Lunar New Year in Yogyakarta

The weekend wanted to slip by unnoticed. It snuck up on me on Thursday when my co-workers casually mentioned that Friday was a hari libur. I perked up at the mention of a day off, a bad habit that's been instilled since I was a kid. I thought of all the things I could do -- all the sleep and the reading and the coffees to be had. Maybe I can wake up at 6am and go on a bike ride... but do I really want to? 

Of course, ideas of a purely self-centered day flew out the window when I realized the case for the holiday: Lunar Near Year, celebrated by both Chinese and Vietnamese alike. How could I have forgotten? Living in Asia, forgetting Chinese New Year might be akin to living under a rock.

To be fair, the Chinese New Year celebrations in Jogja tend to be a little more downplayed compared to other countries in the region. The visual reminders aren't as obvious as, say, in Vietnam (where it's known as Tết) or Singapore. My Chinese boss even told me that she herself doesn't identify with the occasion, at least not to the same extent as Christmas. There were two years in a row when she had to work in Flores, an island east of Java, and didn't even notice when Chinese New Year slipped by.

My weekend started off with the delightful smells of lemongrass, garlic, and fish sauce. Ly, my roommate from Vietnam, started cooking early in the morning, preparing to host a lunch party with friends, to which I was happily invited. When I passed the kitchen in a half-sleepy daze, the room was already filled with a lovely fragrance. I promised not to eat anything until the party started.

The result was a delicious and colorful assortment of egg and crab soup, garlic fried chicken, and beef tomato stew, all prepared with a balance of flavors, while of course maintaining the staple of fish sauce. I've been quite fascinated lately (read: obsessed) with Andrew X Pham, a Vietnamese-American writer/food-enthusiast, and in a cookbook he wrote titled A Culinary Odyssey, he describes fish sauce as being "the soul of Vietnamese cooking."

Food for Tết

The food was luar biasa (extraordinary!), but honestly what also made this one of the coolest parties I've attended in Jogja was the spontaneous singing and dancing that followed the meal. My other roommate, Kak Lidya, has a talent for knowing how to play and sing traditional songs from many islands in Indonesia, so she played the tunes on guitar while everyone sang (or tried to sing) along. It was like having a musical tour of Indonesia, all in the comfort of our house.

I was especially happy when Kak Lidya taught us how to dance the poco-poco, dero', and manortor, three traditional dances from her home island of Sulawesi. I caught on very quickly to poco-poco, since it's identical to a dance I once learned in the Philippines when I was a kid. I'm not the only one who knows about this, either. It's neat to finally know the origin of this dance!

This dance, known as "Tortor", comes from north Sumatra. According to my friend Rifka, who comes from the region, giving and receiving money in this way symbolizes the respect and love among Bataknese people.

Honestly when I started this entry I wanted to write in detail about the entire weekend, but I'll stop here to keep it short. Suffice it to say it was a good one, involving live reggae music, massages, long walks, bike rides, good food and good company. It was a pretty good example of how in-tune I've become to my casual lifestyle here, and I really could be happy doing the same thing weekend after weekend. But with the calendar crossing off days until I return to the US, I may need to be more diligent about ticking off all the other items on my bucket list: all the eco-villages I need to visit, all the farms I need to volunteer at, all the educational programs I want to help with, all the mountains I need to climb, all the beaches I need to sleep on, all the neighboring cities I need to bike to. Gonna shoot for it all, I guess, and if I don't get them all ticked off the list -- hey, at least I've had the chance to live in Indonesia.

Photo on left: Me, with my roommates. Photo on right: With roommates and friends.