We have received multiple requests to use more first person in our blogs, so we’re going to try and each write some of our own thoughts. Let us know what you think. We may use our initials to make it…
There is simply no end to the ways that Suharto gave favors to his sons, daughters, cronies, cousins, and fellow businessmen. Four recent examples from the mid-1990s include the decision of B.J. Habibie, his vice-dictator, to design and produce Indonesia’s…
So the one of us who didn’t post that scathing review of our government earlier would like to make a few observations. (We don’t like to use “I” but I think I’ll make a brief exception here) Today I had…
One nice thing about our apartment is that we get BBC World on the TV. We mentioned before how much nicer it is to watch real news on TV. Last night we watched Tony Blair address the Labour Party congress….
After a hectic afternoon and evening yesterday, we finally started our first real day’s worth of work today. We both stayed at the Freedom Institute, with a brief interlude to find bed linens and money from an ATM that worked….
We’ve now moved into our new apartment at Taman Rasuna, a fancy apartment complex in Jakarta. Well, we think its fancy. Apparently it’s the least fancy of the really high end apartment buildings, but it does feature a pool, exercise…
Today’s journey took us to South Jakarta, to a museum called Museum Purna Bhakti Pertiwi. We have no idea what this means, and suspect it is some Sanskrit holdover. It is a big giant building filled with the gifts obtained…
We have now sampled all three domestic beers from Indonesia, and are ready to give our verdicts. A funny story accompanies our purchasing the beer. We were going to just drink it from the minibar, which we suspected to be…
Last night we ate at a true Central Javanese restaurant in Jakarta. This is our first encounter with truly superb Indonesian food, and all for the whopping price of $4.25 (for two). We had soto ayam (SOH-toh ah-YAHM; chicken soup)…
They just have this swagger. And they try to take your money. Let us explain. We reconsidered our deal from yesterday, and decided that we weren’t comfortable dealing with a random Indonesian guy. So, we found the realtor from the…
