Indonesian filmmaker Richard Oh takes his intellectual and creative pursuits very seriously.

“At home, he [Richard] reads books incessantly,” said his wife, novelist and writer Pratiwi Juliani.

Visitors of the Reading Room cafe in Kemang, South Jakarta, can usually spot the 59-year old Richard sitting in his favorite corner. Sometimes, he can be heard cussing and yelling at his computer screen as he plays online chess games against strangers thousands of kilometers away.

The cafe proves Pratiwi’s description of the avid-reading Richard. As its name suggests, it is literally a reading room filled with thousands of books from various genres and of different languages that visitors can read freely.

Reading various books and talking to a diverse range of people have turned Richard into a versatile conversationalist on various issues, ranging from climate change and human angst to the biographies of great writers and contemporary politics.

When Richard gets enthusiastic about a particular subject, his voice gets louder, accompanied by animated gestures. Richard said he enjoyed learning from other people in mutually enriching exchanges.

For Richard, the casual chats frequently come with a bonus. Supplementing his habit of reading and watching films, these chats also feed into his creative process as a filmmaker.

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