I'm Going to Buy a Bike Licence

I've decided to take advantage of the glorious benefits of being in a country where anything goes if you have the dough. Singapore I cannot ride big motorcycle right? Fuck you. I just BUY a full motorcycle licence here lor. You don't even have know a "guy". Just make an appointment with the traffic police station, pay, get your photo taken, and they hand you your licence in an hour. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Next stop, to the "orphanage".

World's Chio-est Indian

Wah lan eh look at this:

1974 Fully restored Indian Chief. And it's on eBay. The current bid is US$16,709.90 (I don't know why they bother with the $9.90). And apparently, shipping for distances over 2501km (say from is from Haysville, KS, USA to Jakarta, Indonesia) is only from US$850 to US$1150.

Not bad right?

I Become a Rich Prick II

Tomorrow I'm going to interview a potential candidate to be my driver. What the fuck does one say in an interview for a driver? I came up with these questions:

(i) What cars have you driven before?

(ii) Are you prone to road rage?

(iii) If there's a riot and the rioters are out for rich Chinese blood, will you save me?

(iv) What are your hobbies?

(v) Paper or bucket? (See previous post - this can be quite important for the maintenance of my leather seats)

I can't think of what to ask. Think I'm getting nervous.

Last Day at School

Here're some pictures of my last day at the language school. They made me be the MC for one of their functions because I could speak both Indonesian and English and insisted on dressing me up so that I would look more presentable.

Look like a cock but was strangely exhilirating when the guy who was dressing me up was adjusting the miniskirt thing around my waist.

Responsible Indonesian Media

The Indonesian press think of themselves as the Fourth Estate. They say they want to become a check on the government because now, after Soeharto was overthrown, they have better media freedom so they have more credibility. Credibility my lan jiao ok. The other day I was reading newspapers. It said one of Megawati's party members wanted to persuade her to run for the next presidential elections with Soeharto's daughter as her vice presidential candidate. One of the reasons he gave was that "it is now the era of Aquarius" and Aquarius is "favourable to women".

Fuck man. Like that also can.

Valentino Rossi Only 12 Points Behind Nicky Hayden

Hahahahahahaha!!! Today I watch MotoGP. Loris Capirossi start from pole, Valentino Rossi start from second place and Marco Malendri start from third. Nicky Hayden, who is the current leader in the table start from behind. The three in the front row all start very well. Capirossi leads, Malendri second and Rossi third. Nevermind. Still early in the race. Rossi still can overtake Malendri and reach Capirossi for first place.

But then the cheebye Malendri made a bad turn and slowed down Rossi. So in the end, walaupun Rossi could overtake Malendri, Capirossi was too far ahead for him to catch. So Rossi got 20 points instead of 25. Still not so bad cos Hayden is in 7th place so he only get a few points. But then at the last minute, Shinye Nakano, who was in front of Hayden crashed so Hayden gets bumped up to 6 place. Fucking cheebye. But anyway, by the end of the race, Rossi was only 12 points behind Hayden. So its quite possible that in the next race, Rossi can become the table leader. But it'll be a damn close fight lah. But ok lah. At least got chance. Eh. Rossi already win the world championship 7 times already leh. Don't now lose the championship to Nicky Hayden leh.

Anyway, I see MotoGP I also feel like damn itchy to ride motorcycle again. But here how to ride? If you ride moto here, you either (i) die from air pollution; (ii) get squashed to death in between two cars in the traffic jam or (iii) get kidnapped and sodomised if you are Chinese because on a bike, people can grab you easily. So I guess next time if I go back Singapore I will get this bike, buy a set of leathers and go for track days at Johor Pasir Gudang circuit:

Ah you think damn nice damn oo seh right? Actually this bike is an Aprilia RS125. So it's only 125cc. To give you a better idea, unless you're a fucking pussy, only 600cc and above is considered a proper race bike. So this bike is really something like Mr Bean's three wheeled car next to, say a Subaru WRX.

Why don't I buy a bigger bike? Why ah? BECAUSE THE FUCKING SINGAPORE LAW IS DAMN CHEEBYE LAH! For those of you who don't know, in Singapore, after you pass your first bike exam, you are only allowed to ride bikes up to 200cc. Then, after a year, you are allowed to take another test afterwhich you will only be allowed to ride bikes up to 400cc. And then, if you haven't migrated because of the absurdity of it all, you are allowed to take another test no less than a year later which will entitle you to ride any bike you want.

And by the way, before you take the tests, you have to take lessons from ah beng bike instructors with about three braincells* and purposely fail you for each lesson so that you will have to come back for more lessons and they make more money out of you. I swear this is true. This is Comfort Driving Centre. Remember the name. Comfort Driving Centre. They are cheebyes. The CEO is unflatteringly named "Huam Chak Koon".

The supposed rationale for this ruling is supposedly to restrict new bikers to smaller bikes so that they cannot go so fast and become a road hazard. My lan jiao ok. When I was riding my lousy150cc Honda, I still can go up to 160km/h. And somemore bikes with smaller cc are more unstable cos they are so light. So last time when I rode my bike, if the road is wet, even if I go damn slow, I still always skid because the bike isn't heavy enough to put enough weight onto the road. Like you push a shoebox and you push a brick. Of course the brick harder to push because it's heavier and can exert a larger frictional force on the floor right? Fucking bullshit.

No. I have a different theory. I think it's because those people who can make the decision to change the motorcycle regulations are scared that us cool bad boy bikers will steal their girls. Cos they drive pussy cars like the Audi A6. And everybody know that girls would rather ride an MV Agusta F4 1000R (at least the ones that give good blow jobs). Also, its a well known fact that girls prefer to ride on motorcycles because the effect is similar to what is known as a "Sybian".

* One of my first lessons, I foolishly asked the instructor why you need to check only your right blindspot when you turn right at a junction but have to check both your left and right blindspot when you turn left. His answer: "aiyah so easy. Because one is turn right and one is turn left mah. You turn right of course check your right blindspot lah! Then if you turn left you check your left side and your right side mah. Correct or not?" I swear I wished that Lee Chee Chew would appear behind him and fuck his ass like the faggot he is.)

Fucking Hell

Wa lan eh first week in the office and got so many arrows already. Fucking busy. Pang sai also got no time. And then got so many secure doors like macham bank vault like that. Want to go toilet also must go through three doors.

And Indonesians have no concept of personal space. The lift in the office is damn slow so its always like fucking crowded. And then when the lift is obviously already full some fucker will try to squeeze inside. The other day got one guy press his ass so close to me like want to feel my dick like that. And the best part is, when people get out of the lift at their floors, the people inside the lift don't have the cow sense to move into the empty space. So there's like this empty space in the front of the lift but everybody is still squashed in the back. Fucking koks.

The Way Childrens' Books Should Be

I got this from here. Mommy's moaning because she has to pay twice the peak hour surcharge in the taxi to go to the bar and when she gets there she can only smoke in a yellow box like last time in army like that before the op.

Holy Shit

Wow. I just realised that I'm sharing the same blog template with this guy. What's "Ephraim" supposed to mean anyway? Something to do with smiting?

I Go to Motorola to Repair My Phone

So the other day I went to the Motorola service centre to repair my phone (which didn't go too well by the way). Then in front of me I saw this:


Now if we just zoom and enhance the image...

"Is it a bit drafty in here darling?"

Woohoo!! Shiok right? When you look at it don't you just have to fight the urge to put your finger down it and wiggle? It's like one of those things you know you shouldn't do but can't help thinking about.

Final Exam (Slight Return)

So last Friday was my final exam. Most kok exam I have ever done. Seems like my teachers are afraid that I will fail or only pass with mediocre grades because if that happens, we will stop sending people to their school and they'll lose a huge source of income (yeah, they fleece us).

So anyway, reading exam. One week before the exam, the reading teacher tells me very matter-of-factly that the topic for the exam will be about Singapore's development of Batam. Pretty much like one of the passages we read a week earlier. She suggests that I can go through the passage one more time. Right. Two days before the reading exam, she says she wants to go through the passage one more time before the exam, "just to check" if I am familiar with the "terminology". On the day of the exam, I find that the reading comprehension passage is just a simplified version of the passage she made me read earlier. What's more, during the exam she's reading a huge newspaper so she can't see me. Since there's a word I'm not sure of, and she can't see, I sneak a peek at my electronic English-Indonesian dictionary. No sweat.

Then there's the grammer exam. Three days before the exam the teacher gives me a "pre-test" to "check" my standard. Then on the day of the exam, he hands me the paper and says "if you have any words you don't know, feel free to ask me". First time I kenah exam where you can ask the teacher if you don't know the words.

After that was the vocab exam. Apart from choosing the topics for the exam beforehand, the teacher comes into the class, hands me the paper and says "I'm going to go out and run some errands for a while. I might come back but IF (widens eyes) I don't come back, you can just hand in the completed paper to the secretary in the office." And he grabs all his stuff and walks quickly out of the class. Fuck it. I use the dictionary again. But only for the words I don't know la. I'm not totally dishonest.

And then lastly is my writing teacher. I write my essay and the teacher corrects it immediately. After reading through it and circling a few grammatical errors, he asks me, "so what grade you want me to give you?"

Personally I take it as a personal insult that all my teachers don't have enough confidence in me to trust that I can pass the exam without their help. But then who cares? I got an A.

The Sad Story of the Evolution of Bahasa Indonesia

So I've been studying like mad for the last week for my final exam last Friday and it has put me in a contemplative mood about the evolution of Bahasa Indonesia. Honestly, I think it is a bit of a fucked-up language. This is how I imagine it evolved:

Prehistory - 1700 AD:

Homo-Erectus arrives in Indonesia and he starts to realise that that using the same grunt to say "I killed a fucking water buffalo today! Ho say liao ah! Let's celebrate!" and "Cheebye run ah!!! The fucking volcano is gonna blow!" is hardly an adequate form of communication. He starts to invent language and starts out really ambitious. Bahasa Indonesia will be the pinnacle of communication, more beautiful than French, more complex than Japanese. Even when two Indonesians quarrel, people listening will weep at the poetry that is Bahasa Indonesia.

With this lofty ideal, Homosaswono decides that this perfect language should have different ways of calling yourself and other people depending on social status. So he decides that for formal situations and people you respect, you should use Saya to refer to yourself and Anda to refer to the other person. Then among friends or people who are your subordinates, you should use Aku for "I" or "me" and Kamu for "you" or "your". Saswono also decides that there should be a special class of words for soap operas and cool people where Lu means "you" and Gwe means "me". So far so good. Specific salutations for specific people. It is also during this period where fire and corruption are invented in Indonesia.

1700 - 1945AD: Functional Development of Bahasa Indonesia

Somewhere along the way, someone decided that enough was enough. Inventing specific words for each social class (superior, inferior and soap opera/cool people) was too difficult. Indonesians decide to focus on the functional aspect of the language. Indonesian will be a working language and because of its narrow focus on functional terms, it will inspire people to work harder since it is the only thing they can talk about. Tragically, at this time, Indonesia is a maritime/fishing-based civilisation. So a lot of the conversation goes like "I catch fish which is yellow and red yesterday and after my mother-in-law eat, she have many pain and die. Ha. Ha." Or things like "why my fishing boat have brown shit on it? Eh Sutrisno, you sit close to brown shit. Help me make brown shit go away from boat. Just use (left) hand and flick inside sea can already..." And so on and so forth.

Not much development in the richness of the language but at least they have words for all the colours.

1945AD - Present Day: Bahasa Indonesia Becomes Fucked Up

Now Indonesians get lazy. They invent nonsense words by adding suffixes to almost every fucking phrase so that they can replace whole sentences with a single word. So "menomorsatukan" is a valid word which is actually the phrase "nomor satu" or "number one" together with the suffix "me-kan". "Menomorsatukan" is therefore literally translated as "numberone-ed (as in past tense)" which means "make (something) as the number one priority". For example, "dia suka menomorsatukan pekerjaan" means "he likes to numberone his work" as opposed to "he likes to make his work his number one priority" which would of course take up too much time to say and therefore reduce Indonesian efficiency.

That's not so bad. They also add suffixes to acronyms. Like "di-PHK" means "di-putus-hubungan-kerja". In English, it means "breakworkrelationship-ed" or "fired". Oh sure they have a word for fired but then it isn't too polite to say that so-and-so's been "fired". Much better to say that he's been PHK-ed. Reminds you of when your parents wanted to talk about things in front of you which you weren't supposed to hear when you were a kid right? Like when they spelled out certain words? Like maybe your dad would say to your mum "hey, after dinner you wanna give me a Bee Ell Oh Double-U Jay Oh Bee?" Right? Right? Reminds you of that right?

And then the ones that take the cake are "menCDkan", "menvideokan" and "mendigitalrecordingkan". These are actually valid Indonesian words to be used in everyday life. Because Indonesians are too lazy to say "converted (a lecture for instance) into a CD", they'd rather just say "menCDkan" which is like saying "CD-ed". So if I say "saya menCDkan seminar itu", it means "I CD-ed that seminar". Ridiculous. When my teacher first taught me this word, I figured that it was like a local slang but he said its actually a valid Indonesian word. So I joked that very soon they would be saying "menDVDkan" or "menpodcastkan".

He told me they already had words like that.

Final Exam

From a telephone conversation with R.

Me: So my vocab teacher probably thinks I'm going to fail the fucking final exam lah. Today he came into the class and told me that the final exam for vocabulary will only take words from three lessons - Politics, Environment and "Teenage Phrases". That's like three lessons out of like 30 plus in total ok. (That's like your literature teacher telling you.. "ok class for next week's final exam we are going to test only the last three scenes of Romeo and Juliet ok?")

R: But ok what.. now you don't have to mug so much.

Me: Ya... Then I big mouth go and say I also want to learn about terms used in the mass media cos they will be useful next time for me. Then he said.. "ok in that case lets also include the lesson on mass media into the final exam". So now the final exam will cover FOUR topics instead of three. So pathetic right? Aiyah anyway, I think I should be able to pass la.

R: Fuck you. So fucking easy of course can pass lah. If you cannot pass I come to Jogja and cut off your fucking cock ok.

Me: Please don't say that.

Dangerous Electrical Devices

This is a picture of the light switch in my classroom. Notice that there's what looks like dripping tar coming out of the hole in the side of the switch. On closer inspection I realised that it's actually a lizard's tail. On even closer inspection, I realised that it was dead and remember that it had been there since three months ago when I first started the course. Nobody thinks to clear it away. Why bother when bacteria and maggots will do the job for you?

The Indo 500

3am Saturday morning. The sky is stained a deep red from the lights of the city. The silhouette of Mt Merapi looms in the background. H and I emerge from the club, the music still throbbing in our Jack Danielled heads. I push my bike out of the lot and H gives it the once over while I limber up. R and K do the same with theirs.

Side by side, H pulls himself onto my pillion seat and K gets on R's. We rev our bikes while W, the singer from the club, stands in front of us, holding a kerchief in her hand. She raises it and, winking at me and H, cuts it down. We disappear into Jalan Solo in a cloud of burnt rubber and black smoke. We race past Plaza Amburukmo at a blazing 70km/h. My gearbox is protesting from the strain.

At the end of the street, I brake at the very last moment and swerve the bike right into a tight u-turn, my shoe brushing the tarmac. H lets out a whoop. Powering out of the hairpin, the front of the bike lifts in a wheelie. Too late to correct. I lose power and R catches up. Laughing maniacally, he inches ahead of me.

A twist of my wrist and I speed into the tree-lined boulevards of Jalan Gejayan. The claustrophobic confines challenging us to push our bikes even harder. Unhindered by traffic, we criss cross our way through narrow backlanes, waking up the occasional family of chickens.

Now we reach a bridge which gives us a breathtaking view of Jogja by night. Neither of us can resist the urge to slow down to take in the night time scene. The city is quiet, almost dead. In the night, we feel like specks in the sleeping city.

We're at the roundabout at the university, all of us freezing from the cool, crisp night air. One more stretch of road and two sharp turns to the finish. I twist my throttle all the way and hunch my back into a race crouch. R is close behind me. It becomes a test of nerves as the road intersection at McDonalds looms up. I go hard on the brakes a split second after R and lean hard into the turn. My left clutch peg scrapes the road and sparks fly. Oblivious, I change my stance on the bike abruptly as I get ready for the sharp right coming ahead. This time my exhaust is scratched as I shift all my weight to the right in order to make the turn at maximum speed.

The old girl gives me all she's got while H giggles at the ludicrousness of it all.

The final stretch. R is only half a second behind me. We power into the parking lot and our brakes screetch as we stop just short of the fence. W points at me and smiles. I pump my arms in triumph and spin my rear wheels in a burnout to celebrate. The air is thick with the smell of burnt rubber and hard won victory. H slaps me hard on the back.

It is now 4am and, after a celebratory cigarette and a nasi padang breakfast, the dark red sky starts to turn an icey blue. The sun is just rising and the city is starting to wake up. We say our goodbyes, get onto our bikes and slink off into the tight backroads.

Vocabulary Lesson

Yesterday I stepped into my class and my vocabulary teacher, who was already there, immediately and totally out of the blue, goes, "before we start today's lesson, I thought I'd introduce a few new words just for your information." He writes on the whiteboard:

mandal

impoten

subur

aprodisiak

perilaku seks (aman/berisiko)

gonta ganti pasangan X setia pada 1 pasangan

Then he explained in his best English that mandal is different from impoten because mandal means "the condition of a man where he can ejaculate but his sperm cannot make the woman pregnant" whereas impoten "means that the man cannot do the sex" (also known as "cannot get it up" in more conventional terms).

He continued, "subur it refer to the age of a couple when they can make baby." And, lapsing into Indonesia in his excitement, that aprodisiak is to "tambah gairah" or to increase desire.

"Perilaku seks is the doing of sex but there is two type - aman which is the safe type where you wear erm.. kondom? Or eat peel (after some too-ing and fro-ing I realise he meant to say "pill"). And berisiko is like make sex but having some risk. Like don't wear kondom or eat peel."

Last but not least, he explained that "gonta ganti pasangan means that the people always change sexual partner" (I guess we call them "swingers") and that "setia pada 1 pasangan means always with one partner (we all know who those people are)."

I asked him if these words would be coming out in the final exam next week and he said "oh.. er.. ha.. ha.. is only for your information." Now why would he think that I would need to know all these things in particular?

What's In A Name

I just discovered that "lumpur" in Indonesian, and probably Malay, means "mud". "Kuala Lumpur" means "Muddy River Estuary". Now why the hell would anyone want to name their capital city that?

New Porn

Speaking of jerking off, Ducati has decided to release a street legal version of its MotoGP bike. It's called the Desmosedici RR (the 'RR' stands for racing replica). Apparently its based as closely as possible on the bike that they use to race in MotoGP. This is the equivalent of Ferrari announcing that they will start selling street legal versions of the car that Michael Schumacher drives in F1. The Desmo's gonna have a lot of the technology that goes into the MotoGP bike which is, seriously, shitloads. Things like exotic materials to make the bike lighter, state of the art control systems that are years ahead of conventional motorcycles and a dashboard that looks like it came from Luke Skywalker's X-Wing.

This thing is so hard core that there's no room for a pillion rider because the bit of the bike where a pillion normally sits has been used for the exhaust system. This is so that there is no un-aerodynamic exhaust pipe at the side of the bike to hinder its performance.

Anyway, this is what it looks like:



Fucking chio right? This thing costs more than US$100,000. Like it costs more than a merc lah. Best just look eh?

My Friends Eat Lamb Dicks and Get Hard Ons

I had this converstaion recently with H, my Cambodian Muslim ex-Indonesian language schoolmate, primary drinking buddy and discussion partner on matters related to paid sex in Southeast Asia:

H: So the other day Y and I went to this shop to eat lamb soup. It's like this place by the road which specialises in lamb soup. They have all these lamb parts hung up in the stall and then you just point to whatever part you want and they make it into soup for you.

Me: Really? So what did you guys get?

H: Penis.

Me: Shit. Really? Lamb dick? Like one each or you shared?

H: Dunno. We just said we wanted lamb penis in our soup and they gave us two bowls. Can't really tell cos they cut it up.

Me: Right.

H: It's kinda like eating snake actually. You feel really hot all over. Oh you also get a hard on after you eat it.

Me: A hard on? Like a boner?

H: Yeah. Y said he couldn't sleep the whole night because his dick was standing.

Me: Well he could have just.. you know.. let it out.

H: Let what out?

Me: You know like uhm.. goyang goyang down there? (Goyang means shake)

H: Oh! oh.. yeah he could have done it but he didn't. Actually he's not supposed to cos he's like a more strict Muslim than I am.

Me: H, the Pope is a more strict Muslim than you are.

H: Ye-a-h... but well strictly speaking, Muslims aren't allowed to jerk off.

Me: They aren't? Why?

H: It's like the same as losing your virginity.

Me: So it counts even if you lose it to yourself?

H: Yeah.

Me: But who's gonna know right?

H: Well its kinda like an honour system.

Me: Ok. Then what about girls? Like what if they just rub but don't stick anything in?

H: Don't know.

Me: Strange.

H: Yeah. People should loosen up huh?

Indonesian Toilets II

So when I first moved into my hostel, there was a handheld bidet in the bathroom. Basically its this hose with a spray gun attached to the end so that you can spray water at your ass after you've finished shitting. Ever the paranoid tenant, I don't use it on my ass but I do however use it to wash the toilet bowl from time to time. Anyway, its more appropriately called a bidet "gun" because the spray is like damn strong lah. So strong that it kinda atomises into a fine mist when it hits a solid surface. And I notice that the mist kinda smells like... well, shit.

So I had two hypotheses:

(i) There was some malfunction in the bidet system so the water that comes out of it is somehow of lower than average quality. I figured that maybe only the bidet guns in this particular hostel had this problem. The other possibility was more chilling...

(ii) The tap water in Jogja is naturally gross but you can only tell when it has been atomised into a fine mist and you can smell the shit smell. This was a more worrying since if all tap water was like that which came from my bidet gun, this would include the water which I use to shower/wash my face/rinse my mouth.

Anyway, after smelling the water from my tap very very carefully, I found no trace of the shit smell so I happily put the second possibility out of my mind and just never ever used the bidet gun again.

But now that I've moved into the apartment, I notice that water from the bidet gun smells the same! And this time the bidet gun is not that strong so the water is doesn't get turned into a mist but I still smell the shit smell leh.

So I've come up with a third theory which is that they use some kinda industrial water to flush toilets with and this is somehow tapped into the bidet guns. So, if anyone were foolish enough to use the bidet guns for their true intended purpose, they would be cleaning their asses with industrial water. Remember industrial water? Last time my social studies teacher told me that factories in Jurong always have a faint smell of shit because they use industrial water to cool the machinery. Industrial water is like processed sewage but it is only fit for machines because machines don't drink the water. But the fact that it smells like shit means that there's still a bit of the ole sewage in the water.

I think there's no way to solve the mystery but to ask the friendly folks at my school again. Though I'm not sure if I should lest they think I have some shit fetish. And anyway, I don't think I could take it if they told me it was actually hypothesis (ii) above.

I need to get out of this place soon man.