Radu, I realise that you are being humourous, but since our Forum is named "Warung Kopi", I thought it best if I corrected your definition of "warung".
A warung is a small shop , or a stall.
In a village or kampung it is a mini-size general store that will sell everything from foodstuffs to tools, and is open from perhaps 5.30am until 9pm, 365 days a year.
Around the markets it can be a mini-shop selling food that you sit on a bench in the street at the front of the shop to eat, or it can be a stall set up on the sidewalk, with table and bench blocking the sidewalk and covered by a tarpaulin.
Along trunk roads it can be a place where you will buy light refreshment .
A warung can take many forms, and as Radu remarks, the food from some can be fairly risky.
In Indonesia people need high educational qualifications before they have any chance of getting any sort of a job. A Master in Pharmacology may, if he is lucky, qualify to be a travelling salesman for a drug company. This means most professionals do not enter the workforce until they are well into their twenties, or even early thirties. Even a factory maintenance worker will be about 20 before he gets a job---if he's lucky.
These people will be forced to retire at age 55, unless they have risen very high on the corporate scale.
Wages in Indonesia are just enough to sustain life, so the combination of a short working life and low wages means that everybody needs more money, all the time.This is not to mention the falling birth rate , which means that one of the traditional means of support in old age often no longer exists. If an Indonesian cannot own a house by age 55 it means that he faces severe insecurity in old age, and probably an early death. There is no social welfare system.
What has this got to do with warungs?
Well, one of the most usual ways for people in Jawa to supplement this low income when employed, and no income on retirement, is to open a warung in a front room of their house. Provided they are in a harmonious relationship with other people in their immediate community, their neighbours will buy from this warung at slightly higher prices than in the market, or will buy their cooked daily food from the warung, rather than cook at home, thus helping to support the owner of the warung.
In many ways, the humble warung can be the life blood of an entire community. In it can also be a place where people from widely varying walks of life come together,leave their position in the wider community at the door, and join discussion to solve the problems of the world over a cup of coffee.
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