Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

Having slaved over the next edition of Culture Shock! Jakarta for the past few weeks – it goes to the printer in China tomorrow incidentally – I hope there aren’t too many typos, errors or other glitches. It’s possible, even if co-author Derek Bacon and our editor Steff in Singapore have cast their eyes over the text because our brains tell us what ought to be there.

An interesting article in today’s Observer (UK) is about the phenomenon of ‘inattentional blindness‘ which refers to the many tricks that our brains routinely play on all of us.

I like that phrase ‘inattentional blindness’ because it neatly encapsulates so much of what goes on here. However, I’m not referring to the deliberate averting of eyes from things we don’t wish to see; Abdurizal Bakrie not taking responsibility for the Lapindo Mudflow is too obvious an example.

Two days ago, on Friday, National Children’s Day was ‘commemorated’ at the Beautiful Indonesia Miniature Park (better known as Taman Mini). Two representatives from the National Children’s Congress IX, which consists of more than 300 children from the nation’s 33 provinces, expected their five minutes of fame because they had dressed up and were due to read out the conclusions from the congress, entitled ‘Indonesian Children’s Voices’, to the attendees who included President SBY and dozens of ministers and officials.

Maesa Ranggawati, one of the congress representatives, said, “We worked hard to make this list, with the children from their respective regions having something to say about the problems they face in their regions. We had to narrow it down to eight points.”

Ah, yes, time was short because Friday prayers loomed so the three-hour program was cut to two hours and the children’s five minutes was cut, leading to nationwide disappointment from all those watching the live broadcast.

For a predominantly Muslim country to not have factored in Friday prayers is certainly an example of ‘inattentional blindness’; that children could not be given a mere five minutes to be involved in ‘their’ day is the blindness of arrogance.

Mind you, this isn’t the only example of blind faith from the past week.

Back in March the Indonesian Ulema Council, MUI, issued an edict saying the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia was to the west of Indonesia.

On Monday, Ma’ruf Amin, a prominent cleric of MUI, announced, “After a thorough study with some cosmography and astronomy experts, we learned they’ve been facing southern Somalia and Kenya.”

Whoops.

The MUI has asked followers to shift direction slightly northward during their daily prayers, but it doesn’t really matter because, as Ma’ruf Amin says, “God understands that humans make mistakes [and] Allah always hears their prayers.”

That still doesn’t account for how the mistake he was referring to was made in the first place.

The Simpering Twitterfool we have as Minister of Information and Technology relies on his faith to accomplish things. This is what he told reporters on Thursday.

“Insya Allah, (God willing) we will finish the job before Ramadhan so as not to affect Muslims from executing their religious obligation.”

The job he was referring to is the banning of all porn sites. However, he is ignoring the technical complexity of such an operation, one which the Indonesian ISP Association (APJII) says would cost a minimum of Rp.1 trillion (US$110 million) using open source software “because of the number of Indonesian visitors using these websites.”

Presumably our esteemed Minister is one of them as he must have done some research in order to issue his edict. What may be more effective would be to remind Muslims of what constitutes haram behaviour, those activities which they should refrain from (such as the swallowing of liquids or spilling ‘seed’) particularly during the daylight hours of the fasting month, which starts on August 11th.

A final piece of ‘inattentional blindness’ from the MUI would be preventing Muslims from drinking kopi luwak made from coffee beans that have been eaten by the nocturnal critters and then fermented in their stomachs before being pooped out and roasted.

That it’s so scarce that only about 450 kilograms are said to be produced annually worldwide and it costs c.$440 per kilogram seems to have eluded the MUI. How many of their c.40 million followers can afford it?

I now await comments from readers about a perceived anti-Muslim bias in this post, so I can label them inattentially blind to my main point.