Sorry we didn’t post yesterday.  During lunch at the Freedom Institute, a circuit breaker seems to have exploded.  According to the secretary Anisa, the electricity would have been out for "mungkin agak lama," which literally means "maybe rather long," but really means "probably for a long time, maybe until Monday."

You know how you hear these stories about people from other countries who watch American movies and TV, and think that everybody drives SUVs and carries AK-47s, or at least has a horse and a ranch?  Well, we watch a lot of international TV, and here’s what we have decided about the following countries.

All Koreans must play basketball, and a suspiciously large number of them are actually African Americans.  Either that, or they always protest the plight of rice farmers.  All Indians sing and dance all the time, or they are giving lessons about chemistry and differential calculus.  Australians are all employed at rescuing besieged homeowners who have snakes in their backyards and alligators in their pools.  All Japanese participate in humiliating gameshows that leave them very messy.  Finally, the most common activity for Indonesian women is standing still and crying, with a horrified expression on their face because either (1) their father will not let them marry someone of a different ethnic background/social class or (2) there is a ghost in the school.  Alternatively, they may be singing on a show that is designed to make them famous.  Indonesian men also tend to stand still with a horrified expression on their face, or they may be in a band that suspiciously resembles Linkin Park.

Remember all, we kid because we love.

One last tidbit on the Linkin Park theme.  There is one band in particular that is very popular here, and everything about this band is just sort of like Bizarro Linkin Park.  First, the band name: "Saint Loco." Their big song right now is called "Microphone Anthem," off of their breakthrough album, "Rock Upon a Time".  (unfortunately for jm, tp loves this song and has gotten one line stuck in his head which he sings over and over)  Hey, be quiet JM, that’s a relatively good song.  Anyway, the band’s video makes them look precisely like Linkin Park, and their sound is the same, right down to the one "rapper" who alternates with the mid-tenor "vocalist."  (ok tp, now I ask, how can this possibly make a good song?)  It’s not a "good" song, JM.  In fact, seeing as I hate Linkin Park and everything that they stand for, the fact that this is a better song than anything that Linkin Park ever wrote does not mean much.  Sing it with me: JUST ME REPRESENTING MY MICROPHONE!  ME, MYSELF, AND MY MICROPHONE!  (jm: BLAH!)