After Melbourne
And understanding the Madness
In late January I tried another treatment to get over Melbourne, which surprisingly worked. My therapist was that boring Swedish app of Spotify. At first, it seemed to be an old treatment. Anyone who knows me in real life knows I enveloped myself in earphones and music players, from several cassette Walkman units to a Network Walkman necklace (destroyed by Singaporean humidity in 2007) to a Samsung P3 media player (touchscreen stopped working around 2011) before getting the magic of 2010s smartphones with integrated media player, and since 2017, Spotify Premium.
Again, old treatment. I’ve taken note of the top 10 Billboard and ARIA (that’s Australian Billboard) and Oricon (that’s Japanese Billboard) singles and albums for every year since 2000 and have listened to all of them, through downloaded mp3s and original CDs. I’ve seen their video clips on YouTube, and nothing has changed. I still rue the reality that I’m not in Australia, and more importantly, I still didn’t understand why I must hate Melbourne and Australia.
What changed the game? What was the thing that made the difference now in January 2025? Video clip inclusion on Spotify. Triple J, a state-funded alternative radio in Australia, generously uploads its annual Hot 100 playlists to Spotify, and Spotify’s videos play picture-in-picture (probably also a feature on YouTube Premium), so I could watch them while still using the phone.
Meanwhile, for some reason, there are no Oricon playlists, not sure if no one made one or if they were taken down (the East Asians and their weird copyright anxieties). I got the annual single lists from Generasia and looked for the tracks with videos included on Spotify.
It worked like a wonder. I could retrace my arrival in Australia, where there were two music shows on weekend mornings. First, ABC’s rage, the TV version of Triple J, which showed alternative video clips, should be familiar to this MTV Alternative Nation patron. Then the mainstream Video Hits on Ten, which focused on Top 40 singles.
My school life moved from Asian postgrad candidates in the late 2000s (I was the baby, the only 18-year-old doing Advanced Academic English) to working-class Australians in 2001-02. Those two years were the best of two worlds, where I got good grips on the two parts of Melbourne, the Anglo-Celtic suburbs (I didn’t get along with the boys but did well with the girls) and the Chinatown, my shorthand for the downtown where Asian international students resided (this was more boys heavy).
I got into Japanophilia in 2002, a combination of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, watching Patlabor 2 on the public broadcaster, watching Spirited Away on the cinema, and reading Utada Hikaru’s cover story on TIME. I think that’s when this rift between the two parts of Melbourne began: Australian video clips, pop or alternative alike, are about being enough, being quirky, being kitschy even (the disco culture was well-maintained into the 2000s by Gen X Irish and Italians). Japanese video clips, as one could imagine, are about the futuristic or fantastic story (it’s Tokyo, after all), or melodramatic romance.
By the end of 2002, I’d made brave decisions that seemed ruinous but logical or correct at that time. I picked the more working-class La Trobe University instead of the more popular Monash University. I was sold on the promise of Reformasi – greater sympathy for Chinese Indonesians, cultural freedom, and liberal patriotism.
And as usual, God, the universe, gave me what I wanted. I met great Indonesian men and women. I got into the anime scene full of Asian Australians. I read about 19th-century Europe and Japanese contemporary politics while listening to J-pop CDs post-9/11 American rock, and a lot of upbeat Indonesian pop.
In retrospect, that’s where I got it all wrong. I should have gone to Monash and probably met a couple of Jewish Australian students of my age. I should have begun a migration path, looking for the equivalents of the H1B visas. Should have remembered that Australia is always a better place than Indonesia, and it was foolish to forgo Australia in the hope of migrating to Singapore after returning to Indonesia.
And obviously, some things were inevitable. Post-9/11 sympathy for America turned into hate against America after March 2003. Blairism fell in Britain, taking with it all the Britannia good mood brought in by Bend it Like Beckham, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, and Jamiroquai. Australian Millennials felt they got their 1968 moments, fueled by Mike Moore, Green Day, and all the boomer Lefties. I even bought 1968: The Year that Rocked the World for Pete’s sake.
I woke up in 2005 in shambles, and not just from the Indian Ocean tsunami, and theories are saying why. First, 2005 is a long way from 1995. All the Clintonian optimism was gone, and as I said, Blair was long canceled. Utada Hikaru and other J-pop stars were burned out as the era of Cool Japan, inspired by Cool Britannia, cooled off. J-pop practically lost its magic that year.
Then I was 23 when I was no longer a Fool and saw that I got nothing out of Australia. No sex and romance, not even a degree (I was ousted from the Bachelor of International Relations program for less than B average), and it’s too late to apply for temporary residency.
Then everyone felt different in 2005, I got the best teachers and the worst new friends. Old friends had graduated and had been in steady relationships, and I just couldn’t keep clinging to them. I met Japanese Australians and of course, we never understood each other, especially as they were champagne socialists. God kept me granting me wishes and left me with the consequences. I completed my senior year with my first A (for modern Chinese history) and got the Honours year offer. Would I give Melbourne another go? Giving another year of living in Australia?
I took that chance and suffered even more. Traded my nice student apartment (where there was never a white woman, not even as a staff) for a shabby sublet in a rotting area (now a gentrified far-left suburb, of course) and lasted just a week, before living in another downtown student accommodation, again without any white woman. Skipped class and spent the days watching anime. I was sad but not sure why.
Even 19 years later, I’m still figuring out the 2006 video clips. They can be familiar and warm, but they are from a more pessimistic, more tired time as well. 2006 was a year when social media were taking off – Friendster and Myspace, LiveJournal, and YouTube (according to its name, intended to act as a personal TV and studio).
As for me, Utada Hikaru and her Korean counterpart BoA returned, and I lived by their songs indoors and outdoors, but all the optimism had been gone. Again, maybe I had been too old and jaded. Maybe they knew that they couldn’t compete with all the manufactured boybands and girlbands (which in Japan, came in dozens).
One month ago, I had the idea of writing about the Madness and discussed it once or twice on Twitter. The Madness is the inexplicable anger at the world experienced by those who live in the best cities. Not even employment, social networks, and a good postcode could save one from the Madness. You can see every day even in your mention. People who keep on blaming white people, white women, and now, Jews. Hopefully, we don’t need to see the day when Jewish women are blamed in writing.
I experienced the Madness because I didn’t get what I wanted in Melbourne because I didn’t see Asian faces on Australian TV (actually, even unlike in America, Jewish characters are also rare in Australian TV), and I voluntarily detached myself from the essence of Australian life, the suburb. It didn’t help that unlike in TAFE, the community college, more Australian undergraduates weren’t interested in socializing with me.
Call it the middle-class syndrome. The working-class whites are more used to interacting with immigrants and foreigners, while the middle class has the distance, the privilege maybe, to keep them at arm- length. Spending the last two years on Twitter also taught me that Australians are less friendly to Indonesians compared to Americans (the friendliest ones, must be said), Canadians, and Britons. Maybe proximity breeds caution, maybe the lifetime consumption of American sitcoms shapes my sensibility better toward Americans instead of Australians. At least things are improving this year and finally, I got to meet more Australians.
That’s my trip back in 2006, and I’m back in 2025. Objectively a worse time than 2006 for everyone, but again this is the best time in my life. I still don’t have the full picture of The Madness (envy? Racism against white people?), but I’m glad I’m over it. I am glad every day I could help people over the oceans, despite distrusting my compatriots. Indonesian Gen Z is talking about abandoning Indonesia, and while foreign public transport and clean air remain interesting for me (greater pay is the biggest issue, of course), I know too well the 99 problems that Western cities are facing right now. And that thing, The Madness, experienced by people who should have known better.
What’s next? What I always needed to do. Marie Kondoing my possessions. Then maybe next year, hopefully sooner, living my next stage of life. Forming my life, after Melbourne.