People are more Important than Books

And I couldn't agree more. Perhaps a surprising thing to say for someone who has often been accused of being anti-social--preferring to stay at home to read a book than to join friends on another night of clubbing at the latest nightspot in town. People would naturally think that I value books more than people.

But I want to reiterate my view that people are more important than books. Why? Because people make more interesting "reading".

You see, people are like books--only vastly more interesting ones. I value all my friends and acquaintances as living sources of knowledge and experience. They are like plots that are constantly unfolding--books that are still in the process of being written. And there's always so much to read between the lines. Furthermore, people unlike books, are interactive in nature: "reading" them is a multimedia experience that allows one to act both as observer and participator.

Some people are open books; some require massive amounts of cross-referencing and careful perusal of footnotes before one could gain a glimmer of their insights; some cannot be read because they are written in an alien language.

I get to learn so much from my friends in Jakarta: Just yesterday over a cup of kopi tubruk with Edwin (whose father is Javanese and mother Ambonese and he himself recently married a girl from Manado), I learnt that there's an ancient Javanese poet and seer called Ronggowarsito, who can be considered to be the Nostradamus of Java.

I also learnt a lot about the differences between the Javanese and the Sundanese people from my many hours of conversations with Ibu Titi whose husband is Sundanese. I also found out from her how much Sukarno is still revered by the older generation.

And while waiting for our flight home from Makassar on a business trip with my colleague Dharmanto, I learnt from him about the importance of sperm mobility in the process of insemination: Dharmanto's wife only successfully conceived a child after years of undergoing various types of treatment in countless fertility clinics.

I ocassionally would also probe our secretary June for information about her family who has settled down in Jakarta for 13 generations. Her family home in the old Chinatown area is considered a historical heritage. One of her ancestors was also the Chinese Kapitan of Batavia. Entering her quaint Chinese house, I half-expected a sword-wielding Zhang Ziyi to leap over the roof into its open courtyard--where now a huge satellite dish is planted, in jarring anachronism.

And then there's Aan, a Chinese who originated from Bagan Si Api-Api, a small island in the Riau archipelago. The Chinese there are supposed to have been descended from survivors of a shipwreck and an annual ceremony is still held there today to commemorate the event.

And there's more:

Pretty 17-year-old Rosi told me about her experience working in the onion fields of her hometown, Brebes in Central Java; Wijaya recounted his arduous one-week journey on the back of a lorry from Medan to Jakarta down the island of Sumatra; Setiawan from Semarang, married for 17 years, defended his theory that most people got married mainly because of sex; and most fascinating of all was the story by Hengky from Makassar who narrated to us how he was molested by a gay doctor while undergoing circumcision!

I have so much fun talking, probing and picking the background and opinion of my friends; these walking books never cease to fascinate me with their endless anecdotes and snippets of wisdom.

With Jakarta having a population of more than 10 million people, I have a vast library of resources to tap into. Who said books are more important than people?