Saturday 1 July
All quiet on the Eastern front
Saturday night is always a bit of a gamble down the Blok. Sometimes it’s all action, sometimes it’s an anticlimax. A good rule of thumb is that if Friday is a real sizzler it’s odds on that Saturday will be quieter - and vice versa. Well, tonight’s a goodie. Top Gun is the starting off point for what turns out to be an excellent evening’s revelling. With more optimism than expectation of winning I sign up for the pool table and take a seat at the main bar. Feeling a bit peckish I order a bowl of sop buntut and get myself on the outside of a bottle of ice-cold beer.
The reason I usually stick to the local dishes is that western food can be a bit of a hit and miss affair in the Blok M restos. Sweet pasta sauce, balsamic vinegar with British fish and chips, ‘traditional’ meat pies made with leathery filo pastry, goulash that looks and tastes like thick lukewarm gravy, beef curry sauce that looks like anaemic custard - and so on. Once you stray away from the known territory of steaks and seafood you’re in a culinary minefield.
Finishing my sop buntut with perfect timing, my name’s up on the pool list. And I’m on unexpectedly good form, sinking ball after ball with a practiced ease that surprises myself, my opponent and the onlookers. Alas, I’m up against a guy who’s on an infallible winning streak, so my best efforts come to naught.
‘How’s life?’ asks one of my old friends who’s just arrived and is waiting his turn at the pool table slaughterhouse. ‘Could be worse, could be better’ I reply. ‘On balance, Indonesia’s winning this week’. It’s this light-hearted banter that helps all us expats to keep an even keel here in Jakarta, and why we all love the Blok. It’s a great place to chill out.
Sitting down at the bar for a change, I watch the girls parade past with stickers all over their pretty faces. Ah yes, it’s England versus Portugal in the World Cup tonight, and the little darlings are really getting into the spirit of things. ‘Who you for?’ asks one pert beauty. ‘Well, I’m English’ I reply. ‘Oh, so you like Portugal win then?’ Not feeling up to giving a basic geography lesson, I grin amiably and allow her to stick a St George’s flag on my face, which she clearly believes is Portuguese.
And then it happens. In comes a seemingly endless stream of gorgeous Sweet Young Things, very much in festive mood. Giggling and larking about, chasing each other round the bar and then having fits of the giggles, the place suddenly comes alive. One of them latches on to me, and I have a delightful time chatting with her and her coterie of young friends. This is what the Blok is all about, I reflect, as we all have a whale of a time.
With such pantheon of goddesses to watch, I start to categorize them into different types of facial beauty. There are slim, lithe young girls who have delicate and finely-drawn features, and large, luminous eyes that are achingly perfect. Next, there are the slightly buxom girls with wide, evenly featured faces. A broad forehead, high cheekbones and full lips typify these girls. Then there are girls that are difficult to categorize, but have one thing in common. Viewed in profile their faces seem almost flat and featureless, but when they turn slightly the whole topography shifts and a depth of sculpture emerges that’s quite dazzling. From whichever angle you view them they’re different, an almost infinite variety of angles and curves. Another type has an enigmatically protruding jaw and mouth, making it seem that they’re permanently pouting. The effect, in profile, is positively stunning, and when they smile the facial animation is a marvel to behold.
After an hour of analysis and categorization I decide to up sticks and head homewards. In my bajay I replay the images of these wonderful faces, and know true contentment. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”, as the poet Keats put it so eloquently. Yes, I muse, at its finest Blok M can be a very poetic experience.