My friend, Ian, has shared his flooding experience on his blog. He had a bit of a different situation than I did, as he waited around another day before leaving Kelapa Gading – in the relative safety of a military truck versus the manure hauler we cruised in. Several of our friends houses and cars were damaged and we were inconvenienced somewhat but 1000’s of people lost everything – and as is typical in the developing world – it isRead more
Posts filed in: Expat Experiences
Jakarta Flood – Video Taken in Kelapa Gading
I’m still trying to embed video within WordPress blogs; it doesn’t seem to want to let me. I’ll see if I can find another way. In the meantime, I’ll start uploading some of the video taken to YouTube. Keep in mind these are short, badly captured clips – video isn’t my forte. 😉Read more
Jakarta Floods 2007
Wow. What an experience that turned out to be. My last posting was written during the first day of rain when Kelapa Gading (my area in the north side of Jakarta) was flooded but still functioning. Things went quickly downhill from there. That night, torrential rains began falling and continued throughout the night. My wake up call came in the form of my air conditioner shutting off due to the power being cut. My initial reaction to that is toRead more
Floods in Jakarta
When I heard the downpour around 4am this morning, I had no idea how bad it really would be. The city is drowning as we speak, under the torrential rains of these past two days. Some areas of Jakarta are under more than 6ft of water. People are using rafts to get around, and some have become stranded. One of the worst things is that the vile canals have mixed in with the floodwaters, creating a potentially toxic, soupy messRead more
Handphones are destroying memories (handphone cameras vs point and shoot cameras)
What a bold statement to make, right? Having lived in Indonesia for half a decade, I’ve witnessed a revolution in handphone/cellphone technology – a revolution which swept across Asia and throughout the world. Upon my arrival, handphones were something you used to call someone with – and that’s about all. With the arrival of video and photo capturing abilities built into these pocket rockets, there’s little need to carry other gadgets around – or is there? I cringe when IRead more
Off the Grid
I have broken free of the binding chains that are modern technology. Well, for a few days at least. My handphone: a Sony Ericsson S700i – hasn’t been working properly for 9 months, and I finally decided to fix it. In April of 2005 I decided I wanted a handphone with a decent camera, and the nicest screen I could find. I thought that if I were to stumble upon someone interested in seeing my photographs, I could whip outRead more