Still traveling and managed to catch some wifi in Mandalay. So just a few photos to share for now. Merry Christmas.
Some images from Myanmar
24 Saturday Dec 2011
Monthly Archives: December 2011
The security guard and the apartment ghost
18 Sunday Dec 2011
Posted in Indonesia
There is some weird shit that happens in Indonesia. One of them turned into a tragi-comedy recently.
It all began when a university student Mega Tri Pratiwi wanted to play a prank on her friend. So she dresses up as a Suster Ngesot, a ghost in the Indonesian pantheon of ghosts that dresses up like a nurse (Suster) and who crawls around on her hand and body (Ngesot = crawls around using only hand and body).
Then she parks herself in front of the apartment lift and arranges for her friends to bring the unwitting victim up. Unfortunately for her, the friend was accompanies by a security guard (stapam in Indonesian) who had pretty good security reflexes.
As the video below shows, when the lift door opens her friend jumps back in fright, but the Satpam jumps into action, kicking her in the face and breaking a tooth.
As things are in Indonesia where the rich often bully their way over the poor, the student’s father, a businessman has reported the Satpam to the police for assault. The Satpam is being investigated but online the video has gone viral and on liners, including a Facebook account has been largely unanimous in praising the Satpam and condemning Mega and her father for not taking responsibility for Mega’s actions.
What Unspun wants to know out of this incident, apart from the news that the Satpam would not be prosecuted and in fact rewarded for his actions, is by what feat of fecund imagination did such a ghost come into being?
Why a ghost dressed as a Nurse? Why is she ngesot-ing? Was she struck down? And how did the ghost get the Nurse uniform in the afterlife?
And what is the source of inspiration for the manifestation of other Indonesian ghosts such as :
Kuntilanak, a long haired woman dressed in white with a huge hole in her back
Pocong, a ghosts still in in a death shroud – when Muslims die they are wrapped in a shroud with the head and feet ends tied. Apparently they come back if you forgot to untie the top end when burying.
Tuyul – a little tyke. Indonesia’s equivalent to Chuckie.
All these ghosts have gone into show business with Indonesian filmmakers seeking a quick buck from the nation’s preoccupation to scare the pants out of themselves. The ghosts and videos from the movies are lovingly chronicled here.
You have to wonder about the psyche of the people who think up these ghosts though…
Who are the Malaysians behind the company allegedly responsible for 30 killings?
16 Friday Dec 2011
Any Malaysian readers can help identify who the Malaysians are behind PT Pilva Inhutani? (So far there are two versions of the name, the other is Silva Inhutani)
If they are guilty of the crimes alleged then they should be swiftly brought to book for it.
via IPW wants Malaysians probed in Lampung deaths | The Jakarta Post.
A police watchdog wants the government to investigate the involvement of Malaysian-based PT Pilva Inhutani in the killing of 30 residents of in Mesuji, Lampung in 2003.
Neta S. Pane, chairman of the Indonesian Police Watch, said the government should take firm actions against any Malaysian investors in indonesia who broke the law, tempo.co reported.
Malaysian palm oil investors in Kalimantan might also be involved in the slaughter of orangutans, he alleged.
Lampung residents presented their allegations about the brutal killings of 20 people in Mesuji to the House of Representatives’ Commission III overseeing human rights on Wednesday.
Thirty people were killed in 2003 after violence erupted when PT Silva Inhutani took the residents’ land to plant rubber and oil palm plantations.
The Dutch are responsible for all ills
06 Tuesday Dec 2011
Posted in corruption, Indonesia
You have to wonder where there is an expiry date for the sins that the Dutch perpetrated on Indonesia.
Sure, the Dutch who colonized Indonesia were not exactly the most savory of colonizers and they did a lot of harm in Indonesia but when, oh when, will Indonesians like taxman Fuad Rahmany say: “Enough already! It’s time we took responsibility for our actions rather than blame the Dutch.”
Sadly, however, he is not alone. Unspun’s seen too many incidents like this to think its an isolated case of passing the buck, or Guilder, as the case may be. This habit – of not taking responsibility for their actions – seems endemic.
Could it be because of the Joyoboyo Sindrome, where individuals cannot make a difference and the only hope they have of better times is to wait for the Ratu Adil to come save them.
But hang on…is Unspun falling into the trap of blaming present attitudes on a 12th Century soothsayer…. ?
Dirjen Pajak: Korupsi, Penyakit Kronis Sejak Zaman VOC
Foto: Angga/detikFinance
Jakarta – Direktur Jenderal (Dirjen) Pajak Fuad Rahmany menyatakan korupsi merupakan penyakit kronis di Indonesia yang telah ada sejak zaman VOC. Proses pembangunan yang cepat menjadi pemicu berkembangnya korupsi di Indonesia.
“Korupsi ini kita semua menyadari sebagai penyakit yang kronis bagi bangsa Indonesia karena sudah lama berlangsung. Kalau kita baca buku sejarah dan koran-koran, sejak kita merdeka praktik korupsi sudah terjadi tapi sporadis atau satu-satu. VOC juga mengalami penyakit korupsi,” jelas Fuad dalam peringatan Hari Anti Korupsi di Kantor Pusat Ditjen Pajak, Jalan Gatot Subroto, Jakarta, Selasa (6/12/2012).
Fuad mengatakan, upaya pemberantasan korupsi sudah dilakukan sejak dulu, namun belum bisa diberantas habis.
“Jadi korupsi semakin besar karena kesempatan besar akibat proses pembangunan yang cepat,” kata Fuad.
Mantan Ketua Badan Pengawas Pasar Modal dan Lembaga Keuangan (Bapapam LK) ini mengatakan dirinya adalah mantan aktivis saat menjadi mahasiswa Universitas Indonesia di 1974 saat peristiwa Malari berlangsung.
“Tema demo saat itu anti investasi asing yang dibakar Toyota Astra Motor. Tapi kalau anda lihat benihnya adalah kolusi antara penguasa saat itu dengan investor asing. Saat itu harus ada upeti dari investor ke penguasa,” jelasnya.
Karena itu dia meminta para pegawai Ditjen Pajak yang menurutnya adalah instansi tulang punggung negara untuk sama-sama memberantas korupsi sampai nol.
Lower than low: Slaking the thirst for publicity in disaster areas
05 Monday Dec 2011
What can you say about this?
Putting a photo of your face on the cover of drinking water cups that is then distributed to the landslide victims in Makassar.
How low can you go to trawl for votes? What blind thirst for power drives men to such insensitive means to acquire and keep power?
Wins an Unspun shit-for-brains tag.
Tipped by @sheque in his Twitter feed
Air Minum Bergambar Politisi Beredar di Lokasi Bencana – Tribunnews
Senin, 5 Desember 2011 18:35 WIB
Laporan Wartawan Tribun Timur,Rudhy
TRIBUNNEWS.COM,MAKASSAR – Air minum kemasan bergambar politisi beredar di lokasi bencana alam di Jalan Sukadami, Kelurahan Panakkukang Makassar, Sulawesi Selatan, Minggu (5/12/2011). Lokasi bencana sekaan menjadi momentum bagi kalangan politisi dari berbagai partai politik untuk menggalang dukungan serta simpatisan masyarakat.
Berdasarkan pantauan Tribun di lokasi bencana longsor, Senin (5/12/2011) yang menelan korban jiwa sebanyak delapan orang akibat ditimpa reruntuhan tembok bangunan PT The Mutiara Jalan AP Pettarani Makassar, kemarin, tampaknya menjadi ajang unjuk gigi sekaligus ajang sosialisasi para politisi.
Terbukti, puluhan dos air mineral bergambar Ketua umum DPP PAN Hatta Rajasa dan Koordinator Wilayah DPD Partai Golkar Makassar beredar luas di lokasi bencana alam.
Hatta Rajasa adalah Menteri Perekonomian RI disebut-sebut bakal maju di Pemilihan Presiden yang dihelat 2014 mendatang, sementara Yakqin digemboskan maju di pemilihan Wali Kota Makassar 2013 mendatang.
Dari pengamatan Tribun, puluhan warga yang menjadi korban naas bencana longsor tampak berdesak-desakan mengambil air mineral berlebel politisi tersebut, bahkan tak jarang mereka saling berebutan.
Ollie’s journey as Chairwoman of ON|OFF
05 Monday Dec 2011
Posted in blogging, Indonesia, Social Media, Twitter
Tags
It has been a pleasure to work with Ollie in her role as Chairwoman for ON|OFF. Throughout the preparation stages she has been full of ideas, contacts, flexibility, firmness and never too proud to admit the things she did not know and to ask for help.
And she’s acquitted herself extremely well on Saturday when the ON|Off event achieved – if the Twitter feed for #onoffID is any indication – wild success. Unspun’s observations and thoughts of the event and the evolution of the blogging scene in this country in a later posting but in the meantime here’s Ollie’s own account of her journey as this year’s Chairwoman:
ON|OFF 2011 – Ideas Meet Opportunities
December 5, 2011 Ollie
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It’s been a long journey. Early May 2011, Ong & Hanny come to me and asked me to be the Chairwoman of Pesta Blogger 2011 or we call it now ON|OFF 2011. I was overwhelmed (still is). It’s been a BIG event since 2007. I don’t know if I can do that. Ong then explain my job descriptions, then also plans for this year’s event. I have some ideas regarding how the event should work, I told them on the spot, they like it. I still have plenty of ideas for ON|OFF, so, Bismillah, let’s do it.
We do our first media conference in July 2011 to kick off the event. I felt like a student learning for an exam when I get all the media documents from Nia. I’ve been connecting with medias, but mostly to talk about myself. This time it’s different. I become ‘the face’ of ON|OFF 2011 also represent our sponsors: Acer Indonesia & US Embassy. New experience for me.
Why RIM Blackberry may be heading for more trouble over promo gone wrong
03 Saturday Dec 2011
Posted in blogging, brands, business, Crisis and issues management, Indonesia, Public Relations
Tags
Here’s why:
1. It took them a week before expressing regret. A week is a very long time in today’s BB Messenger-fuelled world of communications. In the meantime word has already been spreading around town about RIM’s seemingly slow response.
2. After all this time and it was short of an apology. It was only a “regret”. (You can imagine the internal debate. Executive: “Do we apologize?” Lawyer: “No. We don’t because it would open us up to lawsuits.” Well, in Canada maybe but have you considered that Indonesians apologize al the time for the small infractions and its culturally expected for someone to do so.
3. Trying to inject corporate self-serving message (“It is very important to us to continue to demonstrate that we’re a strong, responsible corporate citizen in Indonesia”) when all the public wants to know is are you sorry, do you take responsibility, are you empathic, why it happened and what you are going to do about it. Nobody wants to hear or care how strong and responsible a corporate citizen you are.
4. Pointing fingers (“We are reviewing [the contracts with Experiential and Hill & Associates], as part of the … investigation to really take a look at the details, [and] relationship, to the event,” he said) As everyone should have learned from BP’s fiasco, it doesn’t matter whether it was your vendor or contractor who is at fault, when you are a big brand and it happened under your watch, you need to take responsibility and not blame, or imply it is the fault of others.
All classic no-no’s in the practice of Crisis and Issues Management from a PR perspective.So what will happen next? If RIM is very lucky things will die down. If they are not then they may be be heading for more trouble as others react against the mistakes they are making. It’s all very unpredictable in crisis-like situations, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t minimize the potential flash points.
via RIM Regrets BlackBerry Promo Gone Wrong | The Jakarta Globe
Research In Motion said on Friday that it regretted the mad rush for the new BlackBerry smartphone on Nov. 25 that left 90 people unconscious and three injured.
“We sincerely regret that many loyal customers experienced frustration and were upset, and that some individuals suffered injuries,” Gregory Wade, RIM’s regional managing director for East Asia, told the Jakarta Globe.
He also said that staff from RIM and others involved in the event had visited hospitals to “extend our support and sympathy to those injured.”
“We are deeply committed to Indonesia and greatly value the passionate support Indonesians have shown for BlackBerry smartphones and popular apps like BBM,” he said.
“It is very important to us to continue to demonstrate that we’re a strong, responsible corporate citizen in Indonesia.”
The new BlackBerry Bold 9790 was made available first in the world in Indonesia and the first 1,000 people at the launch at Pacific Place mall had the chance to buy one for Rp 2.3 million ($255). The half-off discount attracted a huge crowd, some of whom had started lining up the day before.
Wade said the Nov. 25 event had been organized on behalf of RIM by event organizer Experiential and security consultant Hill & Associates.
“We are actively cooperating with the authorities who are investigating this incident,” he said, adding that RIM was also undertaking its own investigation.
He said the company was also conducting an internal review, focusing on preventing a similar incident happening in Indonesia.
“We are reviewing [the contracts with Experiential and Hill & Associates], as part of the … investigation to really take a look at the details, [and] relationship, to the event,” he said….
Raised by lesbians – and what’s that got to do with the price of fish?
02 Friday Dec 2011
Posted in Persuasion
Anyone would be proud to have a kid like Zach Wahls. And he was speaking in defense of the right of his parents to marry legally. His parents who raised him are lesbians.
Southeast Asian Bloggers heading to Jakarta for ON|OFF event tomorrow
02 Friday Dec 2011
ON|OFF, the event formerly known as Pesta Blogger, will be hosting bloggers from nine of the 10 ASEAN member countries tomorrow.
The event, which would be held at Epicentrum walk is expected to attract between 1,000 and 1,500 participants made up of bloggers, social media users, celebrities, fashion designers entrepreneurs, writers and dozens of communities.
ON|OFF is an evolution from Pesta Blogger the largest annual gathering of Indonesian bloggers and other special media users which has been running since 2007. This year the organizing committee decided to change its name to ON|OFF in a nod to fact that there are now more social media platforms than just blogging for people to express themselves.
The other reason for the ON|OFF name is that the organizers want to bring together players who are predominantly offline with players who are predominantly online. The theme for this event is Ideas meet Opportunities so in a way its an experiment of what would happen when you bring smart, energetic and creative people and businesses who are mainly offline with their counterparts who are online.
Apart from that it is a bit of an offline carnival and celebration of people who often meet, debate, discuss, support and cross swords online.
The bloggers from Southeast Asia have been invited to share and exchange their experiences and perspectives about blogging and social media use in their countries. Its a great opportunity for Indonesian bloggers to learn more about their neighboring counterparts and vice versa.
The only invited blogger who could not attend was from Myanmar, not because of any restrictions but because he wanted to blog about US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s historic visit to that country.
Below is a list of the bloggers who are representing their countries tomorrow:
Muhamad Reeda Malik | Brunei Darussalam | Http://Anakbrunei.com.bn/
Reeda is the founder and Manager of #Brunei Channel on an Internet Relay Chat Network called the Undernet, which is one of the largest real-time chat networks in the world, with approximately 45 servers connecting over 35 countries and serving more than 100,000 people weekly. He is also founder of anakbrunei.org, a popular Bruneian photoblog with social commentary on the current events related to Brunei Darussalam and Bruneians both at home and abroad. Contributing writer from Brunei Darussalam for cnet Asia technology blog, Kurapak Teknologi.
Kounila Keo | Cambodia | Http://Blueladyblog.com/
Kounila is a graduate of Media & Communication at the Department of Media & Communication at Royal University of Phnom Penh. She has been freelancing for Agence France Presse and
some international media publications since 2008. So far, she has attended workshops and conferences on traditional and new media in Asia and Europe. When she does not write, Kounila blogs prolifically about Cambodia at Www.blueladyblog.com. New media is her newly-found passion.
Iman Usman |Indonesia | Http://Imanusman.com/
Iman is a 2nd year student of Universitas Indonesia majoring International Relations. His passion in social activism and community development takes him to lead Indonesian Future Leaders and Youth Parliament Indonesia. In his spare time, he also actively contributes to promote ASEAN Community as ASEAN-Indonesia Youth Ambassador. In the beginning of 2011, his blog was named as the 1st winner of Microsoft Bloggership 2011 Competition, and he is invited to New York as one of Recipients of Global Teen Leaders 2011 by We Are Family Foundation.
Sounay Phothisane |Laos | Http://Blog.sounay.com/
Sounay is a website design freelancer who loves to dedicate his time and effort on building websites, blogging, and utilizing social media for the Lao community. Besides being a temporally employed specialist lecturing in Mahasarakham Business School in Thailand, he has contributed to his talents by promoting Laos to the social online community. He has published websites relating to Laos and its rich culture,VientianeHour.com.
Marcus van Geyzel | Malaysia | Http://Www.loyarburok.com/
LoyarBurok.com is the only community blawg in the known universe. In 2006, Lord Bobo Barnabus, the Wonder Typewriting Monkey, mind-controlled several homo sapiens with the Lord’s awesome powers of telepathy and got them to start LoyarBurok, to provide a forum for everyone with an interest in anything and who do not wish to take themselves too seriously – to pontificate (with their tongues firmly lodged in their cheek) on frivolous issues such as those concerning the state of the world, human rights, government, legal profession, judicial system; and to to create awareness and activism on issues of concern such as to help redress violations of human and animal rights, and to seek improvements in the way they order and structure their lives. Continuing their quest for world domination, there are now more than 300 LoyarBurok writers from around the world, steered by more than 20 faithful editorial MastHead minions. LoyarBurok has also birthed on-the-ground activities, advocating human rights and justice.
Flow Galindez | Philippines | Http://Angsawariko.com/
Flow is a blogger and a proud advocate of UN World Food Programme, WFP’s Philippine Connector and advocates causes like climate change and HIV/ AIDS awareness, education, child and women’s rights. He blogs about various topics, such as advocacy, entertainment, events, lifestyle, news, tech and gadgets, movies and theaters and foodie stuff.
Zheng “William” Wei | Singapore | Http://T.qq.com/Zhengwei_zaobao
William is the online editor / Assistant Vice President for Zaobao – the largest Singapore-based Chinese-language newspaper. In 1994, the newspaper launched its online version, Zaobao.com, and today it serves a a news portal that also draws news from other parts of the region. William developed this online news portal even more, increasing its pageviews more than 5 times since he took over, and brought Zaobao to win “Best Print Media Website” for 3 consecutive years.
Arthit Suriyawongkul | Thailand | Http://Bact.cc/
He’s an avid blogger from Thailand, and is very active in promoting freedom of expression, and creative commons in Thailand’s social media sphere. He is a Pedestrian-in-Residence at Opendream, Coordinator for Thai Netizen Network and also a board member of Creative Commons Thailand that works in providing licenses for creative works on the internet. He’s working in the areas of ICT for developments, internet freedom, journalism, and information rights. Right now he’s approaching his final year as a graduate anthropology student. Traveling regularly in Southeast Asia.
Tai Tran | Vietnam | Http://Www.taitran.vn/
Tai blogs about finance, investment, fund management as that is his passion. He has three-years experience as Business Consultant and Analyst. He’s also a Funds Management postgraduate with top score and scholarship. Possesses solid domain knowledge of Technology. He has been blogging about his area of expertise since 2002.
