Bandung Flood

A few days ago, exactly on Monday (10/24), a sudden flood engulfed Bandung. The sudden flood hit some parts of the city in the afternoon, including Jl. Dr. Djunjunan (better known as Jl. Pasteur and Jl. Pagarsih), sweeping away several cars and killing a resident. I was in school and it rained heavily, but I wouldn’t think there would be a flood. On my way home from school, the streets were full of cars and seldom moving, so I waited in school until 4 p.m. and then I went home.

I saw nothing on my way home because I was sleeping. Later at home, I heard news about the sudden flood. It was said by Bandung’s Bina Marga road agency head Iskandar Zulkarnaen that the extraordinary heavy rain unexpectedly flooded the riverbank beyond its maximum capacity. Thus, overflowing water from the Citepu River inundated Jl. Pasteur and Jl. Sukamulya.

"Because of the excessive heavy rain, the river is unable to contain the water," he said to reporters in Bandung as quoted by kompas.com.

The flash flood reportedly took the life of Ade Sudrajat (30), after he fell into the water and was swept away while trying to assist his friend escape from flooding on Jl. Setia Budi. His body was later found in a gutter.

A black Nissan had been dragged more than 200 meters along the street before being diverted by the flow of water and carried into the Citepus River. The flood also swept away a three-wheeled motorcycle, which was parked in front of a garbage dumpster on Jl. Pagarsih and a smaller red Daihatsu Charade sedan.

The mayor of Bandung, Ridwan Kamil, has apologized to the public for Monday’s flash flood. As the mayor, he said, he will be responsible upon the disaster which made up to 16 billion Rupiah loss. He will keep sought on to repairing the drainage system.

“Indeed as Bandung mayor I am responsible. The flood countermeasures keep continues on. This year, Bandung city government has fix up the drainage system in 19 roads. It shows that our yearly installments due to the limited budget,” he said.

Through his Instagram account, Kamil uttered his apologize to all Bandung citizens, and also invited us as Bandung citizens to take our part on keeping our city clean and preventing flood in the future.

Reference:

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/10/26/cause-city-s-recent-fatal-flooding-a-mystery-bandung-mayor.html

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/10/25/bandung-blames-heavy-rain-poor-drainage-for-flash-flood.html

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/10/26/bandung-administration-denies-flood-caused-by-burst-dike.html

https://www.instagram.com/ridwankamil/

http://regional.liputan6.com/read/2635192/ridwan-kamil-bingung-penyebab-banjir-di-bandung

What would Indonesia be in the Next Five Years?

In the next five years, I’d like to see lots of positive changes take place in my country, Indonesia. I don’t have to be a major change that leads Indonesia to be a developed country like USA or Singapore. Instead, small positive changes would give better impact than nothing, right?

In the next five years, I’d like to see a better government system and better government employees in Indonesia. Nowadays, lots of the governors and civil servants corrupt the country’s budget. It is a lot better now than 5 years ago, where the TV programs were full of the corruption news. Thus I think in 5 years I’d like to see no corruption case in Indonesia anymore.

I’d also like to see a more open-minded society and no more racist people. The country’s development is also affected by the citizens. In such wise, if we don’t have good citizens, this country won’t develop well. Indonesian citizens should be more open-minded about everything. We should be willing to hear each other opinion and not being conservative about one idea. I think now, as well as in the future, being racist is not cool. So, stop being racist and start to love our diversity.

I see that there are lots of poor families today, so I hope in the next 5 years the number of poor families will decrease, and more people will have a good quality of life, because every person in the country deserves the same rights to have a good quality of life. They should have better nutrition, in fact that many poor families today suffer from malnutrition. Many also do not have access to clean water, which oblige them to use dirty water for their everyday usage. There are many more that we, especially the governments in this case can do to help these poor families.

One of the most common social issues today is that many parents could not afford their children’s education. Hence, a lot of the country’s next generations are uneducated. I really appreciate Mr. Jokowi’s program of the free schooling that he made so that more poor children can go to school without paying the school fee. But this program has not been spread equally all over the country, only some cities have this program already. I wish in the next 5 years, this program will spread all over the country. Therefore, more children can go to school.

The last change I want to see it take place in Indonesia is a fast internet connection. The internet connection in Indonesia is considered a slow compared to other countries such as South Korea and Sweden. Today, internet is one of the most important aspects of human’s life. The internet helps us connected with someone far away, do homework or researches, play games, or just simply to post selfies on Instagram and watch your favorite youtuber on Youtube. But slow internet connection will make our activities take a long time. Slow internet connection could ruin everything; students ca get no marks because they didn’t do their homework, you could have miscommunication between you and your girlfriend or boyfriend,  or you could be undated with the latest news today.  Thus, I hope we could make Indonesia’s internet connection faster.

Changes won’t happen if there are no actions. We all have to be willing to do things that support the change. I believe that small actions could make a big difference to our lovely country, Indonesia.