Bobos and Bums at Jalan Jaksa

I have known my friend Setiawan since I started coming to Jakarta in the mid-nineties. We had our best time before the Asian Financial Crisis and the riots of 98; we worked hard and played hard: busting our asses during the day and painting the town red at night. To paraphrase Dickens, the last eight years have been the best of times and the worst of times.

These days Setiawan and I meet ocassionally to catch up over a quiet nasi padang dinner and a couple of slow beers. And last night somehow we ended up drinking at a pub along Jalan Jaksa.

The Jalan Jaksa area is a backpacker's haven: Filled with cheap guest houses, hotels and restaurants, most of the budget bule (Mat Salleh) travellers would make a stop here, led by their trusty Lonely Planet Guide.

Sitting there watching the backpackers in their khaki shorts and worn-out T-shirts chatting up the local girls, I was filled with a sense of envy. How I wished I could bum around like them: hitch-hiking from one place to another on a shoe-string budget, without a single care in the world.

Instead we have become Bobos -- a termed coined by David Brooks in his riproaringly hilarious book, Bobos in Paradise - meaning Bourgeois Bohemians. We have become mediocre yuppies: cubicle creatures who have betrayed our youthful ideals to become willing slaves to big multi-national corporations.

Spoilt by corporate perks and entrenched in our new-found middleclass respectability, we try to bury our guilt by leading lifestyles that hint at superficial bohemian idealism: using environment-friendly Body Shop products, sending our kids to school in swanky four-wheelers, going to work in Timberland boots and khakis (pockets stuffed with the latest geek toys), and carrying our Sony laptops around in backpacks as if we are trekking across Tibet. Bourgeois Bohemians.

And there I was sitting with Setiawan, reflecting on all these things -- two Bobos guzzling Bintangs on a warm midweek night, among the bums and backpackers of Jalan Jaksa.