In Oliver Stone’s movie Wall Street financial shark Gordon Gekko says the famous words: ‘ greed is good.’
His famous line seems very applicable to the culture in Jakarta for decades now.
In past weeks Indonesian legislators received a barrage of criticism for their expensive trips abroad, their 1 million USD website budget, phone allowance and an extravagant new parliament building for the members of the House of Representatives.
But being the people’s representatives, is their alleged behavior a representation of the current Indonesian culture among its population, especially in the microcosm of Jakarta?
Living for 6 years in Jakarta I inevitably became somewhat of a cynic, boosted by personal experience. Its the slow shift from becoming a visitor to a resident of Jakarta.
Sunday offered another proof of my full integration when I left the parking fee in Kemang and a satpam bluntly demanded ten thousand rupiah parking costs. Any ordinary Jakartan knows parking in Central and South Jakarta costs two thousand rupiah, and maybe in Kemang five thousand rupiah. The guy just tried to rip off a bule.
But he failed as I gave him two thousand rupiah with my eyes wide open like golfballs, Samuel L. Jackson style.
Nonetheless, there are always a lot of other experiences in the roads, streets and kampongs where Indonesians show an incredible sense of helpfulness and social responsibility. Stuck in a terrible traffic jam on Jalan Rasuna Said during nighttime, I decided to take the risk and get on an ojek, although being a bit overweight from all the Indonesian food.
Despite the added kilo’s my veteran ojek driver speeded over the lanes, passing big holes in the road in a tremendous velocity. “Slow down a bit pak,” I asked him politely, having a horror image of the motorcycle hitting a hole and my neck being crushed by a Kopaja public bus.
An important lesson in Jakarta is to always trust the ability and experience of your ojek-driver, I quickly remembered. Fortunately, my driver already had made some calculations of my body weight and decided to slow down.
I had to go to Plaza Indonesia and we passed all the cars smoothly.
Finally we arrived. I stepped of the motorcycle like a cowboy from a horse, took the helmet and gave it to the Ojek-driver.
We had agreed on a price of 25 thousand rupiah. I grabbed my wallet, opened it and saw the next dilemma. I only had a 100 thousand rupiah bill on me and a green twenty thousand, and he showed me he had only 50,000 for change. I looked around for a place where I could change the red bill for smaller change. But in the middle of the Bundaran HI roundabout that is not an easy option.
In my pocket I had some one thousand bills. The ojek-driver witnessed all this shaking his head with a grin on his Arab Betawi face. Finally he cut to the chase to solve the problem: ‘Just give me the 22 thousand rupiah you have.’ I reacted in disbelief: ‘But then you are three thousand short?’ ‘Its ok,’ he told me, his face told me I gave him a good story to tell his ojek friends:
Some big bule was scared of speeding on his motorcycle, and then even had the nerve to come up short.
Get outta here..
