History must not get in the way of relations
It is often said that taxi drivers are cultural ambassadors who hold a mirror up to a nation's psyche, warts and all. And that seemed to be the case with the driver of our Bluebird taxi, stuck in Jakarta's extremely congested and cacophonous traffic on a sizzling hot afternoon.
Buses belched like volcanoes; motorcycles buzzed noisily through traffic like giant insects; policemen blew whistles to guide cars. Staring impatiently at the policemen while blasting his horn, Dudi, our 28-year-old driver, suddenly cursed in a mixture of heavily accented English and broken Chinese.
His outburst sliced through the frustrated silence in the taxi, and it made all of us laugh. His chosen Chinese curse is arguably the most frequently used slang word among my countrymen.
