Enough!
11,000 flee Indonesia’s Mount Merapi volcano.
East Timor, Aceh, West Papua, the Bali bombing, the tsunami, the earthquake, and now Mount Merapi – at some point you have to wonder why anyone would want to be in the Indonesian government.
The islands are beautiful when they aren’t moving, melting, under water, or exploding. The people are nice when they aren’t trying to kill one another. The cost-benefit ratio of living in Indonesia has shifted significantly lately.
Update: I forgot about the Avian Influenza.
4 comments
Bryan: Cost/benefit has changed? The same could be said for Florida, y’know.
Indonesia is a huge and variegated nation. Of that I am sure. A friend who’s been living there for a decade on a number of different islands reports that Sumatra is vastly different from (and far, far less enjoyable) than Java. And Borneo greatly different from the rest. She says geology has little to do with it.
Partly it’s the degree to which foreign corporations have been allowed by locals to pollute the place and rape it of its mineral wealth. Mostly, it’s the people/society. On some islands, they have spines and a brain. Elsewhere (i.e. Sumatra) they’ve become complete sheep.
Dunno if she’s right. Not been there. Just reporting the view of one resident who has spent 10 years there.
There have to be close to a thousand distinct ethnic groups on the islands and it is the western rim of the “circle of fire”.
It seems that they are undergoing one problem after another without going into all of the political problems. My brother was being offered a position in Jakarta after he finished his job in Hong Kong, but he turned it down on the advice of his wife who wasn’t interested in living in a Muslim country, no matter how moderate, and wanted to get back to the country-side away from cities.
Based on my brother’s reporting, the islands were being destroyed by development to obtain resources or to build resorts.
Earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis – maybe nature’s way of dealing with avian flu?
I know, that was cruel. “All” you have to worry about in Florida is hurricanes, alligators, no-see-ums, and JEB!
I’d forgotten that they are also a center for that.
We worry about hurricanes, we avoid alligators, we ignore bugs, and Jeb is only around for a few more months.