Cranial Vomit

Err yes… a few weeks ago I kinda lost all my blog posts for my trip to Indonesia. Well, I’ve got 1 back so far.

Woo!

Enjoy!
Its been 17 years since i last was here. the place seemingly hasn’t changed one bit. despite the chaotic sprawl that lay before me, one thought comes to mind : welcome home Chris.

welcome to Jakarta..

I spent many years as a child here, although Aussie born I am from a multicultural background. Mother from Indonesia, father from France. My Indonesian heritage stems back all the way to the Indonesian royal family, as a kid I used to think that was the bees knees – I was a prince of sorts.. although to be honest, I have as much royal power an electric toothbrush. After two years of Australian schooling my parents moved back to Indonesia where I was chucked knee-deep into an Indonesian education system that was completely alien to me which most likely was one of the cornerstones thar turned me into the persnickety and eclectic minded person who is writing this blog entry for you today.

Jakarta, where the rich get richer and the poor pretty much all stay the same, but they still manage to smile all the time regardless the situation. well i think they are smiles… quite possibly they are just grimaces of pain.. I’ve never seen so much tooth decay in my life as i have in the last 3 hours.  its hard not to be in sheer amazement that Jakarta’s populous hasn’t already descended into pure anarchy- let alone imploded upon itself in a giant mushroom cloud of despair and hopelessness.

the last time i was in Indonesia, the Aussie embassy was bombed. i do have to give those terrorists credit though, to actually find their target amongst a landscape that resembles a metropolitical puddle of chunky Sunday morning spew is simply an amazing feat.. heck, I’m having  enough trouble trying to find the sky let alone where the embassy is. its as if the whole city was encased in a giant bubble of smoggy filth. the attack on the embassy wasn’t a cold blooded act of terrorism, they were simply trying to blend the ambassadorial headquarters into it’s surroundings.

after a 2 hour drive to my uncle’s house which would probably take 30 minutes if several million people just got off the roads in unison, i finally get the opportunity to relax… well sort of. the block of land in which this house is situated on would fit quite snugly in my lounge, dining and family room combined. there are 8 of us in this house at the moment. i haven’t gathered enough courage to ask where i am sleeping - after finding out there is no hot water on site, let alone anything remotely resembling western plumbing. this is slumming it at it’s best.

as i sit out at the front to have my first smoke in 10 hours, i notice the constant smell of diesel exhaust accompanied with the never ending background noise of cars honking at each other around the corner.

mmmm carbon monoxidey. 1 week here will shorten the lifespan of my lungs by a month. Thankfuly I have nicotine to drown out the worries of my deteriorating lungs.

a glimmer of blue sky momentarily pops into existence above me, but as quickly as it comes into view - it vanishes. the rarely used term ‘acid rain’ jumps into mind as i stare into the bleak grey cloud cover. all around me i can see the gradual weathering down of buildings thanks to the harsh pollutants in the air. Walls which were once white are now stained brown and are showing signs of crumbling to dust.

Everything just seems dirty and not in the fun “dirty” you’d normally associate with ditsy club-hopping blondes who have mastered the fine art of circular-breathing but a dirty in the way that you’d associate with absolute filth, much like the scene at the local kebab shop’s toilet at 3AM on a Sunday morning.

There is a fine layer of dust on everything and I’m afraid that I might catch some sort of tropical bubonic plague type disease if I was to simply walk within 5m of an open sewer. Unfortunately the ability to avoid such things are completely lost on me as there seems to be holes everywhere, uncovered and filled to the brim with a black sludge o’ death.

Reminds me of the night when I polished off an extra-big bottle of black sambucca at a friend’s 17th…. The toilet became my friend. I even gave him a name. It was Larry.

Larry and I were more than friends. You could say we were lovers. I spent a lot of time inside Larry that night. To this day the smell of lemony fresh toilet duck still gives me a semi..

This is the part of the trip that I had been regretting. I agreed to do the Jakarta thing because of the family – it had been too long and chances are that if I don’t see them now, ill probably never see them again. I had already missed the death of my two aunties, if any more of them decide to croak, I might as well get a mental refresher to what they look like….