Our peculiar penchant for stating the oh-so obvious

I really work out now. I don't just work out, say, once a week for half an hour with my AB-roller in front of a TV munching chips at the same time.

No, I seriously work out, in a serious, well-equipped gym, four times a week, doing the walking up-hill thing for an hour, the tummy-crunching thing one hundred times and the butt-lifting thing 50 times.

Why do I do it? Did I finally realize that gulping red wine and dancing till two o'clock in the morning is not an ideal fat- burning, muscle-tightening routine? Not really.

Actually, I started to work out because I got fed up by people -- mostly Indonesian females -- saying: "Ooh, you are fat now, aren't you?", with their devilish grin obviously stating how delighted they are to see my body looking more like Monica Lewinsky's than Penelope Cruz's. One less intimidating female in the way.

So what, I had my after-pregnancy blubber, but did these people have to point it out so cruelly?

Most Indonesian women also love talking about pregnancy.

I remember when my husband and I visited his previous workplace in Yogyakarta a couple years ago, less than a year after we got married. One female employee said: "Ma'am, where is your child? Aren't you pregnant yet?"

Why did they ask me such a ridiculous question? There are several possibilities.

The first, which is a harmless one, is that they genuinely cared. Most local women want to have children as soon as they are married, either because of their love for kids, as proof of their womanhood or simply to have a stronger foundation to bind their husbands to their marriage commitment.

The second possibility, and a not so nice one, is that they wanted to point out that I might be an incomplete female by our society's definition because I was not able to conceive a baby.

The third possibility is even worse: They might have assumed that I'd intentionally got myself pregnant to push my then- boyfriend to marry me, so where was the kid?

Then again, we Indonesians are the masters of small talk and peculiar let's-state-the-obvious questions.

"Have you taken a bath yet?" is one of my relatives' favorite things to ask every time they come by for a visit. Why? Beats me.

Or, "Just eaten, have you?", when they see me sitting at the dining table, facing a plate of food, with a spoonful of rice in my mouth.

Uh, what else do you think I'm doing? Having an orgasm?

My German friend once complained to me, "I can't stand it when my Indonesian colleagues in my office, my landlady or my neighbors ask me 'Where have you been?' when they see me arrive from somewhere. And they ask me 'Where are you going?' every time they see me ready to go somewhere.

"Why do they ask me those questions? Where I've been and where I want to go are not their bloody business!"

Is it being courteous, nosy or just annoyingly stating the obvious? I just realized, that in the Indonesian language, those peculiar questions are called basa-basi.

In my dictionary, basa-basi means courtesy or a conventional phrase of greeting. My toes just curled up -- that always happens when I disagree with something! Because I think this Indonesian courtesy can be divided into three categories: positive courtesy, meaningless courtesy and cynical courtesy.

Which one is which? Oh God, I'm driving myself crazy, but I think you have to be an Indonesian to know the difference.

Somebody like me, who voluntarily positioned myself in between two cultures -- western and eastern -- by marrying an expatriate, sometimes feels trapped in the middle. Part of me understands how to play the language game but another part of me acknowledges that some of those basa-basi questions are improper, illogical or just a rude invasion of privacy.

To make peace with myself, I've decided to simplify the situations I encounter. I decided to believe that people ask me basa-basi questions because they care for me. For example, when people pointed out how heavy I was, I decided to believe that those people were happy for my prosperity. Mind you that a lot of Indonesians believe that being fat equals being wealthy or prosperous.

After all a language is only an invention of an imperfect society, don't you think? Especially Bahasa Indonesia, which was introduced to a majority of people whose native tongues are not Malay, so it's easily misused and sounds awkward. I'm way more fluent and politically correct in Javanese and English than Indonesian.

But I have moments when I just want to let loose and forget all the "niceties".

When I was working at my previous place of employment, there was one receptionist who used to always ask me, "Are you going home Ma'am?" every evening after office hours.

I would just smile and go on my merry way.

But, this is what I was dying to say: "No, actually I'm not. I just love to pretend that I'm ready to go home by carrying my bag, putting on my jacket, walking to the elevator, going down to the basement, unlocking my car, only to lock it again to return back upstairs to my comfortable office cubicle, just to amuse you."

Well, I never did, but it would have been interesting to see her reaction.

-- Aida Greenbury