Of cutlery trays and thingamajigs

JAKARTA (JP): Isn't it funny how an ordinary, even insignificant matter suddenly takes on such gigantic proportions? I'm sure that you have experienced a moment when some itty-bitty thing, like a button that comes off your shirt or skirt, has become the only matter in the universe on which your existence depends, transcending such mundane occurrences like wars, environmental degradation, plagues, starvation and the pimple that has manifested itself in one of those out-of-reach spots of your anatomy which aren't referred to in polite conversations.

I had one of those moments, in fact, it lasted a week or three, give or take a few days. The very basic reason behind it all is that I've been setting up my own home. You know that you have to get a fridge, you know that you need a stove, dining table and chairs, etc., etc., so you set out to acquire them. After a while, when the goggle box (TV to you) and stereo set are in place, curtains are hung, the pembantu (maid) puttering in the kitchen, among gleaming, but soon-to-be-black, pots and pans, you heave a sigh of contentment and achievement. But then you walk into the en suite (the grand name for the space which encloses a shower), bak mandi (tub), and a toilet bowl and discover that you could use a rack on which to pile up toiletries and various other knickknacks that help make your body clean and smell nice.

Then, in the pantry, that plastic, tubelike thingamajig in which you stick your spoons, forks and knives, so they can drip dry, just won't do. You remember that once you almost defingered yourself because the business ends of the forks and knives were up instead of down, and that the otherwise, very efficient pembantu seems to have a mental block when it comes to putting them right-side-up. What is needed is a nice cutlery tray, divided into sections, in which you lay them (I mean the spoons, etc.) down horizontally so they won't be a health hazard. But do you go straight out to the nearest shop and get one? Not on your life! You keep on postponing until you wake up one day, and the first thing rudely shoving aside everything that occupies the little gray cells is a cutlery tray.

If you think that stores are dripping with the things, you're wrong. Thinking that they'd be readily available at one of those monster megamalls, I thought I might as well start at the top, so I treated Seibu with my presence. Lo and behold, there they were ... lovely plastic specimens, laid out on a special counter and at a reduced price, too! I swooped down on them, had a closer look and discovered that the special price was so special I almost had a seizure. A hard-earned Rp 33,000 for a slab of plastic? The label said that it had come all the way from Italy. Well, Italians probably took one look at them, rejected them stante pede, and decided to toss them to Indonesia.

Next stop was Sogo. Like the preceding store, it has everything your heart desires when it comes to kitchen necessities. Everything except cutlery trays. I then inquired about bread knives, and the girl led me to a knife counter where I was shown one priced at something like Rp 60,000. It and its siblings (meat knives, cheese knives, and whatever) were born in Switzerland, said the girl, who didn't think it at all funny when I suggested that they looked homesick so why not send them right back.

I left Sogo, fully intending to continue the search elsewhere but was unfortunately waylaid by a bookstore. Sniffing about, I came across the latest in the series of booklets of politically correct fairy tales and others of like ilk. The latest was about famous authors prostituting themselves by writing ads, like Shakespeare doing his bit on a detergent or Erica Jong recommending a certain airline company because she was initiated into the Mile High club in one of the company's planes. Now, if you don't know and want to know what the Mile High club is all about, that book will tell you. Buy it, but don't buy it at the bookstore where you'll have to fork out about Rp 60,000. It's cheaper, by Rp 20,000, up on the second floor in a Japanese bookstore whose name I can never remember correctly. Kushimoru? Yakitori? Sukiyaki? Who cares.

Actually, it's nice to have two such shops in one building. Three, in fact. There is another one, which is even cheaper, in the same place. The three-in-one arrangement enables you to compare prices. Several times, after seeing a book at a bookstore that seemed interesting, but at a price that made me gasp, I went to another bookstore and walked away with the same book at a greatly reduced rate. Caveat emptor, indeed!

But did I get a cutlery tray? Yes, but not on the same day. Maybe I'll tell you more about it next time.

-- Jak Jaunt