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A belated story update: I wrote a story about the end of the Jakarta Fair, which you can view here. It's weird interviewing people that I can't communicate directly with, but it was still a fun experience going to the fair and talking to the vendors, who were pretty candid about their gains and losses. It was like pulling off fingernails to get fairgoers to talk to Nofia and I, worse so than it normally is getting strangers to talk to me while doing a story.
So I finally got my camera cable, which means I can upload a bunch of photos and I've been saving up. Here goes:
A slightly blurry picture of me in my awesome new motorcycle helmet taken by my uncle's driver, Safei, by the entrance of the Jakarta Post. It gets really sweaty under that plastic encasement.
Well, after an hour or so of persevering through a bad internet connection, I haven't succeeded in uploading anymore photos (damn you blogger.com! damn my office's slow internet!). I'll try again in a couple of days when I get back to the office...
Last week, I met with a UW law professor who was spending a month in Jakarta working with a non-profit organization called Uplift. One small connection has turned into something much bigger-- and a potential story idea. The professor, Beth Riven, is vice president of the organization; her husband, Mark Schlansky, is the president and founder. They also happen to live about 5 minutes away from my new house in Lake City. Mark used to work at Boeing too. Strange how you can find such a strong a connection to home in a country you've never been to.
Anyway, I spent some time in their office on Tuesday and was really impressed by the work they've been doing in Indonesia. For close to a decade, the group has been advocating for health and human rights in a few South Asian countries, most recently in Indonesia. It's actually written into the Indonesian constitution that residents are entitled to medical care, but the point is rarely enforced. Uplift's strategy has been to educate doctors on the concept of "right to health" and stresses the importance of disaster training, especially after the 2004 tsunami. They are also targeting a younger generation of doctors, hoping the message will shape a new crop of informed health care professionals and influence the way medicine is practiced here.
Recently Uplift has been working with the mothers of students who attend madrasas, or Muslim schools, to teach them how to make products (mostly bags and storage containers) out of recycled materials, namely the packaging from cleaning products; it's a very Seattle-type project, in my opinion. It's up there with the handbags I've seen made from recycled car leather. All this is part of their project to create "child-friendly communities," where the children, families and neighbors all benefit from better standards of living that are self-realized. Anyway, Uplift is supposed to sell these products on their Web site (I haven't been able to find the link, I'll update when I've got it) and give the profits back to the families. Tomorrow at 6:30 a.m., I'm going with Mark and the Jakarta director of Uplift, named Geni Achnas, to visit a madrasa. I'm very stoked to see a different side of Jakarta.
Today I got to go w/ Augustina, one of our Web reporters, to sample a new Italian restaurant. It was the best Western food I've had in Jakarta, and it most importantly it was free. It was also, at 2:00 p.m., my third meal of the day (a meal of six different courses), testifying to the overeating I've been doing here. Good thing I'm gym-bound today!
A new crop of red, itchy bumps have begun to plague me again, and I'm not entirely sure they are mosquito bites. Why does my skin hate Jakarta?
Since Thursday, my main mode of transportation has been on the back of a motorcycle. It's fucking rad. My first ride on Thursday was probably the most exhilarating moment I've had in a long time, I almost cried inside my helmet (which is also pretty rad looking). Granted, I'm just the passenger (bike being driven by my uncle's driver), I've officially fallen in love with transportation via motorbike. Perhaps I'll start saving money for a Vespa back home. In any case, my sweet new helmet is probably my favorite Indonesian souvenir so far, even if I don't get to use it when I go home.
Riding on the back of the motorcycle, it was the first time I really felt like I was a part of the city and not just observing it like an outsider. Most people my age and working the same type of job that I do can't afford cars; they usually ride motorbikes or get by taking public transportation and taxis. By riding a motorcycle, I'm kind of sampling the life I would have if I was really a Jakarta resident. Since my uncle is leaving soon for 3 weeks, I've had to figure out an appropriate mode of transportation for while he's gone. Taking his car would require me to pay for gas, which is about $50 US every 4-5 days. I brought a sizable amount of money with me, but that's a lot of cash when you calculate it over 3 weeks. By taking a motorcycle, I'm spending a bout $15 US a week, a much more economical amount by my standards.
It's weird to feel like a foreigner but not be treated like one by Indonesians; because I don't look distinctly foreign (read: white), people usually approach me by speaking Indonesian, to which I usually reply with a confused, slightly worried look. In certain places, like work or malls, I can get by with English. Even after making some flashcards, I haven't been catching the language as quickly as I'd like to. Oh well, about 7 more weeks to go anyway, and I don't expect to be fluent by then. I had almost the opposite experience while in China two years ago; most people could tell that I wasn't Chinese Chinese by the way I dressed and my accented Mandarin. There, I felt extremely foreign despite looking Chinese.
Last night was an adventure, both good and bad. I went to the final day of the Jakarta Fair, a month-long celebration of the city where people can buy stuff,watch performances and eat good food. A good deal of it is actually held indoors, but I was there to do a wrap-up report of the event. Accompanying me was Nofia, a Jakarta Post reporter who is actually one month younger than me. She helped translate interviews and we had a lovely time together. The bad part? Getting totally jacked by a taxi driver on the way back to the office. Asshole got miserably lost and charged me more than twice what it should have cost for the trip.
It's strange seeing someone my age (22) already employed at a well-regarded newspaper. In fact, the Jakarta Post has spent the last several days interviewing people for 10 new reporting positions. My journalism friends will surely marvel at this: 10 open reporter positions. When the hell has the Seattle Times or the P-I even had one open position for reporters?? The hiring process that the JP employs is interesting too. Nofia, who previously worked in human resources at the Phillip Morris-owned cigarette company Samporo, was hired after going through a writing test, an interview with the editor in chief, and a psychological test (quite common for most jobs in Jakarta, I'm told). Afterward, the hirelings underwent a year of training: 3 months of instruction and 9 months of field work at a specific desk in the newsroom.
It's an interesting if not perplexing difference to American newsrooms, where internships, clips, references and (most importantly) connections will likely land you your first job, and usually not at a nationally renowned publication (unless you're a total prodigy). Most of my co-workers here didn't study journalism in college, let alone a writing-related field. Nofia majored in international relations, which is actually quite applicable. Iwan the Webmaster and another reporter I met (name escapes me) both majored in engineering, probably one of the least applicable majors to journalism.
Perhaps my future job does lie in a foreign country. Seeing as the JP is still a growing newspaper by many standards, it seems natural that they would be expanding their staff right now.
My plans for this week? Making time to work out (I joined a gym last week to keep myself fit and occupied), fleshing out a story idea about a non-profit organization championing human rights and medical rights, and seeing the new Harry Potter movie.
Despite my nightly ritual of applying a pretty liberal amount of bug repellent all over my body, the Indonesian mosquitoes continue to haunt me in my sleep. In addition to the allergy-related bumps on my right leg (and now the back of my left thigh), I have two bites on each hand, one on my back, three on my left ankle, and one on my right cheek. Today I wore leggings with my skirt, to not only hide the battle scars on my leg but to keep the bugs out. I'm convinced the mosquitoes here are of a mutant strain capable of biting people through their clothing. There is no way my repellent isn't working! Next step: leave no cubic inch of skin uncovered with insect repellent, even under my clothes.
Also, Iwan (the Jakarta Post's Webmaster) told me this morning that my article about Miss Indonesia was the most read story on the Web site. What? Really?
Having been here for a week, I've come to appreciate and detest several aspects of Jakarta:
- Food is cheap and pretty tasty. For lunch today, I had a local dish called soto, which consisted of a coconut milk-based soup flavored with spices and lime juice. Served with rice and a free iced tea, lunch cost me about $15,000 RP, or less than $2 US. In general, a square meal at a modest food vendor (whether it be on the street or in a mall) will cost between $1 and $5 US. That's pretty amazing.
- The traffic here is epically terrible. The white dotted lines separating each lane are taken more as a suggestion than an actual guide by drivers. A car ride from my office to home, which should normally take about 15 minutes, once took an hour and a half. Cars and motorcycles weave in and out of lanes, sometimes only inches from one another. Pedestrians also have a hell of a time crossing roads with no crosswalks. It almost makes me long for the simplicity of Seattle traffic.
- There are a lot of malls in Jakarta, varying in size and quality. This is good and bad, I guess; I've noticed a lack of green public space in Jakarta, like parks or other areas not occupied by buildings. At the same time, malls and I have become good friends. Being by myself a lot of the time, malls are a pretty safe bet for a hangout where I know I won't be accosted by strangers and where at least a small percentage of the population can speak English. As much as I've wanted to be more adventurous during my stay in Jakarta, realistically it's not such a great idea since I don't speak the language.
- Watching American shows on Indonesian television is a great learning tool for grasping the language. The first season of Project Runway was playing on one channel, followed by Ghost Whisperer (yes, a strange choice in shows, duly noted). Since it is a large Muslim country, a lot of the "sexier" parts of American shows are cut out. Example: Jennifer Love Hewitt's character on Ghost Whisperer is about kiss her hubby; we see their lips about to meet and a split second later their faces are parting. A slight moment of editing cut out the actual lips-touching-with-maybe-some-tongue action from being realized on screen. I went to see Die Hard last night and the film was prefaced with a notice of censorship before proceeding. Not sure what was cut out of the film exactly, which was still pretty entertaining to my surprise (not because of the censorship but because it's the first Die Hard movie in eight years).
- A lot of simple Indonesian words are plays on English and European words. "Bottle," for example, is "botol" in Indonesian; "bank" is also "bank" but pronounced more like "bang"; "beer" is "bir"; "taxi" is "taksi." My theory is that most words that are more English sounding or are close to English are words (or things) introduced into the Indonesian lexicon after the language was settled and finalized; this has happened in other Asian languages. Cheese in Mandarin, for example, sounds like "chee-suh" when spoken, which is more or less a phonetic pronunciation of "cheese."
- The begging culture is pretty shameless here, as it also is in parts of China that I've been to. Probably spurred by the fact that my uncle also drives a nice car, when stopped at an intersection people will come by with trinkets (Spiderman blow-up dolls, world atlases, small toys, drinks, newspapers) and attempt to sell them to you, or people with feather dusters will dust your car like a wood end table in the hopes of getting a tip. Some people employ their children in the process, sometimes just walking from car to car jingling a plastic bottle full of change. It's heartbreaking but also familiar; some parts of Beijing are very similar in begging culture and actually more manipulative than what I've seen in Jakarta.
- The gap between rich and poor is cavernous in Jakarta, but the space they share is very, very close. Frequently I'll see a block of shanty houses with tin roofs barely holding themselves up, and literally right next to these houses is a brand new building, usually an apartment complex, advertising for tenants. The fancy malls I've frequented have no trouble employing people, but the pay is abysmal. My uncle estimates they get a paid about $100-200 US a month--for working probably every day. My co-workers at the Jakarta Post get along quite well, I think. They say the big Indonesian paper, Kompas, pays the best though. Iwan recently told me he was thinking of buying a car, which would set him back $5,000-$10,000 for an inexpensive brand. This indicates to me that he isn't hurting for money necessarily.
- There are two chain establishments I didn't expect to find in Jakarta: Dunkin' Donuts and A&W. The former is actually kind of logical; Indonesians like sweets and fried food, as I've come to understand from a lot of the local cuisine I've tried. But the A&W fascination puzzles me. Other highly popular chains: Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonald's, Sizzlers (!), and Popeye's. Pollo Campero is a novelty here: a Guatemalan chain looking for success in Jakarta. I promised Manuel I would eat there at least once while I'm here. I have to find it first...
- Carre 4 is the most amazing store in Jakarta. Nearly anything you need to buy you can find here. I also visited a wholesale Costco-like store called Marko (Dutch-owned), which has seen a drop in business since Carre 4 (French-owned) opened. At Carre 4 you can buy smaller portions of things, and apparently Marko is not kid-friendly at all. In fact, you can't bring your children inside the store. Carre 4, on the other hand, has a kiddie corner for kids to muck around in. Marko did astound me with its uncanny resemblance to Costco, though.
That's the extent of my musings so far, I'm sure I'll think of some more enthralling observations later.
My right leg is officially diseased.
On Saturday I noticed a few exceptionally large bumps on my leg, which I attributed to being some really nasty mosquito bites. The next day, after one particularly large bump smack in the middle of my lower shin began to increase in size and refused to respond to the antihistamine gel I applied to it, my uncle suggested I see a doctor. He was convinced I had some kind of allergic reaction or a virus; he turned out to be right. This morning I visited a doctor who confirmed that I'm not suffering from insect bites; my leg is having some sort of allergic reaction most likely triggered by stray cats or dogs (cats are getting the brunt of the finger pointing from both my doctor and my uncle). I do have a minor allergy to animal hair, but I had no idea my allergy could escalate to this level, even in a foreign country.
Besides the fact I've had no contact with any animals (alive, that is) since I arrived in Jakarta, I don't understand why only one of my legs is reacting so violently to this allergy. Anyway, I'm currently taking two oral medications and using a topical cream to treat my ailment. Because I've previously had bad reactions to foreign medication (once while in Taiwan my entire body broke out in red splotches from taking some foreign cough medicine), I researched all my prescribed medications on WebMD.com; everything check out, thankfully. I guess all the cute skirts I brought along to keep me cool during my trip are now out of the question. It's pants, pants and more pants for this girl.
I've decided to create some sort of photo essay to chronicle the state of my right leg. As soon as I get my camera cord (which is being air-mailed as we speak), the fury of my right leg will soon become public.
That addresses "cat allergy." "Cat oven" is an entirely different story. So I've been seeing these "cat oven" signs around the city and have been slightly grossed out by them. Not that people eating cats is entirely new...But now I've found out that it's not at all some sort of contraption in which to cook cats. In the Indonesian alphabet, "c" is pronounced like "ts," as in "tsi tsi fly". So it's not so much "cat" in the Western sense but "tsat," meaning "paint" in Indonesian. "Oven" is actually meant in the literal English definition. "Cat oven" refers to a service performed by auto body companies where "cat" is applied and then one's car is put in an "oven" to set the paint and give it a glossy finish.
I haven't been able to snap a photo of this phenomena yet, but stay tuned for cat ovens galore.
I'll try to keep things short by ending here. Tomorrow: my observations about Jakarta on the one-week anniversary of my arrival.
Last night was a perfect example of why it sucks to live (almost) alone with people you can't communicate clearly with. I came home from the Miss Indonesia pageant completely exhausted; I actually fell asleep for several minutes toward the end of the show, which wasn't as exciting as I had anticipated it to be. I was washing up before bed when suddenly the sink in my bathroom decided to detach itself from the wall. In front of me was this wide ceramic basin, supported below by nothing more than a metal pipe. The whole fixture wobbled around in the air like an obese, one-legged man. I held onto it for a while, thinking I could possibly slide the basin back onto the metal prongs in the wall that were initially supporting it. I wasn't too keen on letting go of the sink, fearing it would flap around for a bit and then go crashing onto the bathroom floor. After a few minutes, I realized that I could either continue holding onto this heavy, pink basin for the rest of the night, or I could catch the maids before they went to bed to help me out. I opted for the latter since I'm prone to break things more than fix them and ran for the kitchen. As I was going, the first thing that popped into my head was, "Shit, how am I going to communicate this to the maids? We barely understand each other as it is." I figured "help" was a pretty universal word, so as soon as I spotted Marci, one of the maids, I whispered "Help!" and vigorously motioned for her to follow me. She and the other maid followed suit to the bathroom to find the sink still wobbling weakly on its metal leg. They managed to fit the sink back into the wall but the pipe dislocated in the process, causing water to leak out of the joints whenever I turned on the water.Panic attack aside, it was an interesting evening. This morning my uncle assured me that our driver, Safei, would fix the sink and that the shower head in my bathroom would also be replaced. I wish all landlords would be as accommodating. Regardless, I'm glad he pays Safei extra to be not only the driver but the miscellaneous handyman of the house; the man has two kids and a wife to support.As I briefly mentioned, the pageant was kind of a snooze. It wasn't just that I didn't understand a lot of the dialogue and conversation on stage; it was simply a poorly organized production. All the contestants did was walk around the stage and answer questions; there were 3 rounds of Q&A and nothing else, not even a talent or swimsuit portion. Instead, the producers hired well-known singers (some whom were runners up on Indonesian Idol) to perform between segments. I enjoyed hearing some Indonesian pop music, but after about the 10th song (there were six different singing acts, some of which performed more than once), I was ready for some serious pillow action. My article, however, was posted to the Web site earlier this afternoon. My co-worker Augustina and I actually left early and missed watching the winner get crowned. Due to some lingering jet lag, I couldn't stay there any longer without passing out. As a result I had to wait for Augustina to get to the office this afternoon in order to finalize much of my article, which relied on her translation of the Q&A and of the biographies of each contestant in the program booklet. The language barrier still irks me, but I'm trying not to let it become such an obstacle. This weekend I plan on getting an English-Indonesian dictionary and probably an Indonesian-English one as well; Jakarta Post employees get a discount at one of the local bookstores, Granmedia, so Augustina offered to lend me her card on Sunday for the 20% discount. We're going to the Jakarta Fair beforehand to check out some of the local festivities; likely I'll be writing a piece from the foreigner's perspective, which Iwan suggested I do. We'll see how well this foreigner survives the weekend.
I made it!Aside from the immensely long flight from Seattle to Taipei and then to Jakarta (aided by in-flight entertainment from the fine films In the Land of Women and Disturbia), I managed to endure the trip in one piece, albeit a sweaty piece who desperately wanted to shower and brush her teeth. I spent the rest of yesterday (Tuesday) hanging out with my Uncle Patrick, with whom I'll be staying with while in Jakarta. He leaves in a couple of weeks to see his wife and kids in Singapore, after which I'll be all by my lonesome self in his house (which isn't too shabby) with two maids and a driver. Pictures to come once I can get a hold of the USB cord for my camera (unfortunately, I left it in Seattle). I've never, ever had "servants" and am extremely uncomfortable with the idea of having two people wait on me and one person whose sole purpose is to drive me around. It's a very, very strange living arrangement. But my housing situation as arranged by the Jakarta Post was way out of my spending league ($800 US a month!), so I decided to rely on family connections. It's ironic that the more opulent living arrangement ended up costing me nothing as opposed to an apartment that would have cost me $1600 to live in for two months--minus maids and driver, I'm certain.
My first meal in Indonesia was Chinese food at a fancy restaurant inside a huge Indonesian mall called Taman Anggrek, one of the newest and fanciest malls in the city; this is a perfect characterization of my uncle, who is Chinese-Indonesian. We had straight up Cantonese food: some shu mai and ha gao (dim sum staples), fried noodles with seafood, bitter melon, pumpkin soup, tsa siu bao, tsa siu chong fun, lotus seed buns, taro buns, and some chrysanthemum tea to wash it all down; afterward, I was disgustingly full. I also got to visit a Target/Fred Meyer-like shopping center called Carre 4, which is a huge, huge, huge store selling produce, prepared food, clothing, electronics, furniture and everyday necessities. Tonight I'm going to the Carre 4 wholesale store (read: Indonesian Costco) with my uncle to stock up on supplies before he leaves for Singapore.
I had my first day at work today as well. Initially I'll be working with the Jakarta Post's webmaster, named Iwan, uploading stories and helping him with an overhaul redesign of the newspaper's Web site. Any suggestions about the Web site (http://www.thejakartapost.com) are extremely welcome; in fact, you'll be making me look good with all your brilliant ideas! The layout is decidedly dated. I don't think the Web site has been changed much since it launched in 1998. Later, I'm supposed to moved around to the features section and will also write for the Sunday edition. The Jakarta Post also publishes a pretty cool weekly supplement called Weekender; it's like mini magazine clearly geared toward more upper class Indonesians and rich expatriates. That's not necessarily an insult but more of an observation on the content (fashion & lifestyle pieces, articles on celebrities, editorials criticizing the state of Jakarta, photo essays about the ethnic minorities of Indonesia, etc.). I hope to contribute something to this section, eventually.My first real story, however, will be covering the Miss Indonesia pageant. Having just attended and participated in the Miss Chinese Seattle 2007 Pageant festivities (I was giving away my title of Miss Talent), as soon as I saw the commercial for Miss Indonesia I hunted down someone who could get me there. I'm attending with a co-worker, a Web reporter named Augustina, who will be my escort/translator for the night. In the same way that we have both a Miss USA and a Miss America pageant in the United States, there are two Miss Indonesia pageants; the winner of one goes on to Miss World while the other moves on to Miss Universe. The one I will be attending is the slightly less popular contest (according to my co-workers) and the winner will eventually participate in the Miss World Pageant. I'm so excited to go!
