Wednesday, April 11, 2012

one-way trade?


Read an article about David Cameron coming over for a two-day visit to Jakarta.

First: poor Dave. Brits worship sunshine, but I don't know what he'd make out of combined sunshine, pollution, and humidity.

Second: poor Dave. Fillon beat him by almost a year.

Third: poor/hello Dave. France sent a Second-in-Command (not Sarkozy - I wonder how it would turn out if he had walked the tarmac instead).

The more important issues: What kind of talks did Dave and Bambang* have? Did Dave talk with Marty? I'm not so well-versed in defense strategies so I will give that topic a pass, but what about trade? Is it really equally bilateral, is it we-come-here-for-favours type of bilateral, or is it something else? I smell Perry's black ships in the air... but then again, I might be overcautious, I might be irrationally historically referential, I might be right, or I might be plain wrong. Interesting stuff.

On trade, I would rather be able to ship my things to UK (to sell there) without incurring crazy customs fees. £35 is nowhere near enough for sending anything. Maybe the audience can share a few things about these potentially nefarious webs of knowledge?

Also, how did they converse?

I imagined that I was in the vicinity of these decision-makers, somehow got roped into a chat with them and got asked about where I used to live (somewhere unsalubrious) and what I used to do (something vain). Then somehow I got recruited as 'special advisor' (Dave's preferably), got overworked and overpaid and overnetworked, and... return to my field in the next few years. Or maybe not at all. I might end up a prime minister! Ha.

Anyhoo, good night people.

*I do not like his usual moniker, and since his first name sounded a bit off, I settled for his second name instead.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think you might have underestimated your country to much hahaha...

I feel you. At first I also thought it probably be one way trade. UK selling more stuff to Indonesia than the Indonesia to UK.

But with a quick google search I found that it's the other way around. Indonesia's export to UK is actually triple the size of UK's export to Indonesia.

http://www.ukti.gov.uk/export/countries/asiapacific/southeastasia/indonesia.html

Surprise...

As a side note, with the trend of global power shift to Asia, I found that it is too often people put Indonesia at the same league with China and India. That's too generous.

Perhaps David Cameron is overvaluing Indonesia's economy?

On second thought, nahh... That man visited at least 5 other countries in South East Asia on this trip. We don't matter that much :-)