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):

Padang

I returned from Padang a few days ago, to the shocking realization that Jakarta feels like (3^rd or 4^th) home to me at the moment. Padang is, well, different. It’s right on the beach and surrounded by mountains, but most of all, people just aren’t Javanese.

Javanese (and Sundanese, the people of West Java) are extremely polite, with intricate rules as to what people will say to each other. “No”, for example, is not acceptable, under any circumstances (including when you’re asking a taxi driver if he knows how to get somewhere, and he has no clue.) “Kurang tahu” (literally: “less then know”) is about as close as people will get, and even that’s a challenge.

Minangkabau – the people of West Sumatra, where Padang is – don’t share these kinds of norms. For example, when people stare at you while you’re eating in Java (the common state of things), or laugh at you as you walk by, they usually feel mildly embarrassed if you stare back for a moment. Minangkabau don’t have this problem. They’ll just keep on staring and laughing.

This must be the cure for all those 13 year olds who want to be… whichever celebrity 13 year olds want to be. A couple of months of being the center of attention, constantly, should do the trick. A friend in Padang – a linguist from Australia on fieldwork for a master’s thesis – was at a traditional wedding in the mountains a week ago. Two kids saw her and started crying. “Made me feel wonderful”, she said.

The truth is, though, Indonesians in general are just very social people and there's actually something refreshing about Minang directness. Part of the problem is just my weird notion of “privacy”. It just doesn’t belong in a place so densely populated. And so all the “leave me alone” cues from the West – e.g. pausing while your host hovers over you to inspect how your dining is progressing – don’t work.

But the people I actually got to know in Padang - especially the staff at the linguistic lab I'm working out of - were great. Minangkabau architecture is beautiful too, the famous Padang food deserves its reputation and having the ocean front in the middle of the city isn't too bad either.
Next time I'll be exploring the mountains as well.

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My first morning in Padang there was a 5.3 earthquake not too far away.
Slept through it, of course. I love my earplugs.

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Great minds think alike:
Shlomo Benizri blames gays for earthquakes, emulating Abu Bakar Bashir.

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This must be what my Indonesian sounds like:
“In regards of communities concern of flexiblity data communication technology, pushed us to create the new product with WiFi base; called HotSpot.”
- The English introduction, when connecting at a “HotSpot”

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From the mouth of a river at the edge of town:

Marcus

1. Yogya

“Ah… born in Jerusalem?”
This was, more or less, the first thing we heard upon arrival in Indonesia, when I was 11 and the Soeharto-era immigration officer looked through our passports.

A couple of weeks ago I heard it again, this time accompanied by a big smile from a dean at an Islamic university. I was touring a few departments soliciting permission and assistance in recruiting their students for my study. Recommended response: make a reference to the Arabic origin of a word, comment on a similar Arabic word, and in general give a vague, equivocal, deniable impression that you speak Arabic.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it… I actually have no problems here with my place of birth. I’m not the only one (a friend here grew up on Cremieux street) and besides, Americans like me are born in many places (Silver Spring, Vineyard Spring). “Islamic” can also mean many things. And yet, when my next stop turned out to be the Faculty of Islamic Religious Studies, on a Friday, there was that moment of: “Right….”

Turned out completely fine, of course.

Yogyakarta was a long string of these meetings, explanations, interviews with potential assistants, etc. It was also an opportunity to revisit places and people after two years. Some have unfortunately moved on, of course, but it was good to be back. Yogya (pronounced “Jogja”) is the university city of Indonesia, full of young students and academics and is also a center of Javanese tradition.

2. Borobudur

Yogya is also close to Borobudur, a beautiful giant stupa from the Buddhist period, around 800 CE, which I had shamefully not visited before:

3. Jakarta

The rainy season has really arrived. The Jakarta airport was shut a few times last week, and the road to the airport was shut for much longer. When we finally landed at night, I embarked on a two hour ride into the city through West Javanese countryside. I doesn’t help either that my neighborhood name, “Bendungan Hilir" (“Benhil”), literally means “Dam of the River-Mouth” (or something to that effect).

Tip: don’t watch the Lost pilot episode just before flying in Indonesia.

4. Washington

But only in Jakarta can you actually vote in the U.S. primary. The Democratic Party now has a “Democrats Abroad” section, with delegates and all…

5. Arkansas

Slightly out of context, but still scary:
"I didn't major in math," Huckabee told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference meeting in Washington, D.C. "I majored in miracles."

- Huckabee disputing the inevitability of a McCain candidacy

6. Beijing

As ironic as it is, Chinese New Year is a biggish deal in Jakarta (among all the other new years). A partly-Tionghua (ethnic Chinese) friend noted bitterly that until the democratic period, it was illegal to even celebrate it. Now everyone seems to join the party.

Happy Year of the Rat!

7. Padang.

That’s where I’m headed tomorrow.

Death of a Dictator

After a couple of weeks of anticipation, it happened: Soeharto died yesterday around noon and was brought back to the family house on the famous Cendana street in Jakarta. It’s been a very interesting couple of days here, although I'm mostly just watching, a bit confused and doubtful I'm really capable of understanding what's going on in people's minds.

Soeharto ruled Indonesia for 32 years, the better part of most people’s lives, and his death is all anyone talked about in the last 24 hours. I'm in Yogyakarta at the moment (getting permission to recruit students for my research), and everyone here is glued to TV sets with round-the-clock coverage of the funeral of “Pak Harto” (Mister/Father Harto) in Solo, the nearby traditional rival of Yogyakarta. Flags on official buildings are at half mast, of course, as in this Islamic school near my "homestay":

Soeharto was actually born near here to a poor peasant family and rose the ranks of the military (first the Dutch military, then the Japanese-sanctioned militia, then Independent Indonesian army). He was a classic military authoritarian and the fanfare today is both odd and fascinating to me. After such a long, often ruthless and ever-cleptocratic rule, Soeharto receives a lavish state funeral. All of officialdom was in Solo today and even dignitaries from nearby countries were invited (the president of East Timor included! Soeharto was the president who ordered the bloody invasion of East Timor. Perhaps not coincidently, he didn’t make it in time.)

Indonesians’ feelings seem decidedly mixed too. Most people I spoke to had very ambivalent responses. He did a lot of good for the country, some said, stabilizing it and orchestrating rapid growth that brought millions out of poverty and misery (and besides, things were just cheaper then.) But then they mention the large toll roads around Jakarta (a business venture his daughter, Tutut, is reportedly invested in) or other similar issues. “Maybe he was ok, but his family wasn’t” is one sentence I’ve heard more than once.

A local blog offered this epitaph (two weeks prematurely):

Here lies Soeharto’s mortal remains.
His loss is our eternal gain.
For while he exercised his powers,
Whatever he gained, the loss was ours.

Of course, for those who paid the personal price of “stability” – hundreds of thousands murdered and many others imprisoned - growth was no consolation to begin with.

But today everyone seems, mostly, fascinated. They’ve never experienced this before. The first president of Indonesia, Sukarno, was buried without any pomp or public mourning of any kind in his rather remote hometown in East Java (in accordance with his successor’s orders.) This is really the first presidential funeral Indonesia has known.

It's been an interesting couple of days.

Here's Inside Indonesia’s take on things

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Unrelated, but fascinating

Tereza

When I left for Indonesia, I knew I’d miss tap-water tooth-brushing, but it seemed like a fair trade for being rid of the perennial questions “so why Indonesia?”

My answers about it would go something like: “Well, it’s the fourth largest country in the world. No, really. Really! The U.S. is third, Indonesia is fourth. Honestly…”
Or: “It has the largest Muslim population in the world. Seriously. Yes, bigger than Pakistan; by far. Really; look it up.”

As my cousin puts it, Indonesia has one of the lowest I/P ratios in the world.
With I = subjective Importance (in the eyes of foreigners), and P = Population.
Bangladesh is on the short list as well and I know of a little country in the eastern Mediterranean that might be at the opposite end of the spectrum (at least in its own eyes, or if we count New York Times headlines per capita).

Turns out, however, I was wrong again. Giving up tap-water didn’t rid me of the questions; I get them here all the time. People actually seem puzzled by my interest in their mega-country. It’s not that Indonesians lack national pride or that they dream of leaving – actually, for its size and relative wealth, there are very few emigrants. But the country really is lacking in attention. For many people I meet here too, the idea that I’d leave the U.S. to study Indonesian politics seems odd (come to think of it, with this international consensus on the matter, should I be worried that it doesn’t seem odd to me?)

My last line of defense in these discussions usually comes down to: nicest people in the world (quite possibly true). But the problem with ending those discussions is that I know what’s going to follow. It’s the dreaded “And what exactly are studying?” question.

In the hatchet-job of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” also knows as the film “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, Tomas says to Sabina:

If I had two lives, in one life I could invite her to stay at my place, and in the second life I could kick her out. Then I could compare and see which had been the best thing to do. But we only live once. Life's so light. Like an outline we can't ever fill in or correct, make any better.
It's frightening.

It seems like much of empirical social science is really about answering that: what should Tomas have done with Tereza? Invited her to stay? Kicked her out? If only we could experiment with both.

Well, that’s sort of part of my plan here (minus Tereza.) I can’t actually create two Indonesias, trying some nationalism here, some Islamism there… but I can try and play with some methods and quite a few assumptions and pretend that I have done that. In these two Indonesias, where most people conceive of themselves as “Indonesians” or as “Muslims”, how would they interact with each other, economically and politically? How easily would they cooperate with those who are different than themselves, who speak different languages or belong to different ethnic groups or religions?

And after all, these two Indonesias exist – wrapped up in one. And so if one learns about them both, one might be able to say something meaningful about the real political competition between “Islamist” and nationalist parties and the kind of constituencies they turn to and political appeals they can use.

So there. Next time you feel the urge to write to me with “How/when did this happen? What are you doing there? Why?” remember that I/P ratios like Indonesia’s can’t last.

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I’m off tomorrow, finally, to Yogya. Will be nice to get out of Jakarta after quite a while.

In the meantime, in turns out that R.O.U.Ss are real (via this)

Jakarta "Barry" Obama

One thing is certain, if “Barry Obama” wins the presidency, the U.S. image over here will change overnight. It’ll probably change everywhere, including in America itself, but more than one person here has commented about his Indonesian connection, and what an Obama victory would mean to people. Obama spent four years as a child here, with his mother and stepfather (an Indonesian). It really is pretty hard to believe that a kid who roamed the streets of Jakarta nicknamed “Barry” (everyone has a nickname here) and attended local schools (very rare for expat kids), could be the next U.S. president.

There’s little I hate more than bandwagoning, and I was thinking Clinton is the best available choice, experience-wise, but it’s hard not to be moved by Obama’s oratory. His Iowa victory is really exciting. It would be nice to have a president who not only can speak English, but can do it so well (if only he had some executive experience). It’s also moving to see the reactions to Iowa; here are some from abroad, and this is from Harlem:

Another woman who remembers America 50 years ago watches Obama's victory and tells me she's never seen anything like this in her entire life. Someone says, "Doesn't he look like a president?"
(Via this, it turns out Andrew Sullivan is a big Obama fan).

What’s really great is that Obama didn’t win this round because of Harlem (or Jakarta). It was Iowa after all. But Jakarta and Harlem could still hurt him, of course. Daniel Pipes, who’s had his share of cynical jingoism (I can remember some from when I heard him speak in D.C. a few times), outdoes himself here, writing “Was Barack Obama a Muslim?” (via this).

As you can see, I’ve had too much unproductive time on my hands this week, mostly because I got the official Jakarta “welcome”: I was sick as a dog. After spending a few days working up in the mountains above Jakarta, I came back and spent the next few days holed up in my room (haven’t really emerged yet). The mountains, besides being a quiet place to read and write, also taught me where Jakarta floods originate (it never stopped raining for more than an hour) and reminded me what “cold” feels like (aside from A/C that is).

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Here’s a Makassarese (South Sulawesi) restaurant. The picture hanging on the top left is of the Ka’bah in Mecca, flooded in the 1941.