Jakarta

So yes! I’ve been in Jakarta for 3-4 days now and i finally have internet through cousin’s connection. Internet is freakin expensive where I live. Rp 550,000 for unlimited connection and Rp 450,000 for 3.5Gb bandwidth. cable tv is about Rp 230,000 a month. $1 = Rp 11,000, and considering my cousin gets her unlimited connection (albeit a bit slow) with cable for Rp 360,000 per month total, i feel like i got highway robbed. but the thing is, i live in an apartment building so they only have one provider there… so i guess they are milking the privilege >:O

it’s been quite a culture shock and i can’t stop thinking about how broken the system is here. for example, traffic is a huge problem in jakarta and to reduce it they enforced a “3 in 1″ rule so that some streets (the whole street, not just some lanes) cannot be passed by cars with less than three passengers in them. however, poor kids started appearing in those streets and SELLING themselves. For about $1 people can load them to their cars so that they could go on the 3 in 1 roads. so messed up.

(from here on i will just copy paste part of the email i sent N today :D but i added a fourth part)

There are so many things that are different from LA and Jakarta. It’s making me so homesick all the time. For one, cigarette advertising is allowed here and they are EVERYWHERE! The billboards are literally everywhere. It’s weird because sometimes you don’t even know they are advertising cigarette because the ad says nothing about smoking or tobacco. I guess they just wanted to get their brand name out.

Secondly, they check your cars for bombs and hazardous materials every time you get into a public place like malls and hotels. They even open the passenger door and check the trunks. When you enter some buildings, they check your bags and you have to walk in through metal detectors. My aunt told me it is because there has been a lot of bomb threats from terrorist in Indonesia over the past couple years. I think recently the Australian embassy in Jakarta was bombed. In 2005-2006, there was also a huge bombing in Bali.

Third, Indonesia is a muslim / Islamic country. Islamic people prays five times a day (I think), and one of the major prayer is at 6pm. The prayer at 6pm is widely broadcasted here. The masjid (Islamic prayer building) broadcast prayers with megaphones. It’s a bit like a song and lasted about 5 mins. Local TV channels also stops whatever programs they were airing to broadcast the prayer. It was a bit weird at first, but I remember they did this too since 10 years ago.

Fourth, they are WAY picky about dollar bills. i went and deposited the cash i bought from the states, and about half of them were deemed “bad” bills because they had stamps/writings on them (so we were charged about 1% fee to deposit them), and one of them were rejected by their machine. also, they don’t take bills other than $100 bills here. you can try to convert $1 bills to rupiah, but the conversion rate would be way lower.

anyway, that’s all for now. don’t even get me started about how people drive here… and the motorcycles!! dear god. I think Jakarta is fucking crazy and Indonesians are insane. when it comes to driving anyway.

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