Jakarta Trip

I was in Jakarta from Sept 4 - 6.Prepared my work till 1am (on the 4th itself), went to bed trying to catch 2hrs sleep before leaving to the airport but failed.Arrived and waited for one hour before being fetched.

Went around to few big supermart for market and pricing research. Fachmi's car broke down in the middle of the city. Can you image how it is like to be caught in such an unfortunate situation with extreme hot weather and heavy, thick, congested traffic, whatever you called it, in a city with 10 million people.

In a bad unfortunates situation, there is a small luck. The car's problem was just overheating and solved by adding my drinking water.Some we got them from "Jalan Tikus" I called it. "Jalan" means street and "tikus" means mouse,so is Mouse Street.Again you can image,small,dusty,filthy and very congested narrow streets. There are a lot of mouse streets in this city.

Ironically about the landscape of this city,5 minutes walk from the tikus area, you will arrive at a very modern,clean,rich,full of vibrants and beautiful skyscrapers.A metropolitan lifestyle.I have lived in this city for a year back in 1997 and had made many trips back since then.

Around 4pm, we started travelling to Bandung, a town which hosted Asian-African Conference in 1955.It's only 140km from Jakarta and been to this country so many times,I have never visited this place.It's my first trip.

Arrived closed to 6pm, like any other towns or cities here, everywhere was traffic jammed.Worse still in Ramadam month where at 6.30pm is breaking fast, so everyone is rushing.Indonesia is with 270 million Muslims, don't even dream you can avoid from hit by human tsunami.

Finally we reach our destination for the day, a huge beautiful 4 levels bungalow with a nicely planted,relax tropical garden and the water falls that make the whole ambient looks it was naturally grown. Meet up with his daughter,son-in-law and grand children.This family has a mixed ancestry of Arabian, Dutch, Chinese and Indonesian. Beautiful people.

Business discussion started after breaking fast, relax, snooker games, relax in the garden again and eat again around 10pm.Phewww...

The discussion adjourned at 1am. Too exhausted, my brain could not work anymore. Dropped dead on the bed.

Next morning the air was so fresh, it smelled like Spring. Bandung is on the hilly contours.It is famous among the local for the weekend escapade.Beside the town center, the outskirt are fresh, serene, cool and relax.

The family went off to another lake for a weekend retreat. Though Bandung is already a refreshing place but the other side is always greener.We left for Jakarta and managed only to arrive after 7pm in the hotel.

Savor my old time favorite foods before continuing my meeting with Chandra at 9pm. Another potential business associate.We ended our work at 2am.Luckily he offered his driver to drop me off at the airport in 4 hours times.

Before departure, I roamed around, realized the airport has became very quiet.Perhaps due to the Indonesia airlines have been barred from flying to many countries and of late many bombings,not many visitors so the operation is lesser now.

Arrived home safely and rested for 30mins, drive to casino at Genting.Lost at the beginning,changed machine and with 2nd press, I stroked RM1000 and packed to come home.

What a life????? 4 days with only 8 hours sleep.