{"id":11344,"date":"2011-01-15T18:47:37","date_gmt":"2011-01-15T23:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/11344\/mess-them\/"},"modified":"2011-01-15T18:47:37","modified_gmt":"2011-01-15T23:47:37","slug":"mess-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/11344\/mess-them\/","title":{"rendered":"DON’T MESS WITH THEM!"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/strong><\/span>hey wouldn\u2019t let me attend Public High School #70.\u00a0 It was the closest high school to my home in Jakarta, but the family I was staying with wouldn\u2019t <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"jOKO

Joko in 1986<\/p><\/div>\n

even send their own kids there, much less the 16 year-old American exchange student trusted to live with them.\u00a0 See, SMA (Indonesian for high school) 70 was a bad school, notoriously so.\u00a0 South Jakarta wasn\u2019t a \u201cbad\u201d part of town, but the parents there had the freedom to send their kids to whatever high school, public or private, that they wanted.\u00a0 Even public high school wasn\u2019t free in Indonesia, and if you had a few extra thousand Rupiah to spend on your kids, you did. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

No, I went to SMA 82, a smaller public high school a mile or two further away. I didn\u2019t have much interaction with the SMA 70 kids. I did play on my high school\u2019s basketball team, and when we played SMA 70, they kicked our ass quite handily. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have a lot of pictures from those days (this story takes place in 1986), but I did find with a little Googling that SMA 70 still exists and have their own website now! I took these pics from their official site. Yeah, nowadays, it looks like they actually teach you how to fight IN SCHOOL. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"I don\u2019t know about you, but these look like \u201cbad girls\u201d to me! That kid with the bandana over his face and the basketball\u2026 he must be part of the SMA 70 Mafia. Yes, they had their own mafia, which is sort of what this story is about. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got hundreds of stories I could tell about my two stints as an exchange student in Indonesia, but I got reminded of one today while reading a novel wherein a restaurant was negotiating with a local youth gang for protection. I heard a similar story in Jakarta involving a restaurant I frequented. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"It was located in the Pasar (market) Blok M. I\u2019m guessing most of my readers have never experienced an Asian open air market, and I could easily write an entire blog about how fascinating the markets in Jakarta were, suffice to say these weren\u2019t \u201cshopping centers\u201d; they were square miles of everything from vegetable & textile vendors who were selling the same way they sold stuff hundreds of years ago to high-end department stores selling Gucci and Rolex (you could also buy Gucci & Rolex down in the seedier parts of the market, but they were knock offs). You could get hundreds of different kinds of food and drink at a Jakarta market: satay & nasi goreng prepared and sold out of push carts; Chinese; Indian; expensive restaurants and American fast food. The largest collection of American fast food was at Pasar Blok M.\"\"
\nEvery now and then, my fellow exchange students and I got the craving for the fast food of home, and Blok M was the place to get it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps our favorite restaurant barely exists anymore, but back in the 1980\u2019s, was thriving to the point that they had several overseas franchises: Pioneer \u201cCalifornia Fried Chicken\u201d. Here in the State, it was just known as Pioneer Fried Chicken and was mostly a Southern California chain. Overseas, they added the \u201cCalifornia\u201d to the name to compete with Popeye\u2019s Louisiana, Church\u2019s Texas and of course, the Colonel\u2019s Kentucky. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Damn. Writing this blog is making me hungry. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My buddy and I became friends with the manager of the Pioneer Chicken shop at Blok M, Benny. He had been brought in from nearby Singapore to manage to this crucial chicken-making operation. Like many Singaporeans, he spoke English fairly well, and whenever he learned that the American exchange students were visiting his shop, he would come bustling out of his office in the back to chat with us. We were not only an opportunity for him to practice his English, but were probably good for business. Over time, Benny started spilling some of the challenges he faced running one of the most important fried chicken joints in one of Asia\u2019s largest cities. I\u2019ll never forget his story about dealing with the SMA 70 Mafia. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThese kids, they come in and threaten us!\u201d Benny complained. \u201cThey\u2019re in their high school uniforms with the SMA 70 badge right on it, but they don\u2019t care.\u201d
\nWe nodded in sympathy between bites of succulent chicken.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey say they smash our windows if we don\u2019t pay them!\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Damn.\u00a0 They wanted actual payments!\u00a0 I thought they might have been satisfied with free chicken.\u00a0 This was weird.\u00a0 This was pre-Sopranos. Gangs wanting protection money?\u00a0 This is the kind of stuff that happened in movies, not at what was the equivalent of the local mall! <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut, we have a bit of a surprise for them,\u201d Benny continued, leaning back and nodding his head. His eyes squinted and he smirked with self satisfaction. Apparently, you don\u2019t mess with Pioneer Fried Chicken. <\/span><\/span><\/span>\"\"<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSee,\u201d Benny leaned forward again and in a hushed, conspiratorial tone confessed, \u201cWe have our own mafia.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My buddy and I stopped eating, looked at each other and then back at Benny. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI called back to Singapore, and they\u2019re sending some\u2026. specialists\u2026 to help me with this.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s right folks, THE CHICKEN MAFIA! <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Shit. You do NOT want to cross THE CHICKEN MAFIA!!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Now, I wish I could tell you the rest of the details of the SMA 70 versus Pioneer Fried Chicken story. Maybe something punny like \u201cthe Chicken Mafia came in and batter-ed SMA 70 into submission,\u201d or \u201cthe shady wing of the Pioneer Fried Chicken corporation decided not to bother with a small fry enemy like SMA 70,\u201d but, alas, I do not know what happened next. We never noticed any broken windows there at Blok M nor any SMA 70 thugs terrorizing the patrons. Benny disappeared. The few times we went back there, no manager came running out to hang out with us. I hope nothing unfortunate happened to the young Singaporean. If they\u2019re like any other mafia, you generally do not want to talk about their very existence. Perhaps they found out Benny told us about them. Soylent Green, anyone?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the 25 years since those days, as noted, SMA 70 remains an operating high school. The USA has elected a president who also attended a Jakarta public school. Pioneer Chicken got bought out by Popeye\u2019s in the 90\u2019s who then converted almost all of the Pioneer locations to Popeye\u2019s. There remain 3 Pioneer joints, all in Los Angeles. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re still running the Pioneers in Jakarta. Wikipedia told me that \u201cCalifornia Fried Chicken\u201d is still going strong in China, however. They did drop the name \u201cPioneer\u201d though. Why? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cToday Pioneer Chicken operates in China under the name “California Chicken” because the Chinese there tend to pronounce “Pioneer” in a way which is socially undesirable in Chinese society. The pronunciation of “Pioneer Chicken” is similar to the word for prostitution. The chicken is still prepared with the original recipe.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah, I know this was really long for a blog; maybe I\u2019m warming up for writing my memoirs. My thanks to Robbie for the awesome Chicken Mafia picture! Anyone\u2019s high school year book include a picture of the \u201cMafia Club\u201d? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They wouldn\u2019t let me attend Public High School #70.\u00a0 It was the closest high school to my home in Jakarta, but the family I was staying with wouldn\u2019t even send their own kids there, much less the 16 year-old American exchange student trusted to live with them.\u00a0 See, SMA (Indonesian for high school) 70 was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,15,43,10,25],"tags":[641,1352,81,1354,1353,488],"class_list":["post-11344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-business","category-cooking","category-life","category-world","tag-chicken","tag-indonesia","tag-joko","tag-mafia","tag-robbie","tag-stewd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}