Jakarta - Day 1

My sleeping plans didn't work out as well as I had hoped. Sunday evening, I fell asleep at 7PM while watching a movie on TV. I was up at midnight. I stayed awake a few hours moving around a bit, and fell back asleep by 2 AM. At 6, I got up for good.

We met for breakfast at the club level. I had fared better than the rest of my group, so I guess there was some benefit to my plans to avoid jet lag. At 8, our drivers picked us up at the front of the hotel and drove us to the office.

Rush hour in Jakarta is busier than anything I've ever seen. I've driven in Manhattan and downtown LA during rush hour, and it's never taken 30 minutes to go three miles before. I also now understand why foreigners do not drive here. First, they drive like the British, including having the driver sit on the right side of the car. Second, I don't think there are any real traffic laws. You merge by sticking your car out in front of oncoming traffic daring them to hit you. If they don't hit you, or don't go around you, you've successfully merged.

Morning was mostly introductions - who each person is, what the systems do, what we plan to accomplish over the next few weeks. We also discussed safety concerns for the visiting team. The building is close to the Australian Embassy that terrorists bombed about 4 years ago and suffered damage and broken glass, but no injuries. The region also has frequent earthquakes, so knowing the evacuation routes is very important. They also mentioned that the local elections occur this Wednesday, and it is often treated as a national holiday. Apparently, the elections are typically followed by demonstrations - aka, riots - regardless of who wins, so we discussed contingencies for working at the hotel if it wasn't safe to go to the office. All in a day's work for the Indonesia team.

At lunch, the local team had another meeting, so us visitors went to a local food court for lunch. The food court was only two buildings down, but with 88 degree heat and 80% humidity, it may as well have been two miles away. During the walk, I realized that the smoggy haze is not just visible, it's palpable. Every breath I took I could taste the air on the back of my tongue. If you've ever smelled car exhaust, that's how the normal air tastes here.

All of the advertisements in the food court, as well as the menu, were in English. The waitstaff, however, only spoke the English on the menu. Ravinder is vegetarian, and watching him explain "no meat" was a painful experience. I ordered lasagne with meat sauce, figuring it was probably pretty safe. We also remembered to order our beverages without ice. For forty American dollars - 400,000 Indonesian Rupiah - we all four had lunch and a drink.

The meetings after lunch were again a general discussion of our respective technical architectures. We have another colleague arriving this evening who will need to be present for the more detailed discussions. One of the local guys mentioned to me that he knew a place to go and get brand new DVD's for $0.50 USD. I asked him if they were originals or duplicates. He said "you can get originals". Looks like we're probably going to try and go golfing next Sunday, too.

For dinner, we went to the "Cork and Screw" restaurant. I had a braised beef brisquit in benaise sauce and we split three bottles of wine between 5 people - we all had drivers. We'll probably eat at the hotel the rest of the week, except Saturday, when we plan to visit a popular, authenticate restaurant famous for its decor and how it presents the food.

For now, I'm tired. It's 9:45 PM Monday night. I've already spoken to Jessica and Gabi via web camera - Gabi even said "dada" when she saw me, though she looked very confused. I need to get up at 6 tomorrow morning, so it's off to bed with one more day of my trip in the books.