22nd Floor

Have you seen Jakarta from the 22^nd floor of an apartment? It's nice. My mom doesn't like it as we'd directly see a cemetery. But I like it so much as you see things differently from here, the balcony.

This pic was taken on the 18th of Oct, 2006, at 04.22 am (using my mobile phone's camera, which explains the poor quality, when i felt bored after working for few hours at the balcony)

This balcony is actually my working area. Because this is the only place one can smoke in this particular ruled-by-a-smoke-hater apartment unit. I would drag the chair to be my table and I'd sit on the floor with a cup of coffee (and sometimes a can of beer or a glass of vodka tonic) and the butterfly ashtray next to me. Books would be everywhere on the floor of this balcony and phone and electricity cables would be extended to my laptop on the chair from one corner of the living room where the plugs are.

Sometimes I work here until morning. Until pak zaenuddin the newspaper guy slips through Kompas and The Jakarta Post under the door. Then one and a half hours later if it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, Mbak Sum would come to clean the house and do the laundry.

At one nite, Treespotter, Funny Guy, and I were imagining if Jakarta is a snow field after a phenomenon like happened in the film "the day after tomorrow".

All snow. And there are only few people alive and those of course include us three. We see only white surface in front of the 22^nd floor balcony. We step out of the balcony and directly step on the snow surface. We run around and play with the snow and check on other people alive in tall buildings around us. We go to other apartment buildings and some bars and cafes located on the 22^nd floors and above. The good thing is we have many bottles of alcoholic drink in my house. There is some food on the fridge and there is still another gallon of aqua unopened next to the fridge. Treespotter wants to check on the suite units. But I remind him that the elevator doesn't work anymore so that he has to use the stairs. That would be tiring to go to the 33^rd floor. We were laughing so much that nite (the laughter, I think, was also because of something else :-P).

New year's eve from this balcony is splendid! On the new year's eve of 2007 the sky was so nicely blue without smoke and fog and fireworks are everywhere! No, you can't see it like I saw it from an ordinary house on the ground. No, sorry, you can't. It was extraordinary! I saw fireworks, small and big ones, serious ones and kiddies' ones on almost every perspective.

The morning after, that was the very first day of the year 2007, the sky was again soooo clearly blue. I saw mount Salak from here. One can actually always see the mountain whenever the sky is clear. The problem is that Jakarta sky most of the time is not clear. Polluted. I hate it (and Sutiyoso got an award for combating air pollution from a strange institution!). I usually see the mountain on the days like this: new year, lebaran, and the days around it, where many people stay at home or go on vacation because of a long holidays. Two days ago the sunset was so extremely nice. It was nice from the balcony, frank said, and it was also nice from my office, which is located only on the 2^nd floor.

This pic was taken on the 4th of Jan, 2007, at 06.41 pm

The sky on that day it was so very nice. Well, the sky has been like this for the whole week. I don't know whether it's because of the holiday or because of the big wind and bad whether up there on the sea, which has caused so far six ships sank and a Boeing- 737-400-plane is missing. I am sorry about the accidents but I love this kind of sky. Maybe it's because of the holiday though. Because the traffic jam has been so much less then usual. I hope Jakarta is always like this.

This pic was taken on the 6th of Jan, 2007, at 12.29 pm