Pirates of the Ring of Fire

When I was visiting Claremont McKenna College a few years ago as part of the long drawn-out college admissions process, I joined a law class, where the professor asked his students "what is legal." The agreed upon definition ended up being "almost everything average people do on a daily basis". This may be true in the US, but not so much in Indonesia. It's a nessecesity to break traffic laws, and sometimes pay off police men. Teenagers smoke cigarettes in public even though they are underage. Books are photocopied and read as so. The thing that strikes me the most, however, is the wide spread pirating of TV and movies. Bootleg movies are more widespread than the originals! When you enter a video shop, you look through rows of plastic cellophane bags. See a movie you like, you slip out the disc (usually its scratched in someway) and put it into one of the many DVD players that the video store provides you. Then, you scan through all chapters to make sure there are no stops. Lately, I've been wondering how these discs get so scratched in the first place! Anyway, once you are satisfied that your discs work, you take them to the register and pay 50 or 60 cents per disc. Some of you may be horrified that your favorite actors and directors aren't getting royalties (most I'm guessing don't care though, haha) but pirated movies are close to a necessecity for movie lovers. Insonesia is a country that censors sex so heavily, that when I go to the movies I don't always know whats going on since the government has cut several scenes important to the plot. In a video store, however, you can buy "wonderful" movies like "Wet Dreams 2" and all the, um, scenes that would have otherwise been censored. I, myself, don't buy such movies, but it's nice to actually understand the plot of a good movie that just happen to contain a few sex scenes.

Another branch of pirating is TV and software. I personally don't have experience with pirated software, though I know you can get stuff like Photoshop for free. The TV side is a much bigger deal to me. In Indonesia, you can't access Hulu, and youtube works excrutiatingly slowly. Certain American shows are just not aired on Indonesian TV. So how do you get these wonderful shows in the world of anime and soap opera? You download them onto a disc or a flash drive and watch them that way.

Parijs van Java

Given that I have been in Bandung for over two months already and have not yet done so, I will explain a little bit about my Indonesian home town. Located in the Mountains in West Java, Bandung is described by Indonesians as “cold.” Cold, mind you, means a high of about 85° F (28° C) year-round, Instead of Jakarta's 90° F (32° C). Inland, Bandung is an area with no beaches, but a relatively (key word: relatively) low chance of floods, and almost no tsunamis. They say if you live anywhere on Java you live close to an active volcano, and Bandung is no exception. I live close to Tangkuban Perahu which translates into “the upside down boat” and, you guessed it, looks like an upside down boat. Don't worry, while its active, it's not as active as you'd think, and I'm still at a pretty low risk of volcanic eruption, but recently, we've been getting volcanic ash, a toxically fun gift from Mount Merapi's eruption in Central Java. Basically, Bandung is no one-tornado-warning-a-year Michigan, but for someone living on the Ring of Fire, it's pretty dang safe....I feel a Johnny Cash song coming on, how about you? haha.

Enough about eminent doom in Bandung, let me describe life here: Bandung is a strange cross between Seattle, Los Angeles and Boston. Seattle, because it rains A LOT; Los angeles, because of its sprawl and general pedestrian-unfriendly nature; and Boston, because it is the nation's most famous college town. When I googled Bandung's universitas and sekolah tinggi (university and college), I got 10 results, the most famous of which is ITB (Bandung Institute of Technology), which I have mentioned in previous posts. As a result, Bandung has many shops and activities that cater to the economically-deprived college student including book stores, outlet malls, pasta shops, and places where you can buy paper-thin steaks for about $2 or $3. The best part, however, are the festivals every weekend! Usually, there is something going on at Sabuga, ITB's multipurpose building, and if not, some other school has got something to do. Its a great place for an exchange student because I can meet a lot of former exchange students now in college, and I'm not limited to my high school's extracurriculars! Bandung is also home to the military base of the Siliwangi Tigers, which happens to be right next to my school. If you walk anywhere away from school, you are bound to find statues of tigers in scary positions and soldiers in heroic ones.

Bandung also has a rich history, much of which I don't know, haha. I'm sure some of my Indonesian friends will end up helping me out in the comment section though. Bandung was built by the Dutch, who felt Jakarta was just too hot. It was then Nicknamed Parijs Van Java, or Paris of Java, for its beauty, cool temperature, resort-feel and overall European-ness. Nowadays, it still seems a little European, but it has clearly become like every other Java-sprawl: dirty, crowded, and full of motorcycles. It's still quite beautiful, but it takes a little more time to notice. People from Jakarta still come to visit on weekends, which only clogs traffic more. It was also home to the Asia-Africa confrence, a conference that united non-aligned (plus a few aligned ones haha) countries during the cold war. Another fun fact: the first Indonesian president, Sukarno, went to ITB. Hmmm...thats enough history for today.

The only things that I can complain about in Bandung are the traffic and pollution. I have previously described the frequent traffic jams, and the real-life game of Frogger that is crossing the street, but another annoying thing is the lack of a grid system. Jl. Cihampelas is one way and turns into dr. Setiabudi, which ends up with another branch called Jl. Cipaganti. Jl. Siliwangi is somewhere in there too haha. Its a nightmare to navigate on your own and you are not always sure the Angkot you are taking will go the same path the way home. The pollution is also a bit of an issue, although its hardly something unique to Bandung. Foreigners and locals alike develop a cough. One friend tells me that he had a cough throughout his life that magically dissappeared when he lived in Wisconsin for a year (gotta love that Dairy-air ;) ). Sure enough, it came back when he returned to Indonesia.

The Quest for the Camera

As you may know from previous blogs, I have been searching for a working camera for a since I discovered the distortion problem with my Kodak camera. I'd searched the web to find I couldn't use a credit card, most cameras were cheaper in the US and didn't ship to Indonesia, and many other problems. So about two months later I ended up going with a friend to buy one once and for all. I've changed my mind as to what kind of camera I want from a point and shoot to a DSLR because they seem to be more reasonably-priced here. I cut a deal with my parents to sell it once I came back to the states, and I was ready. I left at 1:00 PM for a store that is famously cheap and good. I thought it would be an in-and-out trip. WRONG! I got to the store, a little hole in the wall with white walls and cameras everywhere, and as it turns out you can't buy Canon cameras for under $400 and they were out of the best alternative, the Sony α230. We hopped in a car and drove to another photography store, this one was more of a studio that also sold cameras. What do you know, they were out at that store too. As were many of the other stores we visited in the local electronics mall. Finally we found one that sold my camera, it worked, I couldn't wait...that is until the salesman found out his machine didn't work with foreign credit cards. Back to square one.
At lunch we figured it out—Sanya would use her credit card and I would pay her back in cash once my parents put more in my account. I am now an Alpharian. On my way home, I hugged my camera tight as I rode on the Angkot. I don't know what I would have done if my camera had gotten lost, stolen or broken on my first day. The next day, I had a few more problems...I'd taken a lot of photos, none of which wanted to upload to my computer. Oh crap, not another faulty camera! I thought. I'd been plagued with two already, and I did not want to go back to the stress that was the Bandung Electronics Mall. Negotiating sales involving hundreds of dollars is not easy in a foreign language, even if you have a translator. I tried a card reader...no luck. Finally, I rebooted the computer and got it! Soon I will upload some photos I have taken with it to my blog.