THE air at Doekoen Coffee was suffocatingly hot, last Wednesday afternoon. The cafe at the Graha Permata shop-houses in Pancoran, Jakarta, seemed enough to accommodate only a handful of the guests crowding the cafe.

A 5x5-meter rendezvous point plus a tent in the garden with around a hundred seats were still not enough to house enthusiasts attending the Membongkar Gurita Cikeas (Unmasking the Cikeas Octopus) book launch. The overflowing crowd c