A Good Year
Christmas letter 2024
Twenty years ago, my world was unraveling. I failed to reach the required B average and was removed from the ‘elite’ Bachelor of International Relations program. I socialized well with native Indonesians but not with Chinese Indonesians or European Australians. Finally, the Boxing Day Tsunami.
The last twenty years have been cycles of rise and fall for me. I have had horrible thoughts and redemptions, heartbreaks and new loves, boredom and adventures, and endless dreams about Melbourne, Singapore, and strangely Toronto instead of Stockholm or Tokyo, perhaps a side effect of listening to Drake.
Ironically, I left social media in 2019 while working as a social media administrator during the pandemic. When I returned in January 2023, I followed every writer I’d read on Quillette, The Free Press, and UnHerd. This year, I’ve become mutual contacts with most of them simply by starting as a reply guy.
On the other hand, with some exceptions, I still don’t maintain contact with other Asian feminists, other Asian journalists, and other Asian writers. I still don’t maintain contact with other Indonesians I have met in real life.
Maybe it comes to political differences, and I hate it. 7 October should have not affected how Asians see the world, but it has. The omnicause has gripped the Asian intellectual class and why not? They are just synchronizing with their peers in the Atlantic. They don’t have to grapple with the complexity of anti-Zionism/antisemitism since they don’t have any Jewish friends in the first place, especially Jewish women. The hate against Jews in the name of standing up for Palestine is the logical continuation of the hate against white women (trust me, I know it’s worse than the hate against white men) that has lasted for a decade.
Early this year I described my X account as a “White women appreciation account”, partly to contradict the prevailing anti-Karen attitude in Asian twitters. Now we’re getting into 2025, and Karen is no longer blonde and no longer mentioned. She’s turned into the unnamed “Zionist”, and beyond Jews, it seems that a Zionist is somebody who thinks Israel has a point, or more precisely, somebody who thinks Israel deserves to exist as a Jewish state. To be anti-Zionist therefore to believe that Israel should no longer exist, maybe.
See what happened? Middle East politics should have not been my beat, let alone something that defined me in 2024. But it did, on a personal level. On one hand, as I mentioned, all the Asian writers have defined themselves around Palestine. My old publication pins “Never stop talking about Palestine” throughout this year, and many former readers of mine never stop talking about Palestine, even linking it to every other thing in Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, and the United States.
On the other hand, guess who have been my biggest supporters and maybe friends this year? Anglophone white women, including Jewish women. Hopefully, we have trusted each other, I appreciate how they share episodes of their lives through their social media accounts, and I appreciate how they have been patient and receptive to me this year.
This result got me thinking about the detachment between body and soul. I don’t think I’ll turn the heads of many women, not even in my twenties. And yet every night and morning I entertain many people across the Pacific, as well as several Britons. When my sister’s family was going to Bali, I considered tagging along, before thinking that I couldn’t just yet approach some white women and chatting with them. And yet from my room, I had my first ever interview with an American writer, as well as speaking with an American woman for the first time.
Thus, sadly, in this age of Wi-Fi and apps, I felt little need to leave my home. All the food gets delivered. All the groceries get delivered. All my social life happens on my couch. Even one of the biggest jobs in my life happened indoors. I still took the pleasure of going to the malls and the supermarkets, but I could have the same fun in my home for the saved money and time (I understand this could be a privilege).
And yet, again, I have never been happier. I’ve spent the last twenty years feeling I was sentenced to exile away from Australia. I’ve spent the last twenty years trying to be a part of the Chinese Indonesian community. I’ve spent the last twenty years trying to be social. Now I’m socializing with people I will never see in the flesh, but who know me and my interests, who have called my name on air and introduced me to their followers, who know my secrets, and who know, and care more about me than my childhood friends and vice versa.
I know this is a politically bad year, everyone has predicted it from the beginning. And yet, unless you live in Ukraine or the Levant, I deem this year to be better than expected for many people. No living in the pandemic, no living in fear of being accused as a racist (which happens to many Jewish populations in the West), no threat of societal breakdown (partly due to tough law enforcement in Asia and appeasement in the West).
It will be Christmas in five days, and this has been the fastest Advent for me. No expectation of a Christmas miracle, no fantasy of what could have been, and no frantic search for the perfect Christmas on TV. Like every night, I’ll just stick with my friends, and my mutuals, and try to be a worthy online presence for them.
No more yearning for Melbourne. No more sadness and regret. No more utopia. I have cyber-suburbia.