Hi again
I know Mom wants to know more about my first week at the office and about my site visit on Tuesday but I’m going to save that for later since really the biggest part for me of last week was getting the commute down. I took a taxi to the office on Monday morning, public transport options being a mystery best solved in person with my new coworkers. (This cost 61,000 Rp., or about $7, and took an hour fifteen.) Having gotten the inside scoop on my public transport options, I got home via a mikrolet to the TransJakarta busway to an ojek:
· Mikrolet: pick up-style truck with a covered bed and benches around the perimeter, 3000 Rp/about 40¢.
· Bus way: Not your regular person bus, oh no, this one has AC and conductors who manage the number of passengers getting on … it supposedly has dedicated lanes to speed the busses through the jams, although sometimes this is laxly enforced (plus, there are still stoplights and corners to turn). 3500 Rp./about 45¢, half hour to an hour, depending on the wait and traffic.
· Ojek: motorcycle for hire, driver and all. Rates negotiable. So far I haven’t gotten my 11 minute ride to and/from the busway stop to under 5000 Rp./60¢, despite decent bargaining skills, but I hear I should be paying 3000-4000 Rp.
A few of my forays into doing this particular commute have been almost flawless and have left me feeling masterfully in charge of my own destiny, whereas more than a few have literally* brought me to tears of frustration and confusion and existential despair: The unsmiling, staring crowds! The heat! The maps that make no sense and absolutely fail to reflect the actual bus routes! The sheer illogic of the bus timing! The ojek drivers who take me to the wrong place even though I know I told them the right thing! …. And on and on, until last but certainly not least the f-u-c-k-i-n-g traffic.**
Although my commute home on Friday went smoothly enough, I felt profoundly sad and lonely and at loose ends. Because… well… it was the weekend and I don’t really have a social life, and had been so overwhelmed all week so as not to make plans with the few potential friends that I have, and my work plan for the next couple months involves a lot of back and forth and not a lot of time in Jakarta, or in any one place at all, all of which got me thinking about how I was never going to have time to make any friends, plus its still sort of unclear what I’m hear to do and what it’s supposed to lead to, and I’m still painfully awkward with Indonesian, and I miss my family, and…you get the picture.
Anyway, none of these are good thoughts to have while faced with a line of end-of-a-hot-day armpits on the TransJakarta busway, and I found myself wanting to get off a stop early and go to the mall.
…Wait. What?!
Yes, the mall. I was confused myself. It got me thinking though, at least in New York, what did I do when I felt sad and lonely and restless and wasn’t ready to face being at home alone? I wandered around a new area of the city or at the very least got off the subway early and walked blocks and blocks up Broadway or across 125th. I guess my subconscious realized how repulsive wandering around on foot through the Jakarta streets generally is and settled on the mall instead. How very urban Indonesian of my subconscious.
So I got off at Plaza Semanggi to wander up and down the 5 stories, buy some wheat bread and wheat croissants - oh fiber! - pirated DVDs, and, I am ashamed to admit, dinner at Burger King. I really needed straight-up American-style junk food, and even at the mall most of the options were rice-based, or donuts - don’t ask - but these weren’t going to work with my appetite level. The Whopper value meal was 5 times the price of my catered lunches at the office.
Although I woke up yesterday with a cold that is still lingering, I am feeling in much better spirits - apparently the mall works for my subconscious if not my two-dollar-a-day budget. Among other things, sleeping in and lots of Australian Junior Master Chef on cable and talking to my sister and parents also helped. Week 2 here I come.
Love,
M
M
*Yes, KE, literally.
**It’s commonly accepted wisdom, based on an actual study, that the number of vehicles in Jakarta already more than totals the length of actual road surface (and I doubt the official road surface figure accounted for the vendors and stalls that spill out into the road in a lot of places). As wonderfully put in the Economist, “sometime in 2014, ... Jakarta will attain total traffic gridlock. Vehicles will take up every single inch of available space on roads and highways, leaving the city like a scene from a dystopian fantasy.” I am a dork and found a couple of other interesting studies and commentaries on the transportation/urban planning situation in this madhouse city as I was looking into the gridlock question. If you’re interested: http://www.bu.edu/pardee/files/documents/BU-Pardee-Policy-Paper-004-Megacities.pdf , http://indonesiaurbanstudies.blogspot.com/
, and there are some pdfs from the Jakarta Globe that I'm planing to read.
, and there are some pdfs from the Jakarta Globe that I'm planing to read.
