Blog off
"
A good way to get people to visit your site is to visit theirs."
So I did and found
a really superb article by Simon of the East Meets Westerner blog. It says everything about blogging that I've thought of saying but hadn't got round to. I can't praise this highly enough, so I won't try
"
The great thing about blogging is plagiarising is encouraged."
But I won't tonight, mainly because it's been one of those days. Almost a typical Monday in Jakarta.
Mine started very early when I got into a taxi whose driver told me that he knew where I wanted to go. Maybe so, but not the route. Now, in my 16 years here I've got to know the short cuts and the direct routes, which are not necessarily the same thing. And no, I didn't want to go on the toll road. Why pay to sit in a traffic jam when the road alongside is moving, relatively speaking? So, why do some taxi drivers take it into their heads to read their passengers' minds? My fellow expats will surely be pleased that my anger was such that I doubt whether that particular driver will ever pick up a
bule again.
My week started late and my day ended similarly.
A smooth fairly hassle-free drive got me to within 10 minutes of home. 45 minutes later I made it. There are a couple of overpasses
en route which were built to ease the flow at intersections. Both drop down virtually at the entrance to toll booths. The queues at both were severely backed up with cars and SUVs, generally only occupied by their drivers who couldn't be bothered to swivel their eyes right to notice that the traffic on the toll road wasn't moving at all!
Are these people stupid or what?
But what exacerbated the delay was a lone policeman waving his magic wand, an illuminated red baton, to stop traffic exiting the bridge whilst allowing traffic to feed in from the left and join the toll road queue. Believe me, my bahasa improves with stress, especially that subset of vocabulary which refers to parentage.
The expat friend of us all, Bart, is possibly too polite for his own good. My problems today are a mere grain of sand in a sock
compared to his. Greedy taxi drivers and stupid commuters and policemen are not as venal as the city's developers.
Why doesn't it get any easier to live here?
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