In the Mood For Kopitiam

Customers talking at Kafetien 88

Kopitiam, or Chinese coffee shops, are important to the lives of millions of people in Southeast Asia, but for Vema Novitasari of Surabaya, they have played a more particular role in her life.

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Online Learning In The Javanese Countryside Isn’t As Easy As Turning On Zoom

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The school where I teach is in a small village on the outskirts of Pemalang, a city of around 1.5 million people in north-central Java. The road I take to get there, while asphalted, is only around three metres wide, pothole-riddled, and flanked left and right by rice-fields…

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The Kost of Freedom

Kost Of Freedom

Young people in Indonesia commonly think of living in a kost, or studio flat, as the essence of freedom. Vema Novitasari wonders: are they right?

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Why I Walk With My Eyes Cast Down In Jatinangor

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In my four years as a college student in Jatinangor, a small city just outside Bandung, West Java, I shied away from looking straight ahead of me when out and about. When walking, I assumed a hunched, bowed posture and I kept my eyes fixed on the ground, looking up just often enough to avoid crashing into anything. Not without cause, naturally…

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