A Day On The TownOk, it was merely a series of encounters out and about assessing my legal and extra-legal options, but I did end up meeting a couple of folk who've impacted on our expat lives.
First up was one of the ladies of KPC Melati
* who have been campaigning for changes in the citizenship laws
. She was not one of the
lovely ladies pictured here but I really believe that Our Kid, who now has dual citizenship thanks to their campaigning zeal will be grateful in eight years time. (He was ten yesterday.)
Next up was KukukaChu of
JakChat who does a nice line in visas, the reason I was in that neck of the woods. He was sitting in
Ya-Udah, half expecting me, not having met the lady from the paragraph above who, just coincidentally (?), is married to the Swiss gentleman who is the owner-manager.
And at his table was Patung who runs
Indonesia Matters. We had never met before and considering that he operates out of Surabaya it could be some time before we meet again. So we nattered about this and that, about
poor old Harry who writes about a Lothario friend of his ~
all he does besides working is dating women. It is the rule he has 3 dates per day and sleeps with most of his dates (many ask him to sleep with them on the first date). He also gets called many times per day by girls he knows already, they ask him to meet him in his or their apartment. When he is with a girl he always shuts off his HP because he is constantly called by girls and his date would of course not appreciate that. And Harry?
I haven't even had a date so far and I been far longer in Jakarta than him.Aduh.
We, Patung and I, also wondered about the wisdom ~ sanity? ~ of Governor Fadel Muhamad of Gorontalo, in Sulawesi, who has a wizard scheme to overcome Indonesia's energy crisis.
Russian electricity company Raoues is slated to build Indonesia's first nuclear power plant. The facility will be located in Gorontalo, Sulawesi, in order to meet long-term demand for electricity there and in nearby provinces.
"The new plant is expected to start operating by the end of 2007. Gorontalo will be registered as the first province in Indonesia to enjoy nuclear electricity," Fadel said.
Fadel said the nuclear plant would be designed to have a generating capacity of 90 megawatts, which would be sold to state-owned electricity company PT PLN at a price one-third lower than that of conventional electricity.
Raoues' representative in Indonesia, Bambang Waskito, said the power plant would be built aboard a ship floating off the shore of Gorontalo.
Commenting on fears about its safety, PLN business director Sunggu Anwar Aritonang said (that) while Indonesia does not have experience operating a nuclear power plant, it does have a solid base of knowledge.
"We have many experts who have studied it. Based on existing literature, nuclear power plants are safe," he said."We have to cooperate with other countries, though. For the first stage, we will just buy the nuclear-powered electricity from the other country."
A solid base of knowledge. Does he mean like Harry's knowledge of women? You know, look but don't touch?
*If you read this, R., could you reply to the comments below, please?
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