FROM THE EDITOR [DECEMBER 13th 2007]

Business in BuGils Cafe really took off once we offered a free beer for a female ghost every night after closing. The long hair girl in white ropes had been spotted by many over the years, and it was generally known that she enjoyed entertainment. There had been salons, flowershops, a furniture shop and even a film studio, but if it was not a place selling beer, it normally closed shop within 6 months. We, BuGils people, knew why. Kuntalani liked beer. For the last few years we fed her with it and BuGils had a wonderfull period. The last person to leave would always leave one Bintang on the bar. And always on the spot where so often somebody had fainted (left corner, nearest to the door). But the weirdest of all things? The next morning when the morning shift came in, they would always find the glass Bintang half empty....

‘Bart! People think BuGils has closed already!’, said Widi with a sad look on her face, when I entered the bar where it all started. ‘Bikin newsletter dong, Bart!’, yelled Risa (right picture) from behind the bar. It was indeed quiet but it was a Monday after all, never a busy night anywhere. I sat down at the bar and looked around. Some Icelandic plane mechanics where playing pool. A mixed couple tried to save cost by drinking from one glass of Margarita with two straws. A security guy was sleeping on two rotan chairs in the garden. The best bar with the best staff shouted for help, I thought. BuGils deserved better, but the location and other circumstances did not work in its favor. Rats had already moved out of Taman Ria, while BuGils was still holding out. Then it happened. I wanted to lift the beer to my mouth, when suddenly a strange experience overwhelmed me. A mysterious power pushed the beer down and back on the bar! It felt like my hand was paralysed! The staff noticed it. ‘Bart! Kenapa!?’ I stood up from the barstool, a bit shaky and tried to lift the glass again, but I couldn’t. I needed one hand to support the other hand! ‘Kuntalani!!’, shouted our cashier Uci in fear. Widi her mouth fell open, her face expressed a total shock. The other girls quickly took some distance from me. I suddenly realised I was standing at the spot where so many had fainted. The spot where once a drunk Icelander pilot suddenly smashed an empty glass right in his own forehead... Where the crazy Dutch colonel had shouted that we should prepare for ‘the attack’, days before the 9/11... And were the gypsym ceiling collapsed, dropping some hundred liters of water on peoples heads.... I looked at Widi. A bit angry I asked her if she still put a beer on the bar every night just before switching off the lights.. Her eyes were staring in fear at me. She slowly shook her head from left to right. ‘No...... udah lama enggak.....’. I moved to another chair. Risa moved to beer along. Uci came closer. ‘Bart’, she whispered, ‘a few days ago Susie (picture below) saw Kuntalani sitting on top of the bar in that corner...’. She pointed at the corner where the Bule Gila book is still for sale. ‘Well, what did Kuntalani do there?’, I wanted to know and turned to Susie. Susie waved her hand and ran outside. I shook my head. Even with 6 guests only, there is always something happening in BuGils... ‘Susi fainted and we had to bring her home..’, Widi explained. It was the most unique excuse I had heard in my 15 year career in Indonesia! But then, I could not deny it did chill me a bit. Widi promised that from now on, she would put the beer back on the bar to keep the ghost happy. One night later, the Ladies Night (every Tuesday) was immediately back at its old levels and nobody fainted and I did not hear anybody shouting about a new 9/11.... Kuntalini is back and she is happy.

I moved on to the One Tree, the small and cozy bar in Blok M. There was this good looking girl that needed a job. She didn’t speak English but in Blok M people don’t need a lot of words anyway. I sat down with her and offered her a drink. ‘A wine maybe?’, I asked her. She was very shy. No, she did not want alcohol. ‘Because’, she explained with a very serious face, ‘I live in Ciputat and need to take bus number 96.’ She stopped for a second. I did not see the reason why she therefore could not take a glass of wine, but she quickly continued. ‘I normally go home on line 96, but if I take wine, I might take 69 instead of 96, and then I end up in North Jakarta in Sunter Podomoro..’, she said, still with no emotion or whatsoever on her face. I instantly hired her, because I love Indonesia with all its goods and bads. This was one of its many goods, in its purest form. The cheating taxi driver that brought me home later that night had never seen a ghost in house he said. ‘But in Blok M many Kuntalani’s Mister!’, he said with a smile. He asked me what my job was. ‘I am a bus driver on route 69’, I told him. ‘Oh....’, he replied calmly as if he believed there were bule bus drivers in Indonesia. ‘Yang ke Sunter Podomoro ya...?’.
≡ Bartele