SWEDEN – such a pity that its food is not available globally

Last month I was in Stockholm, in widen that is, not Stockholm, Wisconsin—interesting place that, Wikipedia states it is a village in Wisconsin, US, founded in 1854 by immigrants from Karlskoga, Sweden, and the 2010 census puts the population at 66. The Stockholm Merchants' Association, however, paints a different picture—a small village… big arts, captured under the banner:

Fine Arts, Culinary Arts, Performing Arts, The Art of Living Well
One of the "Best Small Town Getaways" in the Midwest: Midwest Living Best of the Midwest 2010

And either the census is wrong, or many of the establishments listed—antique shop, restaurants, hotels, B&Bs, winery and cidery, gifts, and many more—are located in the larger area, not within the Stockholm village boundaries.

But that is all an aside. What I wanted to write about is Swedish food. So good and so rarely found outside Sweden. While there I enjoyed the meatballs, the crispbreads, salted butter (really salted with coarse sea salt), fried herring & mashed potatoes, salmon in a variety of ways… and Polish ice cream—Polish? how come Polish? Don't know, but it was goooood.

The Swedish institution, IKEA, sells, apart from it furniture and household articles, a nice variety of Swedish food items. When back in Holland I went to the nearest outlet and bought the crispbreads that would not have survived the return trip from Sweden, together with the best cake you can imagine. No idea what it is called, but it consisted of an almond and chocolate filling inside a delicious crispy pie.

I have read that an IKEA shop (for household items, not furniture, if I remember correctly) will open in a year or two in Jakarta. With a bit of luck food will be included.

Till then, for those not living near a Swedish food outlet, here is a wonderful cookbook with delicious recipes and ingredients that should be available in most locations, except maybe for the lingonberries or cloudberries. The title is  VERY SWEDISH, and the writers are  Annica Triberg, Per Ranung and Tore Hagman.

Enjoy.

  

RECONNECTING – with friends and family not seen for decennia

Several years ago, in Yogyakarta, the address book I had kept since graduating, well not the exact same, as they do fall to pieces after years of intensive use, but the old addresses were entered into replacement versions, unless I decided to the contrary, was stolen. From one day to the next I had lost all means of contacting a lifetime of friends. Have you ever had the same experience? I felt lost, abandoned, utterly helpless, naked. Rape probably has a similar effect on the victim.

It took quite some time and effort to compile a new set of entries. Of course a number of the original names, telephone numbers and addresses could not be retrieved. However, the overall effect on my daily routine proved to be rather limited as, first, the missing ones were apparently not part of my then circles of interactive affairs. Second, I realised that the person might still be alive—at my age I live with an increasing stream of dwindling numbers—but the address not (what's the use of a name with an expired address); and third, in many cases I didn't even know who was missing.

Among the missing entries there is David P, last known location Cambridge, and no amount of googling turned up the person I'm looking for. And then of course there is Alexander vS, last seen in Frankfurt a/Main in 1969, that is 43 years ago! The third one in this line-up is Robert V. While not lost in respect of no idea where and what—being a high ranking civil servant, public sector records provided details of his whereabouts—I nevertheless had lost contact with him since the late 70s when I moved to Indonesia.

Before I left on my visit of Europe—OK, only part of it, but Stockholm, Munich, Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Bussum cover quite a chunk of it.

Google found Alexander on my smart phone, but strangely enough not on my laptop, should the two browser not come up with the same results? Any way, I got a telephone number and I got through to him. Hansje, he exclaimed, is that really you? Of course he wanted to know how I had found him and where I was and for how long. We alternated providing some key elements of our lives of the past four decades, or what at that moment we thought was important to relay. We regretfully concluded that we did not have the opportunity to meet before I returned to Indonesia, and after exchanging email addresses we hung up.

The contact with Robert had been re-established through LinkedIn and before arriving in Holland we had already agreed to meet. Slightly apprehensive I set off to have dinner at his house. But upon seeing him, after all these 30+ years, it was as if we had last met the week before. Several times that night we expressed our surprise and delight about this and decided to have lunch before I would leave to delve into our days all those years ago in Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Trengganu, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and Manila. We did, and though it was a miserable rainy day—just walking the few hundred meters from the bus stop to the café got me soaked—it was as joyful as the dinner at his house.

And, while in Munich visiting aunt Selma, I also met her son, cousin Dominik, last seen some 50 years go when he was 10. He is now a famous director of German films and TV, and with him too, we exchanged email addresses and agreed to remain in contact.

Remains David P. But who knows, one day he might suddenly appear out of the digital aether of the internet.

MOVING – to the new apartment

Finally. After repeated promises by the contractor that tomorrow everything will be ready, we have finally made it to the new apartment. No great distance involved. Just from tower one to tower two, same floor and same unit number. The new apartment is the mirror image of the old one, which leads to quite a lot of confusion. The fridge is no longer to the left when entering the kitchen, and the dining table is now to the right when entering the apartment.

But what joy to see the books on the shelves rather than boxed, and the paintings and maps on the walls. Bought myself a new drill, a Bosch  GSB 16 RE Professional, and spent the whole of yesterday drilling holes and hanging the pictures. And the books, tiring to put them up, but finally they are accessible again.

The best part of the apartment is the bathroom. Rather than stepping into a bathtub and drawing a plastic curtain to take a shower, now it is a real shower one steps into for a real rain-shower experience—a large shower head to soak you, and if you want to hold the shower head in your hand you turn the knob for this second option. The tiles in the cubicle are anti-slip… so simply enjoy.

And the view is old and new Jakarta combined: the red-tile roofs of old, and high rise apartments of the past decade.

FRANCOIS VALENTIJN – preacher, plagiarist, encyclopaedist

For someone generally referred to as the Preacher of Ambon, the epitaph of plagiarist with a tendency for self-aggrandisement does not seem to be fitting. Or am I naïve… Anyway, according to my sources[1] he was both.

Born in Dordrecht where his father was deputy principal of the Latin school he read theology, philosophy and related subjects in Utrecht and Leiden. In 1684 he finished his studies and was called as a minister to the Netherlands Indies where he arrived in Batavia end-December 1685, and in April 1686 Amboina. Under the guidance of among others Rumphius he quickly mastered the Malay language and in slightly more than three months he was able to conduct his first service in early-August of that year. Against his bitter objections he was subsequently posted on Banda—he was forced to take the position as his superiors told him that it was Banda or nothing, with repayment of the travelling expenses Amsterdam-Batavia-Amboina. After 11 months on Banda he returned to Amboina (1688) where he started the translation of the Bible into Ambon Malay, and the search for a wealthy wife. This latter task was accomplished in 1692 when he married Cornelia Snaats, widow of his friend and patron Hendrik Leydekker, who had left Cornelia four children and a significant fortune. May 1694 he returned to Holland accompanied by wife and five children—four Leydekkers and one Valentijn. He returned to Dordrecht and was ready to settle down. At the request of the Compagnie and persuaded by many friends he, however,  agreed to return to the East.

Although the VOC Board had agreed to his condition that he would be posted in Amboina—and only Amboina, without any obligation to visit the outlying islands—upon arrival in Batavia he was assigned the post of army chaplain for a campaign in East Java.

Quite obviously the masters in Batavia and Amsterdam had different sets of priorities, a situation that also nowadays is not uncommon in globally operating organisations.

Message Regional Office to HQ:  we need an additional marketing unit, our geographic region superimposed on Europe would stretch from Ireland to Moscow, you have representatives in nearly all countries in that area, we have to service that area by ourselves.

No doubt Valentijn complained bitterly, but in the same way as during his first tour, he had to comply. Worn out he returned to Batavia after four months in the field. Finally, early-1707 he could continue his journey to Ambon. A further reason for complaint concerned his translation of the Bible. The VOC principles in Batavia did not approve his translation into Ambon Malay, They insisted on the use of High Malay. This fight dragged on and the Compagnie even threatened to disallow his return—at their expense.

Permission to return home was finally given in 1713 and after a difficult return voyage he settled again in Dordrecht. There he devoted himself fully to his Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën—more than 5,000 pages of text and over a thousand maps and illustrations which took Valentijn 15 years to complete; and in an astonishing burst of speed was printed within four years, with the last volume published some eight months before his death in 1727.

Old and New East Indies, consisting of five parts published in eight volumes, was the first encyclopaedia of the Indonesian archipelago and surrounding regions and contained sections on Amboina and the Moluccas, North and East Celebes, New Guinea, Makassar, Batavia, Java, Sumatra, China, Formosa, Japan, Persia, Coromandel, Bengal, Ceylon, Malacca, the Cape of Good Hope, and Mauritius. Plus, the lives of the Great Moguls, the Governor Generals of the Netherlands East Indies, flora and fauna of Amboina, Amboina church affairs, and accounts of his two (return) voyages to the Indies.

The systematic arrangement of this magnum opus is a bit chaotic: Sumatra, for instance, is given a place between Malacca and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), while Celebes (Sulawesi) is partially covered in Part 1 and also in Part 3. And yes, he used material of others and did not always specify original sources. And yes, it is an opinionated hotchpotch of information. Valentijn displays a lack of interest and knowledge—typical for his epoch—about the native peoples of the different islands. Of the Javanese he for instance writes that the men are typically murderous, perfidious and cruel… but also ready to cowardly knife someone for a few copper coins. And in respect of the Sumatrans (all ethnic groups of the island combined into one) he maintains that it is not necessary to describe them in detail as they do not much differ from the Javanese. But still, it is the first encyclopaedia of the region and until now retains information of great value—his maps, for instance, are exceptionally accurate, and his description of Ambon and Batavia shed light on conditions of these two places that have not been recorded anywhere else.

The amount and detail of information is moreover staggering, from the number of craftsmen by skill in a certain year in Sri Lanka, and the names and years of assignment of the heads of the Dutch trading post on Deshima Island in Nagasaki harbour, to a lion hunt in the Cape.

The whole eight volumes have been reprinted in facsimile and some parts are available from Amazon. For those interested to see more I recommend the following URL which will take you to Part 5.


http://archive.org/stream/oudennieuwoostin05vale#page/n384/mode/thumb

Enjoy!

---

[1]   Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië, Martinus Nijhoff, 1919

        ARCENGEL History of Netherlands East Indies

        Wikipedia

BALI – before the tourists invaded... (2)

During the centuries, all nine Balinese kings—Klungkung, Karangasem, Mengwi, Badung, Bangli, Tabanan, Gianjar, Buleleng, and Jembrana—remained an unruly and obstinate lot, fiercely independent and not in the least interested in following the rules and regulations that the Dutch wanted to impose on them. They strongly objected to the curtailment of their power. Those pesky Dutch wanted to stop the nearly incessant fighting among the kingdoms, while not giving thought to how their demand for slaves would then be met. The rajas would also no longer be allowed to attack and plunder ships flying the red-white-and-blue, and not even have the right to cargo salvaged from ships stranded on their coasts.

Only in 1839 did all kings agree to recognise Dutch sovereignty. But whatever treaty was signed, its actual enactment was poor. The kings (all nine) remained stroppy and showed in no uncertain way that they did not agree to colonial power being superimposed on them. Unsurprisingly the colonial government did not stop complaining that its representatives were not received in a friendly and courteous manner, Dutch ships were plundered, and that letters from the Governor General were not responded to. This lead to a series of expeditions to punish the—some of them successful, quite a number not.

One wonders, however, what priority Bali was given in the colonial policy of the Dutch. The VOC's, and later the colonial government's, main interest was trade, and in that respect Bali had little to offer. Slaves were no longer a traded commodity after the British handed the Netherlands East Indies back to the Dutch, and Bali lacked the spices of Banda and Ambon, or the large foreign owned estates (coffee, tea, rubber) of Java and Sumatra.

Supremacy of the Dutch was not fully established till the twentieth century when in 1906, the raja of Badung, together with members of the nobility, some of his wives and children, and members of the royal household, marched into the gunfire of the Dutch troops, preferring death over a curtailment of his royal power and having to bend his knee to the Dutch. This puputan was repeated two years later in Klungkung. And after the remaining unruly elements were deported to Lombok, law and order was established. Dutch law and order, that is. Dutch sources of the day report that the common people were not sorry to see the kings go, as they had had enough of the lack of legal certainty (for the non-privileged) and the continual state of war that had been part of the old system.

That the population felt relieved might even be true and not wishful thinking on the part of the Dutch. According to the anthropologist Clifford Geertz[1] it is the Balinese who have the entrepreneurial drive to look for opportunities and to benefit from changing conditions. Whether made possible by the imposition of the new law and order, or because improved transport facilities opened Bali to the world, tourism started to become a profitable service activity.

Although negligible by present day standards, the number of tourists in 1930 was large enough to warrant the first tourist guide to Bali[2]. As an illustration of the Balinese entrepreneurial nous, the writer of the tourist guide, G.H. von Faber, remarks that woodcarvings of quality were becoming difficult to find, as carvers and traders, having noted that the tourists were undiscerning in their appreciation of the products, would prefer to produce virtually mass produced low-quality work and thereby improve their cash flow.

The 136 lorries, 264 busses and 787 rental cars, part of which were serving the tourist industry in 1930, have grown and grown and are still growing. Kuta, which in those days was a quaint fishing village with a beach and a government cabana to change into bathing costumes, has outgrown itself. Hotels, restaurants, bars, cafés, shops and market stands cater to the tourists' needs—cold beer, continental and American breakfasts at all hours, beach wear, souvenirs, it's all available at reasonable prices. What's more, thousands of foreigners have started a business, or taken up residence on the island, finding the official paperwork to get permits and licenses fairly easy, definitely when compared to other places in Indonesia.

If only the VOC, and later the colonial government, had let the kings keep their beachcombing rights, and sent tourists and cruise ships rather than Navy flotillas and marines, would not the Balinese, the common people, have brought about a smooth, silent and bloodless power change from the inside.

Sources:       Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië, Martinus Nijhoff, 's Gravenhage, 1917
                  BALI, Het Land Der Duizend Tempels, G.H. von Faber, H. van Ingen, Soerabaia

---

[1] Peddlers and Princes, Social Development and Economic Change in Two Indonesian Towns, Clifford Geertz, The University of Chicago Press, 1963. A comparative study of two Indonesian towns—Modjokuto, a market town in East Java, and Tabanan, a court town in southwest Bali.

[2] BALI, het land der duizend tempels, G.H. von Faber

BALI – before the tourists invaded…

Trader-colonisers from the coast of Coromandel brought Hinduism to Java. The religion was adopted by the Majapahit kingdom in the eastern part of the island. Bali was a vassal state of Majapahit and became a safe haven for refugees from the kingdom when Islam became the prevailing religion.

The original inhabitants of Bali are the Bali Aga. Though a few Bali Aga villages remain today, it must be assumed that the two groups socialised and mixed greatly. From then Bali and the Balinese were largely left to their own device. The Dutch, who first appeared in 1597, were not really colonisers, a colonial power, yes, but even that was a slow and cumbersome process. It went like this. After the brothers De Houtman laid a first contact with the island, it took the Compagnie (Dutch East India Company, VOC), and after 1800 when the company went bankrupt and was dissolved, the government of the Dutch East Indies, more than 300 years to become the administrative and governing power on Bali. See map of regions held by VOC/Colonial Government.

evolution of the Dutch East Indies

During the centuries, the Balinese kings remained an unruly and obstinate lot, all nine of them: Klungkung as the most powerful, together with Karangasem, Mengwi, Badung, Bangli, Tabanan, Gianjar, Buleleng, and Jembrana.

Numerous expeditions had to be sent to ensure that trade agreement were adhered to, Dutch ships not plundered, the payment of fines—in one case 75,000 Dutch guilders, that would be millions of euros when converted to the present—and in general to enforce the power of the colonial government. Interestingly, until the British reign (1811-1815) the main commodity traded from Bali was… slaves. The importance of this can be seen from the fact that in 1778 the number of Balinese living in and around Batavia was 13,000. Raffles put a stop to the trade and it was never revived.

Many of the expeditions ended in failure and supremacy of the Dutch was not fully established till the twentieth century. In 1906, the king of Badung together with members of the nobility, some of his wives and children, and the royal household marched into the gunfire of the Dutch troops, preferring death over a curtailment of his power and bending the knee to the Dutch. This puputan was repeated two years later in Klungkung. Unruly elements were deported to Lombok, and law and order was established. This would of course depend on from where this is observed, but Dutch sources of the day report that the local population was not sorry to see the kings, with the accompanying lack of legal certainty for the common people, and the continual state of war, go.

This might, however, be true as only 20 years later a first tourist guide[1] was published, with the writer complaining that woodcarvings of quality were difficult to find, as carvers and traders, having noted that the tourists would be undiscerning in their appreciation of the products, would offer virtually mass produced low-quality work to improve their cash flow.

Tourist flows in those days were negligible according to present day standards. Total length of paved roads was some 800 km, which in 1930 was used by 136 lorries, 264 busses and 787 rental cars, part of these serving the tourist industry. Two hotels in Denpasar offered a total of 56 rooms—Bali Hotel 38 rooms and Hotel Satriya 18. Singaraja had a total of 9 hotel rooms and Kintamani 14 in two pasanggrahan (guesthouse)—one operated by the Royal Packet Navigation Company (KPM) and one by the government. 

pasanggrahan at Kintamani



The KPM maintained shipping routes between the islands and Batavia, and with Singapore, Penang and Hong Kong. The KPM port on Bali was Buleleng.

The full tourist invasion started when the western countries had recovered from WW-II and economic growth and development kicked in. And in the 80s it really took off.

To be continued.



Sources:  Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indie;  Martinus Nijhyoff, 1917
Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam

---

[1] BALI, het land der duizend tempels, G.H. von Faber

GERMAN BRATWURST – highly recommended…

Yesterday I went exploring. The word has a bit of an exotic whiff to it, don't you agree: seafarers explore an unknown coast, and an adventure ventures into the interior… Hardly appropriate for the car journey on 4-lane toll roads to the nearby satellite town of BSD. But I did prepare a map and a written text on what directions to follow and where to get off the toll road. Pounding rain limited the view and on a clear day I might have seen the second exit sign to BSD CITY—the instructions read exit BSD City, take the second exit on the right! That was confusing: highways in a left-hand traffic system would normally not have an exit on the right. So, when taking the BSD CITY exit I realised that it was the first when I spotted another BSD CITY exit some 100 metres down the toll road I had just left…

the German Centre

And the rain was a real non-stop tropical downpour. The roads got flooded in the lower parts, traffic was down to a crawl and I hoped that the floodwater did not hide a major hole in the road surface. It took me a good 40 minutes to get to the road where the second exit would have taken me, and after a few more wrong turns I finally reached my target: the German Centre for Industry and Trade, or more specifically, the Metro Sky Garden restaurant operated by Food Evolution Indonesia.

This company is the producer of what I think is the best bread in Indonesia—I wrote about their bread in a previous post some weeks ago. My present purpose for coming here was no the bread, but the German sausages, the display of which on their website is so mouth-watering. Not only the sausages, by the way, but as I'm particularly partial to sausages, this was my main reason for going there.

After a long talk with Andreas Stokowy, the director of Food Evolution Indonesia, and studying their home-delivery menu, I decided to buy the German bratwurst, mainly because I could compare these sausages to ones produced by other companies in Indonesia.

At home I immediately started to prepare dinner and decided to have the sausages with potato salad and a tossed green salad. In case you are interested, I make the potato salad with extra virgin olive oil, a little bit of red wine vinegar, mayonnaise (Korean), chopped onions and garlic, tomatoes diced, dried crushed red pepper, chives (dried), and salt. For the quantities—tablespoons, teaspoons, cloves, etc—just follow your own taste. I am, for instance, always a bit heavy on the garlic… not everybody likes that.

Back to the bratwurst. They are good!!! Andreas told me that they are made in Bali according to his special recipe. Well done, Andreas! They are excellent! And the best part is that their skin does not pop during frying—the juices and taste thus stay inside rather than being dumped in the pan.

For those who want to enjoy the taste of Germany too, the sausages and other meat can be bought at the Metro Sky Garden, of course, but also at Giant supermarket in BSD and Bintaro. And the bread is available in HERO Kemang.

Enjoy.

JAKARTA – the only change is…

Back in Jakarta, good to be back, Nias is nice but definitely rural, even the main town, Gunungsitoli, is apart from the racing motorcycles, distinctly rural. And something that this urbanite has not seen for a long time is the total blackness at night; if there weren't that many clouds one would be able to see the full magnificence of the Milky Way.

On my last Sunday there I was treated to this double rainbow… as seen from my room in Hotel National.

I have been back in Jakarta for only a few days but have spent several hours already in gridlock. And in unexpected locations and unusual times.

This is of course, long after the protest actions against the announced increase in the price of petrol and the torrential rains that had a devastating effect on traffic flow!

The worst case was on Sudirman. I was stuck in the slow lane and speeds were measured in mph, meters per hour, not miles. The fast lane was moving along nicely, OK, not racing, but driving in second or third gear. Openings from the slow to the fast lane are few and far between, but all except the last one before Semanggi were blocked by concrete blocks and a few policemen. Such a waste of road space, if half of the cars in the slow lane would have been allowed onto the main lanes all lanes could have been moving.

So I think I'll try one more time. In a previous post I called it "Let's advise the traffic controllers…" The response to this call for cases of regulations that actually strangle the flow, not improve it, was zero-nil-zilch-nothing-nix-nada as readers in Jakarta, and outside, remained mum.

But let's give it another try. This  time I'll call it "Let's start an association of concerned car users in jakarta (accu)" and with the right backing we will be able to have a say in the way traffic is regulated in Jakarta. We might even promise the authorities that we will accept an increase in the price of petrol of 1000 or even 4500 Rupiah (a doubling of the current price) if those in charge of traffic control were instructed to listen to accu and use a participatory approach to improve the traffic system.

The first thing to do will, of course, be designing a catching bumper sticker, or in line with common practice, a rear-window stickers. Anyone…? For a small fee of 30% of revenue accu will grant you sole sticker-rights, a sure way to mint money.