I’m wondering if we can we spell BRIC with a double “I” now that Indonesia has gone from BB to BB+ and awaits an investment grade rating???

And we hear you’re going to visit us. The timing *could not* be better. So many foreigners looking to get into Indo. So many Indonesians looking to get out — pick up a degree, maybe a little work experience on the outside. Jakarta is minutes from Singapore, a few hours from Hong Kong and Sydney, and then New Delhi – Jakarta isn’t much worse than NYC -LA. Consequently, we’ve got this really vibrant mix of Asians, Europeans, others — both expats, repats, everything you can imagine.

The educational institutions are basically just trying to keep up. Obama — who went to grade school and middle school here in central/south Jakarta — has really ramped up the bilateral cooperation, most of it is goes directly to education. Last week Sampoerna Foundation (who works with Harvard but just about everybody else, too) and the US Embassy/US Commercial Service put on a great show with 75 US schools. And a flashy Yank education/culture center at Pacific Place mall, hope you can check it out. Of course Australia and UK have been doing this kind of thing for a decade. But it’s exciting (at least to Indonesians) to see the US involved. Germany is active. Netherlands of course has education links going back 100 years.

Just as an example, I personally have never seen so much interest here in the GMAT in Indonesia — this year and last. And that goes for the pre-’98 monetary crisis.

By the way, I operate a guest stay for young expats (including interns) near the office district. We’ve got plenty of Indonesian cultural information at http://www.sharehouse.wordpress.com.