When You Can Drive in Jakarta...

...then you can drive basically everywhere in the world, excluding Antartica (and other icy places) since we don't know how to work up a snow mobile, or put chains on our tires. Maybe I'm just blowing things out of proportion here, but really, you could only get the logic of these rambles once you get the slice of life in that of becoming a Jakartan yourself. Sure we are no where close to the murderous despair of Palestinians, nor the dying frustration of those who resides with plagues and terrorism, but I'd like to address Jakarta's idea of an energy blackhole in the form of its TRAFFIC as somewhat an equivalent of having an autistic hyper active child poking the back of your neck 24/7.

I'm not making this up, really. A German associate of my father once unapologetically declared that he would rather die instantly than having to drive a car in Jakarta. It's a wise choice, I might say, taking note that he's a foreigner and all. It's unfortunately true that you may feel this devitalizing force creeping inside your veins, killing you slowly, starting from the rapid loss of patience, racing heartbeats due to I-have-nine-lives jay walkers disrupting your route, this boiling sensation you have lingering inside your head, until you finally realize that you're actually being slowly murdered in the Jakartan style, before you even reach 25.

Me? I'm a corpse, really. That's why I let hubby dearest do the driving, and mind you, his skills is fully furnished up to the point where he can text-message in the middle of driving. Unsafe, I know, but I was just giving away examples how a geographically-challenged person like me can actually find a silver lining behind the stormy current that is the Jakarta traffic.

'Till then! Drive safe, guys.

-Tev-

Jerks of Jakarta 1

Too peachy, ain't it? Look at how significantly all right it is to actually park one's car like this just exactly between the asphalt and the sidewalk for some people. It's just way intolerable at decency standards, and if I really don't give a rat's ass, I wouldn't even bother to put a block on his plate number. Let this be a lesson to every wannabe drivers out there, ok? If you CANNOT park your car correctly, DON'T drive. It's just useless and stupid, and chances are you're gonna get featured in a blog that makes fun of your dumb ass.

-Tev-

Last Minute Indonesians

Okay, there seems to be a trend going rupture inside the hearts and minds of generally most Indonesians out there. Despite the overwhelming strength of the desire to inhumanely elaborate all kinds of these "trends", a particular one stands out from the crowd the most. That is none other than the habit on extreme procrastination. Yes, it wouldn't be very us, if one doesn't suspend any completing activities until the very last day, hour, or minute of requested resolution. I'd have to say that it's an issue that I too, unfortunately carry around everywhere, but thank God NOT for my work ethics, even though I slacked off like a slug during college and university.

I've paid witness to the very example of this nonchalantly destructive attitude for the past couple of days, as hordes of company owners going head over heels in trouble as they had just found out that their postponing ways of adjusting their Article of Association to the latest Corporate Act threatens their companies' liability to operate. Whee. Fun.

Oh, and have I told you that it's also a pleasure to witness them being in total pwonage after their mediocre effort to blame my office for not reminding them to complete the adjustment? Seriously now, let's not be elementary students, shall we all? Were they expecting us to give each and every one of them a call to remind them of the each and every little things they need to do with their OWN company? Who died and made you Lord of Freebies?

It's not as if they have to do much to contemplate the late adjustments anyway. All they need to do is just fill some forms that already have a format of their own.

What.Is.There.To.Whine.About?

Agree?

-Tev-

Prenup Agreement Syndrome

Yesterday afternoon, a young lady came to my office. She held the usual appearance that every stereotype bar-girls (if I made up this term, I want a royalty) in Jakarta are strutting during the day. High-lighted hair, dark skin, coloured contacts, cleavage display, short cargo pants, gold accessories, and heavy make-up. Maybe there are more typical descriptions for me to choose, but I think I'll settle for those mentioned above. 

For now.

Anyway, you do know that particular feeling when you're just so used to your job and what you do for a living, right? One look at a certain type of client would turn you into a knowledge machine of what that person wants out of your services. The sort of aid being pursued under my league of capacity falls under legal service category, and looking at the lady, I can too clearly see that what she wanted was nothing too far from the word "Prenup".

Sure enough, she then explained about the current situation she's having with her future husband. Starting from the fact that he's a foreigner and how that condition prevents him from buying (and owning) a land in Indonesia. She then went on by telling me that even though he can personally own the land, it has to be under HER name instead, and the purchase needs to be done with the existence of a prenuptial between her and her future husband. At least, that's what she claimed her lawyers had said to her before. I agree to this of course, feeling rather peachy since by that, she understood her position well enough. Unfortunately, the peachiness doesn't last very long as she then told me her disagreement to such procedure.

This part, I find disturbing.

She finds the prenuptial agreement's separation of assets between spouses as quite an objection to hold, saying this could be a liability if by any chance they decided to have a divorce. I calmly disagree to her saying that even though, God forbid, they do decide to separate, she'll have what she owns in the first place and that he would be unable to take what's not his from the beginning. This is where it gets ridiculously tragic and funny, though. The lady, with all her pretentious bluntness of figuring things out, continued on by saying that the separation of assets on the prenup agreement would then prevent her from owning HIS personal assets back at his homeland prior to the marriage.

I think I blinked a couple of times because of this. And NO, I'll save you the trouble by not elaborating furthermore upon what I've gruelingly established with her. It's fascinating how apparent her motives are by this marriage she'll be having in the near future. How clear as day her intentions look to a professional legal official, and how shameless those eyes were justifying that very aim.

This seems to be a pattern for most of her kind. The group of girls that relies on the svelte lines of their bodies, and the clench of their privates to have foreign men lured in having them as their wives. For me personally, it has passed a borderline of irony when it comes to dealing with their sorts and going with their demands. Trying to be as effortless as I possibly can, I kept a professional manner and provided her with the many advantages of a prenup agreement, and to my surprise, she eventually decided to have it at the end.

Problem solved, you stupid, materialistic bitch.

-Tev-

The Jakartan Monologue

It's smoggy, crowded, dyslectic  between annoyingly humid and steaming hot, populated by rude people from the village areas who don't give a rat's ass about hygiene nor manners, frequently smells like a messed up fusion between carbon monoxide and septic tanks, crowded with unlicensed drivers driving all kinds of public transportation, controlled by local authorities who treats bribery like gods, and a whole lot of other wrong things you could imagine in running a city in a Third-World country. 

The funny part however is that those things mentioned above are frequently paired with the paradoxical counterpart that miraculously go hand-in-hand in the name of coexistence. A parasitic coexistence, that is. To call it ironic would be too bland, and to label it devastating would be a slight-hyperbole. We, the Jakarta people, tend to name our city's issues as something that goes along with the unnamed sequence from bitching to eventually dismissing it into a "whatever"-infused state. Just imagine New York's poorer, adopted, lazy, procrastinating, mentally-unstable, masochistic sister who constantly gets pregnant with bastard embryos while finding out that she's the only one left out from a will inheritance. That's Jakarta in a nutshell for you heathens. Teeheehee.

Who needs this city, really? Our beaches are dark green with a black tint up, unlike Bali. The weather offers nothing but overacting conditions such as when the sun scorches your skin during the dry season, while the monsoon hands giveaways in the form of floods. The traffic made you wish you were James Riady with his endless hordes of helicopters. The local state officers makes you wanna reach an AK-47 and turn them into target practices with their so-called version of public assistance. The criminal activities are so intense that it's actually starting to get a bit funny whenever you see a pickpocket being bludgeoned to a pulp by the angry mass on some local TV program.

At the end, a rant is just a rant.

Alas, I hate my city the moment I realize that I can't live without it. They say that hate and love are like two opposing sides of the same coin. They were right. 

And I share this sentiment with the rest of my fellow Jakartans.

-Tevia-