Muchas Gracias!!

Querida Tia Rossy y Familia Ramirez en Mazatlan, Mexico,
Reciban saludos desde Jakarta, Indonesia y muchas gracias por las bonitas camisetas que nos enviaron.
Esperamos nos visiten en Jakarta pronto.

Muchos abrazos y besos,

Los felices Sapos:
Adelia - Amanda - Amadeo

Happy Chinese New Year 2008

We are off to Indonesia to celebrate the arrival of the year of rat with my family. To those who celebrate the chinese new year, we wish you all the best for the new year and enjoy the holiday with your family!

新年快乐!
万事如意..
鼠年大吉,身体健康,万事如意,心想事成 !

I found a very nice song about the chinese new year. They've been playing for the whole month in every department stores. Enjoy!!!

Bad Weather in Asia

This is something that you don't expect to have when you are about to travel somewhere.
Shanghai continues to receive heavy snowfall since yesterday and it causes delay and flight cancelation in both of Shanghai airports.

At the same time, my mom has been sending me text messages to give some updates about the rain and flood in Jakarta which also cause flight cancelation/reroute as the runway is covered with 50cm high of water and visibiliy is only about 300m.

The weather outlook for both cities for the next week are not very promising. Rain and snow are still expected in both cities. In China especially, the Chinese New Year holiday is coming next week and they expect heavy travellers traffic trying to reach home to spend the holiday with their families.

So either we are stucked in Shanghai airport or somewhere between Singapore and Jakarta. We actually plan to spend the Chinese New Year golden week with my family in Jakarta. We will have to see if that will be possible.

* Photo is taken from Shanghai Daily showing hundreds of thousands of people waiting for train home in Guangzhou train station.

Former Indonesian President died

Soeharto, former Indonesian President and known dictactor who ruled the country for 32 years died today at the age of 86. He was taken to hospital due to multiple organ failure 24 days ago and had been living with help of life-support machines.

Current Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, called for a week mourning to pay respect to the services he did to the country.

Soeharto was known as father figure who helped the country to develop its economy. He was asked to resign from his power in 1998 when the economic crisis hit the region and Indonesia suffered the worse impact of it. He was also held responsible for many corruption acts and political misconducts.

His corruption cases are still on trial in Indonesian court of justice.

I am not quite sure how the Indonesian people feel about him at the moment. Whether or not they think of him as a hero of the nation or otherwise.

I found an interesting pooling in CNN today about how will former Indonesian president Suharto be remember and the result is quite interesting.

Visiniorary architect of modern Indonesia 9% (82 votes)

Brutal & corrupt dictactor 55% (493 votes)

Both 31% (280 votes)

Neither 5% (44 votes)

Total voters = 899

I hope, disregard on how the people feel about him, the country's current political & economical stability will not be affected by it.

Detailed story can be read here

*Photo taken from CNN.

Back!

We were back last Sunday. It was lucky as we landed at around 5 pm and typhoon Krosa didn't start until around 9 pm and lasted until Monday night. It was heavy rain and wind on Monday and I think it was even worse than typhoon Wipha, although we didn't receive any alert in the airport about this typhoon.

Jakarta was very nice as usual. Waking up late, free days without meetings and appointments, free to do things that you feel like doing for the day. Just the getaway I need. I finally met my new niece (she was born on March this year), met some old friends, catch up of what's going on in the last 10 months since I got home. A lot of things surely have changed in there. You will see more malls happening in Jakarta, theaters have been upgraded to luxurius design but yet cheaper ticket price to beat the black market DVDs, busways (project from old governor Sutiyoso) are now everywhere in Jakarta, causing nothing good but even more traffic jams and people are complaining about increase price of consumer goods. For the last, I actually fear that economic crisis will soon hit Indonesia again soon as I was actually home during the Ramadhan month and I saw less and less people in the food court and restaurants during the breaking of the fast. In the years when I was still living in Jakarta (min. 5 years back), I remember that I had to queue long before I could actually get any sit to eat. Now it is like, come anytime you want! Shops were also not full with people although they've received their Idul Fitri's bonus and supposed to rush to buy new clothes for the festive season. I have to say that I don't have a good feeling about this.

Now I am back in Shanghai. I've managed to go through my first week back at the office. Still the same old shits, lots of emails to answer, meetings to attend, hardly find time to actually sit in my desk and really think of my work. I started to regret buying that return ticket to Shanghai!

One good thing though, we have finalised all tickets and hotels for our holiday in December. Now we need only to apply for the entry visas, in my case, I will need 4 new visas stamped in my passport! The joy of being Indonesian!