The photo that’s been doing the rounds in Indonesia this past week or two is the one below.

It is, as you may have guessed, the last moments before going sub-terrestrial, of one of the Bali Bombers. Now, I’m not a supporter of capital punishment at all, even in this case, but I can’t feel any sadness at the death of these three. Or for that matter, though, any feeling that justice has been done either. The scary thing here is because of the bumbling way the Indonesian government handled this, they managed to turn these three from convicted murderers into minor celebrities here. The larger version of this image appeared in print, in various local newspapers was a little scarier being as it showed a much larger crowd. And it caused quite a stir, not least when it was revealed that several high ranking cops attended as observers.

But for all that it demands a little perspective. This execution had had a several week build up, and a massive media frenzy (both inside and outside Indonesia) had accompanied the days before and after the shooting. The funeral of Samudra and the others was widely expected to provide a focal point for the hotheads and pull a crowd of the ardent caliphate desiring believers (or wackos..call them what you will).

It, according to all reports, had a crowd of some 1000. We know they came from inside and outside the village:

Abdul Rahim, a key figure in the group, said: “Hundreds of us are waiting in Solo to come … but on the day of the execution there could be 1000 here.”

In a country of 230 million.

Even allowing for the fact that most Indonesians living outside of Java would have found it hard to get there, there are still 130 million people in Java…so they managed, not even taking into account the local village population (200?, 500?) to pull one in 130,000 Javanese.

Huge. Your average wacko Church preaching the end of time in Alaska does much better than that, I’m sure.

Wandering around the top floor to Borobudur the other afternoon I offered to take a photo for two young-ish girls (20ish) who were climbing the central dome (quite contrary to the signs on the rather spectacular 9^th Century monument, but in Indonesia rules are at best vague). The two, from somewhere in the country…the monument pulls in more local tourists than offshore, and it pulls in a fair few of those…but likely Java were dressed as about 10-15% of girls their age are here, with modest clothing and ?ij?b. I thought nothing of this, smiled and clicked the phone’s camera button.

They then giggled at the bulé, said thank you and asked to take our photo. I don’t get a ‘can I take your photo?’ request that often, it’s much more often the other way around. So I said yes and they clicked.

I thought nothing of it as they wandered away but then it hit me, how much my attitudes had changed since I’d arrived in Indonesia. I first came here as a visitor and later a resident I was shockingly naïve. Sure I’d seen folks in various Muslim attire and even known a few across the years to talk to. And had spent the early part of my life in Singapore.

However never had I been immersed, for a very long time in such an alien culture to my own. We pride in ourselves in New Zealand and Australian at our diversity and multi-culturalism but the real truth is that we are mostly conservative folks out of the European grand tradition of what we see as liberalism, with a few bits of exotica around the edges to make ourselves feel diverse. And those bits around the edges are expected to divest themselves of where they came from, apart from a token nod here and there, over a generation or two, if they want to stay.

So to come and live in a society where I was the alien, and expected to conform was a shock.

I have to be honest, when I first delved into Java (Bali is different, there isn’t quite that cultural abyss to deal with..some but not absolute…2 million smiling tourists a year does that to an island).

But Java, yeah, especially once you leave the mega-opolis of Jakarta, is something else and we are taught in the west to be wary…no, more than that…terrified of it, and photos like the one above and the media, and relentless travel warnings all play their part.

This is, we a told, a nation that is 90% Muslim.

The reality, of course, as those girls are evidence, is quite different, dramatically so. And the Muslim mass, ?ij?b or not, or the thousand variations of that religion that make up that 90% figure, are a million generous and welcoming kilometres away from that miniscule turnout at the funeral, or the travel warnings written in the comfy offices of Canberra and then transcribed without really any understanding of what they might actually mean, in further comfy offices in Wellington.

And so, this week, for perhaps the thirtieth time over the past four years, Brigid and I went back to Java. This time it was different. We’d decided to make our trek to the last beach at the end of the road, Jepara, by road trip from Yogyakarta, through the highlands of Jawa Tengah to Semarang and then north. The last part we’d done many times and much of it is a shitty endless stretch of endless road works.

The first bit, though was new to us both. So we’d contacted Ali, our driver (after the brief thought to hire a car had been dismissed) and said drive on down please.

We were staying as many times before at the Grand Hyatt in north west Jogja. It’s a big old sprawling behemoth, with a big curling swimming pool that goes under rock pools, waterfalls, bridges and down steps, and is a refreshing place to enjoy a snog with th’wife and a Bintang after a day in the grime of Javanese factories.

Last time we were there together they had a Mexican evening and I managed to stand next to a mass murderer, Suharto, a first for me.

This time, there were two events of note. Firstly there was an Audi convention. This meant that as we checked in Audi-less, our Hyatt Gold Card meant nothing. I flashed it and you could see the girl thinking ‘No TT, no upgrade’ thus we ended up on the ground floor.

The other event of note was the Cigarette Sales Convention. Anywhere else in the world post, about 1970, this would be a low-key event, so as to avoid negative comments verging on abuse. Not in Indonesia. Here the folks proudly wore their khaki uniforms with large Marlboro branding on the back and a dozen other badges on the front. And they sat in the restaurant for breakfast puffing with some pride. In fact the guy at the next table managed to eat, text on one phone, talk on the other one (important people always have two here) and smoke half a packet.

Ali arrived about 8 and we headed off.

I really had no idea what to expect. It was only 100km or so but in Indonesia, depending on the traffic and the quarries they often call roads that can take a while.

Ali said 2 hours would do it, which was ok, and happily it took a wee bit less than that. The road was little worse than large parts of the national roading system in New Zealand, albeit with the usual fairly hefty dose of homicidal maniacs. Fortunately the maniacs drive at a slower speed than the maniacs in the west, 80 km/h being a fairly high speed.

Ali had one of those in the front TV / DVD players that are so popular here..watching a sinetron, or singing karaoke, whilst swerving past or avoiding belching trucks and buses is quite the thing to do. He offered to put it on.

But since we’d not been this way before we demurred, deciding, for a variety of reasons, on the view.

The thing about Java is that it mostly consists of areas of unspeakable grime which, without warning, mutate into areas of unspeakable beauty. And so it was as we left Jogja and went uphill. But the higher we went the lovelier it seemed to become, and even the grimy bits, like the almost alpine desa of Ambarawa with it’s mix of Chinese Temples, towering Christian Churches and stately Mosques, seem quite pretty and aloof from the chaos of the bigger towns down the hill.

And it, as always in Java, hits me how clean, if you can call grimy clean, Java is compared to the trash that sadly covers Bali now. The rivers, excluding the big cities, run garbage free unlike any in Bali these days.

No, Java has a beauty and a serenity that runs counter to the fact that it’s the most populated space on Earth and the Javanese are, even in the mega-cities, perhaps the most gracious, welcoming people I’ve met. Not once have I felt as threatened as I do on an average Saturday night downtown in Auckland or Sydney. Not once have I felt the threat that the western media, paranoia and travel warnings tell me I should feel in this island where I am not just a minority but a bizarre oddity representing something that people can mostly only imagine from images and the mass media which offers them as twisted a view of the west as we have of places like the hills of Jawa Tengah. Where evil Muslim madrassahs are supposed to fester.

The next day, having worked our way through the endless concrete road works out of Semarang, being rushed to preempt the rainy season and the flooding that washes out the old bitumen road every year, we found ourselves back in the car, a shitty Izuzu Panther that shuddered above 60km/h and has broken back seat springs which twisted my back in a way that has meant I’m still stuffing painkillers in my mouth.

TV? No thanks Ali. So Ali put on a CD with a selection of some of the worst songs ever recorded, all cover versions mind, and off we trotted to visit Borobudur.

Borobudur was / is quite something. I think both Brigid and myself felt that we’d been remiss in not making the 15km trip there in past trips to the area, but there you go, and we’d made it now.

Outside it was your typical slightly rundown Indonesian tourist attraction. Lots of stalls selling the same sorts of things and dozens of folks who swooped on the tourist from the moment he or she alighted. We found our very own permanent attachment just after we got out. Brushing aside the masses wanting sell us fans/ books/photos/ things that made noises / dolls and everything else we’d never need, he introduced himself as Ali. Another one..but as one would guess Alis are never in short supply in Java. He was short, had shocking teeth, all smoke stained and broken but he grinned widely through them and offered us his miniature stone Buddhas. Do we need these…no…sorry…ma’af, pak, tak mau..

Only Rp100, 000 said he….

tidak, pak

We wandered in and Ali followed.

You have KITAS? He asked…

Ya…

Ali pointed us to the locals’ entrance, where it was Rp9,000 (80c) rather than the tourist gate (US$11) and I smiled gratefully at him

Rp70,000? He said…

I was not that grateful.

He wandered in and pointed us in the direction of the big grey pile of ancient stone up the hill. A couple of wheeled trains sat by the gate with hopeful Indonesian families sitting in them. They were not, it seemed, going anywhere fast so we walked up the hill.

Borobudur was everything I’ve ever thought it might be. It was awe inspiring and we stood at the top of 1200 years (much of it spent covered up and lost) looking down at the clouds and the Indonesians, kids, army guys, families and students wandering around with obvious self pride in this monument to centuries of civilization, back to the time when Europeans were still thinking about working out stone castles and this was constructed, as were the other great monuments in the region. To the great Hindu Kingdoms that ruled this region and the Islamic armies that drove them east to Bali.

We walked down the stairs, the trains had still not left and the families still sat hopefully (Indonesians understand patience in a way I will never) and Ali was waiting.

Good, eh?

Ya..

Rp50,000?

Tidak, mas.

As we walked out in search of the carpark, the swarms came at us again, but many more. The batik fans now came in all sorts of sizes and there were t-shirts. Ali brushed them away.

Rp30,000?

No.

Anda berasal? said he.

New Zealand..Selandia Baru I replied. Anda?

Dari Indonesia, Bapak, he replied.

I smiled at that, how could you not, and looked for the car.

Tempat pakir disana, pak, he said and pointed towards our car.

Rp20,000?

No I said, and pushed a Rp10,000 note into his hand..for your help. Terima Kasih, Pak Ali..hati hati..

Ali did a happy little skip, shook my hand and ran off looking for someone else to help.

Writing this, and working online to clarify names, I realized just how little data there is available about Java. Type Java into Google and most of the hits come from the programming language…even Wikipedia has the island as second on it’s google ranking. And this island, the 13^th largest in the word, with one of the world’s largest cities on it, and the centre of the 4^th most populous nation in the world, has a far smaller entry (1969 words) than the programming language (6425 words).

We know nothing about it apart from some idea that we need to be scared of it.

We need to be very afraid, not necessarily of those people in the top photo but of the arrogance, blinkers and ignorance that add to that fear.

It won’t last but the Grafton Bridge entry on Wikipedia right now is fantastic:

One for the eighties kids..

More to be found at Chad’s Facebook, assuming they own you already

And one more in passing…

I love this song. The dub on the 12″ is the best track Prince never released, but likely wanted to.

A few weeks back Brigid and I sat in a restaurant on Hong Kong’s peak with a few friends. One of these, Felix, had brought his dad, Kevin, along.

His dad was an enormously successful importer / exporter out of and into Hong Kong. We talked and we laughed a fair bit and I enjoyed his company.

After a while he asked where we came from. New Zealand I answered, explaining that we were Asian based expats.
You must be enormously proud of your Prime Minister said Kevin.

I explained that proud was not really the right word…well yes it was a word I’d use, as below but perhaps supportive and grateful were more appropriate.

Supportive because I generally agreed with both her philosophical and policy. And grateful because of the enormous strides the industry I’d been involved in had been able to take over the past decade as a direct result of her active personal input in furthering the industry. Last month there were, in one week, 13 New Zealand albums in the NZ Top 40. That would have been unthinkable if we’d had a continuation of National’s arts policies of the 1990s.

Kevin seemed an unlikely fan though…he was a very conservative aging businessman, the sort of person you’d assume would support the right. So I queried his opinion.

His opinion of Ms. Clark, he said, was based on how she was perceived outside her home country. Kevin explained that New Zealand’s mighty, and much improved in recent years, reputation, at least in the Asia-Pacific region, rested in no small part upon the way she was perceived. As honest, decent, clean and principled. And, importantly, independent.

It’s hard to overstate how positively New Zealand is viewed beyond it’s shores and it, too, is hard to overstate the role Helen Clark has in that perception. It wasn’t always so. Before 2000 we were seen as pretty much a US satellite state. Clean though…

As a non resident New Zealander I feel a little, no that’s silly, more than that, quite a bit, saddened by the end of the Clark era. She’s someone who, and I think my opinion is echoed by most New Zealanders I meet offshore, that does give me some pride. Taxi drivers around Asia ask where I’m from…they either respond to my answer with “Kia Ora!” or a thumbs up “Helen Clark!”.

She has substantial international mana and I’m pretty sure John Key, who from a distance looks like a personality free zone (an opinion emphasized by his pathetic leap onto Obama both before the election and in his victory speech…does he have his own personality or simply borrow?), will be lucky to achieve same level of respect beyond the nation’s shores. And of course that respect translates back to New Zealand’s standing.

This election, in an odd way also changes, ever so slightly, my feelings for my home country. In the last few years, since I left NZ, I’m finding some parts of it harder and harder to relate to and this change unfortunately confirms that distance.

I don’t quite get the bile that’s infested parts of the political landscape of NZ, such as the rampant hate of many of the right wing blogs and those that inhabit them. Or the likes if the wacko fringe like Ian Wishart or Lindsey Perigo. Maybe I missed it before, but did we always have these sorts of nutters? Maybe we did but before the net came along they simply festered and hung out at dusty halls shouting slogans at candidates before the police rustled them off. Now they get an audience and the festering…with slogans like Helengrad and Liarbor… finds bizarre currency. Or they wail endlessly corruption without having any idea of what corruption actually means to the sort of kids in third world countries who spend years studying and passing exams but are unable to get the paperwork to prove it because their parents can’t afford to bribe the teacher and headmaster…that’s corruption, not the signing of a picture or not, or a hundred other things that’ve been thrown at Helen Clark.

This despite the fact that both her, and her unfairly maligned husband are amongst the most dedicated and profoundly decent people I’ve met, in or out of politics. The need to slur them, and god, haven’t they been slurred, says more about the sludge who make the slurs that the targets.

Today the sludge won and I really don’t know if I want any part of it.

Myself, I think history, and we need to wait a few years, for this will view the last Labour Government, but in particular it’s leader as important and of substantial note. Someone said she’s of the ages which is a bit tough..she is after all, still alive…but the idea is correct.

That said I can’t help but feel that maybe it was time for her to move on, not because of what she had or had not done, but because she was of her time and that time, in NZ at least, and not for the better, seems to be passing.

The old cliché about a country getting the government they deserve has been tossed around a fair bit in recent hours and I can’t help but concur. Maybe it’s time for the gray, mediocre drones to have their shot. That last bit may be a little unfair but having lived through several National governments, it feels that way each time.

But they surely reflect a side of New Zealand that I don’t miss or crave.

Thank you Helen.

I guess I’d better see if I have any grey slacks left in the back of the wardrobe…last worn in 1999.

I’ll need them next time in in NZ to blend, if you will..oh and one of those nice thick brown belts you get from Hallensteins..

Is it wrong of me? Maybe…but I’m thoroughly enjoying the US rightwing implosion after this week’s rout. Witness the reliably odious Michelle Malkin:

Malkin’s no fool..she thoroughly despises her audience, she’s in it for the bucks, but knows that they lap this stuff up and there’s potentially (a few million) dollars in it for her in the future if she pushes this line.

This is in response to Fox’s increasingly bizarre ‘fair and balanced’ reporting that Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent:

I’m not sure if I buy that at all. She’s conniving and dumb but surely not that dumb..although on second thoughts maybe she is, there is voluminous evidence that points in that direction, much from her own mouth. But more likely this is just the other side swinging first, and as Malkin correctly says, McCain chose her, and that, regardless of how thick or dishonest or just plain nasty she is, really is the bottom line. That she accepted, of course, is another matter altogether and speaks unpleasant volumes about her. Surely you know when you are not up to the job. Maybe not.

This guy is a fool, but hell, he gets published. His odd fact free argument is just to stomp his feet and say it ain’t true, with gems like:

uh….ok…..
and then there is:

And I also think McCain’s concession speech was thoroughly dishonest. After all the sludge and slime that he has not only been a part of, but actively encouraged, how can he stand in front of that seethingly ugly and inconsolably angry crowd, who think that American has elected a Marxist Child Murdering Terrorist because he and his ilk have repeatedly told them so, and preach unity.

If you have a spare moment and a thick skin, go to Redstate, right now it’s better than The Onion or The Daily Show. These guys rock!

So you go Michelle….this will only get better as the crazies try and out-froth, and consume each other.


*courtesy of A Tribe called Quest

All I really need to say is thank god I was wrong. I’m a firm believer, especially as I’m now residing in the land where voodoo, or a local variation of it, is a legitimate political philosophy, that one should not be too optimistic about these things

I’m a pessimist but I’m also hopeful.

I’m hopeful that Obama will have the foresight and wisdom to invite all the Clintons to his inauguration, but most of whom George, who will then be persuaded to perform the original version of Paint The White House Black (or Chocolate City as it’s more correctly called) as the song’s been thirty years in the wings waiting for this very moment.

We went to an American expat gathering in Sanur to watch the flag go down on eight years of Republican hell. It was a fairly uncontroversial gathering…a straw poll (anonymous) gave Obama one hundred and something votes to one, and the appropriated named organiser, Jack Daniels, wisely advised the lone Repug to keep very quiet.

That, of course was hardly a surprise, since, from personal observation, Republicans rarely travel unless they are a) posted places by big corporations, or b) in the army. Hell, most don’t leave their county I’d imagine.

The two hired Indonesians dressed as Uncle Sam, on stilts, really looked the part. I’m just not sure what part it was supposed to be.

It was all going rather well..the food was overpriced but OK and the beers were even more ludicrously priced but try as we might we couldn’t win any thing in the raffle, aside from two very un-American Heineken towels…until they announced the CNN forecast of an Obama slam.

This was followed by a very loud rendition of Hail To The Chief which seemed odd since the chief was nowhere to be hailed, either in Sanur or in Chicago at that stage. And then the speakers roared out The Boss. Born in the USA came rattling out of the PA at deafening levels and the bloke next to us, who I think was European rather than American..or maybe he was just born in Hawaii and grew up in Europe, as you do..screamed out something that sounded like hallelujah, and burst into tears.

Bruce, evocations to the almighty, and tears..it was all too much and I decided I’d pass on the reduced ($7.50) Obama 08 t shirt on sale. They gave me an official Obama / Biden badge instead which was fine and will go well with my, keep-the-Marxists-together, Mao t shirt from Shanghai.

The chap from Europe was happy. We all, bar the lone Republican in hiding (we think it was Tom, who sells grossly overpriced ‘antiques’ on the Bypass) , were.

And then, with some timing, the AV guys decided to fine tune the CNN feed as Obama was about to hit the stage. A flurry of hands at the guys, not least from the distraught guy next door to us who was about to miss his moment. And it came back on, with a red tint..which seemed out of place this late in the game.

The guy next door shouted out series of whoops and Obama wandered on and said his, very impressive, bit before handing back to Wolf Blizter. The Indonesians dressed as Uncle Sam wondered what it was all about. Tom from the Bypass looked depressed and Jack Daniels said it was time to party, but being midday we thought it was time to leave.

I’m very happy.