Done it on the last weekend and finally have the chance to visit the infamous Cafe Batavia as well. Last time I visited here the area is crowded with exhibition, this time it was the sea of people and the sellers as well as tweenies from school.
“In many parts of the world there’s always the group of people who run the streets, both night and day. They interact with vast number of people of different characters, while they themselves are also a people of character, whom sometimes annoying, plain hilarious, shady, cool, educated or street smart. Some of them are very fond of speaking their minds, while others are very shy. These are the collection of the wisdom and knowledge of the taxi drivers, whom are kind enough to share and talk to me during my travel across Indonesia (mainly Jakarta).”
I stopped and looked at the back today
Do I see beauty?
Do I see destructions?
I never know
Because none ever matters
Matters no one ever.
I always said that the concept of truth is like the horizon, a person stands in one place wouldn’t be able to grasp what others see.
Put it simply to fulfill the concept, you can see it, others can see it, but nobody can comprehend what is the absoluteness of truth, it’s because each one sees what they want to see. A different perspective for every person.
Just like the door, all we can think are “is it bolted?” “is it locked?” “is somebody just closed it?” or ”are we the one that lost the key?”
What if I tell you, that the key or lock did not exist and the door is a figment of our imagination, painted by an artist which makes we believe that we’re being locked out. Just like the concept of a horizon-slash-truth, you wanted to see a door and its lock, you’ll see a locked door. Where as in other’s perception the locked door might not exist at all.
Now if you still see a locked door, turn back and take a look. You’re being locked outside, where fate always cross, chances are always present like inconsistency and beauty hides itself in chaos.
Writer’s notes: When I write “our” on the title I am referring to people in South East Asia or Asia Pacific and most particularly in Indonesia.
Last time I fall sick, I was doing an experiment on myself. Not that I fall sick due to the experiment, I was experimenting on how long I could recover fully from the sickness by not coming to the doctor and moreover to not consume any antibiotic to recover myself.
It took me a month.
The people here loves their antibiotic and especially the doctor that prescribe them with the antibiotic. A doctor which could cure their patients in a single visit, is a good doctor and very kind as well, because not only the patients get cured easily they also kind of doctor who won’t take any advantage of the patients. But how will it affect the general populations in the future? while science and medical students are very aware of the term ”super-bugs”, the general population do not. The continuos bombardment of antibiotic, and the low understanding regarding the use is giving way to these “super-bugs” to increase in the terms of numbers and kinds.
What are the “super-bugs?”
They could be present as the insects which capable to resist the strongest insecticide, or as the infamous Methicillin Resistant Streptococcus Aureus (MRSA), regardless of the name they could only mean one thing. Trouble.
Like every species, this super-bugs have come a long way, they evolve from the most primitive form to the ones which contain all the necessity to survive. Humans evolve from apes (creationists please do not argue on this), as a species we learn to use tools and to exploit the nature in order to gain the favour, whether to hunt or gather, in a simpler word, we learn how to survive. These super-bugs are also the same, although they don’t use tools they survive because of the difference in their genetic material.
Consider the case of the white butterfly on the height of Industrial revolution in England. They originally were white in colour, because living in a temperate climate they need the colour tone in order to survive from their hunter. however some of them born in a unusual circumstances, with black instead of white as their wings. Easier to be recognised, easier to be hunted is the fate of these black butterfly, however the Industrial Revolution came, and the usual white snow was polluted to become black, and the condition was altered. For the benefit of the story let’s just say, nowadays there are more black butterfly than the white one in England.
The story above is the similar picture in the context of the super-bugs, where they actually also the product natural selections, however the one who acts as the “natural selections” are none other than mankind with their love of antibiotics.
“So it’s just a little bugger which is difficult to be eliminated?” not exactly. This little bugger causes many hospital acquired infection on patients which are recovering from their diseases and finally could cause complications or even death. The fact that they are more antibiotics resistant, would make them very difficult to eliminate with the present level of antibiotics and if they could be eliminated there is still chances for them to evolved to be resistant to that particular antibiotic.
What can we do?
Consider MRSA as a very expensive experience, we can actually slow down the transformation of other bacteria or viruses to become the next “super-bugs”, avoiding arms race between species. How to slow down the transformation is easy that is by do not using antibiotic in order to cure non-significant diseases (common cold, sore throat, fever etc.). The problems (sigh) lies on whether people could understand that they are not supposed to take antibiotic as simple as taking candy.
To raise awareness about this antibiotic issue is the solution, however is not the same as raising awareness about issues like the global warming. It is more like putting a warning on cigarettes’ pack to tell people the hazard to your health, however it seldom kept them away from smoking. Furthermore, by telling this, people must accept that evolution is real and we are part of it, while in this region people still believe that evolution is a concept where man comes from primate.
It would be long and lengthy process to educate the people, perhaps as long as the development of the new super-bugs, however as it is necessary to be done, none is too late after all.
The movement could began in hospitals or clinics by doctors, in which if there are any patients coming with the symptoms of cold or fever try to explain to them that the disesase did not require the administration of antibiotics, just plenty of rest and liquids and paracetamols is enough. Of course doctor, have to be more than able to explain the matter to the patients and that requires a great communication skills.
What can a patient do then? other than educating themselves, patients are also having the rights to have the proper explanations from the doctor and finally do not judge the doctor based on what medication that they give you or how long does it takes to recover.
As a final notes, I will say that prevention is better than care thus live your life healthily and love your vessels, you can’t actually change them anytime if you have trouble.
Cheers
In less than 15 minutes, it will be the official earth hour in Jakarta, Indonesia a place where the writer currently resides. This blog entry is made solely on the battery power of my laptop and without any other source of electricity. For the matter of publishing the writer is using a USB dongle of 3G internet service and hopefully it will reign on.
Update: at least one of the building in Jakarta turning of their lights, which is kinda neat, but the rest….
Update 2: just heard some malls are actually turning off their lights cool 
although Malaysians are very daring to turn off the Petronas Twin Towers.
Update 3: The Flickr Photo Group have the picture of Jakarta during the Earth Hour, you can find it here. There is a very clear picture on Sampoerna Strategic Square turning their lights off and some other beautiful picture as well.
It is another earth hour this year, and unlike the previous one, tonight is backed by many organisation and public figures (in Jakarta), the message is very clear and concise, do something for mother earth and do it tonight by switching off the lights for 60 minutes.
After that then?
The trend to care of the environment have been gradually increasing; we have seen many movies, lectures, seminars, and music concerts to address this awareness. However those all would meant nothing if the care for the environment is only present at that particular time.
What’s next after earth hour? that’s the part that haven’t being explained by the organising committee of the earth hour, will people continue to their daily habit again and next year to do this same routine again, to vote earth again on 2010? I certainly hope not. The idea of voting for earth is not by just turning the lights off for 60 minutes during the earth hour only, the real deal is how to vote for earth everyday in our life.
Sceptics of the earth hour and the global warming have something in common, their disbelieve of the event and the ability of people to keep up to vote earth. Although it is very simple to do something for the environment which can be done in their daily lives. Use the public transport, bring your own case when you’re taking away food, and simply, use less paper and many other things that we, ordinary people can do.
Do not let this just become a trend, a media over-hype and just something people do to achieve credibility. So turn off your lights tonight, however the real business starts after this, change your daily habit and act beyond 60 minutes. Keep voting for earth.
Cheers
ps: just for the fun of it now I’ll shower in the dark
Update: The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said that the cost of the Internet will be reduced to allow greater acceptance with the public. Hope this will be the key to provide better utilisation of the Internet to the masses. news taken from here
Update 2: The cost of the Internet will be lowered after the legislative election on April 9th. A way to attract the voters? I’m sure the user will not put too much care on it
On my last post I was talking about the lack of use of email as a mean of effective communications. There are several factor that made this e-mail communication did not become a reliable and effective method of communications.The pressing matter is the availability of the cheap internet access. When I meant cheap, I also meant that it have to be reliable in good quality (in terms of speed and signal) to ensure the process of effective communication.
Indonesia is steadily improving in its internet access, however it is far from satisfactory. In comparison with countries like Malaysia or Singapore, who enjoys cheaper price of Internet for better quality, Indonesia seems like a country full of choices but none of the choices could be considered best. Real life example should apply here; Telkomspeedy the sole provider of ADSL internet access in Indonesia as a whole, have put the price of Rp. 450.000 for their 3GB quota, while Malaysia with their Streamyx cost as much but with no cap (www.telkom.com, www.streamyx.com).
Well we can always look for scapegoat for every matter in Indonesia, which include on this laying of price, however, that is not the point of this writings. The point is how do we can achieve what Malaysia and Singapore have been able to achieve. Of course there would be a lengthy discussion and regarding what could and should be done regarding this matter, a project proposal, and to the point of acceptance and rejection.
Telkom as the national telecommunication services would automatically handling the ADSL route of Internet connection. This act as a double edged blade, first as Telkom had the technology and infrastructure they could readily deliver ADSL internet access, however, being the sole provider would mean that the market is monopolised by Telkom. There are however, gaps that could not filled by Telkom and its ADSL access, there are the people who are always on the move, People who are unsatisfied with the package offered by Telkomspeedy access and people who does not have phone line yet (but of course they have mobiles). This over the time creating a new number of ISP with competitive price and package, however, none of the new ISP are targeting the third of the market, because of the lack of infrastructure and low number of Internet user in Indonesia (only 10% of Indonesian uses Internet regularly out of its 200 million people (Kompas, 27 December 2008)) Based on the situation above it could be determined that there are several things could be done in order to sort this problem out.
1 Lower the price of Telkomspeedy, this can be done by subsidising the cost of the Internet from the education budget.
2 Build infrastructure that could support the other ISP to provide internet access other than the big cities.
3 Provide training of basic internet feature (data collection via google, correspondence via e-mail, etc.) in school, government offices and people who need to interact with other people.
4 Make a program to use the Internet for regular correspondence, for example; Students from two different secondary schools across cities in Indonesia will try to correspondence with each other via email, they could share stories or pictures regarding their school etc.
5 Create an awareness to use email as a medium for correspondence and point out the the advantage of using email rather than snail-mail.
6 Build a proper library with cheap and qualified internet access, for people who does not have computer to use.
Onno W. Purbo have an interesting idea on how to achieve low cost internet by using a frying pan. There are wiki articles on how it could be achieved;
http://opensource.telkomspeedy.com/wiki/index.php/Teknologi_RT/RW-net
http://opensource.telkomspeedy.com/wiki/index.php/Wajanbolic_e-goen
*both of the link is on Bahasa Indonesia.
The basic idea is to share internet services in community where one household would act as the primary user for the service, while at the same time sharing the connections with people in the community. The frying pan would act as the receiver in other households.
By using this method, people in community could actually bear the cost of the Internet together, which is rationally going to be cheaper, thus achieving the more effective communications.
Cheers
Internet in Indonesia have been existed for quite a very long time, most early adopters would still remember the ugly days of using dial-up connections, visiting plasa.com and trying to log on to gain pornographic material. Today Indonesians fondness of internet and its content (which include pornographic material, celebrity gossip, information of stock exchange, social sites, online gaming, etc.) is climbing towards the peak. This could be seen not only by the increasing number of the cyber cafes but with the increase of people filling the normal cafe with their laptops or other 802.11 gadget, and increasing number of ISP.
There are however several issue that did not resolve along with the increase the internet usage in Indonesia, first is the utilisation of the internet to increase productivity, second is cost of the internet service. The two issues will affect one another, awareness of the importance of internet as a mean of effective communication will increase the number of ISP thus increased market competition therefore reduced cost of the internet could be achieved. This will bring us to the topic of the writing, first how to use internet as a mean for effective communication for professionals and casuals alike and second what can be done to reduce the cost of the internet.
The forgotten one: e-mail
To kick-start the utilisation of internet as a productivity machine I believe we need not to look forward, the technology that allow us to be productive is already present ever since the birth of the internet itself, which is the e-mail.
Along with the now popular blogs and forum, e-mail has been the starting line in internet interaction, before you can join forum, make blog, playing online game, chat, buying stuff over the net you got to have an e-mail address. An e-mail address will show who you are; for instance kids and adolescent e-mail address will differ with those professionals or grand parents. E-mail address also is an important part of the public address of company to NGOs, government departments to The Ministry, both public and private school as well. Unfortunately despite the increasing number of internet user and thus e-mail user, the usage of e-mail in Indonesia (as a mean of communication) could be called tragic.
Why tragic? to make a clear picture regarding this tragedy, let me tell you my story on job and information hunting;
After graduation I have been trying to convince my parents that the good thing to do is to continue my studies, get my postgraduate degree and look for work overseas, unfortunately they are not very keen of the idea, stating reasons that I need to experience in the working environment and taking postgraduate degree could be done later on in life. I swallow the bitter pill and began looking for work and information, I look for jobs over the internet and newspaper over the time. So far there is nothing different than the average Joe right? however, being a firm environmentalist I always try to sent my application through e-mail to various companies, in order not to waste paper. Over the time, none of the local company reply regarding the availability, even though their advertisement still present on the job seeking site.
So I kept wondering what went wrong with my application that is being sent through e-mail? A few possibilities remain; first, my resume is not good enough for their criteria, second, there are already a person filling for the position and lastly they just does not open their e-mail account periodically. Giving the fact that Indonesian, are not very fond of their e-mail based communication, I began to suspect that the reason they did not inform me back regarding my application is because I contacted them through e-mail not by actual or physical mail. Thus I began to look over the company websites, and unfortunately as well, some of them are very difficult to navigate, others are still on construction and some even have been expired. Therefore there are no other form of two way communication other than phone call.
The stories above are one of the example of how Indonesians still do not consider email as a mean of effective communication. a second example might be a simpler, try picturing a craftsman who would like to expand his market. He could promote his crafts by two means; produce an advertisement or waiting for buyers to come, we will not elaborate more on how the way he sit, instead we looked up how he could market his crafts. First, he could produce few brochures regarding his product and will try to market it nationally or even internationally via email or other internet interaction or he can come to the advertising agency, pay some amount of money and let them create a giant billboard and put it on the side of the main road. No need for a calculator for this one, the cost of producing email and sending it are cheaper than producing a giant billboard. This second example would only work in several condition, however, To target a national buyer, the buyer should also have internet connection and second, e-mail might easily reach people around the world, however it is also easily ignored, therefore there is a need to set up an internet marketplace; a blog, or social website account might just do it.
Therefore, given the increase of interaction between people in the world and the ever growing conscience on our impact to the environment, I believe e-mail could be an important substitution if not a complement of how we should interact with one another, both professionally and casually. People and the government of Indonesia thus, should care more regarding the use of e-mail, and by doing so hopefully, the internet is no longer a place to download any pirated intellectual property and porn but as a place to learn and growing.
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