Without going into a rant about how “elitist” and “anti-poor” this idea is – and let’s face it, there’s nothing to this other than the denial of rights to those who can’t afford it – it sounds like a good idea.  Middle-class sensibilities were once again trumped (perhaps even insulted) in this election, which favored the likes of Nancy Binay and Grace Poe at the expense of people like Richard Gordon and Risa Hontiveros.  Rightly or wrongly, much of the blame is passed on to the “masses;” those who can be swayed by popular surnames or P500 bills passed around the precinct just before the polls begin.  Never mind that these are the same masses that kicked out dynasties and entrenched political figures in other provinces, but that’s another story altogether.

I think that we, as “middle-class taxpayers,” do not benefit as much from government as much as we should.  Nor are we as invested in government as we think we are.  Political families and coalitions in the Philippines never pander or reach out to the middle class because government involvement interferes with our way of life.  It’s just too stressful and inconvenient: political activities don’t jive well with our own pursuits.

A rally of workers and students in Mendiola, for example, is more of a cause of traffic than a legitimate expression of a gripe.  And the “proper forum” is too inconvenient, too: writing a letter and mailing it to Congress, or lobbying for it, interferes with Monday-to-Friday productivity.  And maybe it’s fair to say that a chunk of people who didn’t vote this election were the likes of us “middle-class taxpayers:” the process of registering or voting eats at productive time, anyway.  In denying rights to the masses, I think that we’re all too often the first ones to deny it to ourselves.

There are two schools of thought to the “only taxpayers should vote” idea.  The first one sounds grossly unacceptable, and it is: that the amount of taxes we pay corresponds to the amount of votes we have.  So much for the “power of the middle class,” then, if the likes of Kris Aquino would have more votes than we do because she pays more taxes than 99% of the population.  The second school of thought violates the very principle of the idea: if one taxpayer gets one vote, then whatever happens to the commensurate investment we all have in the salaries of elected officials? Isn’t that unfair for a taxpayer who pays P20,000 when he or she gets the same vote as a person who pays P10,000?

Either way, both schools of thought ignore a very plausible possibility in the outcome of this elections: that there are middle-class taxpayers who probably also voted for Binay or Poe, or the same old politicians. So much for the “only taxpayers should vote” idea: taxpayers, like the much-maligned masses, are also capable of making bad choices. Consider the same class that put Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in power, or threads of the very same class that longs, among other things, for the glory days of Ferdinand Marcos.

The way I see it, our problems with the popular sentiment isn’t one that finds firm footing in taxes, but in civic duty.  It’s not the value of our vote, but how we value our vote.  It’s not the amount of taxes we pay, it’s the amount of time we spend ensuring that those taxes are spent the right way.  The truth is we are all invested in the political process in one way or another, whether it’s a middle-class taxpayer frustrated with tax deductions, or a fisherman with no access  to higher education, a student who doesn’t pay income taxes but is more politically active than us, or a self-made millionaire grown jaded on the way things are.

Civic duty and civic understanding should be inculcated into the people as early as possible.  Civic-minded citizens would not sell votes to the highest bidder.  Civic-minded citizens would understand how government works, and what their role is in making good government possible.  Civics allows us to understand why there’s taxation, why there’s universal suffrage, how laws are made and what the role of the elected official is in all of this.  A strong sense of civic duty allows us to demand more of our politicians and our political system: that this shouldn’t be about personalities and dynasties, but that parties should be defined along clear ideas, platforms, and ideologies. Most of all, a strong sense of civic duty should impart the knowledge that one’s political obligations do not end at voting: if you want your candidate to win, you will support those candidates with all the reasonable resources you can. Or that if you think that there’s no choice, you become the choice yourself. We’ve seen the triumph of grassroots movements before: new forces like Ed Panlilio and Grace Padaca once inspired us, but there weren’t too many choices like that this time around.

All this falls into the responsibility of a public education system in dire need of reform.  I think that such practical political courses should be started in higher K12 or in one’s first years of university education, but I digress and that can be saved for another time.

Do I agree with this election’s turnout? No; I would have been happier to see Teddy Casino and Risa Hontiveros in the next Senate. I would have been happier to see more independents in the Baguio City Council. I would have been happier to see bigger representation for groups like Migrante, Anakpawis, and Kabataan. I would have been happier to see PCOS machines work, and that platforms triumphed above personalities. Then again such are civic consequences in their own right: part and parcel of popular democracy is to realize the fact that some people will not vote for the same choices I make. Maybe out of personal choice, maybe out of personal circumstance. Yet, it is civic duty – yours and mine – to ensure that these choices are made freely, in good conscience, and with due value given to it.

Taxation is a civic duty. So is voting. If anything this election shows us yet again that the most essential acts of citizenship are often thrown by the wayside; if not taken for granted, they’re seen as heroic or exceptional or even irrational and aberrational. When it comes to representation as a consequence of taxation, I guess I rest my case.

Much like the Madrid bombings in 2004 that killed 191 people and the London bombings in 2005 that killed 52, the Boston bombings were carried out by men who integrated into their societies and benefited from the liberalism and inclusiveness of the West. Yet, despite their seemingly Western ways, the attackers in London and Madrid harbored deep hatred sparked by al-Qaeda’s virulent ideology – perhaps much like Tamerlan, who said, “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.”

I’m not one to play an “expert” or anything – I just have views – but Ms. Ressa’s view is a dangerous one to make.  It’s a connection present in such theories as Huntington’s “clash of civilizations,” or Krauthammer’s “bloody borders of Islam.”  It’s a connection that was used to validate everything from post-9/11 racial profiling to the War on Terror, to cable news anchors trying to pin the Boston bombings to anyone with an Muslim-sounding name and Arab facial features.

It’s one that places unnecessary fears and burdens to anyone in the United States who does not have the “American-sounding name” or the “American facial features.”  Or anyone in the world, for that matter.  “The face of evil,” so to speak.

It’s one that creates black flags out of careless connections.

Reading Ms. Ressa’s piece reminds me of John Updike’s Terrorist, but without the nuances and background that creates the motivation for Ahmad Mulloy (the central character in the novel) to become one.  Rather, with all due respect, Ms. Ressa implies the tenuous connection that has somewhat found firm footing in modern global policy: that Islam has bloody borders, and in her own words: “The Tsarnaev brothers match the profile that most worries American law enforcement: long-time American residents familiar with American culture, geography and customs with ethnic roots and values that allow them to develop deep connections to Islamic movements overseas.”

And then what?  Is the connection a trend?  Not really.  Many perpetrators of murder and terrorist acts in the United States didn’t even belong to this view of things, and still committed murder and terrorism.  People like Timothy McVeigh, David Koresh, Terry Nichols, Ted Kaczynski, and so on and so forth.  For that matter, what does this make of Filipinos in the United States, for example, and the Abu Sayyaf?  Or Koreans here, and North Koreans?  Or worse, is that logic exclusive to people who are Muslim, Middle Eastern?

Whatever happened to looking at our own “bloody borders,” and see people hate a system we have so much in common with with America?  If Tamerlan did not understand America (using the term loosely), how much of America understood where Tamerlan came from?  Dzokhar became a US citizen on September 11, 2012: do we really have to resort to Da Vinci Code-esque assumptions as to why terrorists exist?  What about the shortcomings of society, the ones that are enough to put people on the road to radicalism because they aren’t as much “part of us” as they are excluded from things because of their names or their culture?  Or discriminated against?  As uncomfortable as it is to make a connection this way, it’s one that builds context more than detective-story connections.

This isn’t an apology for the terrorism in Boston, or terrorists in general.  Far from it.  The perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings should be dealt the firmest punishment as the law will allow.  But when we remove the perpetrator from the context to fit the bill of our own preconceived notions we don’t sow “awareness.”  Rather, we sow fear: in profiling the Tsarnaev brothers this way we recreate the climate of a post-9/11 world.  We create a climate that brings about such books with titles like “American Jihad” or “Future Jihad.”  Fear that the Rappler mood meter itself can reliably pick out of its audience.

Do these connections then validate things like the Balikatan exercises?  Does this connection validate – somewhat apologize – for the wars in the Middle East that claimed the lives of people who were anything but extremists or jihadists?  Does this connection then validate the idea that many immigrants in the United States or wherever have the insidious intent to mete out harm instead of extend gratitude?  It does not.  Simply because there is no connection to speak of.  Or if there is, it doesn’t hit at the root of the problem.  It intensifies it, in the same way that history shows its uncomfortable faces.  Like Japanese internment camps, Guantanamo Bay, prostituted women in Angeles, comfort women, racial profiling in a post-9/11 world.

And that’s a black flag in itself: several hues darker than we imagine it to be.

You told me once before
Things will never change between us
And I put my faith in you
But you left my side one day

You don’t know, but because of you
That I have stopped eating
I stay up wide awake at night
‘Coz of that sick joke you’re playing
And one day, when I love again
Hope that it’s with someone not like you
Someone like you who has a heart of stone

Wherever you may be today
Listen to the words I’m singing
I hope this song will wake you up
And melt your cold hard feelings.

You don’t know, but because of you
That I have stopped eating
I stay up wide awake at night
‘Coz of that sick joke you’re playing
And one day, when I love again
Hope that it’s with someone not like you
Someone like you who has a heart of stone

You don’t know, but because of you
That I have stopped eating
I stay up wide awake at night
‘Coz of that sick joke you’re playing
And one day, when I love again
Hope that it’s with someone not like you
Someone like you who has a heart of stone

Someone like you who has a heart of stone

Manuel’s right: there could have been another reason for the suicide.  The same is true for so many people who have committed suicide: yes, you cannot pin suicide on just one factor.  To quote a statement often uttered in the wake of this tragedy, “suicide is complex.”  And the complexity of this situation allows commentators like Manuel – and myself, even – the free pass of dissecting this situation.  The same complexity that allows activists to create a battlecry around the circumstances of Kristel’s death.  The same complexity that allows us to all grieve and cry, whether genuinely or in one of those self-serving orgies of preaching to the crowd.  Or even finding dignity in protest.

There’s where I disagree with Manuel, though: if it’s that complex, should society wash its hands of the responsibility that comes with the death of a brilliant student whose dreams were dashed by poverty?  Especially if poverty is society’s problem in the first place?

What strikes me as weird, following this whole talk and buzz (or brouhaha) around her death, is this: those pinning the blame on Kristel – whether directly or indirectly – are the ones with fingers readily pointed at the weak constitution of the victim’s willpower.  Is there no strength in her asking for a loan?  Is there no strength in her writing a letter to a politician asking for a shot at a scholarship?  Is there no strength in her parents, begging – or rather, requesting – for a reprieve or a chance from the UP administrators, much less cling on to the hope that she be rebracketed under the STFAP?  Is there no strength in her hanging on, sitting in, and taking in all the shame and humiliation that comes with her situation?  For all we know, that strength was sapped.

That should bring us to what should bring us clarity in all this weirdness: poverty is not a source of strength.  Poverty – and everything that comes with it, like hunger, sickness, frustrations, and despair – weakens the body, the mind, the soul.  If all you have for lunch is candy, doesn’t it weaken the body?  If you run the risk of getting a bad scholastic record because your education hangs on a much more tenuous balance than that of your peers, doesn’t it hurt the mind?  If you’re forced to give up on your dreams because of circumstances outside of your control, doesn’t that crush the soul?  While some find strength in these adverse circumstances, some are weakened by it.  Shame and humiliation eat and gnaw at the body like hunger and cold.  Some kids have their scholarships, benefactors, and dreams – and yes, STFAP brackets – to hang on to.  Kristel was poor and crushed enough as it was without those.  And if there’s any other cause that we’re looking for, for her to take her own life, if there’s any weakness that we’re looking for in her constitution, it’s one made frail and weak by her poverty.

And that’s where the system comes in, I think.  Poverty is not an individual situation, it is social: perhaps more social than Facebook, Twitter, and whatever the word “social” is appropriated for these days.  Poverty is not a personal problem, it is a systemic problem: the very reason why many of our intellectuals and policy-makers obsess themselves over the plight of the poor.  And yes, Kristel’s death cannot be pinned down to one thing: a “confluence of factors” may be the most ethical, gentle, politically-correct, and soundbite-worthy thing to say.  But that shouldn’t mean that there should not be outrage around the irritating, maddening, anger-inducing poverty (and all its humiliations) she went through before she took her life.  That’s what we should be railing against, because it affects all of us.  And if it doesn’t, there will come a time where we’ll be affected by it.

As complex as suicide is, there are things that drive people to doing so, among other “weak” acts like selling a kidney or being driven into prostitution.  Things that may be as simple as being poor, left with little to no choices, and left to one’s own devices where you can find them.  And perhaps the only reason why we get accused of “romanticizing” the poor is because no roses grow in the trash heap, no birds fly above the charcoal furnace, and the songs in the squalid squatter areas do not come from a Stradivarius.

And for those looking for “cause:” yes, to use the soundbite, suicide is a complex thing.  But you don’t “cause” it.  You drive the person enough to the wall, that the wall breaks, and that person either falls over the edge, or jumps from the edge.  Suicide in our society is an irrational thing, but even the most irrational things in the world have their reasons.  We can never prove that what killed Kristel, because this is not a case of, in its most legalistic and technical form, murder.  This is a case of suicide: we can only point to what drove her to the wall and to the edge.  Without a shadow of a doubt, what weakened her, what impoverished her, what suicided her, are the circumstances that were out of her control.  Circumstances that our society could have averted in the first place.  Circumstances we don’t want to look at: because all those candies for lunch, all those promissory notes, all those appeals for a scholarship and rebracketing hold more evidence than a suicide note we try to use as a shield.  Or as an apology, for that matter.  It is that glaringly obvious circumstance: Kristel was marred in poverty, mired in desperation, and denied a place.

Manuel and I can agree to disagree at this point, but the weirdness does not stop there.  What makes the buzz even weirder is that whenever we talk about the poor, we talk with somewhat no idea how much our slips are showing.  We may know what it’s like to be poor, sharing anecdotes about our once-poor lives and our experiences with hunger and shame, but the fact to the matter is we are not poor, and we do not experience what they’re going through right now.  The least we owe them is empathy.

The great orator Raul Manglapus should have left us with some empathy for the poor by virtue of the powerful words he used in “Land of Bondage, Land of the Free,” but we somewhat act more like the amo than the tao.  We find it easy to pin indolence on the plight of the poor, bringing up our anecdotes for drunkards and gamblers in the sitio as if it’s the universal truth among poor people.  But what of poor people who work eight hours a day, work another eight hours to try their darndest to make ends meet, and still not have enough?  What of the poor people who, by strokes of luck and circumstances they’re not in control of, remain poor despite the backbreaking labor of things that we wouldn’t be caught dead doing?  Are they lazy?  Are they weak?  They’re not: I dare say they’re much stronger than we think.  And they’re the ones who should benefit from all of this “agenda-setting,” this desire for change.

Or at least from a little empathy.  A little understanding.  Assholes?  None bigger than a system that keeps poor people poor, none stinkier than that which impoverishes people.  Kristel is not a tool, but evidence that sometimes, a system that benefits us so much is something that kills one of us.  A system that forces us to dance on empty stomachs.

And that’s why it’s an “agenda,” at least in Manuel’s eyes: it hits you right in the pit of the stomach.

The Zapatistas chose to start their war on January 1st, 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect. They took over the Plaza de Armas in San Cristóbal de las Casas without frightening the tourists on their Christmas holidays–this was so much the case that Marcos told some tourists who were going to the beach at Cancún that he hoped they would have a good time, and he told some others who planned to go to the archeological site at Palenque that the road was closed and, not without humor, added: “Excuse the inconvenience, but this is a revolution.”

- Elenia Poniatowska, “Subcomandante Marcos and Culture”

In her column on yesterday’s issue of The Philippine Star, Cate de Leon argues that “activism is passé.”  I think her view reflects a lot of popular middle-class sentiments about how the students of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines burned chairs and school equipment on the school quadrangle – and how some students of the University of the Philippines wrote graffiti on the walls of UP Manila – to protest tuition fee increases that allegedly contributed to the suicide of Kristel Tejada.  It’s the popular middle-class (or, using the term loosely, “bourgeois”) point of view that this kind of “hooliganism” and “vandalism” is unnecessary, ineffective, and inefficient.

I agree with Cate this much: “When you have a cause and you’re committed to seeing it through, you make it your responsibility to make sure you are listened to.  If one method doesn’t work, you try something else.”  There are a lot of methods of activism that I personally do not agree with, like pelting eggs at government officials or destroying the gates of school buildings.  But if we continue looking at activism from that point of view, we’re missing the point of activism altogether.

My issue with Cate’s sweeping generalizations is that it frames activism on a very narrow point of view: one framed by “limited and actual experiences,” a shifty standpoint betrayed by her own tempting thoughts that “maybe oppressive structures are illusions.”  Some corporations and industries don’t deny that anymore anyway, and spend so much on “corporate social responsibility” that it somehow becomes a shield for all the environmental destruction, or the mass layoffs, the very causes that activists find themselves at odds with.

But the word passé carries with it a notion of being fashionable, which isn’t true for the principles that make activism perpetually relevant.  And while it’s true that certain protests are done out of sumusunod sa uso or sumasakay sa isyu, activism carries with it a certain longevity.  That’s why it’s still here.  A certain desire – a need – to topple the oppressive structures that give us the illusion that we’re living in a just and fair society.  The pointed criticism that Cate is trying to make didn’t hit the mark that well.

Let’s get rid of the platitudes and draw this rather complex thing in a very simple refresher.

*     *     *

Modern society was built on the back of activism, as much as it was built on the cogs and wheels of capitalism.  The men and women who stormed the Bastille were activists.  Those in the Thirteen Colonies who stood up against British rule were activists.  The heroes that we often take for granted in our coins and bills were activists.  Every convenience we enjoy today is made possible in part by the struggles of activist movements: civil rights movements, workers’ movements, feminist movements, indigenous peoples’ movements, cancer support movements, AIDS awareness movements, students’ movements, and so on and so forth.

These are made up of people – “ordinary, relatable people who shit in the morning,” may I add – who rally against ordinary, relatable pieces of shit called oppressive structures.  Things like tyrants, taxation without representation, colonization, racism, worker abuse, sexism, discrimination, a lack of healthcare, the high costs of education, and so on and so forth.  And there are people – like myself, Cate, and whoever is reading this right now – who are continually dehumanized by oppression, reduced to being just cogs in the wheel.  It’s like seeing how much you pay in taxes and have to suffer through a bad road and see the insufferable face of a politician somewhere there.  Just as there are working-class people who don’t get paid with things we take for granted: I’m not talking about 13th month pay and bonuses, but an actual wage.

Yes, there are people who fight small battles in a really big war.  People like Kristel Tejada, who fought a small battle with her tuition fees and lost to the big war of poverty.  People like Cristina Jose, who fought a small battle with donations that were hoarded from her community, and she paid for it with her life.  People like Jonas Burgos, James Balao, Sherlyn Cadapan, and Karen Empeno: fought their small battles in a really big war, and now we don’t know where they are.  And yes, it goes without saying that we are surrounded by cold, dehumanizing, abject poverty that we see from the comfort of our comfortably middle-class windows: we don’t have to experience that, but it’s real.

Now when all those oppressive structures – or “illusions” – trample on the rights you have, when they disrupt your daily life and prevent you from making your way in the world, what is your choice?  Surely you’re not in a position to do some “actual, authentic, two-way communication” with tyrants, colonizers, racists, sexists and so on.  We try: Cate talked with her college secretary, Kristel’s parents talked with the UP Manila administration.  Heck Rizal, MLK, Malcolm X, Jesus, Gandhi, they all did the same thing.

But sometimes, and all too often, when power is not on your side, you are not at liberty to do any “actual, authentic, two-way communication.”  People who tried doing that didn’t find the road easier, but harder, and next to impossible. A lot of the things we enjoy today – like next week’s holidays, health benefits at work, the right to vote, gender equality, civil rights, vaccination, women’s healthcare, hygiene – those are things that weren’t achieved by “actual, authentic, two-way communication.” They were achieved by things like jail, protests, rallies, pickets, strikes, and yes, in at least one case, a crucifixion.

As responsible as we are for our own actions, there are people who do it wrong by us.  There are people who selfishly want the world for themselves.  And yes, all too often, poor people are left with little to no choice because this world revolves around your ability to make one.  There’s suicide on one end, there’s kapit sa patalim on the other, there’s the right to starve, there’s the off-chance of winning the lottery or making good on the business.

You find a way, or you make one.  Some people look out only for themselves.  Some people work for the welfare of their brothers and sisters in mind.  When you find a way or make one for the latter, there is cause.  There is activism.

I’m sure that spending years in prison before getting shot, leading millions of people to speak about your dream or to the seaside to gather salt, turning tables over at the the synagogue, or raising your indignation over the death of a schoolmate is inconvenient, disagreeable, or perhaps even debatable.  That while there is no excuse for rowdy, unreasonable behavior, there is no excuse in doing nothing about the things that oppress your brothers and sisters, much less denying the existence of large-scale oppression in modern society.  When things are wrong, people stand up.  When structures oppress them, people fight.  And when people stand up to fight, they’re activists.  When people speak for change, they’re activists.  When people act for change, they’re activists.

*     *     *

Which brings me to this: the color, ideology, and political beliefs of these activists are immaterial to the argument at this point because it was not pointed out: the author lumped them all together with the sweeping generalization.  But more that that, by saying that “activism is passé,” the piece betrays itself as something that I hope isn’t intentional: a shallow defense of the status quo, an apologia for the bourgeois and the burgis, that “grating speeches” and militancy aren’t things that hit close to home if you’re not the one bearing the brunt of the suffering.

It sounds naïve because it is, especially on every time the slip revealed itself: in “limited but actual experiences,” in the shallowness of saying that that “maybe oppressive structures are illusions,” and asserting an “oppressor-oppressed dichotomy” where there is none.  Or something as simple as friction, even: that it exists, that it is necessary, and in the real world, you need resistance to make things work.

This much I agree with Cate.  I don’t subscribe to chair-burning, to spray-painting, to clogging traffic.  I do, however, recognize their existence, and sometimes I do recognize the importance of the most radical actions to move the world.  But as far as things like the Arab Spring, breast cancer fun runs, and the undercurrent that keeps PUP tuition that low, again: excuse the inconvenience.  But some things about the world need to change, whether it’s the way we protest, or the very things that we are protesting against.

A week wouldn’t be enough to experience “authentic Jakarta,” much more so if work – not tourism – is the agenda here.  What Jakarta has offered me in a day, though, is something that I will never forget.

Jakarta is a city that is generous with its quirks and idiosyncrasies: taxi vouchers, coated peanuts, its own unique take on “Pinoy Henyo,” and Twitter links on just about every restaurant’s door sign.  Traffic in Jakarta, as messy as it is, is a good metaphor for the stark contrasts of it all: the old minibuses run alongside the luxurious Toyota Alphards, the ojek alongside the Mercedes-Benz Silver Bird taxis, and like in the Philippines, the occasional man on the street selling feather dusters.

Loewy’s at the Oakwood compound was where me and my boss Sebastien, and my colleagues Mathieu and Phil, had our after-work drinks and cheeses for the first few nights.  The busy watering hole gives you a glimpse of the modern, corporate, cosmopolitan Jakarta.  This is a city that has everything going for it: money, investments, and new business flow into places like Kuningan, transforming it into a rapidly growing center of commercial growth.  But the pains of a growing Jakarta are still there, despite the architectural marvels and the Mercedes-Benz Silver Bird taxis: if the squalid slums on the outskirts of Kuningan don’t hit you as real, the millions of rupiah spent on dinner and drinks for six will.  The lifeblood of the nation is undervalued enough that a 200-rupiah coin (roughly two pesos) feels like plastic in your hand.

But Jakarta’s great food is found in places less urban, like the hawkers at the back of Tempo Scan Tower.  In many ways, Jakarta can be evangelized on the word of its good food: venerated in the epistle of krupuk, and the gospel of all sorts of nasi.  The food of Indonesia is similar to ours, but very different in the manner by which it is approached.  Rice is the core of Indonesian fare, almost always served fried, savory, and with just a hint of spice.  The authentic nasi goreng, I am told, is an art of delicate and tenuous balancing act between the volume of rice, the viand mixed in, and the spices used to season the dish.  This is a place where pork is foregone in favor of duck, fresh fish, and the bounty of the sea.  This is a place where the most flat-tasting dish can be made absolutely stunning with just a hint of sambal.

And that can be said for Yusuf Adiwinata, where Kartika, Pat, Rifky, Putri, Thevi, and myself feasted on the best streetfood I had in Jakarta: a sumptuous meal of the best fried rice in the world, sate ayam that one would probably pay up to P400 in Manila, and that Indonesian staple, Tehbotol.

In a city where A&W and Carl’s Jr. still exist, where McDonald’s isn’t the big one, KFC is sold with chili sauce, Jollibee seeks redemption from the unfavorable view of Chowking, the kings of cuisine are the food carts and street stalls, where heaping plates of nasi goreng kambing and dozens of sticks of sate ayam are washed down with the obligatory bottle of Tehbotol, all for the price of a couple of rounds of beer in the Philippines.  There is no mistaking the epiphany that comes with eating perhaps the world’s best meat-on-a-stick product: the tenderness of the meat swathed in nutty and tangy peanut sauce can have you finishing off the entire plate before you even realize you’re full.

Cheap, and perhaps even reasonable, too: in Indonesia, apparently, there’s no such thing as “service water.”  The bottled mineral water business is enough for the players to create websites, applications, and even headquarters in towering office buildings.  And the taxi services can be Tweeted and called via phone apps: which sometimes leads me to question if the notion of a “social media capital” is a statistical or a functional one.  But that’s for another time.

The oxtail: perhaps the most revered part of the animal in this country, is always fork-tender and rendered to the very marrow of its bones.  Sambal, I am told, occupies such a respected place in the Indonesian palate that the traveller will never be caught leaving the Soekarno Airport without a small bottle in his or her luggage.  There is a certain love-hate affair with the rupiah: while the taxi drivers are polite enough to count the money from the thick bundle of cash you exchanged at the moneychanger, the voucher system has evolved enough to render it more or less an option for the tourist.

And then there are the idiosyncrasies, like tequila served with orange slices and without salt as standard.  Or that a drink at Lucy in the Sky forces you to look up and see a Jakarta that’s still growing: stunted in some places, but shows a lot of promise within.  That “awareness” in Jakarta’s advertising landscape must go through many filters that have little to do with class, but more to do with culture and faith and taste and time.  This is a country where the taxi driver is a Blackberry user, that no dog can be seen wandering about, that street children don’t tug on your trouser legs but instead offer you scented tissues for the smallest rupiah bill you have on you.  This is a country where the air is heavy with the smell of diesel and kretek, that the Kenneth Cole shirt is held in lower regard than handmade batik.  This is a country where in a bar, “Sweet Child of Mine” is played in the same set as Elvis.

And yeah, I took some pictures, too.  Not a lot, but hey.

My hotel window shows a Kuningan that’s a lot like Makati on a Saturday night: the show still goes on, the cogs still keep the wheels spinning, traffic enough to make you thankful of EDSA rush hour at times.  This is Jakarta: it looks a lot like home, but looks betray you once the reality of being in a very different culture hits you.  It’s a charming city, a megapolis that still manages to keep its soul with streetfood vendors and street musicians in spite of the more Western, cosmopolitan image it presents with places like Kuningan.  They have experienced the same things as us, but they responded to it their way.  Their problems are theirs to solve, and in a city bustling with opportunity and new money and cocoons like Kuningan, it remains to be seen if the rewards are for them to reap.

Over breakfast at the Gran Melia yesterday, my colleague and friend Gretchen told me one important thing I had to know about Jakarta.  The similarities offered to me by the glass skyscrapers and broad avenues of Kuningan City are veneers to the differences and nuances of “the real Indonesia.”  It’s the same thing that my colleague and friend Crisela told me over authentic teh tarik - no Chatime here – over at Kopi Oey: that how things may look is not exactly how things are.  At least that’s one thing we have in common; that an Indonesian visiting the Philippines may feel the same thing.

I may never get to know “the real Indonesia,” much less “the real Jakarta.”  There’s too much living that you need to experience here before you can paint the best outsider’s perspective of the situation.  That reality – that authenticity – will always be clouded by my own preconceived notions of urban life and city living, with me and my Americanized preconceptions like left-hand-drive and rush hour traffic.  But that doesn’t mean I should deny myself a shot at that reality: not at all.

Somehow, this place will always be bizarre to me; and I mean that in a good way.  I don’t know when I’ll be back, but one thing is for certain: this may not be like the place I had in mind when I first saw it, and the similarities of the city where I came from, but I like it. I like Jakarta.  I like it enough that I think I should come back here again.