After last week’s spa and massage experience I thought that I would move on to the indomitable subject of erections. Specifically, I decided to pay a visit to an oft seen but seldom scaled tourist attraction, Indonesia's national monument, Monas. I was inspired by a JP story this week informing me that Last Sunday (20th) was National Awakening Day and accordingly, a flag ceremony at Monas had been planned. Unfortunately, according to the story, the ceremony was cancelled at the last minute leaving various disappointed high school students sitting disconsolately under Sukarno's concrete phallus, falling asleep on National Awakening Day. This classic RI moment has been brought to you courtesy of the Jakarta Post.
Anyhoo, I disembarked from the busway and first had to gain access to the monument's surrounding park. Several years ago, the park was scrubbed clean of hawkers, vagrants and lady-boys and a fence erected around it in a bid for respectability. It seems to have worked and the grounds are now probably the most pleasantly peaceful place in the city to walk around. However, the deer that the governor introduced into the area seemed to have vanished. Perhaps they were poached in the dead of night and turned into venison satay or alternatively are now giving rides to kids around the perimeter of some plaza food court.
I approached the base of the monumental beast with a due sense of awe and trepidation. It's certainly a grand monument and a powerful national icon. I actually find the functional, rectilinear, modernist minimalism of the whole thing quite groovy. It's the same proud, uncluttered, futurist 60s aesthetic that you see in UK polytechnic buildings or Soviet apartment blocks from the same era. On another level though, the monument also exudes a rather monolithic, autocratic, Nietzschian will-to-power vibe. The grounds around the monument's base are in the process of being very tastefully landscaped gardened. To stretch the phallus metaphor: the new gardens act as a pubic foliage, signifying Indonesia's coming-of-age as a country (or troubled adolescence perhaps).
I bought a ticket and headed into the monument compound. I climbed aboard the elevator first and headed to the top viewing deck to check out the city. The view is indeed impressive although the leaden pall of smog hanging over the capital reduces visibility to a couple of kilometres or so. The people scurry below like ants, the trains pull out of Gambir and the busway buses plough precisely along the edge of the park. It's interesting how putting hundred meters of altitude between you and Jakarta ground zero makes everything appear to work with clockwork, toytown precision. The skyscrapers tower impressively and over in the corner of the park, the huge dome of the Istiqlal mosque bulges proudly like a single Hitlerian teste (to stretch the phallus metaphor so far now that it's in danger of snapping back in my face). I wish I could have stayed up there for a few days. Sleeping bag, flask, binoculars - it would revive my Jakarta appetite for sure.
After the view I headed back down to base camp to join the school kids traipsing around the monument's museum. It's called a museum but in fact there aren't actually any relics or artifacts on display. Instead, there are about 30 or 40 Dioramas (little model tableaus) depicting Indonesian history. It's all very interesting to walk around; however, there are a few bones of contention when we come to the Suharto era. One Diorama depicts,"The foil [sic] of the bloody coup of the Indonesian Communist Party," whilst another tells of how, "On May 1st 1963 the Dutch officially transferred to sovereignty over Irian Jaya to Indonesia through the United Nations Organization after a unanimous vote." The still persecuted children of PKI members and many in Irian (West Papua), not to mention various historians would probably dispute these facts. Official history is always written by its winners though, this much should be clear to most people.
Unfortunately, almost a decade after the fall of the great Suharto, Indonesia's democratic institutions still can't countenance any substantive debate on issues such as these. Books about Marxism or those questioning the official G30S communist coup version of history are swept off shelves or confiscated. Any social democrat organization to the left of Tony Blair (lots of room for maneuver there) are automatically branded communist and attacked by the usual goon squads. Only two months ago the Urban Poor Consortium were pelted with bricks over a demonstration outrageously demanding that the government simply live up to its millennium development promises
The whole reds under the bed thing is looking a little bit tired these days. The prospect of Indonesia going communist in 2007 is about as likely as me being invited for tea at the Palace by SBY because he really digs my weekly digs at his country. I mean, come on, Russian communism collapsed 18 years ago and as for China, well communism is about the only thing that the Chinese are not interested in exporting these days. Is it communism or truly representative democracy that's really feared here? Am I a shining wit or a spoonerism? Answers on a postcard please.
And so concludes another purple faced rant... only not quite because a new section has been added to the Monas Museum. Yes! It's a high-tech computerized stand depicting the clinical integrated efficiency of Jakarta's transport system and includes a busway network map with twinkling lights. There's also an amazing 3-D computer-generated model of what the monorail will look like when it's finished, although that’s currently looking about as likely as shiny eyed Kampung Marxists leading a long march across Java.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
So Spa, So Good
Tucked away in many of the city's shopping complexes and commercial estates you can find that familiar Asian motif, the spa. Some are rather misleadingly called family health centers - spas are exclusively for the dads in my experience - while others have been nominally expanded into spa and karaoke joints. It's the karaoke part of the title here that carries with it certain, perhaps not unjustified, connotations of sleaze in this country. The reality of the spa though, seems to fall somewhere between the professed temple of family health and a place of much redder recreational lighting.
Jakarta's spas are mainly full of East Asian men: Koreans, Japanese and Indonesian Chinese, all sitting around stoically in functional blue regulation trunks like some Maoist swimming team. The only women here are the ones providing the massages (sorry, I'm having trouble locating the plural of the word 'masseuse') however, this doesn't necessarily imply any funny business. The spa is a normal part of oriental culture in the same way that occidental males may join a gentlemen's club: they both provide the opportunity to relax and to make new acquaintances and business contacts.
As a Brit, I've taken to the whole experience like a duck to very hot water, even though the spa hasn't really been a part of our culture since the Romans left, over a millennia ago. The occasional pale faces like myself, who visit the city's spas from time to time, find the experience novel and relaxing in equal measure.
Last weekend, an Indonesian friend took me and another lily livered Westerner to a spa in the Kota area that I had never been to before. After a couple of hours, I was able to restore myself to rude health again after a particularly heavy Saturday night spent toasting the new branch of Bugil's that has just opened in Pondok Indah. I must have sweated out several liters of free-flow beer by the end of the session.
The use of a spa's facilities usually costs between Rp.50,000 and Rp.100,000 for the whole day and this includes everything except a massage which inevitably costs extra. I like to start in the fitness room and spend some time on the various fancy, high-tech exercise machines. There are usually weights, a treadmill, a cycling machine and that strange kind of walking up the stairs device. Last Sunday, after about half an hour's worth of building up a sweat and aimlessly pushing the space shuttle flight deck array of buttons on the machines in a vain attempt to make sense of the various calorie burn statistics and energy output readouts, it was time to get wet.
The main spa room is where the serious relaxation begins. Often tastefully decorated in mock Greco Roman frescos and blue skies and clouds painted idyllically on the ceiling, you can indulge yourself in hot and cold plunge pools as well as the usual sauna and steam rooms until your head starts to swim and your muscles start to glow. Alternating between the hot and cold pools is a favorite of mine. The body seems to reach a state of tingling temperature equilibrium after a few switches and after an hour or so you are in a Zen state of blissful relaxation.
The sauna and steam room help you to sweat out those local beer formaldehyde toxins. Personally though, I don't seem to have much of a tolerance for the high temperatures. My record in a sauna is about 3 1/2 minutes with several damp flannels draped over my face. Some of these Korean gentlemen seem to be made of asbestos however and spend simply ages sitting there, ladling water onto the hot coals with inscrutable expressions on their faces.
.
All towels, trunks, sandals, flannels, toiletries, drinking water and dinky little kimono dressing gowns are supplied at your average spa so there's no need to bring anything with you.
After the fitness and spa sessions, you can head up to the usually darkened ambience of the lounge room and watch what will be a huge TV screen whilst ordering a meal or a drink. Then you can decide whether to opt for the massage or not. The basic massage may cost Rp.50,000 and upwards and will be in a semipublic, partitioned cubicle (so little chance of anything fruity occurring). The massage may involve the use of mystic oils, magic balms and/or the masseuse hanging off bars attached to the ceiling and trampling all over your back. For my part, I'm not that convinced of the therapeutic benefits of such oriental spinal stampings but they seem to enable the Japanese to live to a ripe old age. No pain, no gain I guess.
Other, higher standards of massages (and karaoke of course) take place behind closed doors and it may be here that the ancient art of massage dovetails with an even older profession. In all honesty, I have never gone for the "full" treatment myself, preferring to seek out my jollies in more conventional social situations. However, various acquaintances of mine have referred rather horribly to their experiences of enjoying, "A rub and a tug," behind closed doors. Please don't ask me what on earth this delightful phrase means; the spa has already parboiled my pink skin once this week and I've no wish to land myself in even hotter water.
Jakarta's spas are mainly full of East Asian men: Koreans, Japanese and Indonesian Chinese, all sitting around stoically in functional blue regulation trunks like some Maoist swimming team. The only women here are the ones providing the massages (sorry, I'm having trouble locating the plural of the word 'masseuse') however, this doesn't necessarily imply any funny business. The spa is a normal part of oriental culture in the same way that occidental males may join a gentlemen's club: they both provide the opportunity to relax and to make new acquaintances and business contacts.
As a Brit, I've taken to the whole experience like a duck to very hot water, even though the spa hasn't really been a part of our culture since the Romans left, over a millennia ago. The occasional pale faces like myself, who visit the city's spas from time to time, find the experience novel and relaxing in equal measure.
Last weekend, an Indonesian friend took me and another lily livered Westerner to a spa in the Kota area that I had never been to before. After a couple of hours, I was able to restore myself to rude health again after a particularly heavy Saturday night spent toasting the new branch of Bugil's that has just opened in Pondok Indah. I must have sweated out several liters of free-flow beer by the end of the session.
The use of a spa's facilities usually costs between Rp.50,000 and Rp.100,000 for the whole day and this includes everything except a massage which inevitably costs extra. I like to start in the fitness room and spend some time on the various fancy, high-tech exercise machines. There are usually weights, a treadmill, a cycling machine and that strange kind of walking up the stairs device. Last Sunday, after about half an hour's worth of building up a sweat and aimlessly pushing the space shuttle flight deck array of buttons on the machines in a vain attempt to make sense of the various calorie burn statistics and energy output readouts, it was time to get wet.
The main spa room is where the serious relaxation begins. Often tastefully decorated in mock Greco Roman frescos and blue skies and clouds painted idyllically on the ceiling, you can indulge yourself in hot and cold plunge pools as well as the usual sauna and steam rooms until your head starts to swim and your muscles start to glow. Alternating between the hot and cold pools is a favorite of mine. The body seems to reach a state of tingling temperature equilibrium after a few switches and after an hour or so you are in a Zen state of blissful relaxation.
The sauna and steam room help you to sweat out those local beer formaldehyde toxins. Personally though, I don't seem to have much of a tolerance for the high temperatures. My record in a sauna is about 3 1/2 minutes with several damp flannels draped over my face. Some of these Korean gentlemen seem to be made of asbestos however and spend simply ages sitting there, ladling water onto the hot coals with inscrutable expressions on their faces.
.
All towels, trunks, sandals, flannels, toiletries, drinking water and dinky little kimono dressing gowns are supplied at your average spa so there's no need to bring anything with you.
After the fitness and spa sessions, you can head up to the usually darkened ambience of the lounge room and watch what will be a huge TV screen whilst ordering a meal or a drink. Then you can decide whether to opt for the massage or not. The basic massage may cost Rp.50,000 and upwards and will be in a semipublic, partitioned cubicle (so little chance of anything fruity occurring). The massage may involve the use of mystic oils, magic balms and/or the masseuse hanging off bars attached to the ceiling and trampling all over your back. For my part, I'm not that convinced of the therapeutic benefits of such oriental spinal stampings but they seem to enable the Japanese to live to a ripe old age. No pain, no gain I guess.
Other, higher standards of massages (and karaoke of course) take place behind closed doors and it may be here that the ancient art of massage dovetails with an even older profession. In all honesty, I have never gone for the "full" treatment myself, preferring to seek out my jollies in more conventional social situations. However, various acquaintances of mine have referred rather horribly to their experiences of enjoying, "A rub and a tug," behind closed doors. Please don't ask me what on earth this delightful phrase means; the spa has already parboiled my pink skin once this week and I've no wish to land myself in even hotter water.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Only Rp.99,999
The local advertising industry has been in the news recently. A new regulation has come into force stipulating that advertising agencies should only use domestic actors, actresses, locations, etc when making their commercials.
The Indonesian advertising industry is purported to be worth some 40 trillion rupiah per year and is also apparently dominated by foreign companies, so perhaps this is fair enough. If the country succeeds in developing a domestic advertising industry then I hope that's it will be goodbye to the children of mixed Western and Indonesian marriages who advertise skin whitening products under false and racially rather dodgy pretences.
The veracity of local adverts will not, however, ultimately be addressed by this regulation. One English friend of mine, for example, who once appeared in a miraculous hair dye advert in what I thought was a rather obvious wig will just as easily be replaced by the faux follicles of an Indonesian slap head. Foreign or local actors? What does it matter; there's still a lot of hokum and snake oil out there being bought.
Apparently though, established icons, such as the Marlboro cowboy, will be exempt from the new regulation on the grounds that, "no suitable cowboy in Indonesia could replace him." I'm not so sure about that myself; the builders who recently did some work on our house perhaps have the relevant cowboy credentials necessary (and they smoked a lot to) but I'm getting off the point.
The idea of icons in advertising is a fascinating one though. Adverts are pregnant with signs, symbols and connotations and resonate with all kinds of cultural meanings in their attempts to get consumers to identify with their products. Advertising agencies raid reference systems for visual and musical signifiers. Reference systems designate shared systems of knowledge, social stereotypes and widely recognized cultural symbols that all, consciously or unconsciously, connect with the viewer.
Famous dead gay French theorist (aren't they all), Roland Barthes, famously turned his theories of semiotics (the study of signs) away from literature and applied them to cultural artifacts and adverts in his book Mythologies. With fascinating and hilarious consequences he teased out the hidden subtexts and cultural assumptions that underlie the symbolic order of our commercial world.
In one example Barthes, being French, looked at the symbolic meanings attached to wine in his country. Wine, says Barthes, is not just one drink among others in France but a ' totem' drink, equivalent to the milk of the Dutch cow or the tea ceremoniously taken by the British royal family. Wine is thus not only a drink but the foundation of a collective morality. For the French, to believe in wine is a, “Coercive collective act," and drinking it is a ritual of social integration. Substitute the word wine with the rice and we have the Indonesian equivalent. In generating these mystical meanings, cultures seek to make their own socially constructed norms seem like facts of nature.
Indonesian advertisements are ripe with such symbolism and second order meaning. Watching the endless ads (which often seem to add up to as much total time as the programs themselves) on one morning last week, all the familiar cultural signifiers were paraded across the screen ready for deconstruction.
Firstly, I was presented with a chili sauce adverts that takes place in a traditional market over a stall selling real chilies. The Pasar (market) is a common motif in Indonesian commercials and seems to symbolically encapsulate the Pribumi ‘sons of the soil’ mindset. The image presented is one of nature's bounty; a place where all of Indonesia's great fertility is focused in a social arena of reverent nationality and celebration. In reality we all know that most markets are smelly, chaotic places full of thugs who extort the traders and steal people's wallets. However the advert seems to say, "Buy our chili and buy your own little piece of the Indonesian soil dream." The real chilies in the ad further serve to link the product with Indonesian fecundity, belying the fact that the stuff more closely resembles radioactive nuclear waste ground into an orange paste and is nothing like the real thing.
Then we had a couple of drug commercials representing the pharmacological free-for-all that is the Indonesian drug market. Diarrhea medicine was codified by a man walking through a field of green tea. This natural image connotes a holistic, homoeopathic approach to medicine and seems to suggest that one's bowels will be gently purged of toxins whilst health is restored to you, ready for your next fix of street gutter satay.
The ensuing paracetamol advert took the opposite tack however, by stressing the potency of the product. A woman is trapped in a vision of hell when her car breaks down in the Jakarta rush hour. The angry pain circles radiating out from her forehead can only be subdued by the tablets in question. Personally I reckon that nothing short of a morphine drip feed or sawing your head off would actually subdue such a Jakarta traffic headache but there you go. Dirty, smelly reality intrudes into this commercial but is soon tamed by the product under discussion. The seamless utopian dreams of the advertising paradigm are soon reinstated.
Milk formula ads are always rich in symbolism in this country too. The one I saw featured all the usual flying mini globes circling the screen with the names of chemical elements stamped on them. These molecular totems serve to lend the product the deep scientific legitimacy needed to persuade the parents of six-year-olds that formula milk is vital for their children's health, despite the fact that their kids have had teeth for four years and thus can actually chew on real food.
Oh my God. The commercials seemed to stretch on and on like some surreal deodorized hyper-world. I was also presented with dandruff the size of golf balls, sanitary towels as soft as a gossamer wings and ' typical' Indonesian families chugging down various breakfast cereals and rice dishes in houses the size of the presidential Palace.
Anyway, I must sign off now, I have a strange craving for some instant noodles.
The Indonesian advertising industry is purported to be worth some 40 trillion rupiah per year and is also apparently dominated by foreign companies, so perhaps this is fair enough. If the country succeeds in developing a domestic advertising industry then I hope that's it will be goodbye to the children of mixed Western and Indonesian marriages who advertise skin whitening products under false and racially rather dodgy pretences.
The veracity of local adverts will not, however, ultimately be addressed by this regulation. One English friend of mine, for example, who once appeared in a miraculous hair dye advert in what I thought was a rather obvious wig will just as easily be replaced by the faux follicles of an Indonesian slap head. Foreign or local actors? What does it matter; there's still a lot of hokum and snake oil out there being bought.
Apparently though, established icons, such as the Marlboro cowboy, will be exempt from the new regulation on the grounds that, "no suitable cowboy in Indonesia could replace him." I'm not so sure about that myself; the builders who recently did some work on our house perhaps have the relevant cowboy credentials necessary (and they smoked a lot to) but I'm getting off the point.
The idea of icons in advertising is a fascinating one though. Adverts are pregnant with signs, symbols and connotations and resonate with all kinds of cultural meanings in their attempts to get consumers to identify with their products. Advertising agencies raid reference systems for visual and musical signifiers. Reference systems designate shared systems of knowledge, social stereotypes and widely recognized cultural symbols that all, consciously or unconsciously, connect with the viewer.
Famous dead gay French theorist (aren't they all), Roland Barthes, famously turned his theories of semiotics (the study of signs) away from literature and applied them to cultural artifacts and adverts in his book Mythologies. With fascinating and hilarious consequences he teased out the hidden subtexts and cultural assumptions that underlie the symbolic order of our commercial world.
In one example Barthes, being French, looked at the symbolic meanings attached to wine in his country. Wine, says Barthes, is not just one drink among others in France but a ' totem' drink, equivalent to the milk of the Dutch cow or the tea ceremoniously taken by the British royal family. Wine is thus not only a drink but the foundation of a collective morality. For the French, to believe in wine is a, “Coercive collective act," and drinking it is a ritual of social integration. Substitute the word wine with the rice and we have the Indonesian equivalent. In generating these mystical meanings, cultures seek to make their own socially constructed norms seem like facts of nature.
Indonesian advertisements are ripe with such symbolism and second order meaning. Watching the endless ads (which often seem to add up to as much total time as the programs themselves) on one morning last week, all the familiar cultural signifiers were paraded across the screen ready for deconstruction.
Firstly, I was presented with a chili sauce adverts that takes place in a traditional market over a stall selling real chilies. The Pasar (market) is a common motif in Indonesian commercials and seems to symbolically encapsulate the Pribumi ‘sons of the soil’ mindset. The image presented is one of nature's bounty; a place where all of Indonesia's great fertility is focused in a social arena of reverent nationality and celebration. In reality we all know that most markets are smelly, chaotic places full of thugs who extort the traders and steal people's wallets. However the advert seems to say, "Buy our chili and buy your own little piece of the Indonesian soil dream." The real chilies in the ad further serve to link the product with Indonesian fecundity, belying the fact that the stuff more closely resembles radioactive nuclear waste ground into an orange paste and is nothing like the real thing.
Then we had a couple of drug commercials representing the pharmacological free-for-all that is the Indonesian drug market. Diarrhea medicine was codified by a man walking through a field of green tea. This natural image connotes a holistic, homoeopathic approach to medicine and seems to suggest that one's bowels will be gently purged of toxins whilst health is restored to you, ready for your next fix of street gutter satay.
The ensuing paracetamol advert took the opposite tack however, by stressing the potency of the product. A woman is trapped in a vision of hell when her car breaks down in the Jakarta rush hour. The angry pain circles radiating out from her forehead can only be subdued by the tablets in question. Personally I reckon that nothing short of a morphine drip feed or sawing your head off would actually subdue such a Jakarta traffic headache but there you go. Dirty, smelly reality intrudes into this commercial but is soon tamed by the product under discussion. The seamless utopian dreams of the advertising paradigm are soon reinstated.
Milk formula ads are always rich in symbolism in this country too. The one I saw featured all the usual flying mini globes circling the screen with the names of chemical elements stamped on them. These molecular totems serve to lend the product the deep scientific legitimacy needed to persuade the parents of six-year-olds that formula milk is vital for their children's health, despite the fact that their kids have had teeth for four years and thus can actually chew on real food.
Oh my God. The commercials seemed to stretch on and on like some surreal deodorized hyper-world. I was also presented with dandruff the size of golf balls, sanitary towels as soft as a gossamer wings and ' typical' Indonesian families chugging down various breakfast cereals and rice dishes in houses the size of the presidential Palace.
Anyway, I must sign off now, I have a strange craving for some instant noodles.
Monday, May 07, 2007
The Green Revolution
This week, two new city initiatives have been hitting the headlines. Firstly, the great Jakartan transport crisis is about to be solved once and for all by the imminent arrival of commuter boats on the city's rivers. Have no fear readers, I will be donning a gas mask and enjoying the delights of one of these sewage cruises when they materialize. Last week however, I had to be content with checking out the newly opened park in Menteng. The park has been hailed, with typical Jakarta Council hubris, as the start of a re-greening revolution in the city. Whether they'll ever get round building any more parks in less affluent areas of town only time will tell.
Anyway, I hobbled up to Menteng last Sunday for a stroll around the new public space, which has been constructed on the former pitch of local soccer team Persija (who are understandably less than thrilled by the whole thing). There's been a big hullabaloo surrounding the park's opening which is indicative of just how rare an event this is. This is the first park I can remember opening in town in 10 years. Compare this with the multitude of plazas which have sprung up in that time and it's hard to say how the re-greening of Jakarta will fare against the mighty beast of commerce.
The park can be found at the top end of the Menteng strip, which for years has been a popular hangout for late-night motorists looking for a meal to eat in their cars. The hawkers have now been banished to a side road however. Yes, the fried rice and baso (meat balls) brigade may have infiltrated every single nook and cranny of this huge metropolis but if there's now a public space in which it is possible to sit without your eyes streaming from satay smoke and decaying food leftovers being dumped everywhere then,”Bravo” I say.
The park houses a multi-storey car park with spaces for 150 cars. This end of Menteng however is not connected to a busway. Once again the bigger picture evades Jakarta's leaders and the park and ride option goes begging. This is pretty much par for the course here though. Look up the word piecemeal in the dictionary and you'll find a little aerial photo of Indonesia's capital. Menteng is also just about the only area of town that already has parks in it, so maybe the district is a slightly strange choice of location from this perspective as well.
I was in a positive mood though and full of Sunday cheer as I ambled into the park after consuming a huge pizza next door. Upon entering, one is initially confronted with two vast neo-Bauhaus, hyper modernist greenhouses. They look sensational but were alas empty when I visited. They will supposedly be full of flowers soon though and to be fair, the city does plant a few good displays of blooms from time to time, although they are usually confined to the streets abutting the National Monument, Monas.
The areas around the greenhouses were absolutely jam-packed with Jakartans when I visited. The park's newness and comparative cleanliness ensured, however, that the ambience of the place remained just the right side of a Palestinian refugee camp. There is a children's playground, a large concrete play area incorporating two basketball courts, an elegant fountain and some pleasant lawns to sit on. All very commendable, although the park is still tiny in comparison with city parks in other countries.
One thing that my colleagues and I noticed immediately however, was the lack of dustbins in the place. There wasn't a single one and the rubbish was already starting to be trampled into the new grass. It's all very well accusing Indonesians of being bad litterers (which I frequently do... because they are) but if there are no rubbish bins then what do you expect?
Despite a few misgivings and a depressing lack of ducks to feed, I hope that the park survives and isn't bulldozed over in 12 months time to make way for a branch of Starbucks and a spa and brothel complex. Let's hope the government doesn’t get cold feet over their re-greening plans when they realize how much money they are losing by turning vacant plots into parks instead of selling them off to the highest bidders. Maybe the parks will even foment a revolution. I have a dream of hordes of people stumbling out of the plazas en masse and marching, blinking in the sunlight, into the peace of their nearest park. There, they will sit around on park benches discussing Marx and Chekhov, like some William Morris workers’ paradise, whilst their mobile phone atrophied brains wake up to their own common humanity. They will then march on Parliament and seize control. Er...sorry, it was labour day this week comrades and perhaps I'm getting a bit carried away. Vive le green revolution.
http://metromad.blogspot.com/
Simon Pitchforth
Anyway, I hobbled up to Menteng last Sunday for a stroll around the new public space, which has been constructed on the former pitch of local soccer team Persija (who are understandably less than thrilled by the whole thing). There's been a big hullabaloo surrounding the park's opening which is indicative of just how rare an event this is. This is the first park I can remember opening in town in 10 years. Compare this with the multitude of plazas which have sprung up in that time and it's hard to say how the re-greening of Jakarta will fare against the mighty beast of commerce.
The park can be found at the top end of the Menteng strip, which for years has been a popular hangout for late-night motorists looking for a meal to eat in their cars. The hawkers have now been banished to a side road however. Yes, the fried rice and baso (meat balls) brigade may have infiltrated every single nook and cranny of this huge metropolis but if there's now a public space in which it is possible to sit without your eyes streaming from satay smoke and decaying food leftovers being dumped everywhere then,”Bravo” I say.
The park houses a multi-storey car park with spaces for 150 cars. This end of Menteng however is not connected to a busway. Once again the bigger picture evades Jakarta's leaders and the park and ride option goes begging. This is pretty much par for the course here though. Look up the word piecemeal in the dictionary and you'll find a little aerial photo of Indonesia's capital. Menteng is also just about the only area of town that already has parks in it, so maybe the district is a slightly strange choice of location from this perspective as well.
I was in a positive mood though and full of Sunday cheer as I ambled into the park after consuming a huge pizza next door. Upon entering, one is initially confronted with two vast neo-Bauhaus, hyper modernist greenhouses. They look sensational but were alas empty when I visited. They will supposedly be full of flowers soon though and to be fair, the city does plant a few good displays of blooms from time to time, although they are usually confined to the streets abutting the National Monument, Monas.
The areas around the greenhouses were absolutely jam-packed with Jakartans when I visited. The park's newness and comparative cleanliness ensured, however, that the ambience of the place remained just the right side of a Palestinian refugee camp. There is a children's playground, a large concrete play area incorporating two basketball courts, an elegant fountain and some pleasant lawns to sit on. All very commendable, although the park is still tiny in comparison with city parks in other countries.
One thing that my colleagues and I noticed immediately however, was the lack of dustbins in the place. There wasn't a single one and the rubbish was already starting to be trampled into the new grass. It's all very well accusing Indonesians of being bad litterers (which I frequently do... because they are) but if there are no rubbish bins then what do you expect?
Despite a few misgivings and a depressing lack of ducks to feed, I hope that the park survives and isn't bulldozed over in 12 months time to make way for a branch of Starbucks and a spa and brothel complex. Let's hope the government doesn’t get cold feet over their re-greening plans when they realize how much money they are losing by turning vacant plots into parks instead of selling them off to the highest bidders. Maybe the parks will even foment a revolution. I have a dream of hordes of people stumbling out of the plazas en masse and marching, blinking in the sunlight, into the peace of their nearest park. There, they will sit around on park benches discussing Marx and Chekhov, like some William Morris workers’ paradise, whilst their mobile phone atrophied brains wake up to their own common humanity. They will then march on Parliament and seize control. Er...sorry, it was labour day this week comrades and perhaps I'm getting a bit carried away. Vive le green revolution.
http://metromad.blogspot.com/
Simon Pitchforth
Monday, April 30, 2007
Dancing In the Street
Busking is a common occupation in many of the world cities. In my home metropolis of London for example, the underground stations often reverberate to the sound of saxophones and amplified guitars and many of these street musicians are actually talented music students trying to make a few shekels. In fact they've now become a tourist attraction in their own right.
It works a little differently in Jakarta however. When you pull up behind a line of traffic at the lights here, hoping to drive through the junction before the effects of global warming submerge it in 3 feet of water, you'll be confronted with someone rather less likely to be an undergraduate at the Juilliard School of music. Often you will be faced with one or two guys staring in at you through your windscreen. They may be shaking a stick with bottle tops nailed to it and singing in a monotone whine. If they're lucky (and you’re unlucky) they may have a guitar between them. These guitars are the cheapest available and are, in fact, impossible to play properly. For a start, they appear to be strung with cheese wire and secondly they don't stay in tune as you play up the fretboard. I can actually play guitar but almost had my fingers sliced in twain when I once tried one of these buskers' torture instruments.
Busking here is thus inverted from its usual function. Instead of paying them because you like the sound that they are making, one basically pays buskers in Jakarta in order to make them go away and assault someone else's eardrums. We all know that if you slip them a couple of thousand Rupiah then they shoot away, after a courteous Terimah Kasih, like greyhounds after a rabbit. Mind you, if you don't pay them then they can sometimes get a bit shirty and flick you off with a few choice non Anglo-Saxon swear words or indeed bang on the car or taxi. Even hip swinging transvestite buskers can get tetchy at times and have the advantage of possessing longer nails with which to scratch your paintwork.
These impromptu street jams often resemble the fun preliminary heats of American Idol; the ones in which tone deaf sociopathic wannabes induce reactions in the three judges akin to somebody dragging their fingernails down a blackboard. In fact, maybe the local franchise, Indonesian Idol, should head out onto the streets in search of a few comedy contestants for the early rounds.
Sadly though, many of Jakarta's buskers are just vulnerable little kids. Some are orphans whilst others are pushed by their impoverished parents to earn money on the streets during hard times. Non-governmental organizations such as Yayasan Griya Asih, Jakarta Street Kids Global Concern or the ISCO Foundation often advise people not to give these kids money as it only encourages poor parents and criminal groups to exploit them by sending them begging into the traffic day after day. It seems like an act of kindness to slip these poor waifs a few Rupiah but if the aim is to discourage children from busking and get them off the streets and into schools, then maybe it would indeed be better to divert any cash to organizations such as the ones mentioned above.
It is perhaps understandable that the city’s Street kids are often lacking passion in their vocal performances. Being hungry and often victims of violence and sexual abuse, musical talent is probably the last thing on their minds. The government aren't much help either. Many street kids are intimidated and even beaten up by public order officials and a current issue hitting the headlines here is the huge number of Indonesian families unable to even afford birth certificates for their offspring, surely a basic human right. No birth certificate, no school.
Apparently, there are over 150,000 children plying people on Jakarta's streets; busking, laughing, fighting, shining shoes, getting involved in petty crime, taking drugs, prostituting themselves, contracting AIDS and, of course, playing some of the most shocking music ever heard. The 1989 UN Convention on the rights of children specifies rights to a home, health care and an education among other things. Here though, these are pie in the sky wishes for many adults as well as children.
So, to sum up, we’re on the horns of a dilemma here. Either don’t give the buskers Rp.1000 and help to discourage the ear drum abuse in the longer term by keeping them off the streets, or go for the quick fix of shutting them up with a few coins and then breathe an instant sigh of relief when they take their caterwauling elsewhere. Politics is never simple is it?
The http://metromad.blogspot.com/
Simon Pitchforth
It works a little differently in Jakarta however. When you pull up behind a line of traffic at the lights here, hoping to drive through the junction before the effects of global warming submerge it in 3 feet of water, you'll be confronted with someone rather less likely to be an undergraduate at the Juilliard School of music. Often you will be faced with one or two guys staring in at you through your windscreen. They may be shaking a stick with bottle tops nailed to it and singing in a monotone whine. If they're lucky (and you’re unlucky) they may have a guitar between them. These guitars are the cheapest available and are, in fact, impossible to play properly. For a start, they appear to be strung with cheese wire and secondly they don't stay in tune as you play up the fretboard. I can actually play guitar but almost had my fingers sliced in twain when I once tried one of these buskers' torture instruments.
Busking here is thus inverted from its usual function. Instead of paying them because you like the sound that they are making, one basically pays buskers in Jakarta in order to make them go away and assault someone else's eardrums. We all know that if you slip them a couple of thousand Rupiah then they shoot away, after a courteous Terimah Kasih, like greyhounds after a rabbit. Mind you, if you don't pay them then they can sometimes get a bit shirty and flick you off with a few choice non Anglo-Saxon swear words or indeed bang on the car or taxi. Even hip swinging transvestite buskers can get tetchy at times and have the advantage of possessing longer nails with which to scratch your paintwork.
These impromptu street jams often resemble the fun preliminary heats of American Idol; the ones in which tone deaf sociopathic wannabes induce reactions in the three judges akin to somebody dragging their fingernails down a blackboard. In fact, maybe the local franchise, Indonesian Idol, should head out onto the streets in search of a few comedy contestants for the early rounds.
Sadly though, many of Jakarta's buskers are just vulnerable little kids. Some are orphans whilst others are pushed by their impoverished parents to earn money on the streets during hard times. Non-governmental organizations such as Yayasan Griya Asih, Jakarta Street Kids Global Concern or the ISCO Foundation often advise people not to give these kids money as it only encourages poor parents and criminal groups to exploit them by sending them begging into the traffic day after day. It seems like an act of kindness to slip these poor waifs a few Rupiah but if the aim is to discourage children from busking and get them off the streets and into schools, then maybe it would indeed be better to divert any cash to organizations such as the ones mentioned above.
It is perhaps understandable that the city’s Street kids are often lacking passion in their vocal performances. Being hungry and often victims of violence and sexual abuse, musical talent is probably the last thing on their minds. The government aren't much help either. Many street kids are intimidated and even beaten up by public order officials and a current issue hitting the headlines here is the huge number of Indonesian families unable to even afford birth certificates for their offspring, surely a basic human right. No birth certificate, no school.
Apparently, there are over 150,000 children plying people on Jakarta's streets; busking, laughing, fighting, shining shoes, getting involved in petty crime, taking drugs, prostituting themselves, contracting AIDS and, of course, playing some of the most shocking music ever heard. The 1989 UN Convention on the rights of children specifies rights to a home, health care and an education among other things. Here though, these are pie in the sky wishes for many adults as well as children.
So, to sum up, we’re on the horns of a dilemma here. Either don’t give the buskers Rp.1000 and help to discourage the ear drum abuse in the longer term by keeping them off the streets, or go for the quick fix of shutting them up with a few coins and then breathe an instant sigh of relief when they take their caterwauling elsewhere. Politics is never simple is it?
The http://metromad.blogspot.com/
Simon Pitchforth
Monday, April 23, 2007
Kings for a Day
A couple of years ago, the war on corruption became a tangible reality for me and a two of my friends as opposed to just being a snappy soundbite emanating from the mustachioed lips of unctuous politicians.
At the time I was in need of new digs quickly and was desperate for somewhere to rest my weary bones of an evening. Then, in the nick of time, a close friend of mine invited me to stay in a huge mansion he had just moved into in an exclusive rich man's housing complex just off Jalan Rasuna Said. I went and had a look around the place. To say it was palatial is something of an understatement. You could have gone hang gliding off the chandeliers in this drum and then swam a few laps of the bath tub. "You can stay here for free," he told me. "What the hell is going on?" was my bemused reply.
The story went as follows. One evening a couple of weeks previously, my chum and a follically challenged German friend of ours had been enjoying a drink on Jakarta's backpacker street of broken dreams, Jl. Jaksa. There they had made the acquaintance of a young British banker of dubious professional standing and moral scruples. He told them that he was currently looking after the finances of (read: laundering the ill gotten gains of) a rich Indonesian family who had fled to Singapore to escape corruption charges arrayed against them. He was also responsible for looking after their abandoned mansion and making sure that no harm befell it. He subsequently invited my two friends to move in rent-free. All they would be liable for would be the monthly bills and the upkeep of the place.
Well, my friends leapt at the chance and pretty soon all three of us were firmly ensconced in the Chateau, peeling each other grapes and entertaining lordly fantasies of throwing a Great Gatsby style party on the mezzanine. I think I even started using the word lavatory instead of toilet.
So, who did the house really belong to? Who exactly were these bourgeois fugitives from justice? Well, a little Internet research told us that we had hit the big-time. In fact, the owners of our palace were on the top 10 most wanted list of Indonesian swindlers. The family had owned a chain of duck farms around Java and invited local farmers to invest in the project under a cooperative umbrella. Everything had been going swimmingly and Mr. Duck (Donald?) had been gaining plaudits and kudos as a man of the people and supporter of local agro-business. Then bird flu hit the headlines and the operation started to go belly up, quite literally I presume. You can probably guess the rest. When the going gets dodgy the dodgy get going. Donald (not his real name) and family fled to Singapore with millions and millions of US dollars worth of the poor investors’ money. Now Singapore, as I'm sure you're aware, is reluctant to sign an extradition treaty with this country due to the colossal amounts of cash that Indonesian corruptors who have fled there inject into the local economy. Thus Donald Trump-Duck (trumped up?) and family reside on the island state to this present day, sitting pretty on their duck laid nest egg.
Back at the ranch though, we were enjoying the palatial life to the max, although admittedly I had to walk quite far out of the posh complex in order to find a decent, cheap fried rice. Actually, now I come to think of it, the Sat Pam (security guard) and the maid's family were also at each other's throats now that the Great webbed footed patriarch had flown the nest. These were minor drawbacks, however, compared with the pleasure of seeing our itinerant friends' jaws drop when we invited them over for a beer.
Nagging doubts remained however. Were we morally complicit in this guy's crimes by looking after his house for him? Were we bad people for doing this, even though we were doing it for ourselves (rent-free remember)? Should we serve sparkling wine at the party and pretend that it's champagne?
In the end, the matter was taken out of our hands. One morning, a lawyer for the poor, ripped off farmers turned up at the house of informed us that in a week's time, these sorry sons of the soil would be holding a large demonstration outside the house and that us pale faces may wish to consider moving out. Then, a couple of days later, Mrs. Duck turned up and informed us that the house had been sold, their furniture and belongings would be packed up and sent to Singapore the following day and that we should move out by the weekend.
And so all of our bourgeois fantasies came crashing down to earth after a mere six weeks of the high life. We never did get to hold a party or even find out what happened at the farmers' demo. Hopefully they torched the house but my gut feeling of Javanese deference (some would say subservience) tells me that it was a polite affair. In any other country there would have been bricks flying through the windows.
However, at least we managed to assuage our feelings of guilt and complicity in the whole sorry corrupt saga by pilfering a few items from the house before we left. Robin Hood lives! Yes, they take from the rich and give to... themselves. As I type this, a couple of hand-painted wooden ducks are staring down inscrutably at me from my computer desk.
http://metromad.blogspot.com/
Simon Pitchforth
At the time I was in need of new digs quickly and was desperate for somewhere to rest my weary bones of an evening. Then, in the nick of time, a close friend of mine invited me to stay in a huge mansion he had just moved into in an exclusive rich man's housing complex just off Jalan Rasuna Said. I went and had a look around the place. To say it was palatial is something of an understatement. You could have gone hang gliding off the chandeliers in this drum and then swam a few laps of the bath tub. "You can stay here for free," he told me. "What the hell is going on?" was my bemused reply.
The story went as follows. One evening a couple of weeks previously, my chum and a follically challenged German friend of ours had been enjoying a drink on Jakarta's backpacker street of broken dreams, Jl. Jaksa. There they had made the acquaintance of a young British banker of dubious professional standing and moral scruples. He told them that he was currently looking after the finances of (read: laundering the ill gotten gains of) a rich Indonesian family who had fled to Singapore to escape corruption charges arrayed against them. He was also responsible for looking after their abandoned mansion and making sure that no harm befell it. He subsequently invited my two friends to move in rent-free. All they would be liable for would be the monthly bills and the upkeep of the place.
Well, my friends leapt at the chance and pretty soon all three of us were firmly ensconced in the Chateau, peeling each other grapes and entertaining lordly fantasies of throwing a Great Gatsby style party on the mezzanine. I think I even started using the word lavatory instead of toilet.
So, who did the house really belong to? Who exactly were these bourgeois fugitives from justice? Well, a little Internet research told us that we had hit the big-time. In fact, the owners of our palace were on the top 10 most wanted list of Indonesian swindlers. The family had owned a chain of duck farms around Java and invited local farmers to invest in the project under a cooperative umbrella. Everything had been going swimmingly and Mr. Duck (Donald?) had been gaining plaudits and kudos as a man of the people and supporter of local agro-business. Then bird flu hit the headlines and the operation started to go belly up, quite literally I presume. You can probably guess the rest. When the going gets dodgy the dodgy get going. Donald (not his real name) and family fled to Singapore with millions and millions of US dollars worth of the poor investors’ money. Now Singapore, as I'm sure you're aware, is reluctant to sign an extradition treaty with this country due to the colossal amounts of cash that Indonesian corruptors who have fled there inject into the local economy. Thus Donald Trump-Duck (trumped up?) and family reside on the island state to this present day, sitting pretty on their duck laid nest egg.
Back at the ranch though, we were enjoying the palatial life to the max, although admittedly I had to walk quite far out of the posh complex in order to find a decent, cheap fried rice. Actually, now I come to think of it, the Sat Pam (security guard) and the maid's family were also at each other's throats now that the Great webbed footed patriarch had flown the nest. These were minor drawbacks, however, compared with the pleasure of seeing our itinerant friends' jaws drop when we invited them over for a beer.
Nagging doubts remained however. Were we morally complicit in this guy's crimes by looking after his house for him? Were we bad people for doing this, even though we were doing it for ourselves (rent-free remember)? Should we serve sparkling wine at the party and pretend that it's champagne?
In the end, the matter was taken out of our hands. One morning, a lawyer for the poor, ripped off farmers turned up at the house of informed us that in a week's time, these sorry sons of the soil would be holding a large demonstration outside the house and that us pale faces may wish to consider moving out. Then, a couple of days later, Mrs. Duck turned up and informed us that the house had been sold, their furniture and belongings would be packed up and sent to Singapore the following day and that we should move out by the weekend.
And so all of our bourgeois fantasies came crashing down to earth after a mere six weeks of the high life. We never did get to hold a party or even find out what happened at the farmers' demo. Hopefully they torched the house but my gut feeling of Javanese deference (some would say subservience) tells me that it was a polite affair. In any other country there would have been bricks flying through the windows.
However, at least we managed to assuage our feelings of guilt and complicity in the whole sorry corrupt saga by pilfering a few items from the house before we left. Robin Hood lives! Yes, they take from the rich and give to... themselves. As I type this, a couple of hand-painted wooden ducks are staring down inscrutably at me from my computer desk.
http://metromad.blogspot.com/
Simon Pitchforth
Friday, April 20, 2007
righteous indignation
Got a few comments viz my atheistic rant. No actual death threats yet though.Here's one:
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How did a half-wit get a column in the esteemed Jakarta Post?
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That was one. You can blame my friend Chris who used to work there. Not sure how "Esteemed" the Sunday Post is though. Another one was:
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This is someone who doesn't now that he doesn't know and that there is a very thin line between a fanatic and an ignorant.
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Try reading it again. No, I'm none the wiser either. Also received was:
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Way too rational Simon, whilst you are (I assume) prepared to acknowledge that there MAY be intelligent design, I doubt very much that your average monotheist will provide for the possibility that your view might be true.
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Good point there from Geordie. I tried hard not to be offensive and argue rationally but the you can always count on the dogged certainty of the faithful. Whatever happened to doubt and soul searching? They used to be an integral part of religions.
Last word to my drinking sparring partner Rich:
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your worse than a heathen son of Satan, you gosh darned COMMUNIST and you need to REPENT and buy some guns.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
How did a half-wit get a column in the esteemed Jakarta Post?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That was one. You can blame my friend Chris who used to work there. Not sure how "Esteemed" the Sunday Post is though. Another one was:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is someone who doesn't now that he doesn't know and that there is a very thin line between a fanatic and an ignorant.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Try reading it again. No, I'm none the wiser either. Also received was:
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Way too rational Simon, whilst you are (I assume) prepared to acknowledge that there MAY be intelligent design, I doubt very much that your average monotheist will provide for the possibility that your view might be true.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good point there from Geordie. I tried hard not to be offensive and argue rationally but the you can always count on the dogged certainty of the faithful. Whatever happened to doubt and soul searching? They used to be an integral part of religions.
Last word to my drinking sparring partner Rich:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
your worse than a heathen son of Satan, you gosh darned COMMUNIST and you need to REPENT and buy some guns.
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