Jakarta Tales Vol 2: From Exigo to Vertigo

Two roads diverged into the woods,
And I took the bloody wrong one because I didn't know the right bus to take
And that has made me wiser - read what's written on the bus.

If you can't, ask someone, goddamit!

Well, Robert Frost certainly wouldn't be impressed with the slang but what the heck, that's the best way I think I could have described my stupidity last Monday while boarding a bus. I tried saving transportation costs, I ended up paying double the fare to office.

Anyways, welcome to Vol 2, Version 1 (Unlike Microsoft, I keep my versions to a bare minimum) of Jakarta Tales. Please choose from the following sections to save yourself the trouble of going through my entire mail:

Work
Play

So much for options.

PLAY

The last 2 weeks (you already know what happened in Week 1) have been exciting. I've started liking Jakarta bit by bit and I'm loving the people more and more. In a nutshell, it's work everyday, maybe some fun in the evenings, weekends is fun.

I started off my weekend expeditions two weeks back by visiting the Monas (short for Monument Nasional... believe me, the Indonesians use abbreviations for everything), the Istiqlal mosque and the Royal Dutch Cathedral.

Monas is a 100-something metre high tower in the heart of Jakarta Pusat (Central Jakarta), made of Italian marble and has a 30kg gold "flame" above it. It was constructed by Indonesia's first President, Soekarno as a symbol of Indonesia's independence. Unfortunately, I reached a lil later than the visiting hours so could not take the lift to the top or visit the museum inside. And I wasn't carrying any camera so don't have any snaps.

The Istiqlal mosque is bang opposite the Monas and is a beautiful, modern mosque with a capacity for 120,000 people at a time. That makes it the largest mosque in South and South East Asia. Again, no snaps. And lastly, the Royal Dutch Cathedral is bang opposite the Istiqlal mosque. it was built in the 19th century by the Dutch and is a beautiful piece of architecture. No snaps again.

Bottomline - have to go to these places once again to get snaps :)) Btw, this virtual tour you're taking costs eh... 2$ an hour... I'll take it when i come back.

My next stop after these was Giant - the superstore. And it is super, in size! Anyways, I did manage to find an "Indian section" where MDH, Everest, Pillsbury and the likes are doing very well and it warmed my heart to see them there... ah, mera bharat! I picked up groceries for the month and off I was.

Loads of love

Yousuf