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

Took these on my way to work today, ca. 9am. Bunderan HI and Menteng area.

<Edit: this is just in my area, which can be considered the central business hub of Jakarta with the main roads and office towers. Now wading knee deep in water and watching traffic chaos unfold may make it sound like fun rather than a real disaster, but other areas were far worse hit, with entire streets drowned, houses flooded and electricity shut off.>

Looks like it is starting: the websites of the film “The Act of Killing” as well as the film production company behind it  (Edit: “Jagal” is the Indonesian title) Jagalfilm.com, can no longer be accessed (from Indonesia)

Joshua Oppenheimer, the film´s director, tweets on Fr. January 11

Director Joshua Oppenheimer first asked followers to test from various devices and locations, and two days later, on Sunday, January 13 at 16:01 WIB Detik.net came out with an article opening up speculation about who might be behind the blocking.

Here is my rough translation of that article:

Has the website of the controversial film “The Act of Killing” been blocked?

Ardhi Suryadhi - detikinet

Jakarta – the site that hosts the controversial film ‘The Act of Killing’ by Joshua Oppenheimer is reportedly not accessible any more. After it has been tested from various providers, it seems like the site at http://theactofkilling.com/ is no longer online as it should be.

This is what the filmmaker, Joshua Oppenheimer states: “Interesting. Many report that the site #TheActofKilling/#Jagal can not be accessed without redirection via a proxy” he writes on twitter.

“It seems that http://jagalfilm.com & http://theactofkilling.com can no longer be acessed from Indonesia. Who did this?,” Oppenheimer continues.

Besides the director, other twitterers directed questions regarding the unavailability of the website of the film that was screened at Toronto Film Festival towards the Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Tifatul Sembiring.

“Hey Mr. @tifsembiring, why can´t the website of the act of killing not be opened? What´s wrong? Is this on purpose?” asks another twitterer.

“If this happened on the order of Menkominfo, they have to explain their reasons. Thus far, blocking is only allowed for porn sites, gambling and blasphemy,” says Megi Margiyono, a cyber law specialist from Indonesia Online Advocacy (IDOLA)

The film The Act of Killing’  that was shown at Toronto Film Festival tells the story of the situation after the “30 September 1965 movement”. It shows the involvement of Medan youth in the killings of suspected PKI members.

In the film, one of the executioners is Anwar Congo. Anwar confesses that he was involved in the killings, but because the situation was dangerous. He reasons that if at that time he had not killed PKI members, he himself would have been killed.

A Response by MenKomInfo appeared on br68h.com as of SUNDAY, 13 JANUARY 2013 20:19

Here is my rough translation of that article:

Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (Kominfo) denies blocking the website of „The Act of Killing“

KBR68H, Jakarta - The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (Kominfo) denies having blocked access to the website of „The Act of Killing“. The speaker of the Ministry, Gatot S Dewabroto, claims not to know that the website of the film that sparked controversy can not be accessed by the public.

„I did not know about this, I have not even seen the film, we are also not aware that the site has been shut down. We always inform the public in a formal procedure if there is a site which we shut down. This means, we would for sure come out with a public report.”

The website of the film The Act of Killing cannot be accessed in Indonesia. The director, Joshua Oppenheimer, questioned the shutting down of the site via twitter. This question was then taken up by other twitter users, and directed to the account of the Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Tifatul Sembiring.

The film that was screened at Toronto Film Festival tells the story after the „30 September 1965 Movement“. The film shows the way members of the Communist Party Indonesia (PKI) were killed by activists of the Pemuda Pancasila (Pancasila Youth) in Medan.

Soon after, a change.org petition was started by  Megi Margiyono, asking the govt to explain / take a position on the speculation of the site blocking

Here is my rough translation of that petition:

Petitioning Mr. Tifatul Sembiring, Minister of Communication and Information Technology of the Republic of Indonesia

Menkominfo (The Ministry) has to explain the blocking of the websites www.jagalfilm.com and www. Theactofkilling.com

Arbitrary blocking of websites violates human rights, specifically the right to freedom of expression and the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds.

To: Mr. Tifatul Sembiring, Minster of Communication and Information Technology, and Head of PR Mr. Gatot S Dewo Broto
With respect,

Since January 12 2013, internet users in Indonesia are no longer able to access the websites jagafilm. Com and theactofkilling.com. Both sites are used to promote the documentary film with the title “The Act of Killing”, with the Indonesian title “Jagal”. The film is a documentary about Anwar Kongo, a personality that became the executioner of people suspected of being members of the Communist Party Indonesia (PKI) in 1965. The film by Joshua Oppenheimer is of great historical importance, and is very useful in creating awareness about human rights in Indonesia.

There are suspicions that the two sites have been blocked by several Internet Service Providers (ISP), so that the websites cannot be accessed from Indonesia. The problem is that there is no transparency about the blocking of sites in Indonesia so that the public does not know which sites are being blocked. This is the same for the owner of the sites, they are also not being told about their sites being blocked.

The practice of blocking and filtering in Indonesia does not adhere to the principles of transparency and due process of law. (The Ministry) never provides information to the community about which sites are and will be blocked. In addition, the blocking procedure (in Indonesia) does not follow a formal legal process through a court order. Not only that, even the criteria for content to be blocked are increasingly unclear. Initially, the only content that can be blocked are pornography and gambling. Then, content containing blasphemy (Blasphemy) could also be blocked. Now, it seems content containing political material such as films about 1965 can also be blocked.

We are worried that blocking without clear criteria, without a procedure that is following basic rules, and without transparency about the list of sites that are being blocked will give rise to e regime of internet censorship in Indonesia. If this happens, we are in the middle of a serious threat towards the freedom of the internet.

So we are asking you to explain whether it is true jagalfilm.com and theactofkilling.com have been blocked by the government? If it is true, what is the legal basis for the blocking of those sites?

Sincerely,
[Your name]

From the very first job interviews, it was clear that as PR Coordinator (my official job title) I would have to be Jill-of-all-Trades. They wanted a person who would manage classic PR work that comes along with a cultural institution, but, specifically, to take the online activities of the GI Indonesia to the next level.

It’s obvious why a strong online presence is of importance in a country like Indonesia. Adoption rates of social networking sites and mobile internet have been phenomenal, with Indonesia present in the Top 10 tweeting cities worldwide with not 1, but 2 cities – Jakarta leading and surprise candidate Bandung wedged between New York and Paris.

Image courtesy of semiocast.com

Also, Indonesia’s island geography and weak transportation infrastructure makes it particularly difficult for people from remote parts of the country to take part in cultural activities in the capital or other big cities. All the more important to reach out and offer opportunities online.

What I found. Assessing the situation

Goethe-Institut is, per definition, a network organization with establishments all over the world. It is partly funded by the German government, yet an independent entity. It additionally acquires financial help from the private sector and public funds. While the headquarter in Munich offers resources and guidelines, the sister institutions abroad have a lot of individual freedom in executing and documenting their activities.

When the GIs in the SEA region saw the need to quickly get active in social media in order to keep up with their audience, this, unsurprisingly, led to the mushrooming growth of various facebook pages, groups, profiles, blogs and twitter accounts to fulfill immediate needs. There was little time to devise any overall strategy or coordinated effort. I believe many institutions with a similar network setup such as the GI will find themselves in this situation.

In my first discussion with the team (meaning everyone that administers, or engages with, one or more of our many many social media outlets), I actually found an impressively deep understanding of social space, of the benefits and possible pitfalls of “conversation” rather than providing information, and a general positive and open attitude towards “social “channels.

While there were a lot of great individual efforts, the main problem I saw was the inconsistency with which content was offered, the lack of a structured approach in working together as a team, and the lack of, or not yet identified need for measurable goals.

Developing goals

In our first workshops as a team, we talked about the overall goals for the social media activities for each of the departments. Why did we think we need to be active here? What kinds of conversations were we hoping for? Would we be using social media as replacement for some other form of communication, for example ticket reservation via email?

As the result of the workshop we were left with three main goals, which now serve as guiding principlse until the next assessment.

Goal 1 “engagement” – being social as a goal in itself

As a non-profit and unlike a company with a physical product, our “product” is experience – something intangible and certainly difficult to measure in hard numbers. Our products: learning the German language, experiencing art in all forms, taking in literature or other media content, happens as a result of people interacting with each other. It dawned on us that, when culture is your product,  facilitating conversations is a strong goal in itself. This means that – perhaps more so than in the social media channels of commercial brands – we are allowed to pat our backs with a growing number of fans and conversations. And Goethe-Insitut’s slogan “language, culture, germany” makes a pretty good guideline for the content mix.

Measurement: growing number of fans/followers, increasing  interactions

Goal 2 promoting events

Looking at the number of signups for the language classes and at the number of visitors to most of our events, we can say: this is looking good. Since the institute is the venue for most events and language courses, there is a natural capacity limit. And the language classes as well as events are usually full, if not overbooked. This puts us in the luxurious position of not really having to use social media to promote anything – but we sure could use it to make event promotion and registration more efficient. Especially for larger events that do not take place in our house, we need to be able to pull a larger crowd. We need to start using online ticketing, which simplifies the process, and gives us an idea ahead of how popular the event is going to be. The next opportunity to introduce social media promotion and e-ticketing is coming up in October, so we’ll definitely be testing it out soon.

Measurement: sign ups through social media, incl. measuring effectiveness of individual channels

Goal 3: Virtual / real interaction

The final goal is related to the first, but goes further. Ultimately, our online presences should be able to offer genuine online experiences for those not physically able to attend, and it should offer “real” value. While the language department is leading the way in the form of offering online classrooms and German language-learner communities, the culture and information/library departments still need to figure out which formats and topics are most meaningful to their audiences. On the long run, I want to use social media to create windows of opportunity for dedicated individuals to get involved with GI’s program from far away: this could take the shape of having smaller remote cities “apply” for hosting cultural activities, which would then be brought there by GI, or regularly inviting interested people from further away to see cultural events produced by the GI. Creating campaigns around “city battles” or invitations to events will also help increase visbility and number of fans and followers.

Measurement: usage/readership of online products, impact and participation during social media ‘campaign’ periods

Implementation

While coming up with grand goals is comparatively easy, implementing the processes to achieve those goals is the challenge. We have to take into account the different experience levels of the team with social media and its tools, as well as the “heritage” of social media routines that have evolved in the past.

These are roughly the steps I took in the past month to steer softly in the direction of where we want to be heading.

3 months (May – July) Framewok for consistency

In order to work together towards a shared goal we needed to establish a sense of being a team first. We rounded up all people with access to and active roles on any of our social media outlets, branded them the “social media team” and set up a weekly meeting.

We invented new gimmicky roles among us, such as the “wearer of the twitter hat” for someone responsible for managing interactions, keeping up with the stats, assigning tweets, and live-tweeting from events in a given week.

The twitter hat is an actual paper hat with a twitter bird on it, intended to make it’s wearer feel self-conscious and awkward, meaning they won’t forget about the tasks they have that week

We invented the “facebook gardener” for someone whose responsibility it is to tend for a particular facebook page or group.I find that using playful images such as these helps people identify with the role and makes the tasks that come along with it come naturally. Of course – the gardener “weeds out” bad comments, highlights particularly interesting posts, decides which posts go where etc.

Also, in order to understand how we were tweeting and who was tweeting, (all sharing one twitter account, @gi_indonesien) we decided to start using initials after each tweet. Although it sounds like a clumsy workaround and a waste of characters, it has helped us learn from each other, avoid double tweeting and improve the quality of our answers to our followers.

In another step towards consistency, (still work in progress) we are streamlining the content flow from one channel to the other, and developing unique but consistent ways of writing for facebook and twitter.

Spending some time on building the team and workflows was important: to have a strong team that knows how to hold effective meetings, how to formulate goals and move towards them, is at the basis of everything…

6 months (August – October) – Increasing quality with tools, measuring effectiveness

In the coming three months, I want to focus on increasing the the number of interactions, keep a stronger focus on stats and implement  more advanced tools such as e-ticketing for a pilot event and working with a contest app for a photo competition engagement campaign. Starting in September, I will also focus building 2 “communities within the Goethe community”.  One is targeting German-Language-learners in South East Asia. The other is the already existing comiconnexions platform for comic/graphic novel fans, which needs to go into phase 2.

Lastly, we will start setting the necessary internal foundations (commitment, timeframe, budget…) to work towards goal 3.

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…

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

Or, to make it sound less dramatic: I am going to relocate my physical operating range to… South East Asia, with my future homebase in Jakarta.

CC license by Dennis Lee

Now Jakarta isn’t exactly foreign territory. I was born by a beach just outside of the city and eventually went to school there. The prospect of returning now feels like bumping into a highschool crush: More than a decade later, both grown up and matured, you realize you still have a lot in common. You feel infinitely giddy about all the stories you have to catch up on.

meatspace, mindspace

I suppose “moving” in this connected world isn’t such a big deal. From my twitter stream I get the impression that half the world is constantly on the move, traveling from Europe to the US to Asia and back with the same ease as people on a daily commute from the suburbs into town.

CC license by Shreyans Bhansali

And maybe that’s all it is.

Who cares where someone ‘lives’, as long as their mind is istantly available. Our permanent connectedness has made being physically somewhere else much less frightening and strange.

CC license by Azizul Ameir

Mindspace knows no borders, but the lagging behind of meatspace in this matter is obvious. Visas, languages, timezones, jet lags, incompatible mobile phone carriers. And then the actual meatspace comes crashing in, taking the form of noise, smells, humidity, and the lack or overabundance of certain infrastructures we have grown to take for granted.

CC license by joe71102

Are those just annoying, ridiculous little artefacts of the past in an otherwise seamless rendering of the self?

In perfect mindspace, we live fluid lives, detached from time and surroundings. But I believe that for now, the artefacts of meatspace will impact me, and little by little, I may find myself  changed by my new environment.

choices, branches

Why is it necessary to make choices? Try to imagine the possibility of simply creating an instance of yourself, whenever difficult decisions come up, and simply walking down both paths at once, as is suggested in Charles Stross’ novel Accelerando. Each instance could explore the option, soak up the experience and reunite with the main branch at any point. How would this affect identity construction, I wonder. Instead of being “spoiled by choice” – surely one of the sicknesses common to the generation growing up with endless options and opportunities – living each choice to the fullest. Could possibly drive us even further into insanity.

CC license by sqala

goodbyes

For now, the choice is made, the promise of opportunities weighed one against the other. Who knows where this will lead to, but I’m definitely looking forward to the exciting times ahead!

Thanks to all the nice people who have made my time in Berlin worthwhile. Flatmates, friends, colleagues from work and uni, the twitterverse, random party folk!

I’ll see you all online, with just 5 hours of head start in the summer. I can now spend more time exploring and writing about what interests me in art, technology, and science  from a new Southern-Hemisphere angle.

And I’ll keep you updated about my new job, which is to help the Goethe Institute Jakarta transition its online communication to become more dialogue-oriented and community-driven.

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…

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.