Shopping Mall Society

(30/10/02)

Some friends from Jakarta just visited Vancouver for their NGO tour in Canada. I was ready to take them to Vancouver Public Library, Science World, and Stanley Park. When asked what place they would like to see, their answer had surprised me. They wanted to see shopping mall! I couldn’t help thinking that Jakartans are becoming more and more into shopping mall society.

For most of Indonesian, western countries almost always identical with luxury, modernity, beautiful, rich, and smart people. Look at them on TV! So it surprised them that Vancouver didn’t have those shopping malls as big as the ones in Jakarta.

On the other hand, many people in western country may think that the third world is identical with poverty, lack of education, and chaos. One illustration was when a new friend I met here was surprised to see a picture of me with a beautiful swimming pool as a background. She said honestly that she pictured Jakarta as a slum place where beauty doesn’t exist. Little she knows that Jakarta is a place where its 12 million population live in wide range of life from the bottom of hell to the top of seven heaven.

When I went back home the last time in June, I could hardly see the scar from few years back of economy crisis. The big shopping malls and traditional market were full with people, and still growing. Salon and beauty parlors were busy. Glodok electronic center, one of the biggest electronic center in South East Asia were hustling and bustling as usual, though in 1998 it was one of the place burnt out by fire and loot.

These are such phenomena. With the hardship of economy crisis, we are looking to have fun, to forget about what have happened. Those places offer such entertaining, and fun atmosphere. It is the place for us to see what we can’t afford but still can dream about.