When 'permanent' means 'temporary'

Reported in The Jakarta Post today, investors to Indonesia are offered permanent residence. Only that, it is "limited to five years".

What?

Got debt problem? Go to Bank Indonesia

Bank Indonesia (BI) is to limit credit card subscription, reported Kontan weekly.

A deputy governor of BI received a letter from an ordinary citizen. The latter told the former that he was in debt problem. He couldn't pay up his credit card bills. He got eight credit cards, all overdue.

And Bank Indonesia has a brilliant solution. It will issue a regulation to limit one's credit card subscription. No one can have more than two credit cards.

My goodness.

I'm thinking of writing a letter to the Deputy Governor like this:

Dear Deputy Governor:
I am poor. Every day I eat at warteg. ¹ Because I'm so poor, I usually eat and pay later when I have enough money. Some wartegs allow me to do that as long as I return the money with an extra penny or two. Recently, situation is getting worse. I lost my job. I have debt to pay to eight wartegs. But I need to eat, no?

And I'm imagining this brilliant solution: No one is allowed to be customer of more than two wartegs.

¹ Warteg is street vendor selling inexpensive food.

Wanna join?

So there they are. Indonesian Nationalists Association.

Good luck with that.

Pertamina under pressure

It's still early in the morning. But this news just made my day. Pertamina decreased the prices of its non-subsidized fuels again, due to consumers' switching to subsidized fuel after an increase last week. Mmh, sounds like Pertamina learned something.

But most entertainingly, Pertamina set the prices even lower at stations where there is ... competition:

Pertamina still applies a special, lower prices at locations near competitors (Shell and Petronas).

You say competition ain't good?