Snookering You

Selamat Besok!

Yes, it’s almost that time again, besok, when all the work from the last week finally gets done: that lecturer finally responds to your email and the leaks in your room get fixed. The construction noise stops, the potholes are filled in and the Internet comes back on. A happy besok to one and to all, and may besok bring everything you ever wanted.

Besok, it should be noted, means “tomorrow”.

Clearly, it really helps to approach every day in Indonesia without intending to actually get anything done. It helps further to assume that, if it does get done, it will be done slowly and probably done wrong. You can do everything right – make that active verb into a passive verb, remember those ke-an and pe-an affixes, and give instructions to which a man could set his watch – and still fail miserably, on account of the fact that low wages, repetitive responsibilities and a complete lack of formal training transcend language barriers. Service is generally unskilled and without a smile, unless they’ve managed to run out of whatever you’re looking for (habis or kosong). This happens more often than you will ever learn to accept and usually concerns the one product on which their business is based.

“Good morning. Um, could I have fried rice and a sweet ice tea?”

“Sudah habis,” says my new friend at the nearby warung, smiling.

Embarrassment in Indonesia is deflected with a weak smile, sometimes quite a Gallic shrug of the shoulders. On n’y peut rien, he seems to be saying. “We’re a cafeteria more than four hours from closing, and we’ve run out of food: what do you want me to do?” I always want to invite him, in slightly fewer words, to engage improperly with a female member of his immediate family. How on earth, I want to scream, can you run out of rice?

I cannot overstate how unbelievably easy it is to take this personally, either. I’ve been living in Jogjakarta now for a little over two months, and gradually, reluctantly, you fall victim to cynicism. “He must be saving the last bit for one of his mates,” you snarl inwardly. “Or he can’t be bothered. Perhaps he’d prefer a nap.” I have mastered the subtle art of ordering Western food without cheese (“tanpa keju, Mas, itu penting sekali,”) and yet that sickly yellow ooze that besmirches by burger never fails to rattle my cage.  Spend any length of time in Indonesia, however, and it eventually becomes clear that you are not (usually) a victim of petty crime or disinterested incompetence: you, like millions of Indonesians on a daily basis, are yet another victim of circumstance.

Take last week, for example. Tens of thousands of Indonesians spent a great deal of last week out in the streets, masked and sometimes heavily armed, protesting a planned hike in fuel prices. Occupy Jakarta never got off the ground last year, simply because when Indonesians have a gripe with their government, Occupy – non-violent and passive-aggressive – just wouldn’t cut it. The increase, devastating for anybody on the breadline (basically everybody) was scrapped at the eleventh hour, but the anger was palpable.

Returning to the point, in a country where he can’t predict how much it will cost him to run his scooter next week, my newfound friend at the warung probably didn’t make enough money yesterday to order enough supplies for today. Like most impromptu roadside businesses – from the tambal ban, the elderly gentlemen who’ll put air in your tyres, to the Vermak penjahit, denim tailors – he’s just thinking about tomorrow. Selamat besok.

It is this unpredictability in everyday life that struck me as I chalked up at Planet Pool, preparing to submit myself to a thumping at the hands of an opponent abiding by Indonesian rules. Divided though Australians may be on matters such as immigration or the carbon tax, we can at least all (usually) get behind one thing: touching the cue ball, while it remains on the felt, is verboten. Opinions run the gamut on what constitutes a foul, and whether or not you can commit a foul while shooting for the eight-ball and still win, but we as a society can generally gather around the idea that, as in golf, the ball is played from wherever it lies. Indonesia has organized itself around the belief that if your opponent scratches his shot, you are allowed to pick up and place the cueball wherever you like, and play it from there. It is incredibly disappointing to lose on such a bizarre variation on a game I grew up playing.

But you live and learn, and you adapt: I’ve always been a strong believer that behind all the traditional dances and ancient ruins, a culture can reveal itself in the way that its people spend their free time. The ingenuity and creativity of Indonesians never ceases to amaze me – when life hands them lemons, they make lemonade. You can have a quality textbook copied, printed and rebound as an exact duplicate in under an hour for less than a fiver, simply by waltzing unannounced into one of the many print shops around UGM. You can choose from all manner of fabrics on Jalan Solo and have a shirt done up in time for dinner. I wonder if I had grown up here, would I have survived, would I have thrived, on so little support from a government that can find no way to profit from me? Suddenly, moving the cueball for even the tiniest advantage doesn’t seem so strange.

With just a few weeks to go until my halfway point in this semester, there’s no shortage of attractions and, of course, distractions. Javanese is progressing slowly, such as it is, and between being spat at by orangutans and visiting what must be an architectural tribute to the Water Temple from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I’ve found time enough for eating fresh seafood at the beach, learning to ride a motorbike, finding the best place in town for a bit of forbidden pork and, wouldn’t you know, actually doing a bit of studying. Mid-semester exams loom nigh, and while one lecturer advocates the mass culling of Sumatran elephants – emphatically not the strangest opinion I have encountered so far – we must cram vocabulary in preparation.  The next two weeks have something a little more special in store, so with that I’ll bid the audience adieu and that certain somebody a very warm welcome. Selamat dating ke Jogja, sweetheart, dan jangan lupa bersenang-senang…

Dog, Diesel Juice & Kelas Kosong

My ears were ringing when I finally came around; I swallowed that fetid bile that only a bout of vomiting can induce. I was soaked in a cold sweat, and it took me a few seconds to work out where I was: on the floor of my bathroom, bollock-naked and slowly regaining consciousness at about three o’clock in the morning after spending the last hour defecating through the eye of a needle. Later, when Pak Agus asked me how I had felt, I said seperti kematian – “like death.” The depths of my bucket – my new best friend – had taken on the faint orange hue of regurgitated pumpkin soup, and it was all I could do to empty it and rinse it in the hope that the stench wouldn’t permeate the room. I took some deep breaths and managed to clamber back onto my off-centre toilet seat, resuming the ordeal. I had a few more hours left to survive until sunup, when I could tell somebody that I needed to go to hospital.

All manner of exotic Indonesian illnesses are covered by the terms sakit perut (a sick stomach) and masuk angin (the more esoteric “to enter the wind”). Culinary hygiene in Indonesia is forsaken in favour of flavour, and there are a few rules of thumb you can use to cheat the odds. Don’t eat anything washed in tap water. Make sure that whatever you eat was cooked after you ordered it. Avoid the kaki lima, those streetwalking bowl-whackers peddling slop from rickety old pushcarts. Finally, trust those churning guts of yours: if it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.

Alas, however, comes the Balinese boogeyman. I would spend the next two nights convalescing in air-conditioned comfort at the Rumah Sakit Patih Rapih. No azan, no invectives between the underpaid tukang-tukang – instead, soothing voices over an intercom asking presumably every patient in the hospital if they’d like Communion or (hauntingly) the Last Rites. Spongelike rice congee, lukewarm and salty and all but force-fed to me by the aggressively Catholic nurses. Lazy afternoons spent trying (failing) to understand the sinetron, those ubiquitous Indonesian soap operas of uniform awfulness. A visit from friends, as Sam bungkus’d some roti canai and curry for me and Mitch wheeled me downstairs for a visit to Dunkin’ Donuts, and – on the Friday morning – a birthday cake! With a prescription for antibiotics and a doctor’s note that would excuse me from classes for most of the following week, I was released on the afternoon of my twenty-second birthday.

The world carried on without me that week, providing fodder for the blog. While the clowns in Canberra engaged in an ostentatious circle-jerk on Monday, Professor David Hill – one of the many brains behind our exchange program – slammed the drastic decrease in Indonesian enrollments at universities across the country. Forty percent was the national average; NSW reported the drop as high as seventy percent. For those of you betting on China (simply because you’ve heard of it) or laughing at the idea of Southeast Asia amounting to anything other than the source of your Bintang singlets and dirty long weekends, consider the following: Indonesia is set to become one of the world’s most powerful economies in just twenty years, surpassing us in less than fifteen, and the Australian response has been to slur and bumble ham-fistedly into the Asian Century. I recently read that there are now more students in Australian high schools studying Latin – Latin, a dead language with no speakers and almost certainly no exchange opportunities – than Mandarin Chinese. If we’re not embarrassed by that, then we ought to be.

To remedy this, Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans recently applauded those institutions that are paying attention to Asia and suggested that Australian students ought to be spending at least some of their academic careers among our neighbours to the north. With that in mind, I’d like to share some of my experiences as an international student plodding along in Indonesia.

Kelas kosong, the empty class, is the double-edged sword of Indonesian university culture, both a delight and a perpetual pain in the backside. Late lunches, surprise meetings and I suspect probably more than a few naps account for the repeated absence of lecturers from their classes, giving rise to that musical phrase, kelas kosong. Nonetheless, as if by magic, the students still manage to procure textbooks, readers, test schedules and assessment information without the need for their lecturers: you’ve got to make friends fast to keep up. UGM is like Hogwarts in that regard. Classrooms change without warning, and the constant construction work and repairs on campus force you to find a new way each time you venture to a new part of this lush, verdant educational paradise. I have, however, managed to find every one of my classes so far bar one: I wasn’t enrolled during the first week and I spent the second week acquainting myself with the business end of an IV drip, so tomorrow afternoon should hold some surprises in store. The other classes, though, have been incredible experiences.

I’m taking two classes to supplement my Indonesian language skills, Reading (Membaca) and Vocabulary (Kosa Kata). Both are exactly what they sound like. Membaca involves listening to other people learning to read, unparalleled in tedium but certainly a fertile source of humour, and Kosa Kata has taught me (one week too late) all the words for various people working in the medical industry. The workload is easy, the lecturers are friendly and chatty, and I’ve had an opportunity to make new friends from Egypt, Japan, South Korea and Russia, all through our mutual use of Indonesian.

Javanese, though, is utterly, totally, distressingly different to Indonesian. Searching for cognates is like telling the time by watching a stopped clock – perhaps twice a day you’ll get it right, but most of the time, you’re omong kosong (talking nonsense). Mitch cheerfully pointed out during our second class on Monday that since the language is divided into two completely dissimilar varieties, a ‘high’ form (for elders, airport staff and anybody who handles your food) and a ‘low’ form (mostly for children and chickens), we’re getting half the reward for twice the effort. Since we’re learning it through a language in which none of us are fluent, however, I’m inclined to think the dividends are a little worse, but damned if it’s stopped us from trying. I’ll be conversant in this impossibility of a language by the time I leave, I swear it.

Australian Foreign Policy is essentially terrifying. In order to illustrate what one must first accept before understanding how Australian foreign policy is structured, the lecturer had this to say: “Australia doesn’t have the capability to defend itself, and it cannot build up enough of that kind of power in the short- or even medium-term. It is in a state of being threatened, or at least potentially threatened, by bigger countries in the north.” The vocabulary is a struggle at times, but I was pleasantly surprised to find myself following between sixty and seventy percent of what the lecturer was saying. The norm, we were warned, is twenty percent straight off the bat and, if you’re very, very lucky and exceptionally good, eighty percent by the time exams roll around.

Between my hospital stint and endearing myself to the charms and tribulations of student life at UGM, I’ve been putting my time in Jogjakarta to good use. Pak Agus invited all the lads in the kos out to join him and his friends to sample his favourite food. The meat was tender but a little fatty for my tastes, but dog rendang is a delicacy worth trying, if only for the opportunity to chat to Indonesians. They’re such curious people, full of questions and answering yours in earnest.

“No, Pak, you can’t really eat dog in Australia. We have kangaroos, though…”

It was after dog rendang that I tried imbibing possibly the most horrendous substance ever devised by humankind: kopi klotok. Wikipedia will tell you that a klotok is a “traditional riverboat used to navigate the waters of Indonesia.” The kopi klotok bar near our kos is right next to a filthy, turd-filled canal, and I suspect this may have something to do with the name (not to mention the flavour). In any case, wave goodbye to the next two days of your life. Two milkshake-sized glasses of kopi klotok – blended with chocolate, ice, coffee, blueberry, whatever you like – will have you clinging to the floor for fearing of falling into the sky. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

All that said and done, however, I do hope that these colourful experiences serve as even the slightest encouragement for those among you considering an exchange to Indonesia or indeed, anywhere else in Asia. A good friend of mine heads to Japan this week for the next five months to master the language, swelling the ranks of those of us fortunate enough to have both the inclination and the opportunity to build connections in Asia. Pundits and policy wonks from either side of the political divide will likely weigh in over the coming months on Australians studying in Asia – Professor David Hill has hopefully encouraged some momentum on the topic – and no matter what you think of our government, you might as well get while the going is good. They’re not going to pay to send us to Asia forever, so line your gut with liquid wax and join us for some dog. After all it may one day transpire, in a fitting twist of irony, that the cure for Bali belly is a glass or two of kopi klotok…

The First Fortnight

Allāhu akbar…
Ash-hadu al-la ilaha illa llah…
Ash-hadu anna Muħammadu-Rasulullah…
Allāhu akbar…
La ilaha illallah.

So begins each morning. Pak Agus, my landlord, is already wandering freely among the tukang listrik and tukang kayu, Indonesia’s underpaid and overworked blue-collar tradesmen. They’re all smoking, of course, inevitably while fitting in new gas pipes, and such is their devotion to the job that a little torrential rainfall would never deter them from some electrical work. Clad in hoodies, shorts and flip-flops, and earning just RP30,000 a day – a little over three dollars – these guys still smile and chatter on in bahasa gaul (street slang) or gutter Javanese, inevitably while dangling from creaky bamboo scaffolding and stapling cables into the wall.

In the absence of any proper government regulations, however, Indonesians prove themselves to be incredibly resourceful. For all the injury it must cause, watching from the sidelines is a fascinating way to spend one’s time while falling into something of a routine for the first time in weeks.

“So, tell me about Indonesia.”
“It’s life, mate, but not as we know it.”

Breakfast is quick, cheap and nearby. For less than ninety cents, I’ll have an iced tea and special fried noodles at the café down the street and, after profuse thanks in Javanese (”Maturnuwun sanget!”), I’ll usually head back to the kos for a shower and then out and about for the day. We spent our first week in Jogjakarta at the University Club Hotel, located inside the UGM campus, during which we had orientation every day. By day three we were already searching for our kos, the ubiquitous boarding houses peppered along every jalan and gang in Indonesia, and I’m lucky to have found one with Internet. It sits rather cosily between three mosques that, despite their close proximity to one another, can’t quite seem to match their five-a-day calls to prayer (bless them for not even trying). None of us ACICIS lads have air-conditioning or hot water – we’ve dubbed the morning ritual “Kerobokan khususan”, the Kerobokan Special – but we’re slowly learning from that uniquely Indonesian brand of putting up and shutting up.

Whereas Jakarta is a concrete jungle rooted in a swamp and Bali is infested with delinquents sporting Southern Cross tattoos, Jogjakarta is home to a seasonal population of students. Most of them weave on their scooters like dragonflies through the hellish traffic that clogs up every road from Merapi to Malioboro – my friend and pendamping (student helper), Kiky, took me for more than a few spins through the local area in search of a kos, though I’m a little too fond of staying alive to rent one myself. The layout of the city itself is interestingly organic, too. To quote a text message I received this afternoon, regarding dinner plans: “the padang is usually on the right hand side of the road, mate. Seeyou there.” These cafés spring up along the main roads sometime around dusk, serving all manner of local fare for usually less than a dollar, taking up every available inch of pavement so that pedestrians can enjoy dodging cyclists and scooters on the kerbside. By dawn, vampirically, they vanish.

This happy-go-lucky attitude seems to be par for the course in Indonesia. Roads are both poorly designed and badly maintained: unmarked speed bumps (those excellently-named polis tidur, “sleeping policemen”) cause more than a few accidents, as do potholes and open gutters, and the law against riding without a helmet is usually only enforced when the police are in need of some cash. Security checkpoints induce discomfort not because of their thoroughness, but rather the opposite: unless they find a clearly-marked explosive device with a ticking clocked taped to the top, the guards wave through happy shoppers into the mall. A fellow ACICIS’er tells me he saw arc welders in Bandung using sunglasses to “protect” themselves from the sparks: most of them, he says, wind up blind by the age of thirty. I’ll take his word for it.

This week has been occupied by the Herculean task of enrollment, and the forest of paperwork that accompanies it. The resourcefulness that makes anything possible in Indonesia, as far as I’m concerned, can be distilled down to bergotong-royong. Dimas, a local ACICIS staff member and all-round flamboyant party animal, characterized bergotong-royong as “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” – in a typically Indonesian take on matters, however, it’s perhaps better rendered in English as “let’s each scratch each other’s backs, all the time.” It’s essentially a blend of numerous concepts like quid pro quo, good karma and paying it forward. An elderly man befriends you on an international flight, buys you dinner upon arrival and gives you his SIM card? Bergotong-royong. A place to stay courtesy of a random old lady’s relatives in far-flung Bandung? Bergotong-royong. The list – and Indonesia – goes on.

Classes begin next week. I’m taking Arabic, Javanese, International Relations of Europe and three courses dedicated to improving my Indonesian. I’m yet to be sick, I haven’t lost any weight, and I haven’t been robbed, so I’m putting one in the win column for my first two weeks (and my first blog entry) in Indonesia. Phil, the Resident Director, told us about the experiences of an American man who had been living in eternal frustration with the unpredictability of life in Indonesia. His Indonesian wife, determined to school him in the art of patience, had this pearl of wisdom to offer:

“Do you want to be right, or you want to be effective?”

With any luck, insh’allah, I’ll simply survive.