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Last night I took my new camera out for the first time.  Of course I hadn’t familiarized myself with anything, so I just put it to automatic mode and snapped away (= mostly blurry photos, must do better next time)

This is what happened at Paola’s birthday party in Jakarta, Febuary 22, 2013.

Some of it.

Needless to say, I wasn’t the most popular party guest. I was the creepy person taking candid shots. Thanks everyone, what a crowd!

Oh, this also happend:

I stole the title “Harlem Cake” from him.

All photos by @texastee

We danced. For women, against violence, for equality, against discrimination, or something.

Strike, dance, rise.

Dinda.

Jump!

She was the best dancer.

The organizer took a minute to smile at me before an interview.

Ibu Mardiyah Chamim.

Metro TV crew.

Friends.

She did not want to be photographed.

These guys rolled up.

He was sketching.

Rainbow dancers.

We met in the crowd, smiled at each other, took this photo and each went our way.

Pose!

<3

Strike, dance and rise.

All photos by @texastee at V-Day Jakarta

Pulau Macan – Working towards a small “sustainable” island community

Part of what I love about living in Indonesia is that I have friends here who have created unconventional careers for themselves. One of these friends is Roderick, he runs a small Eco-Resort on a tiny island just 1.5 hours off the Jakarta harbor.

This island, Pulau Macan or Tiger Islands, is a speck in the clutter of islands called “Thousand Islands“. In reality, there are about 120. Less than 10 of them have tourist resorts on them, most of them are uninhabited, and some of them have larger island populations of up to a couple of thousand people. Even though they are easily accessible by speedboat from Jakarta for a weekend trip, they have not been that popular with tourists.

Some of these islands are privately “owned” (long-term-leased from the government) oftentimes by wealthy businesspeople who rarely ever make it out to “their” island and usually have a caretaker family looking after it. Tiger Island is one of those islands, it´s owner however agreed to let my friend Roderick rent and manage the island into an Eco-Resort that would be attractive enough for tourists from Jakarta.

This was about 4 years ago, and Tiger Island is now mostly booked out during weekends with a capacity of up to 40 people, and is still quite busy during weekdays. In these years, Pulau Macan has evolved from a tiny island with a few run-down buildings on it into a beautiful weekend getaway for the eco-conscious, with a form of open air lab for green technologies attached.

On my last visit I asked Drigo to give me a tour of the status quo of the island´s eco technologies.

Energy

The island was dependant on importing gasoline from the mainland or other islands in order to power its generator. Importing gallons of gasoline on boats which in turn run on gasoline is, as one can imagine, costly and ineffective. This may have been ok when there was only one family living, but would become increasingly more difficult with more and more guests visiting the island.

One of the major improvements for the island was the investment in a “stand alone” solar panel system which charges up batteries when the sun is bright and makes this energy available at night and on overcast days.

Solar panels on jetty

To install the system was not cheap, but since it offers a  free source of energy and the technology is guaranteed for up to 10 years, it can be easily calculated that the investment pays back.

The "battery pack". Excess energy is stored during the day, converted and released by night if needed

The island requires about 200 Watts of energy during the day, this mainly to run kitchen appliances such as the fridge, and 1000 watts at night, when all lights are on.

Currently 80% of the island´s energy needs can be covered by the solar panels. The rest still needs to be supplemented by generator. A way of improving this might be the successive exchange of energy saving lightbulbs to LED and the installment of an additional power source such as a wind turbine. Or simply more solar panels?

Water

The other major issue on the island is water. This encompasses the freshwater needed for drinking, showering and washing, as well as the management of wastewater on the island.

Rainwater collecting system

Like gasoline, fresh and drinking water needs to be imported from the main land or neighboring islands. Pulau Macan does not have a well.

Bamboo pipe system drains rainwater off roofs and filters it into a large container

To ease the need for expensive water, a simple rain water collecting system was installed. Basically rain is cought in drainage pipes off the roofs of the larger buildings. The water is transportet through an above-ground bamboo piping system and filtered into a large drum. However, in the process the water picks up particles from the bamboo and disintegrating leaves, so that the water is eventually not clean enough to supply guest huts, due to brownish color that is in itself not harmful but looks unhealthy.

The rainwater collected is momentarily used for watering the island and cleaning around the house and boats.

Right now, only a small percentage of potential rain water is collected, which makes sense since its use is so limited. Fresh water still needs to be imported for drinking, cooking and showering. If a way was found of storing more and cleaner rainwater, this might reduce the need for the island to import fresh water significantly.

Wastewater management

The water from showers and sinks is captured, filtered, and reused for watering the gardens. This requires the use of biodegradable, non-harmful chemicals in soaps, shampoos and detergents.

The toilets don´t factor into the use of fresh water, because they flush with salt water from the sea.

Most of the wastewater from the toilets is captured in septic tanks. One pilot toilet so to speak, has a more sophisticated “artificial wetland” attached to it.

artificial wetlands - here saltwater version with baby mangroves

In this system, the (salty) wastewater seeps through a series of gravel/sand/coral/pineleaves filled tanks, and on top of these mangrove plants grow, freeing the water from some of the harmful nutrients before the waste water seeps back out into the sea.

Ecology

Compost and Gardens

Kitchen wastes are composted in deisgnated areas around the island.  This compost is used in the gardens…

..

Growing some aloe vera, chillies and papaya

… however, the gardens are still the problem child of the island, at is has been very difficult to grow anything substantial so far, most likely due to the overall high salinity of the soil or an acidity problem which might stem from the many pineleaves from surrounding trees.

Compost pit and chicken playground

The compost pits are a favorite with the island chicken, which roam around freely and dig happily in the dirt. Their job is to hunt for worms and centipedes, which can become a nuisance if they have no natural enemy. Some mice were also introduced to the island to help with the hunt for centipedes. The mice in turn are hunted by the local monitor lizard and some hawks and owls.

Driftwood

A lot of dirftwood reaches the thousand islands, and Roderick and his team occasionally collect driftwood on the beaches of the neighboring islands.

Roderick on a pile of wood

A lot of the island furniture is made out of the driftwood that finds its way there. It makes the interior of each hut unique, like in this beautiful open air, ocean facing coral hut.

Some ideas

Pulau Macan is not a zero-carbon footprint self-sustainable miracle yet. But I do find 80% of energy use from solar pretty impressive. I guess made possible by the fact that very little energy is needed, especially during the day.

Some ideas are floating around, still waiting to be imeplemented and tested.

1. Would planting in a greenhouse environment lead to better results? The soil might be healthier, and pine leaves would be kept out. Should be easy to try on a small scale.

2. A fish farm would be an obvious asset. Right now fish is bought on farms on neighboring islands. Fishing in the waters surrounding the islands is not advisable, since they are already largely overfished.

3. Windturbine to assist the solar panels. There´s always a nice breeze.

4. Of course: algae farm. As additional food source and fertilizer? Or even energy source?

5. Live there? The obvious major flaw to the eco-conscious mind is that you still need to get out there, usually on a gas-eating speedboat. Yea, you could sail, but this takes too long for a weekend trip. Of course living there longer term and cutting back on the number of trips to the mainland would help. 3G connection is pretty stable…

Three weeks now since my arrival in Jakarta! The shockwave of being transplanted has passed, and I am starting to grow new little roots.

Here are some of the topics that have kept me busy:

Apartment Search

In the past, whenever I visited Jakarta I always had a place to go to, either my mom’s house or my sister’s. Now that both of them no longer live here, I have to establish my own homebase. Which is easier said then done. None of my friends are currently looking for a shared-house situation, and none of them had a spare room to rent out. Just bad luck.

Apartments, as it turns out, are pretty expensive. Everything is expensive after living in Berlin. Of course there are many people here who earn MUCH less than I do. And how do they get by? Surely there must be an affordable lifestyle? Yea there is. But this involves staying in the house of your family, having a two hour commute to work – one way – and not being able to participate in much of what the city has to offer. Being poor here is damn tough. And if you want to keep up a lifestyle of barhopping, visiting friends in other neighborhoods on a regular basis, living close to work and eating well, this is costly.

Back to the apartment search. In the end, I found a little place, not much more than 30m2, in an apartment complex. I will pay more rent than for my 135m2 (shared) flat in Berlin. But I will have the luxury of having access to a large pool area, sauna, tennis courts and gym and a marble lobby with 24hr security. That’s the thing. Glamorous or poor (the real poor, not the Berlin coquettish kind of poor) The in-between is there, but hard to find.

I call it rat´s nest - my new home

Work

Work has been a wild ride, so far! Goethe-Instiut Indonesia is buzzing with action. There’s exhibitions, concerts, movie screenings and other events going on several times a week. Add a number of web-products such as a jazz community, a comic platform, the house-own facebook page and web pages into the equation, some of them requiring coordination with other countries in the region, and you can tell I will be very busy. As “PR coordinator” my job is to help the team to make what’s going on at the GI visible and tangible, with a special focus on strengthening that part of PR which is interactive, networked, and community-driven.

I will dedicate separate posts to what I experience and learn at my workplace. For now, all I can say is: truly awesome colleagues, exiting topics and a huge challenge ahead.

News

The fun part about moving is being exposed to different set of news and discourses. This is a rough rundown of some of the headlines and quirky news items that have been floating around as sort of ambient information:

Traffic, traffic, traffic. Jakartans talk about traffic like others about the weather. The hopeless congestions have made life in the capital extremely stressful. There´s a mayorship election coming up, and for sure a new mayor will have to address this. Newspapers are dedicating whole series to the subject of (failed) transportation- and city-planning.

Related to that has been a news item of viral qualities: Minister for “State-Owned Enterprises” Dahlan, angered by the fact that he was waiting in a long queue to enter the toll road, while only two of the toll booths were operational, got out of his car and ushered cars through the gates – without paying – himself.

And I don’s know it it’s just coincidence, I find the news strangely gruesome here. For instance the case of 3 Indonesian workers killed in Malaysia. Apparently they were shot by Malaysian police for unclear reasons, trespassing of some sort. As if that’s not enough, it was suggested that the bodies may have had organs removed, implying that this may have been a case of intentional murder for organs. I haven’t really followed up on this story and have not yet heard a conclusion or fact clearance. The whole story was all speculation and hair-raising quasi-facts.

Another crazy random news item was that a Dutch man set himself on fire in front of the Dutch Embassy in Jakarta. Another minister (or rather the deputy-minster for energy natural resources) died mysteriously on a trekking tour. There has been a series of deadly shoot-outs in Bandung (the city my mom lives in). Two Russian men (one of them a yoga teacher in Bali) were caught at the airport with a couple of dozen capsules with hash (!) in their stomachs.

On a more serious note: the book presentation by a canadian author, invited to talk about her book on (liberal) Islam at cultural centre Salihara, was stopped by the police because a protesting mob was getting out of control. The main cause of protest was the fact that the author is a lesbian. Ugh. Shouldn’t the police have protected her rather than stopping the event?

And, of course, there was the Sukhoi place crash. This has pretty much dominated all TV channels the past days.

Before I moved into my new place, I took the train to work. Lucky I did not have to get into this one, mine was never quite a crowded.

Events and People

In my spare time, between work and apartment search, there’s even been time to check out a few things. I was at the small gallery of panna foto for a talk about photography and social media. I went to watch a special avengers screening organized by the Indonesian Marvel community. Full costume!

I went to the Jakarta edition of Pecha Kucha (which still lives on after I introduced it here in 2008!!). There I encountered Jakarta’s graffiti and street art hero Darbotz, was introduced to the Indonesian Spreadshirt and learned that there will soon be an Indonesian kickstarter. And so many more cool initiatives.

To my (and my spine’s) relief, there’s a pretty good yoga studio not far from my office with classes after work hours almost every day. So even that’s taken care of. I have managed to to 1-2 times a week.

And of course I went to some parties and bars, locations and friends I already know well from previous visits. All in all, 3 exciting and action packed weeks.

Night market at Fatahila

Just had a chat with my flatmate who told me about his sister’s new dog, Kadu. Kadu is a Vizsla, a sporting dog commonly used for hunting, with genetic origins in Hungaria.

Source: WIkipedia

Vizslas are bred to near-perfection for their hunting job: they are well mannered, loyal, extremely intelligent, have extremely good sense of smell and direction and practically thrive on being trained and executing tasks. In Kadu’s case, he will be trained to be a falconer’s dog – and this is where me and my flatmate started to get confused. What exactly is a dog’s role in falconry? Heck, how does falcon hunting work anyway?

point, hover, scare, hit and retrieve

Turns out, falconry is a complex collaboration effort between bird, dog, and human. The dog’s job is to sniff out and locate the prey, typically a pheasant or other fowl. The dog then “points” in the direction of the prey, letting the human know it is time to get the falcon (or hawk, or eagle) ready. The falconer lifts off the falcon’s blindfold and lets the bird soar into the sky. When the bird is in the right position, hovering above the dog, the dog gets the signal from the human to go and scare out the prey. As the prey tries to escape by flying off, the falcon immediately detects it and plunges from the sky to make the kill. Now the falconer summons back the bird (it is conditioned to do so, knowing that it will get fed), and the dog wraps up the job my retrieving the kill carefully and handing it over to the human.

Honestly, how amazing is that? As a born-and-bred big city girl it is hard for me to imagine how such a perfect cooperation between entirely different species could have been thought of, much less achieved through training by making the most of each species’ unique capabilities.

Add a horse into the equation – a human on a horse, travelling long distances, with the dog at the horse’s heels and the falcon on the human’s shoulder. A pretty impressive team.

Now I am not a fan of hunting, but I guess I find it ok that some people care about preserving this tradition of falconry. It seems to me to be more of a sport and interspecies bonding exercise, not a senseless wild chase with the goal of killing a maximum amount of living flesh.

Eagles can kill wolves, too

So while in most falconry the prey is fowl, in Mongolia people have trained golden eagles to hunt wolves. The eagle is released once the wolf is spotted. It drops down onto the wolf from above, grabbing its spine with one claw and the snout with the other, immobilizing it. The hunter then comes to finish the wolf off.

Animals as tools

Of course rifles and other tools have long surpassed dog, bird and horse in the efficiency to fulfill certain tasks. But still fun to think about what humans have achieved by making animals their tools, breeding for certain traits, training them by gaining knowledge about what the animal wants and how it can be persuaded to do certain tasks while still making sure it stays happy and healthy. Now add a little genetic engineering, more sophisticated training and conditioning methods and who knows we might end up with the next generation of self-replicating super precise power tools…

Loved this piece of sciency news today: common fruit flies, apparently, can survive being frozen at -5° Celsius for more than an hour, continuing development regularly afterwards and even producing healthy offspring.

cc by Joe Jimbo

One simple trick made this possible: the fruit fly larvae were fed a mixture of an amino acid called L-proline and glycerol. Both components act as cryoprotectants. Researches got the idea after they found out that an arctic variety of drosophila produce this amino acid to withstand the cold. The arctic flies are in fact so good at it that they can survice being dipped into liquid nitrogen (!), that’s about -196°Celsius.

How absolutely cool is that? Thinking this further, Does this mean that soon all those deep-freeze fantasies, allowing humans to preserve their bodies to be awoken several years, sometimes hundreds if years later, will soon become reality?!

There’s one possible application of the cryoprotectant amino acid L-proline which could become useful in the not-so-distant future: to preserve organs just a little longer before transplantation.

cc by Shanghai Daddy

Whoever has been to Jakarta knows how it is to be stuck in traffic. Epic, hopeless congestions will make you want to tear your hair out, especially if you are trying to get home after a long day and you KNOW your home is – in theory – only a few kilometres away.

Unfortunately, Jakarta does not have a rail-based public transport system like tram, underground or similar. The only other means of getting around slightly faster is… by motorbike. Because bikes can weave though the traffic and thus get to the next traffic light just ahead of the pack.

cc by tb smith

DIY motorbike taxi

Jakartans have known this for a long time, and unsurprisingly, Jakarta’s streets are full of motorbikes;  in fact I believe they are key contributors to the traffic problem, but let’s leave that aside for now.

Motorbikes are pretty affordable, and a small industry has sprung up around the idea of motorbike taxis. Normally, the way this works is that some motorbike-owning emang with not much to do offers his services to whoever happens to walk past. This type of informal, unlicensed transportation service is called “ojek”.

Motorbike taxis clearly have potential, but most of the wealthier Jakartans are reluctant to use this service. Of course, riding a motorbike means being exposed to heat and rain, to smog and dust. It is not very safe and the average ojek driver isn’t necessarily experienced or well trained.

Go-Jek

Smart move of Jakarta based starup Go-Jek to tackle that problem. Of course they can’t away take the heat and dust, but their mission is to make ojek smarter, safer and more convenient by providing a more formalized service. However, instead of putting new drivers and bikes on the street, they choose to work with already existing drivers that are selected by 3 criteria: their experience, their reliability and whether they have a valid drivers’ license. The call-an-ojek hotline now makes it possible to give drives additional rides, leading to less idle time. (App to follow soon, I hope!)

This is what their website looks like. Apart from transporting people, Go-Jek also offers courier services for goods.

So simple, so brilliant! Go-Jek has received quite a lot of attention, also from international media such as this time magazine video and won numerous Indoensian business innovation awards.

On my next visit, I will definitely use this service.

A typical trip from Kemang (South Jakarta) to Menteng (Central Jakarta) would cost me 40,000 IDR, which is about 3.8 Euros. By car, this trip could easily take 60-90 minutes. By bike, perhaps half that time.

I have to say it is rather expensive (a regular taxi ride would not be that much more), but if I get there way faster it may still be worth it. I hope Go-Jek has plans to provide training and more long-time security for drivers under its program as the company grows.

The Winner

To those who missed it: Last Thursday we had a great award ceremony, we chose this guy Robin Sukroso (aka Rainer Hirl) out of the three finalists as our trustee.

His plan is to build a simpler, ready to plug in version of his custom made techno guitar. We think he’s amazingly talented and his idea has a real potential. We hope you like our choice!

Runner Up

Rebecca Loyche‘s project is an installation called “circadian project”. It’s basically a room full of light. She says lights like these are used for therapeutic purposes to treat depression, especially in the nordic countries where going without daylight for weeks has bad effects on your health. She proposed to create this room as a public space, a place you can go to to recharge your batteries in winter.

Rebecca Loyche - Circadian Project

Runner Up

The third finalist was Dickon Stone, an adorable guy who lets bugs compose music. His project Bug Box Drum Machine is a type of installation, a white canvas which attracts bugs at night. As these bugs fly around they hit sensors which in turn trigger various drum samples.

He explains this idea comes out of something of a Zen approach to music, letting the ego of the composer step back and instead using the intellect to let nature’s beauty shine.

Dickon has made a similar instrument called “Bees in a Sitar” – using the hollow of a sitar to house bees and enabling them to create sounds.

Awesome Berlin is back on February 2, 2012, applications start now! (open until Jan. 25th 2012)

The  Awesome Fund Berlin is a EUR 1,000 grant awarded several times a year to a truly awesome project taking place in or around Berlin. The Award winner will receive the money upfront in cash, in a brown paper bag. This grant is provided with no strings attached and claims no ownership over the projects it supports. Its sole purpose is to help make awesome ideas happen.

Who can apply?

Anyone can apply if they have an awesome idea and if they’re sure they can pull it off. It is hard to define awesome, but we’re sure you know what we mean. We’re looking for ideas that are unseen,  captiavitng, and that manage to inspire audiences.

How?

• go here: http://awesomefoundation.org/submissions/new
• Choose Berlin Chapter
• Fill out the application form
• Send!
The Trustees of the Berlin Awesome Foundation review all applications and will contact three applicants to make it on to the shortlist. These three finalists are invited to present their project in a short 5-minute talk at the day of the award ceremony at Betahaus, Prinzessinnenstr. 19, Feb. 2, 2012, 9.30am. The Trustees will  announce their decision shortly after the presentations. The winner takes home the brown paper bag with EUR 1,000 cash.

Previously funded by Awesome

Birdhouse building workshop and turning election campaign posters into birdhouses flashmob – coordinated by Jay Cousins

Parts of Graffiti Research Lab Germany’s Light Rider projection bike