On the afternoon of October 7th it finally rains. The days that follow are as hot and dry as any since I arrived, but for a few glorious hours we get some relief from this "tropical weather" baloney.
The rain coincides with my landlady’s son Dali’s wedding day. She is the head of the neighborhood, so this is sort of a big deal for everyone here. Canopies are erected, chairs are brought out, and the dusty courtyard is quickly transformed into a decent reception area. The blonde New Zealander bride in full Javanese wedding garb (complete with black zig-zag hairline makeup) is particularly memorable. Sadly, my camera is unavailable to capture this.
After the ceremony, the young people blast reggae and someone’s uncle produces plastic bottles of local whiskey. It tastes like a lukewarm “whiskey and coke” that was mixed two or three days ago. (In other words, not particularly good.) There must be something compelling about the stuff since, at Susi’s older son Joko’s urging, I put back plenty of it. Joko tells me about the orangutans near his home in Sumatra and I pledge to visit him there while I am more or less "in the neighborhood".
More weirdness on restaurant television: I recognize the background music used during the soccer wrap-up on a rebroadcast of British sports coverage as Soundgarden’s “Fell On Black Days”.
October 10th: Since Ramadan puts “the kibosh” on live music performances, my first opportunity to see live music in the familiar bar context comes in the form of an affable Indonesian reggae-pop band at Café Bintang (naturally featuring Bintang, the cheapest available Indonesian beer, AKA My Favorite Indonesian Beer):
They're pretty good. Returning home by bike, my enjoyment of night breezes and a Circle K ice cream cone is interrupted periodically by the smell of burning filth.
The Indonesian attitude toward trash is… different. I’m told taxes that would normally fund proper sanitation services instead go toward lining local fat-cats’ pockets. Without serious garbage collection*, garbage cans don’t make sense so garbage is stored in tiny wastebaskets. When the wastebasket is full, they either a) place the contents in a plain metal tub –as is the habit in my house- to be burned in the yard later, b) dump the trash out in a pile on the street and burn it there, c) dump the trash into one of the metal street-side trash crematorium, or d) just toss it wherever, for someone else to deal with.
*I do see garbage trucks from time to time. They're always overflowing and they're always stopped next to a neighborhood trash heap. In these moments they don't seem to be collecting the trash as much as exchanging possibly-edible food matter with feral trash-combers.
Garbage matters are further complicated by the amount of plastic this country uses. Every single purchase, no matter how small, is automatically placed into a plastic bag. Fresh-squeezed juice is packaged “to go” most popularly in a plastic bag with a straw sticking out of it. If not, it’s poured into a plastic cup that is then wrapped in a plastic bag.
That reminds me:
On one of my first nights in Jogja, I bought a roll of square hard candy, roughly the size and shape of old Jolly Ranchers. I tried one and found the texture to be really odd. It had a smooth, waxy surface and a vague fruit flavor that became more pronounced once I worked through the outside layer. Inside, it was crunchy like normal hard candy. I was starting to wonder about the purpose of the weird outer layer when I realized that each candy was packaged individually and I had just eaten the first one with its clear plastic wrapper.
Lastly, this is what my ride to school looks like in fast-motion, set to Animal Collective.
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