JAKARTA: 'Biasa' they say here - as usual. This is one of the places where I wage my personal intellectual war against the market-fundamentalism - system which already consumed this unlucky country from head to toe. What happened during one month that I lived here? Traffic jams got even worse, pollution unbearable. There were floods despite inauguration of (badly designed) Eastern Flood canal. City Planning Agency opened new City Planning Gallery which nobody can find and which is not offering any solution to the imminent collapse of the city, anyway. Biasa. Corruption got worse. Statue of Obama who spent some time as a child here was removed (not because his outrageous foreign policy, but because
he is not really Indonesian, it seems). Chinese people were at least allowed to celebrate Chinese New Year/Spring Festival - great progress considering that under Suharto everything Chinese was banned, including language, dragons and cakes. But don't count on tolerance (only western mass media speaks about Indonesian tolerance, anyway) - Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf is now available everywhere - in Bahasa Indonesia and in English. And mosques are broadcasting all that is happening inside, in some neighborhoods well over 6 hours a day. You better be like the majority, or else. Biasa.