Adventures of Isabel

So, as promised I put up more photos from the SONA counter-rally. But I’m feeling thin on thoughts, or at least coherent ones.
A full-text of Arroyo’s speech can be found here. There’s some debate about whether or not she actually believes the rosy statistics she quotes. I’ll leave that to the psychoanalysts.

I’d love [...]

While President Arroyo gave her annual State of the Nation Address, and estimated 13,000 protesters held a march and counter-rally, denouncing low wages, the risingcost of living, and denouncing Arroyo’s record on human rights and civil liberties.
Additional images here, and more photos and thoughts tomorrow.

The Philippine government just released its report on school attendance for 2006-2007, revealing that 17% of primary-school-aged children — which is to say 2.2 million of them — are not in school.
In 1999-2000, before current President Arroyo, the corresponding number was 3%.
Numbers have plummeted under Arroyo, as has real per-capita spending on education, making [...]

This is my bathroom lizard in Mandaluyong. They seem to come standard issue in houses here, but I feel this is a particularly outstanding example of the species. Now that we’ve gotten accustomed to each other, we respectfully greet one another every morning when I go for my tabo-tabo.On the other hand, I [...]

This cloud of smoke is not a trick of the camera or a momentary phenomenon. This is what Jakarta is like, all the time, indoors and out. I never thought I would enjoy breathing the sweet air of Manila, but here I am. I seem to have returned from Indonesia with a [...]

Ibu Kurniati
On May 28, 2006, Ibu Kurniati’s world exploded.“For us, it was like a small apocolypse. We saw huge fires, and the hot mud, and the strong smell of gas was everywhere,”
The previous day, natural gas prospectors Lapindo Brantas hit something soft while drilling nearly 3 km below the surface in East Java. [...]

One of the quite nice things about this visit to Indonesia is that I’m on a pretty loose schedule, and have time to do normal touristy things like visit temples.We even got up at 4:00 in the morning the catch the sunrise at Borobudur (and thus miss the heat and the crowds). It was [...]

Irham, Jakarta
Bush has never been a popular figure in Indonesia — a Muslim country with a strong history of anti-imperial struggle (notwithstanding of course, its own colonial adventures in East Timor and Papua) — and his re-election ensured that dislike of Bush would extend to the American people.
Recently, though, it’s once again become cool to [...]