9/04/2009

On voting day about a month ago, Jakarta was being very nice. Her streets were quiet, her people laid back, even the weather mellowed. Since we, me and the boyfriend don’t vote, what better way to celebrate democracy to go to this once heavily debated project of the late dictatorial president’s wife that cost gazillion tax payer's rupiahs: Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

The place was among the have-to-go-places on “school educative excursions”. Wearing the red and white uniform we dizzily roamed its vast and winding streets, up and down rows upon rows of architectural models of various traditional houses and myriads of museums, ride the gondola or go peddling swan boat till our feet hurt. MSG-addled and sugar-high we would shop souvenirs of identical neon-bright hats and promised to be friends forever, before we got really sick on the bus trip home. Oh those were the days….

Since it was such a classic tourist spot what better way to capture the moments than by Polaroid. Since I don’t have one, I use this program called Poladroid that will develop your digital camera photos to a very fun Polaroidish images (and yes you could even shake ‘em).

Just before the sun sets, my foot was bitten by a dog. Maybe it dislikes shocking pink as I dislike dogs. It was kind of hard to tell which dog I should hate more since we were ambushed by a dozen in the front yard of a studio full of statues, finished and unfinished. One of the residential sculptors is a friend of my BF. He showed us how to mold clay into nose, into ear, into mouth. Watching him work his agile hands soon made me forgot the dog accident. And the day was perfected.