Emma's Mini-Blog

By Emma Vickers s25
University of New South Wales

While in Jogjakarta with ACICIS Emma Vickers wrote a blog for her family and friends to keep track of her daily interactions with Indonesia. On this page are some extracts from her blog. The complete blog is at http://emmaindonesia.blog.com/

August

Stepping out of the plane and looking around was really weird. It was strange because I was looking at my home for the next year. The landscape was so different yet I felt quite content and comfortable with the idea of settling in here.

We mainly had briefings today on health and security. Security-wise, we are pretty safe here, with no real risk from anything in particular (apart from traffic accidents, the roads are pretty wild here, with very few road rules). We’re living in the northern suburbs of Yogya, I suppose its sort of like Hornsby if I was to think of an Australian equivalent.

The days are usually around 30 degrees here, which is hot but its so consistent that you don’t really notice it after a while. It’s the dry season here now so its not too humid. Its really quite pleasant.

In the evening we met our pendamping (our helpers), who have been allocated to each of us to help us find accommodation and to help us settle in for the first few days. The meeting was quite awkward at first but things loosened up over time. My pendamping took me on her motorbike, which when one on the quiet roads was quite exhilarating, while on the main roads quite terrifying.

My first class yesterday afternoon was good, it was an unstructered ramble about Indonesian political forces but I could understand it and I liked it. I had a Javanese language class today which was fun. The Javanese language seems like it will be quite hard to pick up, as he's teaching us both high Javanese (krama) and low Javanese (ngoko), so it may be a little confusing. The lecturer is quite eccentric, throwing jokes around and asking us strange questions. For example, when he was getting us to introduce ourselves he asked me what I'd eaten today. 

Yesterday the sky was blue for the first time, because there was a bit of a breeze to blow away the pollution. I discovered that I have a really good view of Mt Merapi from my street. I look straight up to it. It feels like I'm quite close to it, like I'm living on the slopes.

September

I'm killing time at uni because my Thursday morning class has been cancelled for the third week in a row. So hopefully the first class will take place in week 4. That's my only class where the lecturer hasn't shown, all my others have been fine, which is good. I've had a few good classes. In one on Monday we were broken up into groups of 5 to discuss the application of democracy in Asian countries, which was good for my Indonesian, and I was pleased that I didn't have any difficulties doing the task.

Last night we had a checkpoint meeting at the ACICIS house, to brief us on immigration and health things that have come up. Mark received a round of applause for being the first (and the only, so far) to be hospitalised (he had dengue and recovered in about a week). Afterwards we all swapped stories about the weirdos that hang around us bules (white people). It turns out some are notorious offenders! Like the Jakarta Post paper boy, who spends most of his time going around visiting and ringing the girls, wanting to be their friend. Unfortunately he's friends with the security guard in my kos, and so keeps turning up at my door, and at the doors of the other Australians living there. The other night he wanted me to go with him to meet his mother! At 8.30 at night! So Phil has promised to sort him out today, and anyone who knows Phil can tell what that will be like...

My class on Tuesday also wasn't on, which was a shame because noone in the class has seen a syllabus, or knows when the assignments are, or even what the texts for the subjects are. The lecturer always bolts as soon as the class is over, so noone is quite sure what is going on. I was hoping to block his exit in the class on Tuesday and ask him, but I guess it'll have to wait until next week. Sounds pretty bad doesn't it? Yeah it is but that's just Indonesia, that's life here. Everything is extremely laid back. And after all, I'm going to one of the best universities in the country that so many students can't get in to, so I shoudn't complain. I think some of the other ACICIS students are having trouble comprehending this.

 The guide we had at the Dieng Plateau also ran our hotel. He was a nice guy who chatted to us lots, and took care of us. Only problem was he kept sneakily trying to rip us off or trick us every now and then. For example, he told us there was a bus that could take us from Dieng to Yogya. Then, 45 mins before the bus was due to leave, he told us it was broken and we'd have to pay 10 times the amount to hire a car to take us to Yogya. Fortunately, Becky hadn't cancelled our return booking from Wonosobo, and were were able to get back there and back to Yogya quite easily.

The international relations class goes over a lot of stuff I've already done, but I liked it because it reminded me of how much I enjoy international relations and how much I loved studying that field back in Australia. Being the second white person in the class of around 50 or more, I couldn't get away with quietly being the new person. The lecturer pointed me out as a 'teman baru" (new friend) at the beginning of the class and asked where i was from etc. Then halfway through the class he asked if I could understand what I was saying, because I wasn't laughing at his jokes! After that whenever he cracked a joke everyone in the class would turn and look at me to see if I was laughing. Which of course I was, even though I didn't find his jokes funny. So this made the class quite interesting.

I'm sitting in my usual internet cafe, letting the ice cream settle as I try to avoid scratching the 3 mosquito bites I've acquired on my knee tonight, and inhaling lungsful of cigarette smoke. It’s interesting to watch the world go by and try to figure out what everyone does on a Friday night during Ramadan. Not much really, this place is really busy, with families having tea and coffee, and there's a big group of guys sitting near me, hanging out on a Friday night I guess. I've been trying to figure out what a brochure near me is about. Its advertising an English tutoring school, but along the side of it is written in big letters "we are not a sausage factory!" strange...but then again, a lot of things in Indonesia can be pretty strange.

October

Last night  was the 21st birthday for Ayleen, from ANU. We had a dinner at a really nice restaraunt and it was great fun, there were about 40 Australians and Indonesians there. I had an adventure getting there, as I got a taxi on my own and as the taxi didn't know the way I got him to drop me on the street. Unfortunately it was a very long street, and he'd taken me in the wrong direction, so after asking for many directions, dodging many groups of guys calling after me, walking past houses and rice fields, i arrived at the restaurant, accompanied by around 30 kids who I met near the end of my walk who wanted to practice their English (Hello bule, I love you and I want to marry you- who teaches 7 year olds how to say that!). 

I had an exam today, so I've been busy studying for that. A few others who have had exams this week have turned up to find that they've been postponed, because the lecturer hadn't bothered to write an exam paper yet. One of my exams has been cancelled, as the lecturer hadn't gotten around to organising a textbook or an exam for us. My exam today was on, albeit a bit strange. It was for International Relations, for which there are 2 classes - A and B. Becky and I are in the B class, and before going to the exam we checked the noticeboard to see what room we were in. It said that we were in rooms 8 and 9, with the A class in 3 and 4. So we went and sat in room 9, were given the exam paper and started the exam. Around 15 minutes into the exam one of the supervisors checked our details and told us were were in the wrong room. We told him the noticeboard said 8 and 9, but he said vaguely "no, its 3 and 4". Someone must have swapped the rooms around, but we had no idea. So we had to run around and find the correct room, and then be given a different exam paper (surely the 2 classes for 1 subjects should do the same exam, but it seems not...). We had to catch up on the 1st 15 minutes of a 90 minute exam. But hey, we're getting used to uni being as strange as this.

Yesterday a guy came into the front yard to go through our rubbish bin. Its hard to believe that scavenging is the livelihood for quite a few poor people here, who collect scraps of things to on-sell for a few cents or a dollar or 2 if they're lucky. There's a general rubbish area down the road, where rubbish is sorted and the scavengers pick through it. The one going through our bin left with an empty plastic bottle that looked like it had contained cleaning products or something.

November

I've just finished my mid-semester exams, with my last exam this morning, at 7.15am. The exam was pretty hopeless. For this one we'd been given specific instructions on what to study, and then weren't tested on those things. The exam required us to write a research proposal for our essay due at the end of the semester, where we had to outline what country we'd chosen, what issues were faced by that country, then formulate a research question and propose a conceptual framework to answer it. A lot to ask of my Indonesian, particularly at that time of the morning! The main problem with this question is that this is the subject that started off great but now involves only class presentations each week - where students present their RESEARCH PROPOSAL to the class. So for around 6 people, all they had to do was re-write the speech they'd given. Others just had to write the speech they were about to give and others sat there looking blank as their presentation is 4-6 weeks away and they haven't started any research for it. Fortunately, I'd done a little bit of research on mine last week, but I had actually researched something different to what the question asked, as the original instructions for the research proposal presentation were much more vague. So I did what I could, given the circumstances.

After the exam I went to get a drink at a cafe and then rode home. On the ride home my bike started playing up, it feels like the bearings are going again because as I pedal, my pedals get stuck or skip, instead of rotating smoothly. I just took it to the bike repairman and he had a quick look and said that its not broken, and sent me away. Typical approach to problem solving here - the scary thing is that the health care system is exactly the same. So now I'm tearing my hair out a little, as I can't really ride the bike far in case it gets worse and becomes too dangerous. I'll have to think of a new way to try and demonstrate to the repairman that it is broken.

I've been sick for the past few days with a flu. I went to the doctor on Saturday after I'd had a terrible night of a fever, headache and nausea (I feared the worst and was worried I was coming down with Dengue Fever). I went to the "Happy Land" Medical Centre and was inspected by a very jolly doctor who said 'you have...typhoid! No wait, I mean... a common cold". It turns out tropical colds and flus are very different to the usual ones - more symptoms yet at the same time presenting itself in an unusual form. For example, my sinuses are fine, my throat was a little sore and I've only got a slight cough - so none of the usual symptoms. Yet the same feeling of unwellness.

One of the girls who's been here since the beginning of the year took us to a lesehan, a temporary eating place set up on the side of the road at night time, that was in one of the streets off Malioboro. It was a really nice place with good food and a lovely, chatty woman running it. Despite being in the tourist area, we were the object of great fascination, as Westerners around here don't normally eat in these places. Others sitting near us would come over to look at what we were eating and talk to us. They were all impressed that we could speak Indonesian, and were killing themselves laughing when a few of the girls started speaking in Javanese to them. Everyone that came to the lesehan to get food was asking the owner who we were and why we were eating there. It was a really fun time and a great atmosphere.

Indonesia can be such a land of contrasts. Like the other night when I went into the family quarters of my kos to find someone to refill the water dispenser. I was surprised to see how many people were there. It seems like quite a few of the extended family sleep on the garage floor. Meanwhile, in the very same building I can afford my own room with my own bathroom that has hot water, a comfortable bed, a desk and the internet.

The thing that always cheers you up about this place is the friendliness and community spirit, as we experienced when we ate at the lesehan. Everyone sticks together, shares everything and look out for each other. Its what puts a smile on your face and reassures you when you see things that make you sad.

December

My friend Miko had been asking me to be a guest in his English class that he teaches, and I agreed and took Roz along with me. The class turned out to consist of 6 men in their late 30s-early 40s who were employed by TNT and had obviously been made to do the lessons. They knew very basic English, and were told to ask us whatever they wanted to know about us in English. You can imagine the results! Amongst other more...normal...things, we were asked what our plans were for marriage, what we liked in a boyfriend, whether we wanted one of them. When we tried to get them to talk about other things, such as "what do you like about living in Yogyakarta?", one of them replied "because its full of pretty girls like you." Another joked that he had a wife and child but no mistress, so one of us could be his mistress. After an hour and a half of this the class was wrapped up, thankfully.

I went grocery shopping today. When I got out my wallet to pay for my groceries, the woman behind me put out her hand, like beggars do when they want money. This middle-aged woman was well-dressed and had a big basket of groceries. She clearly was not poor! But I was more offended by the fact that she treated me like this, and in a place where I want to be left alone and treated like everyone else. I'm used to being asked for money when I'm on the streets, and am happy to be generous with the many poor people I come across. But this was not something I expected in the queue at the supermarket! Let alone from someone who is clearly an opportunist. I ignored her left in disgust, hating how much it had upset me.