Plis Deh Jakarta!

For a few months now, Jakarta’s side streets (and in some cases the main ones as well) have been filled with posters of every shape and colour, with the picture of someone who generally we don’t know, and their political party affiliation. Oh, their name printed in big letters as well for good measure, including their district.

I don’t know who these people are (and perhaps couldn’t care less), but how would an interested voter find out more about their possible candidate of choice? Or party of choice, even? I’m pretty sure that most Jakartans couldn’t tell their PDS from their PKS, let alone parties with similar – but still different – agendas and programs. Now, I’m sure that each and every one of these political parties has some sort of manifesto or policy brief, but in most cases it’s in the form of political gibberish worth pages and pages of reading. Strangely, they never try to explain this in the simplest terms to the man on the street (well, perhaps since they haven’t done their roadshows yet), and a simplified slogan of their goals and policies are strangely never in the ubiquitous posters, banners and so forth.

For the lack of a better, more relevant to Jakarta example, even Barack Obama’s presidential campaign summed up all of his policies to one word: Change.

OK. These people that we don’t know, from parties we don’t really know, are asking for us to vote for them, but we don’t know what they stand for? Are they really expecting for votes by purely name recognition only, after barraging the general public with these posters?

Really, friends from said political parties. We the people may be stupid and ignorant, but it doesn’t mean we have to stay that way.

The Jakartan government is planning to make students come in earlier to school, and offices to open at different times based on area.

Don’t we have a hard time making people come on time as it is?

The Jakartan government announced that they have cut back their electricity and water use lately. The cutback was small, around 5 percent for electricity, but the concept is good. I’m not being sarcastic – the government has shown that under proper direction, they can actually manage to show that something as simple as cutting back electricity use is possible. A first step is always good. A great next step is to install simple light sensors on the street lighting, so that they turn off automatically in the day – and perhaps use solar power for the lights, so they are not dependant on the city’s electricity grid.

Now, if the rest of us can do it as well…. here’s the rare occasion where I actually believe the government can do it and the general citizenry can’t. Or won’t. Or doesn’t care.

Hm, did I leave the aircon on at home this morning?

The Bekasi administration caught 52 civil servants and 63 school students skipping work or school to hang out at malls.

Can’t miss the irony where the amount of civil servants caught was almost the same as the amount of students. Kind of rekindles your confidence in the local government, eh?

from The Jakarta Post

What a city! Now, not only that you can get arrested by dressing a bit sexy, you can even get arrested by smoking! The government did a much-applauded – by the anti-tobacco lobby, at least – sweeping of certain public areas and buildings and arrested 20 people. Yeah, action taken 2 years late, since the bylaw was passed in 2006.

Porn might or might not be good for you, but smoking is definitely bad for you. But cigarette sales is good for the economy – maybe we can get people to start a new pastime; keep buying cigarettes but don’t smoke them?

Cuma di Jakarta.

Kalau sering melihat berita di internet melalui portal-portal berita yang standar, pasti akan melihat 2 berita yang lumayan sering diulang-ulang hampir setiap hari soal Jakarta:

• hati-hati, ada demo
• hati-hati, akan hujan

Berita ini jauuuuh lebih penting untuk orang Jakarta ketimbang berita politik, sosial, keuangan, bisnis, apalagi ilmu pengetahuan. Mungkin karena, apapun yang akan terjadi di dunia politik, sosial de el el, nggak akan mempengaruhi kemacetan! Cuma demo dan hujan yang bisa memperparah. Dan nggak ada yang bisa mengurangi….

The Jakartan government is bringing in heavy dredging equipment from the Netherlands to help dig up all the soil, silt and trash clogging up Jakarta’s waterways. Oh, let me correct that – it is only for two, small, shallow waterways in North Jakarta. Local workmen will be trained by the Dutch on how to operate the machines while the tender order for new equipment is scheduled to be finished in January.

I quote:

However, we must start dredging before the rainy season. We shipped one machine to see if it fit in the waterways and to make some adjustment. So that when the equipment arrives, we can operate them straight away.

Hm, before the rainy season? Maybe City Hall hasn’t been hit by the almost daily rainstorms yet, and thus informing the Dutch team that it isn’t the rainy season yet. And perhaps they could have done this, say, in July? Not much of a pilot project. There’s the Indonesian term, pahlawan kesiangan – overdue hero.

Well at least there’s a neighborhood cleaning program to clear up the smaller waterways from all its muck. Yes, great timing, as well – something we all could have done with up to 10 years ago without any Dutch.

Recently Jakartans – most notably, internet-connected Jakartans – have been spreading around news about this video about some strange ‘monster’ living on the beaches of Ancol, to the point the video made it to actual TV.

Telematics pseudoexpert and media darling Roy Suryo, according to Indo-Trans, said on a television interview that according to the “metadata” attached, the video was not recorded in Indonesia. I’ll leave others to speculate what metadata he’s talking about. It got to the point where the makers of the video provided pictures of the location and stated “THIS IS NOT A HOAX” on the Youtube page and their blog.

Some say that this ‘monster’ is actually some sort of creature that usually eats plankton and algae, but perhaps was mutated by all the toxic waste in Ancol Bay. That wouldn’t be much of a surprise.

Little monsters eating corpses and carcasses – a strange analogy for one side of Jakarta?