James’ World

Spent most of March, 2005 in Indonesia. Flew China Airlines from SFO to Taipei to Jakarta. Had a nice chat with an Indonesian maid returning from Taiwan to Indonesia. Both her and her husband work overseas for years at a time to save money while her grandmother raises their daughter. Read the manual for my new Olympus D-575 digital camera ($99 at Fry’s.) Then flew Garuda from JKT to Medan.

Medan, Sumatra

Second visit to Medan in a year …
Stayed at Garuda Plaza Hotel (4-star, $100/nite, free wireless in lounge) which is popular with Indonesian celebrities, and Hotel Sumatra (3-star, $20/nite for PH) which is popular with locals.
Talked to commercial pilots in GPH lounge. (No shortage of pilot jobs with the deregulation.)
Medan was still short of hotel rooms because of the Aceh aid effort. For example, the Novotel Soechi was completely full thanks to the Swiss forces.

Bought a 2 month-old Nokia 3220 GSM color camera phone with EGRPS at Milennium Plaza (3 floors of new and used cell phones!) for 1.6 million Rp. (about $170).

Spent a day in Parapat, Danau Toba enjoying the beautiful scenery on the water.
Worked out in Danau Toba Fitness Center a few times.
Went to the Gleneagles International Hospital and got an ankle MRI for $105.00 and 3 fillings replaced for $66 by an Australian-trained dentist.
Spent a lot of time playing with the new digital camera.

Surabaya, Java

First time in Surabaya …
Flew here on Star Air, one of the new post-deregulation air carriers.
Pretty unremarkable city, although the second largest in Indonesia.
Stayed at Garden Plaza Hotel (4-star, $50/nite). Beautiful view from upper levels.
Got new business cards printed in Tunjungan Plaza for $2, indo MP3s and saw Blade Trinity.
Tunjungan Plaza has an arcade area. The highlight is a 40-computer network for Counterstrike. It was completely booked.
A Chinese businessman (seafood) said there was a gaming center in Jakarta with 400 computers!
Went to Malang and Batu for an afternoon. I understand to relieve the boredom, Surabaya
residents travel to Malang every weekend, and vice versa.
Bonus was a demonstration to protest the visit of Megawati to a conference at the hotel.

Bali

Flew on Star Air again.
Spent about a week at the Bali Seaview Cottage (4-star, $40/nite) on Kuta Drive adjacent to Kuta Beach. Very nice, style is Balinese architecture temple entrance with beach bungalow-style cottages.

Spent a day visiting business advisory companies. Kantor Kita is a combined legal services and employment agency. Typically a business owner pays KK an average of $600/month for English-speaking professional staff (accountants, graphics artists, etc.) KK currently has about 200 staffers.

Planned a photographic day trip for next time.

Went to my favorite foto printing shop and played with my digital camera and XD memory chip on their computer for a few hours. Printed about 200 photos and made a backup on CD-ROM. Might have spent $30 total.

Jakarta

Stayed in a hotel on Jalan Jaksa for a few days. This street is a famous tourist hangout centrally located only a few blocks from Sarinah Plaza, Plaza Indonesia/Mall EX.
Talked to an engineer about development in Indonesia. He mentioned opening an ISP is proscribed, despite the dire need for business-class ISP services in the country.
Worked out a few times at the Ibis Hotel.
And of course spent some time at the wonderful Mall EX, adjacent to Plaza Indonesia.
Tried to extend return ticket, but China Airlines couldn’t help - fully booked.
Couldn’t fill the 512 MB XD memory on my digital camera … 400 shots and still only half-full!

Bought a 2 month-old Nokia 3220 GSM color camera phone with EGRPS at Milennium Plaza (has 3 floors of new and used cell phones!) for 1.6 million Rp. (about $170). You need a Telkomsel Simpati SIM (or one other affiliated company) to use EGPRS (not fast, but not too slow either). It also has primitive video display features, etc. Pretty much the top-of-the-line traditional stick phone from Nokia. It’s a good conversation piece in cell phone-obsessed Indonesia. For most people the 3200 camera phone would be considered a sufficiently deluxe model.

In Indonesia, nobody owns a home computer. Instead cell phones are used for communications (voice and text), image capture and transmission. Most shopping malls have at least one entire floor of cell phone retailers. It’s amazing to see 200 or so dealers in one mall.

The Nokia 7500 is popular with businessmen and government leaders. A telecom engineer on a Star Air flight told me he bought a 7500 because he could create page-long SMS messages or Excel spreadsheets on it and send them to his colleagues while on the road. Waiting is a fact-of-life in Indonesia, whether waiting in a traffic jam, waiting for a bus, or waiting for a plane, so I can see his point.

Users usually send SMS messages rather than make voicecalls because SMS messages are only 350 Rp each (4 cents). People who make a lot of voicecalls generally use a GSM phone for SMS and a CDMA phone for voice.

Cell phones with basic digital cameras, like the Nokia 3200, are very popular. Many Indonesians come from large extended families and enjoy photographing each other. But Indonesians lust over phones that display full motion video. There’s not much video content around, but I guess the possibility is enticing. You can bet that just everybody with a $500 video-capable phone has a 30-second 160×120 pixel 8-bit color adult clip on there to demonstrate to their friends.

Doing a little medical tourism in Medan, Sumatra, today. My foot has been bothering me after a bike accident, so might as well take a picture with the MRI machine here. Gleneagles Hospital is an impressive, newish building in Medan. The hospital is operated by a Singapore company. No lineup, $100 for any body part you like.

My total cost at the hospital was:

Free Referral from hospital doctor for MRI
$ 1 register at hospital
$100 MRI of foot (took 1 hour)
$ 10 Doctor to interpret it
$ 40 Celebrex (recommended by Doctor)
Free Doctor for second opinion
===
$151 Total

In the USA, that would be about $2,000. Doctor Robinson in San Jose said he would have requested a different MRI signal for the foot to show specific tissues, but no complaints about the picture otherwise. He said I should wear shoe insoles.