Masterpiece: Batik Indonesia - Don't Touch!

Batik (Javanese pronunciation: [ˈbateʔ]; Indonesian pronunciation: [ˈbaːtik]; English: /ˈbætɪk/ or /bəˈtiːk/) is cloth which traditionally uses a manual wax-resist dyeing technique.

UNESCO designated Indonesian batik, as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity on 2nd October, 2009.

"The techniques, symbolism and culture surrounding hand-dyed cotton and silk garments known as Indonesian Batik permeate the lives of Indonesians from beginning to end: infants are carried in batik slings decorated with symbols designed to bring the child luck, and the dead are shrouded in funerary batik. Clothes with everyday designs are worn regularly in business and academic settings, while special varieties are incorporated into celebrations of marriage and pregnancy and into puppet theatre and other art forms. The garments even play the central role in certain rituals, such as the ceremonial casting of royal batik into a volcano. Batik is dyed by proud craftspeople who draw designs on fabric using dots and lines of hot wax, which resists vegetable and other dyes and therefore allows the artisan to colour selectively by soaking the cloth in one colour, removing the wax with boiling water and repeating if multiple colours are desired. The wide diversity of patterns reflects a variety of influences, ranging from Arabic calligraphy, European bouquets and Chinese phoenixes to Japanese cherry blossoms and Indian or Persian peacocks. Often handed down within families for generations, the craft of batik is intertwined with the cultural identity of the Indonesian people and, through the symbolic meanings of its colours and designs, expresses their creativity and spirituality."

UNESCO on Inscribed in 2009 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

so, DON'T TOUCH !!!

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mudik (Indonesian, verb)

travelling back to where the migrants come from. The biggest wave happened several days before the Idul Fitri (islamic holiday).

One of the common way for mudik is using the train, which has transported 65.000 passengers daily since 5 days before the holiday. The condition in the economy class is sadden and it's still stay the same since years before. Overloaded, overcrowded, privacyless, facilityless and comfortless.

Disaster Tourism

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Have you ever felt small? That day I felt small and powerless as a normal human being seeing what I saw there.

Those stones are as big as houses, fallen apart from a 200m tall cliff in front of me. I realized, that underneath this giants, there were bodies; houses; memories; and loves buried away with force of the nature which can't be stopped by any human power.

The earthquake's epicenter was far away, but the wave produced by the quake (7,8 at the Richter scale) had torn the cliff and filled up the 5 hectares in front of it. Unfortunately, there were houses, families, human beings on the site. They can't escape the speed of gravity and the momentum of falling stone from a height over the trees. 70 people were reported missing, only 29 found (until Monday, September 7th, 2009). They couldn't escape the speed and force of nature.

Aftermath

The bumpy broken road would make it harder for the rescue team and heavy machinery to reach the place. But it won't stop those villagers coming on their modified (some were built so low, only about 5 cm from the stony road, but it passed).

After a 230 kilometers journey on the motorcycle to Babakan Caringin, Cikangkareng, West Java, Indonesia and with hungry stomach I reached the site with my companion, Wisnu. We decided to walk down so that we won't force the motorcycle too much (indeed we had forced it too much...). I was afraid that it won't come out alive... Lucky for us, someone wanted to take us down on their car, so that we won't have to walk so far.

On the site, there were hundreds of people. Coming around from villages far and near. Some were in colorful clothes, some were in batik. I could see some children climbing from stone to stone. Fathers carried their babies on their shoulder. What are they doing there? Certainly they looked not really like rescue team or pathfinder...

Yes they were "disaster tourists". Welcome to the disaster's ground zero!
Only there is no entrance ticket like in those amusement parks. I'm amazed how this people ignored the warning that some of those stone might still unstable and there were still danger of more falling stone from the cliff.

Some police officers warned them, but it get caught in the wind and the voices never reached them. The police had not put some parameter lines to keep people away so that the evacuation team can work and the risk would be minimized.

It was like ants with a pool of syrup. The ants need some food, so does those people needed some entertainment. only it's the wrong place..because like the syrup might also kills the ant if it trapped inside, so can those giants kill all of us suddenly, collaborating only with gravity and bad luck...

Are we Indonesian really need entertainment so bad so that we would come like ants to the catastrophic site?

...my friends in the glass jar...

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some of my crazy friends...