JAKARTA "Banjir lagi!"

there're some people has look at the "bright side about flood"

The opening day on First day of Feb 2008 bless with “heavy rain”, some people said that this is the “mother nature call” for Soeharto funeral, our former 2nd president, some others said that this is a “Jakarta yearly ritual” happened in the rainy days, and lot of versions spreading around over the years about this “Jakarta yearly occasion”. I think it is a good reason to promote Jakarta such a way?

“Welcome to Jakarta, the city of flood? You may watch the annual occasion of spectacular rain and flood during January and February every year, have your un-forgettable moment during our flooding seasons, honeymoon package is also available, please contact your nearest travel agent to get more detail information or visit http://www.jakarta-annual-flood.com”

Well, the show must go on, this time I wrote this blog about the seasonal occasion. I went to office as usual even though there’s a medium-sized rain since dawn. Driving to kids school drop-off them in front of the school yard as I did many times almost everyday, then continue for another hour drive to my office, and have normal daily activities in office.

But then the rain was getting worse, and I got a call from my wife asking about our home condition made my jump-out of my “deep joy of work” back to real world, and yes, I found out that water has been filling into our house, like a years before like a spring water spread out from underneath of our house ceramic. At the same time some of my work colleague seems a bit nervous and started rush back to their home. So I decided to follow their move, in case there’s something’ worse at home.

My Neighborhood during the flood!

It’s a hard way to back home, traffic-jammed almost all the way, I took almost 2 hours before arrived and find out that I have to park my car in front of our neighborhood just to walking’ in the rain, walkthrough the 30cm high water to reach my home.

By the time our kids back home from school, I asked them to “help me up” to wash out the water from home, just to give them the experience, I let them play around with the water, just like my old days ………….

Well, this will happened annually, so I try not to complain about it, and try to get the bright side of it. Lot of funny things happened, watching my kids playing around with water, walking across the flood to reach home, screaming and laughing in the middle of the rain. Oh My God, you are so kind to me, you give me such a joy that the others may not have, watching my kids playing around, while other parents may not let their kids do the same thing, just like our old days ………………