Disaster Management

The photo is taken from today's Jakarta Post. To continue from my previous post, my Second Life adventures were brutally interrupted by widespread flooding in Jakarta. The flooding was so severe that it inundated the building that my ISP used to house its telecommunications equipment. My Internet connection has been out from Friday to Tuesday and was only reconnected tonight. Most reputable companies have a disaster management plan that they can put to work in cases like this but not my ISP. They obviously got out the mops and buckets and went to work mopping up for a few days. I have a CDMA card that I can insert into my laptop and this enables me to use the mobile phone network. Unfortunately, that was knocked out as well. It was only my PDA with its GPRS connection to the competing mobile phone network that held up and I was at least able to check my email.

I shouldn't complain I guess because there are still many people homeless as a result of the flooding. There are actually only a couple of million people who even use the Internet regularly in Indonesia. That translates to about 1% of the population. The rest have other priorities, like not getting washed away by floods. The flooding has been exacerbated by an alarming decline in green space within Jakarta and its environs. Parks and recreational areas do not make any money and are sold to developers who build housing estates and luxury shopping malls. This is what masquerades as urban planning here. Increasingly, the rainwater has nowhere to go but into the gutters that are already choked with garbage. The gutters carry the water into creeks and rivers that are also full of rubbish. When you have a lot of rain, you have a big flood. It's as simple as that.

Before the flooding and the cessation of my Internet connection, my adventures in Second Life took me to an orientation island where you were prepared for interaction with others in the larger virtual world. However, things went wrong from the start. I wandered into the ocean and spent most of my time walking along what seemed a biologically dead ocean floor. When I finally activated my flying ability, I was above water but zooming over miles and miles of trackless ocean. The island was nowhere to found and then the program crashed. Hopefully, I'll have a more auspicious experience next time. I notice a lot of the large IT companies, like Microsoft and Dell, have a virtual presence in Second Life and Sweden has even opened an embassy there. The Australian government is active as well and has established some sites.