Word: prams
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Nonetheless, the move enraged other European lawmakers, who said the Parliament was merely pontificating. "The European Parliament has thrown its toys out of the pram and put a crucial counter-terrorism data-sharing agreement with the U.S.A. into jeopardy," said Timothy Kirkhope, a lawmaker from the British Conservative Party. "It is not fair that the U.S.'s efforts to tackle terrorist financing have become embroiled in an argument between E.U. institutions." European and U.S. officials will almost certainly need to craft a different kind of pact now. While Washington could cut individual deals with the banking centers of Belgium...
Visitors today to the Indonesian capital might find Pram's take extreme. True, men and boys still relieve themselves in Kebon Jahé Kober's sewers. But the small neighborhood, in the middle of Jakarta's bustle, is an oasis of quiet lanes with socks drying on bamboo poles and friendly bakso (meatball) vendors sucking on spicy, crackling kretek. They'll smilingly guide you to the still standing, ramshackle house of its most famous onetime resident, at No. 8, Gang (Lane) III - although Pram didn't really do much to deserve local affection. Not only did he quickly tire...
...melancholic tones of the story's namesake instrument, his future "tattered and full of holes." It's an equally apt description of Indonesia, which had recently emerged a sovereign but brittle country after centuries of Dutch rule, Japanese occupation and four years of revolution. Reflected in each of Pram's protagonists from the fringe - illiterate wash maids, scabietic houseboys, night watchmen, guttersweeps - are the growing pains of a tentative new nation...
...square popular with "shadows of the night" like Aminah, a prostitute from the lurid tale "News from Kebajoran." She dies in a fit of delirium on a cold concrete bench nearby. How ironic, then, that a statue of Raden Kartini, the women's-rights advocate whose biographer Pram would later become, now stands in the square...
...town of joy, booming with steel, glass and shining retail spaces. But Tales of Djakarta, in which the poor bathe in the canal's toxic "yellowish water" and Japanese officers fill Menteng's villas with comfort women, obstructs those pretty views. Though not void of hope, Jakarta for Pram was a town of tough and busy griefs. The bakso sellers in and around Merdeka Square might still agree...