03-Hanging around
I got to spend a day meeting some of Wimmy’s friends on the Sunday, and get a glimpse of how real day to day life is like in Jakarta. Wimmy’s best friend, Chita picks us up and we spend the day down the mall, doing something to with a tourism competition (which I later find out to be the Mr/Miss Jakarta Tourism ambassador competition – a local version of miss world with brains – the regional one, which Wimmy wins later). Not terribly exciting, but interesting to see that it really isn’t all third world shacks in Jakarta, and that shopping malls are huge, have all the latest stuff, and are guarded by armed security guards. I have to admit, that her friends were pretty attractive, with a certain look of almost Indian features mixed in a subtle blend of the orient complimented with quite warm fun smiles. The guys in comparison, to me at least, seemed p1ssed off and moody.
Hanging around with Chita, I got to meet her Aussie accented boyfriend, Kafir, whose mum in her early fifties looked pretty amazingly not more than mid 30’s. They are both Catholic and being a minority religion in Jakarta, the Christians have to go to one central church in the city centre to pray on Sunday evenings. Wimmy and I spend the evening having a nice long chat over noodle dinner in a make shift street restaurant. During dinner, annoying buskers float around playing awful badly accented love songs drowning your conversation until you can’t bear the aural pain no longer and pay them 1000 rupiah. Chita and friends joined us later. Good conversation, fun evening. I really got this real at ease feeling of fitting in and comfortably being myself there, amongst the crowd of Indonesians. Perhaps it’s the Asian side of me related to the good company. Pleasant to feel that.
No comments:
Post a Comment