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One man’s million is another man’s burger
by Luke Clark
A million Indonesian rupiah. In US dollar terms, it is around $109, according to the currency website Oanda.com. I recently read that for many Indonesians, a million rupiah is a typical monthly wage.
I did a sobering conversion after working out the value of today’s rupiah. I thought I would then enter in the same day 11 years ago. On April 16 1997, a million rupiah fetched a US$415. But just one year later in 1998, following the onset of the country’s economic crisis, it was worth US$126. It was hard to imagine my own monthly wage plunging by 350% in international terms in the space of a single calendar year.
It is even harder to imagine reading a story about a burger that costs the same as my average wage – and then learning just how many think that it’s a burger worth eating.
A PR person for the Four Seasons Jakarta today told me proudly of her hotel’s well-publicised gimmick, a million rupiah burger.
Launched in 2006, the country’s most pricey burger comprises Kobe beef with foie gras, portobello mushrooms and Korean pears, served with french fries. Despite it all, the veritable feast is apparently not even that big. But I’m told it tastes delicious.
I had read of a similar stunt in New York with an expensive ice cream sundae. But surely, I said, considering this is an economy in which you could fly one-way from Jakarta, all the way to the extreme East of Indonesia – Kupang in West Timor – for less (800,000 Rp to be exact, on Mandala Airlines), surely nobody would bother with the burger?
No, she said, you know how Jakarta people are. Some of them just like to show off.
Then I remembered headlines earlier in the week about food price inflation throughout the world. I wondered about a nation where the price of staples like rice and palm oil is rocketing, yet people happily gobble up hundred dollar burgers to show off.
Hey, maybe this was more like America than many foreigners once thought.
Whatever it meant, it did make me think that despite the lapses of a noisy few from time to time, ordinary Indonesians – modest earning men and women – really are a much more tolerant bunch than outsiders give them credit for.
Then again, maybe it’s also just as well that ordinary Indonesians don’t really like burgers.
Luke Clark is a leading writer with The Transit Café – www.thetransitcafe.com
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