Odd and Interesting Jakarta (Indonesia)

After a year of living in Indonesia, I've learned a few interesting stories, facts, and characteristics about the world's fourth most populous nation (behind only China, India and the United States) that most people don't know.

1)  If you see yellow flags, someone has died.  When driving around the city, you'll often see yellow flags tied to electrical poles, posted on stakes at intersections, and hanging from trees.  The flags are to help the departed's soul find its way home.  The flags start at the place of death (hopefully a hospital) and end at the person's home.  I have not asked what they do if the person dies in another country or on a different island.

2)  Coconuts kill.  A common, though infrequent, cause of death in Indonesia is coconuts falling from the palm trees and landing on someone's head.  Palm trees can grow to a height of 70 feet, and coconuts can weigh up to 20 pounds.  The velocity from gravity alone is enough to kill.  A few months back, the paper relayed a tragicomedic story concerning falling coconuts.  In Bali, on a Saturday morning, a man dies from a coconut landing on his head while he slept underneath a palm tree.  The next day, his brother goes to the spot to hang the yellow flag...and is killed by another falling coconut.  The two-fer is rare, but death by coconut, is not.

3)  Lots of lightning.  Do you know the place on Earth attributed with the most lightning activity in the world?  It's about an hour from my house.  Though hotly debated (a city in Malaysia would like to claim the honor), a neighborhood of Bogor, Indonesia, has 320 "thunderstorm days" (days when meteorologists hear thunder proving, in theory, the existence of lightning) each year, on average.  This reconciles with my less-than-scientific observations of the clouds to our southwest every evening over the last year.

4)  Touching the ground is a big deal.  I've mentioned this before, but many Indonesian children, especially in Bali, are always in someone's arms until they reach six months of age.  At six months, the Balinese will host a ceremony where the child's feet will touch the ground for the first time.

5)  Wet means clean.  This is probably the hardest thing we've had to adapt to.  When you walk into a bathroom in the US, if the floor is soaking wet, you walk out.  In Indonesia, if the floors, walls, sinks and toilets are all wet, it means they were just cleaned.

6)  Safety?  What's that?  Since living here, I've heard, read, and witnessed several activities that left me scratching my head.  From road construction workers laying hot tar and using jackhammers while wearing open foot sandals, to the families of seven - including the toddler sleeping on the handlebars - all piled on a motorcycle for a ride into the city, safety just doesn't seem the top of everyone's mind.  On my way home from work recently, we came upon an accident scene.  A 9 or 10 year old boy was LEGALLY driving his motorcycle and cut in front of a car he should not have.  Luckily, he was uninjured - but boy was he mad!  His bike did not appear to be as lucky as he was.  The men who thought using an active runway for a shortcut were not so lucky.  A news blurb recently reported that two men were hit by a landing airplane at a flight training academy as they tried to use their usual shortcut.