PLAYING THE VILE GAME: DEMONIZING MINORITIES

 

Tolerance of intolerance threatens Indonesia’s image

 

 

Image credit:  The Jakarta Post

 

The LGBTIQ+ community in Australia is cautiously expecting an acceleration of acceptance now the Albanese government has the steering wheel.  But in the nation next door which boasts it runs with moderation, human rights is going in reverse.

 

There’s a powerful lobby group in Indonesia which gets its energy from pot-stirring.  Driven by mainstream Islamic organisations it duplicates the tactics of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton when he was Home Affairs Minister warning of woke culture sending the nation in the wrong direction.

In English the adjective refers to an awareness of social inequality. There’s plenty of that in Indonesia where the rich make Croesus look like a pauper – and the under-class has more battlers across the archipelago than there are citizens in Australia.

In office Dutton exhorted the government to ‘weed out the people who have done the wrong thing’, a gardening ambition shared by Indonesian religious groups blaming Western liberals for infesting local values.

In his victory speech PM Anthony Albanese envisioned Australia as a country that ‘no matter where you live, who you worship, who you love or what your last name is, that places no restrictions on your journey in life.’

Ten days later at the start of Pride Month, the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI) offered a different vision.  The Islamic Scholars’ Council is demanding President Joko (Jokowi) Widodo and the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (Lower House) criminalise LGBT practices and purge the nation of deviancy.

Critics say this has more to do with hard liners trying to impose their version of morality, and enhance the religious parties’ credentials ahead of the 2024 election, widening the gap between traditionalists and the temporal.

So far the mainstream media in Indonesia has avoided alerting the populace to the fact that Australia’s new FM Penny Wong, who has been visiting Jakarta with Albanese, is a lesbian.  Revelation could be a plus. The Malaysian-born Senator is also a practising Protestant, showing that faith and sexual preferences are not incompatible.

Although often tagged an Islamic republic because it has the world’s largest population of Muslims, Indonesia is a constitutionally secular state.  Around ten per cent follow five other government-approved religions with Christians in the majority.

Bundling all ethnic and faith groups in the nation of 273 million together by linking bedroom behaviour with treachery, the MUI stamped gay practices as ‘a violation of the state ideology of Pancasila, the 1945 Constitution and the Marriage Law.’(Pancasila is the five-point philosophy underpinning the State.  The final clause reads: ‘Social justice for all the people of Indonesia’.)

The national criminal code currently doesn’t forbid adult, non-commercial homosexual acts involving consenting adults.  However the police regularly resort to public decency and community disturbance legislation to crack down on gatherings of gays.

In radical contrast to laid-back Bali familiar to holidaying Australians, the rarely visited province of Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra applies local laws allowed by Jakarta to ban homosexuality.  Offenders are lashed in public, a brutal and primitive punishment that also thrashes the world’s third largest democracy’s cultivated image as a progressive state.

 

 Image credit HRW.  Police challenge transgenders

MUI Proselytizing Commission Chairperson Ahmad Zubaidi announced that the clerics are demanding  a speedy end to all activities and movements ‘carried out or supported by NGOs as well as international companies in Indonesia which are a manifestation of LGBT in any form or media.’ He didn’t name the foreign businesses allegedly pushing gay rights, but this campaign is more about fantasies than facts.

Like preachers in many faiths he presumed to know the mind of the Creator who apparently labels same-sex sexual relations as fahisyah, an Arabic term meaning lewdness and indecency.

Unfortunately for moderates the government-funded MUI can’t be flicked aside as a fringe group driven by extremists.  The Council is Indonesia’s peak Muslim body and advisor to the government.  Vice President Ma'ruf Amin was chair before entering politics.

The nation’s two major religious organisations dominate the MUI. They’re the grass-roots Nahdlatul Ulama which asserts it’s the world’s largest Islamic organisation with 90 million members, and the more elite Muhammadiyah with a reported 50 million. These figures aren’t audited, so ‘membership’ is more likely a synonym for ‘follower’.

Both promote themselves as supporting tolerance, though their official statements suggest otherwise. In 2005 the MUI issued a fatwa (edict) against pluralism, liberalism, and secularism. Nine years later it proclaimed homosexually as haram – forbidden under Islamic law.

The MUI is seeding fertile ground. A 2020 Pew Research Institute survey reported nine per cent of Indonesians agreed that homosexuality should be accepted by society.  Despite this dismal statistic the gay lobby saw hope because the figure from seven years earlier was just three per cent.

Menaces to gays in Indonesia have accelerated this century.  A 2016 report by Human Rights Watch asserted that the minority had endured ‘sporadic hateful rhetoric and violent attacks over the preceding three decades:

‘That outpouring of intolerance has resulted in proposals of laws which pose a serious long-term threat to the rights and safety of LGBT Indonesians.’

It wasn’t always so. The Serat Centhini (Javanese teachings of life) compilation of ancient wisdoms includes tales of homosexuality and bisexuality.  It has been described by Singapore gays as ‘Southeast Asia’s version of the famed Indian sex manual, the Kama Sutra’.

 Last century, before the austere and prudish Wahhabism sect got a grip on Indonesia largely by funding hundreds of new mosques run by fundamentalists, waria (male to female transgender actors) regularly performed in public, along with transvestite beauty contests.

Lest Australians get too smug it’s worth remembering that despite the party’s name the previous government was not a showcase for liberalism. On The Conversation website, Monash Uni Human Rights Law Professor Paula Gerber wrote that ‘under the Morrison government, LGBTIQ+ people were subjected to a steady stream of attacks’.

Her list included ‘three separate attempts to pass the Religious Discrimination Bills, widely considered a sword with which to attack LGBTIQ+ people rather than a shield to protect people of faith from discrimination’ leading to serious mental health problems.

Although she thinks things will be better under Albanese, his government has not agreed to the Greens proposal for a Minister for Equalities, as in Britain where Liz Truss has the job, though the Tory is much distrusted by the gay community.  In Victoria Health Minister Martin Foley also holds the portfolio of Equality.

Commenting after MUI’s latest assault on difference, former Jakarta Post editor Endy Bayuni alerted readers to his country’s ‘huge problem with increasing intolerance, racism and the way we treat minority groups.’

First published in Pearls &  Irritations, 10 June 2022:  https://johnmenadue.com/tolerance-of-intolerance-threatens-indonesias-image/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TRUST NEEDED - ON BOTH SIDES

          Dear Albo: Get to know the people next door.

 

 

On ABC TV’s The Insiders, the then opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said he planned to visit Indonesia ‘as soon as possible’ – a statement rapidly drowned in the mainstream media’s trite election coverage.  In 1994 when the then PM Paul Keating said ‘no country is more important to Australia than Indonesia’, the response was intense.

Why did journos think Albanese’s comments not newsworthy?  One sad answer is that like much of the electorate they take little interest in the adjacent nation unless it’s jailing blasphemers, flogging adulterers or doing something that jars values the West thinks important.

It’s been pointed out – though as far as I can see only in the foreign media  - that Albanese’s first overseas visit as Labor leader was to Indonesia in 2019, as was his first trip as a minister in 2007.

Indonesian politics are more about personalities than policies.  President Joko Widodo first won office through his signature blusukan walkabouts.  In 2015 he drove security details nuts when he took then PM Malcolm Turnbull on a meet-the-people market tour which set a friendly and casual tone, benefitting  both nations.

That’s unlikely to be repeated when Albanese gets to the Big Durian as Widodo’s minders are now more cautious about unscripted tours.  But the Australian would find his poverty- to- power story – which is similar to Widodo’s riverbank shack-to-presidential-palace upbringing - could have a wide impact if well told.  It would certainly help erase the belief that Ozzies are privileged rich prone to belittle.

While Australia yawns or tut-tuts at mentions of matters in the world’s third largest democracy, it’s much the same t’other side of the Arafura Sea.   Last century youngsters were hungry to learn English and other cultures.  Their appetite was met by enthusiastic teachers following a policy of raising a generation equipped to handle the world. 

Instead, the energy has bogged down in ideologies and bureaucracy notwithstanding the intentions of forward-thinkers like Harvard-educated Education Minister Nadiem Anwar Makarim. He’s a 37-year old entrepreneur drafted by President Joko Widodo to shake up schooling, only to collide with the power of reactionaries seeing secularism behind reform.

 Monash Uni has already opened a postgrad campus in Jakarta. If the new Federal Government can back other ventures, preferably at high school and undergrad level and away from the capital, people would get to discover we’re not all Kuta hoons.

ANU-educated Indonesian Ambassador Dr Siswo Pramono (above) has been in Perth  promoting understanding and trust between the neighbours.. Photo:  Erlinawati Graham

 

 

Distrust of Western ways and Australian intentions is pervasive so all the more reason to try harder.  That doesn’t seem to be on new Ambassador Penny Williams’ agenda.  Despite knowing the language and past involvement in progressive causes (she’s a former Ambassador for Women and Girls) the lady has yet to make a splash. Since the start of this year she’s put out only ten press statements, mostly on trivial matters, and nothing on the election.

Apart from a tweet from Makassar, it appears she didn’t recognise Australia Day through any speeches or mainstream media.  (Her office hasn’t responded to a request for details.) Here was a chance to tell how Australian unions helped the revolutionaries liberate Indonesia from the colonial Dutch.  It’s a forgotten story for this century’s generation, so needs continuous retelling.

 

 

Here’s a job for Albanese if and when he reaches Jakarta and wants to remind the post 1945 Revolution generation that we were on their side.

If that’s currently considered too political for Canberra, Albanese should urge Williams to stress that her nation’s not a British franchise as many think because the Union Jack’s on our flag and the Queen’s image on our currency.

Nor are we the US ‘deputy sheriff’ in the region as former PM John Howard reportedly said.  The offensive tag remains fresh because Australia supported the East Timor referendum in 1999.  We can be proud of our initiatives and peacekeeping, and our billion-dollar aid when the 2004 tsunami ripped Aceh, but that doesn’t mean we’re loved.

For Indonesians, the Unitary State is sacrosanct so the loss of the Portuguese territory it invaded in 1976 has left a deep and weeping wound.  That’s not the only irritant.

Some argue the AUKUS alliance and build-up of foreign troops and weaponry in Northern Australia are ‘too close for comfort’ and could trigger an arms race. These alarms have been addressed, though only lightly.  Another task for Albanese.

Instead of explanation and education, we use trade to find ‘not just a respected partner but a valued one as well’. Former Agriculture Minister David Littleproud’s spiel was monetary: ‘Indonesia is Australia’s fourth-largest market for bulk primary produce … valued at $2.9 billion (last financial) year.’ 

The new PM’s message should be: We don’t just want to feed you, we want to know you.  We’ll listen, not tell.  We’ll talk with you, not at you. Albanese seems to understand this if his quotes are sincere. Before 21 May he said it was important to grow the relationship with a ‘future superpower’.

Despite Covid killing close to 157,000 and infecting six million (Reuters’ figures from official sources and widely considered too low) the Indonesian economy is going gangbusters.

The World Bank's Global Economic Prospects forecasts growth this year will hit 5.2 per cent, but there’ll be minimal trickle-down. Oxfam research shows the four richest men in Indonesia own as much wealth as the country’s poorest 100 million citizens.

Attitudes on both sides need renovating. Just as Australians can be racists, Indonesians aren’t always the pliant friendly folk of tourist brochures. In 1965 a bloody coup in Jakarta was followed by the slaughter of an estimated 500,000 real or imagined Communists and fellow travellers by civilian militias weaponised by the army.

We know of the Holocaust in Europe though not the genocide close by.

There have been other outbursts of violence, often focussing on minorities.  Ethnic Chinese are usually the targets along with so-called deviant Islamic sects.

Another eruption of hate could send a wave of asylum seekers heading our way as they did after the 1998 riots when President Soeharto quit, though they’d most likely come by plane, have full wallets and follow faiths other than Islam.

To ensure a benign view of the people next door, this distressing history is blacked out in Australia by the ‘moderate Muslim’ label. Likewise, the termites of corruption gnaw away in almost every departmental nook and immune to pest controllers. 

The first stage in fixing problems is to accept their presence and examine the reasons.  To date neither Indonesia nor Australia has been inclined to confront ignorance, misunderstanding and distrust which threaten the connections.   If Albanese really is a skilled negotiator he needs to be well briefed by experts outside the ultra-cautious DFAT club, offer friendship but be frank.

They’ll be a wake up when there’s an explosion of fury for some seemingly mild political stumble, like Scott Morrison’s 2019 proposal to move our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  Mobs protested in Indonesia, forcing the closure of two consulates.

Friction points include the low-level insurgency between West Papuan separatists and the Indonesian military, hidden from world view by Jakarta censorship equal to the Chinese cover-up of its alleged anti-Uyghur campaign.

The late Australian Professor Jamie Mackie wrote: ‘The first and most dangerous of the problems ahead — and possibly the most likely — are issues relating to separatist movements in Papua
and the support they garner within Australia.

‘This tends to arouse suspicions in Indonesia that Australians have a hidden agenda to bring
about the dismemberment of Indonesia as a unitary state. Because of the complex, emotionally charged political dynamics within each country associated with this, it could easily get out of hand and prove difficult for both governments to resolve through calm negotiations.

Better to use the spruce up the relationship now than wait till what remains collapses into misunderstandings and ill will.  The next Presidential direct election will be on 14 February 2024 and there’s a chance former General Prabowo Subianto, who’ll then be 72, will have his third crack at the top job.

Prabowo is Indonesia’s Trump lite who’d ignite the wrath of human rights activists worldwide if elected. After his 2019 loss supporters rioted in Jakarta. Eight died and more than 700 were injured. Few think the violence was spontaneous.

Prabowo is now Minister of Defence, drawn into the inner circle by  Widodo who followed US President Lyndon Johnson’s advice on handling FBI Director J Edgar Hoover: ‘It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in’.

 

Australian academics have been quick to offer advice.  Some has been sound like this offering from Professor Rebecca Strating of La Trobe Uni warning that ‘the new government also needs to listen to Southeast Asian perspectives. States like Indonesia don’t want to be forced to make a choice between US and China.

 

‘Engaging with Indonesia requires creative, nuanced and modulated diplomacy. Sensitivity around sovereignty, autonomy and regional security is key.’ 

All fine and dandy, but these are elite issues which make little impact on the poor and struggling in a nation of more than 273 million. A decade ago Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index ranked Indonesia 96 among 179 nations.  Its position now is 102.  This frightens the Western investors Widodo says he wants to attract.

All the more reason to get to know the neighbours at all levels.  Mackie offered scores of suggestions in his 155-page Lowy essay – a useful guide for PM Albanese and FM Penny Wong,

 

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 3 June 2022:  https://johnmenadue.com/how-a-labor-government-could-revamp-our-relationship-with-indonesia/

 

 

 

 

 

A SOUND POLICY ON HISTORY

 

MAINTAINING THE MELODIES OF HISTORY    

 

 

                     

 

Malang can mean ‘hapless’ which is unfortunate as the East Java city is green, cool at 444 metres, rich in history and awash with creative and caring citizens.

 

Among them is Hengki Herwanto.  As a former civil engineer, his legacy includes some of the new toll roads, speeding journeys and unchoking the old clogged and tortuous tracks which made motoring between big cities a misery. 

 

As he dashed down the concrete a favourite in the CD player was the late John Denver’s Country Roads, Take me Home. Now Hengki is retired that place is the Malang Musik Museum which he helped pioneer.

 

The genial highwayman is loopy about music, despite being unable to play any instrument, suggesting a frustrated muso:  ‘Maybe. When I hear good music there’s something there that creates a new spirit in me. I love ballads, rock and country – every type has its quality, but I prefer the music of the 70s and 80s.

 

‘I’m still trying to understand gamelan. So much modern music is easily forgotten. Perhaps I’m just a romantic.’

 

Long before Joko Widodo became president and Covid sounded like the name of a board game, Hengki and a few old music-mad mates set up a library in a large rented house. 

 

 It held more than 10,000 donated discs, cassettes and vinyl records.  Some, like their custodians, go back more than half a century. A wall of honour recognised 70 local bands and performers. 

 

 

As the collection grew space became a problem, so the local City Council offered a floor above an old theatre, part of the Gajayana Art Centre.

‘The UN headquarters is in New York,’ he said. ‘So we have United Music in Malang with music from every country in the world. Here anyone can listen and be inspired by music they’ve never heard before.  We care about preserving the past.’

 

At first, the volunteer organisers dubbed it Galeri Malang Bernyanyi, suggesting a studio because they thought youngsters might be put off by the word ‘museum’. But this is a fascinating place, now more appropriately labelled Museum Musik Indonesia.

 

The title is grandiose and rightly so because the collection includes traditional music from across the archipelago – along with some curious hand-made instruments.

 

The walls are papered with posters of men with hairy armpits and outrageous make-up, thrusting their crotches and electric guitars.  The girls are leggy, though by modern Western standards more sterile than seductive.

 

The East Java all-girl pop band Dara Puspita is well featured, wholesome as Disney cartoon princesses. The weirdly un-Javanese named Tikkie, Takkie, Suzy and Lee toured Europe twice in the late 1960s and cut eight albums, 30 years ahead of the Spice Girls.

 

Though clearly dated the memorabilia is marvellous; though many colours have faded they still carry the enticement of a great night out.

 

Now the enthusiasts have won international recognition with a Rp 120 million ($8,400) grant from the UNESCO Memory of the World Committee for the Asia Pacific. 

 

The Museum has used the money to help preserve its collection – the humid tropics are unfriendly to vinyl discs and oxide-coated cassette tapes – and publish its catalogue Traditional and Ethnic Music in Indonesia, much of it in English.  Apart from lists, the book includes info on the artists and their work.

 

Hengki came from a military family but marched to a different drumbeat from Dad.  For a while, he worked as a journalist for the music magazine Aktuil, which collapsed in 1978 after 254 editions.

In those heady days, he followed the British heavy metal rock group Deep Purple and was jumping in his seat at their 1975 Jakarta concert.  Rolling Stone magazine reported 150,000 fans, 200 injured, and police with machine guns and Doberman dogs.   

 

 

 

 

 

But if you’re a collector rather than a top performer, music doesn’t pay the bills. Hengki left a life of screaming kids for the roar of diesel engines.  ‘I went into engineering to help build Indonesia’s infrastructure,’ he said.

 

Music can’t be borrowed from the gallery, though that policy may change. The immediate plan is to digitise the cassettes that are most at risk. Plastic tapes stretch and magnetic oxide coatings flake.

 

The gallery won’t duplicate and sell recordings.  As many supporters are in the music industry they say they respect copyright. More than 300 individuals have donated their private collections.

There’s a keyboard, recording equipment and electric guitars, including one painted with batik designs.  Musicians, including New Zealand gamelan players who toured Java and Bali in July, have dropped in.

 

Visitors sometimes run clinics for local talent. The gallery holds discussion groups and promotes events. 

 

‘Dangdut (a thumping mix of Javanese dance and folk laced with Hindustani and Arabic music) is popular in the regions though not the big cities,’ said Hengki. 

 

 ‘There’s too much Western influence, but we are developing indigenous styles.   Instruments like the angklung (bamboo tubes that are struck and shaken) and gamelan are distinctly Indonesian.

 

‘The centre for music in the archipelago used to be Jakarta but is now Ambon (the capital of Maluku province). Most people seem to pick up trends through television promotion.  Radio doesn’t feature so much as it does overseas.

 

‘Unfortunately, Indonesia is internationally known for corruption.  That’s negative.  We want our country to be famous for its music, and we hope our book will help.’ Or as Hengki’s hero Virgiawan Listanto aka Iwan Fals, Indonesia’s Bob Dylan, sings: Salam Reformasi.

 

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First published in Indonesia Expat, May 2022:

GETTING ON TOP OF LIFE

 

 

              Planning to live stress-free

 

 

It seems silly bordering on ridiculous to suggest that the Greek architect Hippodamus of Miletus (498 – 408 BC) influenced the way we live in Indonesia. 

But the polymath dubbed ‘the father of urban planning’ by the philosopher Aristotle was also a mathematician, so thought in patterns and grids.

His ideas expanded to Europe and were eventually brought to Indonesia by the colonial Dutch and remain still.  Time for an update.

Java is one of the world’s most beautiful islands – and most overcrowded.  In the worst cases density, along with poor sanitation, helps breeds diseases like typhoid fever – a concern in some parts of the archipelago.

New housing developments are rushed onto the market before power, water and sewerage are installed.  It’s still easy to find villages where the locals bathe, wash clothes and even defecate in rivers and irrigation drains.

Stretching limited space without cramping needs unlimited imagination. Good design should not be confined to kettles and toasters.  Ideally it starts outside in the suburb or village, setting the tone for harmonious living and creative thinking.

Research by the University of Minnesota shows that where we settle impacts our emotional and physical health:

‘The stress of an unpleasant environment can cause you to feel anxious, or sad, or helpless. This in turn elevates your blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle tension and suppresses your immune system. A pleasing environment reverses that.’

Gardens, well-maintained parks and a clear view of the heavens help.  Greenery soothes the soul and reduces global warming. Asphalt, concrete, glass and other hard heat-bouncers don’t please our precious planet.

Traffic calming, rapid rubbish disposal far from waterways, easy access to services for all-particularly littlies, the elderly and disabled, no pollution of ears, nose and eyes– these essentials are so often kicked aside in investors’ race for rapid returns.

The Covid pandemic has tossed earlier thinking and values up in the air – and they are still fluttering down.

One of the most significant shake-ups has been in the way we organise new housing developments. Much damage from quakes and landslips can be mitigated by avoiding unstable ground and riverbanks.

Blinkered planners followed Hippodamus’ principles, using a ruler and set square, streets straight and in parallel so a drone view reveals a chessboard. 

Fine for cars and motorbikes to practise for the next Asian Le Mans at Lombok’s Mandalika Circuit, though no joy for residents seeking peace.

Exasperated community leaders often resort to laying polisi tidur, literally ‘sleeping police’.  Known as ‘speed bumps’ in Australia and ‘judder bars’ in New Zealand, bureaucrats tag them ‘vertical deflection devices’.

 They marginally slow traffic but boost noise as motorbikes throttle down –and then hit the gas.

The idea of a grid (a ‘grille’ might be a better word as rigid layouts imprison), isn’t to please buyers but ensure the developers can squeeze many houses into a few hectares and reap the maximum return, unworried by government rules.

Whether owners would live contently is beside the point.  Now, slowly, it is becoming the point. Not just exist, but enjoy.

When the virus struck authorities closed streets to hamper movement transforming through roads into dead-end streets.

Noise levels tumbled and security was enhanced as the only passers-by were those with legitimate business.  The safe quietude gave families the confidence to let their kiddies play outside, their cries and laughter replacing the roar and snarl.

As Covid restrictions are lifted the pressure to open street-end gates grows.  It’s being resisted.  Who wins will determine whether suburbs are for people or profit.

Local governments are supposed to set sizes to lots and limit usage of buildings.  They don’t, so newcomers can find their neighbours have started a store or worst still a workshop using power tools. 

Adding extra floors is often at the expense of others’ privacy as the renovators can peer down into the yards of neighbours, restricting their freedoms to dress and move around as they feel.

Even in a culture that embraces community living, personal space is still respected.

Zoning – to confine industry and commerce to non-residential areas - is essential. Malang, the second largest city in East Java after Surabaya is growing fast, people from other provinces are drawn to the hilltown’s moderate climate (444 metres) and 28 tertiary education centers.

There’s work in the factories processing produce from the rich agricultural surrounds, like milk, tea, coffee and tobacco, and before the pandemic, tourism.

Kos (boarding houses) can be set up in any house with extra rooms, though noise and parking cause problems for those who want to live rather than exist.  This is another issue for the bureaucracy’s building departments to regulate

Apart from Jalan Ijen, the wide twin road boulevard built during the Dutch colonial period, the most beautiful and well-considered district is just outside the city. 

Built on the lower slopes of Mount Gendis (1259 m) east of Lawang the wide pothole-free streets meander gently. The lots are big and many offer grand views across green paddy. The occupiers don’t get disturbed.

In many ways it could be a showground for ideal design.  There are trees aplenty, their shade welcome. Power lines run underground so there’s no spider web of overhead cables to spoil the streetscape, and no banner advertising.

That’s because the citizens aren’t interested in commerce, though almost all are Chinese.  It’s the private Asri Abadi Cemetery. 

 

Hippodamus would be discontented here and that has nothing to do with a difference in faith.  The meandering, lovely layout conceived by sensitive planners making the most of the topography, would not have satisfied a geometrician.

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First published in Indonesia Expat, 1 June 2022: https://indonesiaexpat.id/outreach/observations/planning-to-live-stress-free/