Tom Pepinsky

Author: tompepinsky

  • A Stroll Around Menteng

    Yesterday I took a stroll around Menteng, the prosperous leafy “inurb” of Jakarta which is where I like to stay. It’s a nice part of town because it has sidewalks that you can walk a long and tree-lined streets that are pretty and shaded enough to avoid the hottest part of the equatorial sun around here. I walked for about three hours, with a break in the middle for lunch.

    I’ve walked around this area before, so there’s not really much new to report about it. But I did get a couple of good pictures, in particular this wordless advertisement for PDI-P:

    Sukarno the Orator

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    Some additional pictures are here. You get to the new pictures by clicking “next.”

    For dinner I tried a cuisine that to my knowledge I had never tried before: Acehnese. There are a couple of reasons why I’d never had it before. First off, Acehnese food is hard to come by, as there are fewer Acehnese people in Jakarta than there are other ethnic groups. Second off, I’d always heard that it’s not much different than other Sumatran foods, in particular Padang-style West Sumatra food. I know now that this isn’t really true. Acehnese food blends Sumatran food with lots of Arabic and Gujarati influences, giving it a distinctly different kind of taste marked by notably different spices. Less of the Christmas cookie spices of Java and the eastern islands, and more of the peppery and sour tastes of central Asia. My very tasty dinner at Rumah Makan Meutia in the Bendungan Hilir neighborhood demonstrated this quite well.

    Rumah Makan Meutia. Assalamu’alaikum.

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    I also can confirm that Acehnese food does indeed make use of a special herb that one tends not to associate with cuisine. Its seeds go in the basic spice paste and also gets used in ayam tangkap, a chicken and fried curry-leaves (etc.) dish.

    Check out more recent food pictures here, including nasi rames, soto ayam istemewa, es teh tarek, mie Aceh, roti cane, and ayam tangkap. You get to the new pictures by clicking on “next.

  • Who Like Many Indonesians Uses Only One Name

    SBY has chosen his running mate, the Governor of Bank Indonesia, Boediono. Who, I hasten to add in the style of the American press, "like many Indonesians uses only one name." I guess we can get used to this phrase because we're going to see a lot of it in the future, assuming current predictions of an easy victory for the incumbent hold true.

    SBY-Boediono

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    Boediono is a solid pick. SBY is pretty popular no matter whom he
    chooses as a running mate, so he doesn't need to use his VP to shore up any
    type of political support from any particular group. So he's picked a technocrat
    with a great reputation for clean and capable macroeconomic management.
    This is precisely what a large developing country needs facing a global
    economy such as this one. I have good sources that tell me that when
    SBY first contacted Boediono about the job, Boediono's response was
    "well, I'm worried about whether or not we can find someone responsible
    to run Bank Indonesia." SBY ate that right up.

    The other parties are screaming now that Boediono is a "neoliberal" and
    that he "doesn't represent Muslims." These are weak complaints.
    Boediono is a neoliberal, but he's not an ideologue. His supporters say
    that he's careful and attentive to the differences between textbook
    macroeconomics and real world conditions. And to the extent that he is a neoliberal, that just might be a good thing. The complaint that he doesn't represent Muslims is even sillier. At the end of the day, the four Islamic-affiliated parties that support SBY (they hoped that this would give them a VP pick, and accordingly were the ones fussing about no Muslim representation) have all now fallen into line behind SBY-Boediono.

    The other two official tickets are Megawati Sukarnoputri and Prabowo Subianto (PDI-P and Gerindra) and Jusuf Kalla and Wiranto (Golkar and Hanura). I have fewer positive things to say about these two tickets. I don't trust Mega to govern well, Kalla to govern cleanly, or Prabowo or Wiranto to uphold the rule of law.

    Mega and Prabowo, Wiranto and Kalla

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    Here's another press mention of Thursday's research presentation. I should note that if this author were my student, I would report him for a violation of academic integrity for improper use of quotation marks. The author also seems to miss completely the point of our research, misinterpreting both the findings and our interpretation of them.