The meaning of life

Now what? Experiments are finally done and I have that mixed feeling I used to get after barely surviving some big exam: the sighed relief of a job finally done and a renewed appreciation of the aimless, meaningless oddity that is human existence. What am I supposed to wake up for now? Luckily, the answer to that question is very clear: Jakarta is exactly 12 time-zones away from, say, Boston or Detroit and this week, finally, the Celtics won on the road. Few things will get me out of bed as quickly as the realization that while it may be 7:30am, the Conference Finals are on.

We finished coding data for the 360^th subject/respondent one night in Yogyakarta and the next day I found myself at a fancy hotel in Jakarta for the annual 3-day Fulbright conference here. I knew it would happen, but the switch between crazed-work mode to living it up in Jakarta was just a little fast. I vaguely remember rambling on to overly polite anthropologists at the conference about why economic games, priming treatments and embedded experiments actually are relevant to important things such as post-colonial nationalism or the rise of religious discourse in contemporary world politics. I got the feeling they were, to put in Javanese terms, less than impressed.
Indonesia is awash with anthropologists (but I have nothing against anthropologists; some of my best friends are anthropologists…), and as one friend put it, my experiments just sound a little “reductionist”. I think what really shocked her was that I usually don’t think of “reductionism” as a negative thing. But I digress.

Subject number 360, if you must know, was an anonymous 21 year old woman from an Islamic University in Yogya. In the halls of that university, incidentally, I noticed one woman in a full niqab (Saudi style female dress) and another in tight “skinny jeans”, very high heals, and make-up covered by a symbolic jilbab (Asian style veil, like the ones Benazir Bhuttu would wear.) I wonder if the two of them gossip now and then.
All in all we had six faculties in three universities, including the one in Padang, West Sumatra, and now it’s over. Data analysis and all that fun stuff have just begun but for the next two weeks at least, I get to pretend I’m done with something. To celebrate, I’m actually going home for a two week vacation and very excited about that.

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It’s been nearly a month since I posted and if you’re reading this, I guess you care, so sorry about that. A bunch of stuff has accumulated that I’ll probably upload in the next few posts. For one thing, I’ve been meaning to post pictures from the kampug tour of Jakarta with Mr. Z. and here are a few of them (you may notice the superior quality of these photos when compared to previous posts. I’d like to say it’s because Mr. Z. has a far better camera than me, but I think he’s also better at pressing that button on the top.)

This dignified gentleman (wearing the cap of someone who’s been to Mecca on pilgrimage and a traditional Javanese batik shirt) owns a little restaurant facing the canal. He provided us with coffee for which we’re grateful.

This little guy was very new to the world when we met him and his mom enjoying the morning.

These are Jamu bottles, traditional Javanese medicine sold door to door by women as a daily health routine to cure every imaginable ailment. Apparently the Jakarta Jamu scene is dominated by the women from Solo (a city near Yogyakarta and its main rival as seat of traditional Javanese culture).

Every neighborhood in Indonesia is expected to have a welcoming gate that celebrates independence, marking the years since 1945. This neighborhood is a big fan of PDI-P, the party of former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Indonesia’s founding president Sukarno (that’s Bu Mega on the flag.)

And here’s Mega at the local PDI-P station. Notice the white nose on the bull. This distinguishes PDI-P from plain old PDI (black nose.) The final –P stands for Perjuangan (“struggle”, or “struggling on…”) and was used for the new party, after Soeharto manipulated the old PDI and forced Mega to leave PDI. Yes, I actually care about these things.

And to counter the nationalist side of things, here’s a banner for PPP, the United Development Party. Under Soeharto and starting in the early seventies, there was an engineered 3-party system, with Golkar, the ruling “non-party” in the center, the nationalist (Red-White) PDI on one side and the Islamic (green) PPP on the other. All three parties still exist and compete with a bunch of new parties that entered the scene since 1998.

This is a worshiper at the large, wonderful Chinese temple in the Jakarta Chinatown.

Just when you thought you’ve seen the weirdest named streets… here’s “Public administration street (1)” (Notice poorer quality of photography.)

A guy.

ps
Continuing on the sociological side-results theme from last time: older siblings of the world, watch out, there’s some data on your behavior you might not like.