All Around Jakarta (Jesica W Scania)
Jakarta, January 2023
Jakarta, for me, is not only the capital city of Indonesia. It’s the home for more than 10 million lives to stay and make a living. Jakarta is a center of government, business, entertainment and education. Jakarta for me means the home where you can feel different emotions, where people can go back and forth, find or lose their belongings, wherein surrounded by the harmony of history, modernization, pressure, romance, rush, and serenity.
Amidst the hustle culture running through the capital veins, high rate of mobility, and considering values of time, publics are lucky enough to obtain plenty of rapid transportation alternatives along with adequate facilities, following: Transjakarta Busway with plentiful buses and their own lane on the highway in order to avoid the crowd and traffic, the fascinating underground MRT, affordable fare for train with various destination.
It is as if the Jakarta government who’s responsible for the mass transportation matter really takes the phrase “no matter where you go, we will always get your back” to a whole different level.
One could easily wander around Jakarta with no worries.
A very clean station, strict health protocol, priority seats for elderly, pregnant ones, and people with disabilities, various routes, cashless transactions, well-maintained security, what else could you ask for? A modern design of modes of transportation as you can see in the “The Italian Job” movie? Or you’re running out of e-money balance? Or even get hungry in the middle of the journey? Still, we got your back!
People keep saying that “home is where the heart is” but there is such a more considerable phrase to state what home is in my perspective.
I could say that home is where you are able to leave as you wish and are still welcomed when you decide to return. So does Jakarta.
Home is a place to learn how you would rather behave. So does Jakarta.
Even though Jakarta, in fact, does not start their morning with drops of morning dew, bird chirping, cock crowing, or warm morning sun that caresses your face. No, that can’t be Jakarta for real, are you being serious?
Scorching rays of morning sunshine, honking horns, motors, crowds with their own interests jostling in the middle of tumultuous Monday morning traffic, not to mention those stereotypes or prejudices over how Jakarta is depicted as harsh, competitive, egoistic, lavish, and so on, and so on as well. Well, that would be more accurate to describe how metropolis society starts their week, or day, or morning, or activity.
But, it’s not about the traffic. It’s not about the crowds. It’s not about the horns either.
It’s about the center of governments where people’s interests are determined. It’s about the center of education where students attain their rights. It’s about the center of business where the wheels of the economy rotate without an axle. It’s about the center of modern transportations modes to operate, to take you wherever you wish, exceeding your mobility limit. It’s about the center of amusements with sleepless nights and unbearable pleasure of youth.
Jakarta is lively both day and night. Nothing can dim the glitz and bustle of the capital, where everything goes in sync. Regularity and disorder, innocence and filth, trust and betrayal, safety and insecurity, dignity and wretch. Jakarta is an epitome for imperfect perfection of harmony.
As the motors pass by, the enlivened pedestrians, hawkers peddling in every corner of the town, never ending traffic below the flyover, each individual is on their duty to move the whole megapolitan spirit. Along with nature until it tells them to rest, to go back home, saying that’s enough for today.
Or maybe not.
The crowds are still bustling, the motors are still operating, the city would never stop dancing. Day and dusk, both are just considered as a sign of the times. The day is finally over, but not with the spirit. Skyscrapers are finally becoming more quiet, streets are finally vacant enough for people to seek some soothing pleasure.
Jakarta, indeed, is not as modern as Tokyo, as romantic as Paris, or as historical as Rome. But there’s something Jakarta teaches you, something one couldn’t simply forget, one thing that could be understood only by those who’ve experienced them already.