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Low-end living: Opting for the cheap but valuable
Fresh produce: Residents can turn to traditional markets such as Pasar Santa in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta, to get fresh yet low-cost everyday commodities, particularly cooking ingredients and fruits
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span class="inline inline-center">Fresh produce: Residents can turn to traditional markets such as Pasar Santa in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta, to get fresh yet low-cost everyday commodities, particularly cooking ingredients and fruits.
In a city as congested yet vibrant as Jakarta, life is a game of choice. From choosing the best place to eat, the most effective mode of transportation to choosing a hopefully traffic-free route, people become masters of weighing different options.
Innovation proliferates in the city, adding more alternatives to a pre-existing pile of options, but one stack that seems to be crumbling downwards is the ability to opt for economically feasible choices.
With large parts of the world experiencing economic turbulence and the nation's growth gradually stagnating, consumer confidence is falling and prices are rocketing upwards unexpectedly.
Stall foods have gotten surprisingly expensive, popular meeting places are graced with more zeros and higher numbers and the general price of things according to the market has jumped to the roof compared to a few years ago.
Ultimately, living in Jakarta is becoming more expensive and going for an economically frugal life seems to be a lot more difficult.
Even so, mastering the game of choice is one thing Jakarta's citizens live by, and a chance to survive hardship is possible with a change in lifestyle. Choosing to alter our lifestyle, adjusting to current economic challenges is no smooth road, but a community of nearly 6,500 Internet-citizens on Facebook is helping its members to do just that.
Jakarta Low-End Living is an online community on Facebook that has, since 2014, encouraged its members to live a cheap yet tasteful life. With precisely 6,392 members, they share tips with one another and engage in discussions on budget-friendly alternatives in Jakarta.
The group shares daily cheap cooking tips, low-budget shopping experiences, information on ongoing promotions and sales and a lot of do-it-yourself tricks.
Emphasizing low-end living, the group does not oppose or objectify the opposite, saying, 'it's not that high end is bad, but if you can get the same result for half the price, why not?' This philosophy, or code, is written into the group's character.
Kurnia 'Ni'ang' Joedawinata initiated Jakarta Low-End Living under the stressful circumstances of a freelancer with little money to spend. He began posting on Facebook on how to live a low-end life for freelancers like him. To his surprise, he received a lot of feedback from his friends. There was considerable interest in how to choose a cheap yet tasteful lifestyle, and so Kurnia decided to extend the concept by sharing tips to a wider audience.
'With this platform, we share tips on how to live efficiently, to purchase low-end things within a certain standard of living,' Kurnia told The Jakarta Post recently. 'Low-end is not lowlife, and it also doesn't mean it is second class. It's just something cheaper, another option.'
Together with his friends Felix Dass, Eric Wirjanata and Buyung Widhi, Kurnia established a decentralized, egalitarian community that runs according to the involvement of its members and the fundamental idea of low-end living. The community follows an organizational method known as 'swarmwise', made famous by the Swedish politician, entrepreneur and author Rick Falkvinge.
Members of the community are free to post what they choose as long as it falls under the underlying idea. If a member shares a post unrelated to the idea, such as advertising, the administrators will erase it from the group.
Members can find various posts offering information on do-it-yourself jam recipes, places to purchase valuable vintage in Jakarta and unique recycling methods with domestic trash among many other things. These posts are in addition to posts that ask for help in finding cheap ways to get things done.
However, most of the tips shared are posts taken from the Internet.
Eric says that one way to counter this unoriginality is to start documenting creative and affordable methods the administrators do themselves and then initiate within the community.
'The idea is to present and appreciate things for their value, not mere prices,' he says. 'We want to document simple but cheap things that we and our friends do but we still haven't found the time.'
The members' posts and tips offer some relief from Jakarta's increasingly scary prices. The unique ideas give members the ability to choose more budget-friendly options.
Scrolling through the group's activities, one sees that advertisements are not allowed, and members have to be conscious of this when presenting a post or starting a discussion.
Names of brands and shops need to be censored to ensure the validity of the community's main objective, especially considering the fact that commercialized things in Jakarta are far from low-end.
Acknowledging the absence of popular brands and commercialized goods, anonymity and authenticity might just be the way the community's members achieve a frugal but satisfying economic life. It's widely known that the price of a certain good becomes staggeringly more expensive once it is branded, compared to those solely purchased at a local market or those goods that are self-made and planted.
'The thing with Jakarta is that there's a lot of superficiality,' says Kurnia. 'Achieving a low-end life is actually not that difficult [in Jakarta] even under this economy. It's just questioning which aspect of a good is more important: the function or the social status that comes with it?'
For the community, seeing the city from a different lens is one way to live a life that's affordable. Felix suggests that the best way to live cheaply yet with value is to control the consumerist beast within us, even if that's a lot of work.
'People should spend time in public places like parks or libraries. The cost is free but is still romantically applicable for dating or even working.'
Kurnia says that 'trying everything' is another way to low-end living. Exploring possibilities, being creative with what we already have and breaking the barriers of routine is a way for us to try new things that can be beneficial.
As an example, people could go to local markets and purchase fresh local organic commodities instead of going to the usual major supermarkets.
'Lower your prestige and meet people from all classes,' Kurnia says. 'As we surround ourself with a variety of people, we learn more, we receive more tips and we'll be able to survive.
'Like all communities, I alone do not really build it. We [the members and I] build it together.'
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The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post.
' Photos by Sekar K. Tandjung
