On Thursday 10 October 2019, the Thammasat University Library welcomed a group of representatives from Andalas University, Indonesia, who visited the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus.
Andalas University (Unand) is a public research university in Padang, West Sumatra, a major national institution of higher learning and the oldest outside the island of Java. Unand is particularly known for its faculties of social science and medicine.
Padang is the capital city of West Sumatra and the largest city on the western coast of Sumatra Island. Residents of Padang are mostly from Minangkabau ethnic group. Minangkabau people, also known as Minang, are indigenous to the Minangkabau Highlands of West Sumatra, Indonesia.
Minangkabau are ethnic majority in West Sumatra and are a minority in other parts of Indonesia as well as Malaysia, Singapore, and the Netherlands.
Padang is also associated with the Minangkabau ethnic cuisine, called Masakan Padang or Padang cuisine. It is considered spicy, especially such dishes as spicy coconut curry rendang and soto padang.
Indonesian folklore
The Thammasat University Library owns a number of books about the folklore of Indonesia.
Among local legends and stories in Padang are Malin Kundang, a Southeast Asian folktale about the fate of an ungrateful son. A sailor from a poor family becomes rich by running away and marrying a princess. When he returns to his home village, he is ashamed of his poor family and refuses to recognise his old mother. She puts a curse on him, and when he sails away, he and his ship turn to stone.
Another story related to Padang is Sitti Nurbaya: Kasih Tak Sampai (Sitti Nurbaya: Unrealized Love), an Indonesian novel by Marah Rusli (1922). The tragic story tells of two teenaged lovers who are separated. Sitti Nurbaya deals with themes such as colonialism, forced marriage, and modernity, and is still taught in high schools in Indonesia.
Outstanding faculty
Unand has had many outstanding professors, including the noted economist, Professor Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, first dean of the faculty of economics. TU students may borrow his books through the TU Library Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service.
Another exceptional educator is Professor Gusti Asnan, a maritime historian and expert on Minangkabau heritage. Professor Asnan’s research may also be borrowed through the TU Library ILL service.
Among high achieving Unand graduates is Ricky Elson, an Indonesian electric car developer who works for the Nidec Corporation as chief of the division of research and technological development of permanent magnet motor and generator in Kyoto, Japan.
Interested visitors
On 10, October, the group visiting the Pridi Banomyong Library was led by Ajarn Donny Eros, Lecturer/Researcher in Literary, Film, and Tourism Studies at Andalas University.
The group was especially interested to see the many books about Indonesia generously donated by Ajarn Charnvit Kasetsiri and Professor Benedict Anderson, and shelved in the Charnvit Kasetsiri Room of the Pridi Banomyong Library.
Ajarn Donny is a full-time lecturer in the English Department, Faculty of Humanities, Andalas University. He earned a master of arts degree in film and literature at the University of Essex, United Kingdom with a thesis on of film and religion in Indonesian Cinema. He has also been invited to teach Indonesian Language, Culture and Cinema at Busan University of Foreign Studies, a private university in Busan, Republic of Korea, which specializes in foreign languages.
Ajarn Donny cofounded the Tourism Development Center at Andalas University to develop multidisciplinary study focused on West Sumatra. In addition to teaching and research, he is also involved in developing the film ecosystem in West Sumatra together with the local government and film communities.
Last year Ajarn Donny made a presentation at TEDxBatangArau, an independently organized TED event at Padang, Sumatera Barat, Indonesia. The theme was animated and Ajarn Donny spoke in Indonesian language about learning from the film industry. His TEDxBatangArau lecture was posted online.
Among previous projects which Ajarn Donny worked on was in digitizing endangered manuscripts of Western Sumatra, written by the Minangkabau people, an ethnic group indigenous to the Minangkabau Highlands of West Sumatra.
Ajarn Donny has also worked to create socio-anthropological documentary films and videos on Minangkabau culture to provide comprehensive and accessible information media about their culture.
Among the publications of Ajarn Donny is a co-authored article from 2014 about Apple Product Placement and Representation of the Current State of Thailand in Seven Something (2012), published in a journal of Busan University of Foreign Studies, South Korea. The article’s abstract reads, in part
Apple has made successful product placements in many Hollywood box offices and won the Brand cameo award for Overall Product Placement in 2012… Recently, Apple products have featured in films from Thailand and other South East Asian nations. Seven Something (2012) is one of the most successful Thai films, which strongly lend it to Apple product appearances. Thus, this paper investigates the phenomena by elaborating about conceptual briefs on product placement as well as Apple’s “unique” product placement by closely looking at the mise en scene and narratives of films which include the Apple product placements. A discussion on nations (in particular, Thailand) and their representation in film is also included.
TU students will recall that Seven Something (รัก 7 ปี ดี 7 หน or Rak Chet Pi Di Chet Hon) was a Thai drama romance anthology film in three sections, directed by Jira Maligool, Adisorn Trisirikasem, and Paween Purikitpanya.
The movie recounts love stories from three different generations, with characters aged 14, 21 and 42. It stars Jirayu La-ongmanee, Sutatta Udomsilp, Sunny Suwanmethanon, Sirin Horwang, Nickhun Horvejkul, Suquan Bulakul, and Panissara Phimpru.
Seven Something is in the collection of the TU Library and may be viewed at the Rewat Buddhinan Audiovisual Center on the Underground 2 level of the Pridi Banomyong Library, as well as at the Puey Ungphakorn Library, Rangsit campus.
Ajarn Donny has also published research on international trade and commerce. The abstract of another article reads:
As Fernandez-Armesto (2003: 185) noted, early modern Asia was a world of strangers. This was but a corollary of the mobility of commodities, people, and ideas that shaped maritime Asia. While the Hakluyt Society has, for the past century and more, published journals and travel accounts in English written by early modern British travellers, ship captains, and expedition commanders between the late 16th and the 20th centuries, far fewer non-English travel accounts of early modern Asia have been made available to English reading audiences, especially from Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish corpuses. Notable exceptions include Blair and Robertson (1903–1909), a voluminous translation into English of early modern Spanish records and accounts of the Philippines, while the Linschoten-Vereniging had a long tradition of publishing early modern and 19th century Dutch ship journals, travel accounts, and studies…
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)