Still in California, Still Alive.
There’s just something about grad school that kills my urge to write.
But I’ll be traveling a lot in the upcoming months. A research trip to DC in November, a short family visit to Utah in early December, and then an indefinite relocation to Southeast Asia. So here’s hoping life gets a little more interesting.
Tags: Add new tag · apologizing for not posting more · Bay Area · Complaining about schoolwork · photographyNo Comments.
Procrastinate. Everything is more fun at the last minute, right? Plus, you’ve got the election and the bomb and the odd spot of food poisoning to attend to.
Gather the requisite documents: a sponsorship letter, photocopies of your passport and visa. Proof you do actually plan to leave the country relatively soon can’t hurt either.
Attempt to locate a coherent set of instructions on the process. Fail.
Notice in passing something about needing to extend at least seven days before your visa expires. Wonder if you should be concerned you only have two days. Be concerned.
Finally locate the address of the immigration office closest to your house. Be vaguely irritated that the Department of Immigration’s webpage has not been translated into any foreign languages. (Including English.) Because, clearly, no-one looking for information about visas would have any use for such a thing.
***
After fitful sleep, drag yourself out as early as you can manage. (Not very, sad to say) Head through Jakarta’s hellish traffic to the immigration office closest to your place of residence and your visa sponsor’s address.
Upon arrival, be told you’re in the wrong office. And, consequently, your paperwork can’t be processed. Get directed to an office twice as far from home and work, that is technically in the right district.
A long, expensive taxi ride later, arrive at an office in a part of Jakarta you were previously unaware even existed. [Read more →]
Tags: bureaucracy · Indonesia · Sosial Budaya visa · visa extension1 Comment
I had a chance to escape from the office for a few hours yesterday and accompany friends from Voice of Human Rights Media to Klender, a kampung in East Jakarta. They were shooting footage for a documentary about efforts to provide kampung youth with basic legal training to protect themselves and their neighbors against police abuses, especially in drug-related arrests. Bringing a video camera onto the street invariably attracts a little bit of attention:
and then a little more:
and then some more:
(But not, on the whole, as much attention as I attracted when I inadvertently stumbled into a nest of fire ants while trying to get a better angle on a shot. My feet are still stinging and covered in dozens of teeny little welts.)
Tags: Indonesia · Jakarta · Klender · photographyNo Comments.
Would like to reassure people that I was miles from the deadly explosions in Kuningan, Jakarta this morning.
Not many miles, but enough.
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Despite warnings from police that Jakarta might face election riots, today’s vote seems to have gone quietly in the city, with all exit polls showing incumbent president SBY giving the competition a solid trouncing.
A man shows his inked finger — proof he voted in today’s presidential election — as he leaves a polling station in Jakarta.
A woman casts her ballot at a polling station in Jakarta.
Tags: elections · Indonesia · Photos3 Comments
It was lovely getting out of the city for a few days.
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It’s been quite a busy week. I’ve been bouncing between two desks at work — features and online — and it was getting to be a bit too much. Next week, I’ll officially transfer to the online desk, to help train reporters in basic multimedia skills, and to develop new online features for thejakartapost.com.
I’ll miss going all over the city for reporting, but it will be exciting to get to spend more time thinking about multimedia and interactive features. We’ve started putting up a few simple flash interfaces — like this one on the Presidential Debate — and they’ve gotten a good response, because even though they’re pretty basic, it’s still a new and exciting use of technology for a newspaper in Indonesia.
There’s a longer post, for sure, to be written, about the challenges of trying to develop multimedia content when you know the internet infrastructure of the country isn’t good enough for most readers to stream video or audio. Perhaps I’ll try to write it next week, after I’ve spent more time getting to know the back end of the paper’s website.
But I write now, because after a very long workweek (complete with two well-past-midnight crunches in the office), I’m taking a weekend completely off, and travelling to Bandung, about two hours from Jakarta by train. I will be, gasp, without a computer. But I’ll take lots of pictures, and post them after I return.
In the meantime, for your reading pleasure:
My articles on Max Kisman’s graphic design and another on an arts collective in South Jakarta. Both, I’d like to add, written after very long nights dealing with flash. And the first with a few hundred words chopped out.
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I can write stories.
I can take pictures.
Sometimes, I can even write stories and take pictures simultaneously.
But I can not write stories, take pictures and keep track of a lens cap all at the same time.
(And don’t say ‘just use a UV filter.’ Because then I would just say: I can not write stories, take pictures and keep a lens reasonably clean all at the same time.)
Tags: photography · writingNo Comments.
Gado-Gado vendor in BenHil, Jakarta. On a heated stone, he mixes together peanut, citrus, sugar, chili, and your choice of vegetables, rice cakes, tofu and tempeh to make a delicious lunch.
Hallway of a Rumah Kost in Tebet, Jakarta.
Tags: Indonesia · Jakarta · photographyNo Comments.
In today’s Jakarta Post:
An interview with Argentinian artist Jorge Canale. The interview was conducted by email, and his answers were originally in Spanish. Working on a tight deadline to translate this kind of “art talk” from Argentinian Spanish to a form of English accessible to Indonesian readers was definitely a challenge.
A write-up of a lecture given as part of Italian Design week in Jakarta. I definitely miss hard news. But having to write these kinds of features has pushed me out of my comfort zone, stylisticly speaking, which I think is always a good thing.
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