Twelve hours, 4 airports, and one hectic takeoff later, I arrived back in Jakarta after a week in the field in Ternate, North Maluku - and by far, this was the one week that gave all the work I’ve done over the summer some perspective. After having my exposure to LEAD Project’s real work limited to highly administrative work, I had the chance to accompany some of the team to Ternate for a workshop on the project’s brand new Standard Operating Procedures. This new document, which has taken up a large part of my summer (and, I might add, is the [View Full Entry]

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It seems since my time in Paradise, I've run into a little string of bad luck. Friday, the bombs went off at the Ritz and Marriott here in Jakarta, and thus far all the experts are pointing to Jemah Islamiah, a terrorist group with a long list of past episodes here in the country, including past bombing in Jakarta and Bali which together have killed hundreds. By all accounts, since the last major terrorist incidents in 2005, Jakarta has seen massive upturns in security operations, and has by and large gained a reputation as being fairly stable 10 years after the [View Full Entry]

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The one thing that I think I was most surprised with when I arrived in Jakarta was the fact that I felt so safe. This is a massive city, full of some of the wealthiest and poorest individuals in Southeast Asia, but with a glut of surplus labour and having faced security issues in the past, it seemed to me that Jakarta has the situation under control. At the entrace to everybuilding there are guards who will put you through metal detection. Police are around all the major intersections, and there are numerous police posts throughout the city. I've never once [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday morning was quiet... too quiet in this city of (insert over 9 million here). But there was a reason for the silence, though perhaps a celebration would have been more befitting the occasion: the second ever direct Presidential election. For a country of 235-ish million, yesterday's election is rendered all that more impressive because it went off without a hitch. Though there were some sporadic voting irregularities and some problems with identification registration (you are meant to vote only in the district you are registered in, though they relaxed the rules a little this tim [View Full Entry]

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So, after having seen only one small road incident with a motorbike lightly plowing into the back of a taxi, I was in a little dust-up of my own yesterday on the way to work. I have to admit that my directions could have been sooner for the taxi to turn (I'm trying to learn, but my Indonesian is still pretty basic), but without looking he geared left, and we had a motorbike scrape the side. The guy stopped, looked at his leg, his bike, then kept driving! Needless to say, I ended up giving the not-so-impressed driver a nice tip [View Full Entry]

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Transmigration and Big Rock Beer On the LEAD front… As every student of Canadian history knows, way back in the later half of the 19th century, and into the early 20th, the federal government sought to “populate the west” of Canada with offers of free land and great opportunities to build a new life. It wanted to attract further immigrants from England specifically, but as most English balked at the offer, the program extended itself well into Eastern Europe, attracting thousands to the prairies. These people, through many hardships, would change the landsc [View Full Entry]

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This morning I was watching some English news and a fantastic tourism promo came on. The ad, about a minute long, was detailing sady white beaches, culture, shopping, entertainment, industry, etc. of what seemed to be Indonesia. This is great, I thought, the first Indonesian tourism spot I've seen. And then the ad ended with "Come to Malaysia, truly Asia." I just finished up a good lunch conversation about Indonesian culture with some of my coworkers on the subject. There appears to be a recurring resentment that Malaysia borrows too heavily from Indonesian culture and calls it by a dif [View Full Entry]

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In 2005-2006 the UNDP and BAPPENAS (the Indonesian Government’s main planning board) undertook an evaluation of Access to Justice in the 5 provinces of West Kalimantan, North Maluku, Central Sulawesi, South East Sulawesi and Maluku. The results of their research showed some stark justice realities in the country. In most circumstances, the poor and marginalized communities in those provinces had a higher respect and trust in informal justice mechanisms (village heads, village councils, religious authorities) than they did in the state system (police, judges, even lawyers). In turn, mo [View Full Entry]

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After two weekends in the city doing what Jakartans do (go to the malls, walk around, and browse pirated DVDs), this past weekend I finally was able to get out of the city to do a little sightseeing in West Java. Luckily, some of the members of the LEAD team organized a day trip up to Taman Safari, about 2 hours driving (early in the morning without the traffic) outside of Jakarta, nestled in the mountains surrounding the city. The trip up was pretty incredible... as you leave Jakarta, is seems the "city" immediately disappears. New styles of housing, more along [View Full Entry]

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The problem with blogging from Indonesia is that the instructions for posting always show up in Bahasa Indonesia… but thankfully after a few missteps, I get to share some info on the fascinating city of Jakarta. My first introduction to the city of Jakarta actually occurred before I even touched the ground, as we entered the smog layer of the atmosphere where the sky turned from a brilliant blue to a brownish haze. Finally getting a chance to hit the streets and make my way into the city explained it all. This urban sprawl of 9 to 15 million (depending on [View Full Entry]

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