Biro Berita Monyet Putih

Jakarta, Senin (Monday)

Welcome to the laziest and least up-to-date global media corporation, Biro Berita Monyet Putih, otherwise known as White Monkey News Bureau.

The Biro brings you stories from Jakarta, Indonesia, and other places in the archipelago when it feels like it.

This blog, and indeed the Biro itself, started life as emailed ‘Letters from Indonesia’ sent to friends in Australia and other countries.

But the Biro’s output has been too much for some readers whose in-boxes already had plenty of spam and so the Board of BBMP made the decision to make the Letters public and let former email-receivers check the Biro’s ramblings when they felt up to it and let random surfers from around the world in on the game as well.

So you will find that past Letters have been tossed up under recent dates that don’t match with the dates when the Letters were emailed. This is in keeping with the ethos of the Biro to be mathematically stoopid. Also, we still haven’t finished uploading because of our laziness ethos so stay tuned for more postings when we get around to it.

Salam

Letter from Indonesia: no red light for our police

Jakarta, Jumat (Friday)

We all say we love the police service of Tanah Air but deep down we may have a little suspicion that perhaps we should be more circumspect in our unbounded admiration, don’t we? Go on, you can admit it to yourself, just this once. 

After all, it is the duty of the public to scrutinize their paid defenders and not just loll about in restful complacency in the certain belief that Tanah Air’s finest really are the finest.

So, in the interests of making a nod, at least, towards the role of the Fourth Estate, something that is usually far from the concerns of this blog, I set out to think of some reasons to not love everything about the police and lay them before you for consideration.

I tried very hard to come up with some. Even one. I walked up and down, my head bowed, my brow furrowed. I pondered deep into the night, sleepless. But I have to admit I failed. I couldn’t think of a single reason to not adore the men and women who devote their lives to serving the people as their slogan attests (and how rare is it that a slogan matches reality? But in this case it surely does).

So, instead of trying to shake your faith, I shall reinforce it by reminding you of what our police do par excellence (not that you need reminding).

Just recently I had an errand to run, which I executed upon my little motorbike. I left home at 11 a.m., thinking I’d be back by noon to avoid the heat but, as is so often the case, a street was blocked by construction works and I had to take a detour that meandered around hither and yon and concluded in a massive traffic jam in which even motorbikes were stuck, meaning I was still on the road at closer to 1 p.m., sweating, dirty and tired.

I was about 100 meter from the traffic lights at one of those enormous six-road intersections that take about three minutes per segment. I was cooking inside my jacket, gloves and helmet. Nothing much was happening each time the lights facing me turned green. We crept a few meters closer, at best.

When I stood up and peered between the buses and trucks, I could see that the intersection was jammed with the same. I began to contemplate suicide by breathing more deeply and asphyxiating on carbon monoxide rather than die slowly of heat exhaustion in the vehicular desert.

But just as I was about to take the first of the life-threatening deep breaths, our heroes arrived. Two policemen stepped out into the midst of the intersection and began to direct drivers this way and that. These angels came from I know not where — perhaps they descended directly from Heaven — but in a couple of cycles of the lights the intersection was clear and I had made it to the front, only to be faced once again by an accursed red light. But one of the police angels waved me through, along with all the other motorists behind me. Glory! Wonder! Joy! Praise be to the police!

Now, gentle readers, allow me to state unconditionally and with no fine words left unemployed that this must surely be the pinnacle of work carried out by our police. What better purpose do they serve? Catching crooks? Hardly. Protecting the pluralism of the Constitution and minority-group citizens from mobs of thugs? Never. Assisting road accident victims? Not on your life. Defending the rights of adults to choose their own entertainment by permitting and, indeed, proudly supporting a foreign singing star’s concert? Don’t make me laugh. Refusing bribery and rigorously pursuing those who don’t? Now you really are entering into the absurd.

But waving motorists through red lights, now, that’s something you can’t complain about.

Salam

Letter from Indonesia: mosquitoes and other PR stunts

Jakarta, Kamis (Thursday)

Some chaps gassed our kampung last Sunday.

The noise of a small electric motor at constant high revs pushed its way up and over the usual sounds of the inner-city village: The bass notes of adults, kids’ shrill voices, cries of the itinerant food and services sellers, the rumble of an occasional motorbike or car. A look out the window confirmed my suspicion: Clouds of white smoke were rising above the roofs of the houses lining the alley behind us. Yes, it was the bi-annual “gassing of the mosquitoes” — a ritual enacted by the local government to propitiate the annoying and dangerous Mosquito God or, more accurately, the Occasionally Voting Citizenry.

It seems a sensible idea, doesn’t it, to kill mozzies before they kill us, especially in a dengue fever “hotspot” with lots of excellent breeding grounds in the form of stagnant open drains, a fetid canal and prolific plant life, as well as plenty of ready victims, particularly little kids and the elderly?

Sadly, the whole event is a farce or, to call it by its modern name, a PR event staged for the purposes of convincing the public that the government is doing something in defense of their health.

Nevertheless, it’s quite a dramatic spectacle, at least in a sleepy kampung on a Sunday morning, with the somewhat devilish noise and the clouds of unpleasant-smelling smoke. I fled the house to the open space of the larger street that dissects the kampung while two chaps with machines that looked like weapons from a “Ghostbusters” movie criss-crossed the kampung’s alleys, flushing out residents or enveloping them in fog, as long as you paid the Rp 10,000 fee that was being asked for special attention to your part of the kampung (which meant that plenty of fetid drains were left untouched by the gas).

Looking down the alley to the small square that is home to a suitably small church (dear Islamic Defenders Front, the mayor of Bogor and other defenders of faiths, please don’t panic, there’s a mosque 50 m away) and a badminton court that doubles as a clothes line, there was nothing to see: Everything was obscured by a thick white fog, from which cheerfully emerged, waving her hands about and doing a little jig, one of the chubbier of the kampung’s small children. It was obviously quite good fun, being gassed by insecticide.

After about half an hour of dodging the supposed poisonous gas, I ventured back into the house. The first thing I saw was, you guessed it, a mosquito, flying lazily about. I assumed it was in its death throes and anticipated it spiraling to the floor in a final coup de grace signifying the triumph of mass public health measures over disease and ill health. And then it settled on my foot. I stared at it for a while, expecting it to totter sideways and go belly up. It didn’t. So I applied the usual technique – I slapped it – and produced a pool of my blood and its body parts. Perhaps this was a lucky rogue mozzie? No, another couple careened past, ready to take up breakfast where their colleague had left off. They seemed perfectly healthy. Assuming that the mozzies in my house were no tougher than the mozzies in the rest of the kampung, it appeared that the gassing was a waste of time.   But we felt that Something Had Been Done, which is all that matters to government.

Salam

Letter from Indonesia: this, that and another thing

Jakarta, Jumat (Friday)

It’s a truism that many people speak with authority, but very few speak the truth.

It’s odd, though, for a truism to be apparent as you wander in your usual daze through life. At least, I seem to wander in such a manner, dreaming about this or that while lots of other “thats” or “thises” are going on in front of my nose, most of which can be classified as people speaking authoritatively but not saying anything that’s true. But not to be too hard on myself, it’s not really possible to grasp every little ripple of reality as it washes about, is it, and bathe in its harsh beauty?

Unless, of course, you are a member of the fabled Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, or the House of Representatives, defenders of the world’s fourth-largest democracy. Here, in one rather odd-looking building, are gathered some fine specimens who not only speak with tremendous authority but also always speak the truth — yes they do, lots of different truths, especially when they are ratting on their fellows while arraigned before the anti-corruption court.

It is a heart-warming and edifying spectacle, hearing our fine representatives pronounce with authority that everything is this thing and then, after due consideration of the matter, brought about, perhaps, by a particularly poignant piece of evidence from a prosecutor, announce with equal authority that everything is not this thing but, indeed, that thing.

I firmly believe that this shows flexibility of thinking, what some would call creativity, and, if so, then our representatives must also be our finest artists, something that the Yellow Party, those wisest and most experienced of authority-speakers, want to formalize in their selection process for future candidates.

Isn’t that just great? And also great timing? Really, it’s a stroke of political genius, showing just how on the ball the Party is: To announce this policy just as prosecutors are toying with our former Miss-Indonesia-cum-representative-cum-corruption-defendant, wondering just what it will take to get her to rat fully and freely on all her pals in the DPR and beyond.

At this fascinating and tender moment in the history of modern Indonesian politics, the famed Yellow Men, ever-aware of the apt word and the telling moment, decide that what is needed to boost their chances of electoral success are not honest, smart, hardworking and dedicated candidates, but celebrities. Not that celebrities might not have all of these qualities, of course. Perhaps they do, like former Miss Indonesia perhaps does or perhaps doesn’t (we will have to await the court’s verdict before we can say either way, with authority, even if not with truth).

Be that as it may, I rather like the idea of an all-singing, all-dancing DPR. The House would be the envy of the world and it would certainly put a bang back into business. Instead of staying away in droves from their $2,000 seats in the chamber while they pursue constituents’ interests in, say, Bangkok, Las Vegas or Paris, the reps will be hard at work in committee rooms polishing up their repertoire in order to bash out a duet with a hot former starlet or hunky former guitarist in a karaoke question time. Not to mention getting their grooves ironed out in order to goyang, shake their booty, while debating a bill on this or that of a different sort of booty.

But I digress. What I set out to say at the start, but was distracted by all the tinsel, flam-flam and high-kicking, knees-up reps, was that I may not speak with authority but I sometimes, at least, speak the truth. For example, doubting Thomases who, in an earlier post, questioned my reference to becak or trishaws in Jakarta can simply get out a bit more: Head into the depths of Galur and Luar Batang and you will find the spindly but strong machines still hard at work pushed by their spindlier, stronger and harder working riders who do cross against the edicts of our beloved Jakarta Government occasionally and venture out onto carriageways that are more than a couple of meters wide and upon which there are speeding automobiles and, in my case, a motorcycle. Trust me, it’s the truth.

Salam

Letter from Indonesia: rest, freedom from cares and chrysanthemums?

Jakarta, Kamis (Thursday)

I’ve been ill of late. It was a neat variation of an old-fashioned kind of disease that I’d been immunized against in my tender youth. So, either it was a unique strain invented in the fecund environment of Tanah Air or I was in that small percentage statistically that turns out not to be made immune by the vaccination and it took years to be exposed and succumb. I cannot say which.

It turned out to be a relatively painless illness, but nevertheless of dramatic appearance and with a reputation for being infectious, which meant some lolling about at home rather than trudging off to the day job in a dutiful fashion. Instead, I watched daytime TV and read short, amusing sketches in books pulled at random from the shelves. Both practices allowed naps, which were necessary given the enervating nature of the illness.

Finally, however, I felt I had to go and visit a doctor. This was purely for administrative purposes because I’d done some research on the Internet and could not find any treatment for this particular virus (which was one of the reasons there was a vaccine. Or vice versa). But, enjoying what was on offer on the small screen and thinking that it might be best to let nature take its medically unsupported course, it seemed like a good idea to procure learned opinion, in writing, from a suitably qualified professional that what was needed was rest, and freedom from cares, and chrysanthemums, yellow and white. Or equivalent. And show said letter to the boss, if asked for.

Seeing that I had provided my own diagnosis that precluded any useful medical intervention, it hardly seemed wise to toss money at my usual highly priced international medical practitioner and so I took the advice of a friend and attended a doctor nearby. Said medico had an office-like clinic in an office tower, with no appointment necessary and, surprisingly, no waiting list. I gave my name and within seconds was ushered into a clinical room with the accepted kind of gurney, a screen, shiny cabinets with little bottles full of pills, and a desk, behind which stood the doctor, a round and cheerfully squinting lady in a white coat, casually unbuttoned in that brisk, “coat-tails flapping” style we know of from medical dramas on TV. Some of which I had but recently watched.

A brief discussion ensued about my symptoms and my opinion of them, which, after an even briefer examination, the doctor declared triumphantly to be her own. I felt warmly vindicated, even if all it had required was an ability to read English and connection to the Internet.

Would I need a letter for a few more days off, she kindly enquired?

Indeed, I would, since not only was I still feeling weak but I was surely also still infectious and, besides, there were a couple of movies on TV coming up in the next few days that I really should catch.

Ah, yes, no problem. A letter could be written but did I know that tomorrow was a public holiday and, being a Friday, presaged a long weekend, by end of which I would, most likely, be well and able to return to work?

Aduh. I did not. Indeed, I wished I had bothered to check the calendar and save myself the time and money. Probably I was missing an episode of something or other, too.

Not to worry. As compensation, perhaps, I could buy some pills. The doctor reached into one of the shiny cabinets behind her and proudly showed me two little packs of pills. In her right hand, she declared, were vitamins, which was fair enough unless she claimed they’d cure cancer or make my hair grow to my knees. In her left hand, however, she proudly stated she held anti-virals.

Really? “Anti-virals”?

Yes, really: Anti-virals.

Given that there was no known treatment for the illness we had both just agreed I had, I viewed her claim somewhat skeptically. Presumably, what she was offering was a placebo, a sugar pill, which is typically used as a control in tests of new drugs. One group is given the drug and another group is given placebo and the differences in results are noted to see what the effects of the drug might be. Be that as it may, I paid, took them home, and set out to see if I could track down the “anti-virals” on the Internet. There were no results.

She knew that I would get better without any intervention, so was what she did ethical? Wouldn’t it have been more ethical to simply tell me I would get well in a few days without any intervention necessary? Other than rest, freedom from cares and, of course, chrysanthemums, yellow and white?

Salam

Letter from Indonesia: the silence of the mechanics

Jakarta, Senin (Monday)

I left the motor scooter at the workshop this morning to have the light switch replaced and the seat’s padding augmented, my backside being increasingly battered thanks to the paucity of foam in said seat. The switch was simply faulty.

The workshop is the typical open-fronted shop lined with motorcycle parts, accessories, calendars and, in this case, a fetching black-and-white framed photo of the first president, Sukarno, in his youth. He was a handsome chap but declined rather a lot as time with its dramatic events marched inexorably on.

The shop is staffed by two young men and one young woman, all of whom are marvelously mute, speaking only the minimum needed to convey messages. They exude a quiet (of course) but nevertheless sturdy confidence as they go diligently and methodically about their tasks. They make no concessions to customer service other than that required to put a vehicle back on the road, which they do very well and at low prices.

For example, when I went to collect the bike after office hours they were still working on it and, in a rapid discussion involving three sentences on their part, I was advised that they took the seat to the shop that repads seats, reupholstering not being within their skill set. They were advised by the specialist therein that the seat could not be repadded because the upholstery wasn’t of sufficient size to allow the insertion of thicker foam. Therefore if I wished to enjoy a more comfortable ride, I would have to replace the entire seat, which would be cheaper than repadding, anyway, even if said repadding could actually have been done without replacing the seat, which it couldn’t have. Understand?

I did. So please replace the entire seat.

Really?

Yes, really.

Which one chap then set about doing while the other finished installing the switch. During this process, which lasted about 20 minutes, from conversation to completion, three sets of would-be customers arrived.

The first — a father, mother and a small child in between — climbed off their bike and stood patiently watching the two young men, who were steadfastly working on the tasks they had promised to carry out for me, completely ignoring the family. The young woman came out from the back of the shop and dropped a hammer in a bucket near the men and the family, smiling pleasantly to herself, observed the family in a disinterested fashion, and walked back inside. After about three minutes of equally silent observation the family remounted and motored away without so much as muttering a curse.

Next to arrive were two young men on a custom-modified motorcycle — an old bike that had been hacked to bits and rearranged somewhat — carrying an entire wheel. They were pushier than the family. The rider, a skinny youth wearing a pair of oversized Chelsea football club nylon pajamas, had his long neck sticking out of the collar. He craned his beaky little face beneath the face of the chap looking down diligently at the switch and directed his attention, with a few murmured words, toward the wheel, clutched in wiry hands by his accomplice, who was dressed in black jeans and T-shirt and sported a head with shaved sides and a kind of collapsed mohawk. The mechanic dismissed the inquiries with a swift glance at the wheel, into the hub of which the accomplice was pointing a bony finger, and two quiet words, which I couldn’t catch despite standing about  only a meter and a half away. Abashed, the two lads climbed back on their machine with their wheel and took off in a cloud of blue smoke and chattering engine.

A few minutes later two middle-aged men wearing batik shirts rolled on their motorbike onto the front apron of the shop. The chap on the back strode directly past the two mechanics who, of course, ignored him as he disappeared into the back room. A silent minute later he came out holding a couple of things that looked like parts and off the pair went, no words spoken nor glances exchanged with the mechanics.

It was like watching a silent movie.

Upon completion, one of the chaps gestured vaguely toward the switch and the seat. Why waste breath stating the obvious? The young woman, with her half-amused look, handed me the bill silently, watched silently as I counted out the cash and nodded silently as I handed it over to her.

I climbed silently onto the bike, ignored by all three, and rode off. It was comfortable and worked perfectly.

I rode, of course, in silence.

Salam

Letter from Indonesia: rhino rides the rails!

Jakarta, Kamis (Thursday)

I had no idea what the English term was for the funny-looking thing on the roof of a train that touched the high-voltage cables and transferred the electricity to the train’s motor.

I had to ask a friend (you probably think I wanted to stimulate some intellectual curiosity in the poor soul, who lived in an overdeveloped country, the kind of place where one loses curiosity about pretty much everything except mortgage rates and decaf soy latte frapuccinos, but really I was just too lazy to look it up myself), who looked it up for me: “pantograph”.

It’s not the sort of word that disappoints me, don’t get me wrong, but I expected something less like a Maths class and more electrical, even effervescent, but I suppose disappointment is the travelling companion of enlightenment.

“Pantograph” did bring to mind “panopticon”, the circular, all-seeing theoretical institutional building, often conceived as the model prison, that was proposed by Jeremy Bentham and used by Michel Foucault as a “metaphor for modern ‘disciplinary’ societies and their pervasive inclination to observe and normalise” (I was finally inspired to look up Wikipedia).

“Pantomime” was the next carriage in this particular train of thought, which I welcomed, because “panopticon” alone can be a little too earnest. I love a rollicking pantomime with funny-looking characters over-dressing and cross-dressing and prancing their way through outlandish plots to farcical ends, bringing out plenty of theatrically appropriate cheers, guffaws, hisses and boos from the audience.

But, for good or ill, it’s the Indonesian term that really wins my heart: kedang badak, which literally means “rhinoceros extension”. Isn’t that tremendous?

Now, in my imagination I see a handsome West Javanese rhino riding the rails on the roof of the train along with all the other poor souls who can’t fit inside the limited number of services provided by PT KAI Commuter Jabodetabek during peak hours: together, the rhino and the indebted poor up on the roof dodge and swerve around the dangling concrete balls (which remind me of the symbol for pawnbrokers: “three spheres suspended from a bar… attributed to the Medici family of Florence, Italy, [referring] to the Italian province of Lombardy, where pawn shop banking originated under the name of Lombard banking.” (Wikipedia again)), which were installed to eradicate the symptom not the cause, while every now and then the rhino rips the balls to bits with his mighty horn to the cheers of the other roof riders and the boos of the officials of PT KAI CJ and other members of the disciplinary State over-dressed and cross-dressing in their farcical plots that pass for governance.

According to their website, the vision of PT KAI CJ is to “be the best provider of railway services which meet the expectations of stakeholders”. It seems they are failing to meet the expectations of those “stakeholders” who can’t squeeze into the carriages no matter how skinny they are and how much they hold their breath.

I recommend that PT KAI-J hire a consultant, similar to our imaginary rhino, who not only transmits power but has the balls to do something with it for the benefit of the “stakeholders”, formerly known as “citizens”, of the (delusory) (disciplinary) State.

Salam

Letter from Indonesia: motoring, mysticism and a modern wonder

Jakarta, Rabu (Wednesday)

Motorscootering around fair Ibu Kota requires a set of highly refined skills. It also has an air of mysticism about it insomuch as I have noticed that each journey has its lessons, as if the gods of traffic had decided on a curriculum that must be continually revisited.

For example, today’s lesson was non-motorised vehicles. Barely out on the main road and I encountered the first lot of said vehicles in the form of a line of three food carts or kaki lima making their orderly way along the side of the road between the cars and the kerb. No passing was possible until we reached, at walking pace of course, the wide open spaces of the intersection with traffic lights. And so, a lesson in patience.

Taking off from the lights, I accelerated around a corner and was about to whizz past on the right of the mini-bus in front to the stretch of rare empty road beyond when I noticed the bus driver’s arm flopping out the window and waving downwards, the universal sign to slow down, now! I hit the brakes just in time to weave around a cart filled with gas bottles that was being pushed straight across the road as if the chap was blind. Lesson in not speeding and assuming the road ahead is clear.

About 300 meters ahead the same lesson was reinforced but in a different way. This time, the teacher was a becak or tricycle rickshaw driver who was seemingly parked but who suddenly turned and pushed his vehicle straight across the oncoming traffic (me) in order to, presumably, turn around and head back into kampung. I curled around him and his machine and on to the next challenge a kilometre or so up the road amidst lanes of banked-up traffic: a bicycle, crossways between two cars as the old gent on it nudged his way out into the other lane of traffic in the time-honoured tradition of traffic creep. I nearly removed his front wheel as I went past.

The lesson yesterday was to do with pedestrians, who appeared from nowhere, from all directions, in all shapes, sizes and amounts from individuals to a gang of school kids. They leapt out at me from sidewalks, from behind cars and trucks and apparently from the ground itself; they suddenly stopped when they should have been continuing to walk or walked suddenly when they should have stayed stopped; and they split into stragglers from a conveniently rounded-up mob, providing plenty of opportunity for slalom motoring.

What I find interesting about the types of behavior described above, which would be considered foolhardy and life-threatening anywhere else in the world, is how they reveal the somewhat astonishing, at least for me, social contract engaged in on the roads. For a pedestrian to be able to step boldly out into the kind of creatively flowing traffic we all experience every day and do so with the confidence that the drivers will go around them (and other drivers will go around the drivers going around the pedestrian in a synchronised dance) shows a high level of trust in one’s fellow citizens. A trust that is rewarded and reinforced (pedestrians live to cross the road another day). However, another way of looking at it is that the pedestrian or the not-looking cart pusher is so arrogant they think all should stop for them. But this, too, is an attitude that could only survive if such pedestrians were able to trust that the fellows they apparently despised would let them live. Which they do. Every day. How remarkable.

Such trust requires the complicity of the motorists, who need to be well prepared and patient, indeed, even gracious, as well as having excellent driving skills, including the ability to make nuanced judgments instantly. It also requires a highly developed feel for the rhythm of the roads, a rhythm created and maintained by mutually understood protocols rather than strictly enforced laws. These protocols, rhythms and skills allow an enormous number of individuals to travel together on increasingly restricted spaces and do so without murder or mayhem.

It is this that makes the traffic of Jakarta or, rather, its motorists, one of the great wonders of the modern world.

Salam

Letter from Indonesia: Around the Golden Triangle with sayang belakang

Jakarta, Jumat (Friday)

Last Sunday I tootled around the Golden Triangle on the motor scooter with sayang belakang. That is, with the “beloved behind.” I should rephrase that: With the beloved behind, and all the rest of her, on the back. She has a morbid fear of motorcycles owing to an early unpleasant experience of being pitched off in an accident and doing damage to her behind — that is, lower than her lower back. Over the years, I have worked quietly to entice her back onto the horse, so to speak. She now claims to enjoy the ride, for which I may well be eternally grateful.

To be even more accurate, we didn’t so much tootle around the Triangle as squeeze in and out of its juicier nooks and crannies, the ones that are tucked away in the not-so golden bits. The Golden Triangle, for those readers who are not fully cognizant of lame, copycat, real estate terminology, refers in this instance to the “financial district” of Jakarta, that is, an area roughly encompassing Thamrin in the north to Senayan in the south and bulging out to Kuningan in between and off to the east.

In most cities, it would be characterized by a dearth of life on weekends, the sort of district that has death rays that sweep the streets to ensure no animals or vegetables intrude amid the calm and reassuring mineral life that slowly accretes wealth. However, in Ibu Kota, life goes on, in, around and behind all the shining palaces of capitalism. It does so exuberantly, albeit a little less exuberantly than during the week, but exuberantly and idiosyncratically nonetheless.

For example, did you know that in a narrow street in Kebon Kacang, tucked in behind Tanah Abang and Plaza Indonesia, you can buy seemingly any sort of nail or screw from a lady operating a tiny streetside stall? And that nearby, Pasar Gandaria, not to be confused with the new mall a few kilometers to the south, still does some business on Sundays? And that there are a lot of wisma or hostels near Tanah Abang textile market and more being built as you read this, which are presumably used by visiting traders to the market?

Or that Guntur, also known as Halimun, has a very quiet suburban area that seems like it could have been airlifted in one piece from a sleepy but well-off kampung? And that Setiabudi has not only a fully functional weekend and evenings street market, but also a restaurant with a low-key street frontage that opens out through an old Dutch-era house into an outdoor dining area under shady trees complete with small swimming pool converted into a sailing and display area for model boats and other artworks?

Be that as it may, after about three hours of this, the sayang belakang had had enough and declared that next stop was visiting friends at Taman Rasuna or, to be more precise, visiting the swimming pool by the side of which there would be friends and food and drinks. And, in the way of sayang belakang the world over, she was right.

Taman Rasuna, as some of you may know, is on the edge of the bulge of the Triangle and currently consists of 19 residential towers with more on the way, totaling around 4,000 residents from all over the place: It’s like a mini-United Nations and Taman Mini combined, with representatives of the nations of the Earth mingling with citizens from across the archipelago. And they mingle mostly in or by the pool. It’s a novel place to cuci mata (wash your eyes), that is, do some people-watching while enjoying the sun setting between the towers and the call to prayer issuing in a splendid cacophony from the surrounding 16 or more mosques, all of which have invested in top quality public address systems cranked up beyond “10.” Exquisite.

It’s a unique Jakarta experience that is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the guide books. To be fair, the guide books usually only mention Monas, Kota Tua, and Jalan Jaksa before directing the delicate creatures to Yogyakarta or Bali as soon as possible.

Oddly enough, even the Jakarta Administration’s own tourism department has little faith in its charge’s ability to retain the interest of visitors. If I recall correctly, their sad claim was that Jakarta was hard to sell because of the traffic jams and floods. Seems to me that it should be a selling point given the neighborhood competition, such as Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, both of which are intent on turning themselves into theme parks of what they thought they once might have been and what someone else hoped they would become.

“Truly Asia?”

Hardly. I prefer sayang belakang and a curious Sunday.

Salam

Letter from Indonesia: small and shrill can pose a trap

Last week I was trapped in my house by two little girls. The kids had taken up position in the lane in front of my gate and were making loud but vain attempts to scale the fence in order to seize their prize: the fruit of the belimbing tree.

The tree that so graciously yields a fine harvest of belimbing year round, known in English by the much less attractive name of star fruit, takes up most of my small front yard.

Tania, the 5-year-old daughter of my neighbor, had with her friends developed the habit of demanding the fruits whenever the fancy took them. They cared not whether the fruits were ripe or green, large or small, they just wanted them. All of them. Even the ones right up the top, way out of reach, which sometimes meant I had to clamber up following the lazy little brats’ instructions and poke about with a long stick to try to dislodge them. There was no saying ‘No’ to these girls; they were very insistent, shrill, and small: a formidable combination.

This particular weekend day, I was lounging about inside reading Carl Hiaasen’s Basket Case, a New York Times bestseller in 2002 and 2003. It’s a gripping read about a ‘once-hotshot investigative reporter’ who finds himself deep into researching the ‘fishy-smelling “scuba accident”‘ of the ‘infamous front man of the band Jimmy and the Slut Puppies.’

It’s full of such prose that is hard to leave and so I don’t know how long it took before the shrill and insistent voices of the two little girls and the banging and clattering they were making in their attempt to scale my house’s fortifications finally registered in my brain. Perhaps they’d been out there loudly plotting and scheming and building siege weaponry for hours. It was quite possible; these kids were not easily distracted. They were living testimony that the much-talked-about limited attention span of small children was probably something invented by adults to get little kids off their backs.

A problem had arisen in the face of this particular siege, however, that restrained me from simply opening the gate and allowing the tykes to denude the tree of fruit. Said fruit, some of which had managed to make it as far as maturity, was earmarked for dinner guests the following day. It had to be preserved from the marauding hordes at the gates in order to be fed to the invited marauding hordes known as dinner guests.

All well and good, but I was starving and there was no food in the house. I could hear the increasingly robust call of nasi padang from the warung on the main road sounding in my brain. It was a lovely, swelling choir featuring the round bass of the perkedel, the soprano of the green sambal, the rich baritone of the rendang, and other notes and nuances from the chicken and tofu. Not to mention the string sounds of the curry sauces. But how to escape the citadel unnoticed? The gate was the only way out and it was besieged. Don’t think that I could have thrown one or two unripe belimbing to the mob and expect them to be satisfied; no likelihood of that at all. Those two would’ve seized the moment and scampered up the tree to unreachable heights before I’d blinked. Then they would’ve denuded the tree in minutes while chastising me for not letting them in sooner.

But there were two things working in my favor. First, it was lunch time and surely their mothers would be calling them soon. I wished they would call me, too, for that matter. Second, storm clouds were packing themselves in between the nearby towers. This boded well. An enormous downpour might be enough to dislodge the noisome pair long enough for me to make my escape.

And so I waited, trying to keep focussed on the book while my stomach started to sing roughly along to the nasi padang choir. Half an hour went by and the kids were still hard at it. But then there was a huge crack of thunder and, in its rumbling aftermath, the long, drawn-out call of Tania’s mother, “Taaaaaniiiiiaaaaa! Makaaaaan!” (“Taaaaaniiiiiaaaaa! Eaaaaattttt!”)

Salam

Letter from Indonesia: why would a monkey declare war?

I was recently alerted to reports in the media that a solo monkey had been ‘waging war’ against five villages in the district of Sidoarjo, East Java.

Said monkey apparently bit and ‘wounded’ at least 25 citizens during his ‘war’ before he was captured by a Mr Rahmat, 44, using the old food-as-bait trick.

Sir Monkey did, however, put up a fight and bit Rahmat’s hand during the struggle that resulted in his capture.

Sir Monkey ended up in a cage, his mouth tied with a gaudy cloth that draped down his body, making him look less than the man he had proven himself to be, gawked at and made fun of by the very same citizens against whom he had been struggling. He did not look very pleased.

But, in an unexpected twist, the citizens were divided whether this really was Sir Monkey. Some said the warrior-monkey who terrorised the citizenry sported a handsome tail; others said he didn’t.

The prisoner was indeed tailed, but could Rahmat’s claim that this was, indeed, the Scourge of Five Villages, be proven? Was the monkey behind bars the right or the wrong monkey? Would civilized justice be brought to bear or would the rule of the mob, and Rahmat, be final judge and executioner?

In all of this, I read no reports that gave any opinion, let alone hard fact, as to why Sir Monkey, whether he be Rahmat’s prisoner or another as-yet-unapprehended freedom fighter, had set out single-pawedly to take on the might of five villages full of able-bodied men, women and children with the entire weight of the combined military and police of the Republic of Indonesia standing behind them with their riot gear, anti-terrorist squads, armoured personnel carriers, submarines, fighter jets and even some pimped-up old Leopard tanks armed and allegedly ready for action. Not to mention the various allies who could be called in with their stealth bombers, armed drones, crack commandos and, indeed, nuclear missiles.

What made him take up his mad, unwinnable cause?

‘It was a woman who drove him crazy,’ claimed a chap I was questioning in a Metro Mini. ‘He’d been rejected one too many times.’

While romantic, I found this implausible. Monkeys are largely promiscuous, and if one lady says ‘no’ another is likely to say ‘yes’, unlike in human society where people allegedly mate for life in holy matrimony.

‘He was sick and tired of SBY hiding in the palace and not standing up for the people’, claimed another, more political, animal.

This was a bit far-fetched. Only last week the president had been spotted on the front porch of the Palace claiming it wasn’t easy rooting out and eradicating corruption. Especially in his own party, it seemed.

‘He’d spent far too long in a Wahabbist pesantren’, said another, while their neighbor claimed, ‘He was a CIA agent filled with mind-control drugs!’

Both of these venerable conspiracy claims had the effect of neutralizing each other in a puff of glittery fairy dust, leaving not much left to do but ask the monkey himself.

So I scratched a message on a pandan leaf, attached it to a pigeon and flung the bird aloft (after addressing it neatly and fully). After a few days, the pigeon returned, with a new pandan leaf attached adorned with various squiggles and scrawls.

And that’s just what they were: squiggles and scrawls. It seemed Sir Monkey was illiterate.

And poor.

And homeless.

No wonder he was biting mad.

Salam