Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

I recently read a headline online which simply said 'Yes, Live In Jakarta', and I wondered which of the pairs in the gubernatorial election to be held this coming July was putting a positive spin on life here. All I've heard from them up to now is which of the many problems facing the megapolis they intend to prioritise.

Of course, and once again, I was wrong. The article actually referred to a gig on the world tour of the near-geriatric prog-rock group Yes; tickets cost more than a circuit judge's monthly salary.

There are so many stimuli assaulting one's senses in Jakarta that trying to understand it all without the insights of others is nigh on impossible. Whether stuck in a traffic jam or a meeting to discuss when the next meeting should take place, or you just want to switch off for a while, a good solution is to always have a good book in your backpack or briefcase.

The following are partial lists of what is on my bookshelves about Jakarta, past and present. They are arranged in chronological order according to the periods they are set in.

JAKARTA THEN

Historical Sights of Jakarta
- Adolf Heuken. pub. Times Books International,1989.
Numerous maps and illustrations, and details of little-known, and often neglected, historical places of interest.

A Certain Age
- Rudolph Mrázek. pub. Duke University Press 2010
Colonial Jakarta through the memories of its intellectuals. An academic work which is very readable.

In The Time Of Madness
- Richard Lloyd Parry. pub. Jonathon Cape 2005
A journalist witnesses the revolution in 1998 which saw the abdication of President Suharto.

Eyes of God
- Philip Babcock. pub. Edgeworth Press 2011
A multi-levelled Conradian thriller is set in the turbulent times of 97/98. Babcock was blacklisted and deported presumably because he was a pawn in the struggles for slices of Pertamina following the injection of IMF funds. The introductory passages are set in Jakarta gangs, a five star-hotel and the American Embassy.

JAKARTA NOW

Jakarta Inside out
- Daniel Ziv. pub. Desa Kota 4th edition 2009
A street level look and "a love letter to a city [he's] been proud to call home for over a decade."
Through short incisive commentaries which accompany candid photos,.Ziv provides insights into the chaotic reality of everyday life in the city.

My Jakarta
- pub. Jakarta Globe 2010
A compilation of Jakarta Globe interviews with Jakarta residents talking about – erm – "My Jakarta".

Nineteen
- Irfan Kortschak. pub. Mercy Corps 2008
Selected portraits of Jakarta’s itinerant street vendors – tales of strength in adversity rather than despair and defeat.

Jakarta, Jayakarta, Batavia
- ed. Leonard Lueras. pub. Yayasan Bali Purnati 2008.
A coffee table tome with essays and fine photos – an excellent souvenir of your stay.

Culture Shock! Jakarta
- Terry Collins and Derek Bacon. pub. Marshall Cavendish 2nd edition 2011
fr. Amazon review: As an Indonesian born and living around Jakarta, reading this book still managed to give me insights about the little and not-so-little things that escaped my attention.
(No apologies for an unashamed plug.)

NOVELS

The Year Of Living Dangerously
- C.J.Koch. pub. Grafton 1978
About journalists waiting for the revolution in 1965 which saw the downfall of President Sukarno. Banned during the Suharto era as was the movie, starring Mel Gibson, which has recently been shown on local TV.

Monkeys In The Dark
- Blanche d'Alpuget. pub. Aurora 1980
Life in Jakarta among expats in the inter-regnum between the '65 coup and Sukarno's exile.

+ not Jakarta specific, but Batavia features strongly.

Batavia’s Graveyard
- Mike Dash. pub. Three Rivers Press N.Y. 2002
“The true story of the mad heretic who led history’s bloodiest mutiny – in 1629”

Nathaniel's Nutmeg
- Giles Milton pub. Sceptre 1999
“A galloping good jaunt through the early days of western interaction with the Spice Islands.”

Ups and Downs of Life In The Indies
- P.A.Daum. pub. Periplus 1999
Dutch colonial life in the nineteenth century.

By Indonesian writers

Twilight In Jakarta
- Mochtar Lubis (1963)
The first Indonesian novel to be translated into English in 1964. His tale of life in the kampungs, with its politics, poverty, corruption and crime, when he was a thorn in the side of Sukarno, still seems relevant today.

Saman
- Ayu Utami. (1998) Translation pub. Equinox. 2005
Utami covers many of Indonesia's social ills, such as exploitation of plantation workers, political oppression, religious and sexual identity, in the last years of Suharto's regime. This is an outstanding and courageous novel, with echoes for today.

Also worth reading is anything by Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

PUBLISHERS
Those wishing to delve into academia will find a myriad theses and articles published by universities and smaller publishing houses. You can read about the history, geography, ecology, culture and more of the archipelago from pre-historic times to the current reformasi era.

Equinox
Publishes a wide range of non-fiction, mainly in the business and political arenas, They also republish long-out-of-print works, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as new works by, e.g. Michael Vatikiotis and translations e.g. Ayu Utami's Sanam (see below).

Periplus Editions
Browse their catalogue for high-quality illustrated books, dictionaries and maps on Indonesia and other southeast Asian countries.

Lontar Foundation
Since its founding in 1987 Lontar has concentrated its efforts on creating a 'market' for Indonesian literature abroad through the steady publication of Indonesian literary titles in English translation.

Yayasan Bali Purnati
Coffee table tomes with fine photographs illustrating essays from local contributors.

Blogs and other Websites.

Even a blind man can see that more folk carry 'smart' phones than carry books. If you are one of those, then there are several non-commercial websites, especially blogs, which offer different insights into Jakarta. We bloggers come and go and are rarely objective but these are my current favourites:
Rujak.org – for a sustainable Jakarta (in Indonesian).
Bataviase – loads of links and info (in Indonesian).
Jakarta Kid – insightful stories of Jakarta's street kids.
Jakarta 100 Bars – as it says on the tin.
Jakarta Daily Photo – ditto.
Gangs of Indonesia – fine photo-journalism.
Jakarta Restaurant Reviews  – as it says.
+
Inside Indonesia – monthly, with email subscriptions, readable, wide ranging in-depth articles.

The late David Jardine wrote many book reviews for Tempo magazine and other publications. Most of them have been archived here.
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First published in Jakarta Expat 69th edition (9th-22nd May 2012)

How do I know what I think until I see what I say?
E.M. Forster (1879 – 1970)

Way back in the mists of my search for companionship, on the rebound from marriage number whatever, I'd thrown myself into various causes, one of which paid me from the grants I'd solicited from a number of charitable foundations, (Irrelevant – Ed).I placed a 'personal ad' in Time Out London. I can't remember the exact wording – it probably mentioned my motorbike, an MZ ETZ 250 with a front disc brake …… (Relevant or an interesting titbit? – Ed)

Anyway, what attracted one lass, who I'm still in touch with 25 or so years later, was my description of myself as an auto-didact. She was intrigued because she had to look the word up in a dictionary. It has its roots in the Ancient Greek words αὐτός (autós, or "self") and διδακτικός (didaktikos, meaning 'teaching'). (Informational 'cos not a lot of people know that – J)

And in that word with ancient roots lies my motivation for putting my right forefinger to keyboard: I write because I want to know if I can. And this post is about the 'knowing'.

I'll let you, dear reader (No need for condescention! – Ed), make of it what you will. However, please note that, as with our cavemen forefathers' (and mothers') cave drawings, what you see is a mere spoor, a trace of where I am and where I've been. In the timescale of things, it matters not a jot except for one key element: it has taken me quite a few days to construct this post.

I like to think of myself as a weaver of words offering a cornucopia of connections in order to make sense of it all. So this is not a technological tweet, a piece of ephemera of little value except to gossipmongers or those craving their 15 seconds of fame.

No sirree. It's (hopefully) a well-crafted exercise in eloquence, an example of my erudition, an expatriate expatiation, an experimental expectoration …. (That's quite enough alliteration, thank you! – Ed)

Writing Rules – OK?
The main benefit of blogging is that I don't work to a deadline, except to one of my choosing. Commissioned work, such as the occasional book reviews, require a greater focus of energies. In general terms then, these are steps I usually take before posting online.

One rule of thumb, or whatever digit you type with, is to consider what your anticipated readers know or might be expected to know.

1. Plan
First, I need to have a spark of curiosity.

Occasionally, it's lit by an incident I witness, something sent me by an email correspondent, a picture, or just a distinctive title.

Generally though, my daily news reads, the paper edition of the Jakarta Post or the Guardian-online, are favoured sources. If the former, I tend to cut out and save the article(s) of interest. If the latter, or other sites, I copy and paste sections in WordPad, with the URL, and save these notes in a pending file.

Like a good wine, I allow them to mature, adding connections until I feel able to link my notes through a rough mental picture, with an introduction, a middle section, which can be likened to the filling in a sandwich, and a conclusion. It's only then that I set out to write a draft, offline.

2. Organise
Unlike me, Jenn at The Writing Smithy in the UK, is not usually a planner – but because [of this] there’s a lot of fun and freedom in first drafts. All the decisions open to a writer are up for grabs and [she doesn't] feel any great pressure to fix on a tense, a theme, a point of view or even a plot at this stage. It is only when the first draft is more or less complete … that [she] can start to see, more or less, what the shape of the thing might be.

At this point I'll do some additional research, remembering to copy the URLs of whatever I'm quoting, and often end up with something very different from my original concept. So this is but the beginning because, to quote Ernest Hemingway, "The first draft of anything is shit."

Let's assume that after much rewriting, interspersed with a few meals, episodes of The Walking Dead and a sleep or three, you think you've cracked it at last. You're ready to publish … or are you?

If you're writing something to be published online, then I recommend a browser add-on called ScribeFire, which is a simple to use editor from which you can post, or save as a draft, much as you can with WordPress, Blogger and other blog dashboards, but without their occasional glitches.

And this is where I get to put the finishing touches to what you see herein.

3. Proofread and/or Copyedit
i.e. Check and double-check before publishing or you could appear to be foolish!

Yesterday being the first anniversary of the passing of much-missed friend David Jardine, I re-read the obituary I wrote last year. I was abashed to discover that I'd written 'exhibition' instead of 'expedition'. This is, of course, now corrected. It may be a blow to my self-esteem, but nowhere as serious a cock-up as those committed by the professionals in the mass media.

Example 1
The Australian arm of the publishing firm Penguin has ordered 7,000 copies of a cookbook to be pulped after a  highly embarrassing and potentially offensive error resulted in a recipe calling not for "freshly ground black pepper", but for "freshly ground black people".

Example 2
Indonesia's Deputy Health Minister Ali Ghufron Mukti said that at least 96 million people, or 40 percent of the country’s poor population, would be eligible for the universal health coverage once it takes effect in the early (what?) of 2014.

If 40% = 96 million, then 100% = 240 million; this was the total population counted at the last census in 2010. It makes a change for a minister to be so open about the government's failings.

Some serious blogs about writing.

- Laura Payne may enjoy a Walk in the WoRds, but she is serious about the mechanics of English and offers a "linguistic tour for people who love having fun with words and language."

- I'm more of a left-brained individual, so I prefer Mark Forsyth's Inky Fool blog which explores the connections of words, as well as good writing.

"An academic fellow once told [him] that the best way to spot the weak point in a long essay is to flick through and find the longest paragraph, because that will always be where the writer was most confused. It's a rather good trick, and saves actually reading things."

- Putative pulp fiction writers would do well do browse through Joel Stickley's How To Write Badly Well. This he does – erm – rather well.

- Finally, I'm a subscriber to Michael Quinion's World Wide Words email newsletter. 'Sic' is my favourite section and he once published a contribution from me taken from the Jakarta post: Crocs Go Hungry Due To Lack Of Tourists.

To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "So it goes."
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Did you spot my deliberate spelling error?

That's a new word for me, and possibly for you too. Thanks to Michael Quinion's email newsletter from his World Wide Words, I've just learned that the 'aster' suffix means 'petty and contemptible'.

Vocabulary rather than grammar is the biggest problem faced by language learners and one technique is to try and slip the word into conversation at every available opportunity. That's a good enough reason for this post.

Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president is the first obvious choice. A police sargeant is facing a one year jail term for using a loo set aside for Mugabe at a trade fair.

Here in Indonesia, there are almost too many to choose from, with many politicians jailed for corruption, fleeing from corruption charges, enjoying pornography, being caught in flagrante delicto and so on.

However, because today marks the fifth anniversary of the start of the Sidoarjo-Lapindo mudflow, whose unwitting victims are still awaiting due compensation, let alone adequate and full, Aburizal Bakrie is 'it'.  I have observed many politicians over the years and have respected very few of them, but this man truly stands out, and I'm not referring to his chin.

Since starting Jakartass 1800 posts ago, pre-dating the mudflow, I've had cause to mention him in an unflattering light some 97 times. Once the country's richest man, he has rarely, if ever, shown compassion for anything other than his wealth

Elsewhere, in China where every politician is appointed and follows the party line, scores of prisoners are forced to play lucrative online games in order to build up credits that prison guards would then trade for real money. For allowing such a cruel and unusual punishment, I deem Chinese politicians to be politicasters.

But perhaps there no countries without any  … are there?

Yep, that's the latest wheeze emanating from within the corridors of power.

Excuse me while I guffaw.

There, that feels better, so now for a reality check.

The Coordinating Public Welfare Minister’s Office met with several groups on Thursday to receive comments on which values schoolchildren should be taught.

The office’s deputy for education and religion, Agus Sartono, said, “We already have rich values from Indonesia’s indigenous characters. For example, we can find 36 traits [to develop people] who are creative, smart and polite based on Pancasila, the country’s foundation."

This is a partial selection of suggested 'good traits' emanating from the meeting:
- honesty
- empathy
- creativity
- tolerance
- discipline
- self-control
- democracy
- responsibility
- a love of peace
- positive thinking
- pride in being Indonesian
- an appreciation of pluralism
- perseverance and achievement-seeking
- unity and gotong royong (community joint effort)

You can't argue against the worth of any of those.

'Honesty' heads this list purely for my artistic benefit. However, given that the stated goal is "to shape a better generation than the current one", which shouldn't be difficult, then it deserves its position.

These are just a few headlines from last week's Jakarta Post:
- Letter: Change the ‘graft culture’
- Banten is 15th most corrupt province
- Corrupt judge gets light 2-year sentence

Agus said the program would be expanded into a national framework that included every ministry, with the National Education Ministry and the Religious Affairs Ministry taking the lead.

That's like asking a fox to teach hens how to lay eggs.

About Rp. 221 trillion (US$24.8 billion), or 20% of the 2010 state budget, is allocated for education – as required by the Constitution.  However, just over 70% is reportedly being used to "train civil servants', which may include teachers, although the majority of the nation's teachers don't have that status.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has just published a Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). This makes grim reading for Indonesia.

Last year TALIS assessed 15 year old students from 65 countries on their Reading skills, Mathematics and Science, all from the perspective of the value of these subjects in the 'real' world.

Indonesia were ranked 58th out of 65 countries surveyed.. With the average scores in brackets, these were the Indonesia results:
Reading  402 (493)
Maths: 371 (496)
Science: 393 (501)

The reliance on multi-choice national exams, the ujian monyet as I term it, which are often riddled with mistakes is obviously one factor in the poor performance. Teaching to these tests rules out the creativity which is now deemed to be an important part of one's character.

As for the Religious Affairs Ministry, headed by the infamous Twittering Simplefool, being tasked, I assume that it was either decided because of a warped sense of humour or because of blind faith. Back in July, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) examined its haj management and found 48 ‘weaknesses’ which were prone to graft. Commission deputy chairman M. Jasin said the loopholes could be found in virtually all aspects of haj management, which has long been criticized for lacking transparency. 

Given the other factors to be inculcated, like tolerance, self-control and gotong royong, it's surely time for the Religious Affairs Ministry to rein in the Front Pembeli Islam thugs before seeking to offer moral guidance.

Finally, there's the character trait of being proud to be Indonesian. That sounds good, yet anyone who can take pride in the following news stories from the past week should be ashamed.

- Police, military main human rights violators
- Lapindo: 18 human rights violations ignored
- Violators in remote areas gain impunity (e.g. Papua)
- Human rights: the dark side of the SBY administration

Various folk have highlighted the inportance of parents and society being involved in [character building] education so students can get accustomed to those positive traits in school and at home.

I totally agree; nurturing young people is a partnership.

However, I don't wish to be a partner with those hypocrites who blithely ignore the harm that they are doing to their citizens, of all ages.

I try to be both pertinent and clever with my titles, but having used What Are (William's) Words Worth? three times I think it's time for a change.

So I figure Gabba Gabba Hey will do. It has an honourable pedigree having first been used in Tod Browning's 1932 movie Freaks and then as a catchphrase for the two-chord wonder punk group, The Ramones.

And now I'm using it as a prologue to a rant about the crap English to be seen on hoardings around town.

There is the vacuousness of the exhortation "Let's Live The Indonesian Dream". The hoarding has Lippo Inc. prominently displayed although I couldn't see the connection. Joko Anwar, the noted film director/screenwriter spotted the same sign a day or so ago and asked "Kalo American dream kan rich and famous. Indonesian dream apa ya?"

That was in tweet-speak, but I take it to roughly mean that "Americans dream about being rich and famous. But what are the dreams of Indonesians?"

For most, Joko, it's survival, the eradication of corruption, environmental degradation and violence, the employment of honest police and politicians and … the list is … endless. Why, even ex-Governor Sooty agrees with me.

Lippo's founder/patrician is Mochtar Riady who has recently been allowed to re-enter Indonesia's banking sector.

Bank Indonesia defended its decision to allow Mochtar Riady’s business empire to re-enter the banking sector, saying the founder of the Lippo Group had passed a fit and proper test that took years to complete.

BI deputy governor Halim Alamsyah said, “If the person or institution has a negative track record, they will not be allowed to own a bank, the plan will fall through. I guarantee that.”

I doubt that Halim took into account the Riady family's murky past in America. Nor will he have bothered with the massive development Lippo is building on the floodplain of West Jakarta. For some strange reason it's known as St. Moritz; the hoarding states that the apartments for sale are unique – they have a "private lift". Whether that's for each apartment, each floor or for residents and guest only isn't clear but (gabba, gabba) hey, if you buy an apartment (which are just 80 square metres) you'll get a 42" TV – FREE. Wow, but do remember that you'll also need sp—ace for a bed.

But there's even worse English down the toll road. Another developer is going back to the future in its selling of "botanical residential houses".

As their hoarding isn't adorned with illustrations, I offer these two I found when googling 'Indonesian grass huts'.

Makes you wonder which one the developer has in mind.

Gabba, gabba, hey – eh?

Thanks to the ever fascinating ephemera on the J-Walk Blog posted by John Walkenbach, I tried this site.

I pasted five posts going back to 2004 and I have been informed that I write like these five noted authors.
Charles Dickens – social commentary
James Joyce – convoluted streams of consciousness
Kurt Vonnegut – sardonic humanist
Stephen King – horror stories
David Foster Wallace – who?

David Foster Wallace used his prodigious gifts as a writer – his manic, exuberant prose, his ferocious powers of observation, his ability to fuse avant-garde techniques with old-fashioned moral seriousness – to create a series of strobe-lit portraits of a millennial America overdosing on the drugs of entertainment and self-gratification, and to capture, in the words of the musician Robert Plant, the myriad “deep and meaningless” facets of contemporary life.

Substitute 'Indonesia' for 'America' and I'm flattered. However, although he was a fellow Aquarian, David F. Wallace hung himself on Sept. 12, 2008.
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This post is apparently in the style of Kurt Vonnegut.

And so it goes.

According to an article in the New Scientist which is being quoted widely by linguists, this Mundari word apparently means ‘the sensation of suddenly realising you can do something reprehensible and no-one is there to witness it‘.

If I were to write about all the corrupt politicians, businessmen, bureaucrats and police now being named and shamed – which I won’t because I really don’t have time to write another book – that would be a good title.

All I do have time for is to direct you to the results of the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Contest.

Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.

The rule of this contest is simple: write a single sentence, preferably not more than 50 words, which is the opening paragraph of a novel.

This, my current favourite, has a hint of the rawa-dawa about it.

As Ethel arranged the list of company phone numbers under her clear plastic desk cover, perfectly aligning the lower right corner of the list with the lower right corner of the plastic, then swiveled her chair to file one more inter-office memorandum on trimming the budget, she considered how different her life might have been if her parents had named her Tiffany.