http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/writers-block-little-rain-big-flood/557907
Writer's Block: Little Rain, Big Flood November 24, 2012 t’s sunny as I write this, but the previous night Jakarta experienced a bit of rain. No big deal, except my office in Kedoya, West Jakarta, is like a lake. Dirty brown flood water that no doubt harbors deadly leptospirosis if you’re brave enough to dip your feet into. Cars can’t enter the area and a shuttle is provided to take employees from the parking lot to the main buildings. Now, this is not supposed to happen. A few years back, during the great floods in Jakarta, we had rubber dinghies to row us from the main gate to the buildings where the lobbies were transformed into a pool of water and flood water seeped into the ground floor news studio. This area is near the Pesanggrahan river, chockablock with debris, that tends to spill its content whenever the rainy season comes and turns the surrounding complex into an instant swimming pool for the local kids. Since then a great amount of time, money and inconveniences to the traffic around the area, have been spent in digging the ground and putting in concrete sewers to prevent the news station from being inundated and becoming a headline news item. One of the exit gates has remained permanently closed and barricaded to prevent errant flood water from invading. The theory goes, when the rainy season comes, the underground sewage would absorb all that excess water coming from the river and leave our hallowed grounds high and dry. But, a few hours of rain, not too heavy and not too long for that matter, has turned the place once more into an ugly-looking lake, causing traffic jams on both sides of the entrances and preventing employees from getting to work, causing unnecessary headaches. As it turns out, the day of the flooding coincides with the launch of new, luxurious apartment lofts recently built (during the dry months) just opposite the office area and near the car park. Well, good luck to both the seller and the prospective buyers. I suppose luxury living here will not mean a flood-free experience or the promise that you can get home into the apartment during the rainy season without getting drowned or being infected with rat’s urine. Obviously, the apartment building project has taken away much of the ground’s capacity to absorb excess water produced by rain and flooding from the river. So much for all that digging and concrete sewer building. And so much for the promise of a luxurious lifestyle. Like dreams that are too high for our station (literally) we are constantly reminded of where we really are. Wallowing in dirt. After all, what are man-made objects, things and constructions other than realities and manifestations that emerge from our heads and mental constructs that go with them? Objects that break easily come from ideas that are half-baked, while things that look nice but don’t work properly can only come from a mind that doesn’t think things through. What is this city other than a reflection of a mental model that gave birth to it? Nothing works the way it is supposed to, especially the way roads, buildings, shopping centers and apartment blocks are planned and built. Things are built without any thought to the surrounding area, the environmental impact, the people and the flow of the traffic. So we have modern, fancy structures rising up among shabby, narrow streets with last century’s hygiene; roads and fly-overs that are an eyesore that add additional stresses to our lives. The city is a product of a system that comes from a way of thinking that has no system. The system is flawed because our thought is flawed. It works purely on impulse and short-term ideas instead of analyzing why the reality exists to begin with. Hence, we create one reality after another, in the form of constructing more things that are flawed, that don’t work and don’t solve the problem, as the true nature or the root of the problem is never found. And we wonder why we end up with the same problem, over and over again. Where a little bit of rain, ends up in a huge flood. Desi Anwar, a senior anchor at Metro TV and can be reached at desianwar.com or dailyavocado.net . [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
