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Comment by MarketingJason | Hacker News Reader

I've lived in Jakarta (long time ago) and visited recently for work. One story sums up how I feel about Indonesia:

I worked for a globally-distributed company. The founder, org, and some engineers were located in Indonesia. We had a company-wide "working retreat" in Bali for a month where I got to work alongside our Indonesian Software Engineer team.

At some point, I got up and started to refill a disposable Dasani water bottle I had been using at the water dispenser. The senior dev comes over to me looking shocked.

"What are you doing?" "Umm...I'm getting some more water?" "Don't you know about BPAs?" "Yeah"

He began to explain I shouldn't re-use water bottles because it gets more BPAs in the water. I just said "thanks, I'm okay" and kept re-using the bottle. I also asked around, it was a common belief among the rest of the group.

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I don't think I am particularly dense, but I heavily struggle to tell what this is supposed to mean. I definitely appreciate this story being posted here, but I cannot put a finger on what kind of a feeling about Indonesia it is supposed to sum up.

So on your work trip to Bali, the devs from Indonesia suggested you dont reuse a plastic bottle due to BPAs in the water getting higher with reuse, you ignored their suggestion (presumably because BPAs arent a concern in this case?), and that sums up how you feel about Indonesia? I feel like I am missing something important in this story.

This is definitely true. Although it's a bit extreme to not refill a disposable bottle once or twice, you should instead buy a bottle that is meant to be refilled and not buy bottled water if it can be avoided.

What I'm curious about is what you thought that said about the entire country of Indonesia, so much so that nothing else needed to be said. (Even assuming that the BPA claim is false.)

> not buy bottled water if it can be avoided.

That goes against every advice I've ever heard for traveling developing countries. It's usually "yes, even for brushing your teeth, use bottled water!".

> He began to explain I shouldn't re-use water bottles because it gets more BPAs in the water. I just said "thanks, I'm okay" and kept re-using the bottle. I also asked around, it was a common belief among the rest of the group.

Any reason to believe that is not the case? BPAs in plastic bottles are well known at this point. I guess I'm not understanding what this anecdote says about your feelings about Indonesia.

It's true, you shouldn't. The plastic leaches off in multiple forms. Doing it a couple times won't really hurt you, but it's a bad long-term habit.

Context: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43823883

And… I’m not the expert but I’m pretty sure the BPAs in the second fill are negligible compared to the first. The point is that they are all drinking single-use bottled water and trashing the bottles because of a tiny irrational concern for themselves.

The owner of Jungle Bay in Dominica said a similar thing. Like how we go to watch leatherbacks nesting, and Dominicans show up with hatchets. He was trying to do conservation from a banker’s chair in Morgan Stanley, but it wasn’t working because the people felt no connection to the ecosystem. He started the resort so that the locals would see the value that ‘we’ ascribe to it.

I was once talking to a senior dev from country X, he explained to me how vaccines cause autism, or how the moon landing is fake or Bill Gates is implanting microchips in all of us, that sums up how I feel about the country X.

What’s your point?

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