Tom Pepinsky

Author: tompepinsky

  • Christmas in Jakarta, A New Mall, etc.

    You’d think that in a majority-Muslim country, Christmas would not be such a big deal, but you’d be wrong.  Although perhaps 90% of Indonesians are Muslim, and there are substantial Buddhist and Hindu minorities, there are still approximately 20 million Christians of various types throughout the country.  Plus all the expats, who are known for their disposable income.  We’ve been getting a good feel for holiday cheer throughout Jakarta in the past weeks, even though it’s still 90 degrees out every day.  All of the places where we used to see "Happy Idul Fitri" now say "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year."  Instead of greens and yellows decorating buildings around town, now it’s greens and reds.  There are Christmas lights up in the palm trees, and many store employees have to wear those silly Santa hats around.  When you think about that, it’s weird.  Our "Santa Claus" comes from the Dutch "Sinterklas," but Indonesia has imported the American/British/Australian view of jolly St. Nick instead of the version held by their colonial power.

    We saw a lot of this when visiting a new mall this weekend.  As we’ve described, malls are all the rage here, and they are always packed, so we’ve learned to go where the people are.  People watching at this mall was interesting.  There were many more obviously ethnic Chinese Indonesians than at the malls that we normally visit, and there was also a lot more conspicuous consumption going on.  All of the trappings of the West were there as well, including Starbucks and probably a dozen other coffee shops/cafes, and a hugely popular bread store called "Bread Talk."  As a side note, we are in agreement at the fact that the only Western food that we actively miss is fresh bread–going without cheese, olive oil, Italian-style pasta, pork, and Western-style salads has been surprisingly easier than we had expected.

    Coincidentally, we checked out the giant grocery store Saturday night and found the elusive banana leaves!  Our regular readers will recall that we’ve had some trouble finding these.  We decided not to buy them, though, since we were on the way to a movie.  However, we decided to do our grocery shopping there this week.  Of course, can you guess what happened?  Yesterday when we went back, they were out of banana leaves, which was particularly depressing as we were all set to engage in a flurry of cooking involving banana leaves.  Sigh.

  • The Thai Bird's Eye Insanity Pepper

    We went out for Japanese food last night, and tried a type that we had never heard of before: "Shabu-Shabu."  Maybe for globe-trotting world citizens this is nothing special, but we’d never had it before, and it was cool.  You get a pot of boiling broth and a whole bunch of raw meats, vegetables, noodles, and tofu, plus some sauces and ground ginger and scallions.  You dip your food in the hot broth and it cooks up super-quick, and then you eat it over rice.  When you’re done, you can drink the now-flavorful broth.

    Of course, being Indonesia, they had the obligatory dish of raw red chilies.  Not traditional Japanese, but still fun to have.  Without thinking twice, I (TP) tried a bit, thinking they were the normal kind of very hot–but manageable and tasty–pepper that we usually get from the store.  Nope.  These were the ripe kind of Thai bird’s eye chili that we always avoid at the store.  These peppers are just so unbelievably spicy.  It’s beyond funny, it doesn’t make any sense, we don’t get it.  How do people eat these?  Normally we see Indonesians eating the green kind of bird’s eye chili, which is just as hot but not ripe yet.  One of our favorite memories is our teachers in Wisconsin this summer who would eat one raw bird’s eye chili per mouthful of rice.

    And we’re not just being wimpy.  Food is freaking spicy here and we eat all of it…if anything we’re more used to spicy food than normal.  But still, this ruined dinner for me for about 10 minutes.  For those of you at home thinking "Ha, whatever, I eat raw jalapenos," you’re way out of your league, partner.  The heat is slightly less than a habanero, and I know you don’t eat those raw.

    (jm: I can’t corroborate because I didn’t eat any.  Unlike usual when I taste test things for shrimp for Tom, he tried them first.  Thank goodness.  It was pretty funny, he got all red and teary-eyed and sweaty.  I know some people get some kind of masochistic pleasure out of burning their mouths to pieces, but it’s just not for me.)