Random pics...

Got caught in a Monday morning traffic jam. There I was in my nice, comfy air conditioned car. Having a nice little picnic breakfast... When I looked out and saw this bus ahead. Made me feel very spoilt and over indulgent. This is Jakarta for you.






A scrapbook I made for my friends the Cs'. It contained photos of our holiday together in Sambolo. A lovely beach resort about 4 hours away from Jakarta (with traffic). Unfortunately, you have to lug everything, including microwave and ovenette, along.



A 'clip' board inspired by the 'handmade' magazine that I borrow from my friend and fellow crafter L. Kiddo has many, many clips. But barely uses most of them as they are chucked into a drawer. So she always uses the same 5. This way, she can see all of them and match them with her clothes too! Asked her what words she wanted on the board. Reply, 'Clippy things, of course!'. Hmmm, yes, of course... Duh...



The trampoline in the apartment complex. Kiddo is the one with her legs in the air. The other 2 kids belong to the Cs'. Lovely, sweet kids...



A little accordion photo holder I made for my friend's birthday commemorating her first year in Jakarta.

Beat the traffic blues

I hate car journeys. I absolutely detest being stuck in the car for any longer than 30mins max. It's worse when I have to listen to the kid fidgeting and moaning. Endless 'are we there yet' and 'how many minutes more'. Grrr... We'll get there when we get there!!! For self preservation, I now do the following...

1. Have a decent sized bin in the car. Or at least one that fits the kid's bum. No matter how conscientious she is about peeing before we go out, Jakarta traffic means that sometimes, we get caught out. A friend uses left over diapers, gets the kids to go into the back row to pee in them. But it doesn't solve the occasional poop problem. 'Nuff said... Adults, you're on your own...
2. Teach the kids to have meals in the car. Was totally against the whole eating in the car business till we moved here. Now she's up at 630am, in the car and breakfasting at 7am. Pick her up at 1pm, and she finishes lunch in the car. It takes over an hour to get home, so if we wait, it's past 2pm by the time she eats.
3. Have wet wipes, hand sanitisers, tissues, spare newspapers, spare bin bags. This is really to facilitate the above.
4. Have small bottles of drinking water in the car. Even if you're not thirsty when you start your journey, after 3 hours of being stuck in the car, even the most stoic of passengers will be in need of a little something. The snack issue I leave to your own discretion. Food in the car sometimes means uninvited passengers like cockroaches...
5. Pack a bag of books before you go out. We've worked out that rainbow fairy books last about 45mins. So a minimum of 3 of those if we're going down the road for dinner. You never know. Traffic jams here can appear out of the blue for no reason known to man.
6. Pack a pillow. At the very least you can hide your head under it if the whining gets too unbearable. No, no... don't smother the kid/ husband, they're really not (I hope) trying to be difficult...
7. It's an advantage if you have a third row and/ or seats that recline. Believe me, no matter how much you adore your hubby, after 3 hours (or 3mins if he's particularly fractious that day) of sitting next to a fidgeting, complaining, overgrown kid, you would pay ANYTHING to have a back row. You're never too old for time out.
8. Some people swear by portable DVD's. For us it's the iPhones (GO APPLE!!!). With daddy in the car too, it's 2 iPhones. Someone has to do without, but it's never the kid. Her whining is worse than fingernails on chalkboard. We're waiting with baited breath for the Apple tablet thingey. Ooo... Defender chronicles on an A4 sized screen...
9. Books for adults too. I'm generally pretty prone to motion sickness, even the kiddy rides in the amusement parks can make me green. But traffic being what it is, sometimes I can get through 2 full length novels a day.
10. Remind yourself that despite the traffic, there are other fabulous things you get for living in Jakarta... maid(s), driver, cheap craft stuff, good food, nice house, good friends, endless malls... If all that fails, get out and take an Ojek. (Just KIDDING!! Unless you're a good deal braver than I am)

Mr.D: A law unto himself

Since I wrote the last post, I thought I'd do one on Mr.D our driver. He's worked for us for 2 years, has 3 kids all 7 years apart and is genuinely a very nice guy. Just as a quick example, when the Ritz and Marriot bombs went off a few months ago, he had actually just dropped Hubs at work and was on his way back to the house. Upon hearing the news, he did an about turn and went straight back to the office calling Hubs to say he was waiting downstairs if Sir wanted to go home straightaway. Unfortunately Sir didn't. Sir also missed his plane back to KL that day leaving madam fuming! But that's another story...

So, yes, Mr.D, wonderful chap. But he has some really strange interpretations of traffic law. Most baffling is how he uses traffic lights. How difficult can that be? I hear you say. And 'he uses'? Must be a grammatical error, you say again. Under usual circumstances I would agree. I mean, red=stop, amber=stop asap (or go faster if you're Malaysian), green=go. Basic highway code. Not for Mr.D!! For him, traffic lights work like this... Red=Stop if it's convenient. But go if it's a jam, otherwise you'll never get a chance to go anyway. Go if there are no cars because there's no point stopping anyway. Oh, and it doesn't apply if you're turning left or if you're turning either direction while on a one way street. Amber=go. Green=go. In other words, go as and when you like. It used to have me at the edge of the seat yelling, 'Berhenti, berhenti!!' (Stop, stop). But now, after many months and much futility, I have decided that I shall just ignore it. He just laughs at me anyway.

The next thing is the whole flashy high-lights thing he does. If the car in front stops, he flashes the lights. If he thinks they should be going faster and aren't, he flashes. If they slow down, he flashes. If he's in a hurry and joins the back of a queue, he flashes. I tried counting how many times he flashed the head lights for one 10min journey. Lost count. Couldn't keep up. I have to say though, all the other drivers on the road do it too, so it's hard to say if it's just him or a Jakarta phenomenon. You have to get used to the 'chicka-chicka-chicka' sound pretty quickly though, or go crazy. At least it's not the horns....

All in all, despite his little foibles. We haven't any serious dings on the car. The Man put a couple on there, but they are NOT TO BE SPOKEN OF. Got hit by a golf ball while driving past the golf range, but one can hardly blame that on him. So... Carry on Jeeves, or in this case, Drive on Mr.D...

Day 1 without the man of the house

It's been roughly 24hrs since The Man left for his jaunt around the world. I'm already bored. Amazing how just having someone there to talk to can make life that little bit more interesting. Oh well, we knew his job would be like that, hence the lack of a proper job for me.

Had a rather interesting little experience today. There we were, happily driving down the road to school when all of a sudden, absolute standstill! There were news vans lining the road and police trucks and it seemed like a scene out of some action packed Hollywood action movie. I was just waiting for some suave guy in shades to come leaping over the stationary cars in pursuit of the scruffy looking baddie wielding a parang (parang of course, we're in Asia!!). Instead, all I could see were people standing around. And more people... and even MORE people. Where did they all come from?? Anyhow, we inched along untill, suddenly.... Absolutely no traffic going in our direction!! But being Jakarta, all the oncoming traffic decided that since no one was using our lane, they might as well! So there we were, to all intents and purposes going AGAINST the flow of traffic. I was stressing away going, 'Udah lewat dong!! Bagaimana nak sampai di sekolah dalam masa 10 minit!!' (It's already late! How're we going to get to school in 10mins'), when Mr.D our fabulous driver replied in his inimitable style, 'Ngak apa madam, bisa jalan di sini...' (Don't worry madam, we can go here), and promptly drove OFF THE ROAD!! HELLO!! We were OFF. THE. FREAKING. ROAD!!! Remember the non existent pavements I was talking about? Well, there's a reason you take your life in your hands if you try and walk on them, it's because everyone uses them as emergency lanes. Or convenience lanes, I should say. At least we arrived at school on time... And from now on, I will never ever try and walk on those death traps, ever again!!

Home alone

The man has just left on his 2 week Jakarta-London-New York-Jakarta business trip, leaving me alone with the kiddo. When we first got here, we tried to arrange it so that all his overseas business trips coincided with us going back to KL on holiday. At least then I was back in the bosom of my family and didn't have to worry about being alone in a strange country. Now however, we feel like seasoned expats. Kiddo and I both have our own programs and really, the crime rate in KL makes it such that I reckon it's safer to stay in Jakarta.

Just the other day I was commenting to my driver that KL has had many incidents of snatch thievery, some even leading to death. I wanted his opinion on why he thought it hardly happened in Jakarta (or we never hear of it anyway). According to him, many years ago it was a common thing. However Jakarta is pretty much riddled with kampungs and this holds true even in the expat residential areas. So with the local economy so dependent on the expats ie. maids, drivers, security guards, pool cleaners, gardeners (and on and on, the list is endless), the kampung folk could not risk having the expats driven away through crime. So they took it into their own hands to find and 'discipline' these riff raff. Troublemakers and petty thieves were turning up badly assaulted or worse, disappearing completely! Over time, these crimes stopped happening. Of course, he continued, if you venture out into gang controlled areas in the city then it might happen. So, I now follow a simple rule, before going anywhere new, I ask my driver. If it's iffy, he always tells me not to go or offers to go with me. Not that I've taken him up on that. Shopping with my driver in tow just seems a little weird to me.

The other reason it's so much safer here is that there are no pedestrian pavements to speak of. Short of risking your life playing dodge the motorbike/ bajaj/ car going the opposite direction, it's easier and safer to just be dropped at the doorstep of wherever you want to go. All these places have parking attendants that direct cars into postage stamp sized parking spaces. Thus you're never more than about 10 feet from someone for whom your continued well being is essential to their continued well being... So don't worry about us daddy, we'll stay well away from dodgy areas and crumbling sidewalks. See you again in 2 weeks... mwah!

The joys of Jakarta traffic

When we first moved to Jakarta 2 and a half years ago, I thought I was prepared for the traffic. I mean... traffic, schmaffic. I'd heard all the horror stories. Come on...I'm Malaysian! Who hasn't sat through an hour on the Federal Highway, or been caught in the forever changing 1 way systems in the centre of KL. Not to mention being stuck on the M25 and North Circular Road in London... Traffic! Ha! I laugh in the face of anything Jakarta could throw at me...

Well, you know what they say, pride goeth before a fall. After 3 hours of trying to get from the airport to town (not even to the house!), a crabby 4 year old in tow, I was ready to prostrate myself before the Gods of Jakarta traffic. It was unbelievable! True, there was rain, and it was also a Friday night, but rain in Jakarta is like roast beef and yorkshire pudding, or nasi lemak and fried anchovies, you can't really have one without the other. Of course, subject to times of year, you get more or less of the stuff... And Fridays, don't they come, something like, once every week? In any case, my first lesson of Jakarta traffic... If it rains, stay home. If it's rush hour (7-10am, 12-2pm, 4-7pm), stay home. Weekends, stay home. We've learnt, over time, how to 'guestimate' how long it will take us from Kemang to the airport in order to make the 1.5hr check in time. It's an art. The conversation between my honey and I goes something like that:

Hubs : Flight's at 2pm tomorrow. Check in at 1. Leave house 11.30. Lunch traffic...
Me : Siau! (Meaning crazy in a Chinese dialect) International check in is 2 hours!! Check in at 12. Normally takes 1 hour to get there, but lunch traffic, extra 30mins. Also Friday, extra 30mins. Starting to drizzle too... We leave at 930am!
Hubs : Nah... You're being over cautious... (Mind you, he's the one who's missed flights, not me)

Usually after a lot of wrangling he'll agree to leave at 10am. So far, we haven't missed any flights while travelling together. Incidentally, that first trip from the airport to our rented house in Kemang took 5 hours.

A little tip for those travelling with kids. Have a little bin lined with plastic in your car. Also supplies of old newspaper, wet wipes, tissues and hand sanitisers. I can't begin to count the number of times kiddo has needed the loo while stuck in the traffic. Short of opening the window and dangling her out over the poor, hapless motorcyclists, not to mention the insult to her dignity, this is honestly the most acceptable option.

Here's to dust bins!!