Watched my first film tonight in Indonesia and was impressed that there wasn’t any censorship. Well actually, I think there was some for particularly gruesome scenes but that’s ok, I’d rather not watch those anyway. However, as for swearing, nudity (including full frontal), sex scenes, all the fun things, they made it through! I welcome relief after watching movies in Malaysia which censored pretty much everything, rendering some films unwatchable.
Incidentally, the movie was “Halloween”, and no, I don’t recommend it, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
I picked up some anti-malaria tablets today that I’ll have to take daily while in any rural areas of Indonesia. The pharmacist warned me that I should avoid excessive sunlight when taking them, as it causes you to burn easier and can increase the risk of skin cancer.
I’m already so white that the radiant light from anything higher than an 80w light globe results in singing of the epidermis, so I did consider just taking my chances with coils and nets.
However, since both malaria and skin cancer are potentially fatal, I decided to purchase the tablets, placing more value on preventing short term disease than long term disease. Even though the chance of the longer term disease is probably higher, it is a long way off, thus, health now is worth more than health later. This is a common human trait in much decision making.
But don’t worry, there will be plenty of slipping, slopping, slapping and shading.
An interesting lingua franca audio program about Australian’s attitudes towards Indonesia and Asia in general and discusses our low levels of foreign language studies.
Very interesting points raised however I would add that every Indonesian that I have talked to on my trip has been shocked when I had planned to learn Indonesian. Their reacting is usually something like, “what for? its useless!”. I kid you not. This has been the reaction of just about every Indonesian I’ve spoken to. Secondly, if I tell them I want to go there, they nearly always say that it’s dangerous and that they might ‘bully’ me there being a foreigner. Now, this should be taken in context since most – in fact all – of the people i’ve asked have been Chinese Indonesians. If you follow the situation in Indonesia you will know why this might impact on their attitudes towards Indonesia. Anyway, I should also add that just about every Indonesian I’ve met has been very very nice and friendly and most have very good opinions and attitutes towards Australia. To be honest, I think they are mostly shocked that we want to learn Indonesian since they all want to learn English. Oh, and I would also add – since they don’t mention it in the program – that if you can speak Indonesian you can get by very well in Malaysia since the languages are very similar. I still think it is a very useful language in the region just that perhaps it’s more useful in political circles than business ones. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/linguafranca/stories/2007/1878187.htm
Any thoughts on Indonesia by my many readers? That’s you Sim and Sarah…..
The next games in 2010 will be in Guangdong, S.China and guess what, Australia will be competing! Should be interesting.
Oh, and the opening ceremony (and I heard the closing ceremony) were seriously awesome! The opening ceremony was best i’ve ever seen, seriously great. Check out the way they lit the torch, very nice (well, the lead up to the lighting…).
