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Jakarta a tale of two cities

 
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spinx11



Joined: 19 Jul 2005
Posts: 12
Location: lost

PostPosted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:08 am    Post subject: Jakarta a tale of two cities Reply with quote

Jakarta a tale of two cities




Let�s start in the secondary school that I work in, there's about 8 spore teachers, say about 4 Filipinos and maybe 6 Indonesian teachers, then there's about 8 Chinese teachers from the PRC. The principal and vice principal are from spore too. They are both nice guys who live by their rather impressive and selfless principles (pardon the pun) but they work too hard. As for me I live and work in Jakarta, the emphasis is on live, since I live for the moment I put in lots of effort when I�m teaching and I actually have a passion for the job, I don�t care about what the upper management thinks of me as my loyalty lies with the students first. I�m teaching the whole secondary school IT and I�m the form teacher for Secondary 1b or grade 7, who I also teach English essays. They are a fun class but rather mediocre in academic ability except for this girl, Lisa and maybe a couple of others who are slightly above average. Most of the students here or rather all are Indonesian Chinese and you can count the native Indonesian students on one hand. They lead very sheltered lives, each of them has their own personal driver and they probably have their own personal butler service. But being quite young there's not much difference in them and most of the slum dwelling Indonesian teens.

I actually took a walk in slum once; it was quite safe and had this kampong or village like atmosphere. The people there seemed to have the basic necessities in life, but I could see the condominium that I�m living in the distance, sticking out like a baron's palace. The place I�m living in now was looted, burnt and plundered during the 98 riots, people were killed there, either from being burnt from the looter�s fires or some innocent upper class Indonesian Chinese virgin jumped, rather then enduring a gang rape. The slum dudes that I was walking around with were probably part of the gang. For them it was probably payback time but still it�s no excuse for what they did. Same as the way the pribumis or native Indonesians are exploited by their Chinese bosses or by the pribumi political elite here. Anyway the place has been rebuilt and the lobby looks quite flash, with a decent pool and an ok gym.

So why is the title a tale of two cities? In all the cities that I have been and lived in, nowhere is the income disparity as great as in Djakarta. For example the slum that I had mentioned before has no running water, guys who are probably paid like 50 USD a month, to deliver jerry cans of not quite portable water in push carts about 3 meters long and filled with about two dozen, two gallon jerry cans. Sewage? Well that flows into the sea, where boys and girls swim to cool off from the unbearable tropical heat. If you think that this is the worst place to live in Jakarta, then you are wrong, most families who live there have a household income of about two and a half million rupiah a month. Considering that most Jakarta dwellers earn about 600 thousand a month, I shudder to think about their living conditions. No wonder polio which was declared to have been eradicated by that venerable institution, the World Health Organization, has made an unwelcome comeback in Indonesia. Together with the famine in Nusa Tengarra (Islands East of Bali) I won�t be surprised that the next influenza outbreak will start right here. Imagine the Indonesian government declaring that they don�t have enough funds to cull chickens but they seem to be able to fly first class to the Great Singapore Sale.

Yesterday I went down to Plaza Senayan, (trying to supplement my income as a gigolo) a posh mall with a Mont Blanc pen shop, there were t-shirts going for 1.3 million rupiah ! Imagine a t-shirt that cost as much as the combine monthly salary of your maid, your cook and driver. Unfortunately as I wasn�t successful in picking up a rich and horny skank, so I made my way back where I saw some real disturbing images, city officials were confiscating the bicycles of street food vendors, these bicycles had a stove and a pot on them, serving anything from steamed dumplings to noodle soup for maybe 20 US cents a serving. These vendors from the outlying islands had to borrow the 1 million rupiah or so to set up their bikes with the not so sophisticated equipment needed to serve the rather contaminated food. So what�s going to happen to them? How are they going to repay their loans to their local mafia? Sell their daughters into prostitution? Talk about sowing the seeds of revolution! Have the Indonesians learned anything from their turbulent past? I don�t think so�

More Later
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2 over lee



Joined: 07 Sep 2004
Posts: 1125
Location: www.specialbrewman.blogspot.com

PostPosted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Good post, keep going with the tale of two cities theme and let us know a little more about the rich as well. I live in Santiago, Chile, also a tale of two cities that I'm trying to understand. I look forward to your next chapter.
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blueboyguru



Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 43
Location: Jakarta

PostPosted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 12:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, let me start by giving a pat on the back to spinx11 for a very good post. 99% of what you said was accurate in describing Jakarta and the people here. I've lived and worked in and around Jakarta for only a bit more than a year, but I had been visiting since 1998.
You're right in saying that this is like reliving Tale of Two Cities, and your bottom line assessment that Indonesians don't seem to be learning anything from their past mistakes is right on the money. In fact, I'd say things are getting worse.
I have to wonder, though, if you mistyped your statement "there's not much difference in (rich, sheltered, Chinese-Indonesian teens) and most of the slum dwelling Indonesian teens." This statement couldn't be further from the truth. Every Indonesian and bule I know was taken aback by this statement. I really have to wonder what "slum" you walked through that would give you this impression. Perhaps you should go hang out in BenHil or certain areas of Ulujami - among others - at night and see if this is the same as hanging out in EX Plaza or CiToS. Perhaps you should explore a little more before continuing your novel.
BTW, this is not Blue Boy. I had to use his ID as this site is not registering new users.
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ls650



Joined: 10 May 2003
Posts: 3484
Location: British Columbia

PostPosted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 1:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

blueboyguru wrote:
I have to wonder, though, if you mistyped your statement "there's not much difference in (rich, sheltered, Chinese-Indonesian teens) and most of the slum dwelling Indonesian teens." This statement couldn't be further from the truth.


I assumed that the OP meant something along the lines of "people are the same all over"; that despite the material trappings and cultural differences, folks all around the world are pretty much the same.

In my travels and teaching work, I've come to the same conclusion. All the differences we see between different peoples are just "window dressing", and that we all think and feel the same way.
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gugelhupf



Joined: 24 Jan 2004
Posts: 575
Location: Jabotabek

PostPosted: Fri Aug 05, 2005 12:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I can't pretend to have as much wisdom as the other posters on this one, although it is a subject that intrigues me. To western eyes it is sometimes difficult to understand how the whole place doesn't suddenly implode (and indeed it came close to doing so in 1998) - but looking at it through western eyes, with western cultural values, can be misleading. Here there is no shame in poverty. Poor people are poor, but they aint trash.

The Pribumi vs Chinese thing is way too complex for outsiders to understand and every bule I've seen that has got caught up in this has ended up being chewed up and spat out. I keep well away from it and don't take sides.
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