The First Coffee that I Would Never Forget

The First Coffee that I Would Never Forget

 

 

Before I was finally ordered to move to an overseas post in Indonesia, I made a business trip to Jakarta beforehand. It was early 1990’s.

 

Even until then, I had had some wild imaginations about Indonesia. From several photographs of picturesque beautiful seashores in Bali, I could start to imagine charming and fascinating blonde women sun-tanning in super-mini sized bikinis which could barely cover their shiny skins at peaceful paradises along with southern coast of Java Island. In those daydreams, they were smiling at me while jumping and running playfully and exposing their glamorous bodies so I unconsciously had to wipe up saliva accidentally spilled off from the corner of my mouth. The closer the business trip being imminent, the wilder my imagination was becoming. I thought that, as if in old times, the runway of Jakarta airport would be crowded with vendors and beggars around the passengers who just stepped down from the just-landed planes, and that Jakarta citizens were commuting their offices by jumping and hopping from dangling vines to vines in the jungle like Tarzan, and that I had to wield jungle sword to make my way, as in the old films of Indianan Jones, to my factory for garment inspection.

 

So naturally, however, all those imaginations were wiped away upon my physical arrival in Jakarta in the real world.  I was heavily impressed with several massive statues downtown Jakarta with grotesquely big hands of theirs along with numerous tall and sophisticatedly designed skyscrapers on my way to the hotel that night. To my astonishment, my factory in Cakung, north Jakarta, was nothing to compare with those sprawling small workshops in various corners in Incheon city where my company placed garment orders until previous years. Those factories in Korea were employing only 20-60 workers respectively while that Jakarta factory had 800 local workers in it. It was super big! Of course, however, I did not know then that there were already so many Korean garment plants and shoe factories employing tens of thousands workers in a single installation around. Anyway, my heart was filled up with the highest-ever pride that told me like this: ‘Hey, Don! You are running this big factory with the orders you are getting from buyers all over the world! How great you are!’

 

Factory president was my senior whom I worked with in Seoul head office for a few years before he moved to Indonesia 5 years ago. He picked me up from the hotel but, in the factory office which was like hovering over the manufacturing hall, I had to wait for a while before he joined me back after processing all those bunches of documents which came last night through telex and facsimiles. When I was alone in the meeting room there, a smiling big face with all-out bold head peeped in. He was Aris, an Ambon native as well as the HRD manager of the factory. Ambon was a rebel province which once went independent from Soekarno’s Republic of Indonesia, under the flag of RMS (Republic of Maluku Selatan=Southern Maluku Republic) which was finally squashed down by central government after many years’ resistance. Ironically they were one of most positively responded tribes to central government’s call for transmigration in which policy government send pioneers to deep forest areas, edges of provinces and remote islands for nation-wide economic development. Ambonese people are generally tall and big. They have reputations for often making organization like mafias to protect their own tribal benefits or for their aggressive participations in the financial business fields as trouble-shooters or debt collectors.

 

This Aris, however, was not that kind of person. I didn’t know until then that his full name was Aristotle. When I came to know that, I was at a loss whether I should laugh or what because his appearance was not philosophic at all. He looks more like a tough and volatile Papuan, which had a few cannibal tribes until the recent centuries. Another fact about him was revealed a few years later, that he put ‘Socrates’ as the name of his oldest son. I had hard time to calm me down from my death wish to burst into laughs in front of his face during quite a time of period after knowing secrets of names of his family members. When I first met him that morning, however, his black face and big white eyeballs which had very little portion of black part was surprisingly intimidating enough and his beaming smile was felt ominously spooky and dangerous. Even though I didn’t dare to express explicitly, my instinct was very much desperately yelling at him : Hey, YOU CANNIBAL! STOP THERE! DON’T COME ANY CLOSER!!

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By the way, I tried to memorize a few key Indonesian words before my trip to Jakarta. They were:

 

(1) Ini Salah = It is wrong.

(2) Perbaiki ini = Fix it!

(3) Bagus! = Well done!

 

The main purpose of my trip was to make garment inspection. So, if I found faults in the products, I would tell (1) Ini Salah (It is wrong) and then (2) Perbaiki ini (Fix it) sequentially. If the problem is successfully corrected, then I would go forward to (3) Bagus(Well done!), Otherwise, I should come back to the first to repeat the whole inspection procedures. They were all the Indonesian vocabularies that I have then, so it was simply impossible to understand any other Indonesian words or sentences even in front of cannibal face of Aris!

 

Mysteriously, however, I DID understand what he was trying to say. He was mimicking a sipping motion from an imaginary tea cup while telling me ‘Kopi? Kopi?’  Definitely he didn’t mean photocopy by that. Obviously he was offering me a cup of coffee. At that point, I hurriedly tried to cover up my agitated don’t-kill-me facial ｅxpressions and nodded gracefully while wishing that he didn’t notice my previous panic. I also put that new Indonesian word into my vocabularies warehouse. Kopi.... Ok.

 

It was Aris, again, who brought in my coffee.

Of course, I fully understand his good will that he wanted to leave a good impression to the visitor from the head office by supplying his own brand of hand-made coffee himself. But there were a couple of so-called ‘office girls’ who ran various errands for managers and office staffs. I mean I didn’t insist that I preferred having my coffee from their hands even though office girls were generally young and beautiful. What I had to protest was why Aris should bring my coffee with those big hands which made my coffee cup of standard size look like miniature of children’s play kit. Furthermore why should he neglect the saucer for the cup so that he held the cup with his thick fingers while dipping half of his thumbnail under the surface of hot coffee as if demonstrating his outrageous physical endurance? A few drops of coffee were accidentally poured on the table, leaving black taints with lots of unidentified powders in it. Perhaps it was my prejudice but that coffee even looked rich of proteins then.

 

Aris sat in front of me across the meeting table instead of going out. He kept his beaming smile on his dreadful face and I tried my best to respond with my own forced smile which made several sensitive muscles in my face twitching unnaturally. It was all out of my desperate efforts to give him a good impression in order not to fall as a cannibalistic prey for Aris. He started to tell me something again and definitely I was supposed to have no idea what he was talking about. Mysteriously enough, however, what he was saying was automatically translated in my head in real time. ‘You know what? Back in the kitchen, I found that creamer was not enough. Creamer is a very much essential stuff as long as it is not an espresso-based coffee. So, what could I do for that? I made up my mind to make a special mix for your coffee sacrificing myself. I had to use protein-rich oil under my thumbnail....’ At that point, perhaps I instantly developed my psychic superpower of reading people’s mind!

 

 “Silakan minum, Silakan.”

 

While real time translation was already in gear, it was easy to know this meaning only with his gesture. He was asking me to drink it. Well. In the past, I was forced to have alcohol-containing spirits in the training boots couple times and also drank Soju, a typical Korean spirit, in a dirty ashtray more often, during my military service. I survived those occasions. So I still dared to take that coffee if I had to. At that point, another piece of information about Indonesian culture struck my brain. I heard that they often wash their butts in the toilet with their hand. Was it right hand or left? But there was no time to browse Indonesian cultural information in my brain database. Aris, who already repeated ‘Silakan minum’ dozen times, started to have bloodshot in his eyes and I was feeling that my life was right at the stake if I would further hesitate.

 

First sip...!

An incredible heat struck my whole body. It was my first time to have that much revolutionary taste of coffee in my life. The unbelievably strong sweetness of the coffee immediately paralyzed my tongue and throat when it flowed down through them. It was hundreds of times sweeter than any of coffee that I had had until then. Too obvious that Aris poured all the stock of sugar in the kitchen in that single cup of coffee to demonstrate his best favor for the visitor from the head office.  It felt like that a few more sips would definitely ignite diabetes instantly without fail. Furthermore, I felt enormous amount of certain powders gently sank on my tongue and teeth to make a thick layer. Oh, Lord. Are they from Aris’ thumbnail? Shouldn’t be, Lord! Having a cup of coffee was miraculously enforcing your faithful sincerity in the Devine Hands that much as if a just-reborn Christian.

 

My rational part demanded that I had to spit it out if I want to save my life. But Aris’ big face beaming in front of my nose was a great threat and pressure on me. Spitting it out would more endanger my life for sure. OK. Whatever! I determined to swallow the whole sip down to my throat. Perspiration flooding on my back soaked my shirts. I couldn’t feel my neck because the coffee paralyzed my throat. I also found the chocolate-colored taints with previously mentioned unidentified powders at the rim of the cup where my lips touched. I had to ask myself. What the hell are those powders?

 

Now Aris looked into my face more blatantly. It was already not strange anymore though I instantly developed another skill of telepathy communication. He was waiting for my comments on the coffee as if a chef who ‘cooked’ it. I had to say something good if I wanted to evade that crisis. Aris should not know what I really thought. At that moment of truth, an Indonesian vocabulary that would perfectly serve that occasion was singled out. I, again, stretched my facial muscles to the maximum to force a fabulous smile and said it with my thumbs up :

 

(3) Bagus!

 

If I said (1) Ini Salah, perhaps I could have got killed there.

 

Now, everybody knows that it was KOPI SERBUK, a traditional kind of local coffee in Indonesia. Those powders were also famous now. Definitely, however, it came to my knowledge first time then.  When I was officially posted in that factory a few years after then, I devised a contingent kitchen defense system in order to protect my coffee from Aris’ thumbnail. Permanently!

 

I always asked my office girls to lessen sugar for my coffee but sweetness of coffee was still way stronger than that I had had back in Korea. The sweetness of Indonesian coffee was surprisingly consistent until Starbucks and Coffee Bean finally landed on Indonesian soil. During decades since then, I have changed many office girls for my office as well as lots of coffee brands for my taste. But the sweetness of the coffee has not been lessened that much. Contrarily, I cannot have coffee which is not sweet enough now. As the life in Indonesia is not sweet at all, people here perhaps have seeked for little comforts from that strong sweet taste of coffee

 

Whenever I see those chocolate-colored powders at the bottom of my coffee cup, I still remember my first coffee which Aris served for me then. –END-