J

uly 26, p4

Sweeping up after we'€™d finished playing in the gazebo at a local mountain resort, I realized that what my wife and I were doing was considered very strange in Indonesian society.

After we and the boys had done playing with make-believe Play-doh food (a fun game to play with your children) bits of Play-doh had broken off and were strewn and stuck all over the nicely polished wood floor.

Packing up our snack bags to leave for lunch, I immediately picked up the broom under the gazebo and started sweeping and cleaning up our mess. (By Yuma Sanjaya Maris, Jakarta)

Your comments:

It would seem a small issue to many here, but as you outline it has deeper significance regarding this society.

I have been looked at like an alien for cleaning up after myself here. However, it did not and does not cause me to change habit.

I think we can assume from your experience of one-time social conditioning that people here do know what is right and wrong.

Unfortunately, the way I see it, many take sadistic delight in doing the wrong thing; a combination of the polarities of kingdom-like pride as well as destitute hopelessness but also a lack of education; testament to the fact that strict rules-based cultures with poor teachers don'€™t function all that well (consider Singapore as a point of comparison here).

Still, when someone tells me not to worry about the ants carrying away pieces of rice from my plate and that a man will clean it up, I look at them as the one who'€™s different and wrong, because I think they are. I think their attitude represents a deeper selfishness as well.

L. Millar