the mall | mcljava

I’m alone, sitting in our hammock drinking coffeemix while the cats hunt each gecko in our dirt yard. Chrissy and Rachel both left this morning after a few days of extra Indo holiday bonding in Jogja and Solo (a 50-km train ride away). I spent Christmas in Solo with Rachel pillaging the box my amazing mother UPS’ed me for its hot chocolate, marshmallows, pancake batter and candy canes. Later we got hungry again and went to Pizza Hut for a 7-cheese, stuffed crust, unmistakably American pizza pie. Chrissy arrived the next day from Jakarta and we walked around Solo together sampling roadside food carts, eventually treating ourselves to holiday creambaths and facials at the spa ($4!). Then a train to Jogja, fermented tapioca drinks at Milas and late night hanging out on the sidewalk mats near Jogja’s train station to talk and drink kopi jos, “strong” coffee brewed with charcoal, plus warm ginger milk and fried tempeh.

I’m sitting alone with the cats on this rarely cool afternoon and enjoying how quiet our neighborhood has been today, though broken now as each of the five mosques nearby takes its turn to call our neighbors to prayer. I’ve heard bule claim they hate the sound of the call to prayer but I can’t see why; besides being useful for telling time, it’s a peaceful, periodic reminder to take a moment for yourself, like this one. The prettiest call I’ve heard yet was from the mosque near Rachel’s house the morning after Christmas, when I was awake enough to hear the day’s first call at 4am. He let each line’s last syllable close quietly, gently, avoiding the mechanical drone that the other broadcasted voices can have, as if he was singing to himself in an empty room, bored, tired, maybe sad. It pulled me out of sleep but lulled me right back into it, an Arabic lullaby on Christmas night.

Though lacking a Christian majority, Vietnam and Kuala Lumpur were Christmas-crazy: garland, trees, Santas, reindeer, strings of lights, music in the stores. It was retail-oriented, hollow but familiar signals that you need to be shopping and you need to do it now! I don’t miss this American-style obsession with consumption, every inch of our sight and second of our attention being pulled away from these precious internal thoughts to convince us that we should be buying something, anything, to make our day better, when how much does it ever improve? Indonesia’s (or at least Jogja/Solo’s) version of Christmas was more relaxed, some Christmas music in the grocery store to hum along to and a tree or two at the mall, which still seems like a lot in an area that’s 90+% Muslim. I was happy to pass the time with close friends plus enough wireless internet to dial into the real festivities at my family’s Christmases in Chicago and Utah, enough video power to experience my awesome nieces and nephews so excited about their presents, family company and Christmas treats. I miss you guys.

Scenes from an Indo Christmas:

Rainbows and rice fields on the drive to Solo.

Thanks mom!

Team Indo, one becek: bisa.

Srabi: hot, squishy, coconutty bread with a jackfruit topping — only in Solo.

Durian + chocolate juice, Solo

Street corner serenades at kopi jos, Jogjakarta.

Just for fun, Christmas elsewhere in Asia:

Greeting Seasons!

Sidewalks and storefronts in Vietnam’s big cities.

Mixed Chinese and Christmas goodies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

A Very Retail Christmas in Kuala Lumpur – overload! Look how small those people are!

Before I came to Indonesia, I thought I was going to have to live without chocolate, butter, pancakes, ice cream, root beer, mochas, milkshakes, peanut butter, reliable electricity, English. I’m an idiot: for better or worse, these things all exist in Jogia in spades.

I went to the big mall in town, Amplaz, for the first time on Saturday. It’s huge.

The Carrefour in particular was system shocking. It’s Target basically – you can buy anything you could ever need and the prices are decent. It looks and feels like an American superstore except looking closer reveals all the foreign brands (though many familiar too) and knick-knacks that come with living in another country. It’s like walking into your childhood home and finding a different family living there. Disorienting/paralysing/awesome.

I wasn’t going to get a Starbucks. I wasn’t! It’s too expensive and I’m not homesick yet. One drink there costs at least 40,000 Rp., or~ $4, my whole food budget for two days, whereas coffee on the street costs 3,000-5,000 Rp and it’s delicious. But after wandering around for an hour or two, I was looking at the electronic touchscreen mall directory to see what stores I might have missed (Guess, Baskin Robbins, Polo/Ralph Lauren, Croc…) when a nice guy approached asking to practice his English, and won’t I take a drink with him at Starbucks, anything I wanted. I get a little weary sometimes of English-practicing requests from strangers but oh man, a free frappaccino?! Definitely worth an hour’s tutorial on the past tense.

Guilty as charged. Yep, tastes the same.