… you see a lizard on the bathroom wall and it doesn’t particularly surprise or alarm you. The driver who was sent to pick me up didn’t quite get the explanation he should have, so he drove to Depok, on the wrong side of town So I’m now waiting for a taxi. Hmm… another day in Jakarta.
Tag: TRAVELS
Remix Ubiquitous & on the Jakartan Mall
Of all the songs that one might have expected to hear remixed in an almost endless variety of forms — swing jazz, strings & voice, glittery upbeat techno –this is the last song I thought would start following me around Indonesia. By the way, what the hell was with the original mix video? It sucks in a large variety of ways, so much so that I daren’t get started on it: (Update: Okay, if there’s any more proof that anyone can do anything, one of the main members of Black Box was a classically trained clarinet teacher., says Wikipedia. Sure, …
Random Observations
While I really would prefer to be blogging something a touch more substantial, I’m overloaded with The Freelance Project That Refused to F*cking Die. So, while I’m a little tied up with that — and unable to dive into the fiction-writing project I thought I’d be well into by now — all I have time to post for today are a couple of random observations about stuff in Indonesia, in the vein of my earlier mention of rock star styles here.
When ATMs Attack, or, How Things are Going in Depok/Jakarta
I’ll be going back to Jakarta tomorrow because a certain ATM has decided to swallow my Samsung Card (a credit card) and not spit it out again. Put the card in the machine, watch it crash, watching Windows reboot (with the Diebold brand name proudly displayed, of course!)… quite a sad sight. The first time it happened was a week ago, and I thought it was a freak accident. Turns out, no, not at all. Samsung Cards crash BNC ATM machines in Jakarta, it seems. Or at least, at the mall I was at. Other than that, things are going …
Jakarta Blues
No, not blues in the Robert Johnson/Mississippi Fred McDowell/Miles Davis sense. Blue is the color of the cabs you want to take in Jakarta: Blue Bird Taksi (Taxi) are cabs I have found most trustworthy around here. To answer a few questions: yes, I am in an apartment in Jakarta, which I have rented for the months of January and February, the break between fall semester 2009 and spring semester 2010. No, I have not permanently relocated to Jakarta. Yes, I am enjoying the warm weather, though mostly because there are air conditioners all over the place. That said, it’s …