Stories from 27 December 2006
Malaysia: Internet Slowdown
Nik Nazmi comments on the breakdown in internet services in some parts of South East Asia and East Asia because of an earthquake in Taiwan. “When I told my colleague earlier that a website stated repair works for the cables in Taiwan may take up to three days, we were...
Brunei: New Banknotes
The Daily Brunei Resources has the trivia on the new banknotes released today in Brunei.
Indonesia: Monitor Lizard in Resort Pool
Emma Good Egg describes her encounter with a monitor lizard in a resort swimming pool in Bali.
Jamaica: What the country needs
Francis Wade grapples with his desire, as a returnee to Jamaica, to find solutions to some of the problems plaguing his homeland: “Certainly, I am sure, a part of the answer has to with where we draw our spiritual wisdom, and how we Jamaicans do not sufficiently engage in our...
Puerto Rico: Do you see what I see?
Gil the Jenius enlists the help of refrain from a Christmas carol in his diatribe against what he sees as some of the administrative and political problems affecting Puerto Rico.
Trinidad & Tobago: Trini geography
Chennette has an interesting commentary on the average Trinidadian's skewed vision of cardinal points: “Maybe it was growing up in a mathematical family, but I always viewed Trinidad as more or less a rectangle with some squiggly bits at the corners. Which means that I imagined lines bisecting the island...
St Lucia: Atmospheric landscapes
Arnold Pouteau has a Flickr set of atmospheric photos from St. Lucia.
Trinidad & Tobago: The smelter moves
As Trinidad and Tobago's caves into the protests against the establishment of an aluminium smelter in a community in south-western Trinidad — and moves the project to another part of the country — Taran Rampersad starts thinking that “it has become necessary to become vocal.”
Trinidad & Tobago: Christmas, credulity and commerce
Jeremy Taylor goes over some of the impossible notions about Christmas we have come to accept as fact, concluding “I take some comfort in the thought that the man at the centre of all the fuss would have dismissed it all, just as he furiously ran the bankers off the...
Russia: Moscow Half a Century Ago
LJ user fool_4_lifetime found a rare photo album in a Moscow dump – Im Flug nach Moskau, by Erich Einhorn, ARTIA, 1959 – and scanned and posted 60 spreads of Moscow photos from it in the moya_moskva (My Moscow) LJ community. (Warning: bandwidth intensive!) Here is one of the photos:...
Burundi: Titanic Express massacre
Agathon Rwasa remembers the victims of the Titanic Express massacre in Burundi.
Kenya: DIY phone booth
Local innovation at work: the DIY phone booth in Kenya,”The person who modified it ripped an old Siemens C25 phone apart and installed its display instead of the one that came along with this phone. The keypad is soldered to the phone and a rechargeable battery is inside the box...
Ethiopia/Somali: a reckless war
Enset describes Ethiopia-Somali war as “a reckless war borne of bad choices”: “If the Ethio-Eritrean war of 1998-2000 was a senseless war, then this war between the radical Somali Islamist and the illegitimate Meles-led regime of Ethiopia is a reckless one for all involved.”
China: Ping…ping…pfft
The earthquake near Taiwan last night which snapped six underwater internet cables, seems to have left a large part of Asia, particularly the Northeast, struggling for an internet fix. Those with internet censorship circumvention tools (proxies) already installed on their computers seem to be doing a little better, but for...
Indonesia: Sharia Police in Aceh
Indonesia Matters looks at the latest campaign launced by Aceh's religious police against unislamic behaviour. Aceh is a province in Indonesian island of Sumatra that insists on adherence to strict islamic laws.
Malaysia: Flood Situation Worsens
The Malaysian rounds up the flood situation in Malaysia. It has been raining on and off since Monday in Southern Malaysia and Singapore.
