When I was successful in my scholarship application, I knew it was a major milestone in life. How many people got the chance to live abroad for free? It took 3 years for me to get it; the rejections I endured, the anxiety of being scholarship material.
I lived in a nice studio flat in Bloomsbury. A PhD student’s tenancy was expiring in October, the landlord couldn’t let it in September—the prime month for letting; the start of the semester. We got the rent price under the market price.
We had to find temporary accomodation for September. We lodged at the Noviellos. We were adopted. They even agreed to provide a reference letter to the landlord, saving us from paying 6 months of deposit.
39 Tavistock Court was perfect for us. Big enough for a couple to move around, small enough to clean. There is a sofa bed for two guests, a desk, bookshelf, and a tiny dining table.
We were surrounded by parks. It was like owning a garden, gardens, without having to maintain them (under student visa, we lived tax free).
Bloomsbury is our kind of rich neighbourhood: intellectual rich. Not corporate sterile like Canary Wharf or posh aristocrats like Chelsea. Big names like Tagore, Gandhi, Lenin, and Woolf were residents. The British Library, Wellcome Institute, University of London, and Dickens House are walking distance. A Waitrose in Brunswick. King’s Cross is just a few blocks away, but the noise and hustle bustle do not reach the Bloomsbury bubble.
Bloomsbury is a significant upgrade from Jagakarsa. But soon we compare ourselves with our neighbours. If we stay holed up, we would be thinking we are poor; myopic to our postcode privilege. We know London cannot be explored, even lived, in two lifetimes, so we explored at our own pace—slow enough to soak in the Greatest City in the World yet ambitious and fast enough for a Paddington bear.
On a student budget, our explorations require resourcefulness. ‘Student discount’ and ‘free events’ were our keywords. We relied on TimeOut magazines. Being in Zone 1 means we can walk to most sights and events.
Our disposable income was not as flexible as in Jakarta. There were times when I wished I could go out more or to spend more carelessly; to take a cab—mini, black, or the then unregulated Uber—when I was tired of walking. Returning to student lifestyle made me envy those City professionals. Ordering foods and drinks without consulting the price on the menu or worrying about the last train schedule.
We were better off than most Londoners. The African toilet attendant in a club; handing paper towels for tips. The homeless man who asked for change when we students were having a midnight snack in Subway after the Christmas ball—his facial skin cracked due to the dryness of the winter breeze; it was the first time I met a poor white man. People queuing at a job centre in Camden. East Europeans syndicated begging to repay their debts back home. Council house boys knifed under gang culture and postcode wars.
Inequality in London is not as extreme as In Jakarta, but it is more visible. In Jakarta, we don’t allow homeless or shabby looking people in posh streets, CBDs, or upscale neighbourhoods. Satpol PP (public order inspectors) will arrest them like criminals.
I have never been on the wrong side of the inequality equation before. I am the default man in Indonesia: Javanese, Muslim, male, educated professional. I would have ticked all the boxes of the Indonesian Dream checklist, if not because of my atheism and childlessness.
In London, I made conscious efforts to make friends with people from different countries. When there are conflicting invitations, I always opted for non-Indonesian events. I only attended one Indonesian event: the election for the chairperson of Indonesian Students’ Union. Out of Solidarity with a fellow LPDP scholar who was running for the post.
Opting out from Indonesian events was not just to avoid enmeshment. Typical Indonesian events seem to always include pengajian (prayer group), while the international students’ and London’s events are about something else, i.e. fun—European kind of fun.
I also don’t get the logic of making all the efforts to study abroad then forfeit the opportunity for cultural exchange. There is a chance you’d be exposed to racism. But if you take all culture shocks as racist offense, maybe you are the racist.
Of course, I can indulge in cultural exchanges because of my life’s priority and socio-economic background. Many Indonesian students need to save; they want to use the scholarship monies to buy a house back in Indonesia. Some have to support their family back home.
Europeans are more open with personal finances. When it’s your birthday, they don’t require you to treat them. We’d go to a restaurant, celebrate with a meal and each pay for their own or split the costs. Under Indonesian custom, you have to treat your friends if it’s your birthday. So having many friends can be expensive.
London is multicultural. A prerequisite for the greatest city in the world. I love Western food, but I am by nature and nurture a rice boy. When we travelled to West England for 10 days—and had to eat English foods exclusively—I understood why the Europeans colonised the Orients and Africa.
People have the tendency to flock with their kind. At base level, this means people who look like you. As a rule of thumb, this is helpful. Similar looks mean a higher chance of similar values. But probability can mislead you.
A fellow LPDP scholar entered into a flat sharing arrangement with two Indonesian students whom she met in the departure briefing. She soon realised that just because they all clean their asses with water—not just with paper—does not mean they share the same standards of hygiene or privacy. Her flatmates wet the bathroom floors and toilet seats. Confronted her when they found a bottle of wine under her bed (haram!).
Colonialism was the catalyst for the concept of race. ‘Africa’ was invented when pale-faced people began shipping indigenous people with dark complexion to the plantations of the West Indies. These black slaves were less vulnerable to tropical diseases than white slaves. Before, ‘black’, ‘brown’, ‘yellow’, and ‘white’ people raided and enslaved each other exclusively.
Fast forward past the debunking of eugenics, people still struggle to transcend the homophilic instinct. When the economy became globalised, the mobility of the people intensified. Sapiens are natural travellers. Emigration and immigration have always been necessary for survival and to thrive. Like insects, we were drawn to lights.
London, bright lights-big city.
Here, you can learn any subject you wish to learn. Education is an established industry. The UK Government handed out scholarships to foreign students not just for altruistic purposes. International students are a stimulus to the local economy. They pay higher tuition fees compared to UK and EU students. Living in the UK, despite tax free, means they will spend money here.
Foreign scholarships are soft power exercises. Cultural diplomacy. At surface level, Western Freedom is the consumer’s freedom of choice. You can consume anything known to humankind, provided that you have the buying power. At a deeper level, you are freer to think. Imagine a Chinese student having a taste of Western Freedom. His view on government surveillance and control may change.
The first noticeable freedom is sexual freedom. I co-signed the tenancy agreement with my wife, making her liable for half of the rent. This legal arrangement has a subtle implication: that we are equal by default. In Indonesia, the law assumes the wife to be dependent on the husband. This kind of equal responsibility applies to all kinds of partnership—heterosexual or same-sex—from marriage and civil partnership to cohabitation.
A co-tenancy can be legal evidence that you are partners. In Indonesia, only marriage certificates are recognised as proof of partnership (and you have the be of different sexes but same religion to be married),
You can get free condoms from NHS clinics. My wife still feels awkward buying condoms for me in any Indonesian pharmacy. Many heterosexual couples in Jakarta are not comfortable using condom in their intercourses. ‘Like picking your nose with a gloved finger’, a female friend said.
Abortion is legal in the UK. So when you have an unwanted pregnancy, you can have proper medical treatment (instead of having to abort in a dubious establishment in Raden Saleh, risking your life and criminal liability). Porn is accessible without having to use VPN. Vimeo and Reddit are prohibited sites in Indonesia.
I don’t see that, with the amount of sexual freedom, the Brits and the Europeans are more inclined to debauchery compared to Indonesians. A French friend apologised for ‘talking too sexually’. She asked if Indonesians talk sexually. I should have shown her YouTube videos of dangdut and ronggeng. Or the 90s Indonesian cinema. Nothing represents our dissonance on sex and religious taboos like Catatan Si Boy. We are expected to be hot blooded sexy hunks and dames, like Onky Alexander and Meriam Bellina, but with religious restraints.
An Indonesian parliament member from Islamist party watched porn during a parliamentary session. Local and international sex workers providing services in unofficial red light district establishments: nightclubs, hotels, karaoke boxes, massage parlours. Whatsapp group text messages circulating porn. #Jilboobs (hijabi girls with big tits in tight attires) are as popular as #MILF here.
So yes, Indonesians talk and act sexually.
In fact, my European friends are more sexually conservative than my inner social circle in Jakarta. All of my European friends in London are monogamous. My Jakarta friends are quite liberal in their sex life. Some subscribe to open relationships or even polyamorous (but they keep it from the public and all of us are financially independent).
Then there is religious freedom. Secularısm is a core feature of Western liberal democracy. In London, Islam is an identity—more a race than a religion. Our host family are Muslims, yet they seem to go to the mosque only during the Eid and Ramadan. They vote for the Labour Party. In the West, you can be a liberal and a Muslim.
In Indonesia, a proper muslim must be against LGBT rights (lynch them, those sodomites!), gender equality (a man in the imam, the leader!), abortion (baby killers!), and pre-marital sex (a judicial review to increase the statutory minimum age for marriage was rejected; child marriages are better than falling for the carnal sin of lust).
When my wife’s parents visited us in London, they asked for prayer times. I checked Google. There are at least five different versions according to each school of Islam!
Indonesia only has one prayer time. The only discrepancy is only about Eid dates: you can follow the government’s Islamic calendar or Muhammadiyah. Shiite Muslims are persecuted for heresy, and only 6 ‘other’ religions are recognised (Catholic, Protestant, Balinese Hinduism, Buddhism, and indigenous beliefs). Atheism is unconstitutional and proselytising it is a crime.
One of the patterns I observe about Indonesian Muslims studying in the West is they will reconcile their identity as a Muslim. Some become more religious, even radical. A Chevening scholar, an Indonesian diplomat, quit her job and wears the hijab to serve her ‘natural’ role. Another Chevening scholar, a gay man reembrace the faith because, in London, he found an interpretation of Islam that accepts his natural inclination.
As an atheist, I fit in nicely in the WEIRD (Western Educated Industrial Rich and Democratic) tribe. But I lost that sense of uniqueness I had back in Indonesia, where being openly atheist is controversial (it can be outright dangerous in certain parts of the country). After all, London is a metropolis where stating you are gay weight the sames as stating you like aubergine.
Freedom as a consumer is the most problematic aspect of the Western liberal democracy. Many Islamic demagogues in Indonesia point them as the keystone of the West: a prosperous materialistic culture devoid of meaning. While I can testify that there is nothing meaningful in extreme poverty—a state where humans must live like non-sentient animals—I too shared the existential angst when living among the Europeans.
There is an illusion of choice because there are too many choices. Everyday I was overwhelmed by what items I should purchase and what experience I should buy? The air pollution in London is not as bad as in Jakarta, the traffic is not as congested, the rubbish is not overflowing. But the UK’s carbon footprint is among the top in the world. In third world countries, pollution and environmental destruction are more visible. But the one who benefits the most from such exploitation are people in the first world, the ones who consume the most of the resources.
No wonder if you are poor in a rich country you feel more miserable. When you see extreme poverty, you are reminded of how bad life can be. You are forced to do Stoic practice of negative visualisation every day.
In London, you can go have fun even if you are on a tight budget. The parks are free. The pubs will serve construction workers, so long as he is not wearing soiled work clothes. It’s always good to be rich anywhere, but to have the disposable income in London means you can taste that freedom measured in Poundsterlings.
Money is only as interesting as what you’re going to do about it. In the free Western world, money could be that interesting. No wonder those Arab royalties and Russian oligarchs, the Nigerian oil tycoons, and members of Indonesian political dynasties spend their summers in London. This is the playground of the 1% rich.
The wealth of the Greatest City in the World and its free thinking atmosphere also gave me a crash course and immersive learning on socialism. I was a crypto-fascist libertarian. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Objectivism are romantically appealing to me. I believe in meritocracy and private corporations as the bulwark of humanity. If we work hard, be clever and innovative, and bring the best of ourselves, the world should reward us. After all, I managed to negotiate my way to London.
I came from a middle class family in Jakarta. My family is always struggling with money. Not necessarily because we were poor, but my parents are bad at managing money. Their aspirations are simple: a house, weekends at a shopping mall, dining at mediocre chain restaurants, new car every 5 years, new phone every year, and fast fashion clothings.
But that kind of Jakarta lifestyle is above my parents’ income. My dad is a self employed architect (but he doesn’t generate many clients so he’s virtually unemployed). My mum’s meagre salary in a publishing company supported us financially. They are both Muslims and patriarchal. Bapak is insecure and always feels undermined as the man of the house if my mum speaks any disagreement. Ibu is resentful that she has to take a man’s duty of bringing the food to the table. Supposedly, she could enjoy her income for fun.
London can be brutal when you are poor, but Jakarta can be third world brutal. Only few decent public parks or spaces here. So if you can’t afford going to the shopping malls, you’d be stuck in your home. The public transports are substandards, not having your own transport will severely restrict your mobility. If you are a guy without a car, do not dream of dating a pretty girl. If you are not a pretty girl, do not expect to date a guy. Men’s currency is wealth and women’s beauty. It is the remnants of our feudalistic societies, East or West.
So I worked hard, went to law school, and entered private practice. Climbed my way up the socioeconomic ladder—thought that I came that far due to my perseverance and cunningness. But when I came to London, I just realised a thing called ‘systemic inequality’. In Jakarta, as a default man, I was blind to it.
London is the pinnacle of my achievements, but it brought me to the ground. My peers of international students represent the North-South divide. International students from emerging market countries are typically older (30 something or late twenties). While Europeans are in their early twenties, fresh graduates.
It is common for my European peers to have a master’s degree before entering the job market. The EU job market is so competitive that you need to have at least a master’s degree. Many jobs are outsourced to Asia, where the labour costs are cheaper.
European students are typically trilingual. They are taller not just because of racial profile or genetics, but also because they consume more nutrients. The cities they lived and grew up in have proper sanitation, better access to healthier foods, and are less polluted. Their teeth are not crooked like me because dental treatment is not a luxury.
When I visited Hampstead Heath, Kew Gardens, and other parks, most of the visitors were white. But walk past Oxford Circus and you’d see Asians in a shopping spree—dragging suitcases for hoarding Primark items, produced by sweatshops exploiting our own kind.
Fashion and finance hacks: shop at charity shops near posh neighbourhoods. You’d get better quality fashion items. They are secondhand, therefore reducing your carbon footprint.
Asians are still reluctant to purchase experience. Europeans, being old money from colonial inheritance, know how to live. But when your state takes care of your welfare, it is easier to be less acquisitive to tangible goods. Experience is more difficult to share with your extended family. Many senior British Asian citizens still support their family back ‘home’. Despite receiving the same amount of benefits, they have less disposable income.
Living in London taught me how to treat anyone as an individual. It may sound obvious, but our reptilian brain relies so much on generalisation. We are no longer hunter-gatherers. Our primitive psyche is not suitable to live in the 21st century. Our reasoning faculty may be a new feature in our evolutionary biology. However, ancient prophets and sages have testified the importance of mastering your mind.
David Whyte’s poem ‘Istanbul’ said it best about ourselves: ‘We are never just one thing’. I attended diversity training when working at an international law firm. The facilitator noted that most Indonesians he met identified themselves with their societal roles. A daughter, a husband, a mother. Religious affiliation is also a popular identifier. A Muslim, a Christian. While westerners tend to identify with their interests and socio-economic class. Swimmer, middle-class. Religious affiliation is only mentioned if it shows unorthodoxy. Quaker.
The diversity training comes from a business need: large corporations operating cross-borders, multinational or international, must nudge their employees and executives to collaborate (other than the fact that diversity is good PR). The divide between the foreign lawyers and the locals in an international law firm is more apparent than in boutique law firms. The expatriates in Indonesian offices are paid according to London salary standards. The westerners think that the locals are corrupt and/or incompetent; the Indonesians think the bule are naïve—that they don’t know how to do business in Indonesia (where ‘corruptors’ are equated with ‘survivors’) and colonising.
The divide was not just cultural, but genuine economical competition. The expatriates need to justify their posting, acting as the foremen and overseers. The locals need to curry favours to the white boys upstairs. Politicking exists even in monocultural organisations. However, in a multinational corporation, the multicultural aspects exacerbate it. It is safer to assume that your own kind would understand your situation (which, based on my personal professional experience, went horribly wrong).
University allows you to be more egalitarian. You are evaluated, marked, individually. No quota for distinction marks. Even in such an environment, I can still feel the competitiveness of certain students—they refuse to collaborate or share information (within ethical standards) because they know they will compete in the job market post-graduation.
Of course, diversity does not translate automatically to quality. During the induction trip to Cumberland Lodge, the dean gave me advice she deemed relevant to her Indonesian students. ‘Improve your English. Many Indonesian students struggle with the language barrier.’ The advice can be extended to all students coming from countries which are not anglophone.
A good command in English is not a predictive mark of intelligence. Pendantics are often pseudo-intellectuals. They have little or no analytical capabilities. But, if you’re an Indonesian living in Indonesia, it is difficult to acquire knowledge if you don’t speak and read English. Not many books have been translated to Indonesian. I tried reading Camus’ Happy Death in Indonesian and I have to reread it in English to understand. The quality of Indonesian translations is inconsistent.
Great books of all languages have been translated to English. Just by learning this international language, one will have access to literature from every culture. We still live in the Asian Century. Maybe in the coming African Century, we’ll have to speak French.
Indonesian literature—given our history of totalitarian regimes and censorship—is limited. Only one out of one thousand Indonesians read books. Even the giants of Indonesian literature are not yet in the same league of Western, Japanese, Russian, Korean, or Chinese literati. Part of the equation is the newness of Indonesian language. Declared a lingua franca in 1928. Indonesian is simple and easy to learn. It’s a modified (simplified?) Malay. Ideal for an emerging nation with hundreds of local languages.
Languages evolve. But Indonesians, being Java-centric, have a special affinity for euphemisms and jargons. These two traits are the main contributors of devolution in the Indonesian language. English has ‘quarantine’ and ‘lockdown’. Indonesian has ‘karantina’, but we have to invent ‘large scale social restrictions’ or ‘enforcement of social mobility’ (the only reason the government invented such buzzwords is to circumvent their statutory obligations to subsidise citizens living in a quarantined area).
When I returned from London to Jakarta, the reverse culture shock hit me. Everyone looks like me. My neophilia is always stronger than my neophobia. I have always wanted to connect with the ‘other’. I have a soft spot for interracial couples.
I am glad that post-London I can make multicultural friends even in Jakarta. Real friends with symmetrical relationships—not that typical relationships between a white savior and a struggling local. Now my closest friends are Chinese Indonesians, Australians, Americans, Norwegian, French, Germans, Belgian, Italians, Brazilian, Maltese, Singaporeans, and Brits.
On closer scrutiny, ‘multicultural’ is an exclusive club. We share two common cultural capitals: higher education and financial independence. To pretend my social circle is inclusive is a liberal ignorance. Universities are more discriminative than the Catholic Church or even ISIS. But not all discriminations are equal.
In This is London, a black copper shared his street wisdom about racial hierarchy.
‘I’m gonna level with you . . . Y’see in London you’ve always had the Africans at the bottom of the pile along with the West Indians. I don’t mean West Indians like who flew in yesterday from Jamaica but I mean the second generation of West Indians. They are the bottom too . . . Then you get some Afghans. Then the Eastern Europeans coming up. The East Europeans are above us Africans . . . because they are more acceptable. Because of the likeness of the race. There is a commonality in Europe of the ethnicity . . . you know? That’s the way it is. ‘Then you get the Asians . . . Then you get the Irish. Then you get the white . . . And at the very top you get the rich . . . Where there is no race.’
Being rich does not automatically make you multicultural. But it is impossible to have a symmetrical relationship when the economic inequality is severe. The expats and the locals main divide in Jakarta is wealth. People do not live on bread (or rice) alone. There is more to life than money. But in capitalist-consumerist societies, money is essential.
Being aware of systemic inequality was another nadir. Bleak as it may be to learn that the odds are not in my favour as a brown man from an emerging market, it was also liberating. To know that my failures are not always caused by my incompetence.
One of the illusions of self-grandeur loosen its grip on me. I am not my external achievements. I was forced to be more compassionate with people and myself. Privilege contests, reversed or otherwise, are pointless. There is always someone better off and worse. At an individual level, comparing yourself will only make you bitter or vain.
White privilege exists, but to the homeless man at Subway, I—an international student living in a private flat in WC1—am the privileged. I attended Royal Ascot in the Silver Ring, gazing up at the Windsors; aristocrats; oil sheikhs; and warlords dressed in their top hats or traditional ceremonial attires in the Royal Enclosure. The minimum betting and fences made clear our ‘class’ distinctions.
This was London’s greatest gift to me: a better understanding of life which transcends my default concepts and instincts.
To the Globe, in which I needed subtitles for watching Shakespeare’s Henry V.
To the routemaster buses, in which I have to share the ride with prudes with their music blasting on speaker phone.
To Hampstead Heath, Kew Gardens, Richmond and other parks in which I practiced shirinyoku.
To Waitrose, in which I hunted and gathered as a modern man. And to the Brixton Market, in which we sourced our proteins from the British butcher to Afghan fishmongers.
The crowded tube, the endless museums and galleries, the hipster shops in Shoreditch. The curry houses in Brick Lane and Whitechapel, the Asian supermarkets in Chinatown—which made us feel settled in gastronomically; the pubs in which we socialise in civilised manner despite intoxicated (I love the British way of ordering drinks in orderly fashion—queueing despite no visible line; giving way to other drinkers and never had to shout).
Fitness First Tottenham Court Road, our home gym. The Family Business in Exmouth Market, where we got our first tattoos. The LIF, Barbican, and Mile End campuses. IALS where I spent most of my self study. Monmouth Coffee which taught me to appreciate black coffee. London Krav Maga classes in which I learned to spar with and defend myself against European size opponents, under the tutelage of a Jew instructor.
Our gardens: Tavistock Square, Gordon Square, and Woburn Square. Our main stations: Euston, Euston Square, and Russell Square.
Thank you. Thank you, London.
