Asia, the graveyard of western popular culture

1. A few days ago a friend who was holidaying in Bali sent me this message:

2. “The scene: quiet bar in Ubud, Bali. The soundtrack: “How Do You Talk to an Angel?”. It’s the song that won’t die!”

3. Indeed. I’ve been to Indonesia twice now, and while I have only spent a cumulative total of 32 days there there has been some eye-opening music experiences — and I don’t mean the ethnic local music kind. Ever wondered what Maroon 5 sounded like in Engrish? I didn’t, but I found out several times. Did you know that The Spin Doctors is still together? And touring? And speaking of touring, Foreigner, Whitesnake, and by God Michael Jackson have all toured Japan in the last 12 months. Marty Friedman from Megadeth lives in Tokyo. While you’re at it Billy Blanks’ new fitness video, Billy’s Boot Camp, is so fucking popular that in the space of one week I had some 20 people volunteer that they have used the video. Someone, please, shoot me.

4. (And, as my friend notes, Jakarta sports its own fair share of anachronisms: [Timezone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timezone(videoarcades), Sizzler, Fido Dido (when was Fido bloody Dido popular anyway?), and a tenacious fondness for Frente.)

5. And it’s not just music and fitness videos, cartoon characters are all the rage as well. While the rest of the world may be fixated on Japanimation, the Japanese is fixated on Disney. Oh yes, Mickey might be an arthritic geriatric mouse, but boy does he sell. So does Winnie the Pooh (a.k.a Pooh-san), Stitch (as in Lilo and Stitch), Tweety, Miffy and Gaspard et Lisa, to name a few.

6. (And that’s not including the home-grown characters — Hello Kitty, Little Twin Stars, Charmy Kitty and the rest of the Sanrio stable are still hard at work earning Mr Sanrio his dinner.)

7. But perhaps there’s a shift happening; Asian movies are finding its way into Western cinemas, Asian music is starting to find traction overseas, Asian actors are finding their way onto Western screens and into Western minds. East and West are merging, interwined in a web of images and sounds and thoughts and ideas, creating a new mosaic of identity: one defined not by the geography of past centuries, but one where we can be anything, limited only by what we are willing to accept.

8. And what will we do with our cherished notion of nationality? Will it be thrown out, or incorporated into a wider notion of “humanality”? Or am I just making words up? We are certainly living in interersting times.

Happy New Year, and a quick “I’m alive” update

1. Happy New Year!

2. I’m currently in an internet cafe in Yogjakarta, checking emails for the first time since I left. Here’s a few things that we’ve done since we’ve been in Indonesia:

3. There’s obviously a whole lot more, but I’ll get to all that when I get back to Japan. In the meantime, there’s beer to drink and hawkers to bargain with. Back again in a week!

4. (Incidentally, I’ve discovered that I’m quite good at this bargaining business. It’s genetic, baby!)

Excuses, excuses, and Meeting the Parents

1. I have been really quiet the last few months, but I have been pretty busy. Work is taking up a monster chunk of my time, as it usually does, and I’ve made lots of new friends, all of whom I want to see on the weekend but there is not nearly enough time to see them all and do all those other things. Like grocery shopping (I’ve taken to freezing everything so it doesn’t go off in the fridge), paying bills, the ironing, the cleaning… but things are going tremendously well, though nothing of note to report. I have mentioned that I am enjoying this teaching business, more so that I thought I would, and I think I’ve got the hang of it now. Though I suspect it will be quite some time before I can say that I am good at teaching.

2. Actually I lied when I said there was nothing of note to report, there has been one thing. Last weekend I rather unexpectedly met The Parents. The Girlfriend and I were on a nice stroll through her part of Hiroshima, where she led me back to her house. I [hid] waited dutifully outside as she went inside to grab her mobile phone, and when she came out she announced that her mum wanted to meet me. Well! Ambushed, and having absolutely nowhere to run, I put on a brave face and went inside, (desperately trying to remember how to greet people in Japanese) and found an absolutely lovely woman who was slightly less inimidating than I’d expected. The Father, however, was not so successful.

3. This story is every bit as funny as you think it will be.

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The Big Flop and the Big Durian

1. I have been rather lax the last couple of months, and I have no excuse besides laziness. So, a quick update on life matters.

2. Firstly, my long awaited trip to Kansai this month ran wildly off course and unfortunately had to be aborted mid-trip. It was disappointing, but Kansai is only a two hour train trip away, and I’ve been told November is the best time to go; as the country slips into Autumn it dresses itself in a brilliant red, a breathtaking sight. Not sure the finances will cope but a November weekend in Kyoto is a possibility.

3. Secondly, I won’t be coming back to Sydney this NYE after all. Plane tickets were just to expensive to justify the short time back home, so now I and a fellow teacher here will be going to Indonesia instead — climbing Anak Krakatoa, visiting Yogyakarta and the nearby Merapi volcano and getting under the influence for Christmas and New Years in the Big Durian. Molten rocks, millenia old Javanese temples and cheap cheap beer, oh my!

4. I’m working right now to expand my photography portfolio, and am planning on launching a web store in the near future to sell my prints. I think I’ve got some nice images now, and the cost of entry is so low there’s no reason not to try. More on that as it comes.

5. Not much else to report I’m afraid — weekend antics notwithstanding (and I ain’t talkin’ about that). All is well in the night.

Sixteen Days in Indonesia, Part 3

(Click here if you have forgotten about missed Part 1 or Part 2)

(And, uhm, yeah, sorry it took so long.)

1. “Good Afternoon ladies and gentleman and welcome aboard Lion Air Flight JT0777 to Jakarta. We will be taking off shortly, please ensure your luggage is stowed and your seat belt is fastened… madam, please sit down, no, ma’am, please don’t get up — no! don’t open the overhead luggage…!”

2. I shit you not, some woman actually opened the overhead luggage hold as we were taxiing to the runway, and no doubt would be rummaging through her bag as we took off if cabin staff hadn’t intervened. Just as well we weren’t anywhere near them. An inglorious way to end a holiday by having to be medivaced home for head injuries caused by falling luggage!

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Laser etched Powerbook!

1. From Digg: Dude! This is soooo awesome! Twenty thousand big ones for the laser cutter, another three for a 17in PowerBook, but using it to engrave a woodcut of a Tarsier (I’ve seen one :) is priceless!

read more | digg story

Sixteen Days in Indonesia, Part 2

(Click here if you missed Part 1)

1. “The pictures were so … blue� says a mate of mine of the photos I took of Bunaken, an island about 15 minutes boat ride west of Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi. Bunaken was where we stayed for 5 of the 8 days we were in Sulawesi, and wow, were they a nice 5 days. Sulawesi is a rather large island situated between Kalimantan and Irian Jaya, and looks a bit like a four fingered hand. The thin northern tip is North Sulawesi, where we were. We touched down at Manado Airport at around midnight, and after getting our bags and so forth (ours were last off the damn plane, go figure), we headed out into the chaos. Out of the blue, we were approached by a couple of locals asking for my friend, telling us they were to drive us to our hotel. Which was strange, as no one had told us that, but they seemed to know where we were going so we followed along.

2. Cue, strangeness. The younger of the two guys that came to pick us up seemed quite interested in Jen, which is not unexpected, being young, pretty and the only white girl there. But I was practically invisible. Like, totally so. I’ve often found myself in situations where I’ve insulted someone and found myself ignored, but this was a whole new level of being ignored, so much so that even Jen noticed straight away. And weirdness continued in the car, I was now ignored by both locals, whilst the younger guy tried to get Jen to go to another hotel. Are you getting suspicious yet? I was, and was desperately outpaced — we were in a car with strangers in a place we’d never been to with no map, no guide (apart from the Lonely Planet) and no weapons. We were obviously foreigners, we had big bags that must have something valuable in them, and it’s a pretty sure bet we had money as well. To quote Jon Stweart, “Un-comf-ta-ble….â€?

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Travel pics!

Bunaken

1. Everyone loves travel photos, so here’s a few more:

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Sixteen Days in Indonesia, Part 1

1. Indonesia was such an unlikely travel destination. I had never considered it to be a place I would want to go, and if I weren’t there to visit my friend Jen I would likely never have gone. Even as I touched down in Soekarno-Hatta airport my thoughts were on visiting a good friend, rather than visiting a foreign country. But, slowly, the city seeped into me, rather like the carcinogens in the air (Jakarta is the third most polluted city in the world), and I was hooked.

2. Firstly, a tip. Don’t go into the toilets at Soekarno-Hatta airport. Just don’t. Breathe, and hold. If you absolutely must go, make sure you have tissues with you. You’ll have to use a squat toilet (which is a whole lot cleaner than the sit down one they have), and next to it will be a bucket and pail filled with water. That’s what you use to flush the toilet with. Not that any of this is the problem — the problem is that while there are always people in uniform hanging around outside the toilet, none of them seem to know how to clean it, and it’s pretty filthy inside. Blerg.

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I’ll be flyin’, in an air-plane when she comes, Yee Har!

1. Booked, confirmed and paid for, I’m goin’ to Indonesia! Yay for me. Mum’s not too impressed, because hey, somewhere between Schapelle Corby, the Bali Nine, the Boxing Day Tsunami, the earthquakes in Nias and the ever present threat of kidnapping and civil unrest, there’s a special place of badness with my name on it.

2. It makes you wonder, with so many threats in Indonesia, how do the locals get anything done? Well, the answer is blowing in the wind things get done, so it’s not as bad as they say. “They”, say a lot, and most of it is shit. Precautions should be taken, but it’d be no worse than me walking by myself at night in a rough area. And it’d be pretty hard to dodge a tsunami anyway.