Au revoir Les Blues

France lost to Italy. That was sheer luck for Italy, they played poorly against ten people. Buffon was great though, as usual! What else can I say? the ball is round, nothing is impossible in football. Now it’s the perfect time to change a winning team. Viva Hollandia! To Mr. Andrew Land: I admit defeat mylord! ha.

Indonesia Today

Just another ordinary working day. I’m sitting behing my PC browsing from one Indonesian site to another to overcome my boredom satiate my hunger of news. I bumped into some interesting news from our dear country, and by interesting I mean bad.

1. Djoko Suprapto “Is it for real?”

I believe many people have heard of this name. The so-called blue energy inventor is reportedly being “chased” by many parties, namely mafias, corporations and government officials. Everyone wants to get the formula of his “groundbreaking” innovation. So do you think such thing really exists? Or is he just another famewh**e hungry for attention? I think the latter, but we shall wait and see. Articles: here and here.

2. A member of Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR) might face a lifetime in jail

And we wonder why. Well he is accused of corruption. Rp 4.7 billion to be precise. Classic! he deserves the punishment, but rats like him can always find a way out, right? They repulse me. Read the full story here.

3. Drivers of angkot went on strike

After the government raised fuel oil prices, drivers have got a lot of troubles to meet the Rp. 200.000 they have to pay to the vehicles’owners every day. So they demand an increase of 40-50% of tariffs, unless they are allowed to buy fuel oils at the old rate. Read the story here.

BBM and KPK are apparently the hot topics these days (besides the headlines of Yuni Shara divorcing her husband). Either people are protesting about the fuel price increases or KPK’s ongoing efforts to root out those corrupt government officials. To overcome the fuel price crisis, I think the government should encourage people to start riding bikes already. For the latter problem, I don’t know, death penalty?

Oh well…no matter how bad things are going on in my very own country, I still want to go home (for a holiday).

Suharto dies at 86.

Suharto of Indonesia, whose 32-year dictatorship was one of the most brutal and corrupt of the 20th century, died Sunday in Jakarta. He was 86. Suharto had been hospitalized on Jan. 4 with heart, lung and kidney problems, according to medical officials of Pertamina Hospital in Jakarta. His condition worsened dramatically over the weekend and he lost consciousness and stopped breathing on his own, they said. -The New York Times, 27th Jan 2008.

The most brutal and corrupt indeed. However his huge contributions for Indonesia were invaluable, and so we have to respect him. My heart goes out to his family and to other fellow Indonesians.

Introducing KAFEINFO beta

We have been working on a project for weeks. Inspired by Digg Social Bookmarking, one of the most famous sites today, my boyfriend came up with an idea to make the Indo-version. Therefore, the language is in Bahasa Indonesia, obviously, or at least for now. Since my boyfriend is an IT pro, he deals with all the technical details, whilst me and Dimas contribute by promoting the site and dealing with other creative details. Also, thanks to Chucky for naming KAFEINFO! The site is not final just yet, we are still in the testing phase. Thus, your constructive feedback will be greatly appreciated! However, we expect you to register today and start contributing news links that you find interesting. For a celebrity gossip freak like me, there is also a “celebrity” category where you can update yourself with the hottest gossips! Bottomline is, you don’t have to write your own stories, you just have to copy-paste links from other sites! no frills! The more votes you get for your story, the higher the rank amongst other news links. Visit Kafeinfo at www.kafeinfo.com (it’s a temporary domain, before made permanent to .com, hopefully in the near future), register today, submit as many links as possible, and of course, tell your friends, families, foes, teachers, drivers, landlords, employers, pak haji sebelah, si embok, EVERYONE YOU KNOW to join Kafeinfo! Dank je!

Rudy Giuliani’s Scare Tactics

I just watched this new campaign video of Rudy Giuliani, a prominent United States Republican presidential candidate, and couldn’t be more appalled. The video begins with images of large groups of shouting Middle Easterners with a narrator warning viewers that the United States faces an “enemy without borders”. The video includes images of Islamic rallies, Osama bin Laden, car bombings, etc. The ad touts that, in a world where leaders such as Bhutto are assassinated,”democracy attacked” and that the Unites States “needs a leader who’s ready”, but uhm..ready to do what?

This ad is a perfect example of negative campaigning, trying to win an advantage by referring to negative aspects rather than emphasizing one’s own positive attributes or preferred policies. For me, the video looks like a bad taste, worst horror movie trailer ever. No offense, but I personally think that scare tactics won’t bring any good to the campaign. “The next crisis is a moment away!” sounds like a very serious threat, and people are growing tired of such negative appeals. So why not focusing on the solutions he has to offer rather than the problems we know exist? People know the ‘whats’ tell them the ‘hows’. There are other layers of the message in Rudy’s other ads, of course, but people are judgmental. When they find a loophole, they usually don’t bother to see the other side of the story.

I am not a big fan of politics, but the upcoming US presidential election is just too interesting, isn’t it? I just wish everyone worldwide could actually vote, because we all know that the whole world will be affected by this election. May the best man (or woman) wins.

Visit Indonesia 2008

Dimas just told me that Indonesia finally tosses a national tourism campaign. Check out the ad here, very heartwarming. Oh I’m so proud! We all know that Indonesia has great potential, unfortunately it takes too long for such campaign to be launched, especially compared to our neighboring countries (not to mention Malaysia). According to The Jakarta Post, the ministry of culture and tourism had to revise the slogan because of a minor grammatical mistake. “Celebrating 100 years of nation’s awakening” was changed to “100 years of national awakening”, forcing Garuda Indonesia to repaint 10 planes servicing international routes that had already been daubed with the slogan. Oh boy! they should have checked it before launching such huge project! But anyways, it’s fixed now and so we have to be proud and fully supportive! tell the world how great our country is and tell them to visit Indonesia at least once before they die!