Indonesia food is one of a kind. Indonesia cuisine is mainly inspired by India Hindu food, which you can see different sauce’s in curry. At the same time, they also had their own developed food, which is based on their environment and agriculture. Such as Nasi Goreng (friend rice), Pisang Goreng (Fried banana cakes) and Teh Halia (ginger tea).

The Nasi Goreng is everywhere in Yogyakarta, and very famous there as well. Indonesia is one of the biggest countries of producing rice. And rice is the country’s staple food (Food By Country).Indonesia has multi-cooking ways to the rice.And they will place the rice into a bowl shape, put different types of meats, sources and vegetables around it. Some restaurants will lay big banana or bamboo leaves underneath.

The local people are used to eat by hand. They use thumb to mix the source with rice. That’s why the rice in Indonesia is a bit hard and can separate easily. (Anderson, S. 1995) However, in the restaurant, they will offer a spoon and folk, but no knife.

Another interesting aspect of the food in Indonesia is the side dishes called a savoury snack, which are deep fried crackers made from starch and other ingredients that serve as flavouring. For Indonesians, whether you are rich or poor, they have a habit to eat the savoury cracker, which comes in different shapes even different colors.“Such as light red, orange, yellow, baby blue, light green and white” in round, square or free style shapes (Wiroreno, W. 2016). Kerupuk is a big one, which can also enjoyed on its own or as a snack. The local people would like to eat with different source such as chill because the kerupuk has no taste (Wiroreno, W. 2016).

 

For the drinks, Teh Halia (hot ginger tea with Ambon) is a representative Indonesia drinks. The country’s soil and climate support sugar cane as the largest agricultural and commercial crop (Food By Country). Therefore, the drinks there are very sweet and full of sugar. Interestingly, you can see lot of ants on the table because of the sugar.

 

Indonesia ‘s food culture is various because it has influenced by different foreigner cultures. There are still more to explore about the food and eat habits.

 

Reference:

 

• Anderson, Susan. Indonesian Flavors. Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd., 1995.

 

• Food by Country, 2010, Food in Indonesia, viewed 16 February 2017, <http://www.foodbycountry.com/Germany-to-Japan/Indonesia.html&gt;

 

• Wiroreno, Winawati. 2016, Indonesia food and snack habits, viewed 16 February 2017, < http://blog.cimigo.com/indonesia-food-habits/&gt;

Images:  Photographed by Yilin Yao

 

It is a very precious opportunity that I can interview a local graduate student, who is programing a project called draw your dream in a very poor village.

His name is Bhima Saputera Effenddie, but he prefers to be called Bimbim, who is a very friendly and active boy. And he had studied nursing in a university in Indonesia 1 year ago.

After graduation, he had a vast and hazy about what he could do as well as what he wanted to do in the future. One of his friends invited him to join a program, which was helping kids in poor areas to find their dreams. They ride motorbike for 2 hours to the village, in the middle of a jungle called Datar Batung in South Bornoe that is his hometown.

The kids there don’t know what television is and also have no idea about how cars look like. However, they are very innocent and also very strong. Bimbim explained to us that they were such independent kids that they wash their own clothes, cook for themselves and play without parents’ company. I was mostly surprised by Bimbim’s words that once the kids ran as fast as their motorbikes and asked for kelereng (marble). Because Kelereng is the only toy that they have and can offer. What’s more, you may not believe it common that children there dropped off school for working or for marriage in young ages, particularly, 12-year-old girls may have marries and give birth. Therefore, the kids don’t know what dream they can dream about, since the whole jungle just blocks their mind.

Bimbim was teaching kids about dental health, photographed by Bhima Saputera Effenddie

That’s why my friend Bimbim was trying to bring other people’s dream to this village. In one side, children can get ideas about what dreams can be. In another side, they can learn English words and get to know outside world. At meanwhile, Bimbim was studying nursing, so he also helped the local people to improve their health knowledge. During this project, he felt he found the meaning about what life is. His motto is that life is not about living, is about giving, which encourages him to continue this hard but meaningful “job”. After he was back to city, Bimbim and his friends collected around 20,000,000 Indonesia rupee for this village. And he used this money to make uniforms for the students.

 

I think what Bimbim and his friends did reflect to the reality. People there complain about their government even fight against it, but there are still lots of people never gotten government’s attention. Anyway, Indonesian NGO (Non-Governmental Organizations) is penetrating the area that government can not reach and some of the areas are taken care of by them. I believe in the future there will be more people willing to give a hand to those areas.

Reference:

Photos: Effenddie, Instagram.

 

Design can be very generous, but it can also be specific. At the same time, design is a visual language, which conveys a concept or a thought. The power of design in public health is in its significant performance.

In the past, smoking is not seemed as a bad habit. But after the awareness of health increased, more and more people realized the harm of this bad habit. Therefore, more and more people or organizations stood out to help people reduce this harm even to quit smoking. But without designs, this project cannot be promoted obviously and fast. For example, advertisements, logos and tools that can help to quit this negative habit. Here is an example, the graphic warning labels on cigarette package tell people the negative of smoking. Anyway, We will all be asked if this will work or not.

 

But based on the data that I had researched, people are holding different opinions. The survey from the Ohio State University points different thoughts. Some people think, the image didn’t threaten the smokers (Grabmeier, J, 2015). Because some people themselves can just buy another stylish cigarette cases or they can put a sticker on the warning images (Grabmeier, J, 2015), so as to find their methods to ignore the warnings. But most of the interviewees think that the images can definitely stir their emotions, help them think about quitting this habit among smokers, and prevent others from ever starting it (Grabmeier, J, 2015).

The survey from International Tobacco Control (ITC) of four countries, Canada, Australia, America and UK, shows that the warning photos on cigarette packages do effect on smokers and make them think about the risk of smoking.

 

However, the answers are far from clear, since William Shadel who is an associate director of Population Health Program pointed that “there’s little evidence for the effect of graphic warning labels on smoking initiation or cessation. There are estimates of the potential impact but almost no direct evidence for an actual effect on smoking.” (Deborah M. and Shadel, W. 2014 )

That’s true. But smokers at least are aware of the harm of smoking through the directly design of warning graphic images.

 

Another controversial design that helped quit smoking is Electronic cigarette. The idea came up by Joseph Robinson in 1930. But the first commercially successful electronic cigarette was created in Beijing, China by Hon Lik, a 52-year-old pharmacist, inventor and smoker. (CASAA, n.d) His father is a heavy smoker and died of lung cancer. That was what encouraged him to create the E-cigarette. And this design got approved by government, because at that time they thought E-cigarette was no harmful than normal cigarette. However, During 2008 to 2015, some scientist found E-c would course more health problems. So lots of countries banned to sale it. Nowadays, this design is considered to be 2 types, one including nicotine and one without nicotine. The revolution of e-cigarette is kept on and this design may be refined in the future as a helper for quitting smoking.

 

Above all, the designs that use for public health normally have to go through a process to be improved more perfectly by different judgments.

 

 

Reference:

 

• Deborah M. and Shadel, W. 2014, Graphic Warning Labels on Cigarettes Are
• scary, but Do They Work? Viewed 15 February 2017, < http://www.rand.org/blog/2014/09/graphic-warning-labels-on-cigarettes-are-scary-but.html&gt;

 

• Grabmier, J, 2015, How graphic photos on cigarette packs help smokers consider quitting, viewed 15 February 2017 <https://news.osu.edu/news/2015/12/21/graphic-warnings/>

 

• CASAA, n.d. A Historical Timeline of Electronic Cigarettes, viewed 15 February 2017, < http://casaa.org/historical-timeline-of-electronic-cigarettes/&gt;

Images:

• scary, but Do They Work?  Viewed 15 February 2017, < http://www.rand.org/blog/2014/09/graphic-warning-labels-on-cigarettes-are-scary-but.html&gt;
• Daily Mail, 2014 More countries adding graphic warnings to smokes, viewed 15 February 2017, <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-2671848/More-countries-adding-graphic-warnings-smokes.html&gt;.