This biscuit was an animal swam in a brook

That's right, the third ingredient on this biscuit is ground catfish. It's an innovation by the institute of agriculture at Bogor (one of the top universities in Indonesia, I hear) to help kids get the nutrition (protein, most prominently) that their diet lacks. Or at least, so I surmise from the biscuit. The smiley face makes it irresistable to would-be eaters.











Ewa offered me a couple and made me guess what was in them, and I couldn't-- the best I could come up with was coconut, which might not even be in it. They were actually really good by any standards, I ate the second even after I found out what was in the first. They really got it right with this biscuit: not too sweet, but not fishy in the slightest.

It turns out catfish are really easy to farm, and when in biscuit form, are part of a complete breakfast: the biscuit are one fifth protein and one fifth fat.

when i saw this.. i f4pp3d*

*homage to the greatest torrent of econometrics books ever assembled
Trivia point: "econometrics f4pp3d" is a googlewhack


Oh, the things that get me excited these days. I just learned about Village Telco, which is a super neat initiative to develop an extremely flexible and extremely low cost telephone network toolkit, which is both open-software and open-hardware.

To start at the head, we all really take our telecom network for granted. It can be a little painful sometimes, but we afford our x9.99 (sometimes y9.99 with a data plan, where y >> x), and we get to talk to our friends, figure out when to hang out, and also call in emergencies, like a flat tire, or being locked out of the house. Telecommunication is really useful, wherever and whoever you are in the world.

Now, people in developing countries face the same monopolistic telecom markets as in America (what is it, like two companies?). In fact, it's worse: telecom companies in developing countries are even more bent on getting a high rate of return and invest in the most rural areas last, leaving the poorest people with lack of infrastructure and options that are too expensive for them. With their much tighter incomes, the poor spend a much larger portion of their money on communication. They make much harder choices on a much more frequent basis about whether to use telecom services or not.

Now, this is the case for poor people and energy as well, but the situation differs by a few details. The electrical grid is much more expensive and difficult to afford than telecom services, this is true, but it is much harder to get communication without telecom services than light without the grid. This is not to say that the options are good: the most common alternative to the lightbulb is the kerosene lantern (and kerosene is expensive), which is a terrible thing to sit next to -it's like smoking a pack of cigarettes every night- and there are many other important amenities the electrical grid provides, but let's get back to communication.


Here's where we arrive at Village Telco, who have designed a most innovative piece of technology, allowing communities anywhere in the world to implement and operate their own communications networks (you could do it too!).

What they've designed fits in the palm of the hand, runs on just 2.5 watts of power, is resistant to rough handling, the weather, five different natural disasters, and civil war (and is also flexible to a range of power sources). It works out of the box with existing technology, like ordinary landline and WiFi phones (it's a WiFi based system), and automatically connects to multiple other units like itself to form a linked network or relay for communication. It does all of this for just $120. They call this little marvel a "Mesh Potato", and it's cheaper than most cell phones-- it's probably cheaper than some landline phones.

This means that an entrepreneur could set up a local telecom network on a very small budget (the system is designed to break even in 6 months -- where traditional telecom infrastructure can take decades to pay back), without the need for cell antennae or land lines, and can grow the meshed network Potato by Potato as subscription and demand increases.

This is the 2.0 of telecommunications, where users can take control of their own communication infrastructure. Yee haw!

This is easily the coolest piece of technology I've seen all year.


On the topic of communities taking control of their own infrastructure, Husk Power Systems is a homegrown company in the Indian "rice belt" installing powerplants that supply electricity to rural villages that don't get the national grid. These plants are powered by rice husks, an agricultural byproduct. It's beautiful, a perfect re-use of outputs from the food system, that produces an invaluable commodity and creates no food/fuel conflict. If anything, there is a certain peace, and a mutual encouragement on both sides of the equation.

mari kita makan

I could go on forever about how awesome masakan padang is. Although google translates it to "culinary field", the actual meaning is closer to "farmer's food". Masakan padang is rice served with the eater's choices from a spread of vegetables, eggs, soy, fish, meat and other accompanying foods.

One of my favourite things about masakan padang is how all the foods are arranged in plates carefully balanced on an elaborate arrangement of other plates, so that all the food is visible in the front window, even at a distance. It also makes it really easy to serve, by reducing the reaching distance.












Padang is really cheap and also allows vegans and vegetarians (this post is tagged "animals") to eat to their satisfaction and choose from great variety, eliminating the hassle of modifying menus or limiting their choices. In fact, it's got infinite customisability. It's also really tasty, easy and unassuming. A comfort food of sorts. I eat it every day.

Padang of the week:
Price: Rp 10,000 (about $1.12), where I ate it (price can vary slightly)












This one's got rice, vegetables, tempe, a deep fried egg, and chile*. A good place is more than happy to (as pictured) give you extra veg, and drown everything in coconut curry with no extra charge.

The tempe in Bali is consistently amazing. It's firm to the tooth like well done pasta, and yet has a certain creamy texture. It's got that wonderful nutty savouriness to it without the mal-fermented funk that sometimes comes with tempe in the US. And, it's super cheap. The tempe pictured cost about 20 cents. Next time, I'm getting two.

Deep fried egg! is a delicacy all across Southeast Asia. It's got all the nutrition of an egg, with all the delight of a french fry, this one topped with hot chiles and onions.


*There's more! Bali has red and green chile, just like New Mexico does. What a weird coincidence. The recipes are remarkably similar, the green consisting mostly of ripe fresh chiles and the red consisting mostly of ripe dried chiles. They vary in taste from place to place, just like in New Mexico. Some are mild and savoury, others taste like a molotov cocktail.

And whilst die hard New Mexicans like myself swear by green, in Bali, you just have to get both.

Merry christmas!

Real big on quarks

It's official: century gothic is the "greenest" font, using 30% less ink than Arial, and even more economical than some eco-fonts.

It's so green that the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay changed their default email font to century gothic to save the ink, the environment, and most importantly, money: 30% greater text-for-ink efficiency is a lot, since printer ink costs about $10000 a gallon.

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I've also heard, but found conflicting arguments, that dark coloured webpages save energy. Whether they do or not, mine's dark because I find gentle lights and dark backgrounds easier on the eyes.

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Finally,

This is super awesome: Loband is something like a browser-in-a-browser (perhaps not an accurate description) written by a bunch of really smart guys one of whom I saw speak at this class (which is really awesome and welcoming to audit-ers and not-MIT / not-students). It's neat because it allows an internet user to load all of the content of a webpage text-first, and then waits for instructions to load pictures, sounds and flash...

Okay, I figured it out. It's a service that's run on a high-bandwidth server, to be accessed by users in low-bandwidth areas. It filters websites requested through the service down to their core content at the server before sending it to the user, reducing the amount of information that needs to be transmitted. As the name suggests, this allows for efficient and judicious use of bandwidth in situations where connection speeds are low.

The original business idea was for a whole bunch of high speed servers running loband in Europe-near-Africa and Asia-with-internet-near-Asia-without, allowing users in these countries better access to the internet, and easing congestion in those networks. I can't remember who was supposed to pay for it-- perhaps internet providers in those countries, who benefit from less traffic? I don't recall, but I do remember it made a lot of sense when I heard it.

I don't know how that worked out. In any case, Loband is a useful card to have up your sleeve.

Stormy weather

For the third day today, it's raining men (I wish!) cats and dogs here in Ubud. I put a glass out yesterday to measure the rainfall, and I got a centimetre in about ten minutes(!).

On the way home, I lifted my scooter onto a deserted sidewalk to get around a road that had a foot of water on it. The flooding flushed the gutters out, leaving trash in the street, and making everything smell really terrible. Many roads had an inch deep stream of (brown) water sweeping across them. It had a certain charm to it.












Here are some brave souls fording the river directly.













Best investment I've ever made is a super waterproof messenger backpack, also known to be used by deep sea divers. Fortunately (and unfortunately), it's much more waterproof than my rain jacket and pants.

When I got back to the glass this morning to measure the total yesterday's rainfall, I found it overflowed (over seven centimetres of rain). I didn't get so wet riding home today. Like they say, yesterday was dramatic, today is okay.

Drawn onward to new era

This is (part of) the view from my office, and it doesn't really do justice to how amazing the view is. It's stunningly green, and the volcanoes are, in reality, huge.












After working for and talking to Ewa and Toshi at Kopernik here in Ubud, I'm getting a clearer picture of what exactly they're trying to do. There isn't really a simple explanation for what it is.

Kopernik works to address a couple of issues. In the first domain that they work in, they connect communities in developing countries in need certain types of technologies with companies or organisations which develop and produce innovative technologies, and finally with corporate donors and crowd-funding opportunities (where many donors each contribute a little to a specific project).

This gives poor people access to progressive, innovative and necessary technologies and products (which are often inaccessible because of cost) such as solar electric systems and water purification devices. Kopernik also provides support and advice to communities implementing projects. This spreads knowledge about technologies through the developing world and also connects companies to potential markets.

A key aspect of this is documenting the projects, and gathering comprehensive information on the outcomes and effects of introducing technology and projects. This allows experience to advise the design of future projects. Comprehensively reporting the impact of the projects that donors and supporters made possible is very important, and it helps to inform and engage people outside the field to support projects and learn about the impact of technology on the lives of the poor.


Kopernik not only connects companies to markets and communities with solutions, but also fosters communication between the organisations, businesses and people working on development challenges in low income countries. A big problem, I hear, is that "development" (a word and name I'm not terribly comfortable with), is a very closed industry, where there is little participation from people or other industries outside it, and where even some organisations within it don't talk to each other.

Kopernik wants to change this by being a marketplace and a hub for technology as well as for people, and by involving and engaging people outside the field to learn about and support initiatives in developing countries. Ewa and Toshi are both veterans of the UN, and another reason they are going this route of connections-en-masse and decentralised operation is because it is much faster and more responsive than the bureaucratic and sluggish UN.

We're making plans now for me to spend a couple of months, maybe? in East Timor, working directly with projects and communities Kopernik already works with, and introducing a whole bunch of new technology and programs. Yikes!


I wake up early everyday and ride a scooter (unfortunately, it's too far and the roads are too dangerous for bicycles) to Ewa and Toshi's house (aka Kopernik head office), where we type furiously at computers, sitting on a deck that hangs off the side of a hill facing a river and a countryside dotted with loads of coconut trees, hills (volcanoes?) in the distance. Simply amazing.












I've never owned or rented any kind of motor vehicle before, so it's here in Ubud that I'm buying gas for the first time in my life, a surreal experience. Gas must be really really well subsidised by the government here or something, it's about half the price of gas in the US. Probably in no small part because my scooter gets something like a hundred miles to the gallon, I pay about a dollar (no joke), a week right now for gas.

Yo soy del barrio

I often feel at home and confident in places before I'm actually familiar with them.

I have working maps in my head of so many little cities and places around the world...