The Bakrie Award...

The Bakrie Award is designed to recognise Indonesians who have made significant contributions to the greater Indonesian community.

However, it would seem that not all award recipients are thankful and grateful for the "honour" bestowed upon them. The award has already been rejected by two past winners: Franz Magnis Suseno and Goenawan Mohammed. Suseno rejected the award before even going to a ceremony to get it. Goenawan handed his back.

However, in conjunction with the big announcement that Bakrie Center Foundation was funding, and generously so, the creation of a Chair for Southeast Asian Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there was also an announcement of this years winners. The 2010 winners included Sitor Situmorang and Daoed Joesoef. Unfortunately, for the Bakrie Center Foundation both these winners said they were not interested in the award and did not want it, in fact both stated that the Bakrie's could keep their awards. The award comes with IDR 100 million attached.

The various reasonings for the rejection noted that the spirit of the award was not reflected in the conduct of the Bakrie's themselves with respect to the Sidoarjo mud extrusion. The original news is in Indonesian and can be found here.

Maybe it is about time that the Bakrie family reached the point where they just said, "bugger it!" And, then paid out the claims and had some publicity that could be spun positively. The fact is most people believe that it is a Bakrie company that is responsible for the extrusion and not an earthquake. There is a limited number of ways you can spin bad publicity before it just becomes a stone in your shoe and a sizable irritant going forward. Time to shoulder-up, take of the shoe, shake out the stone, pay the people of Sidoarjo what they are owed, and then get on with whatever it is that the Bakrie's do.

Cathleen Santoso -- Australia's Best Female Golfer Since Karrie Webb?

Cathleen Santoso is a 14-year-old who has been playing golf for a mere three years. She is rated as one of the hottest teenage prospects in decades and potentially Australia's best female golfer since Karrie Webb. Considering that Karrie Webb is a Hall of Famer, then this is indeed high praise coming from Jack Newton.

Jack Newton was one of Australia's great golfers until he walked into the propeller of a small aircraft and lost an arm and an eye. Hey, even after that he was still a better one-armed golfer than most two-armed hacks like me.

The reason I am writing this blog post is that I read an article in The Daily Telegraph about her. Having lived in Indonesia for many years the name Santoso jumped off the page and caught my eye. It is an interesting story. Besides I have a fascination for all things Indonesian and Australian, so this combines both of those fascinations and rolls them into one story.

Cathleen Santoso was born in Australia to Indonesian parents. The article does not say whether the parents have taken out Australian citizenship or not. But, a quick Google search reveals that Santoso has won her state age championship event three years running and is in the representative school-age teams for which she qualifies. I have not managed to track down any photos of her in action on the Internet.

Her inspiration, Michelle Wie, of course.

The beauty of multicultural Australia, our talent is bred locally (although not always) but can trace its ancestry to all points on the globe.

Viva Australia.