Fast and furious

d medium iz d msg

My good friend and fellow scribbler Soppy is a master of the cryptic SMS, the doyen of ellipsis and brevity. Indeed, his messages have a pithy, almost brutal, terseness that makes them veritable gems of the genre.

And so it is that on Friday afternoon I receive a missive from the dear chap asking if I know whether D’s Place is open, as he fancies popping down the Blok for a bevvy. I reply that I presume all the bars are marching to the same tune, and will be open from 7 pm to 2 am as laid down by the omniscient and omnipotent City Elders. Within seconds a response flashes onto my screen which I decipher as meaning that the fellow is in Everest, where things are open. I reply that if that’s the case, it’s naughty but nice. After a brief pause I get another miniaturized masterpiece that announces he’s off to Bugils.

I’m left pondering on the perils of SMS communication, a medium that lacks any redundancy and in which divining the meaning can be a very hit-or-miss affair. For example, last week I’m on the receiving end of a spate of SMS messages in Bahasa, crafted in that cryptic argot so beloved by young Indonesians. Twisting my hand phone sideways on and upside down to see if this helps to decipher the messages, I eventually tease out a tentative interpretation. One, the writer is young, female, and Indonesian; two, I’ve somehow managed to piss her off mightily; three, she forgives me; four, I must try to forget her; five, she misses me. And of course, she automatically assumes that I’m gifted with psychic powers and know who on earth she is.

Do you, like me, sometimes feel that the modern world is leaving you far behind in the remorseless march of linguistic progress? Do you wish that you could SMS with the best of them, and hold your own in the Brave New World of global gibberish? My friends, you can! There’s a great little web site that offers a free English-SMS translation service. Type in your message in real English, click a button, and – hey presto! – up pops a box with your words transmuted into authentic SMS – speak. I pasted in the opening lines of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, with this marvelous result:

2 b o not 2 b, dat iz d :-Q —
wethR tis nobler n d mind 2 suffer
d slings & arrows of outrageous fortuN,
o 2 tAk arms agAnst a sea of troubles,
& by opposing, nd dem.

Click here for the web site, transl8it.com , and all your worries are over.

Ramadan razzle

It’s Friday night, but a very odd, almost back-to-front, Friday night. Having been summoned to a meeting to discuss matters of great gravity and import by my senior colleagues, I proceed to get slowly plastered as the drink flows copiously. This explains, then, how I roll into the Blok at about eleven o’clock somewhat the worse for wear, and have to take very careful aim at Top Gun’s door as I stagger ever so slightly up the ramped pavement.

Fully expecting to be faced with a last-ditch bunch of Ramadan no-hopers forlornly propping up the bar and looking round in vain for a Sweet Young Thing to share a tearful drink, I’m amazed to find the place a seething mass of bawdy, boozy guys and girls revelling away for all they’re worth, and the bar staff rushed off their feet by an endless demand for liquid sustenance.

There are lots of guys milling around who aren’t familiar faces, and a fair number of Sweet Young Things who aren’t regular denizens of the place. Clearly the Word has gone out to all corners of Jakarta that Blok M is the place to hang out during the long Ramadan nights. In fact, so packed and so dynamic is the bar that it reminds me of Top Gun in its heyday, so I squeeze myself onto an unexpectedly free bar stool and get stuck into more ale. Tendering seigniorial greetings to my friends and acquaintances as they wander or stagger past, I ease myself into a blissful state of oneness with the world and drift into contemplation of something that I’d been reading earlier in the day.

Ask a silly question

As I sit and ponder, a particularly charming Sweet Young Thing sets herself beside me, and in very good English asks me what I’m thinking about. “Well actually, it’s the origins of religious symbolism and iconography”, I reply. She tilts her head in a way that says I’m completely weird, and then looks a bit puzzled. “I’m also eyeing up the girls over there”, I hasten to add, lest she think I’m really out to lunch. “Over there” is a table at which are sitting some of the most exquisite Sweet Young Things from Indramayu, casting amorous and predatory glances in my direction whenever my eyes wander in their direction.

Realising that she can’t even begin to compete with such gorgeous specimens, she smiles sweetly and drifts away into the recesses of the back bar. A pity, as I enjoy a bit of intelligent conversation with the girls in the bar – and this, alas, is one area in which the kampong lasses don’t shine.

Poised for success

What is so striking about the girls, the Indramayu ones in particular, is not just their beauty but their whole deportment. Sitting or standing, the whole body is perfectly poised, an aesthetic pleasure to behold. It’s the subtle tilt of the head, the eloquent holding of the arms, the slight slope of the shoulders, the curve of the back, that are so wonderful.

There’s no doubt in my mind that poise explains the easy success of some girls in attracting a mate for the night, whilst their prettier and more overtly sexy cousins are sometimes left on the shelf. These girls give body language a whole new vocabulary, and the range of meaning they can convey without so much as a word being uttered is one of the perennial delights of Blok M for me.

Music hath charms

One welcome bonus during Ramadan is the quality and volume of the music in the bars. This Friday night Top Gun has a great group with a repertoire ranging from catchy rhythmical latin stuff through to a medley of pop and rock music that’s being well played and very professionally sung.

Come midnight I stroll across the road to My Bar, which I’m delighted to see is also doing a roaring Ramadan trade. And would you believe it, they’ve actually got a live band that’s pumping out quite melodious and tuneful stuff, which a lot of the girls are enthusiastically dancing to.

As I sit at the bar facing the disco floor, surrounded by the cream of My Bar’s Sweet Young Things, the boss eases his way through the throng, grinning broadly and looking like a cat that’s got the cream. Yes, business really is booming, and Ramadan is turning out to be a nice little earner this year. I’m really glad for him, and all the bar staff whose livelihoods are so often in jeopardy during the fasting month.

I carouse the night away until the witching hour of two o’clock, when I bid farewell to the Sweet Young Things and stroll contentedly down the road for a rendezvous with my regular bajay. Watching the Ramadan roadside night life unfold as I chug homewards, I reflect that this has been one of my best nights down the Blok for a long time, and turn over in my mind was this because of – or in spite of – the Ramadan restrictions. But as the old saying goes, don’t look the proverbial gift-horse in the mouth.