Despite the drastic ways in which my life in Jakarta differs from anything I had in the States, I haven’t spent too much time pining for things back home. It’s only been one month, sure, but I think that’s sufficient time for spells of longing to set in, or at least little nighttime pangs of lonely poignancy. But, no offense to y’all back in the States, that hasn’t really happened.
That is, it hadn’t really happened until this past Tuesday, when a need for catharsis or blind chance or pure masochism led me to a venue specifically designed to elicit my nostalgia.
M and I spent the last 3 days in Singapore on a (semi-successful) visa run. For those of you guys completely unfamiliar with Southeast Asia, as I was up until very recently, let me just give a brief illustration of how Singapore differs from Jakarta: they are opposites. One is a beautiful, brilliant, hygienic, uptight, high-maintenance, and rich girlfriend with expensive tastes and no patience for disorder or disobedience; the other is a back-alley prostitute with a five-inch stiletto on one foot and a four-inch platform on the other, drunk but gleeful, dirty but smiling, who steals money from your back pocket when she hugs you but turns a winking blind eye when you go out behind her back. You guess which is which.
But it wasn’t Singapore that made me homesick, or not Singapore alone. The cleanliness and efficiency, too, felt foreign—convenient and pleasant and easy, unlike Jakarta, but still alien in its slickness, unlike anywhere I’ve known in the U.S. What made me miss the great country of ‘Merika, and specifically my lost love of San Francisco, was a bar.
Gleeful to be in a country where bartenders mix fairly competent drinks, the beer selection goes beyond Bintang and Heineken, and everything isn’t hit by a massive import tax, we happily researched a place to get good cocktails on our third night in Singapore (we’d had our glorious fill of IPA the night before). When M found a place opened by a native San Franciscan, a former bartender at Azul Lounge, we knew we’d found our spot.
We grabbed a cab and gave the driver the address we’d found online–28 Hong Kong Street, also the name of the bar–only to arrive at nothing but a blank stretch of wall with a padlocked door across from a 7-11 on a seedy-looking street. A little flicker of familiarity flared in my head, telling me that I knew what to do, that I’d been here before, but I shook it out. We were on the other side of the world, after all. But after looking around blankly for a few minutes, double-checking the address, and realizing that our options were limited, we did what we’d both been tempted to do from the outset: cracked open the padlocked door (the lock, upon closer inspection, wasn’t actually keeping the door shut, but was just on one of the door handles).
And sure enough, inside was a small reception area with a well-dressed, smiling hostess, standing sentinel to an unseen back area from which happy carousers could be heard. If I’d walked back outside and found myself on the corner of Jones and O’Farrell, I wouldn’t have been surprised. The hostess led us back, past tables of patrons snacking on bar bites that would fit right in on the Alembic’s menu, sipping elixirs from cordial glasses and mason jars. But the real glory came once we saw the back wall. Shelf upon shelf of old, familiar friends, liquors of the brown variety, small-batch and large, barrel-aged and fiery-sweet: there was Bulleit, pallin’ around with Four Roses, which shadowed over the stout little Hudson’s. And past the friendly brigade lining the shelves was the beer chalkboard, which offered us not only Anchor Steam, but also IPA’s, IPA’s of American microbrew caliber (not to dis the Singaporean brew we’d had the night before, but it just wasn’t the same).
I WILL DRINK YOU ALL! MUAHAHAHA!
Perhaps clued in by our drooling and disproportionate enthusiasm at seeing Hop Devil on the beer list, the bartender—who turned out to be the bar’s owner—asked us if we were from San Francisco.
“Used to be,” I said, uttering that phrase that still feels a little sticky on the tongue.
And thus ensued a good hour of reminiscing, the three of us basically just naming venues and addresses and foods and drinks in a word-association–like barrage of San Francisco adulation (turns out the owner had just moved to Singapore a year ago after helping to open Gitane—so he still feels the yen for the Bay pretty strongly). “El Farolito!” one of us would say, to be rejoined by “Bloodhound!” or “Deep Mission past Cesar Chavez!” or “Avocadoes!”
Sensing kindred spirits, or perhaps just desperation, the owner disappeared into the back and emerged with an off-menu item: one big bottle of Blind Pig IPA, which M and I received as a desert wanderer might receive a bottle of water. Next came a mystery round of shots, which the owner revealed to be Cazadores after we’d all tossed them back. And the pièce de résistance arrived as we signed the check, when the owner disappeared once more, this time returning with a small bottle of the essential, elusive, palate enhancer: Cholula.
“A bit of home to take with you,” he said.
Nectar of the gods
And now, back in Jakarta, I find myself once again among the foreign. There’s a chicken in the parking lot outside, and most cars contain a sleeping man in the driver’s seat—the personal driver waiting for his boss to finish lunch or coffee or shopping or whatever—and a passing monsoon pummels a laneless jumble of forever honking traffic.
The homesickness has already all but left me—though it’s sure to resurface tonight, when I dig the Cholula out from the nest of clothing concealing it in my backpack—and I’m realizing that it’s not despite of Jakarta’s differences but because of them that I’ve been able to miss home so little. It is familiarity that causes upset, tastes of a bygone era that create this longing. But if that bygone era tastes like Blind Pig, I think it’s worth all the emotional fallout.
Journals + Jackfruit 