Local food, crowded train inspires me on the ideal presidential candidate

T. Sima Gunawan   |  Sun, 07/05/2009 11:27 AM  |  Headlines

Taking a few days off is a moment I look forward. Being away from work is good for refreshing the body and soul. This time, I decided to meet some good, old friends in Yogyakarta and Surakarta before visiting my parents, who live in a smaller town nearby.

"Let's meet at Barek and have some gudeg there," I emailed my friend Rio, referring to my favorite dish and one of the places where you can find the best gudeg in Yogyakarta.

"I'm not a big gudeg fan, but that's OK," she replied.

When I was in Jogja - as the locals call the city - I was not much into gudeg. But in recent years, more than two decades after I left the city, I often crave the sweet delicacy.

You never know what you have until you lose it. That's what was written on a pin I bought many years ago. How true it is. Some people say they miss Soeharto, and if he was still alive and running for president, they would vote for him in a heartbeat. But I am not one of them, because even though Soeharto was born in Yogyakarta province, he had failed to promote gudeg as the country's culinary asset.

I will vote for the presidential candidate who loves gudeg and other local food, as well as local products, who cares about the ordinary people like the gudeg sellers on Yogyakarta's sidewalks, who is able to develop a people-based economy, and who is capable of improving the nation's human resources so that people in Jakarta can make gudeg as well as their counterparts in Jogja.

In Jogja, I used to live in a dorm not far from my campus.

The dorm was still there last week, in the same spot, but in a different condition. Sad to say, it was a bit messy. A broken chair - it must be one of the same old ones I saw in the early 1980s, could be seen just outside the gate. The living room now also functions as a dining room. A new kitchen and sink was being built in the yard at the center of the dorm.

I heard that the spacious dining room where students used to have their meals had just been transformed into a hall that could be rented out to the public. In my years, the Catholic dorm received support from donors overseas, but now they had to struggle to survive, but they did not want to burden students with high fees.

That is completely different from the policies of many state universities, which sharply increased tuition and admission fees after the government cut off their subsidy. Commercialization is one of many education problems the next president should address to allow the country to have quality human resources capable of working on many things other than making good gudeg.

From Jogja, I continued my journey to Surakarta, known colloquially as Solo. I decided to take the express train, which would take me to the city in just an hour. What I did not realize was the fact that it was an economy-class train with a limited number of seats.

I didn't mind standing in the crowd for a few minutes, but I could possibly have collapsed if I had to stand for an hour or so and cling to the sweat-slicked metal pole in a crowded non-air-conditioned train car with my rather heavy backpack and a shopping bag with two boxes of Jakarta-made cakes for my friend and my parents.

"There must be a gentleman who will offer you his seat," my friend Anggi said, trying to sooth me.

Holding my Rp 7,000 (7 US cents) train fare tightly, I sighed and just hoped that not many people would take the train - which was highly unlikely, considering it was a Saturday morning with many people traveling to enjoy the school holidays. It turned out the train was not that crowded, but still there was no seat left.

"Please," a gentleman said when I was on board. He must have been moved by my best melancholic face.

He offered me his seat. It was a bench for two with two young women already sitting really close to each other, so as to leave a small space for a third person. Gratefully, I took the offer and felt very lucky.

This gentleman had compassion. He was deeply aware about my condition and showed his sympathy in real action. If he was a presidential candidate, he wouldn't be the kind to shower the electorate with empty promises.

Whoever becomes president should have the human quality of understanding the suffering of their people and wanting to do something about it. And, of course, they have to be as sweet as gudeg.

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