The Real Sickness of Official Dumb

Jakarta's so-called "officials" have taken to making people lie in a coffin in public, in addition to a $29 fine, for not wearing a mask in public.  Not only are these bozos and buffoons completely clueless about the studies and science regarding the use of mask - and likely being paid by WHO and other NGOs to promote this crap - they are relishing their imaginary power.

Since blasphemy is still a crime in Indonesia, punishable by jail sentences up to 2 years, it is now appropraite to counter-charge these noneheads for their profound lack of faith in Allah's mercy, wisdom and grace.  Forcing folks to wear masks and take medical treatments flies in the face of Allah's Great Plan for Humanity, and they are thus blasphemous.

If they can throw the former governor Ahok in jail for nothing more than quoting the Koran, then this is much, much worse.

Jakarta Riots 22 May 2019

Living Dangerously, Again

This month saw the swearing-in of Jakarta's newest governor, Anies Baswedan.  At least once or twice in the ensuring weeks, Anies has declared Jakarta to once again be in the hands of the pribumi, or pre-colonial, people.  One must assume that Anies is either deliberately inciting trouble, or he is woefully ignorant of Indonesian law and history.  In the eyes of some commentators, he is both.

It is the habit of some demagogues here to declare that Indonesia is (once again) Muslim in a kind of "tent revival" analogue to the waves of Sillyanity that sweep the US on occasion.  Anies is one of them, and has made noises of allowing Islamic prayer in the governor's mansion, a proposition I am not entirely opposed to, as long as the Christians, Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists, and Taoists are allowed the same facility.  There are, in fact, six contitutionally-protected religions in Indonesia.

When I hear these demagogues rail about the colonial days and how this is a Muslim country in the same breath, it makes me laugh.  That has got to be one of the most ridiculous assertions an educated person can hear, at least here.

The name Jakarta is a conflation of two Javanese words: jaya and karta.  The term jaya karta can be translated as "city of prosperity," and was coined sometime in the 17th century.  The city's most direct lineage traces back to the Hindu Kingdom of Sunda, which dominated western Java for centuries. 

Arab invades colonialized a significant part of what is now western Indonesia and Malaysia, coming both directly from the Arabian peninsula and via conquests in India.  The invaders brought Islam with them and forcefully subjected any peoples they met along the way, demanding adherence to Islam or offering death.

By the mid-1600s, Islam had conquered much of eastern Java (the Jawa kingdoms), but the Sunda had put up quite a fight, preferring their native religion - a variant on Hinduism - to the harsh rule of the Islamic invaders. 

At roughly the same time, Portugal "discovered" the archipelago in its quest to control the spread of Islam and find new trade.  The natural wealth of the islands, both in things like gold and the unusual array of spices and flavors of food, with a year-round growing season, as well.  The Portuguese and Sunda king made common cause against Islam, and the Portuguese fleet needed a safe port in the area, as well. 

The first treaty ever executed between powers in Europe and the islands was done here in Jakarta in the late 1600s, memorialized on a large carved stone that was only recently recovered during a construction project in the old city.    It details an agreement between the Sunda king and Portugal, whereby the fleet would receive safe port while they helped to defend the Sunda from the Jawa/Islam invaders.  Elements of Portugal's presence are still found in northern Sulawesi and Ambon, Flores, and Timor L'Este, where the wholly different culture of Portuguese architecture and lifestyle led to bloody suppression and the deaths of hundreds of thousands when Indonesia tried to force Islam on the eastern half of the island.

As a bonus fact, Timor L'Este is just the words for "east" in the local language and Portuguese.  The name literally means, "East East."

A very long story short, the archipelago has roughly 1,000 inhabited islands, out of about 17,000.  Some of the islands have been inhabited since Hono Erectus took up digs here, well over a million years ago.  We can't forget the Flores people, too, who are commonly referred to as the Hobbits.  If recent discoveries and research bear out, there are pyramids here in West Java that are 20,000 years old, on top of all else.

Since the dawn of humanity, wave after wave of people from all over Asia have colonized these islands.  Aboriginals in Australia either came through here on their way south, or more controversially, worked their way north.  Some research says people from Taiwan were the first modern humans here.  The Chinese and Arabs have had a go at it.  Most recently, Europe, Japan, Britain, and the US have all had their hands in the resources found lying about the place.

For any group of the hundreds of cultures found across the archipelago to claim pribumi status is thus demagoguery or just plain, unvarnished ignorance.

In 1965, the Year of Living Dangerously, Jakarta had its first Christian governor, Henk Ngantung.  He was deposed by the coup d'etat that unseated President Soekarno.  Jakarta had its second Christian governor in Ahok, who was deposed this year after being railroaded for blasphemy only because he is a Christian of Chinese descent.  This led to the election of Anies, who has declared a victory for Islam.

This is dangerous talk, Pak Anies.  Every time it has happened before, a lot of people died.  Furthermore, there are SIX protected religions in the Constitution, not to mention dozens of ancient and indigenous religions practiced across the archipelago.

Are we headed for yet another Year of Living Dangerously?  Or perhaps the goal is more localized, along the lines of the 1998 Riots, or perhaps Timor L'Este?  Fascism is born of intolerance, and is no stranger to Indonesia.

This is a republic, Pak Anies.

Yet Another Flood Of A Lifetime

I

f you are one of those people who likes to stand in front of a bus and complain when you get run over, then you won't like what I am about to say.

I am a native Houstonian and a transplant Jakartan.  Both cities are now and have always been prone to floods.  The cities are built on river deltas, which attracted people because the soil was so rich and fertile from...get this...the flooding.  In the 40-odd years I lived in Houston, I saw five "floods of a lifetime."  In the ten years I have lived in Jakarta, I have seen three epic floods.

In a nutshell, if you live in one of these cities and complain about flooding, then you are an idiot.  Sorry to be so blunt, but it is a fact of life that has never and will never change.

When I lived in Houston, I always lived in areas that never flooded.  They were the highest points in the city and everyone who had lived in Houston for any length of time know which areas are prone to flooding and which aren't.  Same with Jakarta.

I chose the area of Jakarta, where I live now, based in part on topographical maps, and part on local wisdom.  This area is often surrounded by flooding, making it difficult to get in or out, but my house is always high and dry.  The same can be said of the neighborhoods that I lived in, in Houston.

Last night, I was watching various coverage of the Houston mess and heard on man being interviewed on a local "news" cast.  "This is the third time my house has been flooded and I think it's time to do something about it," he declared emphatically.

Hey, stupid idiot, I found myself thinking, move somewhere else, preferably out of the flood plain.

I lived in Houston during Carla, Alicia, Allen, Allison, two back-to-back storms in 1973 whose names I don't remember, and others that had no names.  Every single one of them caused the "flood of a lifetime."  Every single one of them caused flooding in the same areas of the city - primarily east and south of the city, which amazingly is where most of the flooding is right now.

Much has been made of TeeVee station KHOU coverage, where they had to move the broadcasts upstairs due to the lower floor being flooded.  This is the fourth time I distinctly remember that happening.  The station's offices are on the banks of Buffalo Bayou, which floods every time someone flushes a toilet.  It is surrounded with flood gates.  It has had an emergency studio upstairs for decades for just this reason.

The real tragedy here is not the flooding.  That has been going on long before any of us can remember, and will continue long into the future.  The tragedy is the sheer number of people standing in front of a bus complaining about being run over.

While I don't take the loss of life lightly, nor the personal loss experienced by many people who belongings are floating in a swamp right now, I have to reiterate the statement by the man on TeeVee.
"This is the third time..."

I have seen well over a dozen major floods, in Houston, Jakarta, New Orleans, and along the Gulf Coast and across Indonesia.  In every case, the floods occur in places where flooding is common and expected.  In every case, people move into the areas because, gee-shucks, it hasn't flooded in a long time there...maybe even a lifetime.

The upshot is, if you live in a flood-prone area, build to reflect that obvious fact.  If you live in an earthquake-prone area, build to reflect that obvious fact.  If you live next to a volcano, don't come bitching to me because there's lava in your living room.  And for God's sake, stop asking taxpayers to bail you out every time your lack of forethought gets you in trouble.

While I mourn the loss of life and feel a sense of loss for those who have lost property, I hardly find it a tragedy.  The tragedy is that humans apparently refuse to learn from history, geography and meteorology.

I'm sure the residents of Pompeii and Herculaneum were shocked by the devastation wrong by Mount Vesuvius, but which of us hasn't thought that they were idiots for living on the flank of an active volcano?

I suppose that if Americans are willing to bail out college-educated banksters who took excessive risks and lost, then they are willing to bail out folks who live in a swamp in a hurricane-prone area.  It doesn't change the fact that at some point, people need to take personal responsibility for their actions and choices.

If I can move to flood-prone Jakarta, a city I had never been to before living here, and be able (with a little research and forethough) find a section of town to live in that doesn't flood, I know everyone else can do it, too.

Yes, we call it Common Sense, but it is far from common.

Both Sides Against The Middle

The insanity continues apace.

Here in Jakarta, it has taken an especially hard twist.  In the recent governor election, incumbent Ahok lost to challenger Anies.    What makes it a highlight of global insanity is that the winner ran on a religious platform, saying that Ahok ( a Christian of Chinese descent) was unfit to govern because the Koran says that Muslims cannot be subordinate to non-Muslims.  He, of course, completely misinterprets the lines in question while at the same time accusing Ahok of blasphemy for a statement that has been categorically shown to be false.  Even the Minister of Religious Affairs said that Ahok's comments were mistranscribed - probably on purpose - to discredit the reformist governor.

Where it gets really fun is that Ahok came into office as Vice Governor to the current president, Jokowi.  When Jokowi won the presidency, Ahok ascended to Governor and subsequently won re-election.  Ahok has been roundly praised for cleaning up Jakarta, clearing out slums, upgrading the mass transit system, and rooting out corruption.  Indeed, though many people grumble about actually having to follow the law now, the city has improved quite a bit in the past five years.

Anies, on the other hand, is allied with Prabowo, a man widely seen as corrupt and desperate to take the presidency for himself (he lost to Jokowi in a hotly contested election two years ago).  In the time honored tradition, the ruling political parties raid the State treasury for funds to drive political campaigns, only Ahok has put a triple lock on the Treasury door, with one of the keys being held by the KPK, or Corruption Eradication Commission.  This means all expenditures must be approved by the use of three separate passwords, whith the governor holding only one.

Anies ran on a religious platform, but many people view him as a return to the bad old days of rampant corruption in the Regional government.  Despite Anies wearing his religion on his sleeve, photos made the rounds of social media of drunken parties following his victory - a scandal.  Anies also used a State helicopter to tour his domain, something that Ahok and Jokowi have both eschewed during their tenure, preferring to endure the same traffic issues everyone else does.

Ahok has gone one further now.  During the campaign, Anies adopted a "me too" echo chamber, saying that he would do anything Ahok promised to clean up the city.  This included shutting own one of the most notorious night spots in the city.

To understand the subtleties of this particular challenge, one must understand that the military is widely viewed as having an iron-fist grip on the country's drug trade, and Prabowo (major supporter of Anies) is a former general in the army.  Thus, the gauntlet that has been thrown is a challenge to Anies' loyalty and honesty in a very interesting and low-key manner.

In other developments, food stalls have been returning to areas previously cleared out by Ahok, who thought sidewalks should be uncluttered for pedestrian comfort and safety - a novel idea in Indonesia, where food vendors take advantage of public spaces for rent-free operations.  Also, public employees, who have been forced to punch a clock and actually perform their duties under Ahok, are starting to show up late or not at all for work.

Naturally, a great number of people, who have enjoyed the modernization and efficiency introduced under Ahok, are just a bit worried about what's to come.

There is no doubt now that Prabowo and his Gerindra party will launch another major offensive during the 2020 presidential campaign.  The governor of Jakarta is generally acknowledged as a major stepping stone to national leadership

In effect, this all appears to be a strong political assault on Indonesia's populist revolt, which began in 2010, and a return to the oligarchical rule of yesteryear.

Though this counter-revolt is dressed in all the finery of religious zealotry, it is actually the front of a major shift in Indonesia's demographic composition.  The country's middle class explosion of the past 20 years has allowed an entire generation of Indonesians to be educated overseas.  Combined with the internet and social media, they have become increasingly enamored of truly open and democratic societies elsewhere.

This new generation is much more lenient on drugs (especially marijuana), less controlled by religion, and are far more affluent than even their parents could have imagined.

In other words, it is a mirror of the 1960s, and even more so of the Millennials among their Western counterparts.  In a country where Islam has dominated the social and political landscape for centuries, this is a direct and existential threat to the Powers That Be.  The old control buttons and levers aren't working and they are trying to clamp down to retain their privileged positions.

The problem is, Indonesians are growing accustomed to having disposable income and being able to travel abroad and shop for prestigious brands and drive their own cars, as only the richest folks could do just a short time ago.

Jokowi and Ahok are the crest of a huge wave of change coming to Indonesia, and Anies and Prabowo are the breakwaters trying desperately to slow the tide.  It is the classic case of the rock and the hard spot, with a large, sparkly diamond of middle class affluence resting tenuously in between.

Though it hasn't risen to the level of prominence that the Trump and Le Pen candidacies have, Indonesia's power struggle is nonetheless significant, as it is the premier economy of Southeast Asia.  It is significantly tied to other economies, like Sourth Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines, all of which are on center stage in the massive tug-of-war between the East and West.  The West would obviously feel more secure with an Indonesia that is socially backward and mired in internal corruption.

If Indonesia were to become a major player in regional politics, as it easily could with its vast natural wealth, it would likely align more tightly with China - a prime trading partner - than with Western interests.

Enter Mike Pence, the US Vice President, who recently visited Indonesia.  Coincident with his visit (ahem), Freeport-Macmoran secured an export license that has been in bureaucratic limbo for years pending the outcome of various major lawsuits.  Freeport operates some of the largest gold mines in Indonesia and it isn't hard to imagine the Veep promising to buy up the exports to keep them out of Chinese hands, not to mention the silver and other strategic raw materials that are a bonus of gold mining.

No matter how you slice the pie, things are getting rather interesting here in the archipelago, not just because of the imminent threat to and by North Korea, but also because of the ideological clash that is shaping up in these parts.  Witness Duterte's rather blatant threats against Islamic terrorists in recent days.

For those tracking the political tides of the world, Indonesia bears a close watch, as the incoming Anies administration in Jakarta will be a bellwether of currents in the entire region.  The major concern to Western interests is keeping a strong relgious influence over this government and preventing Indonesia from joining the Shang Hai Accord countries (BRICS).  Indonesia's wealth would greatly benefit the BRICS, and Indonesia itself would benefit from cheaper loans, better trade deals and infrastructure support from China and Russia.

That giant sucking sound is a helluva lot of people holding their breath.

Oui Oui Monsoon

It's another of those lovely tropical monsoon mornings, when the rain and lightning have gone on all night and one discovers all the leaks in the roof that formed during the dry spell.  As is typical of these types of things, the leaks form directly over or next to the most valuable electronics in the house, in this case the laptop and the cable converter box which delivers my outside link to the world at large.

Contrary to common misconceptions, the monsoon rarely involves torrential downpours.  Instead, it rains steadily for days with only occasional breaks.  It is the incessant wetness, combined with the Indonesian habit of covering every horizontal surface with glazed tiles, that makes this time of year grate on the nerves.

The non-stop rains also lead to more dangerous situations.  Here in the city, flash floods and cresting rivers are common problems.  It is so regular, in fact, that it is a normal way of life.  Our important appliances, like the refrigerator, sit on 18-inch stilts, should the waters rise high enough to overtop the first floor, which is already 2 feet above street level.

There is also the obligatory reports of landslides across the country, and mountains are slowly whittled down into molehills.  This occasionally leads to exciting moments when the passable part of a road is barely wide enough for a car to pass, while a gaping hole leads to a heart-thumpingly sheer drop into oblivion.

This past night, we were treated to a bonus: an hours-long electrical display of extraordinary proportions.  There has been over the past few hours a nearly non-stop lightning storm, with overlapping flashes - some quite close by - followed by the mournful crash and rumble of split air.  The ionized atmosphere has the dubious effect of causing the three young cats to go completely nuts, running around in circles, simultaeouslyleaping onto furniture and skidding across the room into rolling tackles.

Other than the occasional streams of water pouring off the stairs and landing on the desk within inches of my valuable electronics, it is not so bad, until one has to venture out into the wild.

The most annoying aspect of monsoon season is the inevitable traffic snarl.  Jakarta has world-class epic traffic jams without any help from Nature.  When it rains, however, the poorly constructed roadbeds rot under the pounding of thousands of vehicles, turning large sections of road into little more than finely crushed gravel.  Additionally, people naturally slow down in the rain so that the usual crawl is reduced to barely more than a squirm.  It is not unusual to sit in one spot for over two hours while folks try to solve the puzzle of 30 cars trying to occupy the same point in space and time simultaneously.

Carrying rain gear and a change of socks, using rubberized shoes and leaving at least four hours before any scheduled appointments are among the many adaptive behaviors one uses to get through monsoon.  Any more, umbrellas are not for one's self, but to protect the ubiquitous electronic devices one needs for daily life these days.  The four-hour lead time is not just for travel hitches, but also to allow an hour or so at the coffee shop to dry off before meeting an important client.

Having grown up in subtropical Houston, I had little problem with this change in weather, but many of the ex-pats I know complain endlessly about the rain and floods and the constant feeling of being wet.  I know many who bought houses in areas prone to noahide floods.  I have heard tales of using bathtubs as row boats from second story windows to get to the market.  They are not exaggerating.  I see scenes like this at least once a year - all taken in stride as a consequence of geography and fluid dynamics.

One often overlooked benefit of monsoon is a break from the overbearing heat.  As I write, it is about 20 degrees Celcius, which is roughly 5 degrees cooler than usual at five in the morning.  There is also a mild but refreshing breeze coming in the open doorway, where the young cats are tearing in and out doing their best cheetah impressions.  The water in front of the house is about 30cm deep, at the moment, but the rain is letting up a bit, so there is hope that I don't need to move the first floor up to the second at the moment.

It is blissfully quiet, as well.  The usual vendors with their various calls are home in bed and the sound of rain is drowning out the four mosques within 300 metes of the house.  There is only the ongoing, overlapping claps of thunder, as hardly any of the normal daily activities have been delayed.

The rain has been steadily falling for the last 24 hours, and the light show has been ongoing since about 11 last night.  With any luck, it will abate in the next few hours and the stream of water coming down the upstairs wall and cascading off the stairs onto my desk will finally stop.  Yet it would not be unusual for this to continue another day or two.  The local news shows have no weather reports, since they are rather pointless.  There are only the breathless reports of landslides, flooding and traffic jams that accompany monsoon.

The lightning has slowed to about five per minute now, so there is hope.

Notes From The Far Side

It struck me, sitting here trying to dream up another 1,000 words with which to assault the internet, that I don't write a lot about my adopted country.  Oh sure, sometimes I twist off on the utter stupidity that can be found just about anywhere, but what about life here and why I choose to live here.

Frankly, Jakarta (a.k.a. the Big Durian) is a lousy megalopolis.  It has one of the highest population densities in the world, a worsening air pollution problem (though still far from Beijing) and almost nothing of any cultural or social interest to do.

Officially, Jakarta has about 10 million permanent residents, but that number jumps to around 20 million souls on any given work day, as commuters stream in from Jabodetabek, the name of the metropolitan area.  There are millions of cars, motorcycles, trucks, buses, trains, bajaj, and angkot that drag huge wads of people into and out of the city on a daily basis.  The constant epic traffic jams, combined with open burning of trash and certain tree leaves to chase away mosquitoes, gives the air an intractable brown sticky pall.  On top of all that, you can hit all the major tourist attractions in two days (Monas, Taman Mini, Kota Tua) and then you're stuck with malls, malls and more malls.

In short, Jakarta sucks.  But how about the rest of the country?

I've managed to visit a fair bit of the country, hitting well over two dozens islands in the process.  When I say that Indonesia is diverse, I mean in the true sense, not the whiny liberal sense.  From an amazing rainbow of critters to wildly differing people and cultures, this country never gets boring.

Indonesia is about the size of the continental US, though composed of about 20,000 islands (more or less).  Among the islands are over 300 distinct cultures and languages, several dozen religions, and lifestyles that range from Neo-Stone Age to Ultra-High Tech.  Incomes range from a couple of dollars a day to millions in a country that is literally awash in natural wealth and resources.  The wealthiest and most powerful island is Java (where I live), followed by Sumatera and Borneo/Kalimantan, with Sulawesi, Bali and others showing up in the Top 10.

When it comes to fauna, there is an equally rich supply of some of the most amazing creatures on Earth.  Every kind of reptile one can imagine inhabits the islands, from small chirping house gekkos to Komodo dragons (up to 10 feet long), as well as all manor of snakes, frogs and related critters.  There are all types of monkeys, from little wily suckers that steal your french fries at highway rest stops to the famed orangutans (orang=person, hutan=jungle).

Depending on which island you are visiting, you might encounter work elephants, mini rhinoceros or spotted deer, tigers, lemurs, and many other fun things.  In Sumatera, there is a popular collector's item - tiger masks (though most folks don't know what they are for).  Word is that tigers only attack from the rear, so the masks are worn on the back of the head in the belief that tigers will be fooled into believing its a face.  No idea if it works, but they've been around for centuries.

In the performance arts, there are all kinds of dance.  The celebrated Balinese forms descend from Hindi influences, while others are Arab-inspired, but there are many forms that are unique to their islands and cultures.  Wayang, a variety of puppets, are popular in many places, especially Java and Bali, and range from shadow puppets to life-sized costumes animated by people inside.

Indonesia is famed for its fabrics, and of those, batik is the most well-known form.  Versions of the art range across the country, but the most intricate version is found in Java, where the original prints identified a person's family, rank and status, as well as the village where one lived.  Java and Bali are the centers for this ancient art form.  Though the ability to read batik is quickly being lost and most of it is machine-printed now, batik tulis (hand prints) are still highly prized and can get quite expensive.

All that said, Indonesians are not very creative people, though they are amazing mimics.  Local craftsmen are extremely talented and can replicate just about anything in any medium one can imagine, but when it comes to original, or even interpretive work, one is hard-pressed to find examples.  There is very little in the way of innovation, with most art limited to endless replication of ancient traditional forms.  That is changing as more Indonesians travel and study abroad, but it is a long row to hoe.

One of the most interesting things about Indonesia, at least to me, is the dizzying array of languages.  It is possible in some areas to travel 10 miles and hear a completely different language.  Of course, bahasa Indonesia is the common language - a dialect of Malay, there are literally hundreds of unique languages, as well as sub-dialects all across the country.  In Java alone, there are four primary languages, Java, Sunda Bali and Betawi, with each being subdivided into dozens of dialects that are mostly regional, with some being influenced by colonization from other cultures.  For instance, the city of Tegal has its own dialect based on Jawa Keras, or "hard Java."  It is mixed with Sunda and the Chinese dialect of Hokkien, with a smattering of Dutch thrown in for fun.

While Indonesians are generally pleasant and open people, they have a number of annoying habits, at least as far as a Westerner is concerned.

Among them is the irritating habit of asking what I consider to be rather personal questions.  If one is walking along the street, it is quite common to be asked, "Mau ke mana?" (Pan maring Ndi? [Tegal], Mulak tu dia? [Batak], etc.), which means, "Where are you going?"  I have to resist the urge to snap back with a snide response.  They also have a habit of asking one's religion, place of residence and family details, even with perfect strangers.

Indonesians, like most Asian cultures in general, can build the snot out of anything, but have no interest in maintaining and managing things after they are finished.  This is not only annoying, it is rather dangerous when it comes to roads, elevators and the like.  I believe this stems from two cultural tropes clashing: 1) the habit of building things cheaply with low-quality materials, and 2) a complete lack of ability to plan ahead.

The lack of planning is a true phenomenon.  Most Westerners who live here for any amount of time run head-long into this problem.  I believe it stems from the fact that there is no winter, and thus no need to plan harvests or store for survival, but whatever the reason, as society gets increasingly complex, it becomes a genuine issue.  To find an Indonesian who thinks further than the next meal is truly exciting.

A final point, though by no means have I exhausted the list, is the Indonesian habit of slathering food with sambal.  Sambal is a condiment made from chillis that looks something like ketchup and comes in similar bottles, but can be rather spicy (for those who can't handle it).  To someone like me who like to cook and eat with a medley of herbs and spices, it is downright annoying that Indonesians glop sambal all over the meal before they've even tasted it.  I know some Western chefs who have fled the country, and others who literally scream in horror when they see this, since it stands as a crime against the delicate seasonings of fine cooking, given that anything with sambal tastes entirely like sambal.  No other flavor can compete.

All that said, why do I like living here?  Primarily, it's the challenge of surviving in a land completely outside my native experience.  Call it the Traveler in me.  I also have a deep and life-long attraction to Asia, so Jakarta puts me almost exactly in the center of everything, being about 5-6 hours from most of the population centers in the region.  Within 3 hours, I can be in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Hong Kong, or any of a number of exotic locations both inside and out of the country.

This country is also a puzzle full of unique challenges to one willing and able to learn.  From the languages and cultures, to the complex and ancient history, this land is a veritable treasure of adventures and knowledge - and one regrettably unknown even to the people who live here.

I have only touched on a fraction of what I have learned in the past decade, because to document all of it would take a book, maybe several.  Perhaps someday I will endeavor to do just that, though for now I have other fish to fry.

The Big Durian

Here in the Big Durian, where 12 million people are piled on top of each other trying to beat the odds and get rich, no matter how many people they have to screw, life has made me rather morose lately.

Not only has the government gone on a robbery campaign (see yesterday's rant), but nearly all of the internet access providers - whether cell-based or cable - have all decided to crap out at the same time.  Out of 24 hours, they are usable about 8-12 hours a day.  No reasons given.

On top of that, the public water system, at least in my neighborhood, has also decided to crap out.  We have a 150-gallon reservoir in the house, which is only getting partially filled each day by a pitiful trickle from the city supply.  No reasons given.

Electricity in some parts of the city has been spotty.  This would be just an inconvenience in most cities, but in the Big Durian, there are only three stoplights in the whole mess, and one of them happens to be near the heart of the city.  When it craps out, it causes a ripple-down effect resulting in a traffic jumble of epic proportions.  And that's on top of the epic traffic situation already caused by the "odd-even" license plate scheme being implemented to try and ease the epic jams in the city center.

Jakarta - the Big Durian - is a mess.  It is a 2,000-year-old settlement with donkey trails for roads that has been paved over a hundred times to stuff more people into a tiny space.  You could put the entire city inside the Inner Loop area of Houston, with enough space left over for all the damn parks Jakarta doesn't have.  And Houston has three loops, with the outer one being about 75 miles from side to side, accommodating 4 million people.  Jakarta has 12 million crammed into what amounts to the inner city of Houston.

What's worse is that Jakarta is the political, commercial and financial center of the country.  All the jobs are here that amount to more than selling coffee and cigarettes in a warung.  Any good jobs outside the Big Durian were centered on minerals and energy, and in case you haven't noticed, those industries have been pounded for the past two years, forcing even more people to come here looking for scraps.

Imagine Washington, D.C. being the only place in the US where decent jobs could be found.  That's the problem here.

On top of all that, every day, millions of people migrate from the surrounding area, called Jabodetabek (Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tanggerang, Bekasi), raising the population to around 20 million daily, and all using trucks, cars, motorcycles, bajaj, angkot, trains, buses, bicycles, and push-carts on roads that are barely an improvement over dirt and gravel, with an incomprehensible toll system of freeways that require every - single - car - to - stop - and - pay.  There is no EZ Tag or automated payment system, since Indonesians would quickly find a way around it.

In fact, that is the nation pass-time - finding ways around the rules.  It starts with five lanes of traffic on roads barely wide enough to handle two.  Then there's the motorcycles, which flat refuse to follow ANY rules.  Oh, and let's not forget the aging city buses that like to race each other to the next stop to get the customers.  Top it all off with sidewalks that are so crammed with food stalls and warung that people walking are forced into the streets to get around - that is WHEN there are sidewalks at all.

The pièce de résistance is that the Big Durian is a city, a state and a national capital.  That means there are presidents, vice presidents, ministers, members of parliament, governors, vice governors, mayors and vice mayors all trying to plow through traffic with their police escorts, making an untenable mess even worse.  And, of course, being Indonesia, every company CEO and his brother hire police escorts to do the same thing, since their time is FAR more valuable than us peons.

The public transportation system here is a joke.  The TransJakarta busway is built at street level, and where it crosses U-turns and intersections, there is a gap in the barrier, so hundreds of cars, trucks and motorcycles jump in the bus lane to try and get around the traffic snarls, causing - naturally - more snarls that now include the mass transit system.

They are installing an MRT system, but of course, the construction causes more snarls and I frankly will never use it because the last place I want to be is trapped in a tunnel with thousands of panicky people during an earthquake or flood, both of which are part of the scene here.  Not to mention the fact that Indonesians are not especially known for their ability to maintain complex systems, and the national pass-time of trying to find ways around the rules.

One great example of finding ways around the rules was an earlier, abortive attempt to reduce congestion in the city center.  The then-governor created a 3-in-1 zone, requiring three passengers in every car during peak times of the day.  Well, since a great number of folk here use drivers (so their lives aren't frittered away behind the wheel), that left only one additional person to get round the rule.  An entire cottage industry sprang up of "jockeys" who would stand on the sides of roads at the 3-in-1 borders and get paid to ride along as the third head.  Result?  Absolutely no effect on congestion, and instead caused worse jams at the borders as people stopped to pick up jockeys.

Just yesterday, I noticed the new improved system to beat the "odd/even" system: electronic digital license places that can be changed at a moment's notice.

Yes, living in the Big Durian is a true adventure, one I have never experienced before.  There are days when it is extremely difficult to keep laughing at it, and today is one of them,

It's a good thing I am producing a musical comedy right now.  I need the laughs.

Tales Of A Misanthrope

The Big Durian.  J-town,  Jak-dehli.  The Nightmare.

I really hate big cities.  I've listened for hours to people waxing on about the Big Apple, and London, and Paris, and Los Angeles, but having been to all of them and lived in some of them, they all suck.

I hate living piled up on top of other people.  I hate only being able to see a sliver of sky through the concrete.  I hate neighbors banging on my walls.  I hate fighting for parking spaces.

In short, I'm a misanthrope.

Jakarta has little to nothing to recommend it.  Compared to my home town of Houston, Jakarta has a third of the real estate with four times the people (Houston: 2,2 million on 628 sq miles; Jakarta: 10 million on 256 sq miles).  The population density here is incredible by any standard I've known before.  There is no need for mass surveillance here, since there is literally no place you can stand that doesn't have 20 people looking at you.

Neighborhoods here are crammed full of people.  The average lot size is about what the average Houstonian has for a garage.  Three of my four walls are shared with other houses.  I'm lucky in that my house is a double-wide with three floors, so I actually have a little space inside.  The average bedroom in Jakarta can accommodate a queen-sized bed and a side table, with just enough space left over to open the door part way.

A normal Jakarta neighborhood has one main street with dozens of gang, or alleyways running off of it in every direction.  Most of the gang are just wide enough to allow a car through, so if you are lucky enough to have the space, you can park your car on your front porch.  There are no yards, though some people turn their roofs into small gardens.

Most houses here have an area that acts a lot like a chimney.  It runs from the kitchen to the roof and allows air to circulate.  There is no such thing as central A/C, and heating is completely pointless.  Those who have A/C use small units that only cool one room, usually the bedroom.  Kitchens are tiny by Houston standards, barely big enough for one person, and the refrigerator is usually in the combination living/dining area.

Houston, being practically brand new by global standards, is laid out on a grid, with freeways running roughly north/south and east/west, and a series of ring roads to service outlying areas.

Jakarta, being over 2,000 years old, is laid out like a box of Christmas light strings with right angles only occurring by the wildest of accidents.  There are no straight lines and you can't even come home by the same route you use to go to work. There are something like 40 million registered vehicles in Jakarta, with a population of only 10 million.  If you want to know where they are all parked, just look at the roads on any given day.  They are parked on the freeways and major arteries all over town.

According to this article, the average speed in 2013 was 16 kph.  I'm here to tell you that if you ever get over 10 kph, then it's 3am on Sunday morning.  By 3:04am, you're back in the traffic jam once again.  I live just 13 km/7 miles from my office, and a really good day means only 1 hour travel time.

When my wife and I went to Houston over the Christmas holidays, we arrived about 4pm on a Wednesday.  Driving home, my brother complained about the traffic.  He was rather perplexed by our hysterical laughter.  He was frustrated by not being able to break 65 kph/40 mph.  I can't recall ever going that fast in Jakarta.

A lot of people ask me what I think of Indonesia.  I have to be honest.  I hate Jakarta, but I love the country.  The city is hot, dirty, crowded, and has almost nothing interesting to do.  There's no symphony or ballet.  There's an occasional culture and arts festival, but the damn things are way over-priced and half the damn city shows up, so you spend most of your time dodging people.  It's a special form of insanity to live here.

Why don't I get out?  Well, easier said than done.  Jakarta is where the work is, for the most part, which is why there are 12 million people in the city on any given business day.  There are roughly 38,000 people per square mile here.  That's more than double Mexico City!  In fact, it's about equal to Mexico City, Tokyo and Beijing combined!  (At least according to Wikipedia)

It's a real experience living here, especially for someone like me who grew up with nothing but space and who, for the most part, hates people - especially a lot of them in a small space.

No worries, though.  That's why we have the mountain house.  Once a month, or more, we bug out and get to where the air is fresh and there is space to walk in and a yard to garden in.

Oh sure, there are worse places.  Karachi or Mumbai come to mind.

I shouldn't complain though.  I make a decent living here and have a pretty good standard of living with a very low cost of living.  Doesn't change my feelings about people, though.  And mind you, I'm not talking about individuals.  I love individuals.  Individuals are great!  I'm talking about herds, mobs, sardine cans full of people.  Alone, people are great.  In piles, people suck.

The funny thing about Jakarta is that almost no one here is from Jakarta.  Pretty much the entire population of the city moved here for work, and if they had a choice, they move out just as fast.

There is, however, one time of year that Jakarta is really quite pleasant.  At the end of Ramadhan, there is a one-week holiday called Lebaran, during which nearly the entire population of Jakarta goes home.  During that week, you can actually go out and lie down on the freeway and get a decent sleep before a car comes along.  It is truly amazing.  You can get from one side of the city to the other in minutes, rather than hours.  There are no lines anywhere.  It is quiet and air quality improves several hundred percent.

The only problem with this holiday is that every single resident of Jakarta goes to the mountains and fills my refuge with screaming kids, traffic jams and karaoke at 7 o'clock in the morning.

I hate people.

Dream Merchant, Part 1

Your faithful reporter at right at press conference

See Part 2 here.

One of our long-time reader/correspondents, Mr. P. in Thailand, suggested that I post a sort of Lessons Learned from my experience building the Ciputra Artpreneur, which is Indonesia's first private, for-profit cultural arts centers.  Never one to turn down a faithful reader if I can help it, read on, McDuff!  You will want to brew up a pot of strong coffee for this one.  It's going to be long.

The Ciputra Artpreneur is the latest destination cultural arts center in Jakarta.  It is located in Kuningan, South Jakarta at Ciputra World 1, part of a three-phase multi-use development that includes malls, hotels, health care, apartments, park areas, a convention center and other amenities.  Once complete, one could almost spend their entire life there with no need to explore the world at large.

The Artpreneur is located on the 11th floor above Lotte Shopping Avenue and is comprised of three levels totaling 3,000 square meters with half of it being a large gallery/expo area, an art museum and a 1,200-seat proscenium theater.  It is owned by the Ciputra family, as is the entire development, and adjoins the Raffles Hotel, which is Jakarta's first so-called 6-diamond hotel (personal butlers optional).

I was the Executive Director for Operations for the Artpreneur and oversaw the construction and start-up of the center, including bringing the first-ever Broadway musical to Indonesia (Disney's Beauty and the Beast).  You may have noticed that I used the simple past tense, and thereby hangs a tale.

The first show we held was the largest collection of Kurt Wenner's work ever assembled - 11 pieces taking up the entire 1,300 sqm of the exhibition space.  The place was not finished and work schedules were shifted to night in order to accommodate the show.  It wasn't my first choice to host the show at the time, since we were well behind schedule, but it was a great show and meeting Kurt was a real pleasure.  Having the general public running around in what was essentially still a construction zone, though, had me doing my best long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

The greatest number of problems I encountered on the project were directly related to cultural differences.  Nothng of this kind had previously existed in the country and Indonesian's are not particularly concerned with safety and standards.  Since I have never had more than a paper cut on any project I've ever done, I was determined not to start now, and spent an inordinate amount of time running around wailing and gnashing my teeth about safe working environments.

A major cultural difference is that Indonesians do not like directness.  It is an affront to them and it makes them feel as if the person being direct is angry.  This fact leads to meetings that are interminable.  They start late (no Indonesian is ever on time), involve a lot of small talk and useless chatter, and no one ever gets passionate about anything.  You can imagine the fun when a hot-tempered Irish-Texan walked into this mix.

At any rate, the construction update meetings were all-day affairs, with at least one or two meals being served in the process.  However, I was deeply frustrated because the actual business at hand was no more than an hour or two.  One day, I finally had had enough and told everyone we were going to have a meeting ex-pat style.  We finished the primary business in 45 minutes, with an additional hour of break-out meetings to address specific problems.  This was down from 8 to 10 hours.  I am not sure how offended anyone was, but I was hugely relieved.  Meetings after that were significantly faster and more productive.

The construction had languished for nearly two years because there was no one involved who had any clue as to how to proceed.  From the moment I stepped in until we hosted the owner's 83rd birthday party was eight months.  That means it went from a dark, dirty, mosquito-infested hell-hole to a mostly functional art center in one-third the time it took to get to the hell-hole phase.

The first major problem I faced when I came on-board was that no one had been following ISO standards, thus as-built drawings were virtually non-existent.  This was a major headache because the contractor had re-positioned air-handling units into the audio booth, had not built out the sound-proof wall according to spec and had made a hundred modifications that were not documented.  I spent the first month walking around with a massive roll of drawings trying to catalog all the changes.  This was vital in order to know which things could pass and which had to be fixed.

The big wrench in the works was that the local contractor had never built a theater or museum, and was making changed based on lack of knowledge of the specialized uses and needs for these kinds of places.  He would cut vital systems to save money with no concept of why they were designed in the first place and absolutely no experience to guide his judgement.

This led to a number of big yelling matches in which I demanded partial demolitions to back up and start again, making sure the second time that things were correct.  Out of a (I assume) genuine desire to understand, the contractor constantly asked me "why."  I tried my best to educate him and his team, but after several months, and a fast approaching deadline, I finally lost my cool and said that I never wanted to hear "why" again.  Just do what I say and be happy with it.  I will worry about the "why" part.

This problem was exacerbated by the fact that the owner really had no idea what they had gotten into.  Thinking that most of the really expensive stuff was just over-engineering, it caused a great amount of consternation when I informed them that they could not bring major shows into the center without meeting certain criteria, including a very expensive rigging system, an even more expensive lighting and sound system, and so forth.  But these were the easy battles.  The big one was yet to come.

Remember I said the Artpreneur was on the 13th floor?  It is surrounded by a parking garage with two enormous spiral ramps leading up from ground level.  The only way to get anything, including a Broadway show, onto the stage was to drive everything up the ramp to the 12th floor, off-load it and hand-carry it up a bank of escalators, through the theater lobby and onto the stage from the audience (house).  This, frankly, wasn't going to fly.  I gave the owner a choice: either you settle for hosting lecture series on the stage, or you need a lift system to get the equipment and scenery from the ground to the stage door.  To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, Beauty and the Beast travels in 12 x 40-foot containers that were never going to fit on the spiral ramp, and the only lift that came anywhere near the stage was just big enough for about eight adults.

This led to a six-month battle because the cost of retrofitting a heavy lift system was considerable, but the entire goal of the center was moot without it.  One day, while enjoying one of my frequent smoke breaks to calm my temper down, I was standing at the spiral ramp when I had a true "eureka" moment.

I proposed fitting a 3.5-tonne lift into the center core of the spiral ramp.  This would get us to the 11th floor, which was 11/13ths of the problem solved.  Later, after very long hours of examining drawings, I found a hole between the beams and columns that would perfectly accommodate another 3.5-tonne lift to go from the 11th floor garage to the 14th floor, directly behind the stage.  This system would require significant demolition and expense, but there was no way I could do what I had been asked to do without it.

Turns out, the lift system was completed less than 24 hours before Beauty and the Beast arrived, and had yet to be tested and commissioned the last time I checked.

The next major issue was the orchestra pit.  Keep in mind that the bottom of the pit was the ceiling for the museum, which houses the largest private collection of the now-deceased artist Hendra Gunawan.  Being a ceiling, it has a greatly reduced load capacity, as well as a number of beams running through the pit smack in the middle of where all the lift gears should be.

For those who don't know, orchestra pits have a number of purposes.  First, they provide a place for a live orchestra that is well below floor level in order to mute the sound and prevent the music from overwhelming the voices.  Second, the pit lift provides a means to raise and lower equipment from storage areas beneath the stage (road boxes, etc.).  Third, it provides additional functionality for things like special effects or an extended apron in front of the grand drape (convenient for hosting 2 shows at the same time).  Without a mechanical lift, one function (storage) is lost, another is reduced (muting) and the third is severely hampered by requiring complex scaffolding and manual labor for the remaining functions.

Because the pit floor is also a ceiling, we lost 2 tonnes off of the loading capacity that was specified.  We lost a full 65 cm off the depth, meaning the orchestra would be much louder than it should have been.  The ability to provide a thrust area in front of the drape was all but abandoned.  And most of the special effects applications I can think of are lost.

These are just a few examples of the many construction and engineering problems I faced.  Others included the rigging system, halon system, UV-reduced lighting, and oh so much more.  Most were solved or at least reduced, but the outcome was strictly dependent on the owner's willingness to purchase the needed equipment and specialized services to correct the issues.

In Part 2, we'll look at the more interesting and intractable problem: cultural.  How does one create a culture that does not exist?

Traffic As Metaphor

This morning was a classic Jakarta moment.

Indonesians, for all their laid-back, chilled out politeness, don't like to stop for anything.  The whole goal of driving in here is to go from point A to point B without stopping, even if you have to go ten miles out of your way.  As a consequence, if traffic slows down too much, they start jumping into the next lane, even if the other lane is on-coming traffic.

Now, to get out of my neighborhood in the general direction of my office, one has to cross a two-lane bridge.  It's the only one for a mile in any direction, and all 43 1/3 billion people in the 'hood have to cross it to get out.

So, this morning, one of the Kopaja buses decided the outbound lane wasn't moving fast enough for him.  Naturally, he jumped into the oncoming lane, because Gosh!  There's no cars coming on THIS side.  He raced along until, in the dead center of the bridge, he discovered the oncoming traffic.  No accidents, mind you, just the Indonesian version of a Mexican stand-off.  Since everyone and their mother followed the bus, he couldn't back up.  What with the OTHER half of humanity sitting in front of him, he couldn't go forward.  And, since all the motorcycles here make it a hobby to weave in and out of traffic to get to the front of things, there was a HUGE knot of motorcycles packed literally tire to tire.

Meanwhile, all the cars trying to prevent anyone from jumping in front of them, had wedged nose to tail with each other.  It was almost to the point where you could walk on heads to get across.  There was barely an inch to move and no one was giving an inch, at the risk of losing a centimeter of advancement.  You know those finger puzzles with 15 numbers and 16 spaces, and you have to maneuver them around to try to put them in order?  That was the scene at the bridge.

My driver, being rather aggressive, even by Jakarta standards, had got us so thoroughly jammed in the center of this mess that I was literally rubbing knees with the bikers around me.  And as I sat there, huffing copious amounts of diesel, gas and kerosine fumes, it occured to me that this was a perfect metaphor for the global economic situation.

Like Violet in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the banksters wanted all their profit, and they wanted it NOW!  In their supreme impatience, they jumped into the on-coming lane (derivatives) until they met up with opposing traffic (limited growth).  Suddenly, there was a massive jam up.  The motorcycles (day traders) weaved and bobbed until they were all piled up at the head of the line.  All the mutual funders and pensioners (cars) were lined up nose to tail to get their inch or two.  Now there's no way out without backing up, and we can't back up because all the 'me-toos' have piled in behind.

I must have looked rather ridiculous, since I was the only white boy in a sea of stressed out brown faces, and I was laughing my ass off.  I just couldn't help myself.  I was cracking knee caps in a mini version of a global problem.

Here we sit, in a global traffic jam, huffing fumes, grinding our teeth.  No one will give an inch lest they lose their place at the trough.  Can't go back, can't go forward.  The absurdity of it all.  And all because the banksters didn't want to lose even a fraction of a cent of profit.  Greedy little bastards.  JK Rowling was right to make them ugly liitle goblins with long, spindly fingers and specks of drool at the corners of their mouths.  Even the nice duds can't make them look like anythng but goblins.

Of course, the 71 3/7 quintillion people on the bridge this morning finally figured it out, but not without severe damage to my knee caps and a mystery scratch on my ankle.  So will the world figure it all out, eventually.  But someone's got to give and others will get hurt.  It's the unavoidable consequence of allowing the bankster buses to jump out of line and race up the hill.

All that driver wanted to do was pass the other buses and get to the waiting passengers up ahead.  His greed caused the entire mess and the waiting folks probably gave up and got a ride elsewhere.  Typical bankster.  If only he had stayed in line like the rest of us, he could have gotten the passengers anyway.  The bus ahead of him was already full.

I probably lost 4 years of my life huffing all those fumes, even with my handy dandy face mask on, all thanks to the greedy bankster.  I'd likely still be walking straight, as well.  Now I've got rotted out lungs and busted up knee caps because that greedy bastard couldn't wait like everyone else.

It was such a perfect image.  I was laughing so hard I nearly fell off the motorcycle when my driver lurched forward to prevent someone else from getting that inch in front of us.

It's amazing what you can learn while sitting in a colossal traffic jam, the likes of which the world has never seen.

The Javanese Wedding

It's been a hectic week.

We spent the past four days in Medan, which is a lovely city, the third largest in Indonesia, on the northeast coast of Sumatera.  It was an incredibly nice break from Jakarta.  The traffic is almost non-existant, compared to our daily life here, and the town is extreme clean, which is a pleasant shift from the usual.

There are massive trees all around Medan.  And when we say massive, we mean six feet across and occasionally more.

And SIDEWALKS!

Now don't get us wrong.  Jakarta has sidewalks.  If you look closely between all the street-vendor stalls, you can occasionally find something with pavement that one would identify as a sidewalk.  When you can find a sidewalk in Jakarta that isn't covered with vendors, it is usually a military-style obstacle course, which for a sighted human being presents a major challenge, but for us hard-of-seeing folks, they are impassable.  It is often easier to take your chances and walk in the street than to try and navigate the walking paths.

As for Medan's traffic, we had to laugh.  Our local guide complained about a slow patch that we encountered after leaving the airport.  "Macet," he said.  We nearly fell out of the car laughing.  It was NOTHING like the wall-to-wall gridlock that is daily life in Jakarta.

Medan has a unique from of public transportation called becak.  They are essentially a motorcycle with a large, covered sidecar.  Though we are quite tall by Indonesian standards, we were comfortable inside.  As per usual, we negotiated the price before getting in.  Standard operating procedure for foreigners is to quote a price that is about 200% to 300% the local rate.  The average tourist will think the higher rate is still cheap by, say, New York standards, but we refuse to be taken for a ride.

We were in Medan on contract to assess the English skills of all the employees in a major corporation.  There are a total of 5,000, and we have a couple of teams fanning out across the country to try to finish the task within the coming month.  The idea will be to customize a computer-based training program that is tailored to each individual, so that their English skills meet a certain proficiency calculated according to their job function. Most international corporations require a certain level of English proficiency from employees in order to deal with international customers.  English is the default business language throughout the world.

We are lucky our mother made us learn English from the cradle, since almost no one speaks Texan outside that great nation.

Once we arrived back in Jakarta this morning, we jumped in the car and were whisked away to the wedding party of a friend's sister.  When we say whisked, we mean that in the Jakarta sense of sitting in complete grid-lock for an hour and a half to go 10 kilometers.  We entertained several fantasies of moving to Medan during the trip.

When we arrived, we noticed that a large tent had been erected in front of the house.  The outside was unremarkable, but the inside had been nicely finished out with red and yellow fabric and full lighting harness.  A small stage had been placed at the front of the tent, with an area for a small band on the side.

Standard procedure for a Javanese wedding is that the couple wear traditional outfits and sit on a small couch on the stage.  Arriving guests sign in and usually receive a small fan to help with the heat.  One then proceeds to the stage to greet the couple, and more often than not, the parents who sit on the respective sides of the couple.  One congratulates the couple with the traditional hand-shake, which is done by holding the heels of the hands together with the fingers opened out, and then sandwiching the other person's fingers in a gesture that is somewhat like a ritualized receiving of a gift.  When greeting the groom, one then toches one's chest, and if greeting the bride, one folds the hands as if in prayer and bows slightly.

The costumes are quite brilliant.  The man's is normally a gold color with some design or pattern intricately woven into it.  The pants are loose like pajamas and the top is a tunic which drops to about mid-thigh.  He wears a wide sash that is tied in the back with a small hat that is completely plain, except for a small tail in the back.  Normally, this costume is worn with a ceremonial knife held in the knot of the sash.

The bride wears an elaborate headpiece  that covers the entire head and has yellow flowers or bangles that hang down on both sides.  The dress is a full-length gown with intricate weavings and applices.  The color normally reflects those of the family's batik, or tartan, much like the Irish and Scottish.  In this case, the family was from Yogyakarta, so the motif pattern included small, circular elements, and the family's colors were red and white, so there were a number of variations on this theme.

We were wearing a beautiful batik that was given to us by some of our students at Pertamina.  It had a combination motif from Madura and Yogyakarta with red and gold colors.  The two patterns are separated by a blue diagonal stripe with a wave form running from the left shoulder to the lower right hem.  The diagonal pattern indicates a knight of the realm, or defender of the king, and the wave form indicates loyalty or constancy, like the waves in the ocean.

After greeting the couple, one proceeds to eat.  There are food tables lining the tent with a great number of selections, most of which range from spicy to drop-dead.  Typically, one can find some kind of ice, like a snow-cone.  The most common flavor is coconut with a fruit, like mango.  Bakso soup is another common offering, which is meatballs of chicken or beef in a hearty stock with green onions and other vegetables.  No Javanese wedding would be complete without sate, in this case chicken, which is skewers of bite-sized meat grilling and dipped in a sauce.  There was a wide selection of delicious foods, which we sampled liberally, all with the ubiquitous steamed rice.

After eating, it was time for dancing.  The small band, comprised of a guitarist and a keyboardist, was playing dangdut, which is essentially the Indonesian version of country music.  It has elements of Arabic and Mediterranean influences, but with a unique island flair.  Dangdut is especially popular in the kampung, or villages, but city folks often look down on it.  It is infinitely danceable, of course.  One can hardly sit still when the music starts.

Dancing usually involves the men standing around doing a sort of rhythmic shuffle, with the arms held about chest high and the fingers balled up with the thumbs sticking up.  There are some more complex line-dancing steps, as well.

Typically, the young single women will get up to dance or sing, and the men are expected to give them money while they perform.  In some cases, the money is held between the fingers while they dance or sing, with the idea being that the most desireable and/or beautiful will have the most bills.

Being bule (white boy), we were assumed to have a bottomless pocket, however we had exhausted both our supply of small bills and our body after an hour or so.  Also, being bule meant that while we danced, there was a small army of photographers and video folks all recording the event, since there aren't many of us who attend these down-home events.

Full to overflowing with delicious food, exhausted of both energy and money, and sweating profusely from the heat and spice, we finally made our escape and collapsed into the car.  The culture shock of coming from Medan to Jakarta and straight into a wedding was almost more than we could bear.

Medan has a large Batak and Chinese population, whose cultures contrast sharply with Javanese.  It's almost like two different countries.  In the space of two hours, we radically shifted gears from the sleepy, tree-lined tranqulity of Medan to the overwhelming sea of competing humanity in Jakarta.

Exhausted and on the verge of convulsions, we collapsed into our bed, grateful to be home at last, though wishing for the quiet green spaces in Sumatera.  Tomorrow, we head to Denpasar, which is the largest city in Bali, about a two-hour flight east, in the opposite direction of Medan.  Here again, we will encounter yet another culture shock, as we go from Christian to Muslim to Hindu, and from Batak/Chinese to Javanese to Balinese.

With any luck, we may even get to the beach for the first time in three years.  Also, having learned a good many bad words in Bataknese, we are looking forward to doing the same in Balinese.  We already know that the Indonesian word, kenyang, which means 'satisfied,' and is often said at the end of a meal, has the meaning of a certain part of the male anatomy in the Balinese dialect.  Looks like we'll have to be careful after dinner...

Stay tuned.

Dear Mom, Part 7

Part of our ongoing series of exerpts out of letters to home. You can find previous installments in the archive near the bottom of the right column.

The first few months are a struggle as you try to grasp at anyting familiar in order to orient yourself in this strange place. Things as simple as bathrooms are a complete mystery when one first arrives. There is no toilet paper, just a hose with a spray nozzle, or worse, a tank of water and a ladle. This is no tub or demarked bathing area. The whole room is the shower. There are no instructions, as to an Indonesian, it’s all quite obvious, but to a poor foreigner just off the plane, it’s a shock.

Living, as I do now, in a neighborhood is even more disorienting. The sheer number of vendors who ply the alleyways and the rhythmn of daily life is wildly different from home. Those old enough to remember the Fuller brush man would boggle at the choices here. From shoe repair to green grocers, junk collectors and mobile kitchens, tailors and handymen, just about any necessity comes right to the door several times a day. They all have their own distinctive calls or sounds. The fried rice guy says, “Nasi-nasiiiiiiiiiiii!” The soup man clangs a spoon in a glass bowl. The fried noodle man rattles a spatula in a wok. The shoe man calls, “Sapa-TOO!” The bread guys all have electronic jingles that play a short tune followed by an electronic voice (usually female) that says, “Roti roti,” and the name of the bakery.

There was even a comical moment, to me, several mornings ago when three bread men from three different directions all met at the intersection directly in front of the house. It was a terrible cacauphony of jingles and electro-voices as they tried to sort things out.

Another sound, which is unique, is the night-watchman, who patrols the neighborhood each night. As he makes the rounds, he bangs out the hour on light poles. “Ting, ting...TING!” 3am. A couple of minutes later, you can hear him down the alley, banging on the next light pole. It’s one of those little things that is at once reassuring and completely foreign.
The night watchman is a function of the neighborhood sheriff, called pa-er-tay (bapak RT). No matter who you are, resident or servant, foreign or domestic, the first order of business when you move to a neighborhood is to go over to the Pak RT and register. You bring a copy of your ID and pay a nominal fee. He tells you the rules of the neighborhood and gives you a quick orientation. After that, all the night watchmen know you and know you belong in the neighborhood.

This is important, in part, because at 10pm, the gates of the neighborhood are closed and locked. Only selected gates remain open after that, and you must past the guard to get in. You will be challenged if you are not recognized. Fortunately or not, I don’t have much problem. I am the only bule in the neighborhood, and everyone knows me.

Another reason why it’s important to register with Pak RT is that you don’t get services, such as trash pickup, without registering and paying the monthly fee. In this neighborhood, it’s Rp.35,000/month, or about $3. That also covers the cost of the night guards, who receive a nominal fee for sleeping by the gate (!). The trash is collected regularly, but erratically, by young guys using pull-carts. They go through the neighborhood and take the trash bags that are hung on the gates and fences every night. The more conscientious ones will even clean up after the trash pickers, rats and cats have all gone through the bags.

One Saturday a month, our Pak RT organizes the men to go around the area picking up litter and cleaning up the public flower beds. If someone (rarely) volunteers a can of paint, the patrol will tidy up the grafitti, as well.

There’s also a daily exercise group that meets in the park across from my house at 5am. They play a music tape that is apparently nationally sanctioned, or at least ubiquitous. Everyone knows it from grade school on. The music is suspiciously like zydeco with a woman’s voice counting off the beat, “Satu...dua...tiga...EMPAT...lima...enam...tujuh...DILAPAN!” It goes on for an hour, like clockwork.

The park is really a fascinating window on life here. I was lucky to find a house directly in front of it, not only for the view, but for the people watching, as well. During the day, kids play basketball and soccer. In the evenings, the old folk come out for a stroll. At night, the young adults sit around and play guitars and pitch the woo, as it were. By eleven, Pak RT chases everyone home, only to start again at 5am, with the exercise group. It’s the center of social life in the neighborhood, and it’s really quite fun to observe.

The neighborhood is a small island in an ocean of craziness, though. Jakarta is a city, for which the word ‘bustle’ was tested and found severely lacking. Traffic here is a nightmare, to put it nicely. Many of the streets are ancient and were not designed to carry anywhere near the load that they do. Furthermore, Indonesians are insane drivers, and to top it off, there is no grid or planning to any of the city, even the newer neighborhoods. Streets stop and start without reason. They turn from one-way to two-way without warning or forethought. There are practically no stop-lights, and when there are, no one pays the least attention to them.

Some time back, I adopted the ojek as the only (vaguely) sane means to get around. Ojek are motorcycle taxis, which are ostensibly illegal, which means they are everywhere and advertise the fact. Motorcycle is the only way to get around in any reasonable amount of time, and that is the only reason I use the word ‘sane.’ Otherwise, it is a hair-raising adventure unlike any commute I have every known.

Traffic in Jakarta is a full-contact sport. On a daily basis, I bump into a half-dozen cars, buses and other motorcycles. A couple of weeks ago, my knee caught the bumper grill of a delivery truck and literally pulled it off with a loud clang. I regularly bump into massive buses and make contact with dozens of side mirrors on cars and other motorcycles.

My driver, Toyo, whom I’ve used for the past year, is a master of what the Indonesian call, “Jalan tikus,” or ‘rat path.’ In other words, he will dodge down the narrow alleys, drive up on sidewalks, go the wrong way down busy streets, and any number of other tricks to get me to the destination on time. A year ago, I would be a quivering mass of terrified humanity by the time I arrived. Now, I just take it all in stride. Part of the fun and challenge of the whole thing. Toyo has yet to throw me on the ground, which makes him stand out from most of the other drivers I have used. I chose him partly because he’s a hefty guy and can handle my size on his bike, but also because he has three kids and a wife, so he is motivated to stay alive as much as I am.

Toyo is as much bodyguard as driver, as well. He watches out for me, runs interference for me, and assists me when he knows I am confused or having a hard time because I can’t see. He’s quite a guy and has become a friend, as well. In fact, his whole family came to Thanksgiving dinner. Even though is wife is very shy, and he warned me that they would probably come early and leave early, she apparently had a good enough time that they all stayed for a while.

Toyo is Betawi, which means he is a native Jakartan. The natives are of a distinct group of people with their own dialect, which he is teaching me. His wife is Sunda, which are the people from the mountains south of the city and parts east, out to Bandung, which is the next major city to the east. They also have a unique dialect, two in fact (halus or smooth, and kasar or rough). Their children, two girls and a boy, are very nice and well-behaved, though they are extremely shy to practice their English with me, despite Dad’s constant prompting.

The language front keeps me constantly on my toes. I’ve mentioned before the hundreds of different cultures and languages that comprise Indonesia. I’ve managed to pick up a smattering of a dozen different dialects and subdialects, though I have chosen to focus on Javanese, in part because I live on Java, and because Wati is Javanese/Chinese.

Javanese is comprised of two primary dialects, halus and kasar, with halus being the royal speach of the Sultan of Yogyakarta and environs. Kasar is spoken by the north-central people around Surabaya, Tegal and Semarang. The difference is akin to that between Scotish and British English, more than, say New York and Texas. There are a dozen sub-dialects that have distinct variations in certain consonants and vowels, as well as vocabulary. Some parts of the dialects are completely distinct, while others are at least cognates.

One example that highlights the difference is the expression that means, “It doesn’t matter,” or “No problem.” In the halus dialect, one says, “Mboten nopo-nopo.” In the kasar dialect, one says, “Ora po-po.” In either case, it’s quite different from the Indonesian version, “Tidak apa-apa,” or the slang version, “Ga pa-pa.”

Indonesian and Javanese share most of the same grammatical rules, though they differ widely in vocabulary. Javanese also has a unique alphabet and writing that is nearly dead, though efforts are being made to rivive it. It is a consonant alphabet, much like most Asian languages and Hebrew. An example follows:

To my eye, it strongly resembles Hindi, though is somewhat simplified. I haven’t attempted to learn it yet. I’m satisfied just to be able to speak a little. Besides, most Javanese can’t read it anymore. It’s mostly a scholarly exercise, at this point. Wati learned it in grade school and still remembers most of it, but no one really writes it much around here. Many in central Java it’s more popular, though I won’t be able to say until I go there.

So Long And Thanks For All The Bakso

Jakartans Relieved that Obama is Gone

How nice. Obama finally found someone who wanted to listen to him. Indonesians flocked to TV sets at the local warung to watch Obama's speech at the University of Indonesia. The hall was packed with students and dignitaries who politely laughed at the lame jokes and nodded appreciatively when Obama uttered about 20 words of Indonesian.

"Pulang kampung nih," Obama managed. "I'm coming home."

Yes, the President of the United States, in contradiction of the nation's Constitution, is a foreign citizen. In fact, I was convinced that Obama would never come here, because it would be the first time in history that a US president was subject to forign jurisdiction.

Maybe that's why he brought 34 warships, 6 aircraft, a phalanx of Secret Service vermin, and a cadre of handlers and protectors. Maybe that's why Indonesia literally lined his route with national police and military for 24 hours. It brought the city to a grinding halt.

See, Jakarta has legendary traffic problems. A normal day sees the city on the verge of gridlock in the normal course of life. Then, here comes Obama, shutting down roads and freeways, and completely bringing the city to its knees.

Boy are we happey he's gone.

I'm just happy because the man is a bag of bones that is played by his masters. His masters think they are our masters. They put on shows of power by surrounding their bag of bones with symbols of might and strength. Indonesians don't care. Indonesians look at the man, not the trappings. They've had to deal with iron-fist rule, both by foreigners and nationals. They've grown tired of people that put up powerful fronts, but are corrupt to the core behind the curtain. The Revolution against the Dutch is still in living memory. The centuries-long exploitation at the hands of the Chinese have become genetic memory. The old folk still remember the Japanese in WWII. People my age know the fun of Soeharto. They know bullshit when they see it.

Yudihoyono, president of Indonesia, doesn't get the same treatment as Obama. When he goes up to the Presidential Palace in Puncak, there are a few motorcycle cops who pull over traffic so he can pass, but they don't shut down the road hours ahead of time to check every square inch of it. That's just like a rock star demanding to have M&Ms in the dressing room, but having a tantrum if there are any brown ones.

Hours before Usama, I mean Obama arrived, the president of Bulgaria was here. Nobody noticed. The day before, the Indian prime minister was here, and there was a little traffic jam around the Indo White House. But Usama, I mean Obama can shut down one of the most crowded cities in the world for his precious presence.

Good riddance.

Look, Obama's masters have planned and executed EVERY SINGLE major act of terrorism in the past 15 years: OKC, 911, 7/7, Mumbai, Bali. Now they want the world to jump through hoops to protect the terrorists. Can't you just see the bastards sitting in their Board Rooms laughing at us?

That's right, THEY commit the acts of terror and then THEY want you to line up at the airport to have your body violated. As if that's not enough, THEY will grope your wife and daughters too, while you watch, to keep you safe from THEM. The dog-licking scum.

Fortunately, Indonesians are smart people. They can see bullshit when they see it. Yesterday, they sat around the TVs to see this man, who is an Indonesian citizen, and nominally president of the US,to see what he had to say. What they heard was a smattering of simple local language, some reminicences about life in the kampung, which he could have gotten from my blog, and otherwise NOTHING of substance: nothing about economic reform, nothing about fresh initiatives to recognize Indonesia's emerging role in world politics...NOTHING.

And he put the city into gridlock to do it.

What were we expecting here? He just represents yet another empire that wants to subjugate Indonesia. Obama is nothing more than a fart bag of hot air to put a pretty face on yet more iron-fisted exploitation of the people's labor and dreams. The US, like so many empires before, wants to rape this country of its hard work and God-given natural wealth.

Obama, they weren't fulled by your chirade. They gave you the polite reception and listened to your foul rubbish, but today, your message is dead here.

We're not fooled. The US is not fooled. The world is not fooled. Crawl back under your rock, Usama, I mean Obama, or is it Barry Soetoro? We don't even know who you are, you vacuous piece of meat-puppet.

Indonesia has fought and won it's freedom. Grandmothers and Grandfathers still remember the price that was paid. They've told me the stories. I've visited the graves. This country isn't fooled, and the world at large is waking up to the charade.

Caoe deh.

No more Mr. Nice Guy. Get out of my face, scum.

Thank God I live in a country were people know bullshit when they see it. American lost that ability a long time ago.

The Animating Contest of Freedom

Well you walk into the room like a camel and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket and your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law against you coming around
You should be made to wear earphones
Cause something is happening and you don't know what it is
do you, Mr. Jones?
-Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man

I recently went back to Singapore. It was the first time I have left Indonesia in two years. And baby, something is happening here, but I don't know what it is.

Seems after you live here for a while, something happens to you. You change. Your perspective warps just a bit. You get used to things that just a while back were wildly outside of your comfort zone.

I have gotten so used to the just-left-of-reality called Indonesia that returning to the 'real world' is a shock. Now granted, Singapore is a techno-fascist state that has brought compliance and lock-step to the point of micromanagement. It is a city-state run by Chinese, which is to say, Vulcans. On top of that, they have spent years recruiting and investing in high-tech brain-power and businesses to the point where the entire nation has become a macro-chip, if you will. It is impossible to describe Singapore without resorting to a truck-load of hyphenated nouns, because there are no normal words for it.

After two straight years in Indonesia, stepping into Singapore assaulted me with clean efficiency. Everyone was following the rules. There were all kinds of modern conveniences, like moving sidewalks that actually moved (Indo joke), restrooms fitted with all sorts of sensors to tell when you've finished so that they can flush or dispense water or soap or warm air, and signage that is both copious and actually leads you somewhere (Indo joke). Everything spacious and people respect personal space. Everything is painfully clean, in a way that would make even Germans wince. It all looks like it was torn from a 1930s Future-ama film short at the Saturday matinée.

It is truly the mirrow image of Indonesia, and I was Alice just stepping through.

With cold efficiency, the airport itself led me through the gate, down the impossibly long corridor and into the dazzling arcade of duty free shopping, with genuine products whose counterfeits I have passed a million times in Indonesian shopping malls. Here was cheap booze and expensive baubles, the diametric opposite of my adopted home.

Once through the endless temptations to participate in consummeristic orgies, I was summarily disgorged into the cavernous entry hall. The ceiling soared overhead and there seemed to be enough room for half the world's population here, so unlike the cramped and crowded stockyards full of shoving people back home. A huge tote board listed the great cities of the world, which airline was going there next, and precisely which line to get in for your boarding pass. If this wasn't enough information for you, helpful little men in red vests would quickly glide up to you and offer help, and the best part was they didn't expect a tip. It was, after all, their job.

I stepped into the tropical heat and blinked at the sun. I was not accosted by 47 men offering taxis, watches and perfume. Instead, there was an orderly row of taxis patiently waiting for the next passenger. The air was fresh and clean. The noise level was significantly below 80 decibels.

the taxi was very efficient. No chatter and useless effort, just took the address and whisked me away in smooth comfort down broad rectilinear streets that looked as if the maid had just left. The driver took the most direct and fastest route without being told. Back home, they take the longest and/or most congested route, unless otherwise guided, in order to run up the fare.

Throughout the remainder of my stay, I was ever-so-efficiently scooped up and delivered quickly, quietly and with cold calculation. Even friendly folks seemed as if they were reading from a script, and there were the sonstant reminders not to litter or spit or forget to flush, all of which will get you a S$1,000 fine. Everyone and everything looks as if it were placed exactly were it needed to be for maximum efficiency. There were no free-roaming animals or smoldering trash fires or vendors strewn down the sides of every street. Even the architecture looks like a Disney version of Vienna with a dash of Portuguese for flavor. Overall, the city is a poster-child for handicap friendly. I was able to navigate easily and never once stumbled over broken concrete or oddly placed doodads that served no purpose but to keep someone busy installing and removing them. If, God forbid, there was a hazard, it was barricaded and marked heavily with orange cones.

The trees all looked as if they were pruned every morning and the parks had manicured grass. Even the birds seemed just a little happier...hey! Wait a minute! There are birds here!

Yes, Singapore is the wet dream of every efficiency expert and obcessive/compulsive on the planet. You could eat off the sidewalk, if you could without being arrested and flogged for doing so. Even the curio and souvenir shops are meticulously organized so that you can easily find the cheap piece of crap you want to bring back to your family and friends. I always get refrigerator magnets. At least they are useful. Worse case scenario, you can put them in your transmission pan to collect metal filings.

By the time I got back to the airport, I felt as if I had been sanitized. The only thing missing was the paper band that said so, and I kept moving so the guy giving those out couldn't catch me. I bolted through the main cavern and wended my way to the SkyTrain to take me to Terminal 1. The highly efficient system came along and everyone queued up and boarded in an orderly and safe manner. We were likewise barfed out the other end. The model of efficiency.

Having checked in three hours early (being efficient and all), I planted myself at Harry's Bar to enjoy a libation while passing the time. I met a young Aussie guy named Brad who was going to Greece to meet his girl for a couple weeks' R&R. I made the usual jokes about joining the riots and shopping for islands while he was there.

In all my efficiency, I had forgotten to set my watch ahead one hour. When Brad pointed this out, I had ten minutes to get to my gate, which was at the other end of the Universe from Harry's, of course. I dashed through the terminal, being the only person whose lack of personal efficiency had made me short on time. I slipped through the security check, but...OOPS! Was that a bottle of booze in my pack?

The woman, an Indonesian, pulled out the massive container of Absolut nectar. It was not in a sealed bag and didn't have a tax stamp. Sorry, but we have to confiscate.

WHAT?

The chief of the check point was a stern Chinese woman, the very definition of cold, hard efficiency. She was unmoving and unmoved. Even having this middle-aged man sitting in a heap on the floor crying hardly budged her inhuman countenance. I could see that my begging and pleading had some effect. The tempurature of her soul had risen to 3 degrees above Absolute Zero, so that she matched the background radiation of the Big Bang. But even offers to relive the Big Bang could not stir her interest.

To her credit, the Indonesian woman was sympathetic, and she kept looking around for some opportunity to bend the rules for me. I offered dates and promises of painting the town when she came to Jakarta. She wanted to, God bless her, but gainful employment was a major hurdle. I slinked off to board without my ill-gotten booty. My Viking soul screamed for loot and plunder, but my rational mind keot control.

I was back in the Indonesian world now. I should have known. It was an Indonesian airline going to Indonesia, which meant the flight wasn't even boarding at the scheduled time of wheels-up. I fumed. I groused. I grumbled. I could see my plunder sitting there, knowing that it would end up on the shelf in the home of some customs apparatchik. It made me angry. I longed for home where a well-placed 50 would have waived the rules.

And that's when I realized...I was homesick. No, not for the police state which shall remain nameless (but whose initials are US), but for my adopted home. I wanted to go back to the place where officials could be bribed, rules could be broken, people shoved and cut in line. I wanted to go back to where it took five people to do one job at seven different windows. I missed my dirty, noisy, crowded, lawless home.

When I deplaned (whatever the hell that is) in Jakarta, there were no directional signs, or the ones that did exist were wrong. The corridors were dark and close, and reeked of clove cigarettes. In fact, over in the corner there was a man standing under a no-smoking sign, enjoying his cigarette. I was beginning to feel better now. I finally found the visa-on-arrival lane, surrounded by a maze of stanchions with no one in line. I went to the first window to pay, the second window to get a receipt, the third window to get my stamp, the fourth window to check that the first three had done it right. Then I wandered down the long, low hall to immigration, where I was informed that needed a form, and that the form was way back where I started. When I got there, I checked. Nope, no signs to let me know that I needed any forms in that area. I filled it out and got through immigration.

I asked a gentleman in a uniform which way to the exit. He asked if I had luggage and I said no. He said I could go in any of a couple of directions, of course. He looked as if he were ready to accept my money for the information. I ignored the look. I randomly chose the most difficult, of course.

An hour after landing, I spilled out into the dark, dirty Jakarta night and was accosted by a dozen men offering off-meter rides to the city. I'm not stupid, just a little dumb. After a particularly long and circuitous route, I was able to ditch them and dive into one of the taxis I trusted more than most. I gave him explicit directions on which route to take back to the house.

As I sat back in the seat for the ride, I realized that I was happy to be home. I preferred the loony, lawless cat-herding of Indonesia to cold, fascist efficiency. I preferred the pushing and shoving in line to marching lock-step in jack-boots. Life just feels organic here, like living in the wild versus a wildlife preserve. The law of the jungle prevails. There is something visceral about this land that appeals to real people who want to live raw, unfettered lives. I would choose this to a petri dish under a microscope any day

For all its clean, efficient modernization, I was no safer in Singapore than in Jakarta, but all the trappings made it appear that way. Like other "modern" countries, Singapore has created a coddling society where people are enticed to give up being alert because everything looks so safe, and lulled into a stupor they foolishly let their guard down...and that's when the danger slips in. In Indonesia, life is still the way it used to be. You are on your own. You must be responsible for you own well-being because certainly no one else will be. Every face you see wants to take something from you, so your guard is always up. Yes! This is real life. This is the way we are meant to be as organic beings...as humans.

As I sat there in the taxi, watching every turn, checking the meter to be sure it was properly calculating my trip, locking the doors, I realized that I was happy here. Not having yellow-shirted thugs watching to be sure I don't step out of line for my own good feels right to me. Not having mandatory health insurance and Social Security and welfare and social services and jack-booted herd masters feels like life to me. Those other things are just veils we pull over our eyes so we don't have to look at misery and suffering in other people, and so that we can feel like we are safe like in mommy's arms. But we forget that when we have mommy's comfort, she can also go through our things and come into our room any time she wants, because she owns the place and feeds us.

I laugh when I read the term "advanced nations." How is it advanced when the populace is never required to mature and gain independence? How is advanced when no one advances past the childhood phase of life? It used to be we measured advanced by how well someone could fend for themselves, not by how much they had delegated personal responsibility.

As the road whizzed under the tires, I thought, "Give me liberty or give me death." What a great line, to bad so few actually live it. Is it better to have one shot of top quality, 25-year-old single malt, or gallons of rot-gut? I'll take the shot, thanks. A little quality trumps a lot of bunk any time. So it is with the life I have been given.

I got down from the taxi in from of the walled and gated kampung. As I passed through the gate, I waved to the night watchman. He's my neighbor. He knows me, I know him. I could pass unfettered. It felt good to be home again.

The secret to herding cats is to lead them, not push them.