Doing a Bono

Every so often my pals and I argue about Bono.

The question is should you dislike him or like him for his promotion of causes. Are Bono and the like vainly trying to prove their worth and greedily self promoting themselves? or are Bono's efforts a net positive?

In any case a pal of mine asked me to promote her charity a little after I made my yearly donation. Why not eh? But to avoid any risk of doing a Bono, I am gonna dredge up some embarrassing story as a confessional ying and yang thing.

Over the past few years I have been supporting POTA. Lieke runs the charity. It's a Christian charity and although I like to think of myself as a strictly kosher atheist - Lieke is deeply passionate about helping the less fortunate in Indonesia.

She has lots of stories. When you hear these stories they draw you in and you feel part of the story.

They're better if you hear them from Lieke in person, but one of them was about a Christmas party they gave to some poor kids. KFC donated all the food. Everything was going well. Lots of fried chicken (Indonesians love fried chicken!!) and good times had by all. Thing was Lieke noticed one boy (or was it a girl?) that wasn't eating his KFC. She was sort of dumbfounded as all the other kids were eating away.

Lieke went over to the boy and asked him why he wasn't eating. He told her that he wanted to save his KFC so he could bring it back to his siblings back home and share it with them.

~~

In New York we don't do KFC we do fried chicken from trendy brunch places and cool divey bars.

~~

Now for the yang.

Last night I got hammered. Made a lot of lewd jokes. Then went on to interrogate this girl (with whom I am semi obsessed) about her ex.

That is too fresh. Let me dredge up something else.

How about the time when we were coming under huge pressure from a hedge fund client of ours. These guys are huge. Their risk was out of whack. I was newly arrived in New York, and was getting phone calls from big wigs.

So anyway, it was getting late and I was trying to figure this out and I had to call up our tech support people. The guy who was supposed to be on duty went home early. I got onto him on his Blackberry and went through him, I was fuming.

A week later it turned out his kid was diagnosed with cancer.

Moon Cake

I was Chinatown this morning.

I ate three quarters of a moon cake - apparently you are only ever supposed to eat one quarter at any one time.

Stomach troubled ensued - lesson learned!

An Indonesian Prisoner

I proposed to an Indonesian girl before. It didn't work out.

However paying $50k to the Indonesian government to marry an Indonesian is a bit steep.

Breathing

I have finally realised how much breathing correctly can help you when you're working out.

Not sure what the mechanics are, but it seems to help a lot!

Probably the most Xenophobic Country in the World(?)

Is Japan the most xenophobic developed country in the world?

Judging by the number of refugees they allow in every year they probably are.

Mirror of Pride and Pain

I heard this great quote about how countries teach history:

"It's a mirror of pride and pain"

It's true, and not all that encouraging eh?

School's Out / In

I remember the number one reason for getting off school in primary school was frozen pipes, leading to a lack of water and probably heating.

That and a sprinkling of snow - Ireland rarely gets much, so everything comes to a standstill when we get a smidgen!

It looks like these students are a hardier bunch.

Reaffirmation

When I tell people that I love Indonesia people often look at me as if I have two heads.

I like seeing Indonesia getting a bit of good press.

If nothing else it means I am not stark raving mad.

New Year's Resolutions

I am giving up beer and the Beatles for 2010. It's gonna be one hell of a year!

Worthwhile-ness

me: well doing anything worthwhile involves a bit of masochism...

look at me and indonesia for example : )

Hanum: haahahhahahahahahhahahahhahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahaha

That Time of Year Again

It's cold and I am in a retrospective mood (along with many others).

Snappiness

One of my pet hates on Facebook is that people only *ever* show the best sides of themselves.

I think the blogosphere is populated by a slightly more deranged sort, which makes for a good read.

~~~~

In any case, I feel bad tonight. Cos I snapped at one of my gym's receptionists - quite a minor 'snap' - but a 'snap' nevertheless. It's one of New York's posher gyms - I pay a fortune for the monthly fee and a personal trainer and yet they call me 'Jonathan' all the time.

(What a horrific malformation of my name! : )

Why? Cos they haven't bothered to correct it in their system, even though I have brought it up tonnes of times.

There's nothing worse than fake personalisation that get's your personal details wrong!

I will apologise to the receptionist once I see her again. She'll have probably forgotten, but nevertheless (also she's pretty cute, any excuse to strike up a conversation!!).

Sissy

You have got more bodyguards than you can shake a stick at - and you're afraid of being assassinated by terrorists - when you should protect your people getting blown up by terrorist bombs.

Your party has a majority in parliament and have just won a landslide presidential election - yet you are afraid of some sort of political coup when you should be joining your people and rooting out corruption.

Who are you? The biggest sissy in Indonesia of course - the Indonesian president - SBY.

How could this bloke be so effing paranoid and feel so sorry for himself while at the same time there's so much his people need him to do!?

Embryonic

I just bought the Flaming Lip's Embryonic album - it's gotten rave reviews don't you know! (I say this, because as I am listening to it for the first time I don't 'get' it - hopefully it's another Bends or something?)

You know you're becoming old fart when you can't be bothered to surf around and download a pirated album but you surf around for the cheapest legit download.

So here's how much it cost at various sites:

1) iTunes: $11

2) Amazon: $10.49

3) WalMart: $10.00

4) Lala: $7.99

No wonder Lala's just been taken over by Apple. That Lala price translates to E5.50 - a far cry from the 15-18 Euros you used to have to pay at HMV for new albums.

I wonder whether I could've found it any cheaper though - if I looked longer than 10 minutes...

By the way, those who say the music industry is dying are off their rocker. MP3s are purer profit to record labels than CDs ever were.

How you will Probably Die

[Link]

Happily I have never had suicidal tendencies.

Weird how different races and sexes have such different deaths... Are our lives /that/ different?!?!

Sneaking into Auschwitz

Fascinating.

Swiss Minarets

[Link]

How well thought out this banishment is.

While we're at it, let's ban church spires, funny statues on top of Hindu temples and Chinese style rooves.

I now nominate Switzerland as the Malaysia of Europe (I previously said somewhere that Malaysia is the Homer Simpson of countries).

The Swiss are afraid of Muslims. Too often I encounter a similar sentiment here. It's utterly depressing.

Let me try to describe a scene that is ingrained in my mind since my last trip to Indonesia. Be warned it is very terrifying.

I found myself in a small village / community in part of Jakarta where the original Jakartans live - the Betawi.

The fun fair is in full swing. It's a very small amateurish affair that's pitched on a small communal patch of land, nevertheless the local village kids are having a great time playing the quaint games.

The smallest kids are learning how to 'fish' at a tiny blow up rubber pool. Using magnetic hooks to fish the small colourful plastic toy fish up. A parent or two is on hand to help them out if they need help but soon they're merrily fishing away.

Shivering in your boots?

The Swiss tell us more about the Swiss than anyone else after this ban on minarets. Shameful.

The KPK Camp

Simon Pitchforth's night out at the KPK.

Blog Post Drought - Or - Miscellanea - Or - It Never Rains but it Pours

One of the first rules I had when I started blogging was not to write about blogging.

Nevertheless I have been on a posting hiatus of sorts, so I thought I'd jot down some things that have been swirling around my mind recently.

~~~

I joined a gym recently. First time ever. It's a bizarre place - very little interaction between members. I also realised how unfit I am (I hadn't exercised since I came to New York).

~~~

In a previous post I linked to Project Euler - a site which has maths problems which you try to solve with the aid of your computer and some cunning.

The way I tried solving the few problems I have tackled successfully was to write down the problem in Erlang (my programming language of choice) and go from there.

That only gets you so far, to solve any of the later problems you really need to know about what makes numbers tick (the problems are number theory flavoured).

Working on these problems is a bit like going to the gym for the first time in a long time - I am sure I can improve if I just devote a little more time and energy to it.

~~~

I heard on the Beeb today that an Indonesian minister says that TV's immorality is the root cause of Indonesia's recent spate of natural disasters. It was at the end of the bulletin - sounded like it was in there just to lighten things up a little.

As Ms. Delvi Wahyuni pointed out to me when we hung out a few weeks ago, morality /is/ the root cause of the misery inflicted on people in earthquakes or tsunamis or whatnot. It's the bloody immoral politicians that pocket the aid and took bribes to allow multi-story tall buildings to be built in Padang.

Are these politicians cynical or just completely and utterly idiotic to blame tsunamis on women wearing trousers while they're directly involved in leeching the resources from society that would deal with these catastrophes?

~~~

I was listening to a documentary about employee owned companies last night.

It's a very interesting way of running a company. Management science does what it always does and argues for the general status quo - i.e. that companies owned by a very small cabal will be more efficient operations.

I am not so sure. Sure the management need to be highly incentivised, as they have the most direct control over the company - but I think underlings have been underestimated.

I would love to read some studies on these companies.

~~~

Ireland got knocked out of the World Cup by France a week or two ago. The winning goal was set up by a blatant hand ball.

Cheating has become such an integral part of football nowadays - and yet because it's been slowly seeping into the game everyone seems to accept it nowadays. It reminds me of the widespread use of steroids in American sport - everyone knows it's happening but mostly people turn a blind eye.

In the same week, police uncovered a massive match fixing scandal across Europe.

Video technology would take away a lot of the ambiguity surrounding match turning events. It's inevitable - the game's only getting faster and harder for refs to keep up with.

~~~

Indonesia has had its own Watergate unfold over the last few months (that is if Watergate involved hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud, blow jobs, assassinations, geckos and crocodiles - I hope we get to see the movie soon!!).

I remember in my first few days in Indonesia, when I tried to comprehend the depth of Indonesian corruption, I was saying to myself - "so what does it mean when literally every policeman, judge, official and politician can be bribed?" - and then having a fleeting feeling of looking into an abyss.

Everyone knows that the justice system ( the "strongest pillar of government" as they say in the US) is completely and utterly broken.

The surprise was seeing the corruption commission fighting to rescue several of its leaders from being framed and inevitable jail time - they somehow managed to record 4 hours of conspiratorial meetings between higher ups in the attorney general's office, the police and several others.

All in all one of the most positive episodes in recent Indonesian current affairs. Civil society in Indonesia is finding its voice.

Now if we could only have a few more of these scandals - this time having president SBY front and centre maybe? Hint hint nudge nudge.

~~~

I've earned almost 100% returns on my investments this year - mainly from emerging markets.

The iShares emerging markets index dropped by 4% since Thursday though, because Dubai looks like it might go under.

I don't see Dubai's demise pulling Brazil, Russia, China or Korea down with it. Although stranger things have happened I suppose - like er the credit crunch ; )

Is it just me, or do I sense a little schadenfreude in Dubai's recent unease?

Movember

I'm growing a moustache cos I am passionate about facial hair and er testicles everywhere.

Donate to help the fight against testicular and prostrate cancer here: http://www.movember.com/m/290696