CHICKEN BIRTHDAY

Yesterday my maid celebrated her birthday together with the ladies and children of the neighborhood. There were about 15 people sitting together on a mat surrounding a barbeque on the parking path in front of our house. They had chickens, cut into pieces, spiced (very heavily I suspected) then grilled. They brought along their own rice and ate together with the grilled chickens. By the time we went home from church everything was gone. And I saw happy faces, heard giggles and children fought with each other. I felt happy for her, knowing that in her limited situation she could bring a lot of smiles to her peers. It may be her first big birthday, urban style.

RICE, RICE, RICE ……. CATEGORIZED ACCORDING TO OCCASIONS

White, steamed rice :
Daily consumption for all. Eaten plain, no salt, no butter, no nothing.
Normal : Aside of the plain rice, we eat meat (beef, chicken, lamb, pork), fish (tropical fish, that is), soya bean based food and vegetable. Indonesian pupils learn at early age that a “good diet” will consist of rice, meat or soya bean based food, vegetable and fruit. Add milk then the “good” daily diet will transform into “excellent” one. Lots of coconut gravy. (Sumatra Island).
Poor : Rice or Corn or Cassava or Sago depend on where the people live ; the more to the east the less rice is eaten. Combine with soya bean based food and vegetable (Java island). Scarcely meat or fish, except in Eastern part of Indonesia, scarcely fruits.

Saffron Rice
Eaten on special commemorative events such as birthdays, weddings, pregnancy and birth, etc.

Red Rice
Coarse and dry, eaten to prevent and heal beri-beri (vitamin B deficiency). Children hate the rice, for it is hard, dry and flavorless. White rice on the contrary,has often special flavor like pandan (no English similar word for it) that goes with it especially the more expensive ones for the rich people.

Rice in coconut gravy
Also for special occasion. Eaten with bits and pieces of fried chicken, fried onion and chilis, shredded omelette, slices of cucumber.

Fried Rice
Eaten generally for breakfast. Egg is thrown in when preparing it as well as bits of meat, onion and chili. Sweet soya bean sauce is liberally poured on it.

Rice wrapped in banana leaf
This variety came lately as an “in” thing but actually has a long history to it. Half cooked rice wrapped in banana leaves filled in with spiced shredded meat or soya bean cake. Usually eaten for picnics or for taking during travel because it is convenient and hygienic, we store them in bamboo-plaited baskets.

Ba’chang or sticky rice wrapped in banana leaf
This originated in China and came probably in the Chinese dynasties period. The form is funny, looking like a cone with 5 to 6 edges. Containing shredded meat or pork spiced with soya bean sauce. Eaten during a certain period annually to commemorate the heroes of Chinese legend. Today this is also packed for picnics.

I am sure there are a lot more which I will gladly add later on.

When Grace Arrives Unannounced

By Andrew Sullivan Sunday, Mar. 20, 2005

She went out for cigarettes. That’s my favorite detail of the story told by Ashley Smith. It was not a noble calling; it wasn’t even a noble errand. But the craving for nicotine at 2 o’clock in the morning apparently led Smith into the loaded gun of one Brian Nichols, a man who was wanted for raping one woman and murdering another woman and three men. According to Smith, Nichols forced her into her apartment, tied her up, put her in the bathtub and told her, “I’m not going to hurt you if you just do what I say.”

What would you do under those circumstances? Scream? Panic? Beg? But at that point, something else intervened. Smith actually communicated with her captor. She says she saw him not as a monster but as a human being. She talked with him. She told her story–how her husband had been stabbed in a dispute and had died in her arms, how she then had developed a drug habit, had been caught for speeding and drunken driving, had been arrested for assault (the charges were dropped), had ceded custody of her young daughter to her aunt. She showed him her wounds as a human being. And she saw in that man his own wounded soul.

It would be politically correct to describe that encounter as a spiritual one. But it seems to me it was more than that. It was, in the minds and souls of both human beings, an encounter with God. Smith’s weapon, it appears, was a hugely popular book, The Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren, an unabashedly Christian guide to making it through life’s highs and lows by constantly asking what God has intended for you. The book is indeed a powerful one–precisely because it insists on the notion that God knows all of us intimately, especially sinners. Smith says she read from chapter 33, which centers on the role of Christian service, on the idea that in every moment there is a chance to serve others. “You can tell what they are by what they do” is one of the chapter’s inscriptions from Matthew’s Gospel.

Smith, blessed by what can only be called grace, saw that terrifying early morning in suburban Atlanta as one of those opportunities. Warren writes in that chapter, “Great opportunities to serve never last long. They pass quickly, sometimes never to return again. You may only get one chance to serve that person, so take advantage of that moment.” Smith did. By her account, she talked to him, made breakfast, told him her story, listened. And as she revealed her openness to grace, so, apparently, did he. “He said he thought I was an angel sent from God and that I was his sister and he was my brother in Christ and that he was lost, and God led him right to me,” Smith said. Maybe he was right.

We latch onto this story not just because it’s a riveting end to a high-stakes manhunt. We find ourselves transfixed and uplifted by the sordid ordinariness of it all. He was an alleged rapist and murderer. She was tied up in a bathtub, clinging to the wreckage of a life that was barely afloat. One was a monster, the other a woman unable to care for her 5-year-old, looking for cigarettes in the dark. And out of that came something, well, beautiful. He saw his purpose: to serve God in prison, to turn his life around, even as it may have been saturated in the blood and pain of others. She saw hers: to make that happen. These people weren’t saints. Grace arrives, unannounced, in lives that least expect or deserve it.

I say that as a believer. The crimes Nichols is suspected of are inexcusable. The serenity of Smith is close to inexplicable. But the message of the Gospels is that God works with the crooked timber of human failure. That was an exceptional moment of redemption. But every day we have smaller, calmer chances to turn another’s life around, to serve, to listen. How often do we simply not see what is in front of us? How often do we believe that the world’s evils–from terrorism to crime to emotional cruelty–are beyond our capacity to change? Or that there is no one in front of us whom we can serve? Smith and Nichols’ story is a chastening reminder that we may be wrong.

There’s a line in a Leonard Cohen song that has always stayed with me. It kept me going in a bleak moment in my life, when I thought, as we all sometimes do, that I couldn’t see how good could come out of the dreck I had turned my life into. “Forget your perfect offering,” Cohen advises. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Happy Easter.

NOTE :
This article popped up on my blog when I edited the article on Rick Warren, tagging his name to it.
And what also amazed me is that I am in a situation where I face God’s grace but don’t know what to do with it, and secondly it’s about Easter time, the same time when this article was written in Time magazine 4 years ago. Who said God does not plan each detail in your life ?

SYMBIOSE MUTUALISTIS

I tried to look up on the internet for similar phrase in English but to no avail. It reads “research articles and archives from 3500+ publications show no result …” Wow … and I think every pupil in Indonesia know it. The meaning is “mutually fruitful partnership” and refers to plants or organism. And I am now referring to a profession that some of my barrio friends hold (thanks God only a few).
Early in the morning they will go out with a big sack on their shoulders and immediately “attack” waste bins of those houses along the way. This is possible because most of houses here have open waste bins facing to the street while the other end inside the compound are usually closed with iron top and locked. They collect plastic bottles, plastic drinking glasses and plastic plates, everything plastics they could find until the sacks are full and often they pressed them until the things cracked inside. By noon usually they finish the job and go to a designated big collector who apparently resides a bit out of town. The collector will weigh each sack and pay accordingly. I was told that the price is about 60 US cents a kilogram and one may collect as much as 10 to 15 kilograms a day. Today however, the price is said to go down exponentially to 20 US cent a kilogram, obviously because there are more and more scavengers, I mean plastic collecting profession in the market.
What does USD 6 mean for any one of them ? (if one can collect 10 kilograms a day). This is what : 2 kilograms of rice, sufficient for 2 meals of 4 persons, some vegetables and some fishes with oil to fry, maybe some fruit or sweets for dessert. I suspect there won’t be enough money left for save-keeping let alone setting aside for schooling.
The big boss-collector will sell those plastics to factories as recyclable material to produce …. more plastic utensils. This way the recycle, reproduce and reuse chain is created efficiently. Everybody is happy; house owners, collectors and big-boss collectors and factories all gain and benefit from the chain. Certainly the environment is benefiting too.
Thus is the symbiose mutualistis.

PROCRASTINATION AT ITS BEST

On the first day of January 2009 until today I have been employed as a consultant/technical advisor of a small firm that strives to be the company I worked in before retirement. Fine up to here. The adverse effect is that I again procrastinated my tasks of disseminating God’s works throughout the world of the community I am living in. You may call me as unGodly which I will humbly accept …… (

POVERTY AND TECHNOLOGY

What is poverty ? Once when I was driving to the swimming pool very early in the morning, a radio regular preacher said that “poverty is a state of mind”, to which I immediately agreed. My friends in the barrio next door seem not to mind of being stamped “poor”, they go by their daily routine happily, or so it seems, because they laugh, they smile, they chat, you name what. If one thinks that poor people do not have access to high technology they definitely are wrong. Majority of the barrio friends have at least a mobile phone with which they do their businesses, e.g. take orders for cycle-taxi, home delivery of a bowl of noodle, take inquiries of vegetable availability, take appointments for spa therapy, etc. My order of a bowl of meat balls will usually go like this : “One bowl, tofu, meat-covered egg, no tomato sauce, no MSG, not too hot”, and in 5 to 10 minutes I get what I want. And when my son wants to go to his English class in the afternoon in a hurry : “Bro, come over in 5 minutes, OK, LIA (name of an English course not very far away from home)”, the fare is normally USD 0.50 to 0.75 one way, a distance of about 2 km. Indonesia moved to TV digital technology not long ago. We are forced then to change our old TV sets to digital and so did the friends. They mostly watch serial Indonesian movies made for TV (called here “Sinetron”) besides news containing mostly gossips and horror stories. What music ? You are not familiar with it; it is called “dangdut” a verbal expression of the sound of mixed Indian and Malay music which is addictive. Today “dangdut” is the favorite music of the lower mass although many love hearing it for the fun of dance to it. What other technology that appeals to them ? Digital camera on the mobile phone. Young girls and boys below 15 go with the gadget to the nearest stall with a PC and photo-printing equipment to print their photos out and go back home giggling ………… Who said poverty and technology is incompatible ?

‘No Human Being Is an Accident’

 Rick Warren of “The Purpose-Driven Life”

“God has never made a person that he doesn’t love,” Warren proclaimed in his sermon. “God has never made a person that he doesn’t have a purpose for. No human being is an accident. There are accidental parents, but there are no accidental children.”

Rick Warren is my role model.

CHRISTMAS IN THE BARRIO

 

Six children of the 3 Ambonese families in the barrio understand a little bit about Christmas.  They are brought up by their Moslem mothers.  Their houses are decorated with plastic Christmas trees with glittering balls and lamps although the women could not care less about the story behind the trees.  For them, as long as their husbands are merry, they will be perfectly satisfied as most wives are destined to be.

The three Ambonese gentlemen, probably were refugees from the war-torn Moluccas islands in the late 1990s married local women, adapt themselves with local culture and habits easily.  They blend with locals who are all Moslems, setting an excellent example to their less fortunate peers back in the Moluccas.  They for instance feel obliged to send parcels containing saffron rice with some dishes and fruits to all members in the barrio, a local habit, when their children are celebrating birthdays.  When we had sermons in our home though, they came without the wives.  A spirit of tolerance ?

I hear Christmas songs played on their music players.

But I don’t hear them sing. 

I long to bring the Lord’s good news to their homes and have the children read some Christian books.

This way, they’ll know our good Lord who brings them happiness to their homes.

Simple families, joyful Christmas trees, God is there

 

HAPPINESS IN A BOWL OF NOODLE

happy-go-lucky-noodle vendor

I don’t know his name, but he’s a familiar figure in our neighborhood.  He wears his long wavy hair tied back in a pony tail fashion.  He is somewhat tall for the size of most men in the barrio.  He is –most of all- a very happy and funny noodle-meatball-and-wonton soup vendor who enjoys talking and joking with his customers while serving them his products.  When he smiles or laughs, all his neatly packed teeth are visible from one kilometer away.  I think he is well liked by old and young, men and women in our barrio.

Noodle and meatball and wonton soup are favorite foods all over Indonesia, and although they apparently came from China centuries ago, the present products are well adapted with Indonesian taste.   “Mee” (=noodle) is eaten in between meals, scarcely a staple food.  The noodle then is added with several “bakso” (= meatballs) and “pangsit” (=wonton; a fussily-like cracker with ground meat inside, deep fried), sprinkled with some leaches, spring onion, fried onion and chili sauce, then voila!  You have the complete dish called “bakwan Malang” as prepared by this guy.  By the way, Malang is a town in East Java where the most delicious noodle and meatball and wonton soup first being spread out to other regions.

He sells a bowl of “bakwan Malang” for a mere US 0.5, so when he sells out his trade of about 75 bowls a day, minus his margin of maximum 50% he gets around USD 12 net a day, a relatively high income compared to most of the people in the barrio, enviable to many and good enough to attract women in the bario.  No wonder, a lot of women feel comfortable talking with him for no obvious reason, even when they plan not to buy his bakwan Malang.

happy faces and bowls of noodle

THE VOICE OF ANGELS

The orphans prepared themselves for an appearance in one of the most beautiful choirs in Jakarta

 

I attended my son’s school Christmas celebration in an Orphanage cum Old People House.  The institution is managed by a Christian association and apparently well financed.  Names of donors lined up the wall and on banners in the main hall.  The school principal deliberately planned to have something different for this Christmas; it should be organized in an orphanage, thus giving the chance to the pupils for contemplation.  That they are more fortunate than the orphans and that all their comforts within their own families should not be taken for granted.

One thing that caught my eyes was the children’s features.  They are all or almost all  from the same ethnic group; the Ambonese.  The Ambonese live on the islands of Moluccas, on the Eastern part of Indonesia.  Centuries ago these islands had a respected place in the global commercial world.  They produced spices which at that time were as expensive as gold.  European nations fought each other for the control of the spice trade.  The Portuguese eventually took hold of the region, exchanged them with the Spaniards for the Philippines islands through the Zaragoza Treaty (1452 AD), although the Dutch snapped from them in the 18^th century.  Up to now there are still some Portuguese family names in the Moluccas such as Fernandez, da Lopez, de Coelho (spelled in the Dutch spelling de Queljoe like my Elementary School teacher’s name back in the 50’s).  They are merry people who sing at whatever occasions, they are natural singers.  Until the 1980’s the Ambonese are dominantly Christians.

Blood bath between Christian and Moslem populations occurred in the late 1990s, an unnecessary and sad episode of the Indonesian history.  Loads and loads of Moslem fundamentalist warriors from Java and all other islands poured into Moluccas and killed many, many innocent people who probably were trapped in the chaos that followed. 

The Divine Hands were there to help …. as children –suddenly orphaned- were evacuated by those who cared, Christian brotherhood that knew no fear.  They were brought to this peaceful retreat in the South of Jakarta, under the shade of big fruit trees in a well managed (or so it appeared) two storey building called PNIEL.  I remember that PNIEL foundation and homes are everywhere in Christian strong areas on Java island.

That day the orphans sung such beautiful songs, I felt my heart sunk and tears dropped indeliberately.  The children choir with some lead singers was apparently trained by the authoritative lady director, and I heard they produced and sold also VCD cassettes. 

With my simple video camera I recorded the choir; such beautiful voice of angels !