Jakarta (megalopolis)

 Photo by mizsz

 Review

Jakarta Megalopolis: Horizontal and Vertical Observations

Arjan van Helmond and Stani Michiels, Valiz Publishers, 2007, 179 pages.

What were we doing? Now I remember, we were headed to Gambir Station to buy tickets to Perwokerto and then after that just burning time before we had to take the new Toyota van my wife’s brother had just purchased back to his house in Depok and meet him there after he was finished working for the day.

It must be a tradition in Indonesia that when you purchase a new vehicle the first thing you do is loan it out to family member.

So then, it was Budi, the husband of my wife’ sister, and I, with the new van, heading out from Citayam on an early sunny morning and headed into Jakarta for the day. We drove out of the neighborhood and onto the main street winding past shops, stores, and businesses packed to the very edge of both sides of the road and which seemed to stretch away like an endless film loop, then on past the Citayam train depot bottleneck, on through Depok, and then finally taking the back roads all the way into Jakarta.

By this time I had been to Jakarta so many times that I had lost count but with out doubt on every occasion there seemed to be a new way to go and new things to see. This day was no different. Budi was taking me on the maximum tour. Down streets I never knew existed, past apartment complexes, malls, embassies, cemeteries, monuments, and a lake where he said he had once seen monkeys. “But maybe no more“, he added. I really liked the notion that there was a lake with monkeys. I filed that away in my head where the idea has rooted into a life of its own to this day.

Jakarta - Lake - Monkeys

Just like that.

Budi clearly knew what he was doing and where he was going. He only mentioned once or twice, out of sincere humility, that he was lost as a result of on the spur of the moment experimenting with a new shortcut. Still, we were back in good order in a snap.

I was there for the ride and the pleasure of watching Jakarta float by my window. But I wondered how he knew where he was going and where we were.

“Budi, how do you know where we are and where we are going?”

“When I first moved to Jakarta I just drove around and around the city day after day”.

Budi had, through time, experience, and experiment created in his head a mental map of Jakarta. He could not survive there with out it. He had made place out of Jakarta’s urban space. He had worked up his own internal geography.

Whether I realized it or not this is what I was also doing. Through most of our day I had no landmark I could anchor myself to in the warren of Jakarta’s densely complex streets punctuated by crazy intersections where no pedestrian would dare to tread, until I saw, in the long distance, hovering in the sky like a signal, the National Monument. I knew then Gambir Station was not far off.

I think it was at that time that Jakarta started to click in my mind

There is an occasional moment or two during the day when all this comes back to me. Out of the murk it comes to the surface like a fish in a pond and rolls its back once or twice. There I am magically arriving at Gambir Station or stuck in the jammed traffic around Blok M or picking out the landmarks heading back Citayam, home, the mosque across the street, the beautiful faces of the children returning from school.

How do you know Jakarta?

 the review is continued here …> go to page

 

Back to Jakarta (back to the future)

Trends and Emergent Properties

Giant Rat of the Foja Mountains    (five times bigger than common city rat)

Gong Xi Fat Chai - Year of the Rat

Asia Times

New year bonus for Indonesia’s Chinese

 By Kalinga Seneviratne

During the authoritarian regime of president Suharto (1967-98), public displays of Chinese culture were banned, and many Chinese were asked to change their names to Indonesian ones if they wished to be eventually considered for citizenship. “Suharto’s government saw Chinese characters and culture as political. We were not even allowed to make candles,” said Yu Le, a member of a Buddhist temple.

He said he now prefers to use his Chinese name rather than his adopted Indonesian one of Suherman. “Around the temple there were always police and military. We could not celebrate Imlek here. People were afraid to come. We had to do it at home, hiding.” …>go to article

At the start of the Chinese lunar new year it is tradtional to make predictions about the character of the coming year.  In this Year of the Rat it appears CAUTION will be the watchword as Chinese fortune tellers predict financial and political rumblings, tsunamis and epidemics in the year ahead…

“The mounts of Anak Krakatau, Merapi and Kelud, which last year did not generate a relatively huge explosion, may spew their infernal lava this year,” Jakarta-based feng shui expert Master Tan told The Jakarta Post, placing the eruptions between March and August. “To tell you the truth, I am so worried about these three volcanos… I hope this time my prediction misses.” While mainstream Chinese astrology lists this year as an “Earth” year, Master Tan says it is a fire year, combining the sky element with its positive soil and the earth element with its positive water, producing “fire thunder”. Surabaya-based feng shui practitioner Putri Wong Kam Fu has had the same vision of the three volcanoes. “I don’t know when they will erupt. But if we all repent, they will not explode as a volcanic eruption is actually an admonition of us humans,” she said. …>go to article

One does not necessarily need to be a feng shui practitioner to make predictions regarding the coming year for Jakarta. A close review of the news will do.  As per Indonesia: volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis are a sure thing. No difficulty there. 

I offer a few of my own predictions here:

Soeharto’s “hero status”.  Not going to happen.

The oddest (perhaps not) scandal relating to that came at the conference of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption held on Bali on Februrary 2, 2008. Delegates were asked to bow their heads in a minute of silence to observe the passing of Indonesian dictator Soeharto. SBY jetted off to attend the funeral. The Sydney Morning Hearald reported that, “Dismayed by the irony of the conference’s condolences for Soeharto, Filipino activist Vincent Lazatan took the stage on Wednesday to present civil society groups call for stronger, quicker action to combat corruption - demanding a transparent, effective review mechanism”.  First, he asked all delegates to stand for a second time. “Please, a minute’s silence for all those who have died fighting corruption,” Mr Lazatan demanded. They stood”.  The whole thing seemed simply and utterly strange.

Another interesting development which may tarnish the hero status thing is reported by TempoInteraktif.

“Cendana” Family’s Wealth May be Confiscated as Guarantee
Tuesday, 05 February, 2008

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The state attorney team from the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) is of the opinion that the assets of Suharto’s beneficiaries can be included in the list of guaranteed confiscation in the Supersemar Foundation civil case. According to Yoseph Suardi Sabda, one of the attorneys from the AGO, it can be the responsibility if the foundation’s assets are insufficient to meet the claim’s value. “The AGO can include it by a request during the trial,” he said in Jakarta last Saturday (2/2). …>go to article

If the family moves assets the AGO can move to confiscate them.  Nice.

While the Golkar Party proposes Soeharto as a hero of Indonesia the people dispose. The voices of his victims still live, the historical record too concrete for this to ever happen, now or later.  Of interest is the recent annoucement by the Univerity of Westminster to fund Innovative film project to document Indonesia’s hidden genocide …>go to article

Floods.  There will be more.

Haven’t we been here before? As Jakartass has recently written, “Jeez”.  My comment there was, “welcome to the new Jakarta (or old Jakarta as the case may be). Soon some enterprising individual will start a water taxi service. Jakarta will be the Venice of the Java Sea”. 

Miko added, “already happened Thomas, when Jalan Thamrin turned into a tributary of the Ciliwung river I watched as several enterprising individuals rowed boats down along the Busway picking up passengers and dropping them off at the nearest dry spot. The most ingenious chap for me was the sampah man (scavenger) who used his cart to take people across the flooded car park of Sarinah to the relative dryness of the overpass, for a small fee I hope.

Curiously I couldn’t help but notice the complete lack of Jakarta’s finest money earners who normally populate Jalan Thamrin in large numbers but who seemed to have disappeared completely.

Traffic was directed by street boys, the old and infirm were assisted by passers-by but nary a peeler was to be seen”.

This, of course, jogged my memory of the Jakarta floods of February 2007, where I saw on MetroTV vegetable sellers using rafts to bring their produce to flooded upscale neigborhoods.

Perhaps SBY will have to tow a boat behind his Mercy Benz so he does not get his feet wet (again).

Still, Jakarta as the Venice of the Java Sea has quite a ring to it. I can see the tourist brochures even now.  As the Official Indonesian Tourism web site quotes Frieda Pinto from India, “Everything in Indonesia are great, I never thought about it the moment I came here…“   Or Wai Lok from Hongkong, “I’ll tell them, that the negative thing we heard about Indonesia is a fake news”.

Thought about what? Fake news? Am I missing something here?

In any event flooding is a trend and emergent property which is here to stay.

More ominously…

H5N1. I have written on this subject before below. 

Flu burung, bird flu. It is out there in Jakarta stewing and brewing.  The virus is extremely lethal and while only 103 people have died from it so far there remains a huge uncertainty of where this is all going, except that it is not going away.  This is yet another trend and emergent propety of Jakarta living.

AFP 2.6.2008

‘Mysterious’ bird flu baffles Indonesian scientists

JAKARTA (AFP) - Indonesian scientists and officials said they were baffled by the “mysterious” behaviour of the bird flu virus here, which has already claimed nine lives this year in the world’s worst-hit nation.Indonesia has reported 126 cases of H5N1 bird flu, 103 of them fatal, since 2005. This year’s victims have all come from the capital Jakarta and its satellite cities. …>go to article

Traffic.  I predict there will be a traffic jam in Jakarta in 2008.

Barack Obama.  Jakarta’s favorite son polls 75% of the 100 expat votes cast. 

Reuters 2.6.08

Many Indonesians cheer Obama in Democrat race …>go to article

If you cannot predict you can hope…

How am I doing so far?  When it comes to Jakarta it is not difficult to end up talking or writing in circles. 

As the novelist Haruki Murakami has written, “On the flip side of everything we think we absolutely understand lurks an equal amount of the unknown. Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings. In the world we live in, what we know and what we don’t know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion”.  

Here at Jakarta Urban Blog there are many of things to see and do.  Look for a new review of Helmond and Michiels Jakarta Megalopis: Horizontal and Verticle Observations and new edits to Selamat Jakarta.

Year End

 

So much that is posted on the net which passes for news or which writers comment on in blogs would leave one with the impression that the world has gone insane.  It has in many respects. And the news, especially now, is often not good. Even here, the subject being Jakarta, we have modern day slavery, corrupt government officials, bird flu, global warming and deforestation, floods, and traffic conditions so horrendous that the wealthy are now offered a  commute to work by helicopter.  When I came across Asia Times Online Books Review for December 22, 2007, I knew it was worth a look. I will be back in January with an updated Selamat Jakarta, new reviews, and introducing new Jakarta writers.

The secret library of hope

12 books to stiffen your resolve

Reviewed Rebecca Solnit

Hope is an orientation, a way of scanning the wall for cracks - or building ladders - rather than staring at its unyielding expanse. It’s a worldview, but one informed by experience and the knowledge that people have power; that the power people possess matters; that change has been made by populist movements and dedicated individuals in the past; and that it will be again. Dissent in the United States has become largely a culture of diagnosis rather than prescription, of describing what is wrong with them, rather than what is possible for us. But even in English, a robust minority tradition can be found. There are a handful of books that I think of as “the secret library of hope”. None of them deny the awful things going on, but they approach them as if the future is still open to intervention rather than an inevitability. In describing how the world actually gets changed, they give us the tools to change it again.

That’s what books in a library of hope consist of - not a denial of the horrors of recent history, but an exploration of the other tendencies, avenues, and achievements that are too often overlooked. …> read full article here

Rebecca Solnit’s secret library of hope

Jonathan Schell, The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence and the Will of the People.

Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope.

Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves.

 Charles Wilkinson, Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations.

Richard Walker, The Country in the City: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Alan Weisman, The World Without Us.

William Morris, News from Nowhere.

News from Nowhere Collective, We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism.

Marina Sitrin, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina.

Subcommandante Insurgente Marcos, The Speed of Dreams: Selected Writings 2001-2007.

Peter Linebaugh, The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All.

Jonathan Isham and Sissel Waage, editors (introduction Bill McKibben), Ignition: What You Can Do to Fight Global Warming and Spark a Movement.

From Asia Times Online…

Rebecca Solnit blurbed a lot of books this year, wrote the foreword for Marisa Handler’s Loyal to the Sky, and provided editorial services on another book of her brother’s, this time with conscientious objector Aimee Allison: the counter-recruitment manual Army of None. Her own book for 2007 is Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, a collection of 36 essays including several that first appeared as Tomdispatches. She is the author of Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities.


 

  

My own reading at the year end is Sidelines: Thought Pieces from TEMPO Magazine, by Goenawan Mohamad, Equinox Publishing, Indonesia (2005) and translated by Jennifer Lindsay.  Goenawan Mohamad  assisted founding Tempo and was editor there from 1971 to 1994 when it was banned from publishing by the Soeharto government.  After the ban, as he states in the author’s note, “In the weeks that followed, protests against the clampdown were voiced in various places all over Indonesia.  The situation was not widely understood, however, because the government censored all news about it.

Nevertheless, the level of protest was unprecedented, and made me aware that if Tempo offered something of worth for Indonesian society, it was clearly related to the need for freedom of expression”.

These “thought pieces” are exquisite essays on a wide array of subjects from history, philosophy, literature, politics, and of course, Jakarta.  They are well worth the time reading and contemplating.