Tea Taster by day - Monkey Catcher by night….

June 13, 2005

Tea Taster by day - Monkey Catcher by night….

Friday was a classic night in the realms of debauchery and ruinedness - Jakartan nightlife makes up for it's lack of class with good quantities of loud music, cheap alcohol and fast women - and that's always a good thing every once in a while. To a point.

The area known as Blok M has a seedy collection of dens of iniquity wherein sultry vixens head for the nearest bulging wallet and display no concern as to who the owner is. This is the kind of place where a womans opening line of conversation is often "look at this" and then she proceeds to show you her "portfolio" of pictures saved to her mobile phone.

Real relationship material - "so how did you two meet?" .... "erm.... why not show them honey!"

The above is the reason that many say that Jakarta is a carefree young mans dream - in fact it is more of a carefree old mans dream - and carefree means lack of dignity and respect in many cases - although there are tales to be told of older guys getting together with girls young enough to be their daughter and living happily ever after - Young Indonesian women first and foremost want financial security and someone to treat them right - older guys want to recapture their youth and perk up retirement - neither of them are hurting anyone, so generally, good luck to them.

For me, while no saint, I can't see how you can be happy that a girl is going home with you for reasons other than who you are - she's looking at the clock (yes I said clock) and thinking of the money and the guys trying not to notice the bored look in her eye, realising he would be feeling pretty ashamed of himself if he wasn't so drunk. There's not a lot of good that comes out of these situations.

Friday we didn't end up in Blok M - we ended up in BATS - a high class night club which, as you descend the stairway, reminds you of an upscale Titty Twister from Dusk til Dawn. BATS has its fair share of vampires, but its not all below board - they've got good live music, fast service and prices in level with bars of London and Hong Kong. They don't water down the spirits and it might very well be the head-office of the "hot chick community".

I was telling my friend that if you remove vital words from James Bond films and replace them with "Potato" how much you laugh its a good way to determine how drunk you are. "The man with the Golden potato" I said and he promptly burst into laughter and his drink went up his nose which really fucked him up for a while. At this point the girl behind us leaned in and said "The spy who loved potatoes" which surprised the shit out of me for two reasons - 1) such a comment suggested she had character - something so often lacking in these kind of situations at 2am 2) she was from Indonesia and she knew James Bond movie titles well enough to see the drunken humor in adding potato to them.

Her name was Amerie and I don't mind telling you that we had mucky drunken monkey bedroom acrobatics later on that evening/morning. God damn it.

Then the next day I honored my promise to attend 11am Bahasa lessons with the religious well meaning hamster man who tries to teach me the local lingo. Afterwards I went to the Gym despite feeling like a washed up drunken otter who had been swimming in Vodka all night and then put in an oven for an hour or so. I have to go the gym because otherwise I will one day end up being bigger than the moon. I am not one of those people that can get away with not paying any attention to staying on the planet – if I don’t at least try to follow the rules of healthy living I won’t last very long – and after too long paying no attention while enjoying the fruits of Vietnam, I’m now getting my comeuppance - but I’m slowly making progress and now can run for 20 minutes without wanting to be shot at the end of it – which is a massive improvement on January when I started going with any conviction.

Anyways – a Saturday of suffering, but suffering with a wicked look of satisfaction hidden at the back of my eyes, passed to evening when I watched the Station Agent which starred a dwarf version of Russell Crowe, the hippy crazy sister from Six feet under and a kind hearted stoner who runs a hotdog van. One of the best films I’ve seen in a very, very long time – I think the message I took from it was that you might think you have problems and that the world revolves around you sometimes - but if you pay attention, you’ll realise there are other decent people in the world with their own shit to deal with, so true friends will be there for you but you’ve got to be there for them in return. The station agent never lets anyone into his life thinking everyone is either being kind to him out of sympathy or can’t wait to make a joke out of his appearance – but once he moves to a new town he gradually lets his guard down and well…. Shit! watch the movie! It’s a quiet, decent minded story about what’s good in life and the value friendship – I hope that doesn’t sound like it sucks too much – like one of Robin Williams man-child pictures “he was a mentally handicapped Russian robot tramp who just wanted to learn the meaning of love and friendship” – that man can be so slapworthy at times.

So when Sunday came around and another dose of torture in the gym finally killed me off – I returned to my humble abode and sank into my lazy boy chair and read the UK Sunday times while listening to Coldplays new album – which after a bit of whining & organ grinding, grows on you until you realise it’s genius. I cancelled the rest of the day from this point onwards.

The best part of the Sunday Times is the awards of the week section – this week there was an award for the fool who stole a bottle of brandy in Buffalo, dropped it, ran off and then got arrested when he later returned to drink the puddle with a straw – there was another for the 19 stone Russian woman who sat on an armed robber until the police arrived – Japanese people who made clothes for chickens also received similar kudos - finally there was one for the young counciller running for mayor in San Antonio called Julian Castro. He lost out 49% to 51% when it was revealed that he got his twin brother Joaquin to stand in for him at some flag-waving-happy-clappy Texas river parade while he attended an important campaign meeting instead (brilliant! I’d of voted for him, not against him!

I also learned that the state of Florida has encountered a 25% rise in birth rates after the succession of tornado’s and hurricanes that swept across it 9 months ago led to folk staying in doors with no electricity, lots of candles and an urge to do what comes naturally.

After loafing in my impossibly comfortable chair for far longer than is socially acceptable, I decided that although I greatly enjoyed my Friday nights cavalcade of sin, I must not succumb to the devilish temptation to do it every weekend – so I have decided to rescue monkeys instead.

Yes - rescue monkeys in Indonesia - I saw an article in the Jakarta post and these folk get phone calls about Monkeys being ill treated or abused around Jakarta and then they go and catch and rescue them - they bring them back to health and release them on a special private monkey island tagged with micro chips to make sure they don't get into any more trouble.

At the moment I've told them that I'm free at weekends and have a car to knock about in if they need extra transport - I know computers, will work for free and love monkeys (doesn't everyone?) so I might be of some use to them - and if not I'll adopt one of the little buggers as these folk are doing a stand up job in difficult conditions.

But if they do let me help out then I will want some sort of uniform and a mask - and possibly a monkey catching super hero moniker to which I must always be referred - something like "Simian the Brave" or "The Brother of Bonobo".....

Oh and there are two girls that run the show here in Jakarta, one Spanish and one Dutch, and they indeed might be described as being members of the hot chick community.

What? I'm doing it for the monkeys!

Honest Guvnor....

Spo | June 13, 2005