Word: indonesianness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Lantip Kuswaladaya shudders when he recalls the earthquake that struck Yogyakarta in May last year. "My wife, who was six months pregnant, was trying to get down from the second floor of our house," says the professional dancer, who lives in Kembaran village, just outside the quake-prone Indonesian city of half a million. "Even though the house was swaying like a palm tree, she eventually made it down safely." His neighbors were less fortunate. The quake, measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, struck before dawn. Most of the houses in Kembaran were reduced to rubble. In Yogyakarta's immediate...
...belatedly winning plaudits for his blend of contemporary design, sensitivity to local conditions and use of materials - bamboo, coconut wood, terracotta - that are sustainable, often recycled and highly suitable for regions liable to geological disturbances and flooding. Immediately after the quake, this self-styled "village architect" used Japanese and Indonesian aid money to build more than 130 shelters. He hoped the design of the rough-and-ready structures would serve as models for local villagers, encouraging them to give up their attachment to concrete - seen as a symbol of modernity and affluence - and return to the kinds of building materials...
...much of this, one sees the legacy of Prawoto's mentor, Yusuf Bilyarta Mangunwijaya - a famed Javanese polymath who was a writer, priest and the founding figure of modern Indonesian architecture. Mangunwijaya stressed the importance of spending money on training first and materials second - a teaching adhered to by his disciple. "He wanted to empower the people," recalls Prawoto, "by giving them a skill that would last beyond any one project." And that accumulated knowledge informs Prawoto's attitude to construction. "I have learned a lot from local builders and carpenters who know best how to use materials from here...
...when the music's belligerence seemed to perfectly echo the hostility many young people felt toward the authoritarian regime of then President Suharto. Onie recalls listening to Guns N' Roses and boy band New Kids on the Block and never feeling a real connection with the music. "Then an Indonesian friend told me that I had to listen to Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols and I loved it," he says. Punk soon proliferated as rapidly as cassette duplicates of the albums could be made, and Onie and his friends would meet nightly at Blok M - beside...
...sites are harder to crack, and Indonesia has a reputation for fraud now that precedes its online shoppers. More and more merchants around the world refuse to ship to Indonesia. But the "carders" of Bandung have found a way around that. The trick is not to identify themselves as Indonesian. The credit cards they use are usually from other countries. When a carder provides the shipping information, he makes up a name and street address, leaving off his country's name and asking instead that the merchandise be sent to "Java West, India" or "Bound Dungs, Australia." The carder...