Increasing globalization erases national individuality
By Graham Best
JAKARTA (JP): I came to work in Indonesia because I wanted to experience something different. Like many or even most people in Britain I knew nothing about this country. It was, I thought, a single tropical island near Malaysia. Of course I knew all about Borneo from wildlife documentaries, and plenty about Bali from holiday programs, but I didn't know they had anything to do with Indonesia. My first glance at the atlas was a revelation.
As I pored over books about my destination I realized it would be quite a change from Britain. Different religions, cultures, languages, flora and fauna, food (which I was especially looking forward to) clothing and even a different way to bathe.
When I arrived, it was no disappointment. Walking down the road in Britain's capital city I wouldn't turn any heads, let alone elicit cheerful greetings and enquiries as to where I was going. I felt like a minor celebrity.
My first encounter with Indonesian food was also a memorable experience. Something I shoveled into my mouth on the assumption that it was some harmless variety of green bean turned out to be a red hot coal. As I sat gasping for air and crying into my noodles, I reflected that we don't see fresh chilies very often in Britain and when we do they're not mixed into the meal whole. Now I tuck into Padang food nearly every day.
Just as memorable but a lot more pleasurable was my first excursion to the Thousand Islands. Snorkeling along the coral reefs I saw things I thought only existed on the Discovery Channel. In Britain you are lucky if you can see your own hands through the silt.
In Britain the shock of pouring a ladle of cold water over your head could kill the sick and the elderly, but at 30 degrees Celsius and 95 percent humidity it's actually very refreshing. The thing that terrified me most of all as I was preparing to leave England, the Asian toilet, can also be got used to with practice.
The roads, however, lived up to their reputation. I've been parachuting and potholing, but the drive to Pelabuhan Ratu and back was by far the most frightening experience of my life. After seeing the exhaust from a Metro Mini I started thinking I might as well take up smoking.
So when I went back home for Christmas and friends and family asked me, "What's Indonesia like?", I had plenty to tell them. It is different, I told them as I babbled on like some 20th Century Captain Cook. Well, as I said, on many levels it is. However, on some it is getting less and less.
It was not until I was standing in that most Western of things, a shopping mall in Cheltenham, that I realized this. I stood there and tried to pick out the differences between it and the ones 7,500 miles away in Jakarta. McDonald's and Wendy's serve the same food, the only concession to the tropics being the addition of Chili sauce. In Britain the people generally have lighter hair and were taller, but they wear the same clothes.
Back in Jakarta I watched Asian MTV, in English, playing the same videos that I had watched on the British Top of the Pops. I also saw English football matches on Liga Inggris.
If you lived in a modern house and don't like rice you could spend a whole year here and never have a mandi or eat Padang food. It'd be your loss, but you could do it.
Shopping malls and McDonald's restaurants are the same the world over and satellite TV makes short work of national boundaries. As developing countries develop people with access to these developments lead increasingly similar lives. They become part of a global culture. Globalization is the buzzword of the moment, but it wasn't until I came here looking for something different that I really grasped what it meant.