So because I have visible tattoos and I speak the equivalent of a 10 year old’s Indonesian, and all my friends here are Chinese Surabayans, people basically read me as ‘dumb ass local kid who went to Singapore or the US to study and now can’t speak properly’, but maybe that’s better than being coded as a foreigner
Macet (traffic jam) in the gang (alley) next to a kost (worker’s dormitory) that is next to pijat (traditional massage) and warkop (warung kopi, coffee stall) with banyak motor (many motorbikes, a primary mode of transportation)
An exciting thing I’ve learned about Surabaya is that there are TWO good film dev labs AND you can send them your film by motorbike courier and you’ll get your scans and negs back same day. I’m going to try, obviously. They’re also open daily!
In 2008 I started spending extensive amounts of time in Indonesia and this post I wrote back then, of being in a small town, brings back all the feels.
I don’t know how I had the energy, but I would basically take a boat to Batam then fly to Jakarta from there, so that I could save 20 bucks.
I’m glad I did that shit. My lower back hurts just thinking about that now
My friend just yelled from her window that she wants bakso, and the guy on the street is sending me bakso in a few minutes. Ahhhhh I miss this part of the world
Also I have been telling every single person I’ve met so far that because I live in AS (how you say the US in Indonesian. AS! As in Amerika Serikat, or Ah-Ass!), I don’t get to eat bebek goreng (spicy fried duck). It’s a speciality in this part of Jawa. It’s like saying you don’t get to eat a sandwich elsewhere. Everyone looks shocked and horrified, and someone’s ordered me one immediately.
Following a link from a blog post I wrote in 2008 also brought up some unexpected feelings. Reading about a part of my life from a decade and a half ago, written by someone else, punches you a bit in the gut. Truly, I’ve loved some wonderful people.
Indonesian, to me, has a lot more obvious Hokkien loan words than Malay does.
Like ‘goceng’ (5000) for anything that is cheap coz 5000 rupiah is cheap, ‘ceban’ (jit ban) for 10 000, ‘ceceng’ (jit ceng) for 1000. ‘Jicap’ for 20, ‘jicapgo’ for 25. You wouldn’t necessarily use them outside the Chinese community but it’s well understood. Goceng is widely used, especially in advertising to say that something is on sale.
And of course, ‘gue’ or ‘gw’ comes from ‘gua’ for I.
When I first came to Indonesia my language skills sounded more ‘Malay’ since I lived in Malaysia for a few years. In Jakarta that immediately clocked me as someone ‘from Sumatra’ (which makes sense?) and I often heard people mistake, and get irritated by, Malaysian accents as ‘not speaking properly’ or ‘being from Aceh’
My accent has changed so much now, that people no longer understand me in Malaysia, but that’s okay.
Outside of major hubs for the Chinese diaspora, most Chinese Indonesians won’t speak a Chinese language outside of home (for obvious reasons.. there were pogroms, as recently as 1998). In Medan you can get by speaking Hokkien, in Pontianak, Teochew. Maybe some older people speak Hokkien at home, but their kids tend not to. In recent years people do send their children to Mandarin classes, but Chinese ‘dialects’ are very much an older person thing. But in Medan you speak as much Hokkien as Penang
If you know Hokkien and Malay, you can guess at 99% of food menus. Maybe some things have different words but they’re similar (mie vs mee), daging means meat generally but not always beef (lembu), you say ‘es (drink)’ instead of ‘(drink) ais’. Lots of Hokkien food terms: tauceo, pangsit, bakmi, bakpau.
The things I didn’t know were the Javanese food terms (iga, saos), and the different drinks options (es soda gembira, jus alplukat), and diff spellings from Malaysia (cakwe instead of ca kway)
It’s actually pretty unlikely for many Chinese Singaporeans to spend so much time in Malaysia or Indonesia. I would say that our cultural perspective has shifted significantly towards towards East Asia in recent years. Most won’t speak Malay or Indonesian at all. Or really visit. But I was inspired by many older people who, maybe due to growing up pre-separation from Malaysia, had more of a ‘Nusantara’ outlook. And I certainly do. I am more at home in Bandung than in Beijing.
The other thing that’s a bit different between Indonesian and Malay: how you address other people. ‘Bang’ is very intimate and it would be weird for me to address the ojek driver like that. Maybe a bit flirty. I’d say ‘mas’ (Javanese). ‘Kakak’ is not just for sister or female relative, it can be for anyone 1-10 years older than you, including men. Pak, Bu for older men and women, or people of status (bosses of companies, or someone accomplished). Mbak for an older female person, not too old.
If you speak Malay and want to spend time in Indonesia, consult the online ‘Bahasa Gaul’ (street slang) dictionary. It’s based on Betawi, the main language spoken in and around Jakarta street culture. So there are those new words, new grammar (adding nge- to make a noun a verb, like ngegym, to go to the gym, ngopi to drink kopi), and then it’s contracted even more (many vowels get dropped). The first time I saw a text message in ‘bhs gaul’ I thought I was having a stroke. ‘Sy dpn’ (saya depan)
@skinnylatte OMG I love that you’re discovering all of these. I’m an Indo native who lived in Singapore most of my youth, and you’re describing everything I discovered about Malay, just in reverse.
The most shocking one to me is that Malay uses the word “budak” for “child”. In Indonesian, “budak” means “slave”. So when some uncle said “budak-budak ku” I thought he owned slaves, when he was talking about his kids.
@skinnylatte I’m learning Chinese and have been running into the whole colonialist dimension of it, a friend who’s currently directing a queer movie in Taiwan called attention to me using simplified instead of traditional, could I get by with mandarin in Indonesia? What would that say culturally about me to a native? Is it proper?
@Mushi It would be weird to use Mandarin in Indonesia. Most Chinese people in Southeast Asia don’t speak Mandarin natively, we speak Hokkien / Teochew / Hakka / Cantonese, Mandarin is an imposed language, and in the case of Indonesia, the Chinese community will probably not speak it in large enough numbers, and will also be more proficient in Indonesian than in Mandarin.
@skinnylatte Just the concept of spicy fried duck sounds amazing. Is this something I can find a recipe for and try to cook myself, or is it one of those “you can’t even get the ingredients in the US” situations? 🤔
@skinnylatte These days #Jakarta - #Singapore round trip costs less than a single Jakarta - #Batam trip so long as you plan ahead enough. That's not even counting ferry ticket and taxi transfer.
Back when it made financial sense, the roughest part was having to queue for immigration clearance as Indonesian passport holders. Never clocked it, but it felt like more than an hour as Singaporeans kept breezing through making "those poor plebs" face. I suspect the decision to never expand the immigration counters back then to be a deliberate one as well.
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