An early meeting suited Rina today with the delayed celebration of Indonesian National Day taking place at the Embassy. Hari Raya's overlap this year on the 17th had made the event difficult on the first week-end, therefore the occasion was pushed back to the end of the month. For arrivals at the Embassy in the morning a food packet would be available, together with an attached four dollars token gift. Usually by eleven in the morning the food and money was all gone and late-comers were disappointed. Rina's friends were hurrying their morning engagements—at their hotel trysts Rina speculated. Texts and calls put through by Rina were all going unanswered as the girls were still no doubt fighting, fighting, Rina said. When the full complement arrived at City Plaza here they will share a cab out to the Embassy, $12-15 dollars working out to two or three for each of them. Only Indonesians would be admitted at the event, Rina explained. Bangla boy-friends would be barred after another kind of fighting, of the bare knuckled kind, broke out at a National Day celebration a year or two previously at the Embassy. No Banglas past the gate nor Malaysians either; Singaporeans would gain admittance Rina thought and Australians too after signing in with their passports at the office. More than a thousand Indonesian expats working here were expected at the gathering, many relegated to the grounds of the Embassy. A proud day that for a Yugostalgic recalled the 29 November trip the Southern Slavs in Melbourne made thirty and more years ago out to Lisson Grove in Hawthorn for their own National Day festivities. A comparable new nation like Indonesia not long emerged from foreign domination. How short a time the Non-aligned Movement endured—Soekarno, Nehru, Nasser and Tito giants of an age past. One can often happen upon stamps bearing some of these faces at the Thieves Market on Sungei Road.
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