Tuesday, 17Oct06
Highlights: fly to Surabaya, day with Maj Franky & family, drive to Malang
Up & out the door at 6. A friend (Felix) from the USINDO office in Washington DC, whom I’ve never met yet, has family here in Jakarta, and was gracious enough to make their driver available to me for a lift to the airport! Great favor (= it was nice talking to their driver (Wawan) along the way about life in Indonesia.
The flight to Surabaya took 1 hour. The landing was a lot smoother than people give Batavia Air credit for, I’m happy to say. (= (it’s among the cheapest airlines to fly: $30 got me across Java)
Major Franky was there waiting for me at the airport. He is an Indonesian Army (TNI) friend I met in Bogor 2 weeks ago. He is the XO of a small engineering unit here in Surabaya. We dropped by to say hello to his boss.
There was a little time to kill in the middle of the afternoon, so I sat & talked with Sergeant Major Budi for a while, a 23 year TNI infantry veteran.
SgtMaj Budi has a 19 year old son who is taking the military entrance test. He wants to follow in dad’s footsteps; a 33-year career decision here. There is no ‘getting out’ after 4 years. Families often scrape together large sums of money to get their kids into the military to beat out the scourge of unemployment in Indonesia. Retirement usually comes at 53. Dad couldn’t be prouder.
Dad’s salary is $230/month, after 23 years. Junior’s salary will be $170/month when he joins. Huh! So promotion from rank to rank brings an average $5 pay increase (since Dad has been promoted 10 times). It’s not the lottery, but it’s a secure job. According to SgtMaj Budi, so many young Indonesian men want to get into the military, the ranks have swollen well beyond the ideal numbers.
At 4pm, Maj Franky’s family was ready to go home to their home-town of Malang (3 hours south), and came to pick me up. What an interesting & fun family.
Maj Franky is originally from the small islands north of Manado (northern Sulawesi), and his wife (Ida) is from Cirebon (border of West Java & Central Java). He is Christian (Protestant), she is Muslim. They have 3 kids: a girl, Yofira (22) who is Christian, and twin 14 year old boys (Chandra and Yudha) who are Muslim. 23 years of marriage & no problems (= that was nice to hear!
Yofira is about to graduate University in Malang next month with a degree in economics, and is 2 months into her new finance management career with Telkomsel (Indonesia’s AT&T). The boys are in their last year of middle school (9th grade).
We drove south towards Malang, and passed through Sidoarjo, where the mud flood is still occurring.
In case you haven’t heard of this latest man-made disaster (still in a state of controversy here), an oil-natural gas drilling company (Lapindo-Brantas) was 18,000 meters deep into an exploration well looking for natural gas. On 27 May (same day as the Yogya earthquake) they hit a pocket of hot mud & gas mixed together, triggering a rush of mud. They tried to plug the hole with cement, but that so far has not stopped 50,000 cubic meters per day of mud from boiling out of the ground. The amount of toxic, 60 degree C mud has since increased to 125,000 cubic meters per day, and has already displaced over 10,000 local residents. Many residents are nauseous from the stench. Some say it was unsafe drilling practices (no standard casing at the drill site, in violation of the contract); others (representing the company) say it was a natural disaster that just happened to occur where they were drilling, by well #1. Some think there is an underground mud volcano developing here that won’t stop gushing boiling hot, toxic mud for years.
Four villages have been buried in mud up to the roofs in an area 12 square km, comparable to the country of Monaco (according to Taipei Times, 27Sep) and the government is trying to figure out how to clean up the mess. The short solution = pump the mud out to the ocean, 20km away. This upsets the fisherman communities, who see tons of mud pumped into their waters killing the ecosystem as bad for business,,, but it appears the government is out of better ideas, and piping is being laid now to pump the mud out to sea.
Maj Franky’s engineering unit is part of this effort. Amazing to see how vast the damage is, and the government hasn’t figured out yet who is going to pay for this, let alone help the now homeless victims.
The drilling division of Lapindo was quickly sold off, according to the Jakarta Post, in what some suspect as an attempt to shield the parent company from liability. If an unfavorable judgment comes down through the courts, bankruptcy is now a fashionable option, and one which won’t impact the company who owned the drilling project at the time of the incident- or leading up to it. Savvy huh?
A 5-mile stretch of the main highway had to be dug out of the mud, so that cars can pass.
Highlights: fly to Surabaya, day with Maj Franky & family, drive to Malang
Up & out the door at 6. A friend (Felix) from the USINDO office in Washington DC, whom I’ve never met yet, has family here in Jakarta, and was gracious enough to make their driver available to me for a lift to the airport! Great favor (= it was nice talking to their driver (Wawan) along the way about life in Indonesia.
The flight to Surabaya took 1 hour. The landing was a lot smoother than people give Batavia Air credit for, I’m happy to say. (= (it’s among the cheapest airlines to fly: $30 got me across Java)
Major Franky was there waiting for me at the airport. He is an Indonesian Army (TNI) friend I met in Bogor 2 weeks ago. He is the XO of a small engineering unit here in Surabaya. We dropped by to say hello to his boss.
There was a little time to kill in the middle of the afternoon, so I sat & talked with Sergeant Major Budi for a while, a 23 year TNI infantry veteran.
SgtMaj Budi has a 19 year old son who is taking the military entrance test. He wants to follow in dad’s footsteps; a 33-year career decision here. There is no ‘getting out’ after 4 years. Families often scrape together large sums of money to get their kids into the military to beat out the scourge of unemployment in Indonesia. Retirement usually comes at 53. Dad couldn’t be prouder.
Dad’s salary is $230/month, after 23 years. Junior’s salary will be $170/month when he joins. Huh! So promotion from rank to rank brings an average $5 pay increase (since Dad has been promoted 10 times). It’s not the lottery, but it’s a secure job. According to SgtMaj Budi, so many young Indonesian men want to get into the military, the ranks have swollen well beyond the ideal numbers.
At 4pm, Maj Franky’s family was ready to go home to their home-town of Malang (3 hours south), and came to pick me up. What an interesting & fun family.
Maj Franky is originally from the small islands north of Manado (northern Sulawesi), and his wife (Ida) is from Cirebon (border of West Java & Central Java). He is Christian (Protestant), she is Muslim. They have 3 kids: a girl, Yofira (22) who is Christian, and twin 14 year old boys (Chandra and Yudha) who are Muslim. 23 years of marriage & no problems (= that was nice to hear!
Yofira is about to graduate University in Malang next month with a degree in economics, and is 2 months into her new finance management career with Telkomsel (Indonesia’s AT&T). The boys are in their last year of middle school (9th grade).
We drove south towards Malang, and passed through Sidoarjo, where the mud flood is still occurring.
In case you haven’t heard of this latest man-made disaster (still in a state of controversy here), an oil-natural gas drilling company (Lapindo-Brantas) was 18,000 meters deep into an exploration well looking for natural gas. On 27 May (same day as the Yogya earthquake) they hit a pocket of hot mud & gas mixed together, triggering a rush of mud. They tried to plug the hole with cement, but that so far has not stopped 50,000 cubic meters per day of mud from boiling out of the ground. The amount of toxic, 60 degree C mud has since increased to 125,000 cubic meters per day, and has already displaced over 10,000 local residents. Many residents are nauseous from the stench. Some say it was unsafe drilling practices (no standard casing at the drill site, in violation of the contract); others (representing the company) say it was a natural disaster that just happened to occur where they were drilling, by well #1. Some think there is an underground mud volcano developing here that won’t stop gushing boiling hot, toxic mud for years.
Four villages have been buried in mud up to the roofs in an area 12 square km, comparable to the country of Monaco (according to Taipei Times, 27Sep) and the government is trying to figure out how to clean up the mess. The short solution = pump the mud out to the ocean, 20km away. This upsets the fisherman communities, who see tons of mud pumped into their waters killing the ecosystem as bad for business,,, but it appears the government is out of better ideas, and piping is being laid now to pump the mud out to sea.
Maj Franky’s engineering unit is part of this effort. Amazing to see how vast the damage is, and the government hasn’t figured out yet who is going to pay for this, let alone help the now homeless victims.
The drilling division of Lapindo was quickly sold off, according to the Jakarta Post, in what some suspect as an attempt to shield the parent company from liability. If an unfavorable judgment comes down through the courts, bankruptcy is now a fashionable option, and one which won’t impact the company who owned the drilling project at the time of the incident- or leading up to it. Savvy huh?
A 5-mile stretch of the main highway had to be dug out of the mud, so that cars can pass.
posted by jonathan adventures at 7:11 AM
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