Tag: Indonesia

It’s Not An All Night Fair by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Translated by C.W. Watson

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It’s Not An All Night Fair is a short novel–indeed, more of a short novella–by probably the most famous Indonesian novelist, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Though I haven’t finished the other Toer book I started (All That Is Gone) that’s becaise it’s a collection of short stories, and I often pick my way through those slowly — nothing wrong with the collection, but nothing compels me to read it in one fell swoop. On the other hand, if I couldn’t finish It’s Not An All Night Fair in one go, it’d reflect badly either on the author, or on me. Happily, …

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Glitch: Tersesat Dalam Waktu (My First Indonesian SF Film)

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So, I’ve just finished watching Glitch: Tersesat Dalam Waktu (English: Glitch: Getting Lost In Time) as I write this. (It will end up being posted later, but I’m writing it now, so I’ll just write it in the present time.) It’s one of the DVDs I managed to pick up while in Jakarta that is actually an SF movie, as opposed to mainstream drama or horror. (SF seems rare there, but horror is practically mainstream cinema in Indonesia, from what I can tell.) Anyway, the premise is that some sort of time loops have been set up for some unknown reason, …

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Indonesians Avenge the Mangling of English on Korean Notebooks by Mangling Hangeul on 대어 오ㅜㄴ 노트보ㅗㅋ

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Often, expats in Korea like to share some of the crazy English that they see on things like the covers of notebooks, on T-shirts, and so on. I myself included one example–taken from a T-shirt I got at the Jeonju International Film Festival several years ago–in a story titled “Country of the Young,” where a carry-bag has the enigmatic phrase, “And Of Course Carrot!” which, if you know enough Korean, is not at all enigmatic. Basically, it’s a transliteration of a pun. As far as I understand it, in Korean, 당연 (dang-yeon) means “naturally, of course, certainly”, and a similar-sounding–but …

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Remix Ubiquitous & on the Jakartan Mall

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Of all the songs that one might have expected to hear remixed in an almost endless variety of forms — swing jazz, strings & voice, glittery upbeat techno –this is the last song I thought would start following me around Indonesia. By the way, what the hell was with the original mix video? It sucks in a large variety of ways, so much so that I daren’t get started on it: (Update: Okay, if there’s any more proof that anyone can do anything, one of the main members of Black Box was a classically trained clarinet teacher., says Wikipedia. Sure, …

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Soraya Intercine Films’ UFO

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Yup, this is what was on TV tonight: A prime time comedy SF TV show in Indonesian about a UFO and some people who retrieved it and made friends with the aliens inside. Miss Jiwaku also picked out what seems to be (maybe!) some kind of plot thread involving some kind of device (a drug, maybe?) that makes people smart, and which was malfunctioning, or misrouted, or something, and the “dealer” of that tech who seemed to be in some sort of trouble. I found it bewildering, to be honest. It seems to be a 2010 production, from the one …

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