Egy Maulana On Brink of European Deal

Indonesian hopes of having another young talent plying his trade in Europe may be realized this year.
Star soccer player Egy Maulana Vikri's agent, Dusan Bogdanovic, said several European clubs, in France and in Spain, had shown interest in signing the 17-year-old player. Bogdanovic added that an official announcement on the name of the club would be released within a month or two.
He was confident that Egy would land on his feet in one of the European soccer leagues, but declined to disclose any more information because the deal was still at an early stage.
"Egy is one of the biggest talents not only in Southeast Asia, but also in the world," Bogdanovic told a press conference at the Youth and Sports Ministry office in Jakarta on Friday.
"I have signed a contract (not to disclose which clubs are interested in hiring Egy). I can only say that is a 90 percent certainty that Egy will play in one of the European leagues," he added.
Sports Minister Imam Nahrawi, who also attended the presser, said the government would fully support Egy's dream to play in Europe as long as he availed himself to the national team when needed.
"It is (Egy's) rights to play in any country. However, whenever the national team needs him, including for the 2018 Asian Games, Egy has to be willing to come home," said Imam, as quoted by Antara.
He said the country would be proud to have more Indonesians, including Egy and another fresh talent, Witan Sulaeman, playing in Europe.
Egy, who also plays for the under-19 national soccer team, said he would brush up on his English while waiting for the contract to be finalized.
He also had trials with French soccer club AS Saint-Etienne for two weeks in December.
Egy, who was awarded Top Scorer and Most Valuable Player in the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) U19 Youth Championship last year, said he had also tried several clubs in Spain, Germany, Poland, Portugal and Italy throughout 2017.
Bogdanovic said because Egy is a devout Muslim, France would be ideal for him to practice his faith.
"Religion is important to him and there are many Muslims and mosques in France," he added.
Soccer observer Yusuf Kurniawan said Egy would be better off joining a Dutch club due to the historical links between the two countries.
"Egy has the quality to play in Europe. However, in order to crack the European market, he will have to prove himself constantly," Yusuf told The Jakarta Post.
To play profesionally in Europe, nevertheless, a player must be 18, he added. Egy will turn 18 on July 7.

Ramadani Saputra
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Indonesia Most Hopeful Country, Survey Reveals

When asked about her outlook for 2018, 53-year-old salon owner Nini said without hestitation, "I'm very optimistic."
Two working days into the New Year, business at her beauty salon in Bendungan Hikir, Central Jakarta, has been unusually slow.
"It has been very anemic," she said. But I'm sure that it will pick up after people come back from the long (year-end) holiday."
And despite being a staunch supporter of former Jakarta governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, who is now serving a prison sentence after being convicted of blasphemy, Nini said she was hopeful about were the country was heading.
"It's true that in 2017 people were easily provoked and incited by religion," she said. "But I think the experience has opened a lot of people's eyes.
"I'm sure that for the 2018 regional elections, they will not be so easily manipulated.
But of course in the real fact that she don't understand that why muslim in Indonesia has been over reacted like that is because Ahok's action to do verbals attack of blasphemy to muslim's ulama, it's holy Al Qur'an and the muslims itself. Ahok also try to manipulating muslims mind and faith that what ulamas and Qur'an says is not true or wrong by make another percepcion of Qur'an's sentence meaning. Ahok also doing some disturbion action to muslim who are mayority people in Jakarta by destroying mosque and muslim's territory and prohibited islam's syiar of Idul Adha qurban by stop and move its ritual from public space to animal cutting house only.
Last year was tough for Indonesia with political and ideoligical divisions starker than ever after a heated Jakarta gubernatorial election that stoked religious and racial tensions in the country.
Novy Linasari, a 28-year-old shop manager in Bali, acknowledged the growing societal discord, but said she remained optimistic.
"I think last year was a learning experience. The year 2018 will definitely be better, especially because the younger generation is becoming more critical," she added.
Nini and Novi's optimism was shared by over 70 percent of Indonesian, according to Gallup International's latest Annual Global End of Year Survey.
The survey, which was conducted in 55 countries between October and December 2017, asked respondents questions on three topic: hope, economic optimism and happines.
Indonesia ranked as the most hopeful country and made the top 10 in the other two topics, making it the overall "winner" of the survey.
When asked whether they thought 2018 would be better or worse than 2017, 73 percent of the 1,026 Indonesians surveyed said it would be better, while only 6 percent said it would be worse.
The survey also showed that 63 percent of Indonesians believed that 2018 would be a year of economic prosperity for the country, while 73 percent said they felt happy about their lives.
Psychologist Ahastari Nataliza told The Jakarta Post that optimism has a strong correlation with cognitive ability, particularly the ability to see things from a different perspective.
"For example, if someone experienced a bad car accident last year, one person might say it was a very bad year because of the hospital fees or the repair costs," she said. "But another person might say it was a good year because they survived."
She added that optimism was something that could be learned over time. "I am sure that everyone is able to be optimistic."
Nini echoed Ahastari's comments saying that "it all depends on how you think."
Jakarta State University (UNJ) sociologist Robertus Robet said the survey results seemed paradoxical because the countries that ranked the highest were those that faced serious sociopolitical and economic problems, such as Nigeria, Bangladesh and Mexico.
Developed European democracies, on the other hand, were among the most pessimistic…
"It seems that the hope and happiness measured by the survey is unrelated to the economy and democratic stability of a country," Robertus said.
"That means that a high ranking on the hope and optimism index goes not necessarily mean that a country is productive and progressing," he added. "It could also mean stagnation. People are optimistic because they ignore the problems."
Lutfi Kurniawan, 25, seems to have taken that route.
An employee at a private company in Jakarta, Lutfi said he was striving to be more optimistic this year.
"I have thought a lot about all the problems in the world and in Indonesia," he said. "But then I realized even the President, who thinks about that all day, can't solve everything. So I've decided to be more positive and and focus on my own personal goals."

kmt/The Jakarta Post
Jakarta

Cate BlanchettnTo Head Cannes Festival Jury

Cate Blanchett, the double Oscar-winning actress leading a Hollywood campaign to tackle sexual harassment in the workplace, will head the jury at this year's Cannes Film Festival, organizers said in Thursday.
Australian Blanchett, 48, who helped launch the "Time's Up" initiative this week following a string of sexual assault accusations againts prominent men in the film industry, will become the 12th woman to lead the prestigious panel at Cannes, which kicks off on May 8.
"We're very pleased to welcome a rare and unique artist with talent and conviction," Cannes president Pierre Lescure and delegate general Thierry Fremaux said in a joint statement.
"Our conversations this autumn convince us she will be a committed president, and a passionate and generous spectator."
The choice of Blanchett, who was named best actress at the 2014 Academy Awards for her role in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, will be seen as politically charged after a year in which the sexual harassment scandal surrounding Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein sparked a deluge of allegiations against powerful men in entertainment, politics and the media.
She was one of the first women to speak out against Weinstein, who faces claims of a string of sexual assaults and rapes from more than one hundred accusers.
Weinstein has denied some of the accusations.
"Any male who's in a position of authority or power, you know, whether he be a film producer or the president of the United States who thinks it's his prerogative to sexually intimidate or abuse women that they come into contact with, whether in the workplace or otherwise, they need to be held to account," Blanchett said during the September premier of her latest picture, Thor: Ragnarok.
She was one of over 300 top women in Hollywood, joining the likes of Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence, to unveil the "Time's Up" initiative on Monday to tackle the pervasive culture of sexual harassment at work.
It urges companies, government agencies and even the US federal court system to re-examine harassment policies.
Blanchett won the Oscar for best supporting actress in 2005 for her portrayal of Katherine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator and won Venice's best actress award in 2007 for her androgynous depiction of Bob Dylan in the biopic I'm Not There.
Ahe succeeds Spanish director Pedro Almodovar as jury head at Cannes, which last year awarded its prestigious Palme d'Or for the Swedish tragicomedy The Square.

Agence France-Presse
Paris

Consumers More Vulnerable In E-Commerce

So, you have started buying products online. But what if something goes wrong?
As more Indonesians shift to online shopping, little do they realize that they are less protected than if they were buying item off the shelves.
The current law on consumer protection was enacted in 1999, long before online shopping became fashionable. But with the e-commerce sector estimated to earn US$7 billion a year, and President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo pushing to make Indonesia Southeast Asia's biggest digital economy by 2020, there is an urgent need for the government to update the law.
Indonesia ranks sixth among the world's largest e-commerce markets, after China, th United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany. Outdated consumer protection laws are a problem in almost every country.
According to a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report released in April 2017, said nations need to come up with laws that strenthen consumer protection in e-commerce without killing innovation and market competition.
Egi Primayogha, a researcher for a non-governmental organization in Jakarta, admits he has had several unpleasant online shopping experiences, but none were worse than when he was sent a laptop that did not match the specs of the one he had ordered.
Two weeks went by before both the vendor and the e-commerce portal responded to his complaint, and even then, they only promised to return his money.
"I wasted time and energy," Egi said.
Natalia Angeline, 23, a graphic designer based in Tangerang, Banten, experienced a similiar disappointment when she bought a book from a local e-commerce platform as a present for a friend.
The vendor promised to wrap the book to withstand damages, but when it arrived, Natalia opened the package to find the cover of the book torn up.
She called the website's customer service only to receive an unfriendly response.
"So, I wrote a review on their website," Natalia said. "Honestly, I'm still a beginner as I just tried online shopping this year."
The UNCTAD report calls for national policies that encourage good practices "applicable to e-commerce in areas including information disclosure, contract terms, secure paymentnmechanisms, consumer privacy and data security, and dispute resolution and redress."
Almost a third of the 301 complaints received by the Indonesian Consumers Foundation (Y
kI) in 2017 came from online transactions. Most were about consumers' data and banking security, fraudulent goods, and shipment and payment refunds, YLKI law and complaint coordinator Sularsi told The Jakarta Post.
None of the cases were brought before the court, she added.
However, it is not as if consumers have no legal resource; there is the 1999 Consumer Protection Law and the Cyber Law, which was just amended in 2017, she said.
But Sularsi feels that consumers are still at a disadvantage because these laws were designed more to shield businesses and industries from responsibility. Moreover, Bank Indonesia (BI) and the Financial Services Authority (OJK) should also be brought into the law, given the growth of digital payment mechanisms.
There are, however, other barriers that Indonesia needs to overcome and that are more cultural in nature, namely awareness of consumer rights and the reluctance to complain.
The National Consumers Protection Agency (BPKN), an independent but state-funded institution, says that not enough Indonesians are complaining whenever they find themselves at the wrong end of a transaction, whether offline or online.
Consumer awareness scored a mere 31 percent in 2016, according to a survey by the BPKN, which is campaigning to make Indonesians smarter buyers.
In its year-end statement, the BPKN criticized the government for not taking consumer protection more seriously and is now pushing for an amendment to the 1999 law, incorporating the growth of e-commerce.
"E-commerce companies should improve their integrity and honesty as it (e-commerce) is a business based on trust," said BPKN deputy chairman Rolas Sitinjak.

sha/The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Preserving The Weaving Legacy

Traditional handwoven fabric has been a part of Kediri culture for centuries.
As the oldest kingdom in Java, Kediri left behind a legacy of tenun ikat (handwoven fabric), which, today, has spawned home industries, most notably in Bandar Kidul subdistrict.
Physical evidence of the Kediri art form is widely available, including six pieces of tenun ikat from 1910 that are kept at the Tropen Museum in the Netherlands. However, literature on the origins and history of the traditional fabric is harder to find.
Records indicated that a large-scale tenun ikat business was pioneered by an ethnic Chinese citizen named Freddy Jie, who thrived in the 1950s with around 200 manual weaving looms and hundreds of craftspeople. At the time, his business only produced woven sarongs with simple checker motifs.
Political turbulence in 1965 adveserly affrected Freddy's business, which was forced to shut down. A policy to import modern weaving machines adopted by the New Order regime further worsened the city's traditional fabric production, until its gradual revival in the mid-1990s.
Siti Ruqoyah and her husband Munawar, who both live in Bandar Kidul, Kediri, East Java, are among the families that have helped to revive the traditional art form.
The couple, who own the Medali Mas brand, started their business in 1989 with only one manual weaving loom. Today, they operate 60 weaving looms and employ 98 workers.
"Besides hard work, innovations and creations are important elements of the production process," Siti said.
Kediri tenun ikat is known for several motifs, such as ceplok (round shapes), salur (straight stripes), shapes resembling Yogyakarta's lurik (striates) and gunungan (mountain).
"Handwoven cotton with traditional motifs covers about 20 percent of our total production," she said.
Despite the complex and long process of weaving a piece of woven cloth, sales have run smoothly and they have even had to employ more workers to meet demand.
Their woven products are sold to Jakarta and several regiona outside Java.
"They were also introduced to the public at Jakarta Fashion Week some time ago," Siti said.
The demand for woven sarongs is generally high during the fasting month. Producing at least 60 pieces of silk and non-silk woven fabric daily with a starting price of Rp 165,000 (US$12) per piece. Siti also creates shoes and bags with woven cloth.
She allows her skillful workers to use her looms for weaving cloth in their respective homes. She tries to share her fortune when demand is high by channeling some of the orders to other woven fabric producers.
This system allows her to exercise quality control over her products. A sheet of woven cloth is crafted through 14 intricate stages, all being handled traditionally.
"One phase of the process affects the outcome of the next, so I'm conducting very tight supervision over employee management and raw material handling," she said.
The woven fabric business also helps young men get employed, challenging gender expectations in weaving, which many believe is a woman's job.
Siti, a mother of two who was a migrant worker before she began hand weaving, said she wanted to see younger generations preserve the Kediri tradition.
Despite strong sales, she noted there were constraints in the industry, including limited land to accomodate larger operations and the fact that the regional administration had never organized overseas exhibitions.
"So far, foreign marketing of our woven products has only been done through purchases by foreign tourists as gifts and consignment of the products to foreign expos," she said.
Kediri Mayor Abdullah Abu Bakar said there was a foreign market for woven saronga, particularly in the Middle East.
"Foreign consumers indeed like exclusive handmade products very much, but there's some reluctance if they're still in cloth form as the tailoring costs are high," he said, adding that he has been attempting to train local artisans to make ready-to-wear woven products.
If demand soars moving forward, land would be provided, he pledged.

Nedi Putra AW
Contributor JP/Kediri, East Java

The Most Amazing Noodles And Other Quick Tokyo Meals

Tempura bowl of noodles is the Japanese equivalent of the Pret A Manger bacon sandwich: a quick snack or a light lunch.
At a tiny underneath a railway overpass in Tokyo, the chef and I tried our best to communicate with one another. He sounded as though he might be describing the delightful kaki-age in tempura batter that he was currently frying for me. But he might also have been miming the lyrics to "Baby Shark."
I was, irresponsibly, utterly lost somewhere in the biggest city in the world, so I wouldn't be able to tell you how to get back to that udon noodle shop - and they were the most amazing noodles I've ever had.
The tempura bowl of noodles is the Japanese equivalent of the Pret A Manger bacon sandwich: a quick snack or a light lunch. The British have a cold lump of protein sandwiched between two squishy yet highly absorbent pieces of bread with suck the saliva out of your mouth and the will to live from your soul - eaten while working, while sitting on the bus, on park benches.
We Filipinos enjoy our bread and sandwiches too, but for us, they are the gastronomic equivalent of a Fox's glacier mint. It is something that tickles the palate or whiles away the afternoon, but not something that actually gives nutrition or sustenance - which requires rice.

'Merienda'
We still haven't figured out how to manage the quick lunch - cheap, filling and fast - nor the 10-minute snack that could punctuate the afternoon.
This holiday season I've been rediscovering merienda, in large part due to a gift crate of bread from Panaderya Toyo, which included knots of pan de sal in addition to sourdough baguettes.
The other reason is that we went away early and were in town for most of the holidays, which means long afternoons of bored, restless children had to be punctuated by a rambling, multicourse meal. So, we would buy bibingka from Via Mare, kutsinta from the initerant vendor, and have ham and chesee sandwiches from Excelente ham and a block of cheese.
I'd make a hot chocolate with real chocolate chunks from Davao and a dash of single cream and vanilla beans. Then we'd finish up with a bit of cake or mince pies, by which time it would be cocktail hour.
It was all very pastoral, straight out of an old-fashioned Filipino short story. But it also makes you realize to what degree these stories were set among the upper classes, who didn't have the urgency of work to abbreviate their afternoons.

Tokyo and toddlers
I do realize I'm a bit late to the party when it comes to travelling to Japan - especially during the years when the yen was particularly cheap and the visa requirements had just been relaxed and everyone was discovering the wonders of bidet toilet seats and well stocked convenience stores.
We attempted to squeeze in a side trip to Tokyo on the way north to the snow, which was a bit ambitious to begin with. But in between the time that we booked our tickets to our actual departure date, our second child became an extremely mobile toddler. Tokyo and toddlers don't really mix, which was why we were in desperate need of restaurants that would serve food quickly and efficiently.
So, we ate a lot of quick meals that involved ducking into a little shop, enjoying a surprisingly filling meal with sides and vegetables, and paying at the cashier. Or if the family didn't want to go out into the freezing cold, I would run down to the convenience store and bring up a plastic bag of hot meals and we would eat them in our hotel room.
I think you can judge a country's culinary culture as much by restaurants like Florilege, as by the quality of convenience store meals. This got me thinking about the kind of meal we would have to have in London or Paris if we were in a hurry.
London punishes you with bad food in general if you aren't rich enough to afford daily Ottolenghi, but more so if you need it quickly. Paris is surprisingly unsympathetic to those who can't make the time for a proper lunch break.
You might get a jambon beurre sandwich. It might be the best bread made by a proper baker, and it'll have great globs of Normandy butter slathered onto the crumb. But in the end, it's still a ham sandwich, the kind that lacerates your upper palate and is dejectingly similiar on the 14th bite as it was on the first bite.

Serendipitous discoveries
Apart from making it downhill in blizzard conditons, enjoying snow monkey life in the onsen, and eat-all-you-can sushi, some of my best memories from the trip consisted of discivering serendipitously good restaurants on the way to a train station or to catch a plane or because we found ourselves at particular spot when hunger pangs struck.
It was proper food, too, with concessions to utensils for the children and with condiments, sauces, pickles. A lot of the efficiency has to do with clients working with the restaurant rather than against it, in a joint effort to move the process along. Customers pick up their orders, and bus out their trays. Then there's a little cloth for you to wipe your place clean for the next customer.
All this happens in the lenght of time it takes for one to reach the counter at Jollibee and order one's Chickenjoy.
This is not to suggest that we should emulate Japan's harsh work schedule, which even they are beginning to rethink after years of declining birth rates and employees dying from working too many hours a week - 80 is the norm, 100 is not uncommon. But even if most Manila workers are not likely to bw victims of karoshi (death by overwork), we do have the most appalling traffic conditions that bookend even the most languid eight-hour job - over two hours, at least, of hell on wheels going to work and coming home.
If someone clever could invent truly fast food that wasn't fried, oily and unhealthy, or perhaps portable meals one could eat while stuck on Edsa, this would do more for nutrition, well-being and sanity of the Manila commuter than the umpteenth flavor of tuna flakes in oil.

Clinton Planca/ANN/Philippine Daily Inquirer

Best Quick Bites In Tokyo

The popularity of Japanese food has been on the rise in recent years. If you go to any high-end shopping mall in Jakarta, you will certainly find dozens of Japanese restaurants. Dining at Japanese restaurants has become a global phenomenon.
When in Tokyo, the capital of Japan, what is on offer, especially when you might not have much time? The following food items maybe the best choice while in Tokyo.

'Donburi': Japanese rice bowls, or better known as donburi, are dishes consisting of steamed white rice and selection of vegetables, seafood, meat or other ingredients. Donburi are cheap, quickly prepared and can be found almost anywhere, making them ideal meals for students, travelers and company workers on a tight schedule. Gyudon (beef bowls) are one of the most common donburi varieties and the top-three gyudon chains in Tokyo are Sukiya, Yoshinoya and Matsuya. If you have a craving for deep-fried foods, you can indulge in tendon, which is rice coupled with tempura. Seafood lovers can also enjoy kaisendon (rice topped with assorted sashimi) or ikuradon (rice with salmon roe) at Tokyo's famous Tsukiji Market.

'Ramen': Tokyo is known for its ramen scene. The best ramen are normally found in Tokyo's many yokocho (alleyways). These are narrow streets that are home to numerous diners, pubs and food stalls. These places tend to be very crowded at night as they are popular sites for company drinking parties and workers who are looking to grab a quick bite before ing home. Tokyo also has a Ramen Street, located in Tokyo Station. Here, you can find eight amazing restaurants specializing in different kinds of ramen such as shio ramen and tonkotsu ramen.

'Konbini bentou': The most practical way to get your lunch is to visit a (konbini) convenience store or supermarket in Tokyo and try their pre-made meals called bentou. There are countless types of bentou but normally, they contain steamed white rice with various side dishes. The rice is sometimes topped with sesame seeds or pickled plums. The side dishes very greatly but common examples include grilled salmon, tamagoyaki, ebi tempura, sausage, karaage and minced chicken. Aside from konbini bentou, you can also buy ekiben, which are essentially bento boxes sold at train stations. These bentou can come in unique designs such as the Shinkansen E7 Kei Bentou, which is shaped like an actual Shinkansen and can be purchased at Tokyo Station's Ekibenya Matsuri.

Sanjeevini Pertiwi/Contributor JP