On gambling

I refer to your editorial Gambling: Yes or No? (The Jakarta Post, May 14).

My experience is that Yogyakarta is in the grips of "gambling fever". There must be trillions of rupiah won and lost everyday, and all of it "black money", all of it beyond the control of regulation, and moderation. There is betting on the outcome of matches in the Italian Soccer League, the European League, and the F.A Cup. And then there is estimating the quantity of numbered marbles in a jar and speculating on how many segments can be found inside a randomly chosen mangenstein fruit. There are becak races, counting cars passing a given point and betting on vehicle number plates.

The greatest attraction however seems to be with the animal kingdom -- cricket fighting, pigeon racing, and betting on the number of "chit-chat" sounds a gecko makes in a certain period of time. I have also heard that in the bird market there is a gambling outfit that arranges bets, both on site and by telephone, on how many whistles a certain bird makes. Millions of rupiah ride on the whim of a creature with a brain the size of your little fingernail. But then, there is the biggest of them all -- fishing.

People pay huge sums of money to sit around the edges of a half-stagnant, slimy green pool and try and catch a tagged fish - and win a car! Fishing equipment shops have sprung up -- like weeds, or perhaps, like reeds.

Everywhere people are reading fishing magazines like a seasoned gambler would read the track guide, looking for that new technique that will "give them the winning edge. Can gambling in Indonesia ever be stamped out? Anyone want to bet on it?

ROB GOODFELLOW, Yogyakarta