Cleaning up

A shopowner mops up while a TV camerman -- and I -- record it all for posterity

The weather's been pretty dry for the last 24 hours, although ominous clouds are lingering overhead. People are cleaning up to the extent that they can, despite the possibility that everything will flood again.

Local police air out their furniture

Popular opinion says this year's deluge has been even worse than the epic flood of 2002. A lot of blame is flying around, much of it settling on Sutiyoso, the governor of Jakarta. Sutiyoso is given to saying colorful things like "you can cut my legs off if I'm wrong." But these days he just sounds sulky.

"This is a disaster, and any preparations we could make would not have been enough for the floods that happened," he has said -- seeming to question the entire philosophical basis for emergency planning. But the people who've been trapped in their houses, or sleeping outside under tarps, no doubt feel more preparation would have been a good idea.