Cooking With Gas

There's an old saying, even older than me, that goes like this: "Now we're cooking with gas!" It means 'Now we're getting somewhere!' It comes from the days when gas in the house became available rather than cooking on a woodstove--a major leap forward from cutting wood and lighting the fire and trying to maintain the proper temperature, and, oh by the way, heating the house at the same time, even though it may already be hot outside. 

Well, in Indonesia, we're always cooking with gas. Very few people can afford an electric stove and the electricity bill that comes with the stove. But it's not as simple as turning on a burner and voila, fire! No, what one uses is a two burner arrangement called a kompor. This is hooked up to a rubber hose and the hose is hooked to a large canister containing the gas. The dial on the kompor makes a spark and the spark ignites the gas. There is a device at the end of the hose which fixes to the top of the gas container and there is a lever on the device which is supposed to safely close off the gas and prohibit it from leaking. Sadly, there have been more than a few cases where something went wrong, the safety device was old or defective, and the gas container has exploded. Not good, for these things explode like anti-personnel bombs on an Afghan highway. 

And then you come to the point where the gas runs out. The container is empty (more or less). It's not as simple as paying a gas bill and having the gas company continue to pipe fuel into your home. No, you must take the gas container, which is quite heavy even when empty, to a place that sells full containers; and you have to choose the right place, because maybe the container is full in  one place, and in another maybe it's not (though, of course, the cost is the same). 

I was facing this situation this morning, and wondering How in the hell am I going to get this freakin' heavy container to a place that sells even heavier freakin' containers, and get the thing back home--me, my motorbike, and the freakin' gas container? My wife and I used to use the car, you see, back when there was a car and a wife. 

I hauled the thing out to the porch and then kind of stood there examining the container and the bike and surveying the general impossibility of getting me, the container, and the bike anywhere at all. At the same time, I mean. And without injuries or explosions. 

And so I called my old friend, Destu. This is what you do in Indonesia when you can't figure something out in Indonesia. You all an Indonesian. 

"No, no, Om," Destu said. "You don't take it. Destu take it. Too heavy for Om." 

So pretty soon Destu showed up at the house and I watched with great interest how this was to be accomplished. Destu placed the container on the front of the bike saddle, himself behind the container, held the container with one arm and steered, operated the gas control and the brake lever with the other hand. Amazing! I doubt whether I would have made it out of the driveway, much less to a repository perhaps a half mile away. 

Of course, once you get the new gas container back to the house, you must get the thing working again, which is never easy. But Destu finally got a spark and gas at the same time, and so now I'm 'cooking with gas'! again. 

The situation with drinking water is similar, though not quite so problematic. You cannot drink the faucet water in Indonesia. You can't even boil the water and drink it. It's that bad. So, you must buy these five gallon water containers and heft the container atop a dispensing unit, turning the container upside down as you heft it (although I hear that there are these new fangled containers that allow you to leave them at floor level, for the dispensing unit will suck the water upward). There are many nearby warungs that sell full containers of water--you just take your old one and replace it for the new one. However, there is then still the problem of getting yourself, the container, and your bike back home. Happily, however, there are many water delivery men, so you just call your neighborhood water guy and he arrives on a special motorbike equipped with a rack for carrying several water containers. And it costs you only 5000 Rupiah--which, I suppose, is somewhere less than 5 dollars. 

In short, in Indonesia you don't just flick a switch and presto. It's always a bit more complicated than that.