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Posts tagged ‘Living in Jakarta’

Jun 1

13 Comments

Ten Years in Indonesia

I’ve never been one to make a big deal out of an anniversary, but May 20 marked 10 years to the day when I left Hong Kong for a new job and a new life here in Jakarta. The milestone passed quietly while I was on assignment in Rote, a small eastern Indonesian island known for its surfing. I remember that first night after I landed, and how it felt to lie in bed as a wave of trepidation and uncertainty suddenly washed over me. It came with the stark realization of all I had left behind: family, home comforts, familiar surroundings, a city with a world-leading public transit system and easy access to the great outdoors. Then the question crossed my mind: “What am I doing?” Read more

Jun 7

28 Comments

Jakarta on the Weekend

I never thought I’d miss Jakarta’s notorious traffic jams, but this pandemic has turned an annoyance of life in the Indonesian capital into a strangely reassuring sign of normalcy. On one of our last outings before the city’s half-hearted lockdown began, Bama and I finally made it to a restaurant I’d raved about ever since attending a work event there several years ago. Read more

Jun 23

31 Comments

Surviving Jakarta

At a recent dinner inside a five-star hotel fronting Jakarta’s most-photographed roundabout, hosted by a visiting uncle, an Emirati diplomat based in Hong Kong recounted her experience of a weekend traffic jam from a beauty parlor down south. “On the way here, the driver told me it would be another 15 minutes but it was really 45. I wanted to hang myself!” she half-jokingly declared. “How do you even live here?” Read more

Sep 30

25 Comments

Jakarta Blues

Many moons ago, at the height of rainy season, I left the office in the middle of a howling storm. The lashing rain was blown almost horizontally in the wind, and my umbrella, now turned inside-out, was practically useless. This was, I thought, almost like the typhoons I had grown up experiencing in Hong Kong. Much of the usual route home was covered with murky, ankle-deep water; in nine months of walking from work, I had never encountered this much flooding. Read more

Jul 31

24 Comments

A love letter to Jakarta

Jakarta Love Letter_1

Handa stared at me in wide-eyed shock. Over lunch in the basement canteen of our office tower, another young coworker had told us a month-long trip to Europe was an exercise in self-discovery. I quipped that Jakarta – and Indonesia by extension – was the place where I’d found myself.

“How could you find your soul in such a soulless city?” Read more

Jun 5

66 Comments

Jakarta for the long haul

Jakarta_1

What if I told you impossible dreams could come true? Those of you who have been following this blog for a while know of my serious obsession with Indonesia, where I have taken eight trips (including a three-month stint) in the past four years. Through a series of fortuitous circumstances far beyond my control, I have now left Hong Kong to start a new job in Jakarta. Read more