Saturday, January 22, 2011

What traffic? vs Car Park

I was traveling a bit with clients, and I kept rushing them from one side of the cities to the other, trying to beat the traffic jam. Luckily, we didnt experience much traffic jam. In fact on their last day we arrived 1 hour early to all our meetings due to lack of traffic. I couldnt believe it, the places that are notorious for their traffic jams, and there were not much of traffic!

I picked them up from their hotel at 7am for a meeting schedule at 8.30am in Slipi. This was after I called up 3 different people for their opinions and a couple more of taxi drivers. So we went there, and arrived at 7.30 am!!! I had to apologize to our host for coming in way too early. Then we took the toll road to Tanah Kusir. Again, practically not much traffic, we arrived 1 hour ahead of schedule!

The funny part was, I was teaching them a bit of Bahasa Indonesia in the car on the way to the second meeting when one of my clients suddenly stopped in the middle of his sentence and asked,"Is that a car park?" "Nope, that's the opposite toll road." He was bewildered. He never saw anything like that, traffic jam so bad that it looked like a car park.

Welcome to Jakarta, Mister!

2 comments:

colson said...

This post seems to confirm my prejudice that Indonesia is full of paradoxes and extremes.

But it also has provides a hidden solution to the traffic problem!

Let's just change perspective. From now on we will perceive any large area covered by cars that came to a halt, to be a car park. And will act accordingly.

For instance the municipality can and will install hundreds of thousands marking meters all along all main roads. Which will mean not only that the traffic jam will have disappeared by ( changed) definition, but also the authorities will be able to cash in.

(Btw: it will not scare away this mister, lady)

triesti said...

@colson, I am not trying to scare you mister..