Can we say 'I am from Indonesia'?

Can we say 'I am from Indonesia'?

JAKARTA (JP): "Look at that," I said to the friendly swimming
pool attendant, "is it mist or smoke?" We were standing on top of
Singapore's lush Four Seasons Hotel in the middle of August. He
turned around to look at the bluish white shrouds that were
slightly obscuring our view of the skyline.

"It must be the smoke from, well, I don't know. They say there
are fires somewhere in Indonesia." He gestured in hopelessness,
and there was a slight tone of resentment in his voice. "Well,
I'm from Indonesia," I said cheerfully and innocently. To my
surprise, he smiled at me apologetically and said, "I'm sorry. I
didn't know you were from Indonesia. You don't look Indonesian."

Why did he apologize to me? Was it because I was a hotel guest
and it was his obligation not to offend any of the guests?
Whatever his reason was, what happened should have been the
reverse: It was clearly I who should have been apologizing to him
and his fellow citizens.

Maybe we don't want to admit it, but the facts ring loud that
our reputation as a nation has been depleting like the ozone
layer. Proud as I am to be an Indonesian, I couldn't imagine
having to attend cocktail parties at this very moment and having
to answer questions as to what we had been doing to stop
exporting the malady to our neighbors.

I just couldn't help imagining how helpless I would feel when
people asked me what we had done to prevent these forest fires in
the first place, as this is not the first time we had this
problem. I guess I'm just grateful that nobody has invited me to
a press gathering in Singapore or Malaysia these days, because I
know I would reluctantly choose to reject the invitation.

I still recall a conversation I had with a doorman at the
hotel where I stayed in Dublin, Ireland, in January. When I told
him I was from Indonesia, he replied, "Oh, your country has a lot
of problems. I've seen it on TV".

That was not at all surprising. In this information era, news
travels faster than we can construct our own version of reality.
There he was, this doorman, half a globe away from where I had
come from, and he was able to recount to me a lot of things that
had happened here that I wasn't even aware of.

We can continue blaming the international media, the
international press, the NGOs and foreign politicians and claim
that they have hidden agendas in bad-mouthing our country. But,
as demonstrated by the harmful haze in the region originating
from our country, we increasingly find ourselves helplessly
defenseless in the face of the facts.

Indeed, when traveling abroad these days, it is getting
tougher and tougher to sustain our pride as Indonesians,
particularly when we happen to have been brought up by our
parents not to lie. How can we be proud if, as exemplified by
these recurrent forest fires, it has become so clear that we
have not learned from our past mistakes?

-- Zatni Arbi