It's Ramadhan!

The Muslim season of fasting is different in Singapore and in Indonesia.
In Singapore, everyone else goes on doing their own business while the Muslims avoid the canteen altogether and hang out in the library. However, in Indonesia, where 90% (or something around that number) of the world's Muslims are, Ramadhan is a different ball game altogether.

I'm lucky that the woman in charge of my rumah kos is Christian and therefore, I don't have to tiptoe around in her kitchen while making breakfast (my usual fare of oatmeal) after waking up late. They were having breakfast (lunch?) at 10am, and they had steak, fries and broccoli. Hardly fare fit for the fasting month. I was confused about her religion because she had Islamic writings hung on her walls. I'm not sure why they are there, but I can probably venture a guess. It's probably related to pacifying the local Muslim spirits(?). In Malaysia, some people believe that the spirits residing in the parcels of land from an ancient time, and Chinese and Indians pay respects to them by leaving offerings at roadside shrines for statues dressed in Malay clothes. (Prof. GBL, 2005) I'll probably ask Ibu Agus when my language skills becomes better and when I've been here longer.

I had lunch with Feng Yi at a restaurant because most of the warungs were closed till 4pm. This was the same restaurant I had lunch at when I first arrived in Yogyakarta 2 weeks ago. 2 weeks ago, I spent about Rp18.000 for tahu telor (tofu fried with egg), a bowl of vegetables in soup, 1 serving of rice and 1 chicken drumstick. Today, I paid Rp30.000 for about the same amount of food.

I'm not sure what extra food I ordered, but surely, it's not that much, is it?
FY reckons that food prices during lunch may have increased during Ramadhan to accomodate the fact that less people will come to eat lunch during Ramadhan. But the menu seems to look the same. I'm still confused.

"Bukan ayam goreng biasa" (Not the usual fried chicken), the sign outside the restaurant says. Then about 100 metres down, I see another sign from a steak house which says "Bukan sapi biasa".
Copyright is another problem here. As long as the phrase is catchy enough, people will use it without acknowledging where it came from. Also, along my street (Jalan Kaliurang), I see shops which provide proofreading services for undergraduate thesis. Shalina thinks that it actually means that the people in those shops might actually do the papers for the undergraduates. This is especially scary since Kaliurang is the street next to the UGM campus, and UGM is the oldest university (and very high-ranking) in Indonesia.

I'm hoping that only a few desperate undergraduates actually use these shops to graduate.