By Richard Boughton I was reading something on the Indonesian government and the ideology of Pancasila. I was skimming it, really. Skimming is something I learned to do at university about a hundred years ago, an acquisition of the intellect necessitated by the assignment of War and Peace, Anna Karenina and the Brothers Karamazov as the [...]

By Richard Boughton “Divorce,” as Felix Unger said in the 1960s movie The Odd Couple, “is a terrible thing.” “Oh! It can be,” was the punch line rejoinder, “if you haven’t the right solicitor.” There is always a punch line. From Robin Williams we have: “Ah yes, divorce … from the Latin word meaning to rip [...]

By Richard Boughton My wife tends to get restless at weekends. It’s a spill-over from the restlessness that besets her on weekdays, a rising of energy that is usually expended at work but now suddenly finds itself with nowhere to go, like water at a boil or un-slurped foam on a newly poured beer. She [...]

By Richard Boughton Given a perverse desire among the young women of Indonesia to experience rape at some point in life, as evidenced by a recalcitrant insistence on wearing short skirts, and thereby rendering their persons generally rape-able, Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali has come to the rescue of the weaker sex by issuing a call [...]

By Richard Boughton Nyepi went by quietly at my house, and quickly too somehow. It lacked the traditional tedium that had always attended it in the past, that sense of hours elongated to the point of rending like a string of overwhelmed taffy. It lacked the customary numbness that assails the mind in the face of [...]

By Richard Boughton In last week’s column I mentioned my purchase of a bilingual language book called Pendidikan Kewarganegaraan (Education in Citizenship). I spoke mostly about my own difficulty with learning the Indonesian language, but I’d like to say something this week about the actual contents of the book, which turn out to be as strange [...]

By Richard Boughton In my continuing effort to demonstrate conclusively and for all practical purposes that I cannot possibly learn to speak the Indonesian language I will occasionally, under the influence of some ill-founded optimism, buy a new lesson book and set to work with renewed, though short-lived enthusiasm, having decided that the fault is not [...]

By Richard Boughton It’s that time again – for me, anyway. Time to renew the old KITAS and sign up for another year of merry madness in Bali. Some of you may have heard that a new law had been passed in Indonesia allowing foreigners married at least two years to an Indonesian citizen to [...]

By Richard Boughton My wife has developed a shocking appendage on her left hand. It is red, rectangular and about the size of the hand itself. There is no cure for this curious swelling, no surgery presently available for removal of the growth and no medicine known that might shrink or eradicate the tumour – [...]

By Richard Boughton Here we go again, folks. It’s the story that will not die. The sad epic saga of the Yasmin Church and its tired yet tireless sidewalk-sitting congregation. Yes, it’s a sit-in. Remember those? It’s back to the 60s tonight in Bogor. Shoo-bee doo lang-lang. Why are they sitting on the sidewalk? Because [...]

By Richard Boughton “I like babies,” the waitress said. “I like them a lot. I want to have the baby but I don’t want to have the husband.” I told her I was sure somebody would be happy to oblige; and, as she was a comely young maiden, I forwarded myself as a possible candidate. [...]

By Richard Boughton Newspaper writers and editors – and especially copy editors (an inimical breed of their own) – are a curmudgeonly, bitterly sardonic sort of creature, or at least I found them so during my short stint at newspaper work in the late 1970s. I think this is simply because they are exposed to [...]