No Indonesian has headed a United Nations affiliated organization since 1972 (Adam Malik, as UNGA president), attention from media outside the region is vanishingly rare, and despite having perhaps the most brutal and intense football culture in the world, the last time it made it into the Round of 16 at the World Cup was when it was still a colony. note Australians are an exception to this, as both countries are (rather uneasy) neighbors, and likewise the Netherlands' colonial legacy has left enough Indonesians and Indonesian-born Eurasians (like the Van Halen brothers' mom) in the larger Dutch cities to make a mark. When you hear the word 'Indonesia', you'll be forgiven for thinking that it's little more than a disaster-prone (true) collection of tiny islands floating alongside Micronesia and Polynesia and their ilk ( definitely not true, but understandable, given the shared etymology).
Indonesia as a concept, curiously enough, has managed to go nigh-unnoticed by many Westerners (at least until the Twitter era) in spite of its behemoth size and population. With a population of over 275 million people, it is the fourth most populous country in the world, beaten only by the United States, India and China. Indonesia, officially known as the Republic of Indonesia ( Indonesian: Republik Indonesia), is a collection of between 13,466 or 17,508 islands located in Southeast Asia.
