Vol. I — We Tried Zoom, But It Was Too Awkward
L to R: Rara, Avi, Chris
Welcome to Weekly, Maybe, a non-ambitious newsletter by Rara, Christabelle, and Avi.
Most other weeks, we’d get together on Sunday night to over-order ikan bakar, discuss memes, and update each other on whatever caught our attention. These days, we haven’t really seen each other in nearly two months, despite living a five-minute walk away from each other. Although a grocery date has been discussed and might happen, we have begun to realize that living in the new normal might very well mean that we will not be seeing each other physically for quite some time.
This newsletter is an attempt at staying connected by sharing our thoughts, ideas, and lingering questions. At the very least, we want to make staying connected fun and interesting for each other (we tried Zoom, but it was too awkward).
Each week, we’ll be sending out a compilation of short essays, recommendations, maybe a grocery shopping list? Recipes? Much like the uncertain times we live in today, the possibilities are endless and we’d like to think we have some time to figure things out. We hope you’ll stick with us.
Rara: Significant. Economic. Presence.
Whenever people ask me what I’ve been up to these days, I no longer feel that pang of shame. No, I have not started a cool side project. I have not enrolled in classes on Coursera. I have not been baking. Social distancing has really taken away the pressure of being interesting. If anything, saying that you’ve been doing interesting things will make you look like an asshole (but maybe I’m just being petty).
I have mostly been working. My work requires a lot of research, and by research I mean googling. I was translating the most recent Perppu (Government Regulation in Lieu of Law — because everything is “in lieu of” everything else these days) when I came across the phrase kehadiran ekonomi signifikan. As I was typing what initially felt like the most effortless words in the English language, I stopped and looked it up. Significant economic presence. It seemed too easy.
Based on hours of obsessive browsing, here’s how it works in a nutshell: in a residence-based taxation, the government can tax any entity residing or incorporated in that country. For instance, since Netflix is based in the US, they pay tax to the US government even if their paying subscribers come from all over the world. This is the norm with digital companies where transactions occur on digital platforms, so countries like India, along with Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand, have begun imposing digital taxes on the basis of significant economic presence (as opposed to physical or representative presence). In the 2018 Finance Bill, the Indian government argued that “non-resident enterprises interact with customers in another country without having any physical presence in that country resulting in avoidance of taxation in the source country. Therefore, the existing nexus rules based on physical presence do not hold good anymore for taxation of business profits in source country.”
Sri Mulyani is not known to beat around the bush, so she named names: “[They] will be the government’s tax base, especially such as today when we use Zoom or Netflix. The companies are not present in Indonesia so they can’t be taxed. But their economic activities are huge.” How huge? That’s to be decided later, but the Perppu hinted on three main indicators: gross circulated products, sales, and active digital users. So I guess this is pretty interesting stuff (at least for me), considering that: 1) It was a Perppu on ensuring economic and financial system stability to handle the COVID-19 pandemic, and they managed to sneak in a provision on digital tax; and 2) I was paid exactly 3 (three) word counts for all this googling.
Christabelle: Finding the Words to Cook
"Gue butuh basil."
"Kemangi maksud lo?"
Like so many people in this quarantine period, I've turned to cooking. I’m that person. Came for the adventure, stayed out of a desperate need for regular small wins in a year that is already a mountain of terrible losses. Where writing takes forever to do — this is my third attempt at coming up with something for this newsletter — cooking is an almost foolproof creative activity, with plenty of room for improvisation in the process and an almost always delightful end-result.
This newfound joy in something I’ve only ever loathed means falling in love with Alison Roman (I may have cried watching her Passover dinner cooking on the eve of my birthday, wishing I could host a dinner get-together with friends the way she did in the video), wanting to be friends with everyone in the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen, and constantly switching between Google Translate and my preferred online veggie shopping platform. Between trying to learn the Indonesian words for ingredients I first stumbled upon in English and trying to find out if I can get my hands on them here.
In a text message with my sister, I tried not to let my embarrassment show as I realized "basil" wasn't some foreign ingredient. It was, in fact, "kemangi", an herb I am very much familiar with from when my mom (or was it my grandma? aunt?) used to grow them in our/their front yard. While some ingredients easily ring a bell (“garlic”, “ginger”), others like “shallots”, “onions”, “red onions” require a bit more research. I learned that while "shallots" are "bawang merah", they are not the "red onions" these cooking personalities of Youtube Culinary School speak of. Red onions, as it turns out, are closer in shape to "bawang bombay" but closer in taste to bawang merah. All disorienting differences aside, I was happy to know that for every recipe that requires the more elusive red onion, bawang merah could work as an easy substitute.
When making Dahi Toast the other day, courtesy of the charming Priya Krishna, one of the ingredients that her recipe called for was "curry leaves", which apparently is neither "daun salam" nor — by my wild guess — "melinjo". Instead, it's "daun salam koja", which I was disappointed to learn the veggie app did not carry. Several other recipes have also introduced me to the word "scallions". For the longest time, I believed scallions to be a type of seafood, yet lo and behold: "daun bawang". But if scallions are daun bawang, then what are “green onions”, “leek” (how is this not a fish, by the way?), and “spring onions”? And what beans do people even mean when they talk about "baked beans"? There seem to be blanket terms for ingredients I know to have specific individual uses and specific terms for other ingredients I've only ever known as having a single identity.
Cilantro has been an absolute MVP in this noob’s quarantine cooking journey. I love how it tastes, I love the kick of freshness it brings to any dish, whether it’s a simple pasta recipe or Japanese sukiyaki. Standing in front of a display of veggies at the grocery store last Friday, I kept picking up and putting back an herb that looked extremely like a cilantro, but had a price sticker that said “wansui/coriander”. Cool, I thought. Here’s a label that has space for two words, yet neither was the word I needed to hear. I googled (translate, then search), and even the internet seems torn. In my confusion, I did end up bringing wansui/coriander home with me, and was happy to find out via a legitimate taste test that wansui/coriander was absolutely, without a doubt, cilantro. It is also “daun ketumbar”, something I have most definitely heard of but never realized I loved so much.
The things you learn.
Avi: Taking My Time
Things have been slow this week, as they should be. My sister, my mother, and I are starting a new tiny business. This might be the worst possible timing, but I figure, what better way to test a business idea than to launch it in the middle of a global pandemic? If this takes off, great! But either way, I’m just happy that all the planning, sourcing, and late-night calls have brought us closer together. I mean, I think this is as close as we can be as a family. But you know what, ask me again in two months.
Also this week: that triumphant joy when you see a prominent female leader kick ass. Five amazing Spreadsheets, which is all one ever needs to feel resourceful. A social-distancing care package. My favorite art project to date, where people are encouraged to deliberately imitate arts that inspire them and engage with the very artists whose ideas they “stole”. I made a playlist! It was only my second playlist ever — usually I would just listen to playlists made by other people or whole albums without skipping — so it all feels very new to me: the obsessing over mood, over transition, over fillers. It turns out to be a great way to kill time, to take your mind off things, a low-effort high-impact activity that is both meditative and cathartic. Last weekend I spent a whole day binging Too Hot To Handle on Netflix (team Francesca!). #BlackAF has been a constant source of giggles, a warm, fun dinner companion. Adored Merritt Wever in Marriage Story, loved her in Unbelievable, so excited for her role in Run! (Now that is a really good pilot.) On a more queer note, I recently discovered the travel guide Queertrip. It will be a while until we can think about travelling again though, so in the meantime, why don’t I refer you to the sweet, sensual queer moments of the world captured in Queering the Map. Fiona Apple dropped a new album, the album, and I’m having fun reading/ seeing how it’s making everyone feel. Forty six days into self-isolation, I stopped checking my Co–Star updates. “Your day at a glance” isn’t cute or funny anymore, it’s just making me sad. Good news is, these penguins have found each other. Now we all can sad-laugh at these emails. The next time you go on Zoom, you can pretend you’re at the Bon Appétit test kitchen — how cool is that!
I noticed how some people have been hard-selling the importance of establishing structure during quarantine, and I can’t help but get a little annoyed. This may feel like an uncharted territory (because it is) and some of us may be scared to “fall into the laziness trap,” to not be as productive, but we are in the middle of a global pandemic. Being a little slow is to be expected. (If you still feel bad, I hope you can take comfort in knowing that those meetings really could all have been emails.)
Besides why can’t we trust ourselves enough that, in the end, we will get shit done? (Says a girl who took five days to come up with a 500-word entry. 😝) When time is all you have, why not be a little more protective of it? Start the day a little late, sign out from work a little early and, who knows, maybe do nothing a little longer…
If you can, why not just take your time?