Simon Pitchforth

Metro Madness: Big Durian Versus UK’s Big Freeze

"Welcome to London Heathrow, the local time is 6:10 a.m. and the temperature outside is minus 5 degrees Celsius.”

If you’re used to wringing the sweat out of your shirt every evening, then awakenings rarely come ruder. I briefly considered nipping into the Airbus toilet to attempt a decapitation suicide by suction flushing my head off my shoulders, but in the end I steeled myself and trudged off the plane.

After a bleary-eyed baggage retrieval in Heathrow’s god-awful Terminal Four, I headed out into freezing fog to meet my sister. The psychological and physiological effects of cold weather are no laughing matter, of course. Those living at high latitudes often fall prey to what is now known as seasonal affective disorder (which, of course, is often referred to by the fantastic acronym SAD). It’s basically taken thousands of years for medical science to grasp that people feel a bit down when temperatures plummet to penguin-huddling levels.

Global warming all seemed a very long way away. They certainly scored an own goal by choosing Copenhagen as a venue in which to thrash out a putative carbon cap agreement. If the world’s leaders had been ensconced in the Jakarta Convention Center, the urban heat island effect and the tropical climate would have ensured a 50 percent global reduction by next July.

God it was cold. The kind of cold that will wrench the spirit out of a man or forge it into steel. Returning from Southeast Asia’s balmy climate to Britain’s Arctic tundra certainly gave me pause for thought. Either you’re an evolutionist, in which case we came out of Africa, or you’re a creationist, in which case we were created wandering around some Middle Eastern Eden. In either case, the risks of hypothermia were minimal; on this point Darwin and Herr Ratzinger are surely as one.

At least the big freeze was lightened by Christmas, and I was soon eating nonstop and building up a layer of whale blubber to combat the frost. A few days celebrating the birth of the Santa, or the time when Jesus comes down the chimney, or whatever it is, was just what the doctor ordered.

After a few days of gastronomic abuse, it was time to don some thermal underwear and hit the streets. After heading into the center of town, the first thing that I noticed upon exiting from Tottenham Court Road tube station was how much London’s electronic road pricing (ERP) scheme has reduced the amount of traffic in the center of the capital.

Alas, the continuing social status conferred upon Jakarta’s car owners will happily see them sitting in jams for hours, pumping their BlackBerries like 11-year-old GameBoy addicts, rather than try any public transportation option. I reckon, however, that a Jakarta ERP scheme set at around Rp 50,000 ($5.30) per day would improve traffic flow and force people onto the busway system, where they can get groped by total strangers and take a tumble on the shoddily constructed aluminium walkways.

At least Indonesia remains safe from the CCTV-health-and-safety-Nazi mentality that has emasculated Britain over the last decade. In Jakarta, one is free to down a bottle of whisky while driving around town, ride one’s motorcycle along the sidewalk at full speed, bathe in fecal rivers and trash houses of worship, should one so desire. The developed world’s ever-expanding list of social pathologies is a different matter, however.

Take smoking, for example. Head down to an English pub these days with a few friends and suddenly half of them are going on a little jolly trip outside in order to spark up and shiver in the snow, leaving their less interesting, non-smoking companions, such as myself, to look after their coats and bloody iPods. It’s drink or smoke folks, but not both simultaneously, very dangerous that is.

Moreover, under new EU regulations, cigarettes are no longer allowed to be called either “Light” or “Mild,” lest people think that they are somehow better for you. “Smooth” or “Refined” is now the legally required nomenclature that must be employed to avoid Orwellian thought crime. If Dji Sam Soe cigarettes were available here, they’d probably have to be sold under the name Emphysema.

I guess I should make the most of my trip over here, however, and drink as much cider as I can before heading back to the Big Durian to thaw out. Happy New Decade, readers, and may you be blessed with many strong sons.


Simon Pitchforth has lived in Jakarta for 13 years. His Metro Mad Jakarta blog is at metromad.blogspot.com.

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