Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

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.
                                                 …………………………..

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.

If you can't see this page please click here.

I like the power of words, and not just because that's how I support all of us in Jakartass Towers. I could kibble and give hundreds of reasons which run the gamut from elation to grief.

Or I could give you a lecture on my 'native' language and how it's evolving, as it should, into 'Goblish'.

But I won't.

What I'm posting here is a collection of snippets cut from various articles because I like bons mots (pithy remarks). They may be taken out of context but they resonate with me and I haven't (yet) got round to expanding them into a post.

My title is, I think, wholly original, something I came up with during my morning ritual in the privy.

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the reader who doesn't get it.

On Blogging

To be unexpressed is the road to unhappiness.
Ben Kingsley

There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us, that it behoves all of us not to talk about the rest of us.
Robert Louis Stevenson

On Human Potential

Nobody knows anything.
Michael Palin

Aesthetics cannot be replaced wholesale by bean-counting analysis.
fr. a review of How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It

I call myself a possibilian. The idea with possibilianism is to explore new ideas and to shine a flashlight around the possibility space to really understand what the size of that space is.
David Eagleman

You shoot your arrow and then you paint your bullseye around it, and therefore you have hit the target dead centre.
Brian Eno

The most important lesson life has taught me is that all my mistakes and difficult times have been my best teachers.
Hayley Mills

You define who you are and where you are by the things that you know you are not.
Brian Eno

Life is fragile and short. Don't waste it by being mean or greedy.
Felicity Kendal

On Getting Old-er

Getting old is when you start complaining about the next generation.
Jenny Agutter

People say that …….. you're not an angry young man, just a grumpy old git. But why should I get to a certain age and go, yeah that's OK? Why do I have to accept everything? If you don't want it, say so and if you want to kick against it, you should do that as well, whatever age you are.
Paul Weller

We were probably the last generation to be truly free to play.
Sue Townsend

On Religion

I don't want places to worship.
My worship is the service of the people
Aşik Ibret

We understand far too much to commit to one religious story.
David Eagleman

Religious ecstasy has overtones of Catherine of Siena drinking the pus of lepers.
Brian Eno

On Democracy

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Bernard Shaw

Whoever you vote for, the government gets in.
Jakartass and many others

On Community Power

What makes wage slaves? Wages!
Groucho Marx

Only the mediocre are scared of egalitarianism.
Bernard Shaw

We're far too smart for our own good, but not nearly clever enough for our own benefit.
Agent 3244

On Climate Change Deniers

I'm no scientist. I'm not an engineer either, but if I asked 100 engineers whether it was safe to cross a bridge, and 99 said no, I'd probably try to find another way over the ravine rather than loudly siding with the underdog and arguing about what constitutes a consensus while trundling across in my Hummer.
Charlie Brooker

These are a few items which have caught my interest recently yet have been a tad too busy to catch up with and write fully about.

1. The Thinking Indonesian's Paper, Kompas, had the following headline in Thursday's edition.

When it's an Indian, Malaysian or other nationality who gets busted for drugs, the articles do not refer to their skin colour. But when it's an Australian (German, Brit etc.) ….

I've said it before – and no doubt I'll say it again – but skin colour is irrelevant and has no bearing in terms of morality, criminality or whatever, and using the word bule (pron. bu-lay) merely indicates the user's inherent racism.

I sent an email regarding this to various correspondents and here is a selection of their replies.

Yes, not good journalism, although 'Bule' is not derogatory, as far as I understand the term.
I think it is relevant. I always thought it meant 'albino' and since I am always so ghostly pale, I have never really objected to the term but yes – not good to print it in the newspaper …

[My husband] is always going on about ‘dumbing down’ and standards dropping – if no one comments then it will be accepted and they might start doing it on a regular basis …

I was tempted to blog this myself, but nah! Although it does feed into this belief that Indonesians (and some others) offer up that the word does not have racial connotations or undertones… Besides, it is hard to get reasoned debate on this one.

I have read the article. Well, what can I say about the "system" which we all know is totally rotten to the core.
My opinion? "Majukan dong!"

So, moving on …

2. In basic music terms, I'm a jazz fan. I'm not referring to the lounge or elevator variety as epitomised by Kenny G, but the kind where risks are taken. Riza Arshad and Tohpati have fused Indonesian 'ethnic' instrumentation with their sublime creativity. Riza has recently been involved in an album, Ubiet's Kroncong Tenggara, and Tohpati has his Ethnomission.

Together, they are key personnel of simakDialog whose last two albums were released on the New York-based label MoonJune.

Leonardo Pavkovic, the founder and continued catalyst behind MoonJune, is trying to arrange a tour of Europe and the USA for them, and needs to get government sponsorship. (I have yet to confirm that he means the Indonesian government.)

L. has written to say that you can help by voting in the Indonesia Cutting Edge Music Awards (ICEMA) 2010.

SimakDialog's nominated track is Disapih from their album Demi Masa released in 2008. (This begs the question as to why a track wasn't selected from Patahan which was released last year!)

You can watch a live version of Disapih on You Tube: Part 1 and Part 2.

3. Another update on the Balikpapan Bay Bridge Project

Why oh why can I find no interest here in Jakarta, or in local media? Out of sight, out of mind?
I don't usually post in Indonesian, but this is what I received from a correspondent in the Czech Republic. (Go figure that one!)

Pak Gubernur Awang Faroek baru saja menerima anggaran APBN untuk membangun Jembatan Pulau Balang, yang akan menyebabkan kerusakan ireversibel Hutan Lingung Sungai Wain dan Teluk Balikpapan. Namun pemerintah daerah masih berani melakukan negosiasi untuk opsi alternatif, yang bisa melestarikan seluruh wilayah.

Tolong membantu kita untuk menyimpan suatu tempat yang indah. Ini adalah kesempatan terakhir sekarang! Ada beberapa hal yang Anda bisa melakukan dengan mudah:

1. Tolong menulis kepada pemerintah provinsi, meminta Pak Gubernur Awang Faroek untuk memikirkan kembali rencananya untuk membangun jembatan Pulau Balang. Jelaskan kepada pemkab Anda tidak percaya bahwa perencanaan pelestarian lingkungan sepanjang jalan dan jembatan Pulau Balang cukup matang. Hutan Lindung tidak bisa dilestarikan cuma dengan pagar kiri kanan jalan, seperti yang direncanakan oleh provinsi! Perusakan wilayah yang sangat unik akan merusak citra Provinsi sebagai Kaltim Hijau, yang akan menjadi Kaltim Coklat atau Merah Kekuningan! Alternatif yang ramah lingkungan adalah Jembatan Tg. Batu – G. Seteleng. Untuk mengontak pemprov, Anda bisa menggunakan link ini.

2. Tolong menulis kepada Pemerintah Balikpapan dan walikota Pak Imdaad Hamid untuk mengucapkan terima kasih atas perhatian lingkungan hidup dan upaya mereka untuk menghentikan rencana pembangunan Jembatan Pulau Balang. Untuk mengontak pemkot Balikpapan, Anda bisa menggunakan Buku Tamu pada link ini.

3. Tolong menulis surat kepada Bupati Penajam Paser Utara, Pak Andi Harahap, mendukung beilau untuk mengejar upaya awal untuk membangun jembatan langsung antara Balikpapan dan Penajam, tapi menunjukkan bahwa opsi Tg. Bati – G. Seteleng akan menjadi alternatif yang lebih baik dibandingi dengan opsi Nipah-Nipah – Melawai, karena tidak akan melewati pusat kota dan karenanya juga akan berlalu bagi kendaraan besar. Untuk mengontak pemkab PPU, Anda bisa menggunakan Buku Tamu pada link ini.

4. Tolong menulis komentar ke artikel-artikel online, menerangkan bahwa bukan hanya orang asing tetapi juga masyarakat setempat peduli lingkungan dan memahami bahwa Jembatan Tg. Batu – G. Seteleng adalah pilihan yang lebih baik dibandingkan dengan Jembatan Pulau Balang. Artikel-artikel disebut dapat ditemukan disini, disini, disini, dan disini.

5. Share artikel-artikel ini pada Facebook Anda.

Bersama, kita masih bisa menyelamatkan Teluk Balikpapan dan Hutan Lindung Sungai Wain!