It was one Saturday evening, at a pub. A genuine pub in winter is always good: warm and smells…well, pub-like. That is a mixture of beer, people not showering, and with a hint of carpet. To a UNO party I was invited. A table of 10 people playing, obviously, UNO card games with a pint on the table. There was me –Indonesian- , a couple of Colombians, a Brit, South African, and some Aussies and a French guy whom I’ve never met before.
Before the mind-and motoric-challenging game began, I introduced myself to some of the new faces. “Where are you from?” They asked me, “Indonesia” I said. The Aussies, being jolly mates, responded with “Oh, that’s close by”…or “Ah that’s nice, Which part?”. “Jakarta” I said.
Then came a sound from the French guy who sat opposite me, “Well I heard that people from Jakarta are bad people”
Perplexed, I stared but couldn’t respond. He might have seen my shocked face, so he continued with “Yeah, I went to Bali & Jogjakarta a couple of months ago, and people there say that Jakarta people are all criminals”
What the hell??!! Well, I heard that you French people are just snobs! The snobbiest of snobs, you know…a whole nation of snobs.
That sentence had perfectly formed and arranged in my head, it had already travelled to my tongue, then my lips opened, lungs sucked in a bit of air (for extra power to make a point)..but then, a millisecond there my sensibility kicked in. Saying stuff like, ok let’s be a better person and let’s just give this pale-face (to avoid saying racist remarks like “white”)- French-snob an education.
So instead I said “Well, if you think it’s true then that’s just sad. Indonesia is a really big archipelago. So it’s normal that you’d find different cultures within Indonesia. Like you went to Bali, where people are calm, beaches make them relaxed lot, and friendly. Jogjakarta, cultural city, people are sweet, smiles a lot, slow paced. In coastal cities, people are loud, harsh, but hilarious. Well Jakarta is Indonesia’s busiest city, coastal, hot, crazy traffic, so yeah we’re not as smiley or as relaxed. And yes, crimes in Bali may have been known to be committed by incomings from Java who could not find a decent work in the crowded Java, but they’re a fraction of all Javanese/Jakarta population thus cannot represent the whole lot.
Fuh… there, I tried to be the better person. So we proceeded to play UNO. After games after games after games, 5 pints, and a whole lot of cheating attempts, we moved to another pub. Where the French guy made another remark, worthy to be posted on facebook’s “Asians tired of being asked stupid questions” group.
“So, what’s your real name?” he asked.
“Huh? Should this be not my real name?”
“You know, because you people usually have difficult names like ‘shing liao chu” and change it into something more practical”
“Oh yeah, usually Chinese/ Koreans do that…not all Asians” I said.
I asked myself today, why do I get annoyed with these remarks?
Perhaps it’s like when Russians get asked “So, you’re a communist? I saw Bond movies”
Or a Colombian gets asked “So, are you a drug lord or something?”
A Muslim gets asked “Where at home do you keep your bombs?”
Pacific Islanders get asked “So, I heard people in the Pacifics are all FAT, you know…obese and all”
A German gets asked “I bet you Germans think you’re all uber alles hey?”
Or even perhaps…like a French guy who gets “So, I heard French are all snobs”.
Whereas these remarks come from people who simply don’t know any better, unfamiliar about other cultures (which is kind of normal I guess). Their only sin is actually being so confident about their cultural-insensitivity.
Months after the incident I met the French guy again, and when he asked me what I thought of him the first time we met, I said “I thought you’re just a random French snob”. I told him why, and he admitted his blunders saying “I was trying to be funny it was a stupid remark, I remember that night and regretted ever saying that”.
When I asked him why French people think they’re better than anybody else, he said: “Well, French people are so cool back then… But now, Spanish and Italians are way cooler than us. So we like to reminisce, holding on dearly to the past..way back when we were cool”
A fair enough answer I thought, so I forgave him and we became friends.
The next time I met him, we talked about our plans after Adelaide. He’s planning to finish another round of internship, finish his degree, do something in Indonesia (yes Indonesia), and then back to France and work there. I told him I wanna go for a Master’s program, somewhere in Europe, “There’s this program in UK & Barcelona. Really interesting but I want to look for scholarships, couldn’t afford is otherwise” I said.
“Why don’t you have it in Jakarta? Scholarships may be more difficult” he said.
“Well, there’s a lot of scholarships from EU to developing countries you know. So there’s pretty much high chance for students from developing countries to go study in Europe”
“Really??? (eyebrows raised). Aarrrgh so that’s why we pay a lot of tax!”
Hmm……………….
.
(Skali-skali aja oke lah) haha.
