Night of the Marauding Musangs

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Having complained in a recent post of the absence of wildlife in our local area, I was surprised by news tonight of an incident involving binturongs (or musangs as they're known locally). I was aware of the existence of these animals in the local area and that they prowl around of a night. I had even caught a glimpse of one maybe a year or so ago but I'd never thought too much about them. However, yesterday evening, our neighbours (father, mother and adolescent son) were sitting in the front of their house when they noticed two musangs descend from a nearby tree. Suddenly, the animals charged toward them and the family retreated. This was only a ploy however, because the musangs turned and carried off the family cat that had been relaxing out front as well.

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I've never heard of musangs killing cats and there is nothing in the literature about such attacks. They regularly attack chickens, rats and birds but not cats. This cat wasn't a kitten. It was a fully grown female. The recent cull of poultry in the area (to reduce the risk of bird flu) and the fact that fruit is currently out-of-season suggests that they may have been driven by hunger to launch this audacious attack. The photo in this post is not one of the said miscreants but instead is a photo taken from a very interesting blog called The Voltage Gate at:

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http://thevoltagegate.blogspot.com/search/label/Binturong

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There is some fascinating information there about these animals. The binturong can grow to a metre in length and weigh 15 kg. It is also known as a bearcat and is one of several species of civet whose anal gland secretions can be used to make perfume. Interestingly:

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The binturong is the only Old World mammal to evolve a fully prehensile tail, meaning the tail is dexterous enough to be used to manipulate objects, like food items. The rest of the mammals possessing a fully prehensile tail are only found in North and South America (monkeys, opossums).

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So I'm reading up on this little known but most interesting animal, partly out of curiosity and partly out of apprehension because we have recently acquired a small, white dog by the name of Gromit who is not much larger than the ill-fated white cat that was carried off. We normally leave her outside of a night but tonight we have brought her inside just in case the musangs strike again.

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Sabina, our resident four year old, had been maddenly insistent for several months that we purchase a dog. Her constant whine was "beli anjing" (buy dog) and eventually resistance crumbled. The catalyst was an ill-advised visit by her grandmother to the pet shop a couple of hundred metres away. Sabina spied a white toy poodle, about three months old, and there was an air of inevitability to the purchase after that. I was consulted as the final arbiter in the matter but because I had once owned a toy poodle by the name of Chloe, I felt it was a case of kismet.

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It would be difficult explaining to Sabina that her beloved Gromit had been carried off in the night by marauding musangs.

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The Wall

Welcome to the wall. The nature strip with its trees, bushes and grass is no more. I have just learned of the probable reason for its erection. A reliable source has told me that during the recent floods, the kampung or village at the back of the Japanese International School was flooded and some of the residents sought temporary refuge on the green fringe. This occupation couldn't have been for very long because I never noticed anybody there at all. However, the School felt that this occupation might become permanent and compromise security.

The school owned the land and had set the area aside as parkland in accordance with local government regulations that require a certain percentage of green space to be made available as part of any development project. All that seems to have swept aside with the supposed threat of a refugee camp developing and the area has now been thoroughly bulldozed and the concrete wall now abuts the footpath. It's comforting to know that there is a logical reason for this environmental vandalism. Extending this logic further, perhaps all green spaces in Bintaro should be bulldozed and walled off from the general public because of the risk of conversion to refugee camps.

Why not just move the fence and leave the trees in place? Why bulldoze everything? At least people inside the school could have enjoyed some shade and a little slice of nature. This construction has certainly added to the uglification of Bintaro. The graffiti has already begun and will continue because there is such an impressive expanse of wall.

Wildlife

This is a photograph that I took at school yesterday. I just happened to have my camera on me when this moth, about the size of a dinner plate, landed near to me. I was the only one who saw it, there was no one else around. I've edited the background of the photograph to enhance its shape. It was the first moth of this size that I'd seen in Jakarta and it reminded me of the general disregard for nature that exists here in Indonesia. It's rare to see a natural creature apart from ants.

Progress seems to be measured by the extent to which humans can impose themselves on the natural environment with little thought to the environmental consequences. Most of the aquifer in Jakarta is contaminated by E-coli because septic tanks leach their contents into the ground. Jakarta has no sewerage system. There is so much water being pumped out of the aquifer by high rise buildings and malls that ground levels have subsided by a metre or more in places. Salt water has begun to penetrate further into the aquifer so that areas near the harbour cannot use the groundwater because of its salinity. Most of the population is reliant on groundwater because the reticulated water system is very limited.

The rivers are convenient places to dispose of household and industrial waste. They are clogged with rubbish and are uniformly putrid. They get flushed out in the rainy season and then the cycle of pollution starts all over again. Residences are kept clean but what happens to the rubbish that is removed is apparently of no concern. It's OK to toss it into a vacant lot, sweep it into the gutter, dump it in a river. Ecological awareness doesn't extend past the boundary of the property. There is no sustained educational initiative to change these attitudes and so Indonesian children are destined to be as ecologically ignorant as their parents. The future can only be worse because there is limited awareness that anything is even wrong and certainly no willingness to do anything about it.

The Degreening of Indonesia

No sooner do I mention the degreening of Indonesia than an example of it appears in my own backyard. On the way to school today, I noticed that a long strip of land that runs adjacent to a perimeter boundary of the Japanese International School is being stripped of trees. It is doubtless being made ready for some development and the formerly green and grassy area will be replaced with buildings and Bintaro's catchment area will shrink a little more. Amusingly, Bintaro is marketed as the garden suburb but its greenery is rapidly disappearing in the face of rampant greed. Land developers of course are the same the world over but in some countries there are constraints placed on them. Not here. It's a pity that I don't have a before as well as an after photo. The difference is quite dramatic.

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.

WoW

WoW stands for World of Warcraft and is the most popular MMORPG on the Internet. The acronym stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game and the 8 million registered players in WoW, not surprisingly, assume various roles and collaborate on quests of one sort or another. I know all this because I set my year 11 computing class to find out as much as they could about online gaming. I'm still assessing what they discovered but I did my own research and was surprised at the numbers of online gamers as well as the huge revenues that the industry generates.

The class is also investigating online gambling and so am I. The graphic above is a screenshot of a slot machine taken from www.freeslots.com where I've been playing on and off. As you may be able to see, I've accumulated 2359 credits but unfortunately this does not represent real money. Compared to the real slot machines that I've played, the returns on this virtual slot machine seem remarkably generous. I've discovered that there are online poker rooms, online casinos and online bingo. Interestingly, the 2003 world poker champion started out playing in one of these virtual poker rooms and in this way secured an invitation to a real world event that he went on to win, much to everyone's surprise.

In my online investigations, I've also come across a site called Second Life where you can lead a virtual second life in addition to your own real world life. You join up and select an avatar, a character to represent you in this virtual world. It doesn't cost any money to join but if you pay money, you can buy virtual real estate and build a house on it and presumably live in it. For purely educational purposes, I've joined Second Life, selected my avatar and am ready to interact in my new virtual world. Unfortunately, not having paid any money, I don't have any virtual money (called Linden dollars) and so I'll be roaming about as a virtual beggar. I still have to download the software from the site so that I can begin my second life but because I've seriously exceeded my monthly download quota, I'm waiting for the new month to dawn. Then I'll be ready for a new adventure.

Memorandum of Understanding

It seems that Microsoft's recent MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the Communication and Information Ministry has come under fire from critics in the House of Representatives who are arguing that "it would create a monopoly for Microsoft, and undermine the government's own "Indonesia Goes Open Source" program, which encourages the use of free and open source software in the public sector". Here is the full text of the article that appeared in The Jakarta Post of January 19th:

Microsoft defends multimillion dollar deal with RI government

Business News - Friday, January 19, 2007 Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta 

Microsoft Indonesia has spoken out on a controversial recent deal with the government, arguing that the deal was initiated by the government as part of its efforts to improve Indonesia's information technology sector as a whole.

Microsoft Indonesia president director Tony Chen told reporters Thursday that the agreement had been clinched against the backdrop of the government's efforts to reduce software piracy, including negotiating with major software vendors for the use of their products by government institutions.

"As a majority of the computers in government institutions use Microsoft products, we were among the first the government invited," he said.

The Communications and Information Ministry signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Microsoft Indonesia in November last year to provide a total of 35,496 licenses for the Microsoft Windows operating system, and 177,480 licenses for the Microsoft Office productivity suite to government institutions.

The MoU will also offer long-term guarantees for the new software investment, ensuring free upgrades for up to three years.

Microsoft Indonesia is also required to work closely with the government in a partnership to improve IT literacy in the country, including providing computers and IT training to schools across the country.

Tony said that the MoU -- with a 70 percent discounted licensing price -- would result in savings of up to US$200 million for the government, compared to the $250 million it would cost if the government was to buy licenses at regular prices. The government would also save $60 million on the free upgrades.

He said that the agreement also showed the government's seriousness about fighting software piracy, which would help attract more investment to the country's IT sector.

Yet the deal has come under fire, including from the House of Representatives, with the critics arguing that it would create a monopoly for Microsoft, and undermine the government's own "Indonesia Goes Open Source" program, which encourages the use of free and open source software in the public sector.

The trend to use free and open source software has emerged in recent years around the world based on various reasons, including antimonopoly sentiment, transparency, cost efficiency and national security. Among the countries and institutions that have gone open source are Peru, the Extremadura region of Spain, the municipality of Munich in Germany, and a number of government agencies in China.

Microsoft and other proprietary software developers do not disclose the source codes of their products.

Tony said that the government had opted to sign the MoU due to the still-limited use of IGOS, while it needed to move fast to improve both Indonesia's IT sector and public services.

Tony's arguments were confirmed by Communications and Information Minister Sofyan Djalil.

Yes indeed and whatever did happen to the IGOS (Indonesia Goes Open Source) program? Well the website is still there at http://www.igos.web.id/english/english.htm but obviously forging a deal with Microsoft will help ensure that the use of open source software remains "still-limited".

If ever a country needed free software it's Indonesia and it's good to read that at least some parliamentarians are questioning what the hell is going on. The graphic in this blog entry I found on the site www.uncyclopedia.org that is actually a wiki and contains some funny entries about IT topics. I found the graphic by entering the word "Microsoft" in the search box.

Alternative Measures

What do you do when you've lost a plane with one hundred people on board and the search has drawn a blank? You slaughter a buffalo of course! The Adam Air plane is still missing but searchers have not given up as this article from today's daily paper confirms:

Searchers slaughtered a buffalo in a traditional ceremony and consulted psychics Friday, the fourth day after an Adam Air jetliner went missing over Sulawesi. In Majene, West Sulawesi, a search and rescue team enlisted the help of local shamans and slaughtered a buffalo in a traditional ceremony, where food offerings were made to the spirits of the jungle and prayers were offered to ancestors to "clear the path" for the operation. "When we come to a new place we greet the spirits here," Majene military chief Zakariya told AFP. "You can see that even when using very hi-tech devices and enlisting the help of Singapore, we have still not found anything. So this is an alternative measure that we are using", he said.

I think this local article nicely complements my previous post concerning the camel sacrifice in Turkey. It's refreshing to know in 2007 that in this corner of the world reliance is not being placed solely on "hi-tech" solutions to solve problems and that traditional methods are still being embraced. 

This is indeed a search that has not gone well from the outset. Initially it was reported that wreckage of the plane had been found and that there were ten survivors. This turned out to be totally fictitious. Waiting relatives and friends of the missing passengers were outraged but there is little they can do but wait.

On a final note, it occurred to me that Adam Air could be an unfortunate name for an airline company in Indonesia because "air" means "water" in the Indonesian language. It would seem very likely that the missing plane has gone down in the sea. Meanwhile, about 400 ferry passengers are still unaccounted for and the chances of their survival look bleak.

Disaster Strikes

I'm afraid I couldn't resist posting the photo from the front page of today's daily newspaper. The caption for the photo is "POOR MAN'S MEAT: A woman sorts through meat to be distributed to the poor at Bogor's Parung subdistrict Sunday." 

Yum! Pity we can't see the flies buzzing around. I read today that some of the poor were far from happy however, complaining that they received far less meat than last year and what they did receive was largely bone. So who got all the juicy bits? 

The year has started rather badly here in Indonesia with 400 still missing in a ferry sinking and a plane missing with 102 people on board. This comes on top of ongoing floods and landslides. The disasters just seem to keep coming. Another report in the paper states that: 

More Indonesians say they are economically worse off compared to 12 months ago and most cite the increased costs of basic goods and travel expenses as the main reasons, an end-of-year survey says. 

How citizens here cope on the meagre wages that they receive is a mystery to me. Of course, there are an estimated forty million who are unemployed and don't receive a wage at all. It's hard to imagine how things could get much worse here but of course they could.

Back in Jakarta

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The Dimming of the Lights

The last time that I stayed in this fine establishment (almost exactly one year ago), I injudiciously covered the lamp, that you can see at the side of the bed, with a towel. I then went to sleep but I awoke to the screaming of a smoke alarm that had been set off by the smoke generated from the slow incineration of my towel. 

The only visible reminders of my near-death-experience were the very warped lamp and a towel with a hole in it. I disposed of the dead towel in my brother's garbage bin but the warped lamp remained. Even though I admitted to the accident and I wasn't chastised or fined at the time, it would seem that I am only now being penalised. 

If you look at the photo on this post, you will see that this time around we have been given only one lamp. One for Desy, none for me. Worse still, it is on the wrong side of the bed. That is Desy's side and if I want to read in bed, the normal order of things has to be overturned. Even worse, I managed to knock the lamp over last night. It seemed as if no harm had been done at the time but this evening, the bulb gave out and so there is no lamplight tonight.

Tomorrow, I'll buy a new bulb to replace the dead one. I don't have the courage to face the manager, Elizabeth, and ask for a new bulb. I know what she'll be thinking: what is it about you and lamps? I just seem to be accident-prone in the current accommodation. Remarkably, I've managed to create a web album of photos taken since arriving. The address is www.picasaweb.google.com/reeves.sean. Have a look.

Terra Australis Incognita

This is a photograph of the guest house where we are staying in New Farm. You enter via these heavy wooden doors (visible to the left of the tree). So far our stay has been very pleasant. I guess one of the most visible differences between Indonesia and Australia is the height of the people. In Indonesia, I don't feel "height-challenged" but in Australia I definitely do. It's not just men that tower over me but many of the women as well. Desy describes it well when she says that she can always spot me in a mall in Jakarta by scanning heads, but not here in Oz. 

It has become for me terra Australis Incognita, "the unknown land of the south", full of people who are growing younger, taller and more purposeful with each successive annual visit. Sitting at pavement cafes, I wonder why Tony isn't smoking his rollies and then remember that the practice is now prohibited. He tells me smoking is also banned in pubs and clubs now. There are a great many rules and regulations in Oz and they all seem to be enforced. 

It wasn't long after I applied for a driver's licence last year, using Tony's address, that mail arrived asking why I hadn't registered as a voter for the recent State elections. Before long probably, the police will arrive at Tony's door with a summons for me to appear in court to explain why I didn't vote. The government's efficiency in extracting fines from it citizenry for all manner of offences is certainly impressive.

Return to Oz

After a seemingly interminable plane journey from Denpasar to Sydney and onwards to Brisbane, Desy and I finally arrived at our destination. There is a broadband Internet connection in the place where we are staying and thus I am able to post this blog entry. The speed is blindingly fast compared to what I'm familiar with in Jakarta. 

Last night, my Norton Antivirus wanted to download over 6Mb of updates and I hesitantly agreed (not wanting to tie up the connection for other people). I needn't have worried, the download took no more than a few seconds. In Jakarta, the same download would have taken several minutes. 

I noticed later, when I was shutting down, that Windows also had 31 updates to install. These updates had been downloaded, unbeknown to me, while I was accessing the Internet. I know realise that there is broadband and that there is BROADband. The reason for all these updates of course is that I now have a brand new laptop: a Toshiba Satellite to replace my poor old ECS laptop that died a few days earlier. More postings from Down Under shortly.

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.

Sagittarius Rising

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