Skip to main content

Day 1: Getting to Indonesia

With Renuka at IAD before departure for Doha
Our journey began at IAD at close to 3pm on Dec. 28. I met up with a couple of my fellow travelers at the airport, including Renuka, Tom Jones, Noah, Jackson.






On transit in Doha




We got to on Dec. 30 Indonesia about 7 am, on time, aboard the Qatar Airways flight 958 from Doha, Qatar.













Duty free cars in Doha!















Passport control, baggage claim and passing through customs was a breeze. It took us no more than 20 minutes to alight the aircraft and meet Matt Regan, who had arrived a day earlier, to prepare the way for us. And prepare he did.


A section of Soekarno-Hatta Airport di Jakarta
Matt gave us the brief on what to do, and how to do it. We withdrew cash from ATM (Matt recommended 1 million rupiah!!!). It felt like a lot, but it turned out to be about $74 bucks (with the conversion being $1 = 13,500 rupiah). The notes were in 50,000s or 100,000s crispy ones.
We then got into taxis and got driven to our Ibis Styles Hotel, where we'd be spending most of our next 24 hours.

Our shuttle from Jakarta airport to Ibis Styles; behind me is Tom Jones and Taryn Levels

Pit stop 1: At Ibis Styles Hotel in Jakarta
Did I mention, the air was humid and hot (very muggy). Halfway around the world that we had left behind, DC, lakes, rivers and waterfalls were frozen. From a world of less than 20 F to one of 80 F.
Oh, it turns out that we are 12 hours ahead of DC, basically the number of hours we skipped ahead in a time-warping machine. So, day is night, and night is day. Unfortunately, this means that the circadian rhythm is gone. Hunger pangs in the middle of the night, forcing the body to sleep when it should be waking; eating dinner when you should be eating breakfast, and so on. The world is crazy, and is going to be so, for the next day or three until the body adjusts.

It's now close to 7am, and I am starving (actually I have been famished since around 1 am this morning). I need to go down and get breakfast and catch up with the rest of the crew.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How well-meaning parents ruined us

Growing up, it was common for our parents to encourage us and tell us how we could be anything we wanted in life. "You can do anything you set your mind to do!" They would cheer us on. "Even the president?" We'd ask unconvinced. "Yes, you could even become the richest man in the world!" All this fascinated us. We vowed to ourselves that we'd in fact become people of substance who would be recognized in the entire world for our achievements. We'd ride in super-yachts like Abramovich and the rest of the mega-rich. We would produce life changing inventions, innovating our way to stardom. We'd become the next prodigy in music and sports. All this is well and good, meant to lift our spirits. Assessing our lives however, no matter how much effort we have put in to realize our dreams and visions, they have eluded us. We have become adept at doing other things though: commenting on FB posts, retweets, identifying the hottest political issue...
Post a Comment
Read more

On thinking

Why do I believe what I believe? Why are my values what they are? Where do my thoughts come from? Are my ideals 'mine'? The question of thought, is a complex one, not least because thinking is so difficult. Many of us do not think, we take the thoughts of others and use them as the foundations, walls, or thatching of our mental structures. But we rarely think, and deep enough on important matters anyway. Thinking involves the admission that we do not know, an admission coming from a place of humility that we are ignorant and could do better. It does not, as is usually thought, have to be from a place of knowledge, even though knowledge can inform thoughts. If it was, then we would not necessarily be thinking, but just reorganizing previously known ideas. It begins with asking the question, why. Why do we go to school? Why do we marry and have children? Why do we work to earn money in order to buy things? Why do we elect leaders? Why do we go to places of worship and perfo...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Africa may learn from Trump presidency

President-Elect Trump successfully ran under the banner of making America first, reducing foreign 'interference' and trying new ways to work with partners on the international scene to solve some intractable challenges. The first tenet, in my opinion, is something that should interest African nations, because of the collective acknowledged viewpoint of making Africa work for Africans. Looking back at the powers that scrambled for Africa more than 125 years ago to present day, we see challenges that have been brought about by the fact that Africa still remains a playground for western powers. The Democratic Republic of Congo fails to move forward due to the strong interests that keep fueling violence in order to continue the parasitic extraction of the vast resources with little benefit to the people of Congo. The CFA countries of Central and West Africa still depend on precolonial arrangements with France to manage their monetary policies, stealing the initiative fro...
Post a Comment
Read more