'Jam karet'

THE INDONESIANS have something called jam karet, "jam" meaning time and "karet" meaning rubber.

We often refer to "Filipino time" to mean our frequently being late for classes, meetings, even flights. I saw a lot of that in Indonesia, especially when I guest-lectured at the University of Indonesia for a week. Students would walk in nonchalantly at 11 a.m. for a class that was supposed to start at 9. Jam karet, my fellow Indonesian professors sighed, but said there was little that could be done about it.

But with time, seeing more of rubber time, I realized jam karet wasn't just tardiness. There was more, a rubber-like flexibility in the handling of time which, depending on the situation, can be frustrating, infuriating or just plain fascinating in the way it shows how different cultures structure and conceptualize time according to local circumstances and needs.

Six-day workweek

Just this week, I had another encounter with another aspect of rubber time.

I was visiting Gadja Mada University in Yogyakarta in the afternoon and then realized there weren't too many people. It was only 3 p.m., yet the halls were empty and many rooms were locked. I thought they might be on summer break but then in the Philippines, university campuses remain full of students and faculty during the summers. So I asked Dr. Muhajir Darwin, one of the university professors, why the campus was so quiet.

Turns out Indonesia has two different work weeks. One is the five-day workweek we're used to, and then there's a six-day workweek, which his university keeps and which goes from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. He said they were planning to move into a five-day workweek but that his preference was for the six-day version because people are more productive this way. After 2 p.m., he theorized, people are drained.

I could empathize with Muhajir, feeling the effects of the sweltering heat and this wasn't even summer in Indonesia. But here we have a good example of how people will restructure time according to local circumstances. In a tropical country, the heat can be wilting and trying to work past 2 p.m. is probably futile ... especially when there is no air-conditioning.

The afternoon heat is the reason why in Spain and many Latin American countries, shops will close for most of the afternoon, and then open up again well into the evening and sometimes as late as 8 or 9 p.m. No, they don't call it rubber time. It's, you guessed it, siesta time.

The idea that we should have a set schedule, "Open 8 to 5" is very Western, and doesn't always follow the rhythms of daily life in a rural area or a small city. When you think about it, even in Metro Manila, we should seriously consider a definite noon break when people can take lunch leisurely and take a quick power nap. I know some offices allow this and I suspect they reap benefits when it comes to productivity.

Midnight stalls

Another interesting example of jam karet comes with the way sidewalk food stalls operate. The night I arrived in Yogya, I was raring for "tempeh," a kind of soy-based food that is found only in Indonesia. It was around 10 when we arrived and I was able to find a stall that was open and selling tempeh. I was ecstatic, assured that I would have a tempeh source for the rest of my stay.

But the next night when I went to the stall, again around 10, it was closed. Then I found out that these stalls would open and close at different times of the day, a bit like some of our fine-dining restaurants. But the times for opening and closing were not fixed. Many of these stalls would close some time in the evening -- between 8 and 10, depending on customers -- and then open again, brace yourselves, some time after midnight to serve insomniacs and people who work nights. Well, sort of work.

The "lesehan" isn't really a stall, just a few mats where people can sit and eat, the clientele mainly "becak" [tricycle] drivers dropping in to chat. The "warung gaul" is a bit more elaborate, with a tarpaulin cover, but it's also informal and simple, serving tea, coffee, "kue" [native cakes] and a variety of "gorengan" [fried foods].

In a way then, these sidewalk vendors predated our modern malls with the idea of "midnight madness" sales, finding a business niche in what we used to think was dead time. That's jam karet, too, a flexibility about business hours.

As I said earlier, jam karet isn't just a matter of tardiness, it's stretching or contracting time appropriately. Our Garuda flight from Singapore to Yogyakarta was delayed by about 15 minutes, but from Yogyakarta to Singapore, it left 10 minutes ahead of schedule. And why not? All the passengers were in.

That reminded me of our jeepneys in the countryside: if you ask drivers when they will leave, they'll say "alas puno" [when-it's-full time]. Makes sense, in its own way.

We in the big cities are chained, captives of time, which has in turn been broken down to nanoseconds and split seconds. We fidget when our computers take a bit longer to boot up (because we've overloaded it with all kinds of programs), when the Internet seems slow (because we've been hooked on high-speed connections), when the microwave minute seems like an hour.

Making time

The Indonesians perfected the technology for instant noodles, which has been disastrous for us -- Indonesians and Filipinos -- nutritionally as well as socially. Cooking and eating are now rushed processes, rather than one where we can enjoy good company and good food. Perhaps we should offset the instant noodles with jam karet in its more positive aspects, remembering that sometimes, when we turn to rigid schedules to "save" time, we may end up wearing ourselves out more quickly.

Just this morning my father asked if I could accompany him to the barber. I thought, "Oh no, it's Thursday morning and I have to finish my Inquirer article." But I obliged, given that I'd been away in Indonesia for several days. Turning to jam karet turned out to be useful; the haircut allowed me to think my article through. So what you're reading now isn't just about jam karet, but was produced out of it.

Eventually, I'd like to develop an expanded philosophy of jam karet, one that accommodates the needs of the 21st century, being punctual and disciplined for certain tasks (such as teaching and attending classes) and being flexible at other times, staying longer than originally planned when visiting a friend who is in obvious need, or reading a few more lines to a child before she goes to sleep, or choosing to cook something more elaborate than instant noodles. It's all a matter of making time, and enjoying it, alone or with friends.