Stress

When Weedy, the local radio DJ, text messaged me on Tuesday, she recommended that this week on her show we discuss “stress.” This might seem like a strange concept coming from a country known more for its lax perception of time than the mental conundrums of the overcommitted suburbanite, but I have noticed that “stress” is an interesting and underappreciated concept here that bundles a variety of symptoms and signs into one oversimplified package.
While staying on the Gili Islands, I met a thirty-five year-old mother of three who had run away from home at age twelve, spent several years in jail, and was now in the process of opening her second beach front bar in paradise. One night over tropical fruity drinks with overflowing umbrellas and twizzle sticks, she described her “stress,” a word used interchangeably across languages. She spoke of bills to pay, kids to look after, and the unavoidable boredom of small island life. Yes, yes, yes, I thought, we all have issues. I get stressed when mangoes from my tree splatter on my driveway, and when my gas tank begins flashing obnoxious warning signs at me. I was getting fed up with her self-deprecation, until she took out her mobile phone-camera and showed me photos of her unconscious on a marble floor, blood streaming from her nose and mouth, a red pool surrounding her head.
“What the hell happened?” I asked
“Oh, you know, so much stress,” she replied, at this point nonchalantly, “so I start to drink much. Two bottles of vodka alone.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Maybe, ya. So I almost die.”
“And who took the photos?”
“My friends.”
“Well, with friends like these…”
“Apa?”
“Never mind.”
Stress. According to the OED, it’s defined as “physical, mental, or emotional strain or tension.” In Indonesia, it’s defined as anything from the proverbial minor headache to attempted suicide.
This prelude made my radio show with Weedy that much more interesting. After fifteen minutes of banter about exercise and keeping a journal to reduce stress, Weedy fielded questions via text message that are automatically relayed into her computer bank. Most of the responses repeated verbatim the recommendations that I had already made – get exercise, keep a journal, be creative, talk to friends, etc. One respondent, though, sent four different text messages, elaborating how he listens to rock music alone everyday after school because he has “stress.” Another, a teenage girl, talked about how she always gets “stress” and eats a lot and sleeps all day. One more respondent replied with a cryptic message about famous people being famous and dying because of “stress.”
In any case, the barrage of slightly off-putting replies got me to thinking on my feet about the Indonesian definition of “stress,” and how one doesn’t really exist here. Many of the respondents indeed were talking about strains or tensions of some sort, but the three mentioned above were definitely getting at something much more sinister. So was the thirty-five year-old mother of three, who came within a hair’s breadth of dying.
I launched into a five minute soliloquy on depression, a term that Weedy and my other co-host, Aji, had never heard about. “Yeah, guys, stress can be stress, or if there’s a lot of stress and it’s really bad and you don’t take care of it, using the ways we talked about earlier, it can turn into something much worse.” If Aji and Weedy’s inquisitive stares were indicative of anything, I thought that I saw a ray of light, that I had gotten through to them. “So the main question we have to ask then, is when does stress become dangerous?”
“Oh, okay, ya, like Kurt Cobain,” replied Weedy. “Maybe I want get depressed also so then I am famous, ya?!”
And that, mercifully, drew our show to a conclusion. “Nick, say hello to anyone listening?”
“Yeah, to all my students at SMA Dua, big up, guys. And Shendi, I know you’re listening because you have absolutely nothing better to do. Keep it easy and don’t stress.”
The “ON AIR” sign switched off, and I received big high-fives from the two pros. “Ya, good broadcast,” said Aji. “Now I go to my wife and children.”

Photos

Caitlin jamming nachos at what must be one of the world's only movie theaters to come with reclining plush chairs, an on-demand butler, and a full selection of top shelf whiskys. Watching the new James Bond flick, Casino Royale, certainly didn't hurt the situation. I'll never watch a movie the same way again. Thanks, Gary!


A prototypical Bu in full-on PJ mode.


Caitlin and her burka-clad counterpart at the airport.


In Jakarta with Caitlin, Layne and Gary at the Dharmawangsa, maybe Jakarta's swankest five-star joint.



Another classic Bu.

Op-Ed

On November 28, 2006, I had the following piece published on the Op-Ed pages of the Jakarta Post.

Why the U.S. must maintain its current strategy in the Middle East
By Nicholas Taranto

This past Wednesday, these pages published an opinion piece entitled “U.S. thirst for oil will keep driving Middle East conflicts.” While many of the author’s points were salient within a certain context, they failed to envision the current situation in the Middle East with the proper long-term geopolitical purview that it warrants. The American presence in Iraq may at the moment seem arbitrary and oil-centered. However, if the U.S. were to end its presence in the Middle East, the region and the world would undoubtedly be much worse off. For those concerned with creating a better and more peaceful future, having a permanent U.S.-led multinational force patrolling the Middle East is of the utmost importance. The end of war is within our historical reach. In order to get to that point though, the U.S. must continue its obligation to bring security and globalization to the Middle East. The following four points show why America can not, should not and will not leave the region anytime soon.
First, if the United States and the rest of the world were not pursuing the massive fossil fuel reserves that exist in the Middle East, the region would be the poorest in the world. Consider what would be of the Middle East if oil had not been discovered there. We could expect a situation similar to, if not far worse, than that of Sub-Saharan Africa. The only product or service that the region produces – and has produced for the past half century – is oil. Without oil and the U.S.-led international presence that follows it, the Middle East would be little more developed than it was a century ago.
Second, Middle Eastern states must begin to use the vast profits they make from fossil fuels to invest in themselves and other exportable goods and services. At this point, limited by Islamic usury laws, almost all of the Arab states’ assets sit inactive in non-interest earning accounts. If this were only several million dollars, it would not be an issue. However, currently over a quarter trillion dollars sit, for all intents and purposes, doing nothing while Middle Eastern states and their peoples stagnate. Aided by the U.S. politico-military machine, that money could be invested in a host of homegrown infrastructure, development, and business projects that would have knock-on effects for decades to come. The U.S. government and American multinational corporations would clearly profit from such a situation. Yet the economic, social, and political benefits derived by the citizens of the Middle East would dwarf the American rewards.
Third, even though many more nations than just the U.S. rely on Middle East oil exports, the U.S. is the keystone supplier of Middle Eastern security. If the U.S. left the region, global oil supplies would most likely sustain themselves for several weeks or even months. However, in a region prone to conflict, the first sign of trans-border animosity in the region would lead to plummeting oil production, which could in turn very easily promulgate a global economic crash. Remove American security from the global equation, and in return you will see international arms races, unchecked defense spending, and mass violence erupting all over the world. The U.S. has the world’s only functional blue water Navy, the world’s largest air force, the world’s most technically advanced weaponry, and the world’s best trained soldiers, meaning the U.S. military can deploy anywhere on the face of the globe in times of crisis. While the U.S. presence in the Middle East is not optimal for anyone, it is most certainly necessary for everyone.
Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, the way that that the U.S. is waging war in Iraq will define peace in this century. After 9/11, the U.S. developed myriad new sets of rules to fight terror. Unfortunately, the American government has done a poor job of describing these rules, not just to its enemies, but to its own citizens and allies too. The U.S. is fighting in the Middle East not just to prevent terror, although that is a goal. The U.S. is also trying to create a new future where all citizens of the world have the opportunity to make their own life decisions, where people don’t have to turn to terrorism because they and their children have no hope. The ultimate goal of globalization is giving hope through opportunities of connectivity. The American model of future peace is a fully integrated, globalized world where the U.S. exports surplus security in exchange for broadening nations’ access to all the resources of the modern world. Let me be clear here: The U.S. will not leave the Middle East until the benefits of globalization have arrived there, and those benefits will not arrive until Middle Eastern rulers acknowledge their peoples’ right to a better life. The U.S. is offering the people of the Middle East economic, political and social security, not only because America wants to see a secure Middle East, but because that is the only way America can remain free.
If you are like most sane individuals, you would rather live in a world of perpetual peace than unpredictable violence. With continued U.S. military support, and sincere commitments of reform and progress from its Arab and Muslim partners, peace in the Middle East can become the reality of our future. No other region besides the Gulf can supply the oil that the emerging world of the twenty-first century demands. No other security force besides the U.S. can provide the region with a veritable measure of safety. The U.S. has made similar efforts before and changed the world for the better. In the name of peace, America must be allowed to stay its course in the Middle East.

The writer recently graduated from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA. He is currently on a Fulbright grant to Madiun, East Java where he teaches English and works with local microfinance organizations.

Jakarta Part Deux

A few weeks ago, a bit of reality crept into my life in Indonesia. Up to that point, most of my time here had been blissfully devoid of any real long-term responsibility. Between travel, teaching, having laptops stolen, and working with my microfinance team, I was hard pressed to focus on any sort of timeframe longer than a few days in the future. When my Aunt Rose e-mailed asking when she should buy tickets, since she only had six weeks left to do so, I told her to chill out – jam karet, babe. However, while grazing through the shelves of books at one of Solo’s English language book stores, it dawned on me that I needed to start making plans for after the Fulbright year ends in June. Staring down the rigid, foreboding cover of the GRE sent me through a spin, albeit a short lived one. Facing the prospect of the real world, I reckoned that grad school wasn’t a bad alternative. As an inveterate slacker of sorts, staying with my head stuck in the books for three more years sounded like a great way to round off my ten months in Indo.
So, the day before Thanksgiving, I left on the train out of Solo, Central Java headed for Jakarta. The plan was to take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) the next day, and then to meet up with some friends for Turkey Day festivities (read: turkey and booze sans turkey). Not at all too thrilled about spending what is by far and away my favorite holiday with a bunch of State Department stiffs in nearby Surabaya for U.S. consular holiday making, I decided to cut my losses and make a little adventure of the test taking rigmarole. The Javanese train system is admired as one of the finest in Asia, and I wanted to give it a shot myself.
The recent proliferation of cheap, safe and high-quality airfare in Indonesia (and the rest of the world) has begun to give the long-distance train market the air of obsolescence that seems to nip at the industry’s heels in both developed and developing nations. Unlike most other things in Indo, the trains actually run on time, if not slightly ahead of schedule. Slightly frumpy train attendants – for lack of a better phrase – dressed in day-glo blue and orange form fitting uniforms dole out pre-boxed meals of luke warm rice and stale potato patties. I was more than happy to spend the day gently swaying from side to side through endless miles of arid cassava fields and rice paddies, crossing over rocky river beds and shabby terracotta hamlets via late 19th century era trestles, stopping momentarily at rural waypoints, where middle-aged ibus in their ubiquitous teddy bear pajama uniforms and flip-flops ply their goods while waddling down the train’s aisle.
As the train sped from rural vistas of brown and burnt fields through dry mountain dells across flat and expansive plains into Jakarta proper, the assorted hallmarks of one of the world’s biggest developing cities became visible through the spider web patterned cracks running across many of the coach’s windows. The slums, shantytowns, mosques, rivers of garbage, grease slicked paddies, slick new housing developments, massive energy and telcom infrastructure, soccer fields of red packed dirt, bench presses with weights made from cement-filled buckets, novels worth of graffiti, and of course, thousands of people from various emerging walks of life on their temporarily muted buzzing and humming motorbikes.
As we pulled into Jakarta, Mr. Bean was interrupted during one of his skits courtesy of “Show on Rail TV,” which had previously been sporadically interspersed with gory advertisements recommending that people heed traffic laws at railroad crossings. I couldn’t figure out who was more grim – Mr. Bean with a tea kettle stuck on his fist, or the small, gray haired man on the TV adds preaching safety and prudence to the backdrop of Muslim chants, clanging bells, and animated gore splattering the screen.
Coming back to Jakarta really does feel to a certain extent like returning home, or at least returning to a place full of fond memories and good friends. Despite the Fulbright officials’ warnings that Jakarta is not Indonesia and Indonesia is not Jakarta, this city in many ways does embody a broader image of Indo. Like any megacity in the world, it harnesses all possible iterations of the human experience – all the hope, optimism, fear, and sadness of a nation, distilled into a bubbling and throbbing mass of wonderfully semi-ordered anarchy.
I got off the train at Gambir, Jakarta’s main hub, and quickly realized that I was right back in the thick of it. No more timid and refined East Javanese villagers, but instead the barked cries of “Hello, Mister! Where you go?” or “You want transport?” hollered with the authority of someone who has been standing in the same place for three years. I descended into the maelstrom of the main atrium, and after exchanging nods with the presiding Polisi Militer, beelined for the Dunkin Donuts – the first franchise I had seen in nearly a month. I ordered a coffee, and let the cashier peer pressure me into an almond donut. I devoured the two meditatively as I watched pretty women with babies, ugly men with no arms, and every iteration of civilization in between pass outside the store’s plate glass windows. I was back.
After my donut disappeared, I made my way out of the station, directly across the street from the national monument, where I previously spent hours and hours on lazy Sunday afternoons walking and talking with people of all stripes. Now, on a late Wednesday afternoon, the monument was empty, save for a few soldiers jogging around the perimeter. The monument is a large and verdant park with a focal point of a massive spire topped with some obscene amount of gold leaf shaped into an enduring torch of freedom or some such nonsense. It was constructed by Sukarno late in his reign, and playing off of the old man’s renowned sexual proclivities, is commonly and comically referred to as “Sukarno’s Last Erection.” I had always been tempted to climb – or ride the elevator, as the case may be – up to the top of the six hundred foot tall unit, but the weekend lines deterred me every time. Now, with the park empty and closing time at hand, I took a leisurely stroll over to the base of the marble monstrosity, where I managed to convince the frumpy female guard with bright red lipstick smeared across her lips and most of her palate to let me through despite it being past closing time. In exchange for her good graces, I was supplicated by her and her male entourage of armed guards for kisses upon leaving, but pretended not to understand. Gross.
After riding the elevator up to the observation deck, I spent a solid hour staring out over the seemingly infinite expanse of Indonesia’s capital city. The Grand Mosque, fifth largest in the world, and its neighbor, Indonesia’s biggest protestant church; the national headquarters for Pertamina, Indo’s oil and natural gas conglomerate; the President’s residence; the U.S. embassy; the national museum; the Javanese Sea visible on the gray, smoggy horizon; and off only a few blocks away, the Hotel Aryaduta, where my great big Indonesian adventure started nearly four months ago.
Attracted as if by some gravitational pull, I descended the Erection and wandered through rush hour traffic until, panting, sweating and covered in the airborne effluence of nearly fifteen million inhabitants, I found myself in the pristine, air conditioned lobby of the place that I called home for over four weeks. The intermingling of dozens of accents and languages was welcomed music to my multicultural sensibilities. Madiun is certainly exotic, but it’s anything but diverse. I never would have thought that being in a room with a Swiss banker, the International Herald Tribune, and a hummus and grilled vegetable panini was the recipe for bliss, but after a swim, a steam room, and another locker room encounter with the flamingly gay Jakartan who attempted to seduce me while I was changing back in August, let me tell you, it was.

While we were staying amidst the four-star splendor of the ‘Dute, room prices were a common Fulbright ETA topic of conversation. It never dawned on me to ask the price of a room while I was there, but now that I needed a place to shack up for the night before taking the GRE, I approached the counter and asked. “Our most affordable room is 550,000 Rupiah, Sir.” Krikey. That’s over sixty bucks. I didn’t even bother to ask about the rooms where we had stayed, which were a step above the most affordable option. All I could mutter was, “Thanks, Uncle Sam.”
Leaving the ‘Dute, I asked Fredie, one of the resident doormen, about recommendations. “Ah, the Formula One is new and cheap, Sir, and is close to where you will be taking your test.” Peachey, thanks Fred. Fredie had remembered me when I entered the building earlier in the afternoon, and throughout my brief stay in the lobby and fitness center, a handful of employees approached me to ask about my health, how teaching was going, and how my various comrades were faring at their respective sites. I felt ashamed that these people knew so much about me, but I couldn’t even place their faces. It certainly felt nice to be remembered, but it was also a lesson in the futility of trying to keep low key.
I followed Fredie’s advice, and a ten minute taxi ride later found myself at the race car-themed Formule1 Hotel – with an “E”, that’s right. The fluorescence was sub-optimal, but the twenty-six dollar price tag would have to suffice, and I was hoping that the beds would be shaped like race cars. Awesome! While the room was clean, new, and adorned with a foot-wide yellow racing stripe over the bed, unfortunately there was no other heyday of racing accoutrement to be found. I consoled myself with several English language publications and a vocab cramming sesh, and drifted off to sleep with images of Miss Sklerew, my octogenarian SAT proctor, zipping around my bed cum test taking station in a 1960s era roadster.

I thought that Jakarta was a pretty grim place my first time here. Nothing, however, compares to the grimness of the megapolis’s city streets after a nice filth generating downpour courtesy of the musim hujan, the rainy season. My first stop was the hotel’s “lobby,” in essence a quasi-guarded door to the street juxtaposed with one of Jakarta’s scores of Starbucks. Even – or maybe especially – at 7AM, the omnipresent chiming of instant message alerts echoed across the hum of caffeinated conversation. A venti latte and toffee muffin in hand (and three bucks later; who honestly pays American prices for coffee in Indonesia? Apparently I as well as hundreds of thousands of yuppified Jakartans do. Somehow that brilliant corporation has branded themselves so well that people buy their sub-standard coffee for up to one hundred and fifty times the street value! It’s just absurd, and absolutely brilliant.) I headed out on to the streets.
I decided to walk from Formule1 to the test center in order to get my blood and gall circulating proper like. The only gall that I successfully generated was the type that comes out of stray dogs and waterborne rats, and in any case, that wound up all over my shoes. Wading over open air cesspools, crossing through muddy construction sites, and leaping over exposed, inestimably deep holes in the sidewalk, I made my way past the Four Seasons out of the posh Kuningan district and into the heart of downtown Jakarta. I expected the Menara Imperium, my GRE location, to be some sort of squat cement complex surrounded by black water and garbage filled moats, similar to so many of the buildings that make up this city. Instead, I was treated to the luxury of a thirty-eight story gleaming edifice of marble and modernity. After another highly caffeinated coffee beverage in the building’s lobby, I made my way up to the twenty-eighth floor. In the elevator, I was surrounded by men and women in ties and skirts. Minus my being the only white person in this building, I could be in any elevator in the world, I thought to myself.
Per usual, jam karet applied in full, and although I had been told to show-up at 8:30AM, no employees appeared until minutes before 9:00, when the test was scheduled to start. In the interim, I struck up a conversation with the only other person in the marble-lined foyer, an attractive twenty-something year-old Indonesian woman, dressed as if she were going to work at some fashionable banking house, not take some lowly standardized test. It turns out that Agni was applying for the exact same schools and programs that I am interested in, namely international development and public policy. As another prototypical Indo coincidox, she was also working in Aceh, where I had spent several weeks on my first trip to Indonesia. Furthermore, the daughter of the parliamentarian from the district that neighbors Madiun, she was born in Indonesia, but raised in Ithaca, New York, where my brother is currently going to college at Cornell. She has studied conflict management in Sweden, and (just when the story gets spicy) she is getting married to an Australian employee of the World Bank in April.
As I sweated bullets through the test – was it supposed to be this hard? – I kept thinking of my competition, seated right next me, divided only by a flimsy cubby. Here we were, from two complexly different and simultaneously similar worlds, taking the exact same test, applying for the exact same programs at the exact same schools. If this isn’t an example of the triumph of globalization, I don’t know what is.
As the three hour computer adaptive test came to an end, I was presented with the choice of canceling my scores, or viewing them instantly. I wavered over the former, concerned with how difficult I found some of the sections, but ultimately, after thinking of the pain in the ass it was to get here – and the $150 test fee – I clicked accept. Completely surprised by how well I had done, I let out a big “HELL YEAH!” and did a full double fist pump while jumping to my feet and knocking over my chair. Way to go, you big, goofy American. Meanwhile, Agni had surreptitiously snuck out of the room, and was waiting for me in the lobby.
Riding high on our recent victories over the standardized machinations of doom, we walked twenty minutes to a nearby Indian restaurant that Agni swears by. Over lassies and simosas, I was overjoyed to speak proper, non-dumbed down, culturally common English with someone who fully grasped the Indonesian perspective, not from a position of temporary contemplation, like mine, but from an irreversible lifetime bond. I hope to see her around Harvard/Hopkins/Columbia/Cornell next year.

Agni and I parted ways – she had to go order her wedding invitations. Before she left though, I asked her for a recommendation as to where I should get my hair cut. Torn between supplications from an ex-girlfriend to regrow my ponytail and the more pressing urgings of my surrogate mom to shear it all off, I was finally caving to Bu Nana’s constant criticism of my shaggy appearance. After a few hours of interneting and another Starbucks hit, I made my way to Plaza Indonesia, one of Jakarta’s biggest malls, and home to several of the city’s most posh female hair salons. Thanks, Agni. For thirteen bucks – an exorbitant sum to pay for a haircut, even by some American standards – I was given the all-star treatment. After informing the receptionist – I kid you not, there was a front office and a very fashionable woman working there – that I wanted a potong rambut, freshly scented pretty ladies whisked me off to the rear chambers, where my mane was cleaned, shorn, and styled.
Halfway through my overhaul, I received a text message from Nelly, the AMINEF-Fulbright co-coordinator and general bearer of bad news. “Nick, I hear you are in JaKARta. You should come to Donna’s house for turkey dinner. Nelly.” Well, if that just wasn’t a splendid offer. I had run away from East Java in an attempt to avoid the State Department types in Surabaya, but after spending the day surrounded by the decadence of contemporary consumer culture and standardized tests, I was starting to revel in the thought of sharing my evening with the centuries-old traditions of gluttony and merrymaking.
After my salon session, looking like the respectable Marine that I always wanted to be, I was ready for the Jakarta embassy crowd and the Thanksgiving festivities that they would be providing. I met Nelly in the lobby of the Dharmawangsa, purportedly Jakarta’s most expensive hotel, where John and I had attended the reception for the Versailles-like wedding back in August (see post). It was a short walk from there to the AMERICAN CLUB, a two-block-square compound consisting of a miniature country club surrounded by the houses of Jakarta’s more prominent American officials and mid- to long-term guests.
Nelly, a self-purported gossip, gave me all the dirt on the other ETAs – unfortunately, there really isn’t anything too exciting, at least not yet. (NB: Last year two of the nine female ETAs got knocked-up over the course of the year. Rumor has it that one of them recently gave birth in the U.S., but that Nelly made the executive decision to deny the would-be father an American visa. I’m just waiting for the day when this year’s version of such a scandalous newsflash comes tearing down the ETA text message chain of command. I’ve got bets going with myself to see who the first one will be…). We arrived at the compound, a fifteen-foot tall metal and cement wall topped with barbed wire, and Nelly greeted one of the guards with, in Bahasa Indonesia, “Well oh my, Pak, aren’t you looking FAT!” Just one example of the cultural callousness that may have eventually led the female ETAs to seek the sanctuary of an illicit affair – I’m not condoning the act(s), but I can understand that the impulse comes from more than just a heightened and under-exercised libido. But I digress.
Inside the gates, Nelly and I were greeted by a chirpy pair of Fulbright grantees – not in the ETA program – who made savage attempts at telling Nelly comic anecdotes in Bahasa Indonesia. Let’s just get inside the house and do what we came here to do, ladies. While waiting at the door for what seemed like twenty minutes, I zoned out on their conversation about taxis, and made a visual inspection of the place. Inside the compound, neat and spacious one story houses surrounded the country club core. Each house had its own garage, garden and screened-in porch. The houses and gardens all seemed to run together, and it seemed if, especially considering the type of people whom I had met at the embassy, privacy and personal space might be issues.
Donna, a regional officer of some sort (and evidently a big-enough-wig to merit a government funded house), eventually came to the door and welcomed us into her home. The first thing I noticed was the mouth watering aroma of homecooked food. Now, I have eaten pretty damn well since coming to Indonesia. I may have lost a bit of weight, but that’s never such a bad thing. The food here is by and large delicious and plentiful, and wherever I go someone tries to shove some new snack or meat product down my throat. However, walking into that house and being bombarded by that aromatic mountain of olfactory goodness was like taking a space-warp to my Mom’s kitchen. I had visions of golden brown turkey, small geological formations of mashed potatoes and stuffing, caramelized carrots, big fat pumpkin pies, and all the other trappings of the best holiday ever. I was instantaneously happy with my decision to forsake my status of cool aloofness in favor of this veritable cornucopia.
Guests continued to arrive, a few of whom I actually knew, including two other ETAs. The awkwardness of random introductions was alleviated with the opening of beer and wine, as I simultaneously became more and more interested in the research of the other Fulbright Seniors, one of whom was looking at local legal reforms in Aceh. The food was brought out on large, steaming platters, but even the gnashing of perfectly cooked turkey couldn’t suppress the room bubbling with conversation. In a room full of good people, delicious food, and a sizeable wine collection, I may have been 3,000 miles and twelve time zones away from my family, but I was certainly giving thanks.

Some Recent Photos

Whitey and some tough Indo military bros at a local wedding.



My Indonesian keluarga (family), the bride and groom, and THIS DUDE at a traditional Javanese wedding. From Left to Right: Random Bu, Bu Nana (my "Mom"), Demos (my "BRO"), Hana (my "SIS"), scary Indo military husband Bro, his beautiful but timid new wife, Dismas (my other "BRO," one letter subtraction and a one letter replacement from "Dumas"), Pak David (my "Dad" and the master of girlish laughgter), Gigantor White Dude (read: me), some other Random Bu. Front Row: Dennis (the 13 y/o menace of my Indonesian existence. Love that kid.)



Bu Nana, Hana, and a really huge white dude in need of a haircut



My next door neighbors and suppliers of my six-a-day diet of Pocari Sweat, the local take on Gatorade.



Weedy (from the radio station) and me (in only slightly less menacing form)

Bush in ‘da House!

It seems like the biggest news to hit Indo this week – besides the story of the “Real Batman” in Radar Madiun – is that George W. Bush will be gracing the capital with his presence today. Granted, he will only be here for six hours between visits to more geopolitically strategic or tumultuous places like China, Japan, and India, but still, it has all of my friends, most of my co-workers, and nearly every motorcycle mechanic that I meet brimming with pride.
Every TV channel is playing clips of protesters burning American flags around the archipelago, and my opinions on Mr. Bush’s politics have become the teachers’ new favorite pastime at SMAN 2, the local school where I work. I tell the teachers that for US$12,500, the sum that I will receive during my year as a Fulbright grantee, America could have alternatively bought four-and-a-half M-16s in Iraq. I ask them, in Bahasa Indonesia, what they think about that, and they laugh – the prototypical Javanese reaction to the uncomfortable. He is the leader of the Free World, and I do carry a passport from his country, but most of the time it seems to me that we just live in different worlds.

Live and Learn

When I first realized that my laptop had been stolen, I felt like I had woken up in an iced bathtub to find that my left kidney had been surreptitiously removed. I was horrified and in shock. My encounter was as novel as a newborn, even though I have been robbed twice before, both times also in interestingly frustrating situations. My first encounter with the thieving class (or at least their aftermath) occurred on a train ride from Prague to Bucharest while I was studying in the Czech Republic. I fell asleep seated upright with my bag between my legs, and I woke up with my bag still between my legs, but with my iPod, Nikon digital SLR, three Nikon lenses, and my sunglasses gone – estimated loss, $3,200. Fortunately, all the good’s were covered under my Dad’s homeowners’ insurance, and I was able to file a sizable claim, which I used to buy a new set of black and white Nikon photo equipment. In turn, while I was rock climbing in Little Cottonwood Canyon on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, that Mormon bastion of blondeness, skinny ties, and purported ex-urban fuelled safety, my car had its back window smashed, and all of my camera gear stolen, again. My two buddies and I drove around Arizona, Wyoming, and Utah for the next two weeks with a poncho duct taped to the window, until my Dad came to the rescue – not for the first time, and certainly not for the last – when he insisted that we get the mess fixed, on his tab, before making the three thousand mile return across country.
Most people that I know have had a run-in with some sort of major robbery. The general sentiment seems to be unequivocal – it sucks. Being robbed in a place like Hungary or Indonesia, where you know from the outset that your chances of recovering the goods are negligible, only adds insult to injury. I have been riding economy busses, time permitting, since I arrived in Indonesia three months ago. With the preconceived desire to “mingle with real people,” I thought that riding the four-hour, dollar-twenty bus to my microfinance project in Solo was a good idea. I, however, forsook the first, boldfacd rule in the book – NEVER FALL ASLEEP WHEN RIDING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION – and wound-up going through an eerily and frustratingly similar situation to that which I had in Eastern Europe. I woke-up to find my bag opened and my beautiful, pristine, and quite frankly sexy Macintosh Power Book gone.
After going through the trauma and self-debasement of the remainder of the bus ride, I still had to go through the truly epic rigmarole of filing insurance papers with the local police – a country specific rite of passage that I learned in the pirogi scented and cigarette filled halls of a minor police station in downtown Budapest. I met my friend and co-worker Akbar at the station in Solo, where after recounting my bad news, he whisked me off to the police en route to our project site. Before arriving at the station, he contacted his local shaman, who stayed in touch with us for the next few hours. The shaman’s initial reading on the matter was “If you feel very bad about this, the computer is probably gone.” Thanks, Doc.
The apathy with which civil employees do their jobs seems to remain universally constant across the first, (formerly) second, and third worlds. (Please pardon the throwback to the days of non-alignment, although judging from recent reports from Cuba, some loony dictators and assorted other ragamuffins seem to imagine the system alive and well. On a tangential note, the term “non-aligned” – and the stratification of developed democracies, communist entities claimed by the USSR, and the others belonging to the inauspicious “third world” – was branded here in Indonesia in the city of Bandung in 1956 where the inaugural Asia-Africa Conference was held. Right.)
At the regional police station in Solo, I spent the four remaining hours of Friday afternoon filing insurance claims and observing with horror and fascination as the gears of sub-provincial bureaucracy creaked into motion. As one officer copied my information from various official documents to his computer, the rest of the force peered over his shoulder, only contributing help in any way when the ashtray began to overflow. The incomprehensibly epic task of copying my name, address, and birth date was extended even further after we were informed that the printers downstairs were not working, and that my information would have to be transcribed to paper, whereupon it would be reentered upstairs, where the printers were purportedly working.
Frustrated to the point of anger by the whole ordeal, I left the smoky office and joined my acquaintances from KOMPIP (the Javanese NGO with which I work) outside in the main foyer. The building was surprisingly modern, well-maintained and clean. A replica model of the complex was showcased in the middle of the hall, and I spent a good half hour wondering why blonde plastic miniatures would ever be playing tennis at the police department’s neighboring sporting complex – oh, the trials and tribulations that plague great minds. As developing techno echoed down the marble hallways, a pair of uniformed officers came striding by. As one of them sized me up, I noticed that his black patent leather boot was trailing a streamer of toilet paper. He followed my gaze, and embarrassedly clutched at his foot as he lengthened his stride.
Upstairs, once my data had been successfully re-re-rendered, I was sat down in front of a barefoot, heavyset man in a loose fitting casual shirt. As he prompted me for questions regarding the time, place, and location of the robbery (in Bahasa Indonesia), I couldn’t help but stare at the massive sweat stains forming under his armpits and manbreasts. He was a true prototype of humanity.
As the sun dropped behind the surrounding hills and rice paddies, the five of us left the police station and made our way to the microfinance site. The shaman was still in contact with Akbar, and was now claiming that I had actually left my computer in Surabaya – East Java’s largest city – despite the fact that I hadn’t been there in over three weeks. Akbar offered more practical advice, and told me that there was a ten percent chance that he could track down the laptop. If you’re going to have a piece of expensive electronics stolen from you in Central Java, there are few people you’d rather be with than the members of KOMPIP, a smattering of people well connected in the criminal world due to their work with the disenchanted and poor of the region. I gave Akbar a weak smile, but didn’t put much hope in his offer. Even after my Dad convinced me to offer a US$200 reward on the black market, I knew that there was little hope for getting back the machine. I lost all of my grad school applications, all of my photos from Indonesia, and much of my recent writings and ruminations.
Live and learn – and back-up your F-ing hard drive – so they say.

Make the World a Sillier Place

Note: Please pardon all of the recent text. Internet connection has been slow, and my laptop was recently stolen. More info to follow shortly...

I spent today’s class in what is euphemistically called the language lab. While the room is equipped with all the trappings of a technologically advanced language retention center - gobs of electro gadgets, individual cubbies, headphones, pro-quality speakers, a computer, a big screen TV - it drove home, yet again, just how preposterously silly this country and the large majority of its inhabitants truly are. As Michael Jackosn’s “Heal the World” blared over the sound system, rattling the windows with what seems to be a nationwide pandemic case of uncalibrated bass, the students were asked to stand at their desks and tell their memorized life ambitions to the other forty members of the class. With their odd pronunciation and even more bizarre cadence, I usually have enough trouble understanding the students. But with MJ shrieking the background, I had trouble deciphering anything.
As I became more and more perturbed, fidgeting in my chair in an attempt to escape the aural trauma that was quickly driving me towards the depths of a Neverland-fuelled fantasy of driving myself into a wall on a panda-themed rollercoaster, I couldn’t help but notice that the other forty-some-odd functional humans in the room seemed to be oblivious to the cacophony surrounding them, if not reveling in the chaos. Indonesians have an incredible gift of being able to just shut-out the surrounding world. This comes with perks and drawbacks. For one, it allows massive groups of individuals to sit through never ending speeches, proclamations, and totalitarian blessings of progress and prosperity, the last of which had to be retooled for a contemporary lexicon of “freedom and democracy” with the fall of Suharto eight years ago. Unfortunately, the knack for blocking out reality also comes with drawbacks, such as an inability to follow rules of the road, a penchant for apparently enjoying epic government office lines, and an oblivious approach to all measure of taste in both volume and quantity of horrible, gut-wrenching, truly torturous developing world techno (DWT) music. I should really devote an entire blog to DWT, the phenomenon certainly warrants one.
To illustrate the point, some students were standing at their desks playing with large leaves, others were tooling with the electronics panels in front of them, while still others were locked on my person with a stare of death that I couldn’t shake even after I had matched their slack-jawed awe with what I reckoned to be my silliest grin. In the middle of all this, as one lanky, acne pocked boy was talking about how he wants to join the army to “front free from my country and must kiss parents,” the reigning teacher, Pak Suhartono, a man in his late-50s with large bifocals and an unkempt mustache, raised himself from his desk, went to the closet, and removed a very large, very obscene feather duster.
The device was made from what appeared to be, and after closer inspection definitely was, rooster plumes. As Pak pussyfooted around the class dusting the students’ desks, anarchy continued to develop in pockets of body-odor and hair-gel scented revolt. Well, perhaps “revolt” here is the wrong word since it implies that the group doing the revolting is raging against some sort of authority, whereas in this case, the authority was no more threatening than Mary Poppins. At random intervals, squeaky-voiced boys would anonymously shout “I love you!” into the ether at no one in particular, in an attempt to achieve I’m not sure exactly what.
Halfway through the class, Pak Poppins handed out sheets with partially completed Michael Jackson lyrics, and I was treated to another symphony of student-led Heal the Worlds. As I sat at my lectern perspiring like a well-fed Dutch colonialist, Pak rummaged through papers and the students bobbed their heads and sang along while waving their arms above their heads in the universal call sign of the burgeoning hippie. Outside the classroom, under a sweltering one hundred and four degree sun, the remainder of the nation pursued its path towards making this world a sillier place, one off-pitch and mispronounced step at a time.

Pretty Women

A few nights ago, I got home from my daily workout session at Klub Bali Center Fitness dan Kolma Renang (swimming pool) around 7:30, and I found myself inescapably bummed out. The feeling had been gnawing at me for the past few days, and I guess to a certain extent, it was to be expected – I had just returned from a month of holiday to some of the world’s most intriguing and wonderful places, and now I was sitting alone in my palace of fluorescence, jamming peanut M&Ms down my gizzard by the handful. I was staring at my still-blank white walls, contemplating how I should go about hammering nails into the quasi-cinderblock substance they consist of, when my buddy Shendi sent me an SMS (text message): “What’s up bro? have u a plan for tonight?” As a matter of fact, I was planning on settling down behind “Verandah of Violence: The Background to the Aceh Problem”, but the thought of sitting alone on my floral print sheets reading summaries of eighteenth century Dutch military travails quickly began to lose its appeal. Instead, I told Shendi that we should go investigate Fire Club, Madiun’s only disco and liquor-serving establishment.
Lo and behold, twenty minutes before Shendi was supposed to arrive, my membantu (literally ‘helper’ but used to mean housekeeper) and surrogate mom Bu Nana decided to make an unscheduled visit to clean my house – why she would do that at nine o’clock on a Saturday night, I will never know. She doesn’t like me going out after 9:00PM, so Shendi and I were forced to keep our rabble rousing low key, for the time being. We hung around the house for a while and watched “Pretty Woman” on the as-of-yet unused TV that I bought nearly two months ago. When your time is occupied with modern-day tales of Islamic woe and self-taught Bahasa Indonesia lessons, there is nary a minute left in the day for the cultural riffraff of the American hoi polloi. We both did, however, enjoy watching a young and vibrant Julia Roberts strut about Rodeo Drive in her uniform of the night.
After Bu Nana left, we took off on Shendi’s motorcycle for Fire. To sum things up, my time there answered a few of the more pressing questions that have been running through my mind regarding Madiun and Islamic culture more generally. As we walked in through the main door, it took me a few minutes to grow accustomed to the smoky darkness inside the club. A pretty, scantily clad girl in go-go boots was singing on stage, and as my eyes adjusted, I saw groups and individual men sitting at small tables with drinks in their hands, staring silently at the girl on stage. Towards the back of the room, crowds of even more scantily clad women lingered and mingled together in small flocks, lasciviously eyeing Shendi and me as we walked to a table at the far end of the room.
“Wait, so Shendi, these ‘pleasure girls’, as you call them, aren’t hookers, but you’re supposed to pay them to sit at your table and have drinks with you?”
“Yes,” he replied, as if that made total sense. “Maybe sometime you get hand phone number and call maybe. But is very dark in here.”
As the singer left the stage and the Manchester United versus Portsmouth game fired up on the projection screen, a twenty-something year-old woman in tight jeans and a low-cut, spaghetti strap shirt approached our table. After unsuccessfully trying to communicate with me – the blare of developing world techno had destroyed any chance for proper conversation, and was giving me a pulsing headache on top of it – she sat on Shendi’s lap and laughed as she twirled her heavily perfumed hair. She got up and left some minutes later, and sauntered back to the bar.
“So what was that about?” I enquired of Shendi.
“Oh, she just a friend from high school,” even in this pitch black room, I could see the smile creeping across his lips. “But now she work here.”
Interesting.
After another twenty minute bombardment from the heavily amped sound system, I told Shendi that I had to leave. Several middle aged men were dancing like seahorses on methamphetamines, clutching at their female escorts as the high pitched screech of the currently popular dangut style techno reached a crescendo. My head was pounding, and even the dimly lit, scantily clad, pretty women couldn’t ameliorate the menace of highly syncopated bass lines. “Ok, bro, we go see my friends.”
After a short motorcycle ride we found four of Shendi’s close friends, some of whom I had met before, at their favorite local haunt, sprawled around a bamboo table drinking whisky cokes and eating bits of fried tempe. As Rocky IV spilled from the overhead TV, the guys talked with me about iPods, masturbation, Jews, the ever popular Free Sex, and how many bottles of Jack Daniels I could stomach. We left at 1:30AM, and Shendi dropped me off at home.
To make a vast and perhaps painfully broad generalization: The vast majority of people in the non-radicalized Muslim world share the same impulses, desires, and aspirations as anyone from any number of strata in the modern, secularized portion of the world. Here, however, many of those impulses must be confined to the fantasy of a dark corner and a devious rendezvous. As I drifted off to sleep on top of my floral sheets, I was alone again, but I had a smile on my face and a head full of thoughts (and pretty women) to keep me curious.

Grammatically Incorrect Dreams

Today’s class, the first since we went on break for Ramadan nearly a month ago, was focused on the students’ dreams and career goals. While many of the blooming adolescents spouted the normal idealistic aspirations of sixteen year olds, I was surprised by how many had seemingly well structured plans to become doctors, economists, policemen and the like. Considering how perpetually disjointed all facets of life normally are here, reading over tangible and oftentimes very realistic and highly motivated goals and plans was a bit startling. I particularly liked the following entry:
“A police woman, ah that’s a piece of cake job I have known. The job is a sparkling easiest thing that always makes me a top woman in this year. The uniform, the saxophone, the whistle, the weapon, the shoes and the sirene, they are for me. I was born for those. I had known that from my grandma, that’s my curse. Yeah, to be a top police woman. When my legs moving, there are many eyes watches my steps. They become because of my perform. Honestly, it makes me bore but how could I bear it. So far, I know they are my stupid fad I have ever met. When I drive my horse, I mean my car, everyone will say ‘Morning miss’ or ‘Hey that’s a really miss universe but in police woman edition.’ Honestly, I really like this life.”
Maybe that wasn’t the best example of realistic and tangible, but it certainly put a smile on my face! Well over half the students expressed interest in becoming doctors. Reasons for said career path included “I want to be it because I want help everybody out from their troubles,” “I will be happy and enjoy because I always work in room with AC,” and “Because I want my parents happy and proud me.”
Most ended their paragraph or two with a supplication of some sort, like “I think enough about my dream, help me if you are praying” or “I want all my family are blessed by Allah and there live peacefully with all Moslem in heaven. May Allah bless us. Amin.”
I also particularly liked this composition:
“Like other girls, I have a dream. It is to become a steward. Because I think that steward always to be seen beautiful, clever, and have inner beauty. The manner of her speak is very sweet and dainty. Usually the steward is very confident too. The steward is very neat in her appear from clothes to hair fashion.
“But to become a steward is not easy. We must can speak many languages. Besides of that, our healthy is the factor to become steward too. The steward also must to manage the anger and must be confident to everyone.
“But become the steward is very attractive. We can fly like a bird although by plane. So, we can revolve the world. The traveling to abroad is very attractive. Beside of that, the task of the steward is very easy. It is serve the strange sitter. And the salary of steward is not little. Because I love travel and money. So, I want to become a steward.”
After the students finished reading their essays aloud, they swarmed around me to collect their papers, graded by the other teacher. While being mobbed by noisome, body odor drenched students, I reflected and found it ironically poignant to be sitting there in a sweltering, poorly ventilated class, handing back these kids’ grammatically incorrect dreams.