What Makes Him Forgivable

It’s been a year since we make going around by public transport and little girl’s pink scooter as a routine.

It is not a new thing for me. Been going everywhere around this town by public transport since I was little. One year lived without my family for a year during junior high school escalated my public transportation knowledge and experience quickly. For many years, I had been a person whom my friends asked whenever they need to go somewhere by bus or kopaja.

But, that is not the case with this little girl. Thus, a little effort should be done.

Once in a while, this little girl (and of course, her mother) should go out of her (our) bubble. Going by public transportation, waiting for the bus under the sun, riding on angkot with other people, dealing with this unfriendly-for-pedestrian city on her scooter.

Dealing with bumpy pavements, endless construction works, people’s staring, endless swearing to the motorcycle driver who was leisurely using the pedestrian walk, being grumpy over the luxurious car who wouldn’t spare few minutes to stop for a while to allow us crossing the street .

Any places where the system is not well-designed and doesn’t work well, people will always argue between what’s right and what’s good.

In this city, you couldn’t help swearing a lot on the road, both during driving and walking. Honestly, we’re really getting used to it.

Is that all bad?

Here’s the silver lining.

In spite of all those things above, this city has one big forgivable trait.

If there’s one thing which could make up all those despcable items above, here it is : good to great food with reasonable price, available widely and EASILY in this city.

You name it, he has it. (I choose pronoun he for this city).

Our weekly scooter, bus or train riding session mostly decided based on which park and ice cream shop we want to visit.

If there’s none, move to boulangerie, ramen shop, pasta place, fancy warteg, or just any new eating places we want to try.

There’s a twitter accound called @darihaltekehalte which will show you so many hidden gems you can find in this city by public transportations. That is genius.

Somehow, it makes sense to me why it’s hard for our people to move for good to other countries.

Food is one of the basics thing needed to survive, the tummy is one that should be fulfilled first before doing anything else, and it is also the simplest thing that can make us happy.

Here, we could get that very basic thing effortlessly.

You can be happy and stuffed by paying as little as Rp 20.000 for a main course, if you know where to go.

You can have authentic other countries food in certain places, and it caters all categories of consumers, in terms of the ability and their willingness to pay.

During London days, we were the middle class who could afford eating out regularly without worrying about the expense as long as it was reasonable, but dealing with day to day menu was quite headaches.

Here, we are the middle class who can afford eating out regularly without worrying about the expense, even for some occasional higher-than-usual dining, yet dealing with day to day menu only takes a little bit of careful planning on menu and budget.

Among many things that I am being grumpy, particularly about living in this city, I have to say he has this one huge quality that is quite hard to let go.

Living in this city might be messy, but it’s easy.

There’s one page from Elizabeth Pisani book Indonesia who described this a perfect analogy :