A trip back to Jakarta
For our usual holiday trip my family decided to return back to Jakarta, just to say hello to old friends. For my family, this trip wasn't necessarily one where we act as tourists but instead one where we move from one home to the next. The atmosphere created from such a trip is similar with what it feels like to go back to Singapore when I lived in Jakarta: Pretty boring.
In retrospect, I have a lot of things to be thankful about in Singapore that cannot be found in Jakarta. For one thing, the traffic in Jakarta is getting more and more horrendous to the point that it takes at least fifteen more minutes to move from one place to another. That was compared to traffic six months ago! At the rate that Jakarta continues to grow economically, Jakarta's roads are said to be gridlocked with cars by the year 2016. Looking at the current state of traffic, this prediction doesn't seem all that off to me at all. I would be interested as to hear how much money Indonesia loses due to the traffic problems that it faces alone. I'm sure it goes into the tens of millions of dollars.
Secondly, the internet speed here remains to be bad. In Singapore, I am used to having the luxury of
being able to watch YouTube videos at the highest quality smoothly. In Jakarta, being able to watch a video at the lowest quality becomes a dream. It is only blogposts like these that I can upload without a major issue. Normally this would not be a problem should we be tourists in another country but sadly this isn't the case: we traded a modern home for a slightly more boring one.
Not to say that there's everything bad about everything is bad about Indonesia. The lifestyle remains slow and relaxed, perfect for a person like me having undergone half a year of what will probably be the one of the most stressful times of my academic life. Food and services are cheap. I have sat through two hours of massages today at two different locations, probably five hours if you include riding in a big car as 'therapeutic'. Movies are cheap (the slapstick comedy movie '22 Jump Street' is probably worth watching in the cinema, but not worth taking a Blu Ray back home.)
Not to mention, I get to meet all my friends again. However, because my academic calender does not coincide with theirs, they still have school to attend. That doesn't stop me from visiting them though, I will see them again on Thursday and hopefully I haven't changed that much.
However much fun Jakarta may be, I will be treasuring the time when I can go back into my room, curl up into a ball and watch movies and go downstairs to play another game of League of Legends.
Cheers,
Matthew Tan
In retrospect, I have a lot of things to be thankful about in Singapore that cannot be found in Jakarta. For one thing, the traffic in Jakarta is getting more and more horrendous to the point that it takes at least fifteen more minutes to move from one place to another. That was compared to traffic six months ago! At the rate that Jakarta continues to grow economically, Jakarta's roads are said to be gridlocked with cars by the year 2016. Looking at the current state of traffic, this prediction doesn't seem all that off to me at all. I would be interested as to hear how much money Indonesia loses due to the traffic problems that it faces alone. I'm sure it goes into the tens of millions of dollars.
Secondly, the internet speed here remains to be bad. In Singapore, I am used to having the luxury of
being able to watch YouTube videos at the highest quality smoothly. In Jakarta, being able to watch a video at the lowest quality becomes a dream. It is only blogposts like these that I can upload without a major issue. Normally this would not be a problem should we be tourists in another country but sadly this isn't the case: we traded a modern home for a slightly more boring one.
Not to say that there's everything bad about everything is bad about Indonesia. The lifestyle remains slow and relaxed, perfect for a person like me having undergone half a year of what will probably be the one of the most stressful times of my academic life. Food and services are cheap. I have sat through two hours of massages today at two different locations, probably five hours if you include riding in a big car as 'therapeutic'. Movies are cheap (the slapstick comedy movie '22 Jump Street' is probably worth watching in the cinema, but not worth taking a Blu Ray back home.)
Not to mention, I get to meet all my friends again. However, because my academic calender does not coincide with theirs, they still have school to attend. That doesn't stop me from visiting them though, I will see them again on Thursday and hopefully I haven't changed that much.
However much fun Jakarta may be, I will be treasuring the time when I can go back into my room, curl up into a ball and watch movies and go downstairs to play another game of League of Legends.
Cheers,
Matthew Tan
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