A Wet Jakarta

The weather is of course as ridiculous as what we have at home. It can be bright and sizzling, then by mid-afternoon, it turns dark and wet. I’m told that it’s been like this for the past 3 weeks. It has been so for the past couple of days. At lunch today, I wanted to head out at lunch to the local bookstore across the road, but I didn’t dare to, in case the rain came to flood the streets.

Yesterday afternoon’s storm must be one of the worst. The sky turned an ominous deep grey and rain fell in unrelenting sheets from mid-afternoon. The city’s roads were locked in a massive jam on the roads in the evening. Many of the major roads and streets were apparently flooded with nearly 50cm of water. Very few people got to anywhere. I bet there were plenty of cancelled dates last night. The work associates and I were lucky to be located on the right side of the road in the right direction from the office to the hotel and got back without too much pain. So note to self here, pee before you get into a car to go anywhere; do not even think it’s okay to pee when you get to the destination.

The friends and I didn’t plan to meet last night, but agreed to play it by ear. I was a little tired and wouldn’t mind just pottering about in a spacious hotel room. The rain caused the friends’ various dinner plans to be cancelled. The chock-a-full roads meant that they couldn’t quite go home till much later. Their offices and apartments were located in the buildings around my hotel, so 4 humans came to BUG me. We had dinner at one of the many restaurants in the adjoining mall, then returned to my room to chill out.

I finally kicked them out close to 11pm when the roads were finally clear. They did nothing but had dessert from room service, sipped from a bottle of champagne and the very nice Bowmore 21 y.o (DFS Changi rocks!), shrieked in horror to Shark Week features on Discovery, put various iPods into the dock, checked out Ben Folds and Nick Hornby’s recent collaboration and lounged around. Very chill right? Yet when they left, the room looked like a tornado tore through it. AIYOH.