When I was in the tourist town of Ubud this Christmas, perhaps best described as the only place I know where you can simultaneously enjoy organic bagels and a cremation, I visited the popular market. “Sorry, this is just a little too expensive” I would say politely to shopkeepers after being quoted outrageous tourist prices. With what I hoped was a disarming … Read More

via Macam Bali Blog

Another post from my wife’s blog, MacamBali…

When we lived in a house a little way from where we have currently taken up residence, one of my Balinese friends felt a little shy about visiting me. She explained she felt uncomfortable there. The family was, of course, very welcoming, but the symmetry of the place didn’t feel right. We were housed on the second floor, with an en suite bathroom. I generally met her on a bale on a flat roof outside our room. And there was no sanggah (family temp … Read More

via Macam Bali Blog

One of the nicer local clinics… A five-day stay cost less than $300, including medicine, doctors’ fees and the rest. Surely we can do this in the US… no?

So things have been even slower than usual on the blog of late… The season for ill health is upon us, and it’s taken its toll. Herewith a few thoughts from Jude on recent events. I shall have a few words to add in coming days. In the meantime…

The last time I saw our close family friend was Wednesday evening. He was in the big outdoor kitchen belonging to the home to which my family had just moved, laughing over a joke as he broke an egg onto a small plate in preparation for his supper. Earlier that day I had been persuaded by my husband to go a clinic after being extremely unwell. The taxi ride took three times as long as it should have done, weaving a path through almost every back s … Read More

via Macam Bali Blog

In coming days we’ll be moving out to more rural digs… Here are few thoughts on the subject from Jude’s blog, Macam Bali. As per usual, I’m woefully behind. =)

Not every day is a good day to move house in Bali. It is essential that the calendar be consulted to avoid an inauspicious start to a new home. But in a few days time, when it is deemed favorable, we will be packing our bags and diverse paraphernalia – toys, kitchen equipment, tripod, cameras, and so on – and decamping. We are transfe … Read More

via Macam Bali Blog

Bali has long held the reputation of an exotic paradise, full of beautiful rice fields and enchanting traditions.  What is less well known is that Bali has a huge problem with environmental pollution. Eight of the most most popular tourist beaches in Bali were identified at the beginning of this year as having unsafe levels of nitrates, phosphates, cadmium and lead; and each high tide washes up more waste. Piles of garbage litter the banks of riv … Read More

via Macam Bali Blog

This morning I was prompted by a remark from a friend to say a few words about getting online in Bali. For better or worse, while in most parts of Southern Bali, one need never (or almost never) lose contact with email, Facebook, Twitter, Skype and all the rest.

On previous visits our primary source of Internet access had been a little “Internet café” behind the local bus terminal. It was cheap and generally quite reliable, if a little grotty. (If memory serves, my wife set up a two-week family holiday in Tuscany from that very spot!) But, even back in the day, ten minutes by motorbike was anything but convenient when all you needed was to send a quick email, or confirm that a check had cleared. Nonetheless, at a time when the Internet was something of a scarce resource, this still seemed a good way to keep in touch with family, work and the rest of the known universe.

Obviously things have moved on since. Our little community alone has at least four functioning Internet cafés, while those who can afford the luxury gain access to email, Facebook and Skype using their smartphones—most commonly a Blackberry.

There are many ways to get online in Bali, some more expensive than others. My wife and I are both using iPhones, which have been surprisingly easy to adapt for the purpose.

Before leaving the States, we had jailbroken and unlocked our phones. For those who aren’t familiar with the technology (and terminology), jailbreaking basically entails running a program (or, more recently, visiting a website) that cedes control of the device’s operating system to the owner, who can then download apps and other ‘packages’ that modify the way the phone works. Presently, these ‘packages’ are most readily available through Cydia, which is in many ways the jailbroken counterpart to Apple’s ‘App Store’.

A particularly useful package is the one that ‘unlocks’ the phone, freeing it from its original carrier (e.g., AT&T, Orange, Telkomsel). In the past these procedures and those who facilitated them worked in a grey area of the law. However, jailbreaking is now legally sanctioned by a statement from the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress.

As a brief aside, I’ve deliberately omitted specific details on jailbreaking procedures and ‘packages’ as I don’t wish to be responsible for the consequences of mistakes—either my own, or someone else’s. The best site for keeping up on all things jailbroken is that of the ‘Dev Team’, who play an ongoing game of cat-and-mouse with Apple’s software developers. Other blogs worth following include 9to5 Mac and iPhone Download Blog, which has easy-to-follow instructions for these and other iPhone tweaks.

So what does all this mean for getting online in Bali? Having jailbroken and unlocked our phones, we were able to purchase new simcards when we arrived in Jakarta for Rp.25,000 (approx. $2.75, US). Then one simply adds ‘pulsa’ (pre-paid cellphone credit) that can be purchased in any of the numerous kiosks lining most inhabited parts of Java and Bali (and, presumably, much of the rest of the archipelago). For anyone who’s traveled in Indonesia, this much is de rigeur. Pulsa will allow you to make phonecalls and send SMS messages (local, long-distance and international). But it will also get you online. Within moments of purchasing my simcard on a street corner in central Jakarta, I was checking email and doing a quick trawl for local restaurants. Hurrah!

Droid does… A picture from our hotel bathroom in Jakarta. (Gareth, it looks like we frequent the same hotel!)

That said… unless you’re terribly careful, the iPhone will simply hemorrhage pulsa. One goes to bed with Rp.100,000 in credit, only to wake up with more than half of it gone—usually from the iPhone’s automated email-checking, calendar synching and so on. What to do? There are several options.

Our first solution came by way of a ‘package’ available on Cydia, after jailbreak. It’s called SBSettings, and it allows you to control the iPhone’s Data and 3G capabilities with a simple on-off toggle accessible directly from the Springboard. (NB: the Springboard is basically the ‘homescreen’ through which you access apps and other functions on the iPhone—it’s what you see first when you turn on the phone.) The toggles allow you to use your pulsa sparingly, when you really need it—to check email, Skype etc. However, using pulsa to get online remains a comparatively expensive option. It’s great for a quick fix, but you should really explore other options for the longer term.

This is especially the case if you wish to ‘tether’ your phone for use with a laptop or another device. Again, having jailbroken, there is an extremely useful—if pricy, at $20—little package called ‘MyWi 4.0’ that allows you to set up a wireless network offering online access for other devices through your 3G data connection. (In passing, you’ll also need a package like My3G to bypass Apple’s restriction on using programs like Skype from a non-WiFi connection.) In my case, this means a MacBook Pro and an iPad. And yes, it works beautifully! So long as we have a good data connection (and this is occasionally a problem in the early to mid-afternoon), I am able to sit at my laptop (or lounge with my iPad) and surf the Net, check email and do all the other things one does online.

Click the picture to see a larger image. From left to right, the first image is a screenshot from the homescreen of the iPhone Springboard. Note that ‘MyWi 4’ is running in the background (see blue border at the top of the screen), showing the amount of data both up- and down-loaded on my tethered laptop. The center image shows the SB-Settings toggle interface that allows you to switch Data and 3G on and off—click once for red (off), and again for green (on). This little set of controls can be accessed simply by swiping your finger across the top edge of the screen, and closed by clicking the little red box marked ‘x’ in the upper lefthand corner. The third screenshot shows the user interface for MyWi 4 when it’s running as the main application. Its default setting allows it to run in the background while you run other apps, or none at all.

When it comes to the data itself, an alternative route is to pre-pay for a data package. There are various options here—we plumped for the Rp.400,000 (approx. $45, US) per month ‘unlimited’ package. Without going into excessive detail (for more see, e.g., Telkomsel), this option offers the first 1.5GB (per month) at a reasonably quick up- and download rate, which then slows down when you exceed the limit. The connection is neither blazingly fast, nor is the data quantity enough for serious daily use. But it works just fine for our present purposes. We’ll probably arrange for a proper ‘high speed’ unlimited connection with Smart Telkom when we move to our new accommodation in a couple of weeks—at which point, I’ll probably have a few more comments to add. In the meantime, TTFN.

Setiap kami kembali ke Bali saya terkejut akan perubahan. Saat berangkat dari bandara kelihatannya papan-papan lebih bercahaya, gedung mall belanja makin besar dan mewah, dan lebih banyak ada barang-barang konsumer yang berasal dari dunia barat dan bersifat norak daripada yang saya ingat dari kunjungan sebelumnya.

Kali ini kejutan yang pertama terjadi pada saat sopir taksi di bandara mohon kami tunggu dengan koper-koper… di depan Starbucks.

Mendapat suatu ‘warung kopi’ Starbucks di bandara Ngurah Rai bukan sebuah kejutan pada diri sendiri. Dewasa ini, kue ‘maple scone’ dan kopi ‘non-fat latte’ cukup gampang didapat di tempat-tempat yang kemungkinannya sangat kecil beberapa tahun yang lalu. Barangkali kejutan yang paling nyata adalah cara ngomong si sopir taksi, dan cara mengucapkan kata asing tersebut sangat fasih dalam Bahasa Indonesianya yang berlogat Bali. ‘Tunggu sebentar, pak… di depan Starbucks, ya?’

Sebagai sebuah praktek (yakni ‘practice’, dalam arti filosofisnya), bahasa berubah terus-menurus—mungkin teristimewa di masyarakat yang bersifat kosmopolitan seperti Bali kontemporer. Hal ini mengingatkan kata favorit saya dari kamus lama Indonesia-Inggeris yang ditulis Echols dan Shadily… yaitu “merambokan,” dari kata asal “rambo.” Artinya, menurut kamus, “menghancurkan secara total.” Ternyata peran filem Sylvester Stallone yang terkenal menjadi kata kerja transitif. (Walaupun mesti saya mengakui belum pernah mendengar kata tersebut dipakai dalam wacana sehari-hari.)

Istilah gres dan cara berbicara yang baru merupakan suatu elemen penting dari semua bahasa yang masih hidup, dan bahasa Indonesia bukan kekecualian. Unsur-unsur bahasa Sanskerta, Arab dan Cina, tapi juga Belanda dan Inggeris, adalah aspek penting dari wacana sehari-hari kini. Dan, pada umumnya, keadaan linguistik ini mencerminkan kemajemukan kebudayaan (‘cultural complexity’) di daerah Asia Tenggara ini. Akan tetapi, bagaimana caranya menafsirkan dan merepresentasikan kemajemukan tersebut secara konsepsional?

Jurusan-jurusan akedemis yang kritikus, dari antropologi ke studi kebudayaan (‘cultural studies’), sudah lama mengenali masalah ini. Pada umumnya, solusi-solusi yang mereka kemukakan berbentuk istilah atau konsep baru — contohnya ‘sinkretisme’, ‘Great and Little Traditions’, ‘creolizaiton’, ‘glocality’ (!) dan ‘hybridity’. Apakah konsep-konsep seperti ini bisa mencapai tujuannya?

Dengan setiap istilah tersebut klaimnya hampir sama: bentuk-bentuk kebudayaan kontemporer merupakan akibat akhir dari sebuah sejarah yang cukup panjang dan terus-menerus berubah. Dan, sebagai akibat, pada dasarnya kebudayaan itu bersifat heterogen, atau majemuk — seperti Bahasa Indonesia, dengan kata me-Rambo-kan dan Starbucks. Didalam bidang pelajaran saya sendiri, kecendurungan tersebut bisa dilihat dalam frase-frase seperti ‘Saivo-Buddhism’, ‘Tantric Hinduism’ dan ‘Archipelago Sanskrit’. Sudah jelas ada juga contoh anekaragam di bidang-bidang pelajaran yang lain.

Pokoknya ialah masing-masing frase dan konsep tersebut bertujuan yang sama—yakni menunjukkan kemajemukan dari obyeknya, dan mencerminkan kondisi-kondisi historis dalam apa kemajemukan ini sempat terjadi. Misalnya, bahasa kesusastraan Nusa Tenggara dari suatu periode tertentu mempunyai beberapa unsur yang sama dengan bahasa yang kita dewasa ini kenali sebagai bahasa Sanskerta. Tapi, kalau diperbandingkan dengan Sanskerta, bahasa kesusastraan Nusa Tenggara tersebut juga berbeda dalam beberapa aspek… Disamping bentuk gramatika yang ‘korup’ (untuk contoh lain, lihat ‘Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit’), ia juga mempunyai unsur-unsur dari bahasa asli daerah Nusa Tenggara. Jadi, apakah ‘Archipelago Sanskrit’ merupakan sebuah bentuk linguistik yang synkretis (‘a syncretic form’)?

Nampaknya, kalau suatu konsep seperti ‘sinkretisme’ atau ‘hybridity’ akan bermanfaat, kemungkinan dari kebalikannya — atau, paling sedikit, sebuah alternatif — perlu juga bisa jadi. Dari perspektif logika, alternatif tersebut adalah sebuah saat murni (yaitu Sanskerta, Hinduisme, tradisi dll. yang “sungguh”) sebelum kemunculan perubahan yang bersifat ‘hybrid’. Tapi, pada umumnya, kalau kita memperhatikan dan menyadari sejarah secara teliti, ternyata “saat murni” tersebut tidak begitu murni—itu juga bersifat majemuk. Dalam kata lain, itulah juga produk dari sebuah proses mencampur unsur-unsur dari berbagai sumber.

Dari pandangan ini, barangkali konsep-konsep seperti ‘sinkretisme’ dan ‘hybridity’ bisa mengajari kita lebih banyak tentang praktek kritikus kita sendiri daripada praktek-praktek sosial yang dimiliki masyarakat yang merupakan obyek dari penelitian kita. (Sebagai catatan pinggir, sudah jelas praktek kritikus kita juga merupakan sebuah praktek sosial.) Contohnya, saat murni yang tersebut (yakni bahasa Sanskerta yang “sungguh” dll.) bukan suatu saat asli yang bersifat homogen; akan tetapi, sebaliknya, itulah hanya saatnya kita berhenti bertanya tentang apa yang terjadi sebelumnya—atas alasan yang sembarangan atau karena ketidakberadaan bukti yang berwujud. Kalau begitu, ada sebuah kemungkinan nyata bahwa bahasa kritikus yang kita pakai untuk mengkonseptualisasikan kemajemukan hanya menunda proses esensialisasi budaya. Di dunia akademis, hampir tidak ada seorang pun yang masih menganuti (secara sengaja) suatu konsep kebudayaan yang esensialis (‘essentialist’)… Akan tetapi, apa dan bagaimana sinkretisme itu selain suatu proses dalam apa esens-esens kebudayaan (‘cultural essences’) dicampur-campur?

Pada akhirnya, itu sama saja kalau masalah yang kita bahas adalah ‘Archipelago Sanskrit’ ataupun Starbucks. Kalau direnungkan, dalam proses penyelidikan kritikus, saat yang sangat penting adalah saat bertanya—yakni jika kita menanyakan, dan sekaligus kita bikin komitmen pada asumsi-asumsi (atau ‘presupposition’) yang tertentu. Apakah kita bisa menafsirkan kepentingan dan dampak sosialnya dari keberadaan Starbucks di Bali tanpa menganuti suatu konsep ‘tradisi Bali’? Kalau bisa, bagaimana caranya? Kalau tidak, konsep tradisi yang milik siapa kita akan pilih? Dan atas kriteria yang mana?

Today’s post from MacamBali is on Balinese food as prepared daily by our cook, Kadék…

As requested by our friend Mandy, this entry will be first of several on Balinese food. Or, more accurately, on the kind of food my family is eating in Southern Bali at any given  moment. In later posts I will cover food preparation as well as our meals, and festival foods. But today, by way of introduction, let me begin by saying that our daily cooking is done by Kadek. She arrives with a smile  each morning with her small son and proceeds to wr … Read More

via Macam Bali Blog

Another post from my wife’s blog, MacamBali…

Life is idyllic. We are living in palatial surroundings at the mayor’s family compound while our local accommodation has the twin luxuries of air conditioning and a bathroom installed. In the meantime, I wake to the sound of roosters crowing and the aromatic  smells wafting from the freshly made offerings of flowers, salt, rice and incense that are laid out early each morning here. Beauty is everywhere as I drink my first sweet rich coffee of the … Read More

via Macam Bali Blog

Each time we arrive in Bali for another visit I’m struck by change. Leaving the airport the billboards seem brighter, the shopping malls bigger and more opulent, and somehow there’s always a little more EurAm consumer kitsch than I remember from the last time.

This year’s first little surprise came when our taxi driver asked me to meet him with our bags… in front of Starbucks.

To find Starbucks at the Denpasar airport is hardly a shock in itself. Maple scones and non-fat lattes are now readily available in what, a few years back, would’ve been the unlikeliest of places. The real surprise, I guess, was the ease with which our Balinese driver’s heavily accented Indonesian seemed to accommodate the new term. Tunggu sebentar, pak… di depan Starbucks, ya? (Wait just a minute, sir… in front of Starbucks, okay?)

As a practice (what else is there?), language is continuously changing—perhaps especially in societies as cosmopolitan as contemporary Bali. Here I’m reminded of one of my favorite entries in the old Echols and Shadily Indonesian-English dictionary… merambokan, from the root-word rambo, “to destroy utterly.” Apparently somewhere along the way Sylvester Stallone’s infamous character, Rambo, became a transitive verb. (Though, in passing, I must confess I’ve never heard the term used as such.)

New terminology and ways of speaking are part of any living language, and Indonesian is obviously no exception. Elements of Sanskrit, Arabic and Chinese, but also Dutch and English, are everywhere apparent in everyday conversation. And this reflects more generally the cultural complexity of the region. But how is this complexity best grasped conceptually?

Critical disciplines from anthropology to cultural studies have long recognized the problem. The solutions they’ve proposed generally take the form of a new term or concept, such as syncretism, Great and Little Traditions, creolization, glocality (!) and hybridity. The question is whether such concepts are capable of accomplishing their ostensible aim.

In each case the central contention has been much the same: contemporary cultural forms are the end result of a long history of change and—like the Indonesian language, with Rambo and Starbucks—they are fundamentally heterogenous. In my own area of study, this tendency manifests in phrases like “Saivo-Buddhism,” “Tantric Hinduism” and (my favorite) “Archipelago Sanskrit.” It should be needless to stress that parallels abound in other fields.

The point is that each of these phrases and concepts shares a purpose—namely to represent the heterogeneity of their object, reflecting the historical conditions under which it became possible. For example, we find the scriptural language of insular southeast Asia for a particular period shares certain salient characteristics with what today we recognize as Sanskrit. But it is also different in several important respects… In addition to “corrupt” grammatical forms (on which, cp. “Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit”), it also exhibits many of the features of the region’s indigenous languages. So is this “Archipelago Sanskrit” (as it is often called) a syncretic form?

On reflection it seems that, for ideas like syncretism and hybridity to make any sense, their opposite—or at least an alternative—must also be possible. This alternative would be the ‘pure’ moment (“real” Sanskrit, Hinduism, tradition, or whatever) prior to the emergence of its hybrid transformation. The problem is that attention to history generally reveals such “pure” forms to be themselves complex—the products of equally contingent admixtures of earlier elements.

From this perspective notions of syncretism and hybridity would perhaps tell us more about our own practices than those of the societies they were designed to address. For instance, the moment of purity (“real” Sanskrit etc.) would comprise not a point of originary homogeneity, but rather the point at which we stopped inquiring as to what came before—be it arbitrarily or for a lack of evidence. If this were so, it would suggest that our existing language  for dealing with complexity (‘syncretism’ etc.) does little more than to defer the moment of essentialization. No one believes in cultural essences any more… Yet what is ‘hybridity’ other than the idea that our essences are getting all mixed up?

Whether we’re dealing with Archipelago Sanskrit or Starbucks, I suspect the critical moment is that of asking questions—and so committing ourselves to certain presuppositions. Can we understand the social significance of Starbucks without making a prior commitment to some notion of ‘Balinese tradition’? If so, how so? If not, whose idea of tradition is to be adopted? And based on what criteria of judgment?