First Results Are In

After months of preparations in Indonesia and - let’s just say - “more than months” before Indonesia, the pilot is finished. I now have my revised procedures and far-more-educated guesses as to what might work, and I even have my first set of real, original, methodologically defensible (?) data to analyze. It’s an odd feeling: uplifting, exciting, but also a little anti-climactic.

It’s my dataset; research I planned and implemented in a far away country for a question I identified and revised three thousand times. All those hours of speculation and redrafting in an office in California, cafeterias of Jerusalem campuses, corridors of hospitals, Pacific beaches and about a dozen trips in seat B13 between the snoring guy and chatty one crossing the Atlantic have started to pay off.

These past few weeks a few dozen Indonesian students and three research assistants actually showed up to divide money according to odd rules and answer a long set of questions, from voting preferences, to the number of times they lend books and CDs to friends in a typical month, to the number of prostrations they perform in nighttime Tawarih prayers during Ramadan (since, obviously, “Traditionalists” tend to perform 23, while “Modernists” tend to perform 11; I like to pretend I’ve known that – or what Tawarih is - for ages).

On second thought, however, it’s, well, a dataset. It’s a matrix of numbers on a spreadsheet. Is it really ok to be excited about it? And yes, it's my dataset, but who said anyone else will care about what it says? (And no, you don't count.)
What’s more, it’s just a pilot. Now I need to repeat it – in revised form - with many more students here in Yogyakarta and in Padang, and hope the results hold up.

But, given that this has been one of the busiest months in recent memory, it feels good to be done with one part at least. Moreover, at first glance, the data looks very promising (no evil-eye-taunting intended…), although debriefing subjects revealed some important changes to be made to the procedure. We tried out most of these changes, and I’m still hopeful.

This has been the main asset of the past month, the intrepid, tireless and insightful Yogyakarta staff:









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I still plan to post some pictures from the Jakarta kampong tour. Here’s a taste, courtesy of Mr. Z’s photography:

And here’s another. I previously mentioned the new and rather radical PKS.
Well, guess who won the mini-election in my pilot questionnaire:














And now I'm going to sleep for 48 hours. Selamat malam.

Sleep, Padang and Beluga Whales

"Blah, blah, blah. Blah. Cliche 1, cliche 2, sports cliche No. 4 and sports cliche No. 7," Jefferson said. "We didn't do a very good job. We didn't give 110 percent. We've got to give it all we got. We've got to leave it all on the court, and we didn't do that."
New Jersey Nets forward Richard Jefferson, as quoted by ESPN
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The main two events of the week were between midnight and 10am, Thursday. At around 12:30am I realized my newish, seemingly brilliant strategy for randomly pairing subjects in the experiment rounds would make creating the printed material I was planning completely impractical. You know you're a nerd when you lie awake, for hours, over badly executed combinatorics of experimental logistics. At around 4am I decided I solved the problem (I didn't quite, but it helped me sleep for an hour, and 48 hours later I think we're good to go.)

At 5:30am I met Mr. Z, a friend who's lived here for 8 years, for an expedition through the awakening kampungs of Jakarta, along the canal down the road. Those who've experienced my state at 7:30am can imagine what 5:30 is like (after one hour of sleep), but even I must admit the advantages of early rising ("best hours of the day" and all that.) If not for Mr Z, I could easily have gone through the year missing most of Indonesia not through space but through time. I'm generally asleep when "Indonesia" happens.
Photos/descriptions of the 4-hour walkabout will follow when I solve some other minor technical issues.
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Complementary arguments:

“A politician from the PDI-P, Soetardjo Soerjogoeritno (Mbah Tardjo), said he was very opposed to the visit, because Israel still occupied Palestine, and besides, Indonesia would not gain anything from Israel because Israelis were famous for being stingy.”
Indonesia Matters (PDI-P is the nationalist party of former president Megawati)
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In other news, Friday was Balinese Hindu New Year, Nyepi Day (a day of silence.) Tourists and their dollars were not allowed out of their hotels in Bali, which I think shows a lot of Balinese dignity.
So far, in the span of three months, I've seen a (Latin) Christian New Year, a Muslim New Year, a Chinese New Year and now a Balinese Hindu one. Each one of these is an official holiday here as well. Happy new years!
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Apparently, Beluga whales enjoy the note G
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Sunday I head back to Yogya, to begin actual recruitment/survey of subjects. Crunch time has really arrived.

In the meantime, a bit more from Padang:












This is (a very dark photo of) a banner congratulating the Tionghoa (Chinese-Indonesian) population for Chinese New Year. It’s of a new political party, Hanura (The People’s Conscious Party), set up by former general Wiranto (left), who was head of the military and a major actor when Soeharto fell from power in 1998. Wiranto was also head of the military when East Timor became independent, and allegedly oversaw the horrible violence perpetrated by the military and pro-Indonesia militia (here’s the latest on the East Timor situation.) Wiranto ran for president in 2004, and wants the new party to help him do it again.


This one is of PKS, a newish, rather radical and very interesting Islamic party trying to make headway outside of its Jakarta base (it’s the biggest party in the Jakarta assembly.) I’ve been told that only a couple of years ago you couldn’t see a sign of them in Padang; now they’re holding conferences and conventions everywhere (even in Hindu Bali.)



Some more from the river:

12 years

It’s always odd to be on the other side of the world when things flare up in the Middle East. Gaza, Sderot and now Ashkelon are the latest focal points, and it doesn’t look good. It’s also odd because 12 years ago, this week, the violence hit very close when a good friend was killed in a bombing. Like most recent years – except for last – I missed the memorial service. While it was a terrible year for everyone, then, in February 1996, there was at least a hope that we were seeing the last few years of the conflict. We weren’t, and unlike 1996, very few people can actually see a viable way out now.

This is what the current war-zone looked like a year ago (although it wasn’t very peaceful then either):