Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

That's the salutation that Indonesian Muslims are tweeting to all and sundry this Ramadhan, the fasting month. Roughly translated, it means "Sorry for my misdeeds since the last time I said this, and apologies for what I may do to you before I ought to say it again."

In a few days, Jakarta will start emptying as a few million perform mudik – return to their home villages.

It has already started.

Central Java Police chief Insp. Gen. Edward Aritonang has given the following rough estimate of the number of travelers who would pass through Central Java during Idul Fitri this year.

He said that there would be 5,189,153, an 5.8 percent increase over last year’s total of 4,807,482. The exodus is expected to peak two days before Idul Fitri starts on Sep. 10.

“Travelers using motorcycles still dominate the roads, with 1,969,821 people, those using private cars are estimated (sic) at 1,815,878 people, and 1,963,067 will use buses,” said Edward, adding that 257,631 people in Central Java were expected to travel by train, 45,350 by plane and 18,576 by sea.

Ministry official Hendri Subiyakto said Sunday that for every porn site blocked, new sites with different names and different URLs were created. He added that the government was respecting Muslims who were fasting by taking such steps.

Given that the fasting month is supposed to encourage tolerance, respect and forbearance, it seems to me that it would be worth chronicling a few snippets I've come across.

1. This short article was sent to me by frequent reader Ultra Tupai and comes from Berita Jakarta.com.

Mass Fight in Kramat Pulo

Instead of taking advantage of Ramadan for religious activities to strengthen belief in God, residents of Kramatpulo Dalam II, Senen, Central Jakarta fight against each other. It happened on Tuesday (8/31) midnight. Until now, the cause of chaos has not been known yet. Such a chaos has happened for times.

The fight between residents of RW 08 and RW 05 happened on Jl Kramat Raya Pulo Dalam III. In that incident, a mother was hit by rock and had to be taken to hospital.

Head of Central Jakarta Police Precinct, Police Commissioner Budi Sartono, stated that the incident have been investigated by his personnel.

"So far we cannot make conclusion about the incident," said Budi through his mobile phone.

2. Gov. Fuddy Bozo puts his foot in it.

In a efforts to control the seasonal influx of newcomers to the capital, Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo recently urged the public not to bring friends or relatives back with them after the Idul Fitri exodus.

“In Tambora there are so many people that you trip over children when you walk,” Fauzi said as quoted by beritajakarta.com at a fast-breaking event in the district last week.

3. And now some good news for good people .

Giving zazat (alms) is an obligation for Muslims at this time of the year. Many of us, Buddhists, Confucians, Christians and Atheists alike, who do not follow a set prayer schedule also contribute according to our circumstances.

Today, the Buddhists were rewarded by the Central Jakarta District Court who ordered a closure of Buddha Bar and demanded bar management PT Nireta Vista Creative, Jakarta Tourism Agency and Jakarta governor to pay Rp 1 billion in compensation to Buddhist community. The protests against innapropriate use of a religious icon to name an entertainment place that sells liquor began in 2009.

I wrote about the issue here and here and here.

4. That the Minister for Communication, Informations and Technology deserves the soubriquet Twittering Simplefool is clearly indicated in this article about the efforts of his ministry to block websites they deem to be pornographic.

Ministry official Hendri Subiyakto said Sunday that for every porn site blocked, new sites with different names and different URLs were created. He added that the government was respecting Muslims who were fasting by taking such steps.

What has caught my eye more, however, is a column by Debnath Guharoy of Roy Morgan Research who gives some statistics about handphones and the internet.

• There are some 90 million unique subscribers, "human beings 14 years of age and older", to "the cellular world of constant connectivity" (i.e. mobile Phones) across the country.

The distinction between a human being and an “active” SIM card warrants repetition. Considering that there are some 160 million Indonesians who are 14+, there is still a long way to go. Of the 11 million entrants in the April-June quarter, 7 million are kampung dwellers. Nationwide, they comprise almost half the cellular population today, more than half of the millions intending to join the community tomorrow.

• The number of regular users of the web via computers exceed more than 8 million people 14 years and older. But that number is dwarfed by the number of users accessing it via their mobile phones, primarily for social networking. Facebook alone claim over 18 million Indonesian users.

There the good news ends.

The high cost of downloading data at slow speeds remains a deterent, regardless of the mode of access to the internet. Applications such as mobile banking are becoming more popular, but remains in the hands of a tiny fraction of society. Bigger screens, higher speeds and lower costs are all essential to e-commerce spreading beyond airline reservations in Indonesia.

In terms of average speed, Indonesia doesn’t make it to the Top 100 countries, far from it in fact. Though harder to prove, costs on the other hand are among the highest in the world.

Against that backdrop, the US$110 million spent by the telecommunications minister on anti-pornography filters is difficult to fathom.

In my view, it's the "bigger screens" which are the key to the Simplefool's idiocy. Although mobile phones may offer speedy access to porno sites, can anyone really get turned on by watching sexual cavorting on mini-screens? Give me a wide screen any time.

So the reported "US$110 million" has been spent to stop less than 9 million of us accessing the sites his ministry can't block; that's c.$13.75 per computer.

Trouble is, I still can't get broadband in Jakartass Towers, my dongles never receive signals and there isn't a fibre-optic cable network nearer than 500 metres. And I'm not going to bother using my 2kbs dial up connection for solitary satisfaction.

So, with these comforting words taken from the b3ta weekly newsletter let me close by telling you that my internet connection was so slow yesterday I ended up just shagging the wife.

I think I'm owed an apology, Minister.
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5. This is a late addendum, but it's so ridiculous that it must be included.

An obscure group led by an academic from a respected Islamic university in Indonesia is reportedly set to petition the Constitutional Court to declare that the (Buddhist) Borobudur Temple in Central Java belongs to Islam.

Read the full article for the convoluted and cockeyed reasoning.

It seems that my short-term memory capacity is going because I don’t recall such lengthy shutdowns at the start of previous Muslim fasting months. Our Kid has ‘lost’ the first three days of schooling at his ecumenical institute and a Catholic school I know of in West Jakarta shut for two days.

On this first day of fasting, a beautiful sunny day, nothing much stirs outside Jakartass Towers – Allah, God, Mammon, whatever, be praised. The builders aren’t banging away next door, a cyclist drifts by, oh look, two pedestrians quietly stroll by, but no cars, and even fewer motorcycles. Whats also pleasant is that the controllers of the sound systems in local mosques seemed to have turned down the volume to a mere setting of 11.

So thoughts can turn inward, or in my case, to some more WTFs which make living here so fascinating.

First some good news. The Simpering Twitterfool, our Minister of Information and Miscommunication, has finally agreed that there’s no way that Indonesia’s ISPs can block all porn sites for Ramadhan.

“A 100 percent ban is impossible, but it’s the effort that counts,” he said on Tuesday.

The bad news is that his recourse is to get his underlings to create a list of search words which can then be added to the porn filters which all 200 ISPs are supposed to have.

“The filtering will be based on keywords, not the websites,” he said, adding that the keyword list would be updated regularly to accommodate new keywords associated with porn websites.

That this effort will also block access to sites which have no connection to material which he deems to be ‘pornographic’ will almost inevitably lead to further problems for him

Try these “keywords” first, guys: sex / penis / vagina / penetration / head.

Need I go on?

Yes, of course I do.

I give you ‘cock’ (a male bird), ‘tit’ (a species of bird) and ‘gay’ (joyous and light-hearted). Feel free to add further double-entendres in the comments box.

But enough of this frivolity.

After all, this is the one time of the year when we’re all supposed to be on our best behaviour, to refrain from mockery and other indulgences.

It is a shame, though, that little effort is made to be good during the rest of the year.

Take the anarchic conditions on the road. This past week, I spotted a hoarding which showed a pedestrian crossing behind which were a couple of cars and a motorcycle or two waiting neatly for a family, mother and a couple of children, to cross the road. The message was simple: Share The Road.

Nice, I thought, whilst wondering how many of the drivers in the traffic whizzing by could read English. But then I got to wondering on which parking lot the photo shoot had taken place. Where was the rest of the traffic? Why were no motorcyclists making use of the empty sidewalk? But hey, if you ignore the wastage of the weak, fat frogs grow from tiny tadpoles. So this must have been the start of a road courtesy campaign.

And it is.

Last Saturday a road safety workshop was lead by a team of racing drivers who advised motorists to train themselves to set aside negative emotions such as selfishness and rage while at the wheel even in low speed situations to ensure the safety of themselves and others.

A true Ramadhan message.

Round the corner, near the start of the Kebon Jeruk toll road, I spotted another hoarding, an advertisement for a motor oil which suggested that the product would Make Every Road A Race Track.

Not in the normal gridlocked months, but now, when the roads are emptier?

Well, actually no.

On Tuesday, Jakarta Police began a campaign of evening operations to stop illegal street races during the fasting month.

According to the police website, those caught during the operation risk the confiscation of their registration papers (STNK) and motorcycles, [which] would be returned after Ramadan.

As a Post editorial says, going by the Indonesian experience, we can be fairly sure nothing will really change once the fasting month is over. It will be like going back to normal.

Still, one month of peace and harmony is better than nothing.

And you thought that Jakartass was cynical?

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.

State schools are cheaper than private ones so they are in demand from the less well off and this is the period when parents enrol their children: SD at age 6, SMP at age 12 and SMA at age 14. Given that there’s a chronological sequence, and that there are bunches of bureaucrats in town halls and at central H.Q., the Department of Education, it should be a relatively straightforward process.

But this is Indonesia where no-one-says “no” and career public officials are expected to obey those in more senior positions without question, and where the buck stops with one’s predecessor.

Until 2006, around the time that folk started tweeting, school enrollments were done on a face-to-face basis. That year, the Jakarta Education Agency (JEA) out-sourced the enrollments system to state-owned telecommunications operator PT Telkom which seemed to manage quite well. Last year, City Hall took back the management and, perhaps rather smugly, managed to get things done on time.

Cut to this year, and oh dear ……

Having already completed the SD and SMP enrollments, and allocated Rp.1.1 billion (US$127,000) for the SMA applications, JEA sat back and watched as their seven servers crashed.

They have handed back the management of the system to PT Telkom who have provided around 30 servers, a mere 23 more than JEA.

Parents are now resubmitting applications and the senior high school year is starting a week later.

Elsewhere, in Serang, Banten – about one hour from Jakarta, 165,000 primary school (SD) children ‘graduated’ this year and parents have submitted their SMP applications. There are, however, only 73,000 places.

Go figure.

Obviously the bureaucrats in Serang can’t as they’ve had six years to prepare.

Yesterday, whilst awaiting an appointment at the Jakarta Eye Centre with my opthalmologist for a post-op check up ~ which went well and thanks for asking ~ I mused about an article in the Guardian I'd read earlier.

Writing in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Thornhill and his colleagues explain that children under five devote much of their energy to brain development. When the body has to fight infections, it may have to sacrifice brain development, they say.

Thornhill's group used three published surveys of global IQ scores and compared them with data from the World Health Organisation (WHO) on how badly infectious diseases affect different countries. The list included common infections, such as malaria, tetanus and tuberculosis (TB).

The scientists found that the level of infectious disease in a country was closely linked to the average national IQ.

This would appear to be common sense, but as Richard Lynn, professor of psychology at Ulster University, and co-author of the book, IQ and the Wealth of Nations (pub. 2002), points out, disease and IQ is a two-way relationship, with low national IQs being partly responsible for widespread infectious diseases.

Anyone wishing to delve into the statistics of Lynn's work can check here. If the UK has a mean IQ of 100, Indonesia is at 89. However, the Indonesian stats come from just one survey conducted among Bandung school children in 1959.

IQ tests are not an indication of 'intelligence', which I take to be the polar opposite of stupidity, and enough can be found online to demonstrate that !Q tests have an inbuilt, generally 'western', cultural bias which do not and cannot measure the theoretical 'intelligences' propounded by Dr. Howard Gardner in 1983, and I wrote about here.

Suggesting that Indonesians are stupid has been proved to be a stupid thing to do. Not so long ago, in April, an Indian foreman at a shipyard in Batam, the island near Singapore, did just that and got severely beaten up by some of the workers who then, 5,000 of them, ran amuck. (This word, now in English, is derived from the same Malaysian word used in Indonesian – amok.)

My definition of 'stupidity' is a conscious act with unfortunate, even disasterous, results due to a lack of forethought about possible consequences.

In the spotlight today are the police who, in spite of their 'intelligence' successes in capturing loads of terrorist suspects, seem to have little regard for the public perception of their daily behaviour.

Firstly, they do not demonstrate that they have embraced reformasi, the drive for transparency and accountability which are evidence of a democratic nation.

The law on mass organisations has an article which states that the government may freeze a mass organization’s administration if it is found to have disrupted safety and/or public order. Yet the police stand by whilst the thugs of Front Pembela Islam (FPI) attack bars and churches, disrupt licensed meetings of gays and transexuals, and, just last week, parliamentarians and constituents discussing free health care.

The list goes on.
(Search this blog for 'FPI')

And now they are talking of a 'War Over Christianization'.

Mur­hali Barda, head of the Bekasi chapter of FPI, claimed that a certain Christian foundation had been relentlessly baptizing groups of people in the city, which has seen a number of religious conflicts in recent months.

“The last one was on Wednesday. A number of buses were seen dropping off people, some wearing jilbabs, at a house in Kemang Pratama district in Bekasi. When our people interrogated the security guard, he said they came from Jakarta and were there to be baptized.” he said.

However, Bekasi Police Chief Sr. Comr Imam Sugianto denied there had been a mass baptism. “All of them were students and they all went there for a swim,” he said.

If true, then I'm justified in saying that the FPI thugs are stupid.

And the police?

There can be few citizens or residents who have not given the police 'cigarette money' at some time to avoid further unpleasantness, which may include torture.

Victims usually do not know where to report abuses and are vulnerable to further abuse if they make a complaint directly to the police.

But it's not so much the lower echelons who are in the news now as the police generals. Questions are being aired as to how six top officers – Inspector General Mathius Salempang, Inspector General Sylvanus Yulian Wenas, Inspector General Budi Gunawan, Inspector General Badrodin Haiti, Inspector General Bambang Suparno, and whistleblower of the tax scam Commissioner General Susno Duadji – can amass from Rp.22 billion to as much as Rp.95 billion) on a salary of Rp.15 million a month (c.$1,600).

This is the lead story in this week's Tempo magazine. Strangely, all of the 30,000 print run was bought up in the early hours by "a group of mystery men" before it could be distributed. Tempo reprinted the issue, and are presumanbly happy with their increased circulation.

What is even stranger is not that the police are upset with the story, but the cover.

The problem with the cover is that it shows a police general with three piggy banks on leashes which could be an allusion to the business interests who buy favours. Mind you, having piggy banks with the police on a leash would seem more apt.

However, it's the pigs which have – erm – unleashed the police anger, so much so that they are talking up a possible lawsuit against Tempo.

National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Edward Aritonang claimed he had received many complaints about the magazine’s cover.

He said, “Imagine, we have 406,000 officers nationwide, and they and probably their relatives, too, are offended because it compares the police to the animal.”

To disrespect police in the UK who are apparently disrespecting citizens is to call them 'pigs', but here the word has deeper, Islamic, connotations. However, apart from the fact that the cartoon doesn't compare the police to pigs, Gen, Antonanng doesn't seem to be that well-educated.

As Tempo magazine chief editor Wahyu Muryadi said, “The piggy banks represent bank accounts, the edition’s theme. Why pig? In Indonesian, a pot for saving money is traditionally called celengan, which means piggy bank. It derives from the word celeng, which means pig."

I wonder what Gen. Antonand has made of the reprint of the magazine which now sports this cover.

Police in a poke?

Pig in a poke is an English idiom which refers to a confidence trick originating in the 15th/16th centuries, when meat was scarce but cats were not and were put inside the 'poke'. 
('Poke', originally meant bag or sack. 'Pocket' is the current form of the word.)

The Indonesian equivalent expression is kucing dalam karung (cat in a sack).

Make of this farce what you will, but my answer to my title is a resounding 'yes'.

I’ve just returned from a 3-day workshop in Surabaya yet I can’t say that I’ve actually learnt much about Indonesia’s second city.

Inevitably there were problems in actually getting there; we were told that our flight on Batavia Air – motto: Trust Us To Fly – was delayed by two hours, but we could transfer to one scheduled to depart half an hour later than the one we expected to board.

Ok, we said, checked in and went off to have a leisurely cup of coffee. Then we heard our names paged. We were late boarding the flight due to depart at 5 because it was actually set to depart at the time we originally expected to leave, 16:30.

A passenger informed us that the flight we were now on had been delayed since 3pm.

Surabaya’s Juanda International Airport has recently undergone major renovation, with a dedicated toll road providing access. Its code used to be SBY but has been changed, presumably because of President SBY, to SUB.

Arriving was familiar: it was akin Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta. There were no trolleys available to shift our load of books for participants and cakes for bosses. I went outside in search of one through the one narrow doorway to be accosted with crowds yelling at me – “Taxi, Mister?” . That I actually found a trolley was something of a miracle, and that I managed to manoevre it back into the arrivals hall dedicated through the crowds exiting by the one door even more so.

We queued for a taxi but were then informed that we needed a prepaid ticket; only one company has the right to operate there, which meant re-entering the throng. At least the driver knew where the Ciputra Hotel and Golf Club is; we were booked there because it was apparently the only hotel in Surabaya with vacancies. (Really??). As it was dark, we saw little of anything and learnt less about the city as we both had problems deciphering the dialectical sludge spoken by East Javanese men.

As we reached the Ciputra Hotel, all we had been aware of was that it is plonked in the middle of a hitherto green area. There were no bellhops to greet us and carry our heavy load and it was a long, not very triumphal, trudge therough a colonade to the reception desk in the distance, and we had to ask for porter assistance to our rooms. At least the beds were comfortable, and having a hot shower in the early morning was an unanticipated pleasure.

Transport was laid on for our first day’s toil and that was when we grew aware of what what was being wrought. There were green fields on which rose grandiose mansions rampant with tall frontage columns, strange ornate ‘eastern’ domes atop, but set in splendid isolation. Not one was alike except in perverse pretensions. I couldn’t help exclaiming “Yuk, that’s ugly” at regular intervals. What seemed even stranger was that for all the size of the plots, no space had been allocated for a garden.

All seemed to announce how much money had been spent and how little intelligence (or humility) had been used in the designs. On the five minute drive to where there were people, we saw nowhere to eat; offices and salons with spas, yes, but it seemed, correctly as it turned out, that without transport of our own we were marooned and doomed to eat in the hotel’s Resto.

The food was indeed adequate, but at Rp.80,000 for a much needed large Bintang at the end of the day, not anything to write home about. (This begs the question as to why I mention it here.) I stuck with the American breakfast, and my colleague with the familiar nasi goreng – fried rice – for his.

I wrote a post about the international real estate industry ‘going green’ a couple of weeks ago, and without knowing how soon I would encounter his particular concept, used Ciputra as an example of how little the industry really cares about the environment, and thinks only of short-term profits.

Hotel Ciputra was to prove this at the last. My colleague had to stay a further night thanks to a hastily arranged presentation, leaving me to come home alone. It would have been nice to have gone back to my room after our day’s exertions. However, checkout time is 12 noon and I wanted 4pm. As far as we could tell, room occupancy was about 10%, if that; most of the ‘guests’ were there for rounds of golf.

Stretching the rules was, of course, impossible – except for a 50% surcharge + 21% tax etc. etc. so I moved my luggage into colleague’s room and vowed to never stay there again .

Notes:

• My room had a dual flush toilet; my colleague’s didn’t.
• There was a small notice about conserving water – cut down laundry bills by using the same bed sheets for more than one night.
• The baths were deep.
• A few, very few, farmers could be spotted among the mansions tending their small plots.
• I didn’t see any solar panels or a solar water tank on any mansion roof.
• There was no public transport to, let alone within, Ciputraland.
• We guessed that within 3/4 years all the plots would be built on resulting in yet another middle-class ghetto, its residents living in splendid isolation.

Next time we will definitely find rooms in another hotel; we prefer to be amongst people.

As I wrote above, we saw little of Surabaya. We saw no buses and few angkots (people carriers). What did catch our eye was an extremely long yet-to-be opened shopping mall, all glass frontage. As to why it remains unopened seems a little strange: it can’t be connected to the national electricity grid which can be seen in front, pylons and cables striding across the wasteland.

So, leaving the splendid isolation of the western outer reach of the city, and leaving my colleague behind, I headed to the eastern outer reach and checked in with bags of time to spare for my flight at 19:20.

It was, of course, delayed for two hours.

Yep, I trust Batavia Air to fly, but never on time.
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Footnote
I didn’t have time to get to the Sidoarjo mudflow which locals have named Lapindo. It’s amazing how much hatred Bakrie has generated.