Connectivity is severely reduced for a few days, maybe more. If you’ve emailed me, or are trying to contact me, please be patient. Yes, it sucks. Makes me koo-koo, reduces my productivity. Working on it. Working also on a book review for Kyoto Journal (of a book on North Korea) and on reviews of several other books I’ve read for this here blog. Next review will be on Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald, which was wonderful but which is proving thorny in terms of writing a fair, critical, and incisive review. Reading? Um… yeah, I’m working on it. And fiction-writing? …
Tag: Jakarta
Loud Coffee?
I posted it on Facebook, but I’m wondering enough to ask it here. I’m in a Starbucks by a bookshop that Miss Jiwaku decided we should go to, because she knows how I am with bookshops, and because we needed coffee, and the cinemas nearby are showing crap. (Incidentally, as with a number of places in Asia, the movie cinema industry is not quite a monopoly, butit’s heavily dominated by a few big companies, meaning your selection is often quite limited. Given a choice between the new Travolta film and the new Mel Gibson, we decided to give moviegoing a …
You Know You’re in the Tropics When…
… you see a lizard on the bathroom wall and it doesn’t particularly surprise or alarm you. The driver who was sent to pick me up didn’t quite get the explanation he should have, so he drove to Depok, on the wrong side of town So I’m now waiting for a taxi. Hmm… another day in Jakarta.
Remix Ubiquitous & on the Jakartan Mall
Of all the songs that one might have expected to hear remixed in an almost endless variety of forms — swing jazz, strings & voice, glittery upbeat techno –this is the last song I thought would start following me around Indonesia. By the way, what the hell was with the original mix video? It sucks in a large variety of ways, so much so that I daren’t get started on it: (Update: Okay, if there’s any more proof that anyone can do anything, one of the main members of Black Box was a classically trained clarinet teacher., says Wikipedia. Sure, …
When ATMs Attack, or, How Things are Going in Depok/Jakarta
I’ll be going back to Jakarta tomorrow because a certain ATM has decided to swallow my Samsung Card (a credit card) and not spit it out again. Put the card in the machine, watch it crash, watching Windows reboot (with the Diebold brand name proudly displayed, of course!)… quite a sad sight. The first time it happened was a week ago, and I thought it was a freak accident. Turns out, no, not at all. Samsung Cards crash BNC ATM machines in Jakarta, it seems. Or at least, at the mall I was at. Other than that, things are going …