A Weekend Well Spent?

Spent half my Saturday at the customer event. I have so many things that I want to do but unfortunately half the weekend is already gone. I have digital photos that I took together with Setiawan that I want to develop. And I have some more research work to do.

People are always asking what you did over the weekend. You are expected to answer: "Oh, I went to Bandung (or Puncak or Pulau Seribu)". If you tell them that you didn't go anywhere, they'll look at you as if you had just wasted the last remaining two days of your life.

The most ridiculous thing that people in Jakarta do is to join the long crawl to the mountain "retreat" of Puncak on weekends. The jam is a few kilometers long. Often they end up in a rented "villa" staying next-door to another noisy family with five kids from Jakarta. Don't be deceived by the term "villa" that is being used rather casually here--it is often just a brick house with water heater and two bed-rooms that had been converted from an old kampung house located along the road to Puncak.

But they will come back to office on Monday and proudly tell their colleagues: "I went to Puncak". And that is supposed to be a weekend well spent.

I would rather spend my weekend exploring the nooks and corners of Jakarta city--like my visit to Kapung Kebun Djahe Kober last Saturday. That was a good weekend.