As a result of the bad kharma from the previous day’s free entry I felt pretty average on New Year’s Eve. I had flashbacks of the previous year’s NYE which I spent with my mum in her motorhome watching Frida on DVD. It was one of the worst NYE’s I’ve had (sorry mum, it was really boring but not your fault). I was sick that night as well, although getting to see Salma hayek’s breasts during the movie eased the pain somewhat. Luckily, this year’s NYE turned out to be a lot more interesting. I teamed up with a guy from the Czech Republic and went along to a free concert in the park in front of the Kraton.

If you want to know what locals do on NYE in Yogya it usually involves sitting on a scooter stuck in traffic waiting for the New year to kick in. The streets were absolutely packed with scooters and noone seemed to be getting anywhere. The smart ones all walked to the concert. It took about an hour to walk the few kilometres to the park and we arrived halfway through a version of rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the name of’. The band was pretty good except for the singer whose command of the English language was crap. Attempting a song in English wasn’t a good idea as he had no real understanding of what he was singing. This was apparent when he sang the last part as ‘fuck you I want to do what you tell me’. Pretty much the complete opposite meaning of what Zach de la Rocha intended when he wrote the song. It made me laugh but noone else seemed to get the joke.

The event was sponsored by one of the big tobacco companies. They had huge signs everywhere. In between bands they played their ad which involved people doing extreme sports and the comperes got the crowd to chant the brand name. It was a bit sad. Smoking is a huge problem here. I`ve been meaning to write a long entry about it. Its definitely one of the worst things about the country and events like this don`t do much to help reduce the problem.

I`ll finish this later