In my late teens I made a conscious decision to distance myself from my family. Throughout my life many of my partners and friends had quizzed me on why I chose to make this decision. Usually I would confabulate some elaborate story about alcoholism, abuse and other nasties like that.. But the simple truth is that if I was to stay living there any longer, chances are I’d kill them where they stand using a pillowcase full of ripe apples.

There simply was too much tension - so I left.

I decided to do the Jakarta thing to please the family. It had been 17 years since I had been here last - if you ask me 17 years is not long enough, not by a long shot. After I had settled in, I started to notice all the small things that had started to make me go a bit loopy.

It all had started yesterday at the gold markets - a behemoth in the middle of suburbia full of tiny shops, all peddling various forms of gold, silver, platinum, ivory and precious stones. Mother dearest and my aunt had dragged me along to increase their collection of hideously tacky jewelery. Indonesia is a great place to shop for gold… assuming you enjoy wearing fat, tacky bling. Curious about the price in comparison to Aussie gold, I spotted a ring that looked very similar to my old wedding ring. I pointed to it and asked the sales person for the price, but before he could answer my mother interjected “you don’t want to buy that unless you’re a faggot homosexual”. Trying to save face, I lied and said I was actually pointing to the one below it - a hideously fat ring with a huge sapphire embedded in the middle. It would look perfect on a transvestite or a 60 year old hooker pulling tricks at the Fremantle harbor as the sailors come in. “Oh, that’s really nice”, she quipped. “I’ll buy it for you”. I quickly made up a story saying I was just looking for a friend and I had no interest in rings as I have really thin fingers. She glanced at my fingers, grinned and pointed at them “have you ever seen girl fingers on a man before?” questioning her sister as they started to laugh at me.

I think I have rather nice fingers.

I attempted to look less retarded for a final time and asked about a nice gold chain. This time I asked the shop assistant to make a suggestion. She pulled out a very nice and simple chain, just what I wanted. Yet again mother dearest interrupts saying the chain was too dainty and was only suited for “teenage girls or the gays”.

After that I just shut my mouth, waited outside and had a smoke. If cancer doesn’t kill me, she will.

Several hours later as I tap away at my palm writing this blog post, I find myself in a multi-million dollar mansion sitting atop a mountain, overlooking the homes of millions of Indonesians. This so happens to be the holiday home of one of my uncles. A pompous prick that has too much money and not enough sense let alone decent taste. Before we journeyed to the holiday home in a fully asian-ised range rover (I shit you not the genuine leather seats were wrapped in plastic) I visited his main residence in the suburbs. Naturally it was located in an exclusive housing estate in inner Jakarta, separated from the rest of the world. The garage was full of Mercs and Beemers, all adorned with a tissue box wrapped in a frilly cosy thing, sitting under the back window.

Inside his house, it was tack city. I counted at least 16 dead animals, stuffed and mounted throughout the house. It was a menagerie of massacred marsupials. A frozen kangaroo sat in one corner whilst a grey koala grasping a plastic branch peers at me with its lifeless eyes from behind a glass coffin. This box was perched tidily on a book case lined with back issues of readers digest and a 20 year old edition of Grolier’s encyclopedia. Everything in the room was gold, silver or solid wood. There is a common theme in the house as all furniture seems screams out “LOOK AT ME BITCHEZ! WE’RE COMPLETELY MISMATCHED BUT FUCK IT, WE ARE RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE AND YOU’D HAVE TO SELL YOUR RIGHT NUT TO AFFORD US!”.

At the holiday home, I marvel at all the walls. Even more solid fucking wood. If this place ever caught fire, it would take at least two decades for it to burn down to the ground. Out my window, two solid state satellite dishes point upwards. They are frikkin huge. I could skateboard in them for hours… if I knew how to skate, or I could even use them to collect rain water back home and solve Australia’s water shortage. Or I could use them for birth control for really really really really really big women. Nothing worthwhile seems to be on while I scan through the the 200 satellite channels.. Al Jazeera seems to be the most entertaining, aside from star sports who are currently broadcasting some caber tossing tournament from Scotland.

When I met my uncle for the first time a few hours ago, instead of greeting me he took a long look at me, turned to the rest of the family and said I looked like a homosexual goat and then spouted a few lines in Indonesian including a rather derogatory racial slur. Think of it along the same lines as ‘nigger’, except used towards westerners i.e. non-Indonesians. In my younger years I got used to be called a chink or a gook, but to be called white is just weird.

If you hadn’t realised already, my Indonesian family seems to be rather homophobic. I had never noticed that as a kid but this was made quite apparent when we arrived at the mountain top mansion and had to traverse the 5 storeys from the car park to the front door. I casually jogged up the steps and then I waited at the top whilst the rest of the crew made their way up. Once they finally made it, my uncle asked me if I did any sports as he was astounded by the time it took for me to get up there. I explained that I go to the gym weekly, which then prompted him to immediately explain to my cousin that straight people go to gyms in Australia, unlike in Indonesia, where apparently only the “filthy gays” go.

I just realised its the first time in months that I’m spending a Saturday night without a beer in my hand. The family is completely religious and alcohol is strictly forbidden. Here I am, sitting on the balcony watching the millions of lights below me and homesickness hits hard. I can hear a mosque in the distance, broadcasting its chants over its loudspeakers. for some reason it reminds me of Rise nightclub in Perth. Add a good bassline and you’ve got yourself your next Ibiza dance anthem.

I decided to myself to have one last smoke, drop a couple of sleeping tablets and head off to my stupidly huge mega-king sized bed.

As the massive grand father clock chimes, my mobile chimes along with it. Ugh. It’s only 7pm on a Friday night. My Mobile reminds me that I’m supposed to be at Katie’s 22nd birthday back home in Hillarys.. She usually puts on free cocktails.. ugh. How depressing.

Sundays when people would be at church praying for their sins, I’d usually be in the city performing great dirty biblical style sins onto my credit card… yes, I’d be out clothes shopping.. how heterosexual of me…
Today i needed some spiritual guidance. Thankfully Jakarta is indeed a shopping heaven.

Knowing i was bored shitless, my cousin offered to drive me to the closest shopping mall. It was huge.

No, I mean HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE.

Several storeys high, jam packed full of outlet stores, a multiplex cinema and a food hall featuring dishes from every corner of the globe, the place was absafuckinglutely packed. There would have been tens of thousands of people there, christmas eve at the centro galleria wouldn’t be remotely as busy as it was here.

Things weren’t that cheap in comparison to home - unless you went for the higher priced stuff. I spotted Pierre Cardain business shirt and tie i has bought last season in David Jones for $120. They had it for $35. not bad.

About an hour into it, i stumbled into a book store and immediately fell in love. books lined the shelves at a quarter of the price of home. there was a book I immediately HAD to have - it was an architecture book detailing unique building designs used in Europe in the 80’s. a hardcover monolith, it was as thick as a box of tissues, as wide as the Sydney Morning Herald and weighed a tonne thanks to it’s ultra glossy fully illustrated pages. I had to concede though. It simply was too big and would severely cause luggage issues. A book like that would easily cost a few hundred bucks at home - assuming a book store would even import it. There it was, taunting me with it’s $50 price tag. damn book tease.

As i browsed the English hardcover aisle I bumped into Heather, a tiny 5 foot something brunette law student from Brisbane with piercing blue eyes, a mischievous impish smile and a flawless tanned complexion. She had taken a year off from her studies to travel Asia. We met while both reaching for the same book about the rich history of the American democrats. She immediately recognised my Aussie accent when i apologised and we started to chat about our mutual interests of the American political system, their upcoming elections and how corrupted the Indonesian parliament was. The topic then swung to tastes in music, literature and the usual casual fluff. i didn’t care what the subject was - out of the thousands of people in the jam packed mall that we were in, i had found a friend.

A friend me likey.

After 20 mins of banter, i invited her for a coffee at the Starbucks round the corner. She momentarily stared off into space as if she was having an internal debate with herself, then she apologetically declined explaining she only popped into the store while her partner Gina was in the shop opposite browsing for wigs.

Hmm, a traveling lesbian law student in Jakarta.

Good for her.

We exchanged email addresses and i bid her farewell with a kiss on the cheek. She grabbed the book we both were looking at and promised i could have it if i ever visited Brissie. Then she vanished into the crowd as if she was Lestat and the crowd was smoke pouring a shitload too much fog onto a movie set.

damn, i really wanted that book.

I then moseyed on over to the over sized food hall. It had everything I would have needed. KFC, A&Ws, Wendy’s, Kirispy Kreme, Boost Juice, Taco Bell, White Castle and any other American classics. I love cheap yankie fast foods and aussie food that pretends to be cheap yankie food but pretends it doesn’t.

I crave it. Like a junkie who craves for a cheap smack pack.
If you want to impress me, turn up at my front door naked. if you want to make me fall in love with you, turn up naked with a taco bell meal with extra cheese in one hand and a 2 litre bottle of a root beer in the other. If you brought along a Starbucks caramel frappuccino, I’d probably pleasure you orally as well….. not sure how you could hold the cup though. given you’re using both hands to hold the meal and the root beer….

Tonight tho, Japanese seemed the way to go. I ordered as much sushi, sashimi and yakitori as AU$50 could get me. I ended up eating enough raw fish to reconstitute half a whale and got a bad case of heartburn. I didn’t care - the food was fresh and cheap. Plus it was the first real food i had feasted on in what seemed like weeks.

My phone chimed, i had spent 5 hours at the shopping mecca but it had only felt like an hour. My ride would be waiting for me downstairs. I trundled down the escalators and the crowd parted in front of me. This seemed to be a religious moment for me… I was moses, escaping a cruel world in search for better life.

But it was all in reverse.

Beyond me was my past life which I had to return to. Behind me, my own personal paradse. I turned to take one last look at the holy pilgramge i had just took.

My deciples: overtly cheerful shop assistants.

My god: the giant plastic colonel sanders thar stood before the food court.

My heaven: the tubs of fake cream cheese stored under the counter at Taco Bell which beg to be poured over my begging nubile body.

I promised myself that i would someday return, i doubt know when and i don’t know how. But the second coming IS imminent. I swear to god and the root beer floats at A&W, the all American family restaurant. you know I’m serious when i swear on a fast food menu.

forever and ever, RAmen.

Err yes… a few weeks ago I kinda lost all my blog posts for my trip to Indonesia. Well, I’ve got 1 back so far.

Woo!

Enjoy!
Its been 17 years since i last was here. the place seemingly hasn’t changed one bit. despite the chaotic sprawl that lay before me, one thought comes to mind : welcome home Chris.

welcome to Jakarta..

I spent many years as a child here, although Aussie born I am from a multicultural background. Mother from Indonesia, father from France. My Indonesian heritage stems back all the way to the Indonesian royal family, as a kid I used to think that was the bees knees – I was a prince of sorts.. although to be honest, I have as much royal power an electric toothbrush. After two years of Australian schooling my parents moved back to Indonesia where I was chucked knee-deep into an Indonesian education system that was completely alien to me which most likely was one of the cornerstones thar turned me into the persnickety and eclectic minded person who is writing this blog entry for you today.

Jakarta, where the rich get richer and the poor pretty much all stay the same, but they still manage to smile all the time regardless the situation. well i think they are smiles… quite possibly they are just grimaces of pain.. I’ve never seen so much tooth decay in my life as i have in the last 3 hours.  its hard not to be in sheer amazement that Jakarta’s populous hasn’t already descended into pure anarchy- let alone imploded upon itself in a giant mushroom cloud of despair and hopelessness.

the last time i was in Indonesia, the Aussie embassy was bombed. i do have to give those terrorists credit though, to actually find their target amongst a landscape that resembles a metropolitical puddle of chunky Sunday morning spew is simply an amazing feat.. heck, I’m having  enough trouble trying to find the sky let alone where the embassy is. its as if the whole city was encased in a giant bubble of smoggy filth. the attack on the embassy wasn’t a cold blooded act of terrorism, they were simply trying to blend the ambassadorial headquarters into it’s surroundings.

after a 2 hour drive to my uncle’s house which would probably take 30 minutes if several million people just got off the roads in unison, i finally get the opportunity to relax… well sort of. the block of land in which this house is situated on would fit quite snugly in my lounge, dining and family room combined. there are 8 of us in this house at the moment. i haven’t gathered enough courage to ask where i am sleeping - after finding out there is no hot water on site, let alone anything remotely resembling western plumbing. this is slumming it at it’s best.

as i sit out at the front to have my first smoke in 10 hours, i notice the constant smell of diesel exhaust accompanied with the never ending background noise of cars honking at each other around the corner.

mmmm carbon monoxidey. 1 week here will shorten the lifespan of my lungs by a month. Thankfuly I have nicotine to drown out the worries of my deteriorating lungs.

a glimmer of blue sky momentarily pops into existence above me, but as quickly as it comes into view - it vanishes. the rarely used term ‘acid rain’ jumps into mind as i stare into the bleak grey cloud cover. all around me i can see the gradual weathering down of buildings thanks to the harsh pollutants in the air. Walls which were once white are now stained brown and are showing signs of crumbling to dust.

Everything just seems dirty and not in the fun “dirty” you’d normally associate with ditsy club-hopping blondes who have mastered the fine art of circular-breathing but a dirty in the way that you’d associate with absolute filth, much like the scene at the local kebab shop’s toilet at 3AM on a Sunday morning.

There is a fine layer of dust on everything and I’m afraid that I might catch some sort of tropical bubonic plague type disease if I was to simply walk within 5m of an open sewer. Unfortunately the ability to avoid such things are completely lost on me as there seems to be holes everywhere, uncovered and filled to the brim with a black sludge o’ death.

Reminds me of the night when I polished off an extra-big bottle of black sambucca at a friend’s 17th…. The toilet became my friend. I even gave him a name. It was Larry.

Larry and I were more than friends. You could say we were lovers. I spent a lot of time inside Larry that night. To this day the smell of lemony fresh toilet duck still gives me a semi..

This is the part of the trip that I had been regretting. I agreed to do the Jakarta thing because of the family – it had been too long and chances are that if I don’t see them now, ill probably never see them again. I had already missed the death of my two aunties, if any more of them decide to croak, I might as well get a mental refresher to what they look like….