000 surplus teachers by 2014.

Six months ago, he said that there are 2.6 million teachers in Indonesia, and around 57.4%, some 1.5 million, of whom have Strata-1 degree while the rests (sic) are still vying to gain teaching certificate.

Christine Hakim, the noted Indonesian actress and a Goodwill Ambassador for UNESCO, suggested that at least 2 million volunteer or part-time teachers are employed in Indonesia, and that barely 40% of subject teachers are actually qualified to teach that subject.

So, will the surplus teachers be volunteers, qualified or unqualified?

Why is there so much that just doesn’t add up in Indonesia?

Indonesia has donated $2 million dollars to Japan in its hour of need. That's the same as Boeing has given. Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said on Wednesday, ‘’It is a modest amount, but it is meant to reflect how genuinely we feel in having solidarity with Japan in their hour of need.’’

Yesterday, Japan and Indonesia agreed to go ahead with the $20 billion Metroploitan Priority Area (MPA) development plan. That's a return to Indonesia 1000 times greater than its outgoings.

Go figure – and think about the potential corruption …

It's in The Sun, so it must be true.

The following snippets are this week's examples of brain death.

To start with, tragic though the Christchurch earthquake is, one may legitimately ask why anyone would wish to build a city on sand. Although stringent building codes were followed for constructions in the past thirty years, Dr. Gideon Rosenbaum, a lecturer at the University of Queenland's School of Earth Sciences, suggests that the devastation of Christchurch was due not only by the close proximity of the epicentre but that also the city was built on soft, rather than hard, rocks "which when wet can amplify the seismic effect, a process called liquefaction.

"I think that Christchurch is built on silt that was affected by the process [of the earthquake]."

Well, Jakarta is built on a flood plain. and suffers from aftershocks of the many earthquakes which occur in Java. And every hundred years or so, the city is hit by a major earthquake such as occurred in 1699, 1780, 1883 and 1903.

Isn't it about time for another one?

Four years ago, a "Pilot Study for a Disaster and Mitigation in Jakarta Project Formation" was discussed. And that may be as far as it went because this country seems to be all talk and little action.

Pot Calling The Kettle?
This past week President SBY finally agreed with this correspondent when he lambasted Jakarta's Governor Fuzzy Bodoh for not improving the city's infrastructure in spite of his campaign promises.

Inco Are Finks
In 1969, the nickel mining company PT International Nickel Corporation (Inco) was granted a licence to start operation over a concession area in Morowali, in Central Sulawesi.

This week, PT Inco was given an ultimatum by the governor to start its operations on the 36,635,36 hectares site or be punished by having its concession reduced by either 25% or 25,000 hectares – the article gives both figures.

Failure to do so will also result in a class action brought by local residents who have been deprived "access to cultivation activities".

Meanwhile, PT Inco has benefitted to the tune of c.$2 billion through "trading equities through the stock exchange".

PT Inco spokesman Janus Siahaan told the Post that they “do look to a far-reaching contribution from the concession area. In this regard, we believe the governor always allows room for talks that are expected to yield the result that conforms to the ongoing aspiration.”

Eh?

Cut!
Cut Tari, one of the starlets involved in the sex-video case concerning Peterpan vocalist Nazril Irham, sentenced to three and a half years imprisonment for having had the video of their mutual copulation stolen from his computer and uploaded onto the internet, has been nominated as best infotainment presenter.

Actually, it's for her role as presenter of Insert on TransTV, the programme she stopped presenting when the sex video case surfaced in the media

Oops!
On 22 February, Fox News reported on events in Libya: "Mohammed Ali of the Libyan Salvation Front and a Tripoli resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals …"
Source: World Wide Words 

I'm not referring to the "18 lies" which religious leaders of all faiths accused the SBY Government  of making.

What has got me thinking are a couple of odd incidents today, a Monday.

This started out with me getting into an Eksekutif taxi just after 6 this morning but not getting an executive service, It's happened so often before with this company that I had qualms as soon as In seetled into the back seat for my fairly regular drive across town.

It annoys me – nay, angers me – that so many taxi drivers, however 'mature' they appear to be, have to demonstrate how fast they can bomb along the toll road, switching lanes, ignoring road signs exhorting motorists to jaga jarak (keep your distance) in order to tailgate trucks. Apart from military and police 'executives' who have police escorts to smooth their passage, I assume that most civilian execs wish to be driven safely, so why is it that bule passengers are treated to displays of machismo?

I wish I had waited for an Express taxi; their drivers are generally steady,safe, have rarely given me grief and never go too fast.

Later, it being Monday, I had various conversations about weekend activities. One lass had spent her time reading a novel in English.

"Oh," I asked, "what's the title?"
"The name," she said.
"That's right, what's the name of the book?"
"The name, the title is the name."

Good, I thought, now wondering how she was able to read a book in English, but sensed a glimmer of understanding: a title is the name of a book.

So we carried on for a bit and eventually I came to realise that the title of the book she was reading was 'The Name'. There was great merriment as the metaphorical lighbulb over my head lit up.

I've just done a search for the book on Amazon, but I'm now confused again as I can't find a book with that title!

There is The Name Book: Over 10,000 Names, Their Meanings, Origins, and Spritual (sic) Significance by Dorothy Astoria.

But, and I'll check this tomorrow, could it be The Name of this Book Is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch?

I really don't like Mondays!