Tom Pepinsky

Author: tompepinsky

  • Sensationalism

    Alert! Facebook is a Menace, Clerics Say! Muslim Clerics Declare Ban on Facebook!

    These are recent headlines from the Jakarta Globe, the newspaper that I get delivered to my hotel room every morning free of charge. I asked for the Jakarta Post, which is a better and more established paper, but there was a snafu, I guess. I have become increasingly frustrated by the sensationalist language that newspapers use in their headlines here.

    Why is this sensationalism? Because if you actually read the articles, rather than the headlines, you learn a couple of things. One is that "clerics" mean a limited number of clerics in East Java, not all Indonesian clerics (or even all East Javanese clerics). Second is that "menace" means "a problem for enforcing single-sex educational practices." Third is that "ban" means "declare it to be forbidden to use Facebook for things that are already haram (forbidden)" and "only for schoolchildren in their schools." So Facebook is not a menace, not all clerics agree, and the ban is not a ban. Details details.

    I should note that this is not a problem with just the Jakarta Globe or with coverage of Islam. Rather, I think that the Indonesian press does a particularly good job of making news out of nothing, and a bad job out of covering real news. The coverage of the upcoming presidential elections is an illustrative example. Reading the big newspapers here, you'd think that there's some sort of close three-horse race between the tickets. In reality, SBY-Boediono is going to cream the other two. No one seems brave enough to give a clear run-down of the likelihood of each ticket winning, or brave enough to write (outside of the opinion section) about the criticisms of the two other presidential pairings. When Mega-Prabowo declare that economic growth will average 10 percent a year under their five year term, without explaining how in the world they will achieve this, it makes front page news. The response from market watchers is buried in the business section several days later. Guess that type of stuff doesn't sell papers.

    I don't think that this is just a problem with Indonesian newspapers–of course American journalism can be sensationalist–but my sense is that even the best newspapers here are not as committed to telling it like it is as I would prefer. So let me respond in kind. TP Declares Indonesian Newspapers A Menace!  TP Refuses to Trust Indonesian Newspapers!

  • Singapore, Stomach First

    People often talk about Singapore as a place where people are obsessed with food. Before yesterday I hadn’t been to Singapore in a couple years, so part of me forgot about this. Or at least thought it was a little exaggerated, as lots of places are obsessed with food. Italy, France, and so forth. But seriously, Singapore is obsessed with food in a way that I don’t think is comparable to other places. Maybe it’s a consequence of the fact that Singapore is so, well, orderly and boring. There’s no politics to talk about, no real economic woes to talk about (although Singapore is getting hammered by the crisis in GDP terms, unemployment is still only around 3%), the weather is essentially the same all the time (hot and humid, or not quite as hot but more humid, or raining), the traffic is usually pretty OK by regional standards, there’s no really old history (the city was a fishing village until 1800) and so forth. So what else is there to talk about besides what to have for lunch? I think that standard Singaporean day revolves around (1) eating and (2) thinking about where to eat next. There are many, many, many food blogs dedicated to Singaporean food.

    This bothers me not in the slightest, of course, because I’ve seen all the tourist things there are to see in Singapore. Moreover, I love to sample local food, and I had two sets of great tour guides to show me where to go. So what did I do on this trip? I caught up with old friends and ate good food. I focused on South Indian food this trip more than Southern Chinese food, which is Singapore’s number one specialty. The problem is often that Chinese food has shellfish in it, so I have to be careful to stick to pork and fish. I can’t eat lots of things like chili crab or prawn whatever or really authentic char kway teow. Plus, this one place that we wanted to try for dumplings was closed for renovations so we substituted banana leaf rice for pork-intensive dumplings. I ignored Malay and Peranakan food entirely because, well, it’s often so close to Sumatran food and that’s normally better here (or in Malaysia itself) anyway. The pics and descriptions are here (they start with my most recent meal in Jakarta, but the Singapore pictures are a few in). Below is the pretty front garden of my friends’ place, which is a great and quiet retreat from the disorganized hustle and bustle of downtown Jakarta.

    A Leafy Front Garden in Singapore

    5-24-09