About Town and Other Topics

Driving
I’m excited to share a trip down a typical small street in town. I considered shooting video but there were too many speed bumps. The camera bounced up and down too much. Instead, I put together a series of still shots to give you just a taste of what it’s like to drive here on these narrow neighborhood streets. This street is named Jalan Panglima Polim. I did not include any sound with this little show, but if I had, it would be the sounds of cars honking. (Don't forget, the videos do not always work on small handheld devices, but work best on desktops and laptops.)

Plastic Bags – more discussion

The battle over the plastic bags in the stores continues. Here’s a sign in one of the shops we frequent.

What is says is this: Let's reduce plastic waste. We provide plastic bags for Rp200 or use a free cardboard (box) or bring your own shopping bags. Since this city backed out of the plan to charge for bags, I guess the stores are waiting for some sort of official notification that may never come? Anyway, everywhere still seems to be charging for plastic bags. We are happily bringing our own cloth bags. Of course, we must buy a few plastic bags for trash and they cost more than Rp200 but are better quality bags so...

Construction

There are so many construction projects going on in town. One night at dinner our table actually overlooked a massive construction project which we later learned will be apartments, office complex and retail shopping.

And here are a few shots of work in the areas where they are building elevated roads called flyovers.

We just read that two more “elevated” roads are to be built right near here. The area is already a huge bottleneck all day long due to the construction that had already started— and now more? Hard to believe.

In quite a few spots I am having a hard time believing there will be space for lanes for cars under the flyover, but we will wait and see.

There's also been more construction in and about the apartment. When we had very windy rainstorms, water came under the exterior doors that open to the air conditioner balconies. In an effort to stop water from flooding under the doors, technicians constructed a wall one brick high across the doorway on the balcony side of each door. There are two air conditioner balconies. This might help, unless there is substantial wind in which case the water will be blown over the short wall and still flood under the door.

We will just have to wait and see!