It finally dawned on me...
It finally dawned on me the other day just what Indonesia is....
In a word, it is basically a cheap copy! Let me explain.
To understand, you'd really have to spend some time here, but I'll do the best I can to shed some light into why I have come to this conclusion. For awhile, when I first moved here, I spent a bit of time at a local Cafe/Coffee Shop. It is modeled after a little French Cafe, and in fact makes a good Cafe Latte (makes a terrible espresso...but we'll get into the reason for that in a second).
I would go there when the sights, and sounds, and dirt and filth of Jakarta would start to get me down, and I just needed a place to get away for a time. As I would set, enjoying my Cafe Latté and croissant, I would watch the locals that would come there (for the most part to impress their friends that they were “cultured”. See, Jakarta is big on “image”).
The closer I watched, the more inconsistencies I started to see. One big one, for me at least, was watching the locals as they ate their croissant using a knife and folk!
Strange…I could not imagine a self-respecting Frenchman eating a croissant using a knife and fork…and seeing these people using one was more strange when you realize that half the time they eat there food with there fingers!
I even asked the sweet young lady that worked there what was the deal with everyone eating their croissant with a knife and folk…she then told me that this was because the people of Jakarta` *thought* that this was how you were to eat one!
It was this simple act that got me to think….
See, just beneath the surface, while this may have *looked* like a quant little French café…it was really just a cheap copy of one…it was as if someone had at one time in there life had seen a French café, and this was the best that there memory could do!
After noticing this, I started looking around…and started seeing all sorts of subtle (and not so subtle) difference!
If you were to buy a DVD here, you’d never the original copy as shipped from the studio, but rather you would be buying a cheap copy of one from who knows where!
Same even with books…even to the point of making then hard-bound! Honest. There are stores that I can go to and buy *copies* of hard bound books, at a fraction of the cost of the originals! Most times I can not even FIND the originals!
Software. Same thing. There are shops in the mall here (I’m not talking someone on the side of the street selling bootleg software mind you) that sell software, any title, complete with disk label…all black market! And this is in a MALL.
Fact is, no matter what you were to buy here, if you were not VERY careful, you’d find that it was never an original, but more often a cheap copy of the original. It’s hard at times to find a real named brand product here!
Even McDonalds! You go inside, same gaudy colors, same foolish clown, but…they are serving rice and fried chicken!
Well, I must finish this…I think I’ll go out for a cup of coffee….
That is…if I can find a real one!
Peace my friends!