Did you know there's world class skiing in Iran?!

I didn't. Word it, it's fabulous!

Sooooo many places and soooo leeetle money!

Shocker!

Lush provides me with my favorite bath and skincare products (when I can afford it), and checking out what's new, I read their campaign against wasteful packaging. In which staf strip. Naked. In stores. Seriously. Only had their aprons on. Check out their No ifs just butts campaign, hillarious.

It's a serious message which will definitely get across. Though I wonder if it's going to make any impact. If lots of people get together and show their market power by demanding, and choosing, simpler packaging, yes. Less waste to take care of, less transporting of waste, less vechicle emission, less use of land for unproductive uses.....

Another one of my favorites, Burt's Bees, is promoting standardization of the 'natural' brand. Seriously, this is important. Some stuff on the shelves really go overboard with the 'natural' (alami) label, it's gross.

I haven't seen good natural products in Indonesia, perhaps the Dewi Sri line can qualify, but in Thailand there's a slew of them, one is even entering our market (though I can't think of the exact name right now, it's something difficult like harnh and thanh or something with more consonants than needed...). I think we need something affordable, local, yet fresh and completely contemporary. I believe the demand is there. It'd be a big hit. After all, we have great ingredients at our hands (coffee, cocoa, coconut, flowers, more fruits than can count...).

Anyone up for a partnership avec moi?

Take that award and shove it down your throat!

Is basically what priest and philosophy professor Magnis-Suseno told the Bakries' Freedom Institute. I am not one for placing a stigma on people just because they're related to bad people, but it's infuriating how the Bakrie people be so casual about the destructions and hardship they have caused so many people. And more infuriating is how other people still treat the whole clan as if they're models of good corporate and citizen behavior? How can anyone in Indonesia take the mandate of corporate social responsibility seriously when you have a Bakrie giving the keynote speech? More like corporate social dodgeability.

So, way to go Prof! That's one award you don't want on your conscience.

Buzzzzz!!!!

Around this time last year the mosquito attact was terrible. This time they're back and it's even worse. So after a few weeks of having the fan on all night, we resorted to something more effective, though somewhat unpleasing to the eye: mosquito net. Living in a hill station, mosquitos were never a problem the 25+ years I've been living here; so houses are not set up for it. So now our bedrooms look like makeshift tents, with sticks being errected on bed corners to support the nets. But it's effective. No need to waste electricity on fans (and rack up the bills).

So now I'm wondering whether I should errect nets to surround me on my workstation. I still use the fan, but around midnight it gets too chilly. I'm sure we'll resolve this somehow. My dad's already thinking of some kind of personal net, something akin to the beekeeper's net, for lounging around in front of the tv...

I amuse easily

But there ain't been much amusing me in the last couple weeks, until yesterday when I found you could create The Simpsons avatar of yourself, and this one, quoted in a World Bank Report, allegedly said by a president of Coca Cola:

"When I think of Indonesia--a country on the Equator with 180 million people, a median age of 18, and a Moslem ban on alcohol--I feel I know what Heaven looks like".

That's one funny dude.