Vol. II — We Stared Into the Abyss, But the Abyss Said Bitch That's Rude
Shirley: Visions of Reality (filmstill) © Gustav Deutsch
Welcome back to Weekly, Maybe, a non-ambitious newsletter by Avi, Rara, and Christabelle. When we sent our first letter last week, we didn’t exactly think we would be talking to a void (there would at least be 10 friends), but that so many of you are here is a little unexpected, we’re both delighted and nervous. Thank you! Thank you especially to those who helped spread the word about us on your socials. We were thrilled to hear back, even if it was to challenge Chris about kemangi being basil (Avi and Rara shall remain neutral over this matter, out of respect for our friendship). Hopefully you enjoy this second volume just as much as the first.
If you’re new to our newsletter, welcome and thanks for subscribing! Weekly, Maybe is an attempt at staying connected by sharing our thoughts, ideas, and lingering questions. 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.
Oh and selamat berpuasa to those observing the fasting month, and a belated International Workers Day to us all. (Redistribute your wealth via Bagirata, maybe?)
Avi: On The Way But Not Quite There
Shirley: Visions of Reality (filmstill) © Gustav Deutsch
I love transcribing for all the reasons most people don’t: it is tedious, menial, and non-creative. I love it not despite, but because you have to write down everything you hear, word by word: every “tsk!” (American), “tut!” (British) and “ck!” (Indonesian), every “umm…”, every “uh huh”, every “hee hee”, all the non-words and onomatopoeias. Even in cases where you can’t quite make out what you hear, you still have to admit defeat and declare it “[inaudible]”. I love it because there’s no way around but through. You can’t fast-track it, can’t skim to get the gist of it (what is this, an n+1 article?), and you can’t skip right ahead to the important parts (because it’s not your job to decide which parts are trivial). The labor of transcribing lies in repeating everything over and over again until it makes sense, and the sweet thing is, it always makes sense in the end. Most of all, I love it because when I do give all the attention it demands and really just listen to these human sounds, I can, for a little while at least, forget about the rest of the world.
But we don’t work so we can forget about the world; we work so we can live in it. And it’s hard to make a living from transcription gigs alone. Even harder is to feel dignified in this line of work, when our society has such a low regard for processes, for things that are on the way but not quite there, for anything but the final product. For most people, transcription is the kind of work you outsource because they have better things to do, and not because they don’t have what it takes: attention to detail, focus, perseverance. Getting something transcribed is usually the first step to doing the “real work”, the intellectual things they’re paid the big bucks to do: the synthesizing, the writing, the insights, the getting published.
Where transcribing is at the bottom of the language services totem pole, interpreting is at the very top. For every hour of work, the transcriber earns one fourth of what the interpreter makes (and sometimes a lot less). Sure, it’s not apple to apple — one is tasked to translate speeches in real time from one language to another, while the other transforms recorded speeches into the written word — but as both a transcriber and interpreter, sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder... Is it the high-performing nature of the task, the urgency of it all, the importance of having everyone in the room understand each other in a matter of seconds? Is it the fancy equipment and the suit? Or is it simply that industries with the demand for interpreting services have more budget to spend compared to those in need of transcription, say the academia or the media? More likely than you think, the answer is yes, yes, all of the above.
But then what about transcription? What about matching someone’s pronunciation of a village with an actual place on the map? Or what about the minutes, sometimes hours, of reading about an expert you’ve never heard of prior to the task, just so you don’t miss the context? For as long as you sit in your chair, working on a transcription, your fingers are always playing catch-up with the speaker, your brain trying to simultaneously remember the last word and predict the next, your ears forever alert. You can’t transcribe while listening to music (duh), while munching, while talking to your colleague or returning a text. Your life — OK that’s dramatic — your day is being put on hold, and you can get back to it when, and only when, the work is over.
I’m just saying, we ought to start giving transcribers more respect.
Rara: A Family Affair
Shirley: Visions of Reality (filmstill) © Gustav Deutsch
When she heard that Jakarta was to be put under partial lockdown, my aunt rushed to the market, bought ikan bandeng, then rushed straight back home to marinate them and lay them under the sun to dry. Later that evening, she walked some 200 m outside of her kompleks to the J&T counter and asked for the express service. The J&T staff assured her that the half-dried fish would be sent in a frozen cargo on the next flight out to Jakarta. So I waited, and then waited again the next day and by the third day I was starting to worry that the ikan bandeng would not be edible by the time it arrived.
On the fourth day, a package containing rotten fish was delivered to my door.
They say it takes a village to raise a child. For this child, aunts are not “Tante”-s, they are “Mama”-s, and every man in the picture is “Papa.”
I knew every single one of them would be upset when I broke the news to our family WhatsApp group that Mama Wana’s care package had been compromised. I also knew that it would be Mama Ida (a Virgo) who would cast the first stone. “Did you specifically request overnight service and frozen cargo?” Before the accused could reply, Mama Ida backtracked. “Just making sure, you know how sometimes they put the wrong labels on boxes.” Mama Wana (a Scorpio) promised to get to the bottom of this. I pleaded for them to let it go, but then again, I was the child and this was no longer just the child’s problem. It’s now a full-blown family affair.
Hours later, the matriarch Mama Ani, who was almost never online due to the fact that she was 79 years old, chimed in. “Kirim mi lagi.” In this house, you simply do what Mama Ani tells you, and Papa Adi was always the first to volunteer. He announced to the group that he was going out to get more ikan bandeng. The situation was quickly getting out of hand.
“There is a deadly virus going around. These are not normal times,” said Mama Ci. “Let’s not give ourselves a headache.” I had been waiting for her to say something, since she was our voice of reason, and as the level-headed Capricorn she was often the designated family spokesperson. She’s the chill one, though not by far the chillest. That title actually belongs to Papa Ica, who, in the midst of all this, sent a picture of a fish wearing a surgical mask.
In the caption, he wrote: “Look at this fish, it’s in quarantine so it’s wearing a masker. He he.”
Christabelle: Brown Water by the Toilet
Shirley: Visions of Reality (filmstill) © Gustav Deutsch
I spent this week deep in the rabbit hole of induction stoves and pans. Did you know that whether a pan has flat or a concave surface actually makes for a different cooking experience? And that the difference between a 24-centimeter and a 20-centimeter pan isn't just its size, but how much oil you will end up needing? Also, apparently, teflon isn't good? Of course you probably know all this, just like some of you knew that "basil" wasn't really "kemangi" — though I remain confused on the subject! 😩
But I digress.
I spent this week deep in the world of stoves and pans and here's why: Last Saturday night while attempting my first-ever grilled-ish chicken, I dropped my dinner — two pieces of chicken breast — by the toilet, in a tiny pool of water that had begun to brown from when dirt came bursting out of the drain a few days prior.
It’s hard to explain how this happened without sounding ridiculous but let’s just say that attempting to cook daily from inside one’s kost room has been A Journey. While the room does come with a small pantry, it has just a single sink, which is inside the bathroom, where the fun magic of washing the dishes happen. And so it was on this Saturday evening that I found myself trying to balance a tray of grilled chicken on one hand while grabbing a newly washed knife by the sink with the other and inevitably failing. The chicken — coated in a glorious yogurt + garam masala + cumin + cilantro + garlic marinade — slipped.
My heart, you ask? It may as well have splattered on the bathroom floor, in a million gooey icky pieces. I felt the whole thing: knot in the stomach, heavy chest, head dizzy from hunger and disappointment. I sighed the sad, sad sigh of crushed hopes and expectations, before carefully picking up said piece of chicken off the floor and sending it straight to the trash. It was a quarantine low point. Yes, I thought of popping it in the oven for another 10 or 20 minutes to maybe "kill the germs", but I'm trying to be a better person.
For emotional redemption, I proceeded to order delivery from my two favorite faraway places — Wing Heng Dim Sum of North Jakarta and Cong Sim noodles of the West. And while devouring the greatest cakwe I have ever known, I began my search, launching endless Tokopedia tabs and offering new information to the Google algorithm regarding my newfound interest as I typed in “what is a saucepan” on YouTube, hoping for visual answers. I watched the entirety of this saucepan test video and found this one incredibly wholesome and informative.
Up until this point, everything I learned about cooking I learned from never really helping out in the kitchen growing up. My grandma never liked to have us kids around when she did her thing, and mom always assigned me other chores like doing the dishes or laundry. So when I was suddenly interested, I got myself a toaster oven and a multipurpose digital rice cooker, two appliances I thought I could realistically use inside this tiny space without wreaking too much havoc. I was right, for the most part. Sure, cooking with them took forever; you don’t get much or steady heat. But it was doable, with patience, which I had a lot of. I even grew to love the challenge, “sauteing” vegetables and making omelettes in the toaster oven (each takes about 20 - 30 minutes), cooking my first pasta meal with the rice cooker (30 - 60 minutes, depending on the topping!). I was the mom pushing my multi-talented children to do better.
But nearly two months in, I was ready to graduate. 1.5 hours spent “frying” chicken in the rice cooker and then “grilling” them in the oven to perfection, only to drop it by the toilet while on an empty stomach? My patience ran out. I needed heat, fast and consistent. So I got myself a stove and a pan. To cook, to fail, and, most importantly, for a chance to quickly redo upon failure.