Christopher Torchia - Indonesian Slang: Colloquial Indonesian at Work

Chapter One

Creatures

Indonesia teems with tame, predatory and mythical animals. Some stick to the jungles, some loiter in your living room. Others roam the underworld.

Tikus kantor

Office rat = Thief.

A miscreant lingers in the office or on the factory floor until everyone leaves, then swipes valuables before scurrying away like a rodent.

Tikus negara (state rat) is a government worker intent on personal gain. A motorcycle policeman on the take pulls over a motorist who runs a red light or stop sign. The driver settles the case on the spot. He leans over and tucks a banknote into the cops boot, which rests on the foot peg of his bike.

Rats are part of life in Indonesia. They rummage through garbage at street corners and crawl from drainage ditches. They gnaw on house foundations, chew window screens, scuttle in ceilings, slither around the water bowls of squat toilets, leave droppings beside bedside tables and munch through food containers. A newspaper columnist once proposed putting a bounty on rats, but the idea fizzled.

Rats are cunning and live in the same surroundings as humans, so they make good symbols of unsavory characters such as tikus berdasi (rat in a tie) and tikus berjas (rat in a suit).

Rats are also a scourge in the countryside, where they eat rice and other crops, inflicting huge losses on farmers. They multiply and spread disease.

Bajing loncat

Jumping squirrel = A thief who waylays vehicles on long journeys.

Bajing loncat was the bane of the trans-Sumatra highway, a major artery stretching between Lampung province in the south and Aceh province in the north of the island.

Luggage-laden buses or cargo trucks formed convoys on the highway for safe passage through forests at night. Groups of bajing loncat hid behind trees at curves, or near potholes and bumpy stretches, and jumped onto the backs of slowing vehicles. They climbed up to bus roofs, or opened rear truck doors, and lobbed bags and goods onto the street. Then they leaped off, backtracking to collect the booty. Drivers and passengers realized their misfortune when they reached their destination.

You can travel the length of the trans-Sumatra road in two days, making regular stops. Jungle foliage and neat palm plantations line the road between towns of two-storey wooden buildings. The worst stretch of road is in the Palembang area in the south. You sometimes come across an overturned truck that blocks the road, delaying the trip for hours. Bandits lurk in places. Children converge on buses at rest stops and beg for money.

Bajing loncat is also a term for someone who jumps on the bandwagon. In early 2004, President Megawati Sukarnoputri criticized several former ministers in her Cabinet who had quit to run in the presidential election. She described them as bajing loncat , fickle people who pursued their own interests, not those of the nation. One of them, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, defeated Megawati in the election and became president.

Kelas kakap

Snapper class = Top of the line

A red snapper fish is big and bold, and feeds on smaller fish. But kakap , which can refer to any large fish, also has negative connotations. Penjahat kelas kakap is a big-time gangster; playboy kelas kakap is a habitual womanizer.

The low end of the scale is kelas teri ( teri is a small fish).

Ali Ghufron, an Islamic militant who claimed to have fought alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and two other people were sentenced to death for organizing bombings that killed 202 people at nightclubs on Bali island on October 12, 2002. During his trial, Ghufron said he was ikan teri (small fry) and that U.S. President George W. Bush and his allies were the big fish who deserved punishment. Authorities blamed the attacks on Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian terrorist network linked to al-Qaida.

Ghufron and the two other militants were executed in 2008. Their families said they believed they would be rewarded in heaven.

Kutu loncat

Jumping louse = An opportunist

Someone who bounces from one job or scheme to the next, like a louse that dances in locks of hair.

Mati kutu (dead louse) is a cornered, powerless person.

Kutu buku (book louse) is a bookworm, or nerd. The term is complimentary because book lice are smart and eager to learn. Some Indonesian literacy campaigners hoisted huge posters with a cartoon image of a bespectacled louse, smiling and reading a book.

Lice are a nuisance in rural Indonesia. Farmers sigh with exasperation when they find lice squirming in grain sacks, but take the discovery in stride. Villagers, mostly females, sit on front porches on a lazy afternoon and pluck lice from the heads of friends and relatives in full view of passers-by. Lice-laced hair doesnt inspire revulsion. Villagers often crunch the lice in their teeth, and eat them. They like the mild, salty taste.

Terlepas dari mulut buaya, masuk ke mulut harimau

Released from the crocodiles mouth, enter the tigers mouth = From the frying pan into the fire

The tiger is a symbol of pride and power in Indonesia. At one time, powerful people were believed to become tigers after death. The symbol of a division in the modern military is the white tiger.

In parts of Central Java, people who walked through jungles to get home once murmured eyang (grandfather or grandmother in Javanese) to any tigers lurking in the undergrowth. They believed the tigers would spare them if they addressed the creatures as respected family members.

Poaching and depletion of habitats slashed the tiger population. For decades, poachers defied conservation laws, hunting tigers for fur, bones, teeth, claws and whiskers. Middlemen sold the body parts across Asia as good luck charms and in traditional treatments for ailments such as arthritis. Some people covet the tiger penis as an aphrodisiac. Tigers disappeared from Bali and the crowded island of Java long ago. Park rangers on Sumatra protect a dwindling number of the big cats, but forests where they dwell are shrinking because developers clear land for palm oil plantations and other industries. Tigers sometimes pad out of the jungle and attack livestock and even villagers.

Crocodiles are better off than tigers. The Sumatran city of Medan has the biggest crocodile farm in Indonesia. But demand for skins is high, and some rearing farms depend on eggs and young crocodiles seized from the wild.

Ancient beliefs held that the crocodile was the ruler of the underworld.

East Timor, a former Indonesian territory, holds the crocodile in high regard. A legend describes how a huge crocodile transformed itself into Timor island: A boy rescued a crocodile that was parched and stranded on land. The grateful reptile escorted the boy around the world for years until it was time for the crocodile to die. It arched its back, and the ridges and scales on its great body formed the hills and contours of the island that became a home for the boy and his descendants.

Jose Alexandre Gusmao, East Timors first president and former guerrilla leader, wrote poetry in jungle hideouts and later in a Jakarta jail. One poem describes the legend of how the crocodiles back formed the mountainous backbone of Timor. The ridge gave shelter to separatist rebels fighting the Indonesian military.