@anakcerdas just alerted me to this blog posting in Travel Blog with the terse and succinct message: “Memalukan yah” (Shameful, isn’t it?). Yes, it is indeed shameful if even half of what the blogger, Mike Foster, says is true. As someone who’s adopted Jakarta and Indonesia as my home I feel duty bound to defend […]
Tag Archives: Culture Clash
Why Western men like slutty looking Asian women: the sequel
The age-old enigma of the attraction of pembantu looking women to Bule men once again gets an airing in the Indonesian blogosphere. This was an question that Unspun tried to deal with quite some time ago (see this link) but till this day puzzles observers as to why relatively well-off and sometimes even good-looking bule […]
Establishing Ketuanan Melayu with an Indonesian heritage?
When Unspun was growing up in Malaysia he was told that the kris was an intrinsic part of the Malay identity.The kris was such a big deal that some years ago when the son of a former Malaysian prime minister and UMNO big shot wanted to establish Malay supremacy over the other Malaysian races he […]
Karim on why race is not so stifling an issue in Indonesia
This is an interesting perspective of the question of Malayness from Malaysian writer Karim Raslan. His last paragraph is especially sobering for ketuanan Melayu types: “History’s record is cruel and unforgiving. Winners shape history and erase the achievements, even the existence of the losers. For many Malaysian Malays it is eye-opening to come to Indonesia […]
Serumpun, but different lingo
Unspun readers who liked the previous posting on the pecularities of the Malaysian language (at least in hospitals) may find this fascinating – an Indonesian-Malaysian dictionary produced by the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur to help promote understanding between both countries. Can’t wait to see what the definition of words like “batik” is like. The […]
The Indonesia-Malaysia broughaha: Political, cultural and personal?
So reports the LA Times. Unspun even got his 5 seconds of fame from the article (you have to go down the paragraphs in the story) but seriously, the two countries have much more to gain than spitting and spatting with each other. clipped from http://www.latimes.com Indonesia vs. Malaysia: a cultural war The neighboring nations […]
Coming soon on Oct 8: An Indonesian invasion of Malaysia
Probably not since the Taiping rebellion has so much idealism, foolishness, naivety and stupidity has been combined with so much misguided idealism, nationalism and foolishness. The Benteng Demokrasi Rakyat intends to invade Malaysia with bows and arrows, black magic and other paraphernalia on October 8. One doubts if they would be able to even mount […]
Whose Chicken Rice is it anyway?
There is a hilarious opening scene in the comedy film Thank You For Smoking where the film’s protagonist, Big Tobacco Spokesman Nick Taylor is hemmed in by anti-tobacco guests in a talk show. He panics for a moment but then decides that the best way he could defend himself is to attack the other parties. […]
Another Anti-Malaysia sweep on Sunday
After all the summoning of the Indonesian Ambassador in Malaysia, after the mysterious appeal to former Vie President Try Sutrisno of the Eminent Persons Group and a rap on the knuckles by President SBY, some hotheads in Jakarta are still conducting sweeping operations against Malaysians in Jakarta (see story below). Like before, the real cause […]
How should Malaysia read the Jakarta “sweep” for its nationals?
Wrote this piece on request for a Malaysian newspaper but they had to hold it for a day and then decided not to run it because relations between Malaysia and Indonesia have “cooled down”. Could never figure out what the roles of the media should be in such times but it’s their right. So, since […]
