Budi, teruslah bermain bola (Budi, keep on playing ball).

July, 2009.

I thought it was thunder.

In Indonesia, the weather is truly a force. In the wet season, often the thunder will drop over Jakarta like a smattering of firecrackers on bitumen, clapping across the sky and setting off car alarms. Or it will pop like a gunshot in the distance. Mostly the storms roll over the skies in the afternoons; morning thunder is relatively uncommon. It is also very rare to have rain in the dry season.

So that morning when I awoke to a sound like one great clap of thunder, I sat straight up in my bed. And there, from my little apartment oasis, 28 floors above an awakening city, I wondered why on earth there was thunder at 8am in the dry season.

It didn’t occur to me that a few kilometres from my bedroom, two men had just detonated backpacks and suitcases full of nail-packed high explosives inside the Ritz Carlton and the JW Marriot hotels in Mega Kuningan.

I wandered out into the lounge room and my flatmate swung around to me from the TV, open mouthed, phone in one hand and the other outstretched, pointing toward our open balcony door in the direction of Mega Kuningan where 9 lives had just been lost.

I thought it was thunder, I heard myself say.

We watched the TV coverage together for a little while and I wandered out onto the balcony, confused about how this could have happened, just over there, just beyond that road, through that haze. Where my friends attend meetings, and take salsa lessons, and have breakfast.

When it became too much to try to understand the local TV coverage, I went back into my bedroom. There, my unanswered phone had vibrated itself off my bedside table with warnings from the in-country managers of our program.

You don’t have to go to work today. (It hadn’t even occurred to me to get dressed).

Stay somewhere safe. (This was a difficult command to follow with confidence).

Don’t go into the Kuningan area. (This was also difficult- I live in Kuningan so I was already breaking this last warning).

The rest of the day was spent watching coverage on TV, calling friends, returning messages, hearing reports of car bombings on the roads (this didn't happen), watching more coverage on TV, talking talking talking... and.... sadness. A friend of a friend was killed. Another friend knew someone who had his leg blown off. Sadness that made me sick in my stomach and weak in my wrists.

This is my home. So yes, I'm angry. And a little bit scared. But the predominant feeling is sadness. That unbearable, aching sadness that wraps itself around your chest and tightens, slowly. I'm sad for the people and families directly affected. Sad for this wonderful country and its people.

When I first decided to moved to Jakarta from Sydney, a number of people thought it was a strange choice. But the most offensively sweeping warning I received was: “you know they put bombs under tables there.” At the time I was pre-emptively protective of my new home and sighed and said something along the lines of don’t be ridiculous. Because it was ridiculous. It still is. The statement was ill-advised, over-dramatic and damaging. After the bombings, the memory of that warning magnified my sadness, because somehow that person has now been validated and that ridiculous, sweeping remark has been made less unreasonable.

One of my Australian friends in Jakarta saw an Indonesian colleague later that day, just hours after the bombing. “So do you think this means Manchester United won’t come anymore?” The young Indonesian man asked sadly. It seemed a flippant concern.

Indonesia isn’t high on the list of tour stops for world-class sporting teams. It is, however home to many passionate soccer fans. The top soccer players are idolised and there are posters of them on the sides of street stalls, above road overpasses and on bedroom walls across the country. Manchester United had been scheduled to arrive in Jakarta a few days after the bombing, for an exhibition match with the Indonesian team. It was a rare and highly anticipated visit and the city had been bannered with massive advertisements for months. Great red posters, with Manchester United players wearing traditional Indonesian batik over their soccer uniforms. The symbolism was unpretentious and effective, aimed at engaging the hearts of ardent young soccer fans across the archipelago – to tell them that the best players in the world knew that Indonesia existed, and it was important enough to visit for a soccer match. “Mau?” (want?) the posters asked, as if inviting every young Jakartan to come and meet these superstars in person.

YESSSSS!! You could imagine the chorus of young people who could never dream of being able to afford to see them play anywhere else.

The team was scheduled to stay at the Ritz Carlton. The visit was cancelled.

Soon after the bombings, the building-sized banners plastered across Jakarta advertising the game were replaced with simple black banners with the sentence: “Budi, Teruslah bermain bola”

“Budi (a common Indonesian name), keep on playing ball.”

The banners have been taken down now and replaced with ads for whitening creams and cigarettes. But every so often I’ll walk down a broken street and see an old ripped poster on the side of a street stall - one of the red posters from before the bombing. “Mau?” it asks, provocatively. And the sight of it will tighten my chest with sadness.

Budi, Teruslah bermain bola

On choosing the wrong boy, even in an Indonesian music clip.

I have a proposition for you, the blond boy said down the phone. Are you free this weekend?

I responded with a tentative “I’m not going away,” (I had vague plans with Harvard, a promisingly tall dark-haired American boy).

“There’s an Indonesian music video-clip shooting this weekend and they need a bule guy and a bule girl and I’m wondering if you want to be my wanita (woman)?”

I was listening now.

He continued: “the storyline is that there are two girls fighting over me.”

And I was sold... I'm a sucker for art imitating life. Life of course being that in Indonesia, white boys are like superstars and no matter how average and ordinary looking they are, they will still have spectacularly gorgeous young Indonesian women falling all over them. And white girls like me, in the background, feeling decidedly confused.

In any case, the thought of the comedic value of appearing in an Indonesian music video clip for a love ballad was unbearably giggle-inducing and promised some comic relief to Jakarta life.

Of course, first I had to meet the director, a yellow-fingered kretek-smoking creature who worked for one of the local TV stations. He picked me up in his Toyota Kijang under the usual confusing circumstances which inevitably resulted from my extremely incapable grasp of the Indonesian language. When we eventually found each other, he took me to have lunch with another of the directors, who proceeded to explain the plotline of the video clip. Through the haze of cigarettes and a language I don’t really understand, and with the aid of food props - krupuks, packets of crackers, bottles of soy and chilli sauce were arranged and rearranged in an enactment of what was to be the storyline - I was able to gather a few snippets of what was going on. The plot seemed to have changed into something much better – it now seemed that I would have the two boys fighting over me, and I would have the privilege of rejecting the blond boy, on film, for posterity. The plot was that the blond boy was going to be a new dashing (white) suitor on a faded blue scooter, trying to win me away from my Indonesian boyfriend (the lead singer of the band) who would inexplicably be riding in a hot red convertible BMW. It seemed that the lessons of this fairytale were a little mixed up, however at this stage I was confident that the storyline had me choosing the Indonesian boy in the hot red BMW.

“Can you bring me your portfolio?” One of the directors asked me in Indonesian toward the end of our lunch meeting.

“Uh, I don’t have it with me...” I replied, and then trailed off in the hope that the language barrier would somehow convey that I had an extensive portfolio of impressive work, which I had unfortunately left at home in Australia. This seemed to do the trick. At least, he traipsed me around to various corners of the TV station to meet seemingly random people, then took a number of photos of me on his phone, and eventually sent me on my way with instructions to be ready for the film clip on Sunday morning.

So the day came and we were in the car with Pak Deddy on our way to film the music video clip of an Indonesian love ballad by a band called Rupiah. The blond boy and I had listened to the song the night before and fallen over each other in fits of giggles at the prospect of pretending to be in love. Now the song was playing all day long and we were supposed to keep straight (adoring) faces locked on each other.

I was made up by the hair and make-up stylists to the Sinetron stars* who spend the day constantly trotting up to me in between takes and fluttering around me with combs and powder puffs and sticky lipsticks as I sweated away all their hard work under the hot Indonesian skies.

The day passed in a blur of confusion and giggles and ridiculous moments.

The blond boy was hungover and spent much of our free time sleeping on the couch, so I mucked around with the boys from the band, who were all entertained by the fact that I was very white and and very big and very blonde and barely spoke any Indonesian.

The blond boy - he is your husband? They asked me a number of times in Indonesian and English.

No.

Boyfriend?

No

Are you sure??

Laugh. Yes.

“Saya cinta kamu” (I love you) a text arrived from one of my new band-member friends during a break from shooting. I looked at him sitting on the couch across from me, phone in hand and both of us erupted into snorting laughter.

When we were filming I tried to channel all my non-verbal communication skills to work out what the hell was going on, and to attempt to be in remotely the correct position, with the correct look on my face. I was mostly unsuccessful.

“Ok Alison come here, now go there,” they ordered, often taking my arms or my hips in their hands and leading me around.

I spent most of the time squinting my eyes in bewilderment, trying to work out what was supposed to be going on as far as the storyline was concerned.

“Get out of frame, out of frame!!” They yelled at me.

“Ok, now in frame, in frame!”

Ack! Where was “frame?”

“Smile smile!”

“Why are you smiling? You’re not happy!”

I’m not happy? (But I have two boys fighting over me?)

The scenes seemed beyond ridiculous – one in particular had me sprawled on the edge of the pool, wearing a dress and high heels. The shot was set up in such a frenzy that before I knew what was going on, I was following one of the director’s hands with my eyes, by way of conveying my contemplative mood - gazing thoughtfully into the pool, across the pool, above the pool, and away into the distance, just to the right of the camera. All the while the blond boy was over in the corner, eating fried chicken and giggling maniacally at my poolside acting efforts.

In another scene the blond boy and I were in a bar having a drink, with my other suitor watching from behind, in a jealous rage. I didn’t even realise the other boy was behind us until the cameras were rolling and I was directed to look from the blond boy, to behind us, where the Indonesian boy was in full blue-steel Sinetron mode, scowling at me. Swallowing giggles, I was then directed to look back at the eye-twinkling blond boy, who was flaring his nostrils in restrained laughter at my puffed-up Ibu hair.** Then we had to clink glasses and pretend to be toasting something... “To blow jobs!” the blond boy announced loudly, and I snorted and felt the drink dribble out of my nose.

In yet another ridiculous scene I was riding with my Indonesian boyfriend (the lead singer) in a hot red convertible BMW. This boy was 23 but looked about twelve and was tall enough to be eye-to-eye with my nipples. I was asked to run my fingers through his hair and look at him adoringly - “like you’re my girlfriend” he said helpfully – and the entire excruciating time I felt like a pervy old lady taking advantage of some unsuspecting boy.

It was whilst shooting one of the final scenes that I realised something was remiss with the plotline. The blond boy and I were in a bar, locked in an embrace... and then we wandered off together, out of the shot.

“What a minute,” I said as we were walking off arm in arm, “am I choosing you??”

“Yep, looks like it,” the blond boy said, puffing out his chest.

“But I want to choose the Indonesian boy in the hot red convertible BMW!!”

I was appalled that I hadn’t even noticed I had made the wrong choice until it was already made and I was in the middle of it, stumbling over the camera dolly tracks as we walked off together out of frame. Sigh.

Lesson: Sometimes, when you don’t speak the language and you have no idea what the hell is going on, you just need to allow yourself to be pushed and pulled and directed around, while doing your best to stay out of frame when you’re not supposed to be there, and not ask too many questions about why you’re choosing a particular blond boy.

The music clip has yet to be released and it still elicits a cringe when I think of what the end result may be. I’m quite sure I will look for the most part bewildered and a little panicked ... and one scene will most likely show me with a drink coming out of my nose due to restrained giggles.

There will also be some stellar moments of me on the edge of a pool, looking off camera distractedly, trying to follow a random hand being waved through the air.

As a side note – Pak Deddy contacted me a number of times following the filming of this music clip, telling me that he wanted me to audition to be the host of a monthly jazz show at the TV station where he worked. I have since stopped answering these calls and dyed my hair brown.

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*Sinetrons are the melodramatic soaps on Indonesian television – the Indo version of Brazilian novellas, much more melodramatic than Australian soaps.

** Ibu hair is popular amongst well-to-do older Jakartan ladies, and involves the entire top section of the hair being puffed up in a wall stretching to the sky, secured with copious amounts of hairspray. I was also lucky enough to wear a side pony in another scene – it was a day of great hairstyles.