Month: December 2017

The Undefeated:

Dieng: One time at Arizona State as soon as we finished practice at their practice facility, everybody takes a shower. And after showering, ‘Ticket’ (then-teammate Kevin Garnett) was there, K.G. So, we were in the locker room, me and him. So, I was in the shower, I got out and I began praying. So, he was listening to his music while he was taking shower, and I was praying. Soon as he got out the first thing he did was turn the music down. And he waited until when I finished and he was like, ‘Yo, G, I got it. I respect this. I’m sorry. I said, ‘No, no, you’re good. The music doesn’t bother me.’ He’s like, ‘I respect [your religion].’ This means a lot to me, considering the fact that you come here and stick with what you believe. So, some people respect that.

Hakeem Olajuwon’s quotes there are also interesting to me because he sounded much more mellowed out compared to the others.

The New York Times:

“Nobody here believes in the greater good, because there is so much corruption, so much posturing about serving the public when what gets done only serves private interests,” as Sidney Jones, the director of the local Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, put it. “There is no trust.”

Hydrologists say the city has only a decade to halt its sinking. If it can’t, northern Jakarta, with its millions of residents, will end up underwater, along with much of the nation’s economy. Eventually, barring wholesale change and an infrastructural revolution, Jakarta won’t be able to build walls high enough to hold back the rivers, canals and the rising Java Sea.

I don’t live in Jakarta and personally try to not visit unless absolutely necessary. I did not know that things are this bad, though.

[…] The most ambitious move by the city is the construction of what’s called the Coastal Wall, now rising like a black cliff from Jakarta Bay. It’s a quasi-temporary barrier to hold back the rising sea and compensate for subsidence — built extra high because, like the rest of North Jakarta, it is expected to sink, too. With subsidence at the current rate, the Coastal Wall itself may be underwater by 2030.

Even more alarming, Mr. Brinkman showed me one spot along the waterfront where the wall ends and all that holds back the sea is a low, crumbling concrete rampart. The water was only a couple of feet below the top when we peered over the embankment.

“If this wall breaks, there’s simply no holding back the Java Sea,” said Mr. Brinkman, gesturing from the rampart toward the city. “Jakarta will flood all the way to the center of town, six kilometers from here. I could take you to 20 other places just like this.”

I was happily exploring one of the magnificent kingdoms in Super Mario Odyssey when, bam, I hear the music of my people:

This gamelan and suling background song with its odd time signature sounds quite soothing to me, perhaps because of regional familiarity. I wonder what it sounds like for those unfamiliar with this type of music.