Enjoying Fun

Voluntary Smiles

Last night I had the good fortune to attend the wedding party of two friends. It was a modest, yet elegant affair, with choice Manadonese cuisine, and ad lib beer and wine. The groom was a little worried about the quality of the wine, but the fact that I drank it ad lib the entire evening could perhaps be taken as an indicator of potability. Albeit, perhaps not a decisive one. The groom had also taken it upon himself to construct his own mix of songs for the proceedings, and the slightly retro, but largely happy, popular music suited the intimacy of the proceedings well. The music was loud enough to be enjoyed, but not so loud that you couldn't easily enjoy conversation at a normal volume. The bride and groom mingled freely with the guests, who evidently were closely acquainted with at least one of the newly weds. In fact, looking around me, none of the guests were obviously bored or irritated. The couple already being amongst the happiest and most well matched one is likely to encounter, now have the added benefit of having been married under the most agreeable of circumstances, having provided their close friends and relations with a night to remember. 

Reviewing a wedding may seem odd, but to be fair, and to sum up the long-held observations of visitors to this country, most Indonesian weddings are the antithesis of fun.
 

I've been to a significant number of such ceremonies, although when I do get an invitation, while I have nothing but warm feelings for people I know, getting ready to embark on the next phase of their lives, I don't get out my calendar and reserve the date in question and don't often feel guilty if I ultimately don't attend. One aspect of most local weddings I've been to, is that the guest lists are so extensive, and the bride and groom in such a state of mental anguish, that it seems unlikely the presence of members of the outer limits of their spheres of influence register whatsoever. The reasoning behind inviting enough people to populate a Scottish village to a reception strikes me as being two-fold. Firstly to ensure pomp and grandeur, and secondly to pay for the damned thing. As it is a local tradition (I've been told a fairly recent one) for guests not to bring presents to a wedding, but rather an envelope containing a donation. In fact, it is common for personal gifts to be rejected in favour of monetary ones, in writing, on the invitations. 

On the face of things, it wouldn't seem unusual to assume that any real festivity is denied thanks to the complete absence of alcohol when getting married in the archipelago. I once put this gaping error to a good humoured Manadonese gentleman, at least fifteen years my senior, gearing up for his second holy union. His unabashed reply was to say, 'yes, but we have macaroni schotel!'. It hardly struck me as a suitable substitute.  

But, to paraphrase that popular old adage - you probably don't need drugs to have a good time. My experiences of conventional local wedding receptions have been as follows:

1. Arrive and seek out the bride and bridegroom, they will inevitably be affixed to two thrones at the centre of the room, with smiles affixed to their faces. A queue of well wishers has usually already formed, which must be joined. 

2. After a cursory, congratulatory, handshake is undertaken with the newly married couple and their respective parents, the next course of action is to help yourself to food. To complete these first two steps in reverse order should trigger deeply felt, personal, shame.

3. After procuring (and I don't use that word for show) food and eating it, there might be some dessert available, but depending on how promptly you have arrived, you may have to move fast to partake of this.

4. Then you might engage in some very light banter with any other guests you know. Finding such people can be tricky. 

5. I think after you've taken care of the handshaking part, you're really free to go. Not entirely courteous, but again, it's not entirely likely that anyone will notice.

6. You could choose to stay for photographs with the bride and groom. These can be quite nice mementos, especially given how easy photo sharing is nowadays, although they are invariably photos which are the opposite of candid.

7. I've noticed cake cutting some of the time, but being no stranger to deeply felt shame, I rarely stay long enough for that part.

I'd like to comment on music, but I fear that might get a bit too insulting. Suffice to say, it's rarely music that could possibly comply with the tastes of the bride and groom, nor anybody I know well. 

One of my personal, favourite, truisms to impart during discussions about the moribundity of Indonesian weddings, is that the funerals I've been to have been a lot more fun. Not because they've been routinely blessed with the refreshments of an Irish wake, but rather because people are generally more relaxed, loquacious and showing signs of actually enjoying one another's company. One mighty source of mirth at a funeral I attended was the casket getting dropped as it was being moved out of the living room. No corpse slid out, but I did get the feeling that such an eventuality wouldn't have detracted from the lightness in the air. I suppose the laughter is a mechanism to deal with grief, but why can't it be applied more to what is meant to be one of the happiest days in the lives of two young people? 

Coincidentally, I was speaking to a female friend yesterday. While we've known each other for a very long time, geographical constraints and the busyness of our lives had disallowed us from keeping fully abreast of the other's developments. Recently we've talked a lot, and the odd life anecdote brought forth to the table provides moment for pause. Knowing her now, married to a man who appears to have been a fine catch, with three children, I had taken it for granted that her own marriage had gone forward without  easily avoidable hindrance, according to local custom. Yet it turned out that in a spate of the kind of small-mindedness which I am growing increasingly accustomed to, her fiancee had not been accepted by most of her family. As she put it to me, she was sure that this was the man for her, and they went ahead and got married regardless. Consequently, only seven guests were present to witness their nuptials. Her husband has  since proved himself to be an able breadwinner, and otherwise reliable family man. Given the irrefutably of his distinguishing qualities, with the passage of time, my friend's extended family welcomed him to the fold. However, there appears to be a high probability that the nine people celebrating that life-defining occasion, with reportedly austere surroundings, will have a memory to share with one another not to be found on an assembly line of perfunctory handshakes.  

Finding Sweetness

I move addresses more often than most people. As a child I had no say in the matter, and as an adult my inability to legally own property in Indonesia means I can move apartment when it's convenient, and it has been convenient to do so more often than I would have predicted. Despite these frequent changes, my parents, or rather strictly speaking my mother, has owned a little oasis of calm since the late 80s at the foot of this mountain:

Mount Ungaran

This was my permanent address during three separate periods, and living in Jakarta as I do, I'm very fortunate to still be able to return here for holidays at least several times a year. The feelings of agnosticism pervading my family notwithstanding, we have been celebrating December Pagan rituals as a family without fail for a good many years running now. My mother is in fact a staunch Catholic, but she doesn't let the heathens in her midst get under her skin too much.

A long-running joke is that many people outside of Indonesia think it's a place located near or within the island of Bali. Any amount of veracity in this claim is a shame, as while Bali is without a doubt one of my favourite places to be, the whole country is one of many and varied pleasures. Of course at the moment, the main news coming out of Indonesia is once again its propensity for natural disaster, with scenes of evacuees from the vicinity of Mount Merapi dominating televised newscasts. Mount Ungaran is a few hours north of that area where misfortune continues to erupt, and it's also a volcano, although dormant as long as records have been kept on the subject. 

When I was a teenager I suppose I took the lush greenery and views of mountains much for granted, which I would say is quite reasonable, although perhaps I was even slightly more nonchalant than most during their teenage years. Nowadays, when urbanization appears to be encroaching upon all of our lives, often with much malignancy, especially in the developing world, a comfortable home in the country represents a sought after item. Not that Ungaran is entirely countryside these days. The great expanses of rice paddies seem to shrink each year as more and more housing estates are added to the landscape. 

 

Lush greenery

Yet despite the ever ubiquitous presence of semi-detached houses, I think (hope) that it will be a long time before my little corner of Java is close to being spoiled. For starters my parents have staked claim to an ample section of it, and why it may not count as a carbon sink, it might as a carbon plug-hole. As, in contrast to most of their neighbours (there weren't really any when the property was first bought), my parents haven't filled up the land with concrete structures, but instead have kept it very green. This provides our ten or so half-wild dogs with a nice play area, and they in turn keep away would-be thieves with blood-curdling howls at the slightest rustling of leaves during day or night. It should be added that the indiscriminate barking of such a pack of dogs to guard a large garden is something which could at times be aptly described as a necessary evil, that is to say they have no qualms about waking up family members in the middle of the night for no good reason. Either that, or there is a staggering number of would-be thieves in rural Java.

Dogs are man's best friend, but the Javanese, including my mother, have much more affection for cats .When I was a child she told me that she preferred cats to human beings, and I wondered where I fit in with regard to that statement. Visitors to the house have marveled at the harmony that occurs between the cat population, - almost always more than ten - and the abovementioned pack of raucous canines. It is true that you will catch these cats and dogs being extraordinarily tender with one another, although there have been a significant number of fatal exceptions. My six year-old son Alex has taken to asking if we could have a pet for our tiny apartment in Jakarta, and I have to explain to him that even if it were allowed by the building's management, it wouldn't be very kind to the animal itself. Luckily for him, and it must be said mostly unluckily for the animals, he has a home away from home where a veritable menagerie awaits.

One of my favourite things about the garden is that it's normally capable of providing enough coffee for the whole family year-round. The luxury of truly fresh and organic coffee is something which I would be lost without, as caffeinated drinks are my one unshakable vice. I tend to do overdo it when I'm actually in Ungaran on holiday, as there is almost always a fresh pot of the stuff lying around somewhere, but I must simultaneously overdose on oxygen, as I never have trouble (over)sleeping, till those well-meaning four-legged friends decide to raise the alarm.

Much like Jakarta, the weather in Ungaran is not what it used to be. The town used to regularly be very cold for the tropics, cold to the point where wearing a jumper was a must. In recent years it seems to have been getting warmer and warmer, with cold spells becoming less and less frequent. Much like Jakarta in 2010, the rainfall has been relentless, it's just that the air remains weirdly warm despite torrential downpour. I for one believe that Al Gore has a point.

It will soon be time to worship a plastic pine tree, and I will have to get my train tickets booked. I hate flying; not so much the flying itself, but just about everything else, and there is a very comfortable and well-priced train that will take me most of the way to Ungaran. At the same time I'm having to contend with yet another apartment move, mostly for the sake of better proximity to my son's primary school. Being at once an optimist and a realist, I am hoping for the best and expecting the worst where the move is concerned, having got none of the preliminary arrangements taken care of yet, thanks to the seat-of-pants method of work employed by all the property agents I've been in touch with. Money is of course another sticking point. 

It's nice to think that no matter how hard my moving will end up being, along with all the other reasons for distress 2010 has presented to me, I'll be able to sit back in a place well removed from the hustle and bustle of city life, where temperatures are rising but still comfortable, listening to the impossible racket of dogs under the impression they've made it to the happy hunting grounds already, and sip on the freshest cup of Java known to man. 

This year, it will be fresh on the heels of not one, but two more tragic natural disasters affecting Indonesia, and its poorest inhabitants, whose recent suffering make my worst problems look like drops in the ocean , and it is with sincerity that I hope the thousands of Mount Merapi and Sumatran tsunami survivors at least have shelter and a steady supply of food long before the 25th of December.