It seems that Ramadan is upon us once again and so may peace be upon all of you. This fasting month, it's nice to see that in keeping with the Islamic duty of Zakat (namely the giving of alms to the poor) that the city administration has criminalized both begging and the giving of money to beggars. The poor have thus been rendered alm-less.
I won't rake over all the arguments surrounding begging again as I wrote about the whole sorry issue in a recent MM. Suffice to say that many children are forced to beg on the streets of Jakarta by unscrupulous adults just as Victorian kids were often forced up chimneys by sadistic sweeps in times past. In this sense, getting them off the street would be a good idea. However, I don't think that criminalization of these poor urchins is really going to improve their quality of life.
How about some decent money being put aside for a few positive initiatives rather than letting NGOs take up the slack as usual? Where matters of the poor are concerned, the administrative arm of city governance, rather than having a velvety glove on the end of it, more closely resembles an iron fist... in an iron glove... with iron bits sticking out of the knuckles.
But moving swiftly along this fine holy month, may I crave your indulgence this week whilst I discuss an urban problem that has no doubt caused many reading this to tear their hair out in frustration. I'm referring here to the issue of noise pollution, a problem that admittedly some are more sensitive to than others.
Noise is a highly subjective thing of course; one man's music (often mine) is another man's racket. In addition, noise does not directly poison the planet. It is transient and, unlike chemical pollutants, once the noise stops, the environment is free of it. In human terms though noise can definitely be considered a form of pollution. The roar of a Bajaj engine, for example, may be as damaging in human terms as the plumes of black soot that billow from its exhaust. Sleep is lost and migraines flourish. Noise causes stress and stress, as any doctor will tell you, kills.
Getting down to specific cases though, the Batavian noise assault (good name for a metal band that) breaks down into several specific causes. If noise pollution is a modern disease then Jakarta is most definitely PA positive. Indonesia’s enduring love affair with the PA system will be a familiar nuisance to many of you. It seems that where this country is concerned, one can paraphrase the motto of the American National Rifle Association: "They'll get my microphone when they prize it from my cold dead fingers." During any public gathering of more than say, two people, the use of an 8 kW sound rig, a microphone and a graphic equalizer set to accentuate the harshest timbres of the human voice is absolutely de rigueur, even if your audience are only sitting 3 feet away from you. Also, the microphone should ideally be possessed by the ghost of the late Jimi Hendrix and be feeding back about 40% of the time.
I recently ate in a shopping Plaza food court in which a fashion show and concert were taking place. The volume was incredible, probably on a par with a Metallica gig or a jumbo jet taking off or something. I could perhaps have stomached a little cocktail jazz piano in a food court while I'm trying to eat but this decibel fest was literally curdling my Soto Ayam. Upon returning to the ground floor of the Plaza I could still hear the event apocalyptically booming overhead.
Then there's the traffic of course. The worst culprits here are the Bajajs and the two-stroke motorcycles whose engine frequencies are pitched perfectly at that teeth rattling level. This problem is exacerbated by the many young, boy racer motorcyclists who gleefully customize their machines to make them louder, rather than quieter. By strapping huge drainpipe sized, eardrum shredding exhausts on to their little scooters these guys are engaged in a constant battle to give their road presence a more macho swagger.
Another source of noise, polluting or otherwise, are the mosques. Now I will have to be careful what I say here and if anyone feels offended, all Fatwas should be addressed to my blog site. Basically, the call to prayer lasts about three minutes and Muslims are supposed to pray five times a day. So does this mean that the houses of the holy are broadcasting for a total of 15 minutes per day? Well, I think we all know the answer to that question.
In recent years, the length of on air time seems to have been lengthening at the city's mosques. They have almost become like mini radio stations although obviously with no actual radio needed. The mosque noise is compounded by the harsh frequencies of the Tannoy systems that they all employ. An un-amplified human voice would be cool though. Either that or the people who collect in the streets to build new mosques could instead consider using the money to fit out existing mosques with state-of-the-art Bose speakers and buying their Muezzin a few bottles of expectorant. The religion of peace? Shouldn't this ideal be aural as well as political?
Other lower volume annoyances that sneak in under the psychic radar but which nevertheless wage a slow war of attrition with one's mental well-being include the endless soft rock bilge piped into supermarkets, airport waiting lounges, cinemas, hospitals, massage parlors and morgues. Soppy balladeers, Michael Learns to Rock, famous for never being heard of in the West, are a perennial favorite in this country and never fail to induce the requisite Stepford wife stupor in checkout queues.
Other sources of noise pollution? Well I'm sure you all have your own bugbears. Exceptionally loud car calls are another common one, the sound seems to drift over the rooftops for literally miles. I should also give a special mention to my local Satay seller who has replaced the endearing wooden "tok tok" sound with the rather less traditional blare of a car horn screwed to his trolley. How I hate him so.
Ultimately though there's a paradox here. Indonesia is traditionally a country of halus (soft) people. It's the country that brought us the ambient bliss of Gamelan music, the sound of moonlight that has inspired and captivated Western composers from Debussy to the present-day. Why then does Jakarta set the teeth on edge so? Perhaps these huge Asian cities are kind of anathema to the cultures that spawned them in the first place. Anyway, my iPod seems to be charged now so I'll bid you farewell.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Chain Reaction
When every last drop of fossil fuel has disgorged its energy into our ever warming atmosphere; when every Honda SUV is but a rusting hulk of iron half submerged by the ever encroaching sea, the bicycle will still be going strong. Bicycles are clean, green, and, when the driving of Ferraris and gas guzzling people carriers become socially unacceptable about 20 years hence, they will eventually be mean. For the moment though they still perhaps have something of an image problem and are no doubt still connected in many minds to people who like to grow their own denim, weave their own yoghurt and rear starlings in their beards.
Now I'm a lifelong cyclist. Admittedly, I was briefly seduced by the testosterone thrill of the motorcycle but after a heavy, bone crunching accident last year, I sold my iron horse and reverted back to the more gentle pleasures of my trusty mountain bike. But perhaps this raises some questions. Logically, bearing in mind Jakarta's no rules traffic free for all, am I any safer on the bike than a motorbike? Am I any less likely to get shunted through the plate glass window of my local Circle K by a runaway cement truck or shredded under the wheel arches of a Metro Mini just because I'm traveling at a more sedate pace? On reflection, perhaps not. But I will never give up the bicycle, mankind's greatest ever invention.
With this in mind, I headed out on my trusty 15 speed low rider last Sunday in order to pedal down to Senayan to check out the annual gathering of Jakarta's Bike to Work community. I first popped into my local cycle shop just down the road from me to pick up a couple of accessories (including a bell which makes a lovely tinkling sound - drives the girls wild it does). Disconcertingly, the Chinese lady behind the counter asked me if I'd like to buy some life insurance from her. Apparently she works for an insurance firm and was just filling in at the bike shop for her husband. Still, I was slightly rattled by her offer and, let's be frank, cycling in Jakarta can indeed prove deleterious to one's health. If the Metro Minis don't get you then breathing in the turgid atmosphere, equivalent to around 20 Marlboro gaspers per day, perhaps will.
Is Jakarta really so inhospitable to cyclists however? Certainly, on a Sunday I found it extremely pleasant coasting down to Senayan Stadium in the sunshine. A few cycle lanes would no doubt improve things though. Upon my recent trip home to the UK, I noticed a lot of new cycle lanes in the suburbs and cycling there is booming as a result. Many of Jakarta's suburban roads, however, aren't even wide enough for the two opposing lanes of traffic, let alone cycle lanes. It's anarchy out there I tell you.
Anyhow, as I sailed into the Bung Karno stadium complex, I immediately happened upon a group of around 20 Indonesians in Bike to Work T-shirts. They were mainly young males wearing futuristic cycle helmets and sunglasses and riding fancy bikes with elaborate suspension systems and disc brakes. There were a couple of veiled young ladies there too, riding more modest machines complete with feminine shopping baskets but it was the lycra clad, slightly homoerotic, male vibe that seemed dominant.
I discreetly tagged onto the back of their group as they rode out through the gates and slowly up Jl. Sudirman. This was the life. As we rode along I imagined all of Jakarta riding to shopping malls and restaurants in bicycling gangs like some vision of precapitalist China before Asia started to suffocate in its own soot belch.
The Bike to Work people were very considerate road users as well and indicated their intentions clearly with elaborate hand signals. Many Jakartan motorists, in comparison, don't even bother with their indicators.
After a few minutes, the group realized that a pasty faced Westerner in an England football shirt had infiltrated their group. After a hearty round of Hello Misters, I found out that they were bound for the new park in Menteng. I agreed to come along with them for the ride.
When we arrived at our destination, I got chatting to some of the guys and they told me that, yes indeed, most of them actually did bike to work. They were also cycling hobbyists though and said that I should join them on one of their numerous out-of-town jaunts. Usually, they told me, they stick their bikes on the train and get off in Bogor for a day’s cycling. Great chaps one and all and also environmentally aware, mentioning, as they did, global warming in their talk with me.
After our brief chat, I was presented with a Jakarta Bike to Work T-shirt which I proudly donned immediately. We parted company and I left the group as they cycled to the Sunda Kelapa mosque in Menteng in search of Bubur Ayam (chicken porridge). The stuff’s full of protein pedal power I'm sure but I draw the line at Bubur Ayam I'm afraid. It tastes like Kentucky Fried Chicken in wallpaper paste as far as I'm concerned.
As I cycled home down Jl. Rasuna Said alone, I passed another group of renegade cyclists. This time there were about 50 of them and they all gave me a friendly wave. There's none of this road rage among the cycling community you know. Why not join us? You can buy a nice bike for about the same price as a mobile phone. Just don't ride on the Busway lanes unless you've always had a hankering to be 1 inch high and 4 foot wide.
Now I'm a lifelong cyclist. Admittedly, I was briefly seduced by the testosterone thrill of the motorcycle but after a heavy, bone crunching accident last year, I sold my iron horse and reverted back to the more gentle pleasures of my trusty mountain bike. But perhaps this raises some questions. Logically, bearing in mind Jakarta's no rules traffic free for all, am I any safer on the bike than a motorbike? Am I any less likely to get shunted through the plate glass window of my local Circle K by a runaway cement truck or shredded under the wheel arches of a Metro Mini just because I'm traveling at a more sedate pace? On reflection, perhaps not. But I will never give up the bicycle, mankind's greatest ever invention.
With this in mind, I headed out on my trusty 15 speed low rider last Sunday in order to pedal down to Senayan to check out the annual gathering of Jakarta's Bike to Work community. I first popped into my local cycle shop just down the road from me to pick up a couple of accessories (including a bell which makes a lovely tinkling sound - drives the girls wild it does). Disconcertingly, the Chinese lady behind the counter asked me if I'd like to buy some life insurance from her. Apparently she works for an insurance firm and was just filling in at the bike shop for her husband. Still, I was slightly rattled by her offer and, let's be frank, cycling in Jakarta can indeed prove deleterious to one's health. If the Metro Minis don't get you then breathing in the turgid atmosphere, equivalent to around 20 Marlboro gaspers per day, perhaps will.
Is Jakarta really so inhospitable to cyclists however? Certainly, on a Sunday I found it extremely pleasant coasting down to Senayan Stadium in the sunshine. A few cycle lanes would no doubt improve things though. Upon my recent trip home to the UK, I noticed a lot of new cycle lanes in the suburbs and cycling there is booming as a result. Many of Jakarta's suburban roads, however, aren't even wide enough for the two opposing lanes of traffic, let alone cycle lanes. It's anarchy out there I tell you.
Anyhow, as I sailed into the Bung Karno stadium complex, I immediately happened upon a group of around 20 Indonesians in Bike to Work T-shirts. They were mainly young males wearing futuristic cycle helmets and sunglasses and riding fancy bikes with elaborate suspension systems and disc brakes. There were a couple of veiled young ladies there too, riding more modest machines complete with feminine shopping baskets but it was the lycra clad, slightly homoerotic, male vibe that seemed dominant.
I discreetly tagged onto the back of their group as they rode out through the gates and slowly up Jl. Sudirman. This was the life. As we rode along I imagined all of Jakarta riding to shopping malls and restaurants in bicycling gangs like some vision of precapitalist China before Asia started to suffocate in its own soot belch.
The Bike to Work people were very considerate road users as well and indicated their intentions clearly with elaborate hand signals. Many Jakartan motorists, in comparison, don't even bother with their indicators.
After a few minutes, the group realized that a pasty faced Westerner in an England football shirt had infiltrated their group. After a hearty round of Hello Misters, I found out that they were bound for the new park in Menteng. I agreed to come along with them for the ride.
When we arrived at our destination, I got chatting to some of the guys and they told me that, yes indeed, most of them actually did bike to work. They were also cycling hobbyists though and said that I should join them on one of their numerous out-of-town jaunts. Usually, they told me, they stick their bikes on the train and get off in Bogor for a day’s cycling. Great chaps one and all and also environmentally aware, mentioning, as they did, global warming in their talk with me.
After our brief chat, I was presented with a Jakarta Bike to Work T-shirt which I proudly donned immediately. We parted company and I left the group as they cycled to the Sunda Kelapa mosque in Menteng in search of Bubur Ayam (chicken porridge). The stuff’s full of protein pedal power I'm sure but I draw the line at Bubur Ayam I'm afraid. It tastes like Kentucky Fried Chicken in wallpaper paste as far as I'm concerned.
As I cycled home down Jl. Rasuna Said alone, I passed another group of renegade cyclists. This time there were about 50 of them and they all gave me a friendly wave. There's none of this road rage among the cycling community you know. Why not join us? You can buy a nice bike for about the same price as a mobile phone. Just don't ride on the Busway lanes unless you've always had a hankering to be 1 inch high and 4 foot wide.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Fuel for the Fire
Firstly this week, may I extend my humble apologies to anyone who may have trotted along to the Jl. Jaksa Festival last Sunday after my recommendation in last week's column. The festival it was in full swing on Saturday with live music, riotous revelry aplenty and even an appearance by Mr Moustache himself, Governor elect Fauzi Bowo. When I turned up on Sunday, however, the whole thing had almost shut down completely. There were only a couple of stalls open to detract from the usual Jaksa groundswell of white skinned lushes and African soccer fans. Apologies to anyone who may have ventured down although I'm sure most of you are much too classy to be hanging around Jl. Jaksa on a Sunday afternoon.
On with the show then. Two stories have caught my eye recently and perhaps offer interesting parallels and contrasts with each other. The first concerns the ongoing kerosene war in town. The government is just about to remove subsidies on the Indonesian underclass's fuel of choice. This has caused panic buying, hoarding and five hour waits for people and their huge plastic flagons at kerosene depots all over town. The plan is to force people to convert to LPG (gas) which is, surprise surprise, more expensive, at Rp. 4250 per liter than the subsidized kerosene rate of Rp.2000 per liter. This would no doubt explain the queues. People seem reluctant to convert to gas and the government have, according to one report, only achieved between five and ten percent of their target so far.
I invariably find local stories such as this depressing. How difficult must it be for literally millions of people to make ends meet in breadline Batavia. Every Rupiah has to be squeezed dry of its potential worth just to enable one to keep one’s head above water and if that means queuing for five hours to save a few thousand then so be it. 1 kg of natural gas is supposed to have the energy content of 3 liters of kerosene but if you can't afford it, you can't afford it.
How lucky the rest of us have it in comparison and I'm certainly not very far up the greasy pole that leads to huge disposable incomes, BMWs and bourgeois respectability. My only kerosene worry last weekend, for example, involved trying to figure out how to light a barbecue using the stuff without taking my eyebrows off. It's not as easy as you might think although we eventually managed to get the charcoal glowing and cooked some horrendously charred sausages and burgers.
Never mind the kerosene though; another fluid shortage was playing on my decadent Western mind last weekend. Specifically I'm referring to the mysterious disappearance of wines and spirits from the shelves of duty-free stores and supermarkets in Jakarta and Bali. Disaster! Kerosene stoves? Forget it, where's the booze gone? I'm a white skinned imperialist and I demand a stiff drink with my barbecued burger.
The vanishing refreshments are seemingly nothing to do with religious edicts or the Sharia lobby however. Neighbouring Tanggerang may have run dry with piety but Jakarta still consumes its own weight in liquor every year (my statistics). Indonesians like to joke that they can drink beer because it's only 5% alcohol and the country is only 95% Muslim. This is an interestingly mathematical approach to problems of religious doctrine I think. Maybe this is why Muslims are allowed to have four wives; because they can only see 25% of each one through their veils.
Back to the matter in hand though. Apparently the alcohol crisis in town and on the Island of the Gods is due to the, "Collapse of a complicated quota system that controls alcohol imports following a shakeup of the Finance Ministry's customs and excise agency earlier this year." Hmmm, yes. This no doubt means that large amounts of money haven't been flowing as freely as certain bureaucrats would like.
On further reflection though, maybe a few weeks off the sauce will do us all some good. We will have some breathing space to reflect on how the invidious spread of the global liquor industry is turning us all into alcoholics. All the same, I could use a drink.
I hope you don't imagine that I'm trying to equate my booze quandaries with the problems of having no cooking fuel. I'm merely trying to exemplify the huge social gulfs that exist here. I would never, to paraphrase Marie Antoinette, declare, "There's no kerosene? Well let them cook with Smirnoff."
In any case, to assert a social stratification based on a ruling vodka class and a submissive kerosene class would be fallacious; the reason being that kerosene queuers enjoy the occasional tipple themselves. Indeed, Indonesian supermarkets are full of cheap, local brands of spirits such as Mansion House. Products such as these seemingly have a chemical composition exactly midway between the two types of liquid under discussion in today's column. Jakartans from all levels of society will take a drink and if all alcohol was banned here, then maybe recent events in Papua would be repeated in the capital. Specifically, people would be dropping like flies from moonshine poisoning and the pernicious effects of beverages containing 75% alcohol (ouch!)
If I had to queue for five hours for 4 litres of kerosene I might even contemplate drinking a few shots of it on the way home to dampen the pain of my urban underclass existence. Jakarta, to me at least, often seems to exemplify the worst aspects of 21st century capitalism. The masses are kept in poverty: scared, demoralized and uneducated and it seems to be getting worse. There is indeed a class war being fought, not only here but all around the world, however only one side seems to be fighting. Anyway let's raise a glass and pray for full shelves again soon. Cheers.
Stop Press
Typical, you write a column and it is out of date before it’s even printed. A visit to Kemang Duty-Free this week revealed that shelves have been nicely restocked with falling down water of every type and strength. The prices have gone up though, rather confirming my suspicions about bureaucratic payoffs. Go and stock up before Ramadan starts but don't forget the Panadols too.
On with the show then. Two stories have caught my eye recently and perhaps offer interesting parallels and contrasts with each other. The first concerns the ongoing kerosene war in town. The government is just about to remove subsidies on the Indonesian underclass's fuel of choice. This has caused panic buying, hoarding and five hour waits for people and their huge plastic flagons at kerosene depots all over town. The plan is to force people to convert to LPG (gas) which is, surprise surprise, more expensive, at Rp. 4250 per liter than the subsidized kerosene rate of Rp.2000 per liter. This would no doubt explain the queues. People seem reluctant to convert to gas and the government have, according to one report, only achieved between five and ten percent of their target so far.
I invariably find local stories such as this depressing. How difficult must it be for literally millions of people to make ends meet in breadline Batavia. Every Rupiah has to be squeezed dry of its potential worth just to enable one to keep one’s head above water and if that means queuing for five hours to save a few thousand then so be it. 1 kg of natural gas is supposed to have the energy content of 3 liters of kerosene but if you can't afford it, you can't afford it.
How lucky the rest of us have it in comparison and I'm certainly not very far up the greasy pole that leads to huge disposable incomes, BMWs and bourgeois respectability. My only kerosene worry last weekend, for example, involved trying to figure out how to light a barbecue using the stuff without taking my eyebrows off. It's not as easy as you might think although we eventually managed to get the charcoal glowing and cooked some horrendously charred sausages and burgers.
Never mind the kerosene though; another fluid shortage was playing on my decadent Western mind last weekend. Specifically I'm referring to the mysterious disappearance of wines and spirits from the shelves of duty-free stores and supermarkets in Jakarta and Bali. Disaster! Kerosene stoves? Forget it, where's the booze gone? I'm a white skinned imperialist and I demand a stiff drink with my barbecued burger.
The vanishing refreshments are seemingly nothing to do with religious edicts or the Sharia lobby however. Neighbouring Tanggerang may have run dry with piety but Jakarta still consumes its own weight in liquor every year (my statistics). Indonesians like to joke that they can drink beer because it's only 5% alcohol and the country is only 95% Muslim. This is an interestingly mathematical approach to problems of religious doctrine I think. Maybe this is why Muslims are allowed to have four wives; because they can only see 25% of each one through their veils.
Back to the matter in hand though. Apparently the alcohol crisis in town and on the Island of the Gods is due to the, "Collapse of a complicated quota system that controls alcohol imports following a shakeup of the Finance Ministry's customs and excise agency earlier this year." Hmmm, yes. This no doubt means that large amounts of money haven't been flowing as freely as certain bureaucrats would like.
On further reflection though, maybe a few weeks off the sauce will do us all some good. We will have some breathing space to reflect on how the invidious spread of the global liquor industry is turning us all into alcoholics. All the same, I could use a drink.
I hope you don't imagine that I'm trying to equate my booze quandaries with the problems of having no cooking fuel. I'm merely trying to exemplify the huge social gulfs that exist here. I would never, to paraphrase Marie Antoinette, declare, "There's no kerosene? Well let them cook with Smirnoff."
In any case, to assert a social stratification based on a ruling vodka class and a submissive kerosene class would be fallacious; the reason being that kerosene queuers enjoy the occasional tipple themselves. Indeed, Indonesian supermarkets are full of cheap, local brands of spirits such as Mansion House. Products such as these seemingly have a chemical composition exactly midway between the two types of liquid under discussion in today's column. Jakartans from all levels of society will take a drink and if all alcohol was banned here, then maybe recent events in Papua would be repeated in the capital. Specifically, people would be dropping like flies from moonshine poisoning and the pernicious effects of beverages containing 75% alcohol (ouch!)
If I had to queue for five hours for 4 litres of kerosene I might even contemplate drinking a few shots of it on the way home to dampen the pain of my urban underclass existence. Jakarta, to me at least, often seems to exemplify the worst aspects of 21st century capitalism. The masses are kept in poverty: scared, demoralized and uneducated and it seems to be getting worse. There is indeed a class war being fought, not only here but all around the world, however only one side seems to be fighting. Anyway let's raise a glass and pray for full shelves again soon. Cheers.
Stop Press
Typical, you write a column and it is out of date before it’s even printed. A visit to Kemang Duty-Free this week revealed that shelves have been nicely restocked with falling down water of every type and strength. The prices have gone up though, rather confirming my suspicions about bureaucratic payoffs. Go and stock up before Ramadan starts but don't forget the Panadols too.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Festivals and Inflation
I've had a fair to middling week I suppose. We're still having trouble getting Astro to connect us up to televisual images of 22 men kicking a leather ball around. There seems to be a big backlog of potential customers who are waiting for their footy and I guess we are way down the queue. Last Sunday I had to resort to watching the Turkish Grand Prix as a substitute.
Still, at least my fellow compatriot Lewis Hamilton, the rookie sensation and first ever colored Formula One driver, is still doing well. Being a black man driving a fast, expensive car though, I keep expecting to see a police car chasing him around the track trying to pull him over. "Excuse me, is this your vehicle, Sir?" Anyhow, come on Astro, pull your collective fingers out.
Last Sunday I hot-footed it down the road to the Kemang Festival as I thought that this would kill a bit of time and afford me the rare opportunity to witness Kemang's snobby boulevards overrun by Plebian hordes. Crowded it certainly was. The world and his wife (and kids) seemed to be on the streets of Kemang, squeezing themselves along the two narrow rows of stalls that ran virtually the whole length of the street.
It was a fun little Festival and perhaps Jakarta should have more of these. If you're actually reading this on Sunday, September 2nd, then you may care to pop along to the Jalan Jaksa festival/fair, which will be in full swing until the evening. God knows what it will be like though; perhaps a bit boozier than the Kemang Festival but no doubt fun nevertheless.
Yes, more festivals please. Although I guess Jakarta is already, in a sense, one huge, permanent street festival. Back to Kemang Fest though. A friend and I started to stroll slowly through the stalls. Many were no different from the clothing and knickknack boutiques that you would find in any market. Others were selling more interesting curios however. There were stalls of old colonial pseudo antiques; including vases and even old bicycles, that could be bought cheaply, taken home and dusted off for display. There were also plenty of plants and flowers up for grabs for your green fingered Jakartans.
One of the most interesting stalls that I ran into was being run by an old acquaintance of mine, Mr John, an expatriate teacher who has for a long time run a little cottage industry sideline turning out framed photographs and creative handicrafts. His latest ruse is old vinyl records. He sources out classic rock albums and binds both the discs and the sleeves into a single, decent quality frame to produce objets d'art worthy of any bedroom or bar room wall. Clocks manufactured from old records were also available for the budget connoisseur.
What really caught my eye, however, was a tastefully framed Rp.1 (yes one) note from the 1950s with the following passage decoratively printed underneath it:
Five things you could buy for one rupiah in the 1950s:
5 cups of coffee (for you and your mates)
two packs of cigarettes (to go with the coffee)
two litres of rice (two-day's sustenance for a family of four)
two Nasi Goreng brackets (for you and your date)
a bus ticket home (still saving up for the motorbike)
Those were the days!
A very creative talking point for my wall, I thought and snapped it up for Rp.150,000. Those were the days indeed. It makes me feel slightly vertiginous when I think of how inflation has tacked so many zeros on to our beloved local currency in the intervening years until now. I've often wished that Bank Indonesia would chop a few zeroes off and start again from one. I would also appreciate seeing the public execution of the bright spark at the Treasury who decided that it would be a good idea to make the new Rp.100,000 and Rp.10,000 nodes the same approximate size and color. How many people have found themselves Rp.90,000 out of pocket since they were introduced I wonder?
Back to my framed vintage currency though. I thought I'd get the calculator out and see if I could create the 2007 equivalent of my friend's Rp.1 purchasing power table. The first item on the list was 5 cups of coffee. Rp.1 today? Well if we take a cup of Starbucks's ludicrously expensive brew (let's say Rp40,000 for a cup size of about 350ml) then Rp.1 should buy you precisely 0 .008 mL of coffee; presumably not enough to drown a mosquito in (or even be visible to the naked eye?)
Next up was two packets of cigarettes. If we assume Rp10,000 and 16 cigarettes per pack then you should be eligible for 0.0016 of a single cigarette or around a 10th of a drag. Well it should make quitting easier.
Then we have the foodstuffs. Let's go with the fried rice. With your 1950s Rp.1 you should be in line for 0.0001 of a plateful. I guess this wouldn't amount to a single grain of rice. Again, we’re going to have visibility issues with this one.
As for the bus ticket, let's calculate one rupiah in a Bluebird taxi. Let's take a rough estimate of Rp.400 for every 200 m travelled (is this correct anyone?) This would give us a 50 cm long journey. Admittedly, I've cheated here because of the Rp.5000 flag fall charge but at least 50 cm has the benefit of being a distance visible without the aid of a microscope. Perhaps a snail or similarly low paced mollusk would be interested in popping down to the other end of the flower bed to see their bank manager at these rates.
Those were the days? Perhaps, perhaps not. However, I'm not sure that the reverse time travel option would be that much fun either. Take Rp.50,000 back to 1955 and purchase 40,000 plates of fried rice and 60,000 packets of cigarettes. That lot would probably raise your blood pressure a few points, although living in modern Jakarta's pea soup air sometimes makes me think I've just smoked 60,000 packs of Gudang Garam. Bring back hyperinflation I say. Let's see if we can't get a few more zeros tacked on there by the end of the decade.
By the way, those interested in perusing my friends handicrafts and antique jewellery and porcelain, should telephone Kustiana Murtjono on 0817 139 577 or come along to Cilandak Town Square on a Wednesday and check out his stall. This shameless plug has been brought to you courtesy of Metro Mad.
Still, at least my fellow compatriot Lewis Hamilton, the rookie sensation and first ever colored Formula One driver, is still doing well. Being a black man driving a fast, expensive car though, I keep expecting to see a police car chasing him around the track trying to pull him over. "Excuse me, is this your vehicle, Sir?" Anyhow, come on Astro, pull your collective fingers out.
Last Sunday I hot-footed it down the road to the Kemang Festival as I thought that this would kill a bit of time and afford me the rare opportunity to witness Kemang's snobby boulevards overrun by Plebian hordes. Crowded it certainly was. The world and his wife (and kids) seemed to be on the streets of Kemang, squeezing themselves along the two narrow rows of stalls that ran virtually the whole length of the street.
It was a fun little Festival and perhaps Jakarta should have more of these. If you're actually reading this on Sunday, September 2nd, then you may care to pop along to the Jalan Jaksa festival/fair, which will be in full swing until the evening. God knows what it will be like though; perhaps a bit boozier than the Kemang Festival but no doubt fun nevertheless.
Yes, more festivals please. Although I guess Jakarta is already, in a sense, one huge, permanent street festival. Back to Kemang Fest though. A friend and I started to stroll slowly through the stalls. Many were no different from the clothing and knickknack boutiques that you would find in any market. Others were selling more interesting curios however. There were stalls of old colonial pseudo antiques; including vases and even old bicycles, that could be bought cheaply, taken home and dusted off for display. There were also plenty of plants and flowers up for grabs for your green fingered Jakartans.
One of the most interesting stalls that I ran into was being run by an old acquaintance of mine, Mr John, an expatriate teacher who has for a long time run a little cottage industry sideline turning out framed photographs and creative handicrafts. His latest ruse is old vinyl records. He sources out classic rock albums and binds both the discs and the sleeves into a single, decent quality frame to produce objets d'art worthy of any bedroom or bar room wall. Clocks manufactured from old records were also available for the budget connoisseur.
What really caught my eye, however, was a tastefully framed Rp.1 (yes one) note from the 1950s with the following passage decoratively printed underneath it:
Five things you could buy for one rupiah in the 1950s:
5 cups of coffee (for you and your mates)
two packs of cigarettes (to go with the coffee)
two litres of rice (two-day's sustenance for a family of four)
two Nasi Goreng brackets (for you and your date)
a bus ticket home (still saving up for the motorbike)
Those were the days!
A very creative talking point for my wall, I thought and snapped it up for Rp.150,000. Those were the days indeed. It makes me feel slightly vertiginous when I think of how inflation has tacked so many zeros on to our beloved local currency in the intervening years until now. I've often wished that Bank Indonesia would chop a few zeroes off and start again from one. I would also appreciate seeing the public execution of the bright spark at the Treasury who decided that it would be a good idea to make the new Rp.100,000 and Rp.10,000 nodes the same approximate size and color. How many people have found themselves Rp.90,000 out of pocket since they were introduced I wonder?
Back to my framed vintage currency though. I thought I'd get the calculator out and see if I could create the 2007 equivalent of my friend's Rp.1 purchasing power table. The first item on the list was 5 cups of coffee. Rp.1 today? Well if we take a cup of Starbucks's ludicrously expensive brew (let's say Rp40,000 for a cup size of about 350ml) then Rp.1 should buy you precisely 0 .008 mL of coffee; presumably not enough to drown a mosquito in (or even be visible to the naked eye?)
Next up was two packets of cigarettes. If we assume Rp10,000 and 16 cigarettes per pack then you should be eligible for 0.0016 of a single cigarette or around a 10th of a drag. Well it should make quitting easier.
Then we have the foodstuffs. Let's go with the fried rice. With your 1950s Rp.1 you should be in line for 0.0001 of a plateful. I guess this wouldn't amount to a single grain of rice. Again, we’re going to have visibility issues with this one.
As for the bus ticket, let's calculate one rupiah in a Bluebird taxi. Let's take a rough estimate of Rp.400 for every 200 m travelled (is this correct anyone?) This would give us a 50 cm long journey. Admittedly, I've cheated here because of the Rp.5000 flag fall charge but at least 50 cm has the benefit of being a distance visible without the aid of a microscope. Perhaps a snail or similarly low paced mollusk would be interested in popping down to the other end of the flower bed to see their bank manager at these rates.
Those were the days? Perhaps, perhaps not. However, I'm not sure that the reverse time travel option would be that much fun either. Take Rp.50,000 back to 1955 and purchase 40,000 plates of fried rice and 60,000 packets of cigarettes. That lot would probably raise your blood pressure a few points, although living in modern Jakarta's pea soup air sometimes makes me think I've just smoked 60,000 packs of Gudang Garam. Bring back hyperinflation I say. Let's see if we can't get a few more zeros tacked on there by the end of the decade.
By the way, those interested in perusing my friends handicrafts and antique jewellery and porcelain, should telephone Kustiana Murtjono on 0817 139 577 or come along to Cilandak Town Square on a Wednesday and check out his stall. This shameless plug has been brought to you courtesy of Metro Mad.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Red, White and Feeling Blue
Another year, another Independence Day in the People's Republic of Indonesia. We are now up to 62 and counting. I suppose you would be expecting me, on past form and least, to be launching a massive broadside assault on the achievements of post-World War II Indonesia up until the present day. Well, we'll see, I'm not sure I've got the stamina for doing another hatchet job on Indonesian politics this week.
People have asked me at various times over the couple of years that I've been writing this occasionally quite cantankerous and no doubt libelous column, if I have ever had any negative feedback or trouble with any authority figure over my Alzheimer fuelled ramblings. I have always replied in the negative and pointed out that I'm not really saying anything that can't be read in Jakarta Post editorials every day (which are, incidentally, written by Indonesian journalists). I may possibly employ a touch more sarcasm than is strictly necessary but I would have to be going it some to top the Post's Independence Day editorial of a couple of years back which was headlined 60 Wasted Years.
Anyway, I decided to give freedom day a fair go and headed up to the National Monument, Monas, to see what festivities were going down. Unfortunately, I never seem to be able to get up early enough in the morning to enjoy the various races and pole climbing competitions that are the Independence Day staple. If there were pole dancing competitions then maybe I'd make the effort.
The Monument's park was packed when I arrived though. Family groups were everywhere, strolling around the recently rejuvenated gardens or camped out on the grass flying kites that frequently came close to garroting me as I wandered past. It was as idyllic a scene as you’re ever likely to see in this concrete, urban Hades and I wondered why the National Monument’s grounds aren't this crowded every weekend.
Parents really should make more of an effort to shoehorn their offspring away from their Playstations and take them somewhere for a runaround. I mean, in classes that I teach I've noticed that the number of kids who look as if they've been inflated with an air hose has been skyrocketing in recent years. They really should be out on their bikes, burning off those chicken drumsticks, getting run over by articulated lorries and being taken to see nonexistent puppies by complete strangers.
The huge number of national holiday families relaxing at Monas generally seemed to be as happy as Larry though, I must say. The culture here is very communal and few things make your average Indonesian happier than chilling out in the company of a million other Indonesians.
I slowly waded through the reclining families up towards the northern perimeter of the Monument Park where the presidential palace lies. SBY's VIP Independence Day bash appeared to be in full pomp and circumstance flow as I neared the top end of the park. I noticed an awful lot of military personnel camped out, securing proceedings. There were also more Indonesian policeman than I've ever seen gathered together in one place before. Aside from the massed security forces, I spied a TV reporter, wearing a traditional Indonesian three-piece Armani business suit, being filmed on a raised platform .
Over the road up the Palace, the brass bands were playing, the rank-and-file soldiery were marching and people were waiting expectantly for the President's Independence Day address. I had seen enough by this point though and hotfooted it down the road to Jl. Jaksa for a (not so) cool Bintang before the amplified platitudes could start.
Nationalism ay? It's a curious beast. Personally I have no time whatsoever for nationalist ideology or patriotism. To me they are just two of the levers that those in power manipulate to control populations and prevent them from seeing the truth of their lives clearly. It was a round world the last time I checked.
The, "My country right or wrong," mentality seems a little strange in light of the fact that one has no choice whatsoever into which country one is ultimately born. What does being English or American or Indonesian ultimately boil down to? It means your parents had sex there. Great. A favorite comedian of mine once mused that instead of putting colored stripes and stars and moons on our flags, we should paste up pictures of our parents making love. Let's see what boot rally mentality can circle around that unpleasant little image. "Is that your mum up there on that flag?"..." Hey, shut up!"
Oscar Wilde once said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel and this aphorism could certainly be said to ring true in this country. Corrupters and human rights violators here so often seem to start waving the old red and white as a diversionary tactic when their backs are against the wall.
Perhaps though, a fractious country such as this needs the glue of nationalist sentiment to stick it together. India, for example, was a very fractious country and Gandhi scored a lot of success in uniting it under a banner of peaceful secular nationalism. This country's brand of nationalism however, is still depressingly militaristic. The monolithic (and still pretty unaccountable) Armed Forces loom over everything with their military and business muscle and divide and conquer tactics. Not very Gandhi-esque at all in fact.
Let's finish positively though. I'll admit that nationalism does have a place in sport, because in sport, who wins or loses is of no consequence whatsoever. So let us be true red-and-white patriots then and congratulate the Indonesian shuttlers at the Badminton World Championships who have just won gold medals in the men's doubles and mixed doubles events. Let us also congratulate local boxing hero Chris John for successfully defending his world featherweight title in Japan this week. May they return to cheering tickertape parades, universal acclaim and lucrative Extra Joss endorsement contracts. Hip, hip, hooray.
People have asked me at various times over the couple of years that I've been writing this occasionally quite cantankerous and no doubt libelous column, if I have ever had any negative feedback or trouble with any authority figure over my Alzheimer fuelled ramblings. I have always replied in the negative and pointed out that I'm not really saying anything that can't be read in Jakarta Post editorials every day (which are, incidentally, written by Indonesian journalists). I may possibly employ a touch more sarcasm than is strictly necessary but I would have to be going it some to top the Post's Independence Day editorial of a couple of years back which was headlined 60 Wasted Years.
Anyway, I decided to give freedom day a fair go and headed up to the National Monument, Monas, to see what festivities were going down. Unfortunately, I never seem to be able to get up early enough in the morning to enjoy the various races and pole climbing competitions that are the Independence Day staple. If there were pole dancing competitions then maybe I'd make the effort.
The Monument's park was packed when I arrived though. Family groups were everywhere, strolling around the recently rejuvenated gardens or camped out on the grass flying kites that frequently came close to garroting me as I wandered past. It was as idyllic a scene as you’re ever likely to see in this concrete, urban Hades and I wondered why the National Monument’s grounds aren't this crowded every weekend.
Parents really should make more of an effort to shoehorn their offspring away from their Playstations and take them somewhere for a runaround. I mean, in classes that I teach I've noticed that the number of kids who look as if they've been inflated with an air hose has been skyrocketing in recent years. They really should be out on their bikes, burning off those chicken drumsticks, getting run over by articulated lorries and being taken to see nonexistent puppies by complete strangers.
The huge number of national holiday families relaxing at Monas generally seemed to be as happy as Larry though, I must say. The culture here is very communal and few things make your average Indonesian happier than chilling out in the company of a million other Indonesians.
I slowly waded through the reclining families up towards the northern perimeter of the Monument Park where the presidential palace lies. SBY's VIP Independence Day bash appeared to be in full pomp and circumstance flow as I neared the top end of the park. I noticed an awful lot of military personnel camped out, securing proceedings. There were also more Indonesian policeman than I've ever seen gathered together in one place before. Aside from the massed security forces, I spied a TV reporter, wearing a traditional Indonesian three-piece Armani business suit, being filmed on a raised platform .
Over the road up the Palace, the brass bands were playing, the rank-and-file soldiery were marching and people were waiting expectantly for the President's Independence Day address. I had seen enough by this point though and hotfooted it down the road to Jl. Jaksa for a (not so) cool Bintang before the amplified platitudes could start.
Nationalism ay? It's a curious beast. Personally I have no time whatsoever for nationalist ideology or patriotism. To me they are just two of the levers that those in power manipulate to control populations and prevent them from seeing the truth of their lives clearly. It was a round world the last time I checked.
The, "My country right or wrong," mentality seems a little strange in light of the fact that one has no choice whatsoever into which country one is ultimately born. What does being English or American or Indonesian ultimately boil down to? It means your parents had sex there. Great. A favorite comedian of mine once mused that instead of putting colored stripes and stars and moons on our flags, we should paste up pictures of our parents making love. Let's see what boot rally mentality can circle around that unpleasant little image. "Is that your mum up there on that flag?"..." Hey, shut up!"
Oscar Wilde once said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel and this aphorism could certainly be said to ring true in this country. Corrupters and human rights violators here so often seem to start waving the old red and white as a diversionary tactic when their backs are against the wall.
Perhaps though, a fractious country such as this needs the glue of nationalist sentiment to stick it together. India, for example, was a very fractious country and Gandhi scored a lot of success in uniting it under a banner of peaceful secular nationalism. This country's brand of nationalism however, is still depressingly militaristic. The monolithic (and still pretty unaccountable) Armed Forces loom over everything with their military and business muscle and divide and conquer tactics. Not very Gandhi-esque at all in fact.
Let's finish positively though. I'll admit that nationalism does have a place in sport, because in sport, who wins or loses is of no consequence whatsoever. So let us be true red-and-white patriots then and congratulate the Indonesian shuttlers at the Badminton World Championships who have just won gold medals in the men's doubles and mixed doubles events. Let us also congratulate local boxing hero Chris John for successfully defending his world featherweight title in Japan this week. May they return to cheering tickertape parades, universal acclaim and lucrative Extra Joss endorsement contracts. Hip, hip, hooray.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Votes, Boats and TV Woes
Hello again sports fans. It's been a busy week in Jakarta, what with Mr. Bowo snatching election victory by a moustache’s width at the finishing line. Indonesia's only satirical TV show, Drunken Republic, depicted Mr. Bowo sporting a huge plaster on his upper lip after the Governor elect had urged voters to pierce his moustache on their ballot papers. Well done indeed and long may the show continue to puncture the proud and pompous leaders of this land.
Actually, a colleague of mine told me that his Indonesian wife had taken their young son into the polling booth and simply asked him which candidate she should choose. "The lovely moustache mummy, like on TV," he replied, pointing at the ballot paper. Now six-year-olds don't actually have the vote in Indonesia, which does beg the question why Mr. Bowo seemed to pitch his election advertisements to exactly that age group.
So then, another five years of the backroom boys for the capital. Personally, life in Fauzi's Jakarta has already turned sour from me with the removal of English Premier League football from our screens. PT. Direct Vision Astro, a company I would bet few people here had ever heard of before last week, have outbid Kabelvision, Indovision and the free local terrestrial channels for the rights to show English soccer.
Whether this hugely annoying occurrence will provoke a stampede for Astro connections remains to be seen. However, when we tried to phone Astro from my office last week all we could get was an answer phone message, so I guess that answers my question. I wish we had all been told a little sooner about this epochal change; as it stands it's probably going to take weeks to straighten this mess out.
Your average Indonesian chap, of course, is quite partial to watching the EPL of a Saturday evening on the local channel TV7. In the wake of its absence, your workaday, down at heel Jakartan gentleman will have to seek out some other low-cost entertainment to indulge in after dark on Saturday. Perhaps there will be a mini baby boom nine months hence as a result. What use is my Kabelvision connection now though? Am I going to have to watch the insufferable Oprah Winfrey smugly backslapping celebrities and ex rehab patients from now on? It doesn't bear thinking about.
In an attempt to prove that there must be more to life than soccer and shopping plazas, I thought I'd head up to one of the few places in town that I haven't yet denigrated in the Sunday Post, namely Sunda Kelapa, the old colonial and still active port at the top end of Kota. After getting a taxi to Jakarta's northernmost border from the end of the busway and accidentally giving the driver Rp.100,000 instead of Rp.10,000 (curse these new notes) I found myself breathing in clean(ish) sea air.
The docks themselves are wonderfully old and dilapidated and you can spend a very enjoyable afternoon wandering around, letting the ghosts of the colonial past wash over you. There are plenty of colorful and weather-beaten ships to take pictures of. Most of them are crewed by even more colorful and weather-beaten old coves. I took a few snaps and after a while, I sat down and had a rest from the walking and the endless cries of, "Yo ho ho, hello mister" that were being launched in my direction.
Then, over the battered warehouses and loading cranes, I spied something. I stood up and saw a brand, spanking new building called the Marina Batavia sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the decrepit functionalism of Sunda Kelapa. I walked around to the entrance to investigate.
A security guard was a nice chap and told me that Marina Batavia, Mr. Sutiyoso's final great project, was just nearing completion and should be opening very soon. Ah!! Even up here I couldn't get away from the city administration and their pet projects. Mr. Security took me on a ride around the complex on his scooter and told me what was going on. Apparently, the new marina is set to rival the one at Ancol just a little bit further east along the coast. It will soon be running trips and tours to the Thousand Islands chain (Pulau Seribu) whilst the huge marina building itself will house restaurants, billiard halls and even karaoke lounges.
I made a mental note to return when the place opens and headed back to the civilising calm of (ex?) Governor Sutiyoso's dubious legacy project, the busway (alas, there's no karaoke at the bus stops yet). I've written about the Thousand Islands before in this column but would again urge people to have a few days holiday there, either via Ancol or the new, sexy Marina Batavia when it opens. Too few people seem to know how close they are to paradise. It's simply a question of navigating a path through the 15 km wide band of effluent and industrial pollution that engulfs the capital's coastline before alighting on the clean tropical atolls at the far end of the Thousand Island chain.
Anyway, rest assured I'll be back soon to check out the Marina when it opens. I'm sure it will all be very decadent, the next best thing to Mr Sutiyoso's original idea of establishing a casino/gambling zone in the Thousand Islands themselves. It's a pity that one didn't come off (I believe the Sharia law brigade poured cold water on the idea). Floating croupiers, bow ties, Martinis, palm fringed glamour. One can but dream. Oh well, back to reality I suppose. I'm off to phone Astro's answering machine again.
Actually, a colleague of mine told me that his Indonesian wife had taken their young son into the polling booth and simply asked him which candidate she should choose. "The lovely moustache mummy, like on TV," he replied, pointing at the ballot paper. Now six-year-olds don't actually have the vote in Indonesia, which does beg the question why Mr. Bowo seemed to pitch his election advertisements to exactly that age group.
So then, another five years of the backroom boys for the capital. Personally, life in Fauzi's Jakarta has already turned sour from me with the removal of English Premier League football from our screens. PT. Direct Vision Astro, a company I would bet few people here had ever heard of before last week, have outbid Kabelvision, Indovision and the free local terrestrial channels for the rights to show English soccer.
Whether this hugely annoying occurrence will provoke a stampede for Astro connections remains to be seen. However, when we tried to phone Astro from my office last week all we could get was an answer phone message, so I guess that answers my question. I wish we had all been told a little sooner about this epochal change; as it stands it's probably going to take weeks to straighten this mess out.
Your average Indonesian chap, of course, is quite partial to watching the EPL of a Saturday evening on the local channel TV7. In the wake of its absence, your workaday, down at heel Jakartan gentleman will have to seek out some other low-cost entertainment to indulge in after dark on Saturday. Perhaps there will be a mini baby boom nine months hence as a result. What use is my Kabelvision connection now though? Am I going to have to watch the insufferable Oprah Winfrey smugly backslapping celebrities and ex rehab patients from now on? It doesn't bear thinking about.
In an attempt to prove that there must be more to life than soccer and shopping plazas, I thought I'd head up to one of the few places in town that I haven't yet denigrated in the Sunday Post, namely Sunda Kelapa, the old colonial and still active port at the top end of Kota. After getting a taxi to Jakarta's northernmost border from the end of the busway and accidentally giving the driver Rp.100,000 instead of Rp.10,000 (curse these new notes) I found myself breathing in clean(ish) sea air.
The docks themselves are wonderfully old and dilapidated and you can spend a very enjoyable afternoon wandering around, letting the ghosts of the colonial past wash over you. There are plenty of colorful and weather-beaten ships to take pictures of. Most of them are crewed by even more colorful and weather-beaten old coves. I took a few snaps and after a while, I sat down and had a rest from the walking and the endless cries of, "Yo ho ho, hello mister" that were being launched in my direction.
Then, over the battered warehouses and loading cranes, I spied something. I stood up and saw a brand, spanking new building called the Marina Batavia sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the decrepit functionalism of Sunda Kelapa. I walked around to the entrance to investigate.
A security guard was a nice chap and told me that Marina Batavia, Mr. Sutiyoso's final great project, was just nearing completion and should be opening very soon. Ah!! Even up here I couldn't get away from the city administration and their pet projects. Mr. Security took me on a ride around the complex on his scooter and told me what was going on. Apparently, the new marina is set to rival the one at Ancol just a little bit further east along the coast. It will soon be running trips and tours to the Thousand Islands chain (Pulau Seribu) whilst the huge marina building itself will house restaurants, billiard halls and even karaoke lounges.
I made a mental note to return when the place opens and headed back to the civilising calm of (ex?) Governor Sutiyoso's dubious legacy project, the busway (alas, there's no karaoke at the bus stops yet). I've written about the Thousand Islands before in this column but would again urge people to have a few days holiday there, either via Ancol or the new, sexy Marina Batavia when it opens. Too few people seem to know how close they are to paradise. It's simply a question of navigating a path through the 15 km wide band of effluent and industrial pollution that engulfs the capital's coastline before alighting on the clean tropical atolls at the far end of the Thousand Island chain.
Anyway, rest assured I'll be back soon to check out the Marina when it opens. I'm sure it will all be very decadent, the next best thing to Mr Sutiyoso's original idea of establishing a casino/gambling zone in the Thousand Islands themselves. It's a pity that one didn't come off (I believe the Sharia law brigade poured cold water on the idea). Floating croupiers, bow ties, Martinis, palm fringed glamour. One can but dream. Oh well, back to reality I suppose. I'm off to phone Astro's answering machine again.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Choice 2007
Well, it's Wednesday and as I write this I've been given the day off work due to the Jakarta governor's election, so at least some good has come out of the whole process. Main contenders Fauzi Bowo and Adang Daradjatun have been locked in a titanic struggle of ludicrous sloganeering, a citywide campaign of poster and sticker vandalism, in order to secure a winning proportion of the approximately 5 .7 million votes on offer. Why anyone would trust either of these guys to run anything more important than their own baths is quite beyond me but at least, for the first time, the city's residents have their own democratic say over who will continue to run the capital into the ground for the next few years.
As with the country's general elections, the campaigns haven't really been fought on any actual issues or dissemination of policies beyond the laughably hubristic slogans pasted up around town promising the earth and more. Mr Bowo's television commercials dispensed with any mention of either education, housing, transportation or environmental problems in favor of encouraging people to punch the ballot paper through his moustache (to the tune of the Indonesian version of Happy Birthday). In a recent televised debate between the two candidates, Mr Daradjatun, upon being presented with the opportunity to ask his rival a question, inquired about... yes, you've guessed it... his moustache. Personally, if I had the opportunity to vote today I be sorely tempted to take the ballot paper home and use the thing as a dartboard instead of merely punching a hole through the luxuriant foliage of Mr Bowo's upper lip at the polling station.
Democratic process should be about questioning politicians hard about their beliefs and plans so that one can make a meaningful choice about where to cast one's vote. Indonesians, since the fall of Soeharto, have enjoyed a free and fair choice in national and local elections but one that, as yet, hasn't been all that meaningful. Politicians and party leaders have sat in their ivory towers whilst their supporters have danced around the streets waving gaily colored banners like so many football supporters." Support my team!" they scream," No! Support my team!" But why? What do you stand for? About the only issue that has emerged to differentiate the parties from each other is that of secularity versus religion (for religion read Islam) and to me that is quite depressing.
I've often thought though, that democracy conflicts with Indonesian culture at some deeper level. Democracy is largely predicated upon politicians calling each other liars and fighting tooth and claw for every vote. It's about our leaders ripping into each other and insisting that their rivals' figures just don't add up. This is how policies and issues become clear to the voting public. However, this country's polite, genuflecting, consensual culture is perhaps in fundamental conflict with the wars of words required of a healthy democracy. Certainly I find it hard to imagine Indonesia producing anything like the jeering, sarcastic rabble that you see in the British Parliament. Better a jeering, sarcastic rabble though than backroom deals and unctuous, inscrutable smiles. Maybe things are, very slowly, changing here, but it's a difficult transition.
To be fair though, the hollow sloganeering of politicians is a problem for democracies the world over in our media soundbite age. Promises to create full employment, end all traffic jams or provide free health care and schooling (as Mr Daradjatun has done) are by no means unique to Indonesia. Politicians have to be seen to be of firm backbone and show strength. They have to answer the questions put to them on their campaigns with unwavering certainty. But to be so certain ignores the crucial value of doubt. Doubt can be a positive thing; it can reveal openness to possibility which in turn can lead to opportunity.
Instead of any rational doubt though, voters the world over are instead bombarded with hollow rhetoric and promises that cannot possibly be kept. The result of this is that nobody believes in campaign promises and the result of this is a general disparaging of politics in the population. This means voter apathy and the vast ocean of indifference that we've seen in the current Jakarta campaign or in the USA where voter turnout has often struggled around the 50% mark.
How refreshing it would be to have heard one of the Jakarta candidates holding forth thus in the last few weeks:
-Well, clearly our city is a big, complex mess and there's no point in promising to fix in five years what will probably take 50 years and a lot more money than I have at my disposal to put right. However, with this in mind, I promise to study how our budget can be used most efficiently and for maximum impact and will form a team to take a coolheaded, objective and above all, open look at the important issues. In addition, my facial hair will at no point be allowed to detract from the seriousness of this contest and to this end I have decided to have my mustache ritually shaved, burnt and the ashes scattered from the boatway into the Ciliwung River to the accompaniment of Happy Birthday.
Now that would be someone worth voting for.
As with the country's general elections, the campaigns haven't really been fought on any actual issues or dissemination of policies beyond the laughably hubristic slogans pasted up around town promising the earth and more. Mr Bowo's television commercials dispensed with any mention of either education, housing, transportation or environmental problems in favor of encouraging people to punch the ballot paper through his moustache (to the tune of the Indonesian version of Happy Birthday). In a recent televised debate between the two candidates, Mr Daradjatun, upon being presented with the opportunity to ask his rival a question, inquired about... yes, you've guessed it... his moustache. Personally, if I had the opportunity to vote today I be sorely tempted to take the ballot paper home and use the thing as a dartboard instead of merely punching a hole through the luxuriant foliage of Mr Bowo's upper lip at the polling station.
Democratic process should be about questioning politicians hard about their beliefs and plans so that one can make a meaningful choice about where to cast one's vote. Indonesians, since the fall of Soeharto, have enjoyed a free and fair choice in national and local elections but one that, as yet, hasn't been all that meaningful. Politicians and party leaders have sat in their ivory towers whilst their supporters have danced around the streets waving gaily colored banners like so many football supporters." Support my team!" they scream," No! Support my team!" But why? What do you stand for? About the only issue that has emerged to differentiate the parties from each other is that of secularity versus religion (for religion read Islam) and to me that is quite depressing.
I've often thought though, that democracy conflicts with Indonesian culture at some deeper level. Democracy is largely predicated upon politicians calling each other liars and fighting tooth and claw for every vote. It's about our leaders ripping into each other and insisting that their rivals' figures just don't add up. This is how policies and issues become clear to the voting public. However, this country's polite, genuflecting, consensual culture is perhaps in fundamental conflict with the wars of words required of a healthy democracy. Certainly I find it hard to imagine Indonesia producing anything like the jeering, sarcastic rabble that you see in the British Parliament. Better a jeering, sarcastic rabble though than backroom deals and unctuous, inscrutable smiles. Maybe things are, very slowly, changing here, but it's a difficult transition.
To be fair though, the hollow sloganeering of politicians is a problem for democracies the world over in our media soundbite age. Promises to create full employment, end all traffic jams or provide free health care and schooling (as Mr Daradjatun has done) are by no means unique to Indonesia. Politicians have to be seen to be of firm backbone and show strength. They have to answer the questions put to them on their campaigns with unwavering certainty. But to be so certain ignores the crucial value of doubt. Doubt can be a positive thing; it can reveal openness to possibility which in turn can lead to opportunity.
Instead of any rational doubt though, voters the world over are instead bombarded with hollow rhetoric and promises that cannot possibly be kept. The result of this is that nobody believes in campaign promises and the result of this is a general disparaging of politics in the population. This means voter apathy and the vast ocean of indifference that we've seen in the current Jakarta campaign or in the USA where voter turnout has often struggled around the 50% mark.
How refreshing it would be to have heard one of the Jakarta candidates holding forth thus in the last few weeks:
-Well, clearly our city is a big, complex mess and there's no point in promising to fix in five years what will probably take 50 years and a lot more money than I have at my disposal to put right. However, with this in mind, I promise to study how our budget can be used most efficiently and for maximum impact and will form a team to take a coolheaded, objective and above all, open look at the important issues. In addition, my facial hair will at no point be allowed to detract from the seriousness of this contest and to this end I have decided to have my mustache ritually shaved, burnt and the ashes scattered from the boatway into the Ciliwung River to the accompaniment of Happy Birthday.
Now that would be someone worth voting for.
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