Jakarta: Take II

Although my companion set out to show me the different types of transportation available in Jakarta, as opposed to the limited few available in KL, what really stood out was the size of informal sector. Roadside vendors, ojek, jockeys (government policy states that at peak traffic hours, cars must have at least 3 passengers including the driver. ‘Jockeys’ stand by the roadside before turn offs onto roads where the police enforce this policy to provide an extra passenger or two for a small fee), bajai drivers – all opportunities to make a living. While this could be linked to a lack of government efficiency in enforcing licensing regulations, this seems to be a deliberate move to allow the informal sector to flourish, and create much-needed jobs.

The sight of people sleeping under a bridge in the middle of Jakarta is sobering and fleshes out a conversation with him about corruption and the state of the country. He argues, like many, that corruption is the biggest problem Indonesia faces but also thinks its consequences are worse now than they were under Soeharto. He claims that under the New Order, at least the corrupt kept the money they obtained inside the country and uses Tommy Soeharto as an example – he gained from the country but also gave back to it, deliberately or not, by building factories and creating employment for Indonesians. The ‘new’ corrupt are different – they take and send it overseas to Singapore, Hong Kong, everywhere else. He argues that corruption is the source of most problems here, even the most minor ones. The traffic jam caused by the bus stopped haphazard in the middle of the road to pick up passengers is in turn caused by the police’s lack of action (they have been paid off or will be, the argument goes).

He says, ‘the rich get richer, the poor are getting poorer’ – I wonder if inequality is increasing. Rising GDP figures and tax revenue figures are well and good but they say little about the distribution of income, where the wealth is going. For all of SBY’s show & tell and conviction that Indonesia is in a different place and all the shiny new buildings dotting Jakarta, a lot remains to be done to actually make this a reality for a portion of the population. SBY may be serious about tackling corruption but until there is a clean judiciary and enforced punishments, it will remain pervasive and an obstacle to ‘development’.

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Some things are familiar. The traditional market near the office is similar to wet markets/ morning markets in KL and across Southeast Asia. Shopowners are mostly ethnic Chinese (the diaspora never fail to venture into business of some sort). The easy availability of food (always around the corner if not outside the door) reminds me of Bangkok more than KL.

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I notice that bookshops in Indonesia are dominated by books published in bahasa, both original works and translations of popular and classic English books. Along the shelf with bahasa-language history books, a name pops out. One of my professors at university who specialized in Indonesian history is here, in bahasa. The fact that the majority of books are in bahasa stands out to me (and also proves to be an inconvenience for the reader seeking an English-language book on Indonesian history, Soeharto, Golkar, etc, although it also led us to a brilliant secondhand bookstore at the Jakarta Art Center). In comparison, the Malaysian publishing industry is tiny.

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The next night five of us take a bus to find dinner – ‘Nasi kucing’, so-called for the small amount of rice bundled with a tiny nugget of fish or other savoury/spicy condiment. She tells me this is student fare but it is also popular with other market segments in Jogja, depending on the location of the cart. Normally, the people at a ‘angkringan’ would be mostly strangers and they strike up conversations about politics, current events, and other topics of interest, for strangers to exchange ideas, she puts it. But today the group of us takes up the entire cart and there is no one else there when we arrive. It is only as we leave that some people come along.

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The Friday lunch hour crowd makes it impossible to hail a taxi and we board an angkot for part of the way back to the office. Our fellow passengers in the rickety bus appear to be from the middle-classes, likely on their ways back to the office after lunch.

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Civil liberties and social norms in the two countries are the main differences to the ones who have spent some time in Malaysia. One points out the park outside the office as a place where young couples like to meet – “they can date and even kiss openly here, not like in Malaysia”. Another, warning one of the researchers of what to expect in KL says “Malaysians are very scared… they have the ISA…. People are scared of one another, Bangladeshis, etc… crime is high”. This reminds me of the hotel driver I spoke to the first time I arrived in Jakarta – he observed that Malaysia was better off economically, but also mentioned that it had the ISA, something Indonesia hadn’t had since Soeharto’s era, 10 years ago. There is the underlying thought that in this sense at least, Indonesia is ahead of us.

old ghost

I do not like hearing from you. After the initial surprise wears off, it messes with my head and my concentration.

"I'll wait for you"
but for what?

"I miss you"
do you now? which part?

I'm exhausted from the weekend and most of all from thinking about you. Work.
You're the addiction I need to break

hello again

My demon is not a small furry creature that wraps itself around my legs. Nor is it a monster the size of two men. It doesn't whisper evil suggestions in my ears, it doesn't twist me to its will like so many little fragile tendrils. It's nothing that insidious.

It is a shape-shifter, this one.
A certain quality of light
a close friend
a sudden breeze
a memory of insignificant events
a road
a season
a song in my head

It's my siren, singing her deadly song, only I don't know if she's leading me forward or pulling me back. I cover my ears but it pierces flesh and echoes in my head. I turn away but I still feel her inexorable pull.

interruption

On the way back from ipoh I watched an amber moon play hide and seek behind the clouds.

This isn't a chapter 3. I intended to record my memories of Sydney here, not every last detail/day (that would get boring) but the most memorable and significant little moments, medium-sized events et cetera. But as the days wore by and the weeks plodded along, the urgency I felt immediately following my return faded. This isn't surprising. Memories get worn around the edges and begin to fray. Which is why I wanted to record them before they faded - because I know they will and I wanted to have something ready to hand to remind me - press refresh.

But now, and maybe this is because time has passed, I am content to just let it be. I don't feel the urge to record right now and the words won't come. So consider this an indefinite pause on that project. If a Chapter 3 comes, it comes. If it doesn't, that's fine too. Because sometimes not recording and just allowing it to fade is, upon reflection, as it should be. They aren't lost. They will just remain wherever they choose to be. And in those rare moments when they flash into my head, the way these memories do, the rarity of the occasion will make them precious.

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Effective immediately, I am taking a break from non-essential human contact. I need to withdraw. People are beginning to wear me down again.

Chapter 2

I remember the kitchen in my uncle's house.

I had rented a room from a crotchety old woman my first two months in Sydney. It was the first time she'd let out a room and had too rules on what I could and could not do, too many things to say, too many idiosyncrasies for me to bear. So I moved out and stayed with an uncle for a couple more months. The next session, I moved into the apartment and stayed there.

The house itself looked shabby and small from the outside. But inside, it was comfortable and felt lived-in. The living room was perpetually dark because of the heavy curtains but the kitchen and the rooms facing the downward slope behind the house were full of light. The kitchen was my favourite part of the house (the bathroom, with its heat lights and angular bath, came a close second, especially when it got colder). It had wooden floor planks and a large blonde wood table in the center. I spent my Saturday mornings at that table, poring over the weekend edition of the SMH in a quiet house. My uncle was hardly around, which suited me well, and Saturday mornings were no exception.

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My first morning in Sydney after a 4 month absence was sunny-beautiful. I woke up early that morning with a not-quite heavy heart, but a rather weighted one nevertheless. The strange feeling I had the night before still lingered and even now I can't quite describe it. It was slightly surreal, but then everything remembered takes on that quality. Possibly a cross between deja vu and jamais vu, although that doesn't at first glance make sense. It was that feeling of familiarity and comfort mingled with displacement and dispossession. This sensation never really went away during the trip, but it was the strongest those first few days living in the old flat.

Stepping out into the morning sun dispersed the sensation. It was only 10am but already the light was intensely bright (that rhymes!) without the suffocating humidity and heat that envelopes the tropics. How orientalist that sounded. It was exceptionally warm for mid-autumn, something I realized a few days later when the weather returned to normal. But that day was perfect.

It had rained early in the morning and the ground was still slightly damp. I remember smiling at the warmth on my legs from the sun, practically glowing at just being there and walking the familiar path to uni. The thing about being absent from a place is how much you forget in the interim, both the good and the bad. I had forgotten so much: the way those fig-like fruit crushed on the walkway perfume the air with their sweet, pungent scent, how bracingly crisp the air is there, the smell of cut grass drifting in from the racecourse. Sensory overload.

Chapter 1

Have you ever read 'Hopscotch', by Julio Cortazar? I picked it up from the library a few years ago after a recommendation from a lecturer who specialized in Latin America. It is a curiously structured book that you can choose to read conventionally (Introduction is followed by chapter 1 is followed by chapter 2 and so on until you get to chapter 155) or unconventionally (chapter 1 is followed by chapter 37 is followed by chapter 102 is followed by chapter 9 until you finish all of them - there is a line at the end of each chapter suggesting which page to turn to next, not the one which follows numerically). It is a brilliant idea, to let the reader assemble the story as s/he will, and to have it fit at the same time is masterful. I digress.

Monday.
I watched as many movies as I could stomach on the plane, as I always did. Put on my face in the cramped, slightly disgusting airplane bathroom because I refuse to look a mess getting off. The queue through immigration is unusually long, and slow. Collect baggage. Queue again to get through customs with my white card and passport in hand. The official checking the ticked boxes on the card waves me through and for the first time, after countless struggles with getting heavy bags onto the x-ray machines for 4 years, I get a free pass.

He was waiting in the arrivals hall. No surprises there. Those came later. The usual exchange of pleasantries follows, how long have you been here, sorry to keep you waiting, work-talk, accept compliment, weather-talk. Kingsford Smith has a new addition to its infrastructure - a multi-storey travelator in the carpark. It is on the travelator that he surprises me first, although I can't say that I wasn't half-expecting it. Oh the uncertainty, always the uncertainty! I think that's what gives me, us both, the rush. That potent mixture of fear, anticipation, uncertainty, defiance.

There was a light drizzle that night. The roads from the airport to my place were the same as I remembered, semi-familiar landscapes.

Later, I found myself in a room that had been mine but now wasn't. Almost everything seemed the same - the same furniture, the same people (at least the two who were around), the absolute silence of the apartment. It was a strange feeling, being somewhere that had been a home. Another curious thing was the lack of emotion I felt. I was sorry for him and would have done anything to help, but not angry or hurt or any of the hundred things someone in that situation could have been. How complicated human relationships get and how much they can change with time. But then, this was never a solid matter to begin with.

Introduction

I'm back

I know I was only there for 12 days, but those 12 days seem both like a lifetime and a blink of an eye. Where to begin?

To begin with, 12 days was too short. In between meeting up with friends and shuttling the family around, I didn't get half of what I'd wanted to do done. Despite my best efforts, I missed out on going to the beaches (too cold), seeing the Botanic Gardens properly (too big), taking the ferry from circular quay to anywhere, taking the train anywhere, digging through the library for books (definitely not enough time. and it's being rearranged. again.), and taking a full walk through uni. In retrospect, I would have needed a month to be even remotely satisfied.

I did however manage to make it to the Opera Bar after dark, to the art gallery for a final(?) visit, to David Jones food hall (where I found my sister looking staggered by the sheer amount and variety of food available - "I need help... can we stay here all day?"), to the fish market for seafood and the best oyster I've had (ever) to catch up with Duncan over coffee (and listen to him complain about his 1st and 2nd year students. and to be amazed once again at how much he has achieved by 30), to walk along the racecourse from my old flat to uni on a beautiful, sunny-sweet day (after a not-quite-dark-but-far-from-bright-night), and, most importantly, to laugh, listen, reminisce.
I also graduated (officially), which was quite fun.

A lecturer once told me not use a sentence as a paragraph. He was right. But this isn't an essay or an article.

Does that count as a start? I certainly hope so.