What a name!
Zainuddin was the first driver assigned to drive me around when I was working in Indonesia.
Most drivers are poorly educated people. When they’re not behind the wheel driving you around they’re usually asleep or absentmindedly playing with their feet.
Not Zainuddin. When he wasn’t driving me around he always seemed to have his face buried in a book - usually a book about American history.
He had a bad habit of asking me detailed questions about the history of my own country that I was embarrassed to admit I couldn’t answer.
Zainuddin knew more about John Foster Dulles than anyone I’d ever met. Like me, most of my contemporaries were too busy watching Howdy Doody and Captain Kangaroo to pay attention to what John Foster Dulles was up to. I only had a vague sense that John Foster Dulles may have been named after an airport in northern Virginia.
But Zainuddin could tell you all about the policies that John Foster Dulles promoted during his tenure as Secretary of State during the Eisenhower administration.
Zainuddin knew more than just American history. Zainuudin made it clear to me that he knew some great places in Jakarta where I could get laid. His comments were my first inkling that Jakarta was a monger’s paradise.
But I was a step ahead of Zainuddin. I NEVER let him drive me anywhere interesting. I knew that if I had let him drive me anywhere truly fun, by noon the next day all the other drivers would know and by the day after that, so would nearly everyone else in the office.
Zainuddin even commented to me one day on the drive home from work that all of the other drivers were pissed at him because he couldn’t tell them anything about my personal, after hours habits. As far as Zainuddin knew, I went to work, then I went home and that was it.
I told him I had a boring life because I didn’t have time to go out and party all night. I was too busy reading up on John Foster Dulles so I could answer his questions.
Zainuddin just smiled. He was too smart to fall for my bullshit. He knew I was getting around in a taxi when lever I was up to no good.
Reading is a good habit, especially that which improves one's knowledge of the world, and differences between people.
I should do more of it.