Below the line

Have I mentioned lately how much I love the commenters on the Jakarta Globe's website? With only a very few exceptions, my policy on comment sections is "that way madness lies," but bless those Globe commenters for being a shining counterexample.

The Globe commentariat has previous in eviscerating substandard and/or outright wrong-headed editorial stances, such as the newspaper's support for an anti-porn task force and its siding with Islamic radicals in the Lady Gaga Saga. Now we have Peter F. Gontha -- Globe publisher, former Suharto lamprey and admitted crony capitalist -- throwing a fit about Jakarta's new deputy governor daring to check his BlackBerry during their meeting, in which Pak Gontha suggested easing the capital's traffic by restricting access to some roads to vehicles of certain colors, an old idea which has been dismissed by the publisher's own newspaper.

I couldn't blame you if you skipped the article itself -- it's full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, as per usual -- but please do read through the comments. The response to Gontha's kvetching is energetic, to say the least. An example:

Quite apart from the appalling arrogance of the first paragraph the lead in to the third leaves one in awe of this mans audacity.
"I am fully aware that I am no expert in city planning, or an expert in overcoming transportation problems. But as a resident of the city, I feel called to contribute to progress." By Whom?
If you are aware of your inadequacy in this area then stick to what you know and you will not get the short shrift out of a very busy officials office for wasting his time.
"noble intention of meeting with his deputy governor" Your Deputy Governor? Who do you think you are?
This sort of statement epitomizes the elitist arrogance that is one of the contributing factors to the state this country is in. Someone who thinks he has a right to interfere in an areas he professes himself to know nothing about, but wants to meddle anyway because he thinks he is rich and should be listened to.
Perhaps the whole thing was to teach you lesson in humility. Epic Fail....

The whole episode does not reflect well on someone who fancies himself the Donald Trump of Indonesia. Still, perhaps Pak Gontha does deserve some sympathy. A man of his wealth and political connections gets used to being treated with reverence and fear -- especially at the Globe, given his mixed record of success with English-language publications -- and finding out that the universe does not, in fact, revolve around you can be quite a shock to the system. Of course, it's a shock most of us experience and get over in our teens or early 20s.

Global perspective

It's been almost a month since a series of events conspired to usher me out of the Jakarta Globe. I'm still pretty narked off about the whole thing, but that's not the purpose of this post. There are some pictures floating around my desktop that I want to post -- some of them even contain people. The shots are somewhat large, so I've left them after the jump.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

What a farce this has been. The last 36 hours have reminded me with full, gory detail of all the things I can't stand about Indonesia.

The HR people at Globe Towers get me my passport at 4 p.m. the day before I leave -- too late to do anything like mail boxes of books or close a bank account. That night, the refrigerator conks out. This morning, the air conditioning unit in the bedroom springs a mighty leak, and on top of that my phone ceases to function. Not a great start but, to quote Brendon Burns, it gets so much worse.

Armed with my last paycheck (converted to rupiah without even asking me) and a passport featuring a snazzy new exit-only permit, I go to HSBC the next morning to close my bank account and transfer that money back to an account in the US. You'd think I asked them to sing the entire score of "H.M.S. Pinafore." What I thought would take an hour or 90 minutes at the most ended up taking five hours (11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) -- so long that the doors were shut and the office boys going home before I actually got my passport back and the account closed. Five hours, 14 different documents to be signed and an innumerable amount of "sorry Meesters" and sheepish grins. "Sorry Meester, but your signature is not an exact match to your passport." "Sorry Meester, but you need to sign a statement document in case any payments you make get returned and you complain about the money." "Sorry Meester, but the Transactions Department has not processed your requests so we cannot close your account yet." In my four years in Jakarta, dealing with that was the closest I'd ever come to truly Getting White and doing something awful.

Needless to say, this took what semblance of a plan I had for my last day in Jakarta and obliterated it. I didn't even get back to the apartment until 5 p.m. and had what I thought was a 10 p.m. flight bearing down on me. Some sweeping and mopping here, a frantic round of packing there and I'm out the door at 6:45 p.m. After dropping off the keys to the next tenant, I make for Soekarno-Hatta and get there with 90 minutes to spare.

How am I posting, then? Funny you should ask. After anticipating a 10:05 p.m. takeoff, we're told that the Korean Airlines jet is delayed in Incheon because of stormy weather and will now take off from Jakarta at 1:05 a.m. This handy bit of information landed in my inbox at 11 p.m. -- thanks, Korean Air. Come midnight, though, we get word that the plane won't get here until 5:30 a.m., and now that's been pushed back to 7:30 a.m. Assuming the jet actually gets here and isn't crippled by this apparent Storm of the Century, we should get to Incheon at about 4:30 p.m. local time -- ample cushion to make my 8:50 p.m. connection to Las Vegas. So much for that ginormous 13-hour layover and getting to chill in the Korean Airlines suite.

What burns me most is dashing off in such a hurry for no reason. All my books save three are still at the apartment, as are my collection of press passes (which I should really toss out anyway) and half a box of Pop Tarts (which leaving unfinished is tantamount to renouncing one's American citizenship). I have arrangements in place for the books to be shipped; the Pop Tarts, notsomuch. And on top of all this, I have assignments in my new college courses that are due today. What fun.

One of these days I'll figure out how to pack up, move and travel without having to leave behind large swathes of my possessions or driving myself bug-nutty. And on that day, Tatooine will freeze over.

UPDATE: Yeah. We left Jakarta at 7:20 a.m. on Wednesday (nine hours later than planned) and pulled into Incheon at about 4:30 p.m. local time. Grab dinner and hop on the plan to Vegas, right? Not with the way this trip is going. Almost every other Korean Airlines flight today was pushed back multiple hours, so my 8:50 p.m. flight is now a 2 a.m. redeye. That will put me in Las Vegas at 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday at the earliest -- just enough time to catch a cab, pour myself into bed and be up for the final leg on Southwest the following afternoon. Fortunately, being a Las Vegas institution, the South Point lets you check in as late as 1 a.m.

Oh, and I haven't slept more than five or six hours total since Monday. It's a good thing I don't have to do anything important at my brother's wedding on Sunday as the lack of sleep and jet lag are going to leave me utterly useless.

Become one with the madness

Many barrels of ink and oodles of bandwidth have been spilled bemoaning the chaotic state of Indonesian football. For all that time and energy spent kvetching, though, precious little progress has been made in breaking the lengthy deadlock.

Recent developments offer little hope for a solution. The Indonesian Super League intends to restart despite talks to establish a single top flight, ISL stars who answered call-ups by the Merah Putih have been punished by their clubs and the Indonesian Football Savior Committee (KPSI) plans to establish its own national team. Discord seems to be the status quo.

But perhaps we’re thinking about this the wrong way. The first law of quantitative economics states that “if a lot is good, more is better,” after all, so having twice as much football as other countries can only be a good thing.

Sure, it’s tempting to give in to frustration and demand FIFA finally follow through on its threat to ban Indonesia from international competition, but who does that really hurt? The ISL finished an entire season as a rebel league without any consequences, so FIFA sanctions would have little effect on it. The same cannot be said of the Indonesian Premier League, for which FIFA and Asian Football Confederation recognition are its only meaningful chips in the game.

Instead of continuing to gnash our teeth and rend our garments, let us embrace the chaos. The inertia that keeps the ISL and IPL separate is a boon to so many people. Just think of all the secretaries, assistants and mid-level functionaries who are still in a job thanks to these leagues’ refusal to compromise. Why won’t those job-killers at FIFA think of the mid-level functionaries?

It’s not just the people in the league offices. Twice as many leagues mean twice as many players, club staff and referees – even if receiving a monthly salary is at best a 50-50 proposition for said players and staff. Plus, twice as many roster spots to fill means the average Indonesian’s chances of becoming a professional footballer are twice as good. Why are those cultural imperialists at FIFA trying to crush the dreams of hard-working Indonesians?

Football’s sphere of economic influence spans so much further, though. Twice as many stadium rentals; twice as many security personnel; twice as many passengers for taxis, ojeks and buses; twice as many people selling “unofficial” merchandise at official events; twice as much football on TV to boost ratings – this is a central piece of the Indonesian economy we’re talking about here. Why are those greedheads at FIFA so eager to deprive this emerging economy of its rightful revenue?

Don’t think of this as another example of short-sighted gridlock. Instead, consider it a victory for the grand Indonesian tradition of dialogue ad nauseam. Last week, The Economist said of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, “By doing very little, Indonesia’s president is doing fine.” Like Rome’s Fabius Maximus did to Hannibal of Carthage during the Second Punic War, Indonesia has a chance to bend FIFA to its will and continue reaping the economic benefits of more football as long as it continues to do as little as possible.

It’s not as though FIFA or the AFC have shown much interest in hurrying along the process. The only deadline in the memorandum of understanding signed in June by the KPSI, ISL and Indonesian Football Association (PSSI) involved holding a national congress by the end of this year, and even then it included no sanctions or method of punishment in the event of failure. If the continental and world football governing bodies can’t be bothered to show leadership or demand accountability, it’s no wonder Indonesia’s squabbling factions have found better things to do than fixing the rift in the sport in the months since signing the MoU.

So let’s learn to stop worrying and love the deadlock. Greet this impasse with the same benign resignation used when facing Indonesia’s increasingly traffic-choked streets. After all, having twice as much football can only benefit the people who really matter in this country – bureaucrats.

Small wonder

You know that quaint legal idea of not being able to profit from one's crimes? It hasn't quite caught on here in Indonesia.

A brief from today's Jakarta Globe:

A court in East Kalimantan has sentenced Abdul Hafid Ahmad, the former head of Nunukan district, to two years in prison and fined him Rp 50 million ($5,300) for embezzling Rp 7 billion from the 2004-05 district budget.

The sentence on Monday from the Anti-Corruption Court in Samarinda, the provincial capital, was substanitally lower than the six years and Rp 200 million fine sought by prosecutors.

A demand for him to repay the Rp 7 billion was also turned down, with the court ruling that there was “no proof that Hafid had enjoyed the money.”

After the ruling, Hafid insisted he was innocent and said he would appeal.

In case you're keeping score at home, this guy has to pay $5,300 and spend two years in the clink — which will inevitably be reduced on appeal — but gets to keep the $740,000 he skimmed from the district budget because the prosecution couldn't prove he "enjoyed" it. Small wonder people are so skittish about taking their chances with the Indonesian legal system.

The reason it's a brief rather than a front-page story on an egregious miscarriage of justice is because graft convicts are regularly fined a fraction of the amount they skimmed off for themselves. More often than not, they're not obliged by the courts to return their ill-gotten gains, either. Small wonder Indonesia is one of the countries where graft is most associated with the cost of doing business.

Not that those tasked with enforcing the country's laws are doing themselves any favors. When mayors and district heads can ignore rulings by the Supreme Court and the police can be cowed by the mere threat of violence by religious thugs, small wonder people question how much weight the rule of law really carries in Indonesia.

The things we print

As an expat, and especially as an expat journalist, it is incumbent upon me to learn about the social mores of my country of residence and adjust my expectations and understanding. I like to think I've done a reasonable job of adapting and blending in, or at least as much as a big, hairy bule can in Indonesia.

That said, sometimes bullshit is just bullshit. Every so often, an article comes across the copy desk whose subject matter makes my eyes start twitching again. There is an understanding on the copy desk that local reporters will sometimes tend toward credulity, not asking follow-up questions or poking at a statement that doesn't pass the smell test out of either a deference to authority or a sheer lack of time. These aren't much fun to edit but are often salvageable.

Then there are articles that are just plain bullshit from soup to nuts. We've had our fair share at Globe Towers — from asking feng shui masters and fortune tellers to predict the events of 2012 to profiling spiritual consultants, shamans and a guy who is so close to Allah he can pray away the rain. We've had woo-tacular health stories about acupressure and a "healer" who says he can cure breast cancer with leeches. Seriously.

This week brought a whopper of unprecedented depths. It was on an "aesthetic wellness clinic" with a handful of entertainers singing the praises of homeopathic remedies and other pseudoscience. Homeopathy, let's remember, has yet to show any efficacy past a placebo effect and is based on the principle of water "remembering" what was once in it. The article also quotes the doctor — of what, I shudder to think — pushing various dubious-sounding remedies, including one that "eliminates free radicals from the body and heals many chronic illnesses, such as cancer." [Emphasis mine — ed.]

Then there was this passage, which was just ... ick.

Indonesian singer Marini said she also maintains her excellent physical condition by visiting the clinic.

“I’m so lucky to have come across Nano Philosophy last year,” she said. “The clinic has helped me look and feel good since then.”

The 65-year-old had previously struggled with constipation that led to severe bloating, lethargy and dull facial skin.

“The doctor treated me with Nano cocktails and organic juices,” she said. “After three treatments, I can move my bowels regularly. I’ve never felt so good in my life. My friends also said my skin looks smoother and more supple.”

I raged against this story for hours, though obviously to no avail. At the very least, I did manage to work the word "claims" into the sentence "Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine that assists the body’s natural tendency to heal itself."

We also managed to cut this bit thanks to a space crunch. Pills that give you a six-pack, beat depression, quit smoking and get over a breakup? Where do I sign?!?

“The pills improve my metabolism and make my body leaner,” said Chicco. “I now have a six-pack [abs].” 

Nano Philosophy has a wide range of homeopathic treatments for hormonal imbalance, joint pain, nerve pain and depression.

“For Chicco, we used a cocktail made of laminaria [brown algae] that destroys fat buildup and excretes them through his lymphatic system,” Muliana said.

The clinic also prescribes homeopathic pills for reducing stress, quitting smoking or even getting over a bad breakup. 

“The lovesick remedy is usually prescribed after a relationship breakup or a sudden bereavement,” Muliana said. “It enhances the mood and energizes patients to continue their lives.”

The pills are taken twice daily, in the morning and at night. Muliana would not say how much they cost.

You know what they call alternative medicine that's proven to work? Medicine.

Marbles! You have no marbles!

How craven and limp-wristed has the Jakarta Globe's leadership become? In the paper's latest editorial -- in which it fully supports the canceling of Lady Gaga's concert in Jakarta -- it can't even bring itself to mention the extremist Islamic Defender's Front (or FPI, by its Indonesian acronym) by name. Instead, it dances around the issue of the police caving to threats from radicals and tries to excuse it all with some socio-political hand-waving.

The saga over Lady Gaga’s concert is finally over now that the pop star decided to cancel her Jakarta show. The reason was security concerns and, given the public controversy, it was definitely the right decision.

Certainly her large fan base in Indonesia will be disappointed. It is also unfortunate that the concert was called off due to security concerns. The country’s police had assured both fans and organizers that it would be possible for the show to proceed.

There are larger issues at play, though. Indonesia is a vibrant, diverse democracy and as such the authorities had to take into consideration all voices. It is their job to ensure that all segments of society have their voices heard.

We do not condone the use of violence and threats to allegedly push an agenda. We do not condone breaking the law and damaging property just to make a point, as some groups have allegedly done recently. Such behavior is unwelcome in a democratic, civilized society.

There are, however, many justifiable reasons for opposing acts like Lady Gaga, such as the messages these supposed artists project. It is not about how she dresses, which is needlessly provocative, but about what she sings and the lyrics of her songs. It is about the lack of morality in what she represents.

Youth will typically be rebellious and anti-establishment. But it is also important that we inculcate in them the proper Indonesian values that will put them in good standing when they enter into adulthood.

Given the divisiveness and the controversy created, the decision to cancel Lady Gaga’s show was the correct one. We must all show maturity and understanding about the cultural sensitivities in our communities. We must accept that Indonesian society is different and that we cannot be expected to be as liberal as other societies.

That will be on the Globe's website on Monday, but that kind of awfulness deserves swift and savage mockery. Once this is out, I imagine the roasting it will receive will rival even that given to the Globe's infamous anti-pornography editorial.

[EDIT: Here it is, right on schedule. Doesn't sound like the masses are pleased.]

Reading that tripe, it's hard not to think back to the oft-repeated cry of "special circumstances" one often hears when people bring up Singapore's atrocious record on human rights. It's awfully convenient to argue that Western ideas of democracy and free speech wouldn't work in your special little corner of the globe and that "swift executive action" is needed to prevent disorder at all costs. No wonder Singapore's unofficial national motto is "the world's most welcoming oppressive dictatorship." Or is that "Disneyland with the death penalty?" I can never remember.

A free press? Don't make the PAP laugh. Journalists are just there to assist the government in nation-building. An adversarial relationship wouldn't work in Singapore because, y'know, "special circumstances."

The attitude given off by the new Globe leadership just screams out that they think Indonesia, just like Singapore, should be of the elite, by the elite and for the elite. Even if Golkar retakes the Presidential Palace, though -- and Aburizal Bakrie is certainly behaving as though that's a fait accompli, making officially unofficial visits to Australia and Singapore -- all the yearning and pining won't return Indonesia to the Suharto era, when cronies were handsomely rewarded and dissent was brutally crushed.

Ch-ch-changes

This week is the last for the Jakarta Globe in its current form. I am decidedly uneasy about this, partly because of the direction of the paper and partly because of who is steering the ship. Mostly, though, it's because the paper which I helped get off the ground and at which I've spent my longest tenure is in the midst of its death throes.

Think globally, print locally

I've spent the last week or so covering the international news desk over at Globe Towers. Filling in usually only lasts a day or two, but we're so thinly staffed that even one medium-term absence leaves us scrambling. We muddle through somehow, though, and changes are on the way that will fundamentally rearrange who does what and where.

One nice thing about doing international news is having all the news wires at your fingertips. As I've written previously, the goal is to find interesting articles that tend more toward analysis and insight than spot news, so having AP, AFP, Reuters, Bloomberg, DPA, the Washington Post and the New York Times to pick from is a great help. With one day left until the regular guy returns to his post, I wanted to share some of the more interesting stories I used in the section.

Gutless wonders

The Centers for Disease Control has started a new anti-smoking campaign that relies heavily on shock value. Apparently there's still 20 percent of the American population that either doesn't know smoking is bad for them or just doesn't care.

Why is the CDC apparently pushing the bounds of good taste with its new campaign? Evidently, it works.

The idea behind such ads is to create an image so striking that smokers and would-be smokers will think of it whenever they have an urge to buy a pack of cigarettes, said Glenn Leshner, a University of Missouri researcher who has studied the effectiveness of anti-smoking ads.

Leshner and his colleagues found that some ads are so disturbing that people reacted by turning away from the message rather than listening. So while spots can shock viewers into paying attention, they also have to encourage people that quitting is possible, he said.

This seemed like a great story to run here. After all, 37 percent of high school and university students smoke in Indonesia, and apparently there is no minimum age to buy cigarettes.

Of course, if you're going to run a story about the CDC starting an ad campaign featuring gruesome images of the effects of smoking, it would be best to include one of those images, right? That was my thinking. The decision-making types in the office tonight did like the story, but my chosen image was just too much for them.

Startling, isn't it? That's kind of the point. We ended up using an image of a guy who lost his legs because of Buerger's disease, which was brought on by smoking. Not quite as jarring, or at least if you don't read the print underneath the image.

Would it be churlish of me to point out that every person in the pod tonight was a smoker? Surely not.

It's been fun

Really, it has -- except when it hasn't, which has been fairly frequently these past few weeks. Several recent developments have cemented my stance that this year will be my last in Jakarta.

The Head Swede is gone and the Head Geordie looks set to follow him in December, if not earlier. The newsroom's leading redhead isn't having her contract renewed next month, so that's another pair of hands we'll be short. Is anyone coming in to replace her? No one can say. That's three out of the four people I like who are regularly in the office who are confirmed to be gone at some point this year. We'll also be losing 75 percent of our copy desk in August and have to coach up a whole new bunch ... assuming said bunch actually arrives.

Then there's the paper itself. Fearless Leader is more determined than ever to shoehorn in more of God's Pet Projects into the print product, and his malign influence is spilling over into other sections. Knuckles were rapped after we dared to run an investigative piece as our Sunday cover story rather than yet another day of Charmin-soft coverage of the local jazz festival (which just happens to have one of our publishers on its board of directors). Any pretense of independence is long gone; we're a Parent Company mouthpiece, same as everyone else. I don't care if other outlets in Indonesia have it worse -- that doesn't make our situation any less bad. What's worse, it's hard to care about the product when quality is so clearly secondary to those running this joint.

Oh, and did I mention the bump in my housing allowance I was promised is now off the table? Supposedly there's still a pay increase coming my way ... assuming HR ever puts a contract in front of me to sign. I, not surprisingly, am not hopeful.

I'm not of a mind to deal with this anymore -- not that I can't, but I won't. I've given this place twice as long as I've given any other full-time employer, but enough is enough. Anyone who's paying attention knows we're being stripped down and turned into a slightly more colorful version of our main competitor (and it's not because they're wildly successful -- it's because they're cheap). That's as good a signal as any that it's time to move on. I'll miss a handful of people here, but I definitely won't miss Jakarta, our management or having the rest of the organization actively working against us. I need to look out for myself, and that starts with removing myself from a bad situation.

Days like these

More often than not, each day at work is a reminder of why I need to get out of newspapers. We're chronically short of help, experienced staff members are being let go because they're "too expensive" or have crossed the wrong Indonesian and, as has been detailed here, this place is run at times like a clown college. Each day is a race to overcome the hurdles put in our path, make the paper look as good as possible and beat deadline -- usually achieving the latter by a hair's breadth.

Even so, there are occasions that remind me why I stick around and offer me the kind of creative challenge I think would be hard to duplicate in another profession. Yesterday was just such a day.

Initially I was scheduled to cover for the sports editor, who had his day off, and move over to check editing once the section was clear. At about 2:30 p.m., though, I get a text message from the Head Geordie, saying our international news guy has "food poisoning" and asking if I can cover for him, too. Such occasions are why they keep me around, of course, so I brave Big Durian traffic with an even more persistent gnawing feeling in my stomach (and not just because I'm out of PopTarts). Making matters worse, one of our two sports reporters is also off and the other is indisposed because God's Own College Basketball Team is playing that night, meaning it's a political necessity for us to cover it.

In addition to the oh-so-pressing matter of Indonesian college basketball, there's also Persipura Jayapura's Asian Champions League playoff at Adelaide United and the Indonesian men's and women's badminton teams trying to qualify for their world team championships. With no other hands to go around, the task of writing those stories falls in my lap. Persipura's 4 p.m. Jakarta time kickoff and straightforward loss was helpful, as was the Indonesian women doing as expected and getting swept by China. What was supremely unhelpful was South Korea taking the Indonesian men to the limit, with four of the five matches going to three sets before Indonesia pulled out a 3-2 win. With Macau only an hour ahead of our time, B book didn't get put to bed until 10:45 p.m. or so.

One thing I try to do when slotting a section, regardless of how many I'm juggling, is to lean more toward analysis pieces and features. The print product can't really keep up with radio, TV or the Internet in terms of immediacy, so it only makes sense to think more like a magazine and keep the spot news to just the biggest events of the day (Syria, Iran, etc.). Fortunately I had Jason Reid's column on Jeremy Lin, Taiwan's embrace of Linsanity and Human Rights Watch calling out Saudi Arabia to demand that it allow women to compete in the Olympics. In international, spot news like Ban Ki-moon raising the specter of crimes against humanity in Syria and Iranian would-be bombers getting arrested in Thailand and Malaysia were surrounded by less timely looks at Xi Jinping's return to Muscatine, Iowa, the upcoming Communist Party succession in Beijing, Burmese exiles returning home, a horrific prison fire in Honduras and Italian women pushing for better workplace equality in the post-Berlusconi era.

Agate formatted, two stories written and five pages worth of sports and news slotted, edited and proofed -- all by 11:45 p.m. I even had time to check edit a few local news stories and help proof A1. I'm not posting this to big myself up or claim that I'm indispensable to the newsroom; rather, it's mostly to help me decompress and avoid having to bore my parents with my office escapades when I call. A new senior copy editor is supposed to arrive next week, so hopefully there won't be any days like these in the future.

Human resources

Meet the new HR department, same as the old HR department.

That promotion that was coming my way? They don't know anything about that. Those improved terms that came with said promotion? News to them. This month's housing allowance? "Lost."

Human resources, where the people are neither human nor resourceful.

Sitting in limbo

Around this time of year, people like to examine their lives and make New Year's resolutions in an attempt to better themselves and their situation. I've long since dropped the habit of making resolutions, but I do think it's an opportune time to reassess where I am and where I want to go from here. Of course, it's a bit difficult to make decisions on where to go when the people on whom you rely for clarity are loathe to share even the tiniest shred of information.

Christmas Sweet

Yes, I'm riffing on a Mannheim Steamroller track. What of it?

The New Zealand photos I promised a while back have been posted on my Facebook page. For those who know how to get to those, tuck in. For those who don't ... oops. You'd have to be a friend anyway, so don't feel too bad.

Christmas was pretty low-key around here -- we already had that Saturday off of work, and we had to be back in the office on Sunday to put out the Monday paper (despite that day being a public holiday). I decided to spend Christmas Eve at the Intercontinental Hotel's dinner that evening, as I had done for the past couple years. Most everyone I asked had other plans, but the nice people pictured below agreed to accompany me.

The food, as usual, was outstanding. Seafood of all shapes and sizes, turkey, ham, steak, yams, other non-yam vegetables, salads and desserts ... man, the desserts. What you see here -- cheesecake, egg nog cheesecake, coconut cake, carrot cake, strawberry mille feuille, rasperry tart, mango mousse, apple crumble and pumpkin pie -- is only a sampling of what was on offer.

I also managed to finally knock out a story that was weighing on my brain during the whole New Zealand trip. Tom Byer, Japan's youth soccer development guru and a fellow American expat, is considering taking on the mess that is Indonesia for his next challenge. Even at 900-plus words, the article itself is a small fraction of the great stuff I got from Tom and Bob Hippy (yes, that is his real name). When Tom said during our talk that I should help him write his book, I'm pretty sure he was only half-kidding.

PSSI's chickens come home to roost

My unabridged commentary piece on Indonesia's World Cup qualifier with Iran and all the nonsense surrounding it. The piece itself got kicked around a bit, what with the sports front being redesigned twice tonight. Enjoy!

----------------

Indonesian Football Association officials watching Tuesday’s World Cup qualifier against Iran must have been proud.

After all, everything on display at Gelora Bung Karno was the culmination of their five months in charge of the country’s favorite sport.

The half-fit players, the nearly empty stands, the choppy pitch at the national stadium — all that and more is the legacy of chairman Djohar Arifin Husin and the new leadership at the association known as the PSSI. All the hand-waving and attempts to deflect blame that will inevitably follow should not obscure the fact that those in charge of Indonesian football have not put the country in position to succeed.

It should come as no surprise that the drumbeat to replace Wim Rijsbergen as coach of the senior national team is already underway. Like his predecessor Alfred Riedl, the Dutchman ruffled feathers when he made the apparent mistake of calling attention to the miasma of indiscipline, arrogance and entitlement surrounding the national team and the PSSI.

Rijsbergen has since moderated his tone, but his point remains the same. While he has not criticized his players in public, he has walked up to that line, informing the press on multiple occasions of the stories he could tell but not elaborating in the interest of “protecting the players.”

What he refuses to say speaks just as loudly, though.

“If there is no discipline outside the field, it’s impossible to be disciplined on the field.” “There must be a lot of talent in a country with 240 million people that is willing to be 100 percent professional.”

Those are not the words of a manager who feels he can rely on his players to show up — on time and sober — when called up to the national team.

To the PSSI, though, what outside observers see as legitimate gripes are just another example of a mouthy bule. Reports have emerged that Djohar will consider Rijsbergen’s position after the Southeast Asian Games, and rest assured that succession plans are already in place.

While the names at the PSSI may have changed, the organization itself is still a political beast and it is not difficult to pick out the favorite son. After the Indonesian Super League finished in June, the Under-23 team coached by Rahmad Darmawan played 16 friendlies ahead of the Games, a youth competition in an event unknown outside this region.

The senior team, which was trying to qualify for the World Cup — the pinnacle of football — played just three times. One of those was against the U-23 team, while the other two needed PSSI and government officials to call in favors to line up friendlies against Palestine and Jordan.

Somewhere along the way, the country that once boasted of plans to host the World Cup decided trying to qualify for the tournament was just too much of a hassle.

That Rahmad is in line to succeed Rijsbergen is beyond doubt. The question is how Djohar and his cronies will justify the switch. Lack of success? Not bringing new talent into the team? Unless the Dutchman’s brief includes uniting the political factions tearing Indonesian football asunder and reviving the domestic league, those charges are unfair.

Too expensive? Making a change would leave the PSSI paying for Riedl, Rijsbergen and the new coach. Poor crowds? It was the PSSI that signed off on the hostile takeover of Persija Jakarta, whose Jakmania supporters make up the bulk of Indonesia’s crowds at Gelora Bung Karno, and spurred the boycott that has left so many seats unfilled.

Indonesia has had six managers since 2000, not including repeat appearances by Ivan Kolev and Benny Dollo. Putting another new face on the senior team’s bench will do little to address the systemic problems holding back the nation.

Most of those problems are long-term concerns, though, and the current leadership would struggle to organize a bake sale. For now, the best thing the PSSI could do is focus on restarting the domestic league. Sacking Rijsbergen and denying any culpability on its part for Indonesian football’s woes will only further entrench a rotten status quo.