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Dear Mr. Gates:
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Date: Wed, 20 December 2006 11:50 WesternIndonesiaTime Subject: Some Busy Days with Herry Latief
November 23, 2006, after a few days earlier he contacted me to ask me to help him make the design for a book cover of Mr. Asahan Aidit - the younger brother of a famous DN Aidit, the Indonesian communist leader of the sixties who had been successfully turned Indonesian communist party to become the third largest in the world - my senior high school friend Herry Latief finally came to Jakarta from the Netherland. In the morning around seven o’clock, he asked me to meet him at Atrium Senen, a shopping mall in the center of Jakarta. On my way there, in front of the famous Hotel Indonesia circle, the busway, bus with special road that no other vehicles allowed to get in, was stopped for a moment. It looked like a VIP person would use the street. A motorcade came, several police motorcycles followed by some police cars, SUVs, and a Mercedes sandwich by two big motorcycles, and some other cars. It was the Indonesian president, sitting in the right part of the back seat of the Mercedes, and he was staring to the right to the busway that I was riding. As if he was giving me some kind of sign. In the afternoon, a few minutes later I entered the Atrium Senen, a shopping mall in the center of Jakarta, in accordance with the appointment with my friend Herry Latief. He would wait for me in the Gunung Agung book store, a famous book store chain in Indonesia. With a long wavy hair tied in his back, he waved his hand toward my self from inside the bookstore. We have a conversation for a while, and left the Atrium, walked approximately a kilometer to the Kepu street, a slum area with strong economic activities containing of some kiosks on the left and the right of the street. Some kind of Home Depot but in the shape of several private small kiosks, selling many kind of household merchandises, some new and some second hands. At the same street are the printing companies, small to middle sizes, which makes the street famous as the center of printing activities in Jakarta. He was searching for a printing shop Lintang, because the owner Sugeng a year earlier had helped him with his book printing. After he met the person and talked for some minutes, we continued to other printing shops searching for the right price for his intention of printing his friend’s book. Among the printing shops we visited was Gobi, a bigger one than the others, with some big printing machines working the printing of magazines, brochures, posters, and packaging stuffs, like the package of tooth paste that were being handled that day. Approaching the dusk we walked to leave the Jakarta’s printing center street. On our way there, in one of the streets, we met with a peddler of Siomay, some kind of Chinese food sold on a bicycle. At first I was also agreed to get one but then cancelled after we later found that it was made of pork. We continued to go to Brantas street where he stays in Jakarta, by riding a Bajaj, some kind of three cycle small car made in India, like in one of James Bond movie starred by Roger Moore. There I met with his wife Ratih, and Ratih’s sister and young brother, all look like Arabs. After the dusk I went home.
Other meetings followed on the next days, among which when he bought a new computer on December 1, 2006, at Sky Computer, one among thousands of computer shops at Mangga Dua, a shopping area famous for their lower prices, consists of some shopping buildings. He bought an Asus PC with 15" LCD monitor, with a rather strange deal of asking for two meals while waiting for the PC to set up by the shop keepers. I left the shopping area alone at dusk because he still had to wait for his family to come by. The Mikrolet, some kind of taxi with more than ten passengers capacity, was making a U-turn when the traffic jam occurred in front of it, since it was the peak hour. Then the Mikrolet made a backward move for around 700 meters before the passenger were asked to leave the car, and me and the other passengers walked some hundred meters to the front of Kota train station to ride the busway again.
Friday December 8, 2006, the lay out work for the content of the book had been done, by Imron, an experience lay-out man who has worked around the Kepu printing area for more than three years. The final design for the cover of the book had also been done that day. Herry also found a shop that he would rent for the next two years, owned by Joni Alfaruk, with Imron to handle most of the work. It would be to handle the work of some next books published by Herry’s publishing company Sastra Pembebasan or Freedom Literature. The authors would be mostly Indonesians who have no choice than to live abroad after the political turmoil of 1965 when the Indonesian communist party made a failed coup. But this term “coup” is in question now, because some people believed that it was just a fabricated historical data.
Some of those Indonesians in the sixties
were making their decision to study in the Eastern block countries for
the good of Indonesia since at that moment the president was a close
ally of the Eastern block countries. But after the 1965
communist party failure, they have to stay abroad because the new
government was strictly suspicious to those studying in the Eastern block countries.
Date: Wed, 20 December 2006 12:15 WesternIndonesiaTime Subject: President SBY Visits to Japan and Russia
Around those busy days I have with my friend Herry Latief, working the book of Mr. Asahan Aidit - the younger brother of a famous DN Aidit, the Indonesian communist leader of the sixties who had been successfully turned Indonesian communist party to become the third largest in the world - there were the news of Indonesian president SBY visiting Japan and Russia.
Date: Wed, 20 December 2006 12:38 WesternIndonesiaTime Subject: Your Activities with Communist Countries
Mr. Asahan Aidit, whose book I was helping to make the cover design, spent some time in Vietnam during the Vietnam war, fighting along with the Vietcong. He told the story about that in this upcoming book of him. As if inspired by it, your recent news also contain your activities with some communist countries or ex communist countries like in the above photos.
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Thank's, A.M. Firmansyah Tel. +62812 183 1538
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