onemilestories

I love cities.

I love the layers. The physical layers and the imagined layers -images of desire in the cities we love (and want to visit) and of hopelessness in the cities we hate (and probably stuck in). I love how cities become characters, growing many shades and hues of shadows and bright lights in the hearts of people who live in them. 

I love that cities have many rules but no traditions.

I love that cities can lie to me, can tell me things that they think is true of themselves when they actually dream of other things.

I love that cities can live a long life and die a long death, or probably stay somewhere in between for a very, very long time.  

I love to passionately despise cities and unmovingly, narrow-mindedly, defend and love them.

Travelling on the metro trains of Berlin is a cinematic experience. And I’m not talking about the underground stations which provide some visual excitements with different colour schemes. Because when the trains leave the underground and rise up to the bridges above the streets of the city is when it gets more interesting.

Many of these bridges take the trains through narrow channels between the angular and naked buildings of Berlin: gigantic grey and brown colossi with occasional stripes of colours on their skins, with neatly arranged rows of windows.

The trains move quite close to the buildings that you can see into the windows of apartment and office buildings. Sometimes, there are decorations on the rows of windows. Sometimes, the messages are for the benefit of train passengers. A simple ‘Hello’ or the more expressive ‘New Shit has come to light”.

Then, spat out of these narrow open-air tunnels in high speed, the trains allow their passengers a view of the wide, flat, expanses of Berlin. You don’t have to go up too high to see a lot in Berlin -this city is as flat as a roadkill.

Here, up on the bridges for the trains, you can see the old as well as Read the rest of this entry »

There was a breakdown of the rail system in Singapore two days ago.

Up to 94 thousand people were affected, but this is less than the previous day, when a disruption to services affected 127,000 passengers, including thousands who were stuck inside the subway trains which stalled.

Reading the news articles, what was clear was the desire to project efficiency in dealing with the problem. The CEO of SMRT (the operator) was very, very, very sorry, and the minister for transport walked around and inspected things, to ensure things are ok straight after the first breakdown. His shirt, by the way, looks very well-ironed in the photos published in the media. He had to look sharp -there were two shutdowns of the rail services in 36 hours. And the first one had a couple of cockups.

Singapore feels like Read the rest of this entry »

In my last post, I talked about how happening Jakarta is. And after mingling with 1,500 bloggers in only one day, I was spoilt for choice for my late night entertainment, Jakarta-style. But how do you get to places? One way is getting taxi, but it has its challenges.

If you’re lucky, you will get an experienced driver who will be able to drive you wherever you need to be in the quickest way possible. And the great thing about experienced drivers is that you can have a chat. Maybe not so much in English, but I’m telling you, you are missing out when you can’t have a chat with taxi drivers in a city. More on that on another post. But now, some tips.

Getting lost even before getting lost could be fun

Here’s a tip: if you’re going to use a taxi in Jakarta, do your research. Be very very specific. If you are going to an office building/mall, know the name of the building and area (don’t say: ‘I want to go to ABC office.’ But do say ‘I want to go to ABC Office, it is in Deutsche Bank building in Imam Bonjol street’.) Some taxi drivers are (believe me on this) too polite to ask for specifics, and ended up drifting around, being confused, AND THEN asked when the situation became desperately hopeless.

There are a lot of websites which can recommend which taxi company to use, but no matter which one you choose, make sure you know where you’re going. Ask your friends/trusted local not only the addresses, but also directions. Get them to write it.

Even then, locals often argue.

‘No, left after Sudirman is much better, doing a u turn there is too hard’

‘But at least he gets to avoid the busway’

‘No no no, left after Sudirman, get under the bridge instead of over it, because then he’ll miss the tollway’

‘What time is he going though? If on the afternoon, left after Sudirman. But on peak hours, go around Kebon Bibit.’

Etc. Etc.

All the while, you’re holding your pen and paper like an idiot, and then the group decided they didn’t actually know where you were going and they were just being helpful and speculative at the same time.

Jakarta, remember, is a sprawling metropolitan, and in this kind of place people have different ‘maps’ in their brain, depending on their life experience and lifestyles. Most locals would be able to point you to the right direction in their localities. But some travel to a different part of Jakarta to work. They often have to travel for hours in the morning, and then again in the evening after work. They only know how to get to their workplace, and maybe some good food places around it, and that’s it.

Hence, many of these ‘locals’ are not actually locals. According to a survey, Jakarta’s population is around 11 million during the night, and 15 million during the day -so that gives you a perspective on the movements of the people within the city boundaries.

I’m not diminishing their reputation, however. Locals can and do help you, but don’t be frustrated when they try their best and failed. They are as much a traveller as you are, so smile and thank them.

How about a map? and other solution

If you have access to a printer, or super-organised that you’ve done this way back before, you can print out an online map with the direction on it to show to the taxi driver.

This, I have found, useful to show to someone else BESIDES the driver first.

Because some taxi drivers get confused and panicked when you shove a map to their face. Not their fault. Decent Jakarta street maps are a recent invention. Not map makers’ fault either. With the labyrinthine little streets (fondly called ‘rats’ ways’ by drivers who know how to exploit the little streets to avoid heavy traffic) all over Jakarta, coupled with a string of governors and bureaucrats who like to build and change roads, it must have been quite a nightmare to create and update maps.

But an outsider might be able to see the map more calmly, and then talk to the taxi driver. Security guards outside buildings are often helpful for this. Yes, security guards outside of buildings often accept ‘cigarette money’ when they help you out.

The best solution, however, is to get someone’s number whom you can call to explain the direction to the driver. Be ready to do this a couple of times, so do get a local number and charge your phone everyday.

Or pray your best that you get an experienced driver, who, in my recent experience, is hard to get. Why?

The types of drivers there are

Outside of taxi drivers, there are three types of drivers in Indonesia: private chauffeurs, truck drivers, and bus/public transport drivers. Taxi companies recruit drivers from these groups. And, like what I mentioned before, they each have different ‘mapping’ of the city, depending on where they used to work.

The thriving economy means that there are more taxis than ever. Which means there are more new taxi drivers than ever.

Many of these taxi drivers come from different parts of Java (or even different parts of Indonesia), and often they are still feeling their way around the major roads of Jakarta. And if they don’t know the place you’re going to, they will ask YOU to help direct them.

If this happens, you can:

a. Get another taxi
b. Help him

If I’m not in a super hurry, I usually do (b). If you are in a hurry, make sure you book in advance for an experienced driver. But sometimes this doesn’t work.

If you’ve prepared yourself with the array of tips and tools above, you will be able to direct him. And he will be thankful to you, and may the karmic gods look favorably upon you, stranger.

Or just pat yourself on the back for a good deed.

Have you travelled in Jakarta or anywhere else using taxis? Have any more tips to share?

Everyone who has been to Jakarta knows this feeling; that heavy, hot, humid air that hits you as soon as you step out of the airplane. Then, as soon as you step out of the airport, a taxi awaits to pummel your bodily breathing apparatuses with extra-cold air conditioner.

A contrast of the senses that was preparing me for this sprawling city of contrast and contradictions.

Writing about Jakarta: interpreting chaos

Hundreds of motorcycles moving deftly between slow-moving cars in the heavy traffic, in the middle of high-rises, construction sites, and black and odious, black, smelly rivers; they all reminded me of my writings and news reports of Jakarta: cleanly edited paragraphs, controlled audio levels recorded in a clean, shiny studios.

Far from this reality of Jakarta I was witnessing.

But how could you translate all these into writing?

Jay Rosen, journalism professor at NYU, said recently that journalism is a way for us to be informed of our society beyond our immediate surroundings.

A society can be self-informing. Town criers, puppeteers, travelling minstrels, all fulfill this informing function for a small society.

They break down and simplify the complexity of everyday events into convenient narrative frames, so new and old stories are told and retold efficiently. Obviously, these narrative frames and storytelling strategies change to adapt to better reflect the society it caters for.

But in a place like Jakarta, where everything clash and mix all the time, ‘traditional’ storytellers face a huge problem. They take time to master narrative frames and think, as well as reflect, on how to fit everyday stories into those frames.

In a place like Jakarta, the time it takes to reflect is the time it takes for the stories to have changed. Many of these traditional narrative frames, known in this part of the world as lakon (lit. ‘roles’), depend on a world where, to put it rather tautologically, the constants are predictable.

But in metropolitan cities like Jakarta, the only constant is unpredictability.

A case in point: as I walked into the conference room where the Indonesian blogging festival was being held in Jakarta, where over 1,500 bloggers turned up from all across Indonesia (some rode their motorbikes for 12 hours to get there), I saw a stormtrooper shaking hands with Tifatul Sembiring, the newly-appointed Minister for Information. Outside the room, a busker wearing a gorilla mask is posing next to Barack Obama’s cardboard figure.

And it’s not all the United States of America. A sprinkle of Japanese Manga here, Indian-influenced music there, and the ubiquitous Chinese/Malay/Indian food everywhere.

It seems like all these cultural elements come to prove themselves of the adage ‘if you can survive Jakarta, you can survive anywhere’.

Journalism

So, as Jay Rosen said, enter journalism. When a society has lost its capability to inform itself because it has grown too big, too fast, and too complicated, the army of editors and writers (and yes, marketers and public relation officers) build the ranks of journalism to create a storytelling army which can handle the demand of that fast-moving world.

But as we get deeper and deeper into this role of being the fourth estate, watchdog of the government, etc. etc., we are probably forgetting that journalism is a storytelling form, and an art.

All these thoughts might be influenced by a tinge of romanticism as I travelled in Jakarta; a place I know so well yet it and I are always strangers to each other, as my first day back has proven.

But as Glenn Gould, the Canadian pianist, said, ‘the purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.’ And to acquire and keep, if not serenity, but a state of wonder about their own society, is something that many storytellers try to achieve.

And all these contradictions and contrasts I was seeing in Jakarta convinced me more that journalism is an art of storytelling; a look from both deep within a society as well as a distanced perspective from it in order to put things into neat narrative frames (or, in the world of newspaper, which page the stories belong to -or what kind of ‘beat journalism’ you are doing).

Yet, even though we insist on using the term ‘story’, we often avoid the term storytelling. And it is often the adrenalin that many of us journalists seek. The ‘gotcha’ moments, the tense exchanges, the deadline-rush. Or, for those who are brave and lucky enough, the hallowed genre of war journalism.

Meanwhile, as I typed my report to send to work, following the old traditional form of the inverted pyramid, the Minister of Information went back to his meeting, while Mr. Stormtrooper went on to check out the Windows 7 systems on display. (Where a passerby made a sniggering remark: ‘The second Death Star was probably built on Windows Vista. Huge, never finished, and has lots of holes in it.’)

And as I started to feel the heat in the conference room, I remember thinking that they should turn the air conditioner up.

The Indonesian Bloggers Festival is coming up!

Tomorrow, an aeroplane will fly away from all this cold crazy Melbourne weather to land on the airstrip of the humid hot crazy Jakarta weather, with me in it.

Just a background on the festival: this is the third Indonesian bloggers festival. The first one, which was on October 27th, 2006, attended by around 500 bloggers.

According to one of its founders, Ong Hock Chuan, it was meant to be a small gathering at first, but then it grew and grew until, this year, around 1.200 bloggers are expected to attend from all over Indonesia.

And a few words on a word which is very important for Indonesian bloggers: ‘kopdar.’

It is an acronym of kopi (coffee) darat (land). Which basically means ‘to meet up in real world’. This is a word that has been used since the day of CB radios. Basically, if you are a blogger in Indonesia, there is an expectation for you to join a blogging community, such as Bandung Bloggers Village in Bandung, and Bali Bloggers Community in Bali. And the blogger communities organise these ‘kopdar’ events -lunches, dinners, going to an event together, where bloggers meet socially. Just for fun. And sometimes for content gathering together.

Which I think is a cool idea. We often ‘forget’ that people exist behind all those blogs.

(Am I excited? Yes. Not only about the bloggers festival: Real Indonesian food! Here I come! Woohoo!)

An architect can go overseas and help turn waste into useful buildings. An artist can go overseas and do arts workshop in a poor neighborhood. A builder rides a bike for 2 hours a day, takes off his shirt and dig irrigation channels and do the dishes while a family of poor farmers gets a paid holiday trip to Costa Rica.

Alright, the last one was made up. But what about us feeble writers? What can we do? The pen is mightier than the sword, they say. A (big) laptop is also heavier than a (small) axe, but a laptop-wielding fiend is not as scary as an axe-wielding one.

But, to continue the less-known continuation of the old adage: The loud earth breathless! Take away the sword -States can be saved without it!

Is this still true? Can travelling writers really be a force of social change?

In my last post, I wrote about how writers must be aware of how they are changing the lives of the people that they are writing about. And that you must be prepared for dialogues, not one-sided musing like how Marco Polo in Il Millione. And (most) writers are good at creating dialogues on paper, and with a little bit more effort, in real life.

Especially for those who are exploring/experienced with multimedia stuff, here are a couple of links you can read to inspire you.

Common Language Project

The website opened, pictures and texts donwloaded, and you go..looks alright. Mouse over the picture, and you’ll go: “WOW! Why didn’t I think of that?”

Very cool website, its mission is to: engage, educate and inform Americans of all ages on the crucial human issues of our time through innovative and accessible journalism.

But it educated me as well as I’m sure it has educated many Americans in very cool ways. This post on a peruvian mining city is a good example. The writing on the page on this item is a bit tiring to read, but it’s a great and inspiring example still.

Bravenewtraveler

This is one of the inspirations for my website. And if I haven’t been successful in changing your mind about the potential travel writing has to change lives, read this post about the power of words in Cambodia.

They have two editors, staff writers, and contributors, all exploring what it means to be a traveller in our century, and most of the articles are short, nicely formatted, but also thought-provoking.

Some other links

And here are some news stories that might also inspire you:

This one is about a newspaper catered for children in Indonesia. Cute, you think. No. Not cute. It’s not even called something cute. It’s called: ‘Berani’ -means ‘brave’.

Here’s an excerpt from the news story:

“Founded three years ago by a veteran journalist, ‘Berani’ believes in starting ‘em young when it comes to love of reading. The 16-page newspaper’s motto after all is, “A nation that develops is a nation that reads”.”

Well, it is sort of cute. But when we in the ‘developed’ country take the importance of writing and reading skills for granted, we often forget that the lack of writing and reading can still put a society in a deep rut.

And then in Thailand, this story is about a conference of young people using social media for social change, including violence on children.

And locally, writers are doing cool stuff too. Bali Bloggers Community members recently visited a mental hospital, and then wrote about mental diseases -one of the most misunderstood illness in our world. They also packed up their gears to go to a village and taught kids who have not touched computers how to blog.

Or you can follow the example of Anthony Bianco, an Australian traveller who, having been invited to the Indonesian Bloggers Festival, decided to give back by writing about blogger communities across Indonesia (who, of course, then also write about Anthony).

Have any more links for us travelling writers to feel inspired? Share it here!

Do travelling writers have to care about theories? In our era, where many of the people we write about in far-flung exotic countries could be as media-savvy as us from the near-flung countries, what are some of the ethical dilemmas facing travelling writers? Can anthropology help?

It took 26 years of travelling for Il Millione to become a hit. And more than 700 years of debating to decide if Marco Polo had been telling us an elaborated piece of fibbery. It could have been (even the intro says that some things ‘he beheld not’), since the book was lines and lines of observations, with no local voices. But back then, the Great Kublai Khan didn’t probably care too much about his image overseas.

Nowadays, no publishers or editors like to wait for 26 years for research. Especially travel bloggers, who must face the pressure of writing very frequently and not wait 26 years (You’re in an exotic country! You must have things to write!). Let alone travel journalists, who often don’t have any other choice but to produce, often in areas they have limited knowledge of. Luckily, there are many tips out there.

But there are things that technical tips cannot help too much with. Together with the pressure to produce, travelling writers must also have the sensitivity previously demanded of, and talked about deeply by, anthropologists. Technological advances and discourses on third world-first world equality have created a situation where writers must be aware of the result of their ‘intervention’ in the daily lives of the people they write about, and the effects of representations of their ‘subjects’ –which critical anthropologists now call ‘interlocutors’.

Same thing, different names?

Does changing the name actually change the way we look at things, or is this just a jumble of theoretical talks? I don’t personally divide practices and theories; writing is thinking. Especially that the object/subject binary does not work any longer when the people you’re writing about are likely to be as savvy as you are with your means of production.

Granted, there are places which reside in the lower plateau of the digital gap. But even in a place like East Timor, one of the poorest countries in the world, kids ran up to me after I took their photos, grabbed my old film camera, then looked at the back of it with the utmost disbelief that their digitally reproduced smiling faces were not there for them to judge my photographic prowess.

But there are other manners of countries: a place like Indonesia, for example, where you could encounter the higher ends of the digital gap as well as the deepest hole. It is a country where digital activism is very strong, but where internet penetration rate is only 20%. And where the meeting of different perspectives can have interesting results that will need a degree of cultural and historical knowledge to understand.

It is in experiencing urban centres in countries like Indonesia where things could get interesting. Sitok Srengenge, a prominent Indonesian writer told me that in Jakarta, there is ‘no time to think, because you just have ideas all the time’. Because it is a place where you share with 13 million people, you rarely eat alone (it’s considered rude), where luxury cars transport people from glittering apartments to giant shopping malls standing next to polluted rivers and dirty slums, where democracy is slowly growing but corruptions and discriminations still transport people from poverty to even more abject poverty; you can never run out of ideas to write about in these places (as well as places to charge your laptop). But that’s also where you will be most likely encounter tech-savvy, media-savvy people who will have a word or two when you write about their city.

So be ready for some criticism: “There’s a jump cut even Godard would be proud of”, one would say of your video. “Why did you use that music? It doesn’t fit with your narration”, grumbled the other. “Cool”, says the silent guy, with a tone that belies the word. “I also noted some mistakes in your codes while I was looking at your website so I fixed it –I hope you don’t mind.”

People formerly known as audience and subjects

Yes, these are the people formerly known as the audience, as well as formerly known as ‘subjects’. When you write about their places, you won’t have (only) academics or peers debating your works for a hundred years, but your interlocutors would download it, distribute it, mash it up with other things the day it was published.

This is why I think travelling writers have to write with an idea of conversation in mind, not a finished product. This especially applies for journalists, whose works are traditionally about making conversations. But if in the past it was for conversations in pubs, lifts, and coffee shops, nowadays the conversation is done online, and the journalist is expected to have ownership and be involved.

This involvement means a writer can’t merely give her voice away. In fact, it’s probably more important now for journalists to take a stand and make her voice known, instead of hiding behind objectivitiy. Jean Rouch, a French anthropologist, talked of a shared anthropology in the 40s, where his subjects are co-writers but he doesn’t pretend that he’s not there.

And many of these people you are writing about are also likely to have some forms of expressions online; they are also allowing themselves to be written about in order to learn. Do not play the humble pie, because that will be seen as arrogant. Present yourself with what you know. Some people like to have teachers, some like to teach, some like to have equal friends to have discussions with. But everyone likes to share. So, put your pen on the table and get ready to have some discussions.

And to finish, this is a quote from the master, Jean Rouch, when he talks about what’s probably the ultimate project on critical self-reflection: anthropologists and filmmakers making film about filmmakers in Niger.

“To undertake such a project in Africa is almost acrobatic. There are so many obstacles … Philo Bregstein and Dutch television, no doubt for the first time in the history of world television, have managed to make a successful film…avoiding all the standard traps lying around for Western travelers, thoughtless givers of ‘poisoned presents.’”

Are you planning to write and travel in Southeast Asian countries? Or have you had experiences writing from there? Share your experiences, or your questions, your comments, your hopes, etc. etc. Would love to hear from you.

September. Sunlight. Oh how I love thee. After a painful trip to the snow, I took a chance with what is looking like a good Melbourne day to visit High Vibes 2009 in Northcote. One of my favorite local bands, Flap!, is also playing.

Northcote

At the tail end of the 19th century, the prices of land and houses in Northcote were quite low. And the existence of nearby factories and farms made this suburb into a workers’ suburb. The second movement of people to the area was in the 50s; again, due to the low price of land and access to employment, many of the new immigrants from Greece and Italy were attracted there.

And then, in the 1980s, a bunch of artists and musicians who were priced-out of Fitzroy (the hitherto ‘bohemian centre’ of Melbourne which was experiencing gentrification) moved northward.

All these created a Northcote which has everything. And everything was on display today on High Street festival, High Vibes. And everyone is loving Northcote. Look at all those happy faces. Aww…

Melbourne: Most livable city?

On many surveys, Melbourne was chosen as the most livable city in the world. And festivals such as High Vibes does create a happy atmosphere where people can smile, rest, and be merry.

Do we think in links? The Economist is rebranding itself and paid some creative people to do a video of a tight rope walker cruising and jumping deftly from rope to rope, moving to different directions and environments.

Is that how it feels like when you’re surfing the Web? Sometimes it feels more like that scene from Star Wars I. Or maybe II. One of those. You know, the one where Mr Skywalker jumps from the top of a thousand storeys high building and then frantically jumps from flying cars to flying cars. But imagine doing that without some Jedi mojo.(I’ve probably insulted Star Wars fans out there with my lack of proper Starwarsian vocabs. Sorry)

Vroom. Crack. Boom. And then SPLAT! on the floor and it will take hours just to go back up again to your train of thought. Or maybe train-stations of thoughts.

A psychologist definitely thinks that the web can be good or no good. Some, like Facebook and computer games, are good. Twitter is no good. Because microblogging sites like Twitter have chances of weakening our ‘working memory’. We just jump from point to point without really following the argument. I don’t think this is true.

….what? Oh, yes, blog post. Sorry. Working memory weakened. Yes. Um…

Damn. Can’t remember my argument against it.

I should have tweeted it so I could remember it -a little bit like what Jay Rosen is doing with mindcasting.

Now, looking at the tightrope walker in the video, he doesn’t seem to take notice of what is around him. When we cruise and click, are we getting more focussed on cruising and clicking and forgetting to stop and smell the flower? Or holding the ‘open’ button for that person making the run for the lift? Again, it seems like most people think it is yes and no.

And most other people probably just forget to talk about it. Let sleeping dogs lie. Live and let die. Which is a title of an interesting film. Or a Paul McCartney’s song. What do you think of all this fuss over The Beatles recently? Oh, talking about The Beatles, there is a new game using their music. Is it coming out on the new slim version Playstation 3? And talking about slim, what do you think of Kyle Sandilands’ comments on Magda Szubanski? And what’s the topic of this blog post again?