Back in Jakarta

Crazy! I feel like being slapped in the face the minute I entered the city, by the air polution, the traffic and by the new things happened within 4 days I was away.

I asked myself, why do I love the city anyway?

But only when I was away from it I got the answer. By just looking at myself in the mirror, everything I do, every move I make, every gesture of my move, it's all coming to the fact that I am a Jakartan. The identity is clear and no more unanswered question left.

Once we sat and talked about this. It amazed my foreigner friend that I can say: I'm a Jakartan, when some people might say they're Javanese. Eventhough both my parents are Javanese, but I was born in Jakarta and spend most of my life here. It is hard not to be attached to it. We are so strange to each other but at the same time we are the same as these tiny objects circling the city day by day. This is something that I didn't find in New York. Maybe my 4 months there was not enough time to feel more that what I've felt, I don't know.

So many just like me here, maybe it what makes us the Jakartan. By some strange connection, longing for the hot-poluted-king of traffic Jakarta and not being able to resist the temptation of coming back here, no matter what...

lulu, Multiplus Buncit, 11.00, July 21, 2006