The European Union has just ratified a new law that makes the Internet fall under the list of services considered to be of "general interest". The law that governs this list of services (which includes water and electricity) protects residents from being cut off by the supplier. Every EU resident is guaranteed by law to have use of basic services like electricity, water and since today also Internet. Here's the article (in Dutch).

In contrast today, here in our home in Jakarta, our water well dried up. The water table level has dropped below the point our pump can reach and we will have to make our well deeper. We live in a suburb of jakarta, about 16km from the center. Yet there is no public service water network to which we can connect. Let me list some of the things that we use water for, because it's something I'm so used to being available and then suddenly you realize what you can't do: wash (clothes, house and yourself of course), provide a living environment for fish (pond), use the toilet in hygienic way, ...

Digging a deeper well is not really a long term solution and it has some dangers of its own, as this article dating from 2007 warns about.

Another serious problem in Jakarta is power. This week we started off with a power outage that lasted 7 hours in the night from Monday to Tuesday. Try to keep your food fresh (refrigerators have to be < 8 degrees C constantly to keep food healthy to eat). And try to sleep without air conditioning or a fan in a tropical climate.

Then they cut of the power for another 4 hours on Tuesday afternoon. Totalling a power outage of 11 hours in a 24 hour time frame. What's worse, the state owned electricty company PLN said Jakarta will suffer blackouts "indefinitely" because of "budget constraints" as explained in this article.

I don't know where this is going. I used to be optimistic about life here, but I don't see any signals that anyone is busy trying to improve things. Legislators of this country fall asleep in the general assembly instead of passing laws. Corruption makes money disappear into the pockets of filthy rich people instead of being used for developing much needed infrastructure. Where is the waste / water recycling plan? Where is the water distribution development plan? What is done about the electricity shortage? Building new power plants? Ha! From what I can tell from the article's I've read regarding this matter, it's not that there is not enough power being generated; it's the distribution network that cannot handle the amount of power that needs to be distributed.

A few months ago some transformers blew up in electricity substations. Overheated (probably because of aged equipment and bad maintenance. Have you seen some of the buses that drive around in the city??) because they were running at 90% capacity (PLN's safety standard is 65% capacity). Note to the people in charge: When you plan to build new power plants, make sure your current network can support the added capacity. In other words, look at the whole picture.

This place needs a strong ruler, someone with a "no bullshit" attitude and legislators who are litterate. Politicians should be academics, not army generals or businessmen.

Thus far my rant and personal opinion on things.