On Indonesians

Was reading Reader's Digest and came across an article on sleep habits of people around the world..and what pleasantly surprised me is this statistic in the article:


Wow cool! At last something to make us proud of being Indonesians....

Then after dinner I was chatting with my housemate and turns out she recently read a survey that says Indonesian youths are among the happiest in the world. That got me curious on what statistics are available on Indonesia and Indonesians, and these are the results:

1. Indonesian youths are the third happiest amongst youths of South East Asian countries, China, India and Hong Kong. (http://www.asiaone.com/News/Education/Story/A1Story20090325-130910.html)

2.The gender ratio in Indonesia is 1.01 male to female. I guess that eliminates any excuses for polygamy in Indonesia!
(https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/id.html)

3. As of 30 Sept 2008, Indonesia has $151.7 billion of external debt (compare to Singapore's $25.52 billions, Vietnam's $23.72 billion, Laos's $3.179 billions, Malaysia's $54.11 billions). Yeah, we've got the biggest debt this side of Asia...

4. Indonesia has 169 airports with paved runways AND 506 airports with unpaved runways.... rough landing, anyone?
(https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/id.html)

5. Military spending is 3% of GDP (compare to Singapore's 4.9%, Vietnam's 2.5%, Malaysia's 2.03%). Meanwhile, our education expenditure is 3.6% of GDP compared to Singapore's 3.7%.
Looking at numbers alone, how come the Singapore education system managed to generate so much more stress? Huhuhuhuh.......

6. Indonesia is first on tsunami death toll (104 055 deaths followed by Sri Lanka's 48 677)

7. We are the 7th largest foreign aid recipient, just between Sudan and Afghanistan....

8. We have the highest known mammal species (515 species) AND the most types of threatened mammal species IN THE WORLD! That means a fantastic biodiversity! Oh wow...I should do further research on what's being done to protect this biodiversity (I suspect not much....) Pretty curious now..

9. Indonesia ranks 15th on the most number of male smokers (France is way down there at no 95..)
No wonder I was unfazed by Paris while Singaporeans complain that Parisians smoke all the time..

10. We rank 3rd for cinema attendance worldwide (1st is India,2nd the USA , and France is 4th...) Wow..I think it says something that eventhough we're "just" a developing country, our cinema attendance is up there with the more advanced countries hahaha...

11. We rank 64th out of 65 countries in the Big Mac Index (defined as the price of a McDonald's Big Mac in US Dollars at current exchange rates...which means our Big Mac price is as low as it can go, only higher than China...) Well, too bad I'm a vegetarian....

12. That said, we also have the second least number of McD outlets at 0.003 per 10 000 people (in a survey out of 39 countries) China is again lowest at 0.002 per 10 000 people. Yeah, with the amount and variety (and sheer fantastic deliciousness) of cheap street food in Indonesia, McD shouldn't even have a chance!
(Statistics 6 - 12 taken from http://www.nationmaster.com/country/id)

13. 60% of Indonesians want adulterers to be punished by whipping, according to a 2004 survey by US -funded Global Freedom Institute (Then again, I took the statistic from a website titled "Jihad Watch" ....huhuhu....http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/003904.php)

14. Indonesians are the third slowest to lose their virginity amongst 42 countries surveyed in the Durex Global Sex Survey 2005. Apparently most Indonesians lose their virginity at age 19.1, compared to India's 19.8 , Vietnam's 19.6, Malaysia's 19, France's 17.2 and Iceland's 15.6. Now, since most Indonesians marry young anyway, I'm just wondering whether most of that virginity is lost before or after marriage.....
(http://www.swivel.com/data_columns/spreadsheet/2372916)

15. Less than 2% of Indonesians do not believe in God, according to a 1999 BBC survey (compared to 65% in Japan, and 13% in Singapore) The statistics might have changed a lot now... the thing is that merely stating "I believe in God" doesn't mean anything... Some people believe with their heart but their mind doesn't believe, others believe in their minds and their hearts are unconvinced, still others believe not with their hearts or minds, but just with their mouths... but I digress!
(http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=tAeFipOVx4MC&pg=PA53&lpg=PA53&dq=indonesians+survey+aheist&source=bl&ots=Kgt6KbsW-X&sig=mw22IKSCHDr-cp9S1S6zKGUETXg&hl=en&ei=Iyj3SbnyMs-JkQWTiuHpCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9#PPA53,M1)

Hmm...the post took longer than I expected because it was pretty fun browsing the net just to try and find weird statistics hahaha...

Conclusion: I guess Indonesia is a pretty cool nation after all...