Polygamy

The big news in Indonesia this past week revolved around the very popular Muslim preacher A.A.Gym whose photo appears above. It came to light that he had taken a second wife about three months ago. His first wife broke the news after supposedly agreeing to the marriage. He already had seven children from his first marriage and his second wife has three children. So now he has two wives and ten children. What was interesting was the reaction of the public. 

Attendance at his weekend meeting fell from the usual 3000 to 800, he was bombarded with SMSs denouncing his new marriage and the government proposed extending an existing ban on polygamy in the military to include civil servants. Women's groups and liberal Islamic groups denounced him and all in all it wasn't a good week for him. He had been seen a model of progressive, moderate Islam but not anymore. Desy was an ardent admirer of A.A.Gym but when I broke the news to her on Sunday morning, the first word to escape her lips was "bastard". Needless to say she won't be listening to any more of his talks and nor will a lot of other women around Indonesia. 

Only a week of school remaining and then it's off to Oz with Desy to visit brother Tony in Brisbane. We'll stay until Christmas Day and then fly to Bali for a couple of days before heading back to Jakarta. The last time I spoke Tara had agreed to visit in January so let's hope she does. It's been eighteen months since we last met and that was when she and Ali dropped in to visit us on their way to England. 

I'm planning to buy a new laptop in the new future because my poor old ECS notebook that I bought in the middle of 2004 is showing its age. The optical drive no longer works, nor does the LAN connection, but because I have an external optical drive and Wi-Fi connectivity, I can get by more or less but lately it's been rather temperamental in terms of starting up. I can always coax it back to life but it is time to move on. I'll get it repaired however, and install Linux on it and that will be an opportunity to gain confidence in using that operating system. The notebook I'm inclining toward at the moment is the HP dv6000t. It's been getting pretty positive reviews.