Adrian Vickers' Indonesia blog

As my regular readers are aware, this year we are celebrating 50 years of Indonesian Studies at the University of Sydney. We have already held a series of events in Jakarta, and on Friday evening, to coincide with Indonesian Independence Day celebrations, we held an alumni reception.

Assembled staff of the Department

It was gratifying to see the strong expressions of support at all levels. The Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor International both spoke of the University's continuing support, the Indonesian Consul General, Pak Sudaryomo, gave a very warm and heartfelt appreciation of our links, and most importantly our alumni described how the study of Indonesia had changed their lives, and expressed the importance of maintaining the Department.

And it is quite an illustrious list of alumni: the late Glenda Adams, one of Australia's leading novelists; Les A. Murray, Australia's foremost poet; media magnate Kerry Stokes; the leading landscape architect Made Wijaya; Professor Toru Aoyama, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies; A/Prof. Husein Mutalib of NUS; Dr Lono Simatupang of Gadjah Mada University; Prof Mike Laffan of Princeton; former staff from Leiden such as A/Prof Stuart Robson; academics from most of Australia's universities (such as Prof Harry Aveling, Prof Barbara Hatley, Dr Angus MacIntyre, A/Prof Richard Chauvel, Dr George Quinn...); Terry Rolfe from the UN; Dr Helen Jarvis who is now a state secretary in Cambodia; federal civil servants in Immigration, Education, Defence, Foreign Affairs and other areas; missionaries; journalists in SBS, the Sydney Morning Herald and elsewhere; and importantly teachers who have in turn had a major impact of the lives of generations of Australians.

My fellow committee members, Keith Foulcher, Trina Supit and Leonie Wittman, did a great job, and thanks too to the Alumni Office, the Dean of Arts and the School of Languages and Cultures for their subsidies and other forms of support.

PM Kevin Rudd recently said in Singapore: "I am committed to making Australia the most Asia-literate country in the collective West. My vision is for the next generation of Australian businessmen and women, economists, accountants, lawyers, architects, artists, filmmakers and performers to develop language skills which open their region to them" (quoted in the Sun Herald 17 August 2008). As yet this vision has yet to link up with the strong commitment shown by our alumni, and it is worrying that the Rudd Government's good intentions are undermined by lack of real funding to universities.

Just winding up a couple of days of official visits to Jakarta. Sounds exciting not, but actually turned out to be quite extraordinary. The University of Sydney has really embraced Indonesia in a big way. Our delegation was made up of 25 academics and support staff, including a swag of Deans. What was impressive to the Indonesians was that 7 of us are fluent Indonesian speakers (and not just Michele Ford and I from Arts, but from almost all the faculties). Our Symposium on Thursday involved participation from 5 Rektors of the top universities (we think this is a first, since you usually don't get Rektors together, let alone talking for a whole afternoon about research and collaboration with Australian universities). It was opened by the Minister for Education, with prior meetings with the Minister for Research and Technology, and participation from high-level officials from their offices. We spent yesterday morning at UI working on specific programs. Sydney has announced that we will put up more for scholarships from Indonesia, and we're looking to open an office.

A couple of crucial issues of getting the exchange working came up in the Symposium, since the Minister raised the inequality in exchanges: there are 17,000 Indonesian students studying in Australia, but only 60 Australian students in Indonesia. David Reeve gave an elegant summary of the problems that lead to this on both sides, including of course the insane Australian travel warning. On the Indonesian side, there is the bureaucratic process of getting visas (as David said, if you want students to come from Australia you need to actually let them in the country). Study visas take 3 months, a lot of expense and a lot of hassle reporting in and out. I also raised with the people from Ristek the issue of research visas.

See Sanat Kumara's site:

Gambuh, a classic dance drama that now is on the edge of extinction,
is considered as the ancestor of all Balinese dances. All
dance-techniques originate in its movement, all scales and melodies
from its peculiar gamelan. It is so rare that a Balinese may never see
a gambuh performance throughout his life.

http://blog.baliwww.com/dance-drama-music/708/

For those who are Sydney University Indonesian Studies alumni and friends, the reunion on 15th August now has a website, <http://www.sydneytahunmas.myevent.com>.

Just been to Siem Reap, where they could really teach Bali a thing or two about how to approach tourism. No overcrowding of buildings, no streets lined with art shops, people keep things clean (no sea of plastic bags dumped around the place), and the sellers certainly don't hassle you as much as Balinese sellers do (are Balinese sellers the worst in Asia? Even the ones in India didn't seem as bad for harrassment).

Just gathering my thoughts for the Bali Cultural Congress on 14th and 15th, where I'm talking about the future of Balinese culture. It seems now that Bali's 'cultural tourism' strategy is long dead, so where does that leave us?

Hari Kebangkitan Nasional yesterday also marked the historic passing of one of the last leaders of the Indonesian independence movement, SK Trimurti. Trimurti had been a member of the nationalist movement since 1933, and during the Revolution had been Minister of Labour (how many countries had female ministers of labour in the 1940s?!). She had been a leading figure in the labour movement and in journalism. Australian audiences may remember her for the brief interview in Curtis Levy's documentary Riding the Tiger. Amazing woman. She was 96.

By a strange coincidence yesterday also saw the death of Ali Sadikin (b.1926), Jakarta's most popular governor ever from the 1970s, and the man who pioneered the wearing of batik shirts as official uniform (I used to have one of the black and gold Ali Sadikin batik shirts, but it has long since gone to Vinnies). Probably the President who never was.

Recent talk by Laksmi Pamuntjak in Melbourne:

See images
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/14740699@N07/sets/72157604836805045/> of
Laksmi Pamuntjak's public lecture 'The Impossibility of History' (1 May
2008), download her notes
<http://www.asiainstitute.unimelb.edu.au/docs/laksmi_pamuntjak_talk.pdf>
for the talk, or listen to the audio recording
<http://harangue.lecture.unimelb.edu.au/lectopia/lectopia.lasso?ut=1123&id=50852>
of the event.

There's a lot on this coming week, with 100 years of Hari Kebangkitan Nasional. I'm off to Jakarta for part of the celebrations, I'll post my newspaper article on the subject letter