Different conditions breed different necessities

Different conditions breed different necessities

MELBOURNE, Australia (JP): I keep telling myself that the
reason we are sent hither and thither in an Indonesian shop
before we can take home the goods we purchase is so that a fair
number of people can be employed.

Thus, while it seems unnecessarily time-consuming as we try
our best to get things done, it ultimately has a sound reason.

However, sometimes I fail to see sound reasoning behind
unpleasant events. At least not immediately.

In a shop the other day I joined a queue in front of a cashier
window. Having been conditioned for years in Australia not to
intrude on other people's personal space, I left a one-person
space between myself and the customer in front of me, which I
kept all the way to the window.

When the person in front of me had completed his transactions,
I began to move forward. Lo and behold, a man slipped into my
space out of nowhere. Feeling cheated, I told him that he had
jumped the queue.

The man turned to look briefly at me, then continued with what
he was doing without even a token apology. Those who saw the
incident quietly looked away. I was seething and embarrassed at
the same time. Not only was I cheated out of my right, I was also
treated as if I were the one being presumptuous.

After all, what was a few more minutes of my time when I had
already been waiting for 20?

It is obvious that in some aspects of life I have adopted
Australian ways. While Australians are, and know they are,
relatively accepting of different cultures, they normally guard
their rights and privacy.

In the meantime, most Indonesians are fairly unfocused on
these aspects, developing the concept of "near enough is good
enough" into a fine art. If the four seater at the back of a
minibus has to accommodate seven, well, so be it, other people
have to get there too.

And if another driver takes your right of way, for goodness
sake what's a few minutes difference?

Australians generally understand that other cultures,
including Indonesia's, have different interpretations on
acceptable margins of error, and as a result are fairly tolerant
of lateness -- within reason -- or a change of restaurant at the
last minute because of dietary requirements. That sort of thing.
But life needs rules and regulations, and once we have them, we
need to abide by them, they usually say.

This type of "rigidity" does not sit well in Indonesian
situations. People can come unstuck in simple daily activities
such as traffic conditions.

While in Dago, Bandung, recently the driver of our hired car
-- a Kijang -- decided to take a shortcut. He drove into a narrow
lane. Unfortunately he was not the only one who knew that route.
The bumper-to-bumper traffic would have made most Australians
give up in horror. However, our driver, a third-year student from
a local university, seemed unperturbed.

As all the vehicles in our lane inched their way ahead, we
came face-to-face with an oncoming lane of vehicles, and a number
of motorcycles which quickly formed an amorphous group. It was
obvious that the lane was not even wide enough to accommodate two
lanes of traffic. Some vehicles on both sides had their wheels
almost flush with the edges of the monsoon drains.

I had seen drivers hyperventilating and trading abuse and
insults during much less hair-raising situations in Australian
cities, so naturally I was expecting the worst. The atmosphere
was literally thick with exhaust fumes.

It was impossible to move forward, backward or sideways. Yet,
not only did I fail to see any angry faces, but after a few
minutes of this impasse which felt to me like an hour, a man
appeared from nowhere and began directing the traffic.

It took an eternity moving the vehicles one by one, one inch
backward, two inches forward, veering this way and that, and
miraculously, all drivers without exception, obeyed him, who by
the way was not even a traffic officer.

Some time later, the traffic flowed again, no doubt until the
next jam.

We all felt a huge relief, but I was still shaking my head an
hour later. I could not see the same situation resolved so
quickly in Australia. Australian drivers are a lot less tolerant
than those I had seen. In fact, the whole situation would be an
unlikely scene for that country. To begin with, Australian
drivers would be unlikely to find themselves in a narrow lane
where two lanes of traffic are going in opposite directions
because town planners would have assigned one way traffic for
those lanes.

Different conditions breed different necessities and develop
different temperaments. Provided we are mature enough to accept
this, we should have few problems in our neighborly coexistence.

-- Dewi Anggraeni