Julia Suryakusuma

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WELCOME TO JULIA'S WEBSITE
This website is a compilation of my life ongoing work - from the time I started to write at age 17 to the present day - which I would like to share with you. Why? Because I believe knowledge is only of value if it is shared.
This website is also a means to construct my professional history - from the time this website is set up in 2009, of 38 years of work. However, I also include a bit of personal history of Julia as Julia!
Obviously, any kind of building takes time, so the site will be developed gradually, and gain greater completion in due course. The newer material will be more readily available, the older material will come later as they first have to be converted into electronic form. So please be patient!
The material in this website is both in English and Indonesia but they are not exact mirrors of each other. Some of the work is in both English and Indonesian (translations of each other), but some only exist in English, and some only in Indonesian. Funds permitting, perhaps one day the English and Indonesian parts will overlap, but no promises from now! You will presently find the Indonesian kept in "Other Works", except for books. Both my English language and Indonesian books will be put in one section.
This website will be updated at least five times a month, as currently I write five columns a month: every fortnight in The Jakarta Post, every fortnight in English Tempo, and monthly in Garuda Inflight Magazine.
I hope that you will find the material useful.
Jakarta, 19 July 2009.

Recent Columns :

'Surfing', 'Bowling' and other Deadly Games

Surfing” has many meanings. In the good ol’ Beachboy days, it just meant riding the waves on a surfboard. After the World Wide Web (WWW) was invented in November 1990 and the Internet exploded into our lives, it also came to mean browsing online.  Now the term is also used in Indonesia for people who ride train rooftops. These are “train surfers” or “atapers” (roofers), as they call themselves. Why do they do it? Are they inspired by Indian heartthrob, Shah Rukh Khan, who sings the mega-popular song “Chaiyya Chaiyya” on top of a moving train? (see <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOYN9qNXmAw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOYN9qNXmAw</a>). If only.  In fact, most train surfers in Indonesia (and India) don’t do it by choice, but simply because the carriages are too full. Others are poor and want to avoid paying for a ticket.  There are, however, some who, like Khan, do it because they think it’s fun. In fact, there are now believed to be at least 19 “ataper” organizations in Indonesia. Perhaps this is not all that surprising. After all, people all over the world regularly choose to take part in death-defying activities, just for thrills — car racing, parachuting, cliff-diving. So, why not train-surfing? I just feel sorry for those forced to do so against their will by poverty or the sardine-can conditions in our dilapidated trains. Train surfing is not a new practice and it’s hardly exclusive to Indonesia but it recently gained a lot of public attention when the state-run train company PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI) decided to counter them with a new game: “train bowling”! Well, it’s actually more like “ataper bowling”. PT KAI is installing rows of concrete balls that will hang down to a point just above the roof of the train, with the sole purpose of knocking off (sic!) “atapers”.  Talk about … er … overkill. In fact, PT KAI’s bowling balls are downright murderous. No wonder rights groups are indignant. Ifdhal Kasim, chairman of the National Commission of Human Rights (Komnas HAM) said, “This shortcut measure shows the laziness of the bureaucracy and puts many lives at risk.” In most countries, governments try to make public transport safer – only in Indonesia do they want it to be more dangerous. The bottom line is that Indonesia is now imposing the death penalty for incorrect train travel, targeting poor people and thrill-seekers. Previously, PT KAI tried barbed wire, spraying passengers with colored water and greasing the rooftops — nasty, but surely better than killing people? So much for claims that we are now a nation that respects basic human rights. Why not just bar the train from leaving the station until the “atapers” get off? Or better still, how about adding more carriages? And targeting “atapers” ignores the real problem, which, as usual, is about the state failing to provide basic services. According to Suryono Herlambang, an urban planner at Tarumanagara University, the government talks about building multi-million dollar transit systems, but doesn’t have the political will to take the relatively easy step of increasing train services between Jakarta and the suburbs. How ironic, given the train network between Jakarta, Bekasi, Bogor and Tangerang already exists — it’s just a matter of improving it. With more than 27 million people living in Jakarta and its sprawling suburbs, there’s a lot of commuting going on. And as long as the trains are overcrowded, the “atapers” won’t be giving up their roof-riding ways any time soon. This government’s inefficient and ineffective approach can also be seen in other areas related to public transportation, for example the pressing need to cut back fuel subsidy budget allocations (explained clearly by Vincent Lingga in the Sunday Post editorial, TJP, Jan. 22, 2012, page 4). The proposed solution of fuel-to-gas conversion for automobiles is fraught with technical difficulties, besides, who pays for the converter kits? Not the government! They’ll end up suddenly raising fuel prices anyway, which is what they should have done ages ago. Then there’s Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport: Another time-bomb ticking away. On April 16, 2007, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) stated that Indonesian aviation “... does not comply with international safety standards set by the ICAO” but by 2010 Soekarno-Hatta had become the world’s 13th busiest airport. The problems are multitudinous but are mainly about overcapacity. The airport was built for 18 million passengers per year but had over 44 million in 2010. Parking space for the planes is insufficient. There is old infrastructure; airstrip overload; inadequate human resources (only 160 when 400 people are needed); and imprecise standard operating procedures (SOPs). Systems designed to accommodate 500 plane movements are now dealing with 2000; and pilots and aviation operators are severely stressed. The old and substandard Air Traffic Control Services (ATS) could cause delays and worse, plane crashes. So, what do the authorities do? Starting this year, flights delayed by four hours have to pay Rp 300,000 compensation to each passenger. At least this measure is not as deadly as KIA’s concrete balls, but it could bleed airlines dry because the system intrinsically creates delay, regardless of anything airlines can do. And the political implications of Indonesia’s public transport messes are no less worrying than the practical ones. Too often, the solutions proposed are not people-friendly. In fact, they seem utterly contemptuous of human life.  Sadly, they smack of the New Order mentality that is fast sneaking back into Indonesia’s reform — including now on our buses, trains and planes.

Documenting Decline: I Forgot to Remember to Forget

The older you get, the more you lose: your looks, your hair, your teeth, skin elasticity, muscle mass, sex drive and eventually … your mind.   Yep, this aging business eventually makes losers of us all. No wonder human beings have constantly sought eternal youth!   
 
I’m 57 now and am no spring chicken, but I actually feel more serene and at peace with myself than ever before. I do admit to one fear, however: that I might lose my mind. I find myself on the verge of saying something and it’s right at the tip of my tongue, but I just can’t get the word out. Aaaargh! So frustrating!   
 
I tell myself it’s because my brain is too crammed with knowledge and information accumulated over the decades. It’s a good excuse, but it’s still embarrassing when you forget the name of a close friend. I’m sure some of you have had that experience. Come on, admit it!   
 
When I was in Australia for the holiday season, The Iron Lady, a film about Margaret Thatcher, was playing in the movie theaters. Meryl Streep — one of my favorite actors, and a genius at impersonation — was playing the lead role, and that made it priority viewing.   
 
I have long had a morbid fascination for Mrs. Thatcher. British prime minister from 1979 to 1990, she was the most powerful and the most feared woman of her time.   I have always despised her aggressive conservatism, destructive policies and corrosive legacy, but have also felt fascination, even awe, at her achievements as a politician and leader. She was a woman and outsider who pushed her way into a man’s world.   
 
A feminist icon Thatcher certainly was not, but her leadership helped normalize success for women. She was one chick who broke the political glass ceiling, blew it away sky-high, in fact. No one had ever done this before in England, and no one’s done it since. She remains a powerful rebuke to those who believe that women are unsuited to lead. Megawati Soekarnoputri (Indonesia’s fifth president) and Sri Mulyani Indrawati (finance minister in the Second United Indonesia Cabinet) will know exactly what I mean!   
 
They say that behind every great man there must be a great woman. The reverse is certainly true too. Thatcher once famously remarked that every woman needed a Willie (referring to her deputy, Willie Whitelaw) but in fact husband Denis was Maggie’s rock. He was her promoter, source of security and financial supporter. He was (understandably) proud of his wife and gave her the support, companionship and unconditional love she needed.   
 
But what married career woman, of whatever political persuasion, has not struggled with balancing work and family responsibilities? Thatcher embodied the tensions between feminism and conservatism and her response was never one of women’s liberation. In fact, she made a point of going home to cook dinner for Denis.   
 
I left London in 1979 after living there as a student for three years. I departed just as Thatcher came into power (no correlation between the two!). This made the film a “reliving” of those years, but that was not what made it most meaningful for me.   
 
The Iron Lady is a film about Thatcher but at the same time it isn’t. It’s also a wonderful story about leadership, women and power; it contains deep truths about aging, the isolation and loneliness it sometimes brings and memory loss.   The fact that the story is told through the life of someone as charismatic and completely unusual as Thatcher makes it all the more absorbing.   
 
This film is moving because it’s about the decline into dementia of a once seemingly invincible person with a formidable will and a formidable mind. It is, in fact, a brave study of a difficult and sensitive subject.   
 
The film humanizes a woman considered a monster by many, including the unions, miners, the families of the hundreds killed in the Falklands war, and other victims of “Thatcherism”. But it’s also a film about all of us. Not many of us will ever be in a position of power like Maggie, but certainly those over 50 will see aspects of themselves in this film — especially women.   
 
In a revealing interview in New York last year (see YouTube: “Scott Feinberg Interviews Meryl Streep & Phyllida Lloyd” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOZMKnNgM9Y" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOZMKnNgM9Y</a>), Meryl Streep was asked if she found it easier to play people who were more like her. “Who says I am not like Margaret Thatcher?” she replied.   
 
The audience laughed, not because Streep’s reply was funny, but because they realized the truth in what she said. Any woman who has had to succeed in a man’s world knows that she must be at least twice as good as any competing man. And that’s why aging is often so much harder for successful women. As their mental powers decline, their male competitors will show little mercy. That’s why Maggie needed Denis so much.   
 
Not that this means every female memory lapse deserves our sympathy! Think of Nunun Nurbaeti, one of Indonesia’s most wanted corruption suspects. Accused of distributing bribes to lawmakers to secure votes for Miranda Goeltom’s appointment as deputy central bank governor, her now-famous amnesia seems more like a legal convenience than a personal tragedy.   
 
So don’t hold your breath waiting for the Nunun biopic. She’ll be forgotten long before Maggie ever is!

Enabling the Disabled

Flying to Australia to spend Christmas with my husband, Tim, I sat next to an attractive, friendly woman and we struck up a conversation. “Wendy” was 51, and she was on the way to spend Christmas with her cousin. I asked her what she did. “I’m a caregiver to ‘Peter’,” she replied. “He’s my 25-year-old son and he’s been a paraplegic since he was 16.”  
 
Apparently Peter had been channeling his artistic talents by doing some graffiti. He was climbing over a wire fence to get to the wall on which he had been painting the graffiti when he fell, breaking his spine. His brain was not affected in the slightest – in fact, his mom says he has an agile mind – but he’s almost totally paralyzed from the neck down. He still has a little mobility in his hands, however, and that allows him to work a computer and operate a mobile phone. Since the accident, Wendy has been a full-time caregiver to her only child.  
 
My heart went out to them. How awful it must be to see your child – in Wendy’s case, her one and only — have his life devastated so tragically. But she told me that Peter took the cruel disruption of his youthful and talented life in an amazingly accepting and cheerful way. Wendy confessed it was she who was more depressed about the situation. Being the mother of an only child myself, I could understand how she might feel.  
 
And, of course, there was the practical side too. How did they support themselves? “Oh, both I and Peter get state pensions. Peter for his disability, me because I’m his caregiver.” They live in government housing, and 25 percent of their pension goes to pay the rent. They are also given an allowance to pay professional caregivers to take over sometimes so Wendy can have some time off, just as she was doing this Christmas.  
 
Wendy and Peter’s situation is a difficult one, by any measure, but how fortunate they are to be in Australia where the government provides decent support for the disabled. It made me wonder, what would happen if she and her son were named “Windy” and “Piter” instead (Indonesian versions of “Wendy” and “Peter”), and living in Indonesia?   
 
“Not good” is the short answer, sadly. Unfortunately, disabilities in Indonesia have never really been seen for what they are — an integral problem of human development, related to socio-cultural issues as well as public facilities and infrastructure. Instead, disability is seen as an individual disaster, with those involved largely left to fend for themselves.  
 
I remember when I broke my ankle in 1996 in Mexico and had to return to Japan where I was a visiting research scholar. Obliged to use a wheelchair, I appreciated very much the existence of ramps and public toilets that could accommodate it. Since then, I have been very sensitive to the availability of these facilities, and how different societies treat their disabled – and the two things are not always related.   
 
While the facilities were better in Japan, for example, the Mexicans were much more sympathetic. In Japan, someone actually stole a taxi I had hailed from my wheelchair. I could only look on in disbelief as the taxi sped off, leaving me stranded on the sidewalk in the middle of the night!  
 
So obviously it’s a combination of infrastructure and attitude, and Indonesia doesn’t do well by either tests. In fact, if the disability in question is mental, we are downright primitive. It is not uncommon for such people to be locked up, chained up or put in wooden stocks (pasung) by their own families, who assume their illness is caused by demons.   
 
The physically disabled don’t fare much better. Most are marginalized, some are mocked and a few suffer outright abuse. Some have no alternative but to become beggars. We lack a proper system of care for the disabled, despite the fact that there are so many.  
 
As usual, statistics in Indonesia vary greatly but the latest figures from the Health Ministry put the percentage of the population who are disabled at 3.11 - that is 6.7 million citizens. The figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) put the figure even higher, at 10 million. Nimas Aliyah of the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry argues that these numbers will increase, given our aging population, the prevalence of degenerative diseases, accidents and natural disasters. And don’t forget violence, Nimas: We’re good at maiming and brutalizing too.   
 
But, fear not! On Nov. 18, Indonesia ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. A few days later, on Nov. 23, a seminar attended by government officials, legislators and civil society activists entitled “Mainstreaming People with Disability into Development” was held in Jakarta, to commemorate the International Day for People with Disabilities, which is observed every year on Dec. 3.   
 
The seminar was a reminder that, in fact, we’ve always had laws to protect the disabled but like most of our laws, they’ve never been properly implemented. Will ratifying the convention change this? Will it put our Windys and Piters in the same situation as Wendy and Peter?   
 
Obviously it won’t. In fact, we’ve got a long way to go, but at least we’ve made a start. Let’s hope this is one reform that doesn’t end up like so much of the rest of Reformasi – lost in conventions, seminars, high hopes … and broken promises.

'State Ibuism' is not dead, it's not even past

<div class="tripane message content showqr"> <div class="msg-body inner undoreset"> <div> <div> The name Julia Suryakusuma is a familiar one for …