My daily commute

Manila, every morning.... 2011.

Porn bill

The Indonesian anti-pornography bill, in short ‘porn bill’ has been driving most liberals mad for weeks. Protests had been staged in many major cities and universities to prevent turning hardcore thoughts into law. Protests climaxed in Bali, a religious but fleshy tropical island where women are still allowed to show their shoulders—breasts in market places have been gone for a long time, that was already history as Covarrubias set his feet onto the island in the 1930s.

Anyway, the whole idea was always mind-boggling starting with a most stupid name. Porn bill? Pornography turned into law? What is it all about? Protection against pornography? Better don’t ask such questions since the proposed definitions of pornography are very broad and vague making such a law on proper behaviour a matter of interpretation and an invitation for religiously radical folks to take over enforcement, i.e. to intimidate anybody whose appearance or behaviour they deem haram.

It gets even more bizarre when you type ‘porn bill’ into google search. Then you learn that porn bill leads directly to Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, a bit of Obama and further down to Kill Bill. An explanation on what it is all about is censored. Anyway, the screenshot above tells you everything …

If you intend to spend some holiday in Indonesia, leave your bikini at home, unless you head for Bali. It is the only place where bikinis will be allowed once the bill turns into law...

Welcome to the new Indonesia!

Rainy season in the Philippines

The storm update from this morning is informing us that the extremely catastrophic Super Typhoon Sepat (named Egay in the Philippines) barreling dangerously across the Western Philippine Sea remains at Category 5 (i.e. the highest category according to the Saffir-Simpson Tropical Cyclone Scale) with winds of 260 km/h. Egay is now on its way to the Batanes Group of Islands and Taiwan.

This message means that heavy rain can be expected for Manila but due to the direction of Super Typhoon Egay we will not see any monster billboards flying around as it happened last year in September under Milenyo.

Photo from rainy Santa Cruz on the island of Marinduque (but far away from tyhoon category 5) in April 2006.