Kerupuk Blogger

Ever noticed how British people seem to call anything "pudding?" "Pudding" for them can be anything from your iconic tapioca pudding to black and white pudding, which is actually sausage, or spotted dick, which is more like fruit cake. Well Indonesians have a similarly all-encompassing food word: Kerupuk. The word "Kerupuk" refers to a cracker or chip, and while it doesn't quite cover as much as "pudding" does for the British, it covers everything from styrofoamy white things that look like funnel cake, to tiny star-shaped chips with colorful edges. You have certain types with noodles, others with porridge, and some you just snack on when you are bored.

Anyway, I thought Kerupuk would be a good subject to start off my entry on Indonesian food. My favorite Kerupuk is something you often see in Thai restaurants in the US. In the US, you are served these pastel colored chips in a basket as you sit down at a booth in your favorite, air conditioned Thai restaurant. They feel kind of greasy, and when you put one on your tongue, and it sticks to it like its gripping your taste buds with little hands. When you ask the waiter what you are eating, he responds "shrimp chips." funny. They don't taste fishy.

In Indonesia, however, you get these when you sit in an open air Rumah Makan, which is a food stall plus benches, a table, and a tarp around the place to shield you from the sun and advertise their food. This time you get these chips sprinkled on top of your chicken porridge or gado-gado (salad with peanut sauce). If you want more, the seller will give you an aluminum box full of slightly stale ones. As you scoop some porridge out with a chip, they make a satisfying crackle. Out of the noise, mostly honking from motor cycles and whistles from angkot,you hear a little mew next to your feet...it's a stray cat looking for scraps.

At a Rumah Makan or warung (food stall) you'll probably see another common type of Kerupuk is the styrofoamy white ones I mentioned before. These look a little like someone took minature versions of the pool noodles you played with as a kid, but curly-cued and glued together to form an oval. A an undipped bite can sometimes taste like pool noodle too. You usually eat these with soup or noodle-soup. My first experience with these was not pleasant: My host family told me "Try Kerupuk!" I sunk my teeth into a dry one and thought is this really food?. Four months since, I can't eat a spicy noodle soup with out a few of these to soaked up the broth and extinguish the burn.

The last type is one I came across in Tegal:Kerupuk Tahu These are fiberous brown domes of crunchy fried tofu that look a little bit like a cross between quisp and shredded wheat. These are my least favorite type and have definitely contributed to my mounting hatred of tofu. Imagine your average shredded wheat cereal, but instead of being sweet and mild, it's salty and tastes strongly of tofu.I first tried this when my family was snacking around a coffee table when someone offered me one of these. I can't remember my initial reaction to the taste, but I do remember coughing. I'd made the mistake of breathing in while chewing and ended up with a throatful of spikey tofu bits. Since then, I've been a bit more savvy about eating them--or avoiding eating them. Every time someone comes over from Tegal, they offer me these little crackers. I end up taking a bite and hiding the rest until I can get a chance to toss it.

Images of Kerupuk: http://www.google.co.id/images?q=kerupuk&um=1&hl=en&biw=1024&bih=677&tbs=isch:1,isz:m&source=lnt&sa=X&ei=5KgQTbG0A87NrQefvqC9Cw&ved=0CAgQpwU

On the Kereta Api

Some of you who have been on Canadian Rail find Amtrak, for lack of a better word, bad. After all, its not as clean, fast, pretty, or comfortable. It's just not worth the time when you can fly. However, if you rode Indonesian rail, you might rethink Amtrak. "A train in Indonesia is almost like a train in India" Agung told me days before I took economy class to Gunung Padang. Although I've never been on a train in India, I can imagine Agung is right (although no one was riding on the roof). When I boarded at the Ciroyom Station, it was still empty enough to grab a seat on a bench. Two little girls were singing for money, a man was selling snake fruit out of a cart, and a woman wearing bright make up was selling bread out of a basket on her head. The benches were narrow, unpadded, and only lined side on the train. The windows were small and high, which didn't really didn't affect us at the time, but did so later while snapping high-speed photos.

Then came the crowds. I few stops in, people poured in. The benches filled up, and people started standing, sitting on the floor, and just trying their best to occupy what free space there was. There was smoking, sleeping and guitar-playing. There were so many people blocking windows that our car got dark. I also got a sense we were with a lower social class than I usually meet at school or in the malls. Train tickets are very cheap, cheap enough to give poorer people a chance to travel.

About halfway through the trip, we hit some beautiful scenery--rice paddies and mountains--all the green was quite a change from the rusty-red roofs seen all over Bandung. I had to get some photos of this, so I stuck part of my camera out the window to get a few shots...I will attempt to post them here.

My Heart Belongs to Griya

Well I thought since I spend so much time here, I should write about my favorite place to go in Bandung--The grocery store. In Michigan, I grew up with high-ceilinged, large-parking-lotted suburban grocery stores in the strip malls that ran along 40-mile-an-hour roads. On the most densely populated island in the world, grocery shopping is a little different. Most grocery stores are little convenience stores like Indomaret. Others, like Griya or Yogya are much larger, but are very cramped, have a larger selection but still quite small compared to American Walmarts, Kmarts, or even Michigan's own Busch's. The largest grocery stores are found in malls. These ones have some of the widest aisles I have ever seen and are big enough to get lost in...at least for a little while. Every mall seems to have their own grocery store with strange escalators built to take carts to the parking lot.

Then there is Griya Arcamanik--my neighborhood grocery store. Since Griya is only a short walk from my house across one of the less-busy streets in Bandung, it was the first place I learned to get to by myself. Since then, I've spent quite a lot of time there. Griya is more cramped and busy than any of the other stores I have been to, the aisles are much too small for carts, so this is a basket-only store. Off to one side: colorful tropical produce in crazy shapes, off to the other: rows of snacks, noodles, drinks and any other processed food items that probably won't give me food poisoning. Upstairs (yes there is an upstairs) is where they keep all the things you don't want to eat like, shampoo, clothing and washing machine soap. Surprisingly enough, they even have a small dressing room with a cloth curtain that sways every time someone passes. I'm afraid that when I am changing someone will run by and cause the curtain to fly open.

The first time I stepped into Griya, it was like an amusement park of food and I was finally tall enough to ride all the rides. The food was colorful, strange, sweet and cheap! I had no parents telling me I shouldn't get too many sweets and the food was so cheap that my two sagging, overfull bags cost only $10! After that, I visited Griya as if a doctor had prescribed a visit a day. I bought spikey pink and green dragon fruit, lugged pounds of juicy, yellow markisa, avoided smelly durian, and puzzled whether to buy green or yellow mangoes in the produce selection. Next, I'd move on to the candy section, shoving candies and chips like Silverqueen, Beng Beng, Choky, Mister Potato, and Yupie into my basket. If you know how much of a Tea addict I am, you'll know how excited I was when I found the bottled tea sectioned. I'm used to a small choice between Sweet Leaf and Arizona in the United States, but in Tea-loving Indonesia, I could buy Teh Kotak, Teh Botol, Frestea, Fruitea, Nutea and Tebs....*passes out from listing my selection*

Upstairs was less exciting. While I was happy to find clothes that cost less than $10, I was a little annoyed that I couldn't seem to find any lotion that didn't turn my skin white. Do ALL Indonesian women really want to look white? Don't some of them like their skin color? After a long search I finally found a bottle of green tea antioxidant lotion without skin whitener. I wasn't so lucky with face moisturizer. The bottle I thought didn't have any whitening agents turned out to have a white tint to it (can you even have a tint to something that is already white?)

Now that I've lived here for several months I've gotten used to Griya, and when I used to smile at my $10 grocery bill, now I am frustrated that I have to fork over THAT MUCH MONEY! I now know how to get around people, (using the sundanese word "punten") but get annoyed that I have to, and the exotic selection of fruit seems so small, without my favorite fruit, Manggis (Mangosteen). Any questions, just leave them in the comment section.

Indonesian Halloween

Halloween is a North American thing. The countries that love it the most all seem to be the US, Canada, and Mexico. Indonesia is not one of them. The only traces of Halloween were a display of Halloween-themed shirts,and an advertisement for a costume party in Jakarta. Anyway, on the the 30th and 31st I had some non-Halloween-related plans. I wanted to go to a Festival celebrating Bali. I went to both the auditions, and the real show, where I saw a costume cooler any mascot costume I have even seen. He came out wearing a mask and dancing the traditional way with shaking hands, but midway through the show he started doing the moon walk. That night I made it my goal (which is yet unfulfilled) to wear that costume because it was just so cool. Anyway, let me get back to my Halloween story.

So I had just come back to ITB after the Bali festival auditions with Agung, and we were planning on seeing the Sherina concert. when I mention that Halloween is tomorrow and that I miss wearing the costumes. Agung points out that there are lots of costumes with his Southern Sulawesi culture club. So we end up turning around and heading into the tiny room for Unit South Sulawesi. Agung picks me out a shiny red shirt with golden embellishments, two golden cuff-bracelets (unfortunately we couldn't find two cuff bracelets that matched), and an uncomfortable statue-of-liberty-type golden crown. He then pulls out a red shirt with a flat-topped hat that is apparently "slavewear". Now remember how Indonesians don't celebrate Halloween? Well, that meant that we were the only ones wearing costumes. We decided to go to a restaurant in Upper Dago (which is at a higher elevation and is beautiful at night since you can look down at all the lights in Bandung). We were being quite crazy and to fit that crazy mood, we cranked up the craziest music on the radio: Radio Dangdut (Dangdut is sort of a cheesy-type of Indonesian pop music with lots of Arabic and Indian influence). When we stopped at a convenience store to buy candy and drinks, I got many more stares than normal. People must have been thinking, "LOOK! a bule! She must be crazy, she's wearing Indonesian clothes!" I just smiled, and laughed with Agung about the situation. At the restaurant, I was able to get mashed potatoes for the first time since I moved here. On the way home I ended up screaming "hello" out the window to all passers-by. While I wasn't able to do any of these things on Halloween, I ended up getting my costume fix for the year on the 30th.

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.