About Jakarta

Polluted. Well, I knew that already. Still, I find I can't walk around outside for very long before starting to feel a bit ill. Instead of the bright green of plants and trees in singapore, those here seem a bit dull and blackened.

The other thing that feels a bit uncomfortable is all the security checkpoints... When arriving at the hotel by taxi, you stop while they open the hood and trunk and do a quick check for bombs. Usually a K-9 unit is there to assist. Whenever you enter a hotel or mall you have to pass through a scanner. All that implies that there is an real risk of bad stuff happening. Still, I don't feel particularly worried.

Corrupt, I knew that too. Luckily I don't have to deal with that directly, just hear about it from the coworker who does. Lots of systems designed to take money from foreigners. Lots of people demand money for work upfront, then decide they don't want to do the work or return the money, etc.

Not sure what else to describe. Traffic's bad, cause there's virtually no public transportation. (a monorail was being built, but the government changed and all the money set aside for it magically disappeared so there are just a bunch of pillars with rebar going rusty). Food is rather cheap, and can get a fair variety. Found a super gigantic shopping mall, picture something easily twice the size of chinook, then imagine a 10-storey version of it.

Visited the Intermap Jakarta office, I was pretty impressed with it... I mean, I don't really know what I expected, maybe part of me actually did picture it being like an uneducated sweat shop, but overall I felt it was a respectable place, as were the employees.

Haven't really done or seen much else here.

Oh, and I got some Pandan cake.