More than one way to skin a cat

One thing you learn in Jakarta is that you should never expect to travel the same route between two places on a regular basis, due to the sudden onset of roadworks, flooding, land disputes, weddings, demonstrations, truck and bus accidents, special events, or huge potholes from shoddy construction, geophysical activity or subsidence.

My daily commute to the office is around 25km, and "normally" takes around 1 hour 15 minutes, but can be as much as 3 hours due to any of the above issues. With the Governor of Jakarta pressing ahead with his misguided Busway project, several of the gridlocked city arterial roads are now missing two lanes while the dedicated Busway lanes and bus stations are constructed. Given that these lanes can't be used by any vehicles now, and won't be used by any vehicles other than TransJakarta buses once construction is completed, it's clear that the current traffic congestion is not going to be improved once the new Busway corridors are up and running.

With my daily commute bumped to 2.5 hours using any of the regular routes I've used up until now, I've had to find a new way of getting to the office, using the trial-and-error method. Fortunately I've settled on a route that gets me to the office in around the 1 hour 15 minutes that I'm used to, by following a partially completed tollroad that ends abruptly due to a long running land dispute (the tollroad was supposed to be finished in 2005). Where the tollroad turns to clay, local residents involved in the land dispute direct us to a dirt track where, for a fee of 1000 Rupiah (10 cents) we find ourselves traveling on a road parallel to the incomplete tollroad, and after a few minutes crawling through a local market and some back lanes, we arrive at my office in good time.

Having spent a week or two using the trial-and-error method of choosing a new route, it feels like somewhat of a victory to find a new route that takes less than 2 or 3 hours.

Keep Up The Great Work!

We returned to Jakarta on the weekend after a few weeks R&R in the home country, and upon our return it was wonderful to see that nothing had changed. In our absence we gave our housekeeper a list of tasks to take care of while we were away, the most important job being to ensure that the landlord arranged to have the house treated for termites (again, for the fourth time just over a year).

When we arrived home bleary eyed after a day of flying on airplanes and sitting around airports with a baby, we realized that our housekeeper managed to maintain her consistent level of performance in recent weeks –

Our floor-to-ceiling curtains, which were listed to be washed while we were away, are now somewhat-above-floor-to-ceiling curtains

With 3 weeks to organize the termite treatment, it actually took place the day before we returned, therefore a pungent cocktail of pesticide and fresh paint permeated the entire house

No dropsheets were used by the painters (or thought of by the housekeeper) who had been touching up the ceiling panels after the termite guys did their stuff, so our living room furniture is now covered in white paint splatter

I know, you're probably thinking "why don't you just get rid of her if she's that bad". Well, firstly there's no guarantee that there's anybody better out there, and secondly, her husband is our drivers, and since he's doing a great job of keeping us alive on the madhouse Jakarta roads, we'd hate to lose him.