Coming Home

WEEKENDER   |  Mon, 06/29/2009 3:41 PM  |  Said & Done

I am a product of globalization. I left Indonesia when I was 12 and spent the next 13 years traveling from one continent to another. I grew up in a total of four countries, and I have traveled to more than 26 others. Aside from my family’s love of travel, the reason I was bounced around so much was that my parents wanted me to have the highest quality of education.

For 13 years I lived on the move. What the education sector in Indonesia could not provide, others overseas gladly offered in its place, allowing me the privilege of living in Hong Kong and Sydney, of spending summers in Madrid and London and of having the all-American college experience in Syracuse. I thank the laws of supply and demand daily for this opportunity of a lifetime.

One day, I realized that it was time to come home. I felt I needed to gain back the distance that has made my family so unfamiliar to me. So I packed my bags and headed back to Jakarta.

Let me give you an idea of how long 13 years is. When I left, Pondok Indah Mall was the place to be and Sizzler was the best restaurant in town. The last concert I went to was a Kriss Kross concert. That’s right, Kriss Kross. They wore their clothes backward. At the time I thought it was cool. Needless to say I had a lot of catching up to do!

I had all of two friends when I came back. They’ve lived here all their lives, so they tried to update me on Jakarta today. Apparently Sizzler was not so hip now – it wasn’t even called Sizzler anymore – and Pondok Indah Mall had spawned a larger, hipper version of itself named Pondok Indah Mall II (clearly we Indonesians are not best known for our originality!).

My friends introduced me to their friends so I could feel more at home. That was when I realized how foreign exchange students must feel. We couldn’t find common topics for conversation. I couldn’t understand their humor. In the words of Indonesians, I was ‘nggak nyambung’ or ‘tulalit’, literally disconnected.

I couldn’t even eat where they ate because my stomach wasn’t immune to the street foods here. My friend suggested her desensitization method, which was to just keep eating and ignore the side effects. She thought the worst that would happen was a longer stop in the bathroom. A small price to pay considering the lifetime’s worth of enjoyment, she pointed out. After 18 trips to the toilet I decided her theory was unsound.

The first year was difficult. I didn’t know many people. I missed my friends and I missed living in a functioning city. I was used to walking places and doing outdoor activities. I was used to open space. In Jakarta I went from my apartment to my car to my office back to my car to the gym and then to the car, and home. I used to live in a city where it snowed seven months in a year. I would get snowed in maybe two, three times a year. I get stuck in Jakarta traffic every day, rain or shine.

But what Jakarta lacks in open spaces, it makes up for in other ways. My life overseas might seem glamorous, what with all the jet-setting around the world, but in reality I live a much more luxurious life here. I was no stranger to scrubbing the toilet and doing the dishes when I lived abroad. I have been doing my own laundry since I was 15. The hard lesson of not mixing your whites and your colors is very quickly learned when you have to wear various shades of purple for a week. Here your clothes are always ironed and your bed made. Food is ready when you come home and a meal consists of actual food groups that are approved by health nutritionists. Apparently leftover spaghetti and fried eggs do not a balanced meal make!

Jakarta is a strange place which I am still trying to comprehend. On the one side there is the grit, the grime and the in-your-face poverty, on the other side the glamorous, cosmopolitan Jakarta. As part of the upper-middle class, one gains automatic access to the hippest bars, the fanciest parties and the most fashionable events. Trendy restaurants provide modern Western cuisine targeted toward suckers like me, who suffer from bouts of nostalgia and are willing to pay a premium to cure their cravings.

You can walk into a bar and feel like you’re back in Sydney or New York or any other international city. In Jakarta, you can live the same lifestyle as you had while you were overseas, or sometimes even better.

But in the end, life is not about all that. It is about the people you surround yourself with. To love where you live, you must be with the ones that make you feel you belong. After that first year I found my people. The outliers just like me, who’ve been away so long they are more comfortable conversing in English, who have had their share of frustrations about being back, who miss the same things they experienced in some other country they lived in some time ago.

At the end of the day, wherever you are, when you are surrounded by friends and loved ones, even the worst day can turn to the best. Three years on, I am still trying to figure out where I fit in. After meeting my people, I realize that that’s ok. We’ll figure it out together eventually!

+ Tessa Wijaya

A  |   A  |   A  |    |   |    |    |    |     |    

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.