Apakah kuda anda punya nama?

"Does your horse have a name?"
We Westerners give names to everything, even inanimate objects: Big Blue; the Eiffel Tower; Herbie.

We also give names to our animals. Even the ones we shoot into space. The Albert series (Albert I, Albert II etc.) were a series of rhesus monkeys and mice launched by NASA in the early days of space programs. "Laika" was the name of the dog launched by the Soviets in a Sputnik 2, which was the first animal to orbit Earth. Her original name was Kudryavka (“Little Curly”).

Giving names to animals seems very natural to us Westerners, since we communicate with them. Or think we do. Indonesians typically don't give their animals any names. The Cidomo (Indonesian horse-drawn cart) drivers don't have names for their horses which I find bewildering, since they work as a team together every day and they DO communicate.

Do you remember the peasant in “Dances with Wolves”, the one who takes John Dunbar (Kevin Costner) to his prairie post, and who keeps talking to his mules in a funny voice: “Hoh, little Jim...” Yes, well, Cidomo drivers would give this guy odd stares.

Cognitively speaking, as soon as you give something a name, it becomes something else. So, a horse with a name is something else than a cat without a name. Which you wouldn’t argue with. And is not a horse with a name also something else than a horse without a horse-shoe? And now, in this string of formidable Socratic dialectic, the final stroke: is not a named horse (e.g. Jolly Jumper) a different thing to a nameless horse (insert: horse without a name)?

I wondered thusly, what does a name do for an animal’s self-perception and identity? Do Western cats have - because they have names - different identities and perceptions of themselves than Indonesian cats?

In the wild, surely animals don’t call each other by names. They do communicate. But do they verbally address one another by names, or just by the sound and intonation of their voice? So have we Westerners in fact alienated our cats and dogs from themselves by giving them names that are unnatural to them? Have I forced onto my dog the idea that he could be a “Jerry” when in fact he is a “Jim”?

Sorry, Jim.

Skiduearinosuda!

It has been a very snowy spring in Europe. From Portugal to Italy they have recorded record snowfalls this year.

There has been no snowfall in Lombok yet. But we are hopeful and waiting. Rinjani Volcano measures over 3,700m in altitude, so it should be an obvious pick for snowfall.

And then I had a good idea with Kai. There is a perfect statistical correlation between Olympic winter games and snowfall patterns. Preparations in July for Winter Games in December has always warranted snowfall in December too. Much in the same way that "Christmas card sales Granger-cause Christmas!" which is the Granger-cause theorem. So if we all bought tickets for the Olympic winter games in Lombok, there is likely going to be snowfall in Lombok too. So taking this causal relationship to heart, Kai and I drafted up a petition to bring the Olympic winter games to Lombok in 2020.

But it hasn’t stopped there. Imagine carving down the slopes of Rinjani past three ecological zones: first, a frozen volcano crater; second, green rice terraces ; and third, the white sand beaches off Lombok coast. Thusly, our motto will be “ski at dusk, eat rice at noon, surf at dawn” . We sat down with some creative writers and after a few hours they came up with “skiduearinosuda” which we felt captures the motto justly. With this motto we can in fact hold the Summer and Winter Games in the same year!

What are we waiting for?

Dear Brussels...

Let me apologize for this somewhat populist, Marxist and disgruntled blog entry from the start. But as a EU citizen, you can’t help wonder about Brussels sometimes...

My sister recently forwarded me a link to the EU in Brussels who have posted job vacancies. The EU in Brussels is hiring junior staff for audit, economics, law etc. until April 15th, so hurry if you think this one’s for you.

I looked at the salary structure for these jobs by the name of AD 5. AD 5 level is sort of the entrance level for people with academic background, i.e. Bachelor or an equivalent 3 years of study and more. And I couldn’t believe my eyes. They offer a fancy € 3,900 basic salary for junior staff under the age of 27. That would still be at least net € 3,000. Now add to this figure expatriation allowances (16% of gross) and other benefits again. Really not so bad.

Brussel’s thinking must be that they want to attract the smartest people out there. Now I do realize that the kids who get these jobs are smart. They have gone through an extensive selection process and several assessment centres. But that’s crazy pay, even by private sector standards. I don’t think starting salaries for young people without work experience in their mid-20s should be that high. Besides, the job market really isn’t that rosy, so smart people would apply for EU jobs even at lower starting salaries.

For comparison, the mean net income in Germany in 2006 was at € 18,000. And the middle class income bracket in Germany is defined, according to the DIW, to be 70%-150% of the median net income (which is € 16,000), which means between € 1,000-2,200 monthly net income for a single-person household. That would mean that Brussels catapults twenty-something singles with a basic starting salary of € 3,900 right into the upper class.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of upward mobility and that people should be remunerated richly for the work they do. But not at 25! Plus, public servants' salaries should match the overall income level in an economy. European middle classes aren't really as rich as assumed. I know a lot of educated people in their 30s and 40s in white-collar jobs, with tons of work-experience, who don't earn that kind of money. Middle classes across Europe don't earn that kind of money now.

I know this sounds very Marxist, but I think the salary structures in place in Brussels beg the question if we have a union of democratic countries ruled by an upper class? And the upper class seems to think it's alright. Dear Brussels, how about a reality-check?

Wakes and football absenteeism

Today was the second wake in a month I’ve been to with colleagues from work. The first one was the wake of a janitor/gardener from our office who died about a month ago. I was astonished to see that 80 people from our office - everyone - came out. That would never happen in a Western work-place, even with a very special janitor. Then again, it happened during work-time. I’d just got into the office that morning when someone informed me of his death. And then they asked me if I would go to the wake? My reaction was: “What, now?”

Everyone came to pay last respects to him. He was a very likeable person. I didn’t know him well but we exchanged many smiles and I gave him a lift on my motor-cycle once.

Today was the other wake. It was actually for a family member of a young colleague. I’ve never met the deceased person but I know this colleague fairly well. Again, pretty much the whole office emptied out and we paid the visit together.

In Germany, funerals are often a small crowd, no larger than maybe one or two dozen people. Here we are talking of at least one hundred at a wake! Would it flatter or relieve you to know if a hundred people came to pay last respects to you?

Wakes here in Lombok are not a morose and solemn thing. While everyone expresses condolences to the family, there is some noticeable laughing and chatter going on.

And through the chatter, I kept wondering about Taylorism and labor productivity, good governance and cultural differences. This time, I was really intrigued. Is this right, I kept wondering? To my Western mind there is an obvious conflict of interest: we are a government office and expected to be at work. And yet this is what is customary here and - in Lombok at least - most government offices would do. The employees leave work for an hour to go to a wake. They see it as a duty to the deceased and the mourning family. And in the end I guess social customs and duties make a place such as this tick.

Will this custom ever change, I wondered? Imagine you wanted to go to your local citizen center and it was empty due to a staff’s decease? Shouldn’t wakes be attended outside work-time maybe, one might delicately ask? But then, as we know, wakes and funerals are hardly attended by the same numbers in the West at all. Our societal fabric has been broken down and changed since industrialization, and do we have a recipe for other nations to revamp their social fabric in a more harmonic way?

So while I was still thinking about the said conflicts of interest and said good governance aspects, how this could relate to a different culture than my own, I realized the little hypocrisy in my position. While we in the West would say it is inappropriate to stop work to go to a wake or funeral, we will stop work for much more trivial things:

If you are a tax payer in a football-loving nation, beware of 2010. Having worked a summer-job after high-school in the courier service of the Foreign Ministry - this was the 2002 World Cup - I can tell you from personal experience that all work there grinds to a halt when games are on. I had almost no files to send and carry around at all during the 90 minutes of German football matches. Mail-traffic within the ministry dwindled to a 5%, and every file that did go round was marked in red letters with “urgent”. Which tells you that really only urgent stuff got done, and all the other stuff could wait.

A similar thing was noted by economists in England about worker absenteeism during England matches in the World Cup. They calculated that UK businesses lost up to £100m a day as thousands of Englishmen skived work to follow the England matches. Which, to an economist at least, makes it a blessing in disguise if your country comes home early from the World Cup.

What I understood about the biogeography of this place

This past weekend, Kai and I have shortly indulged in ornithology. This happened on the Ashtari terrace which offers a great panoramic view of Kuta valley, and a good view of the close-range vegetation. (We actually strayed outside to see monkeys which you can hear in the near-by banana trees but saw none. So we turned our attention to the birds.)

Here is a list of birds we saw: Blaubruecher (the males are only blue during mating season), Kronklammflecker, Brinkgenustler, and Fallfledderer. We also heard the chirrup and twitter of the Tonmongrel and, more distantly, the Samthefler. These are actually bird names we came up with!

Indonesia is a bird-watcher’s paradise. Some bird species here are indigenous to island groups and have evolved entirely on their own. The Sunda shelf used to link the Indonesian archipelago islands to one another and to Asia during the ice ages. The Wallacea islands that Lombok is a part of, however, lie behind the Wallacea line, east of Bali. Bali shares more of its mammal fauna with East Asia than with Lombok, only some 35 km across the Wallacea line. Because Bali and Lombok were probably never connected during the ice ages - the strait here is too deep - the strait has been impassable for many species from the west, including land birds.

It has also been impenetrable for land birds from the east (Australia-New Guinea) due to Lydekker’s line. (I hope my biogeography is correct here, call me out if not.)

There are so few birds left on Lombok. Alas, some people have made it a sport to shoot down the few ones left. So rarely one sees or hears birds in the sky, which I took a while to realize. But now that I noticed it makes me sad.

Things I have learned about myself

The past five months living in Indonesia have taught me some interesting things about myself.

I spent many hours a week cooking in Berlin. I haven't done any cooking since coming to Indonesia, other than prepare a cheese sandwich or a cup of tea. The strange thing is, I don't miss it. And I thought I enjoyed cooking.

I have not played an instrument since arriving here. I thought I would, hence I brought some guitar picks and a harmonica from Germany. But my house’s walls are paper thin.

I have instead taken up new activities, like swimming. I've never before enjoyed swimming but it consumes most of my free afternoons here now. I’ve also never cared for technical aspects of a sport, like how to swim efficiently, but I do now. I am reading a 300-page book full with illustrations about proper freestyle technique. 300 pages, no kidding. This may be a tautology but I am turning into a geek.

Being a geek, I figured I’d go all the way. So I have given my Mozilla Firefox a new “persona” (as it's called). There is a new layout to every week now.

I write a blog now. Mostly about things that aren't worth writing home about. And yet here I am doing it again.

I've started to enjoy eating food outside. (Possibly, because I can actually afford it.) There is a mall in Mataram in West-Lombok. I regularly enjoy strolling through it - if I can, once a week. I used to hate malls.

I have sinned twice and eaten McSundaes, breaking my 12-years old McDonald's boycott. (They don’t have McCafés here yet.) I have repeatedly been to Pizza Hut. And enjoyed it.

Here are things I miss:
I miss my bike rides. I miss returning home and the last stretch on a summer evening, or in the breezy smell of autumn or winter dark - any season really - across the cobble-stoned streets. I had customary routes through those treacherous cobblestone streets.

I miss sinking into the kitchen chair, the BBC broadcasts, making Rahmspinat with pasta. They have a water-spinach dish here called 'ceh kangkung'. It's excellent. But it's not the same.

I miss bumping into friends in the Kiez. But I don't miss the Kiez. I only miss my friends.

I never thought I was a latté lover but I do miss a good milky coffee now and then.

I miss seeing a good show. May it even be in a smoky bar.

And of course I miss seeing and hearing from all of you!