Mangga dua

This morning I did the unthinkable . I checked my Plaxo for Ballo's contacts and gave him a call.
He gave me the news that he's going off to Harvard in August ( yeah theres no Islamia Inst of tech jokes here .(or was it Manipal))

In a fit of wannabe mba networking enthusiasm , I put lunch plan with him - instead of running into him on the pavement as we both live a ghastly 200m from each other. Then,I promptly dozed off , while listening to Russel Davies pod cast on my cool arse SONIC GEAR woofer system. (I don't have an iPOD I am one of those cheap neanderthals who listens to pod casts on my laptop.But SONIC GEAR is a more exclusive club that Apple can ever create)

I lay on my stomach in the coolest pose , face hanging over the edge of the bed and contemplated the peace of a sunday with Monday off . Danke those who lost their chains , yea its already May day here. Inqilab Zindabad. (SUCI , I miss you and your Nestle tins and 'noble causes' here.)

I digress .

My reverie is bull dozed by Balls(say that like pulse with a 'B') who calls , and predictably , suggests we meet a Warung Nasir , a chillax Indonesin restaurant where Ive spent hours sipping Hibiscus juice and staring into space or reading how to go about it in some discount Zen book.(more on that shortly)

Considering I've added a dozen inches during my Indosat project , smashing Makan all over both Java and my face , I suggested we should belt some Japanese and sat in my drowsy twilight zone as he finished his tea and guffawed at some Singapore election stories in the Straits Times.

After trekking a zazillion miles to Wheelock place , he pointed to Sakae Sushi and the 20 people queue in front of it. (hooray 3 day weekends)

Not quite what I was looking forward to , (either it was Oshin that I used to watch , creeping out of my homework slot of 6pm to 9pm , or the pfflyers ad below thats pasted on my wall) , but I wanted a Jap place with paper walls and a low table.



Instead we stood in queue for a good 30 mins and started lunch in what looked like a Japanese Diner , where Pumpkin of Honey Bunny fame couldve gotten away with calling the waiter girl 'Garcon!'.

The wasabi, strong as hell, made it worth it .

There I was , drowsy , hungry ,somningesting and Kansas went bye bye.

I held it together , surrendering to and appraising the moment at the same time.
Lavishly dipping the sushi and like a Kamikaze would've said , falling like a blossom from a cherry tree , with each sting that started in my sinsus cavity and then commanded my being.

Yea Basho , I was a trippin'

And then Balls says it " Woa! this stuff is strong man! Its like theres nothing else but your nose"

I was catapulted into Satori - those words neatly tied up my feelings and it was also so very ....ne'er mind ... and so we downed the rest of the sushi and some bad sashimi in a ritual of communal being in the moment.

Now , you might think that you are entitled to know what this post is really about and theres that bit abt Mangga Dua

After lunch , decided to kill time at Borders browsing, Balls picked up the HBR and Insead's equivalent and had some choice comments about Insead stressing the word "World" in every tag line .

Later , he found a book of suggested travel experiments , like "Discover a place and its people through its bureacracy " or to find out about the culture of a place , try to accomplish some paper work there just for the heck of it. Or abt the time when the author wanted quiet time to read a book and so took a train from Paris to Moscow for the same ..... and I was considering Pico Iyer's book on Jet Lag.

Then a good hour of browsing and entertainment in the philosophy section followed, and I found this



.... think its by the same publisher as that travel experiment book.

Go on... you may try this at home .
Its what made me buy the book .

I did it - calling quietly in a bookshop full of noisy weekend people and blaring ringtones and it was creepy.
The bar man at the Red Room was calling.....nahhhhh....it was jus plain creepy if there is such a thing . Disconcerting , really .
Bought it.

The book is a throw back to my post on flash mobs and to the one night in a hotel when, lying in bed , I sang spontaneously in a strange tongue for a good 10 mintues ( it sounded heady too, really)

And the other book of the weekend.

I decided to stop enriching Periplus thats running a discount sale of books on/from Japan at its airport outlets.
At some point in the past, somebody there decided to stock vast quantities of these books , probably counting the number of Japanese executives who pass by , small glitch , the books are in English and theyve been on 'sale' for more about 6 months now. So , each time when I had 30 secs before the boarding gate closed I would browse for hours at this store and leave with the cheapest book they had.

This week , I stumbled on Jakarta Inside Out




The cover photo remided me of "Mashin ka thanda paani" vendors in Noida's sweltering dust , and in no small way represents the similarity in the bittersweet chaos thats both India and Indonesia.

I spent an hour guffawing with it in Jakarta airport , well worth the USD17 I paid . (gave up on 17x44.70)
(But seriously, all that Bush,Ahmedinejad and price of crude oil shit in Time and Newsweek during the flights was getting out of hand and not to mention duBBs slurs of me being an Economist reader.)

With amazing photography and a kick arse reasearch team , Daniel Ziv has turned out a gem of a book , say Lonely Planet and Time .
Dont take their word for it . Take mine .
With a focus on popular culture , the book boasts a 'Certified Wayang Free' tag line(read fcuk exotica).

As discovered by those who have endured Beck and Bjork through my insistence on spreading dharma by exposing them to my pet interests, these two books will surely be coming around.
And you , who have made faces when I've played Air or thrust Amit C in your hands, you know who you are , and so do the mandalas.

Mannga dua is the name of a Mall in Jakarta which is the capital of the pirated DVD scene .
Mangga Dua - 'two mangoes' .
Referenced here as a tribute to the two amazing books I've picked up this weekend and also an exhibition of my deep knowledge of Bahasa Indonesian , which I feel I am on authority on , after last weekends's trip to Borobudur and Yogyakarta , the cultural capital of Central Java.
More on that soon , but here's a self-indulgent sneak preview.







Meanwhile , call yourself.