'BuGil' offers titillating probe into life of 'crazy white folk'
By David Jardine

I think that many, many more volumes such as Bule Gila should be compiled -- regular anthologies of them, whole dispensations, even complete libraries, perhaps -- about being a stranger in a strange land.

And we bule , white men and women, are "exotics" in a far-flung part of the world, whether American, Australian, British (like me), Canadian, Irish or whatever. Then, of course, there are the Dutch. Indonesia was once a colony of the Netherlands, so it is no surprise that there is a Dutch community here.

Bartele Santema is the Dutch owner of BuGils bar in Taman Ria Senayan, Central Jakarta. The name of the bar is an inspired choice, employing, as it does, that favorite literary device of Indonesians -- the acronym.

 You know -- Dufan for Dunia Fantasi and so on.

BuGils is the acronym of Bule Gila, or crazy white person -- and a smart piece of self-mockery that appropriates some typical stereotypes of the "white folk" found in Indonesia and flaunt them as a badge of wry pride.

Santema is a well-known figure here, as befits the only Dutch bar owner in town. A Frisian, from the northern Netherlands, he opened BuGils a few years back, has made a success of it in his idiosyncratic fashion and unsurprisingly, has seen a lot of colorful characters pass through his doors.

In this volume of short tales, which are not only about the bar, but also about Jakarta in general, he records a few of them for us.

Let us start with Birman , the wildly eccentric Indonesian newspaper vendor, a man with several nervous tics and a modus operandi that often intrigued me as a habitu‚ of Jl. Jaksa, his regular haunt.

Birman -- whose motorcycling style is worth a paragraph or two on its own (he seems to think he is Valentino Rossi) -- it turns out, drives up to Soekarno-Hatta airport, buys used foreign newspapers from the cleaners of KLM planes, takes them home, irons them out and then resells them at BuGils and the cafes of Jl. Jaksa. Furthermore, he then hangs around and reappropriates discarded copies and resells them yet again.

But being a bar owner is not a hazard-free trade. Santema has had a few of the so-called Awkward Squad through his emporium. Take "The Colonel", who is something of a loudmouth with a penchant for praising the Indonesian Military (strange man) at the top of his voice. Santema seems to have been remarkably tolerant of this man for some time before banning him from BuGils.

Being white and crazy is obviously no free entry ticket.

Of course, as is the case at other Jakarta watering holes where expats gather to chat and blather, the vast majority of patrons are amiable, easy-going folk, happy to relax at the end of a day.

Santema engenders the atmosphere by his managerial approach -- and it works, but for how much longer?

This volume contains a business horror story -- let's not beat about the bush, corrupt business practices are rife here -- about a developer trying to muscle him out of Taman Ria.

Bule Gila is full of wry observations and some wisdom. If the prose occasionally seems a little awkward, that is a minor fault.

 I enjoyed this modest volume and recommend it, not least because Santema reminds the bule , especially those who moan and groan about "Indonesia this" or "Indonesia that", that a sense of humor is an absolute prerequisite to living here.

 That reminds me of the Englishman I worked with some years ago, who moaned and groaned about being called a bule .

Good God, I thought, where was his British sense of humor? There are far worse things we could be called.

Taken from The Jakarta Post