18th Moon Station

Gading Night Carnival 2012

It’s already been a year since the previous night carnival isn’t it ? Just like before, the developer in Kelapa Gading held a festival for fashion and something that hold the key to our heart (according to Yogi Bear), food.

There’s also wine and cheese showing, probably there’s also tasting time but at least I came on the wrong time.

As usual, the first day has a parade of costume and decorated cars across the boulevard, blocking traffic and re-routing cars through residential area’s streets where they will bring noise to the locals as well as still causing long traffic jam everywhere around.

It’s this event that attracted most of the visitors toting camera, which speaking of peoples nowadays, a lot of them.

Jakarta Batik Carnival

When I first heard there will be a batik festival in Jakarta, in a place they call Batik village, my first impression is a place with significant number of batik textile artists gathering together. That seems like an ideal setup and the place itself can become an in-the-city tourist destination for peoples who want to see how it's done, and yet still produce thing in a home industry scale output.

Of course it’s a vain dream, because thinking of it again cold headedly, would it be possible to make such place in Jakarta when the government’s main interest is quick money (e.g: construction and commercial projects) instead of the slower (e.g: iconic public space, non-shopping tourism development).

Anyway, this year’s annual Jakarta Batik Festival is in fact the second and is located in the neighbourhood of Pal Batu neighbourhood in Jakarta.

Un-inflated balloon festival

From Thursday to Saturday, the hot air balloon show passed Indonesia in Jakarta, or to be exact, Sentul sub-urban city area. From the officials, I heard they’re in move from the show in Malaysia to Australia, maybe New Zealand after this if the schedule is right.

Of course, they don’t just came from the sky. The aerial transportations are brought to Indonesia through the harbour.

Being a rarely held event, as expected many of the local photography community came to this event to take pictures. There’s also photo contest, adding to the excitement.

Sadly, because the wind is very strong that day, the balloons are not even expanded completely. The official mentioned limit of wind speed at 10 knot for flight safety.

Another suggestions from my friends are because of the location. Despite located in a still in development real estate area, they choose to held the event in the Sentul International Convention Centre’s parking area. The location is relatively small compared to the other open ground in the area, close to the expensive building.

If that’s not enough, there’s also high voltage power line close by. In fact, the cables are floating above the visitor area. If the wind dragged the balloons to either, there would be problem wont it ?

In exchange, we have clear sky with ample amount of clouds to be taken picture of. Still didn’t take off the disappointment though, especially those who has paid for the 100k photo contest ticket (regular ticket 25k).

Amusement Park

Very late post, but last month my office went for a company birthday picnic to the local amusement park.

Can be said that it’s an old amusement park and if you compare, things are not that amazing compared to modern amusement parks abroad. The iconic rides of a typical amusement park such as carrousel, merry-go-round, roller coaster is small now compared to when I saw it last time (IIRC, 2nd year of elementary school which is more than a dozen years ago).

The most saddening thing is perhaps how it copied amusement parks from other country (such as the Universal Studio globe in front of the entrance).

But still, the things I enjoyed the most are not their new rides. I’m never a fan of screamer rides from the first place. Instead, it’s actually those traditional rides that bring back nostalgia.

Those modern things that’s designed to get adrenalin rushing with speed and height ? They are like drugs pushing fake feelings into your brain.

That said, I almost not ride all of the rides and instead spend my time walking around shooting pictures of peoples instead. The queue on popular rides are too long and a waste of time after all.

One personal note. I had two best childhood memories about this park. First is a climber game house that’s already torn down maybe from last decade. The second one is a cup noodle vending machine. The vending machine is no longer working, but it’s now resting inside a cup noodle vending stand. Hi!

Biggest regret in the trip is probably… I put in an exposed film roll into my camera! The roll became useless. That one is from the time my family used a free one night ticket in a hotel downtown.

Weekend activities: Support a war

In effort to gather support for the Palestinian, groups rally supports in countries, especially those with large Muslim population like Indonesia.

A bit like Jobs without the glasses, but it's not him.

In this event, the honoured guest is a Palestine soldier recently released in exchange with an Israel troop. The comparison made me remember a joke once when Indonesia did prisoner exchange with Australian.

One Australian prisoner in Indonesia with a dozen (don’t know the number) Indonesian prisoner in Australia. If we call it equal trade, it kind of implying about their worth isn’t it ?

Out of my elements

For a batch of updates now. I hasn’t have the time to write down stories from the last few weeks. Today, since I’m down with (hopefully just) a cold, lets track it all back.

This is from three weeks ago, an event called the Brightspot Market. It’s a market event for young designers to directly present their design in physical form to their target audience, the young and hip community.

Personally, I’m coming just for the pictures. Being in this kind of place really made me feel like out of my element and I don’t have good prejudice on them either.

Well, in my eyes at least, the target are peoples with high self-consciousness and doesn’t take self-identity lightly. It’s as important as part of pride.

Young, fresh, rebellious, out of the box, all of it like promise of a bright future up ahead compared to the shithole of petty workers who just live and wait for death to come.

Being part of the movement that “care” and “make changes” to the world, not the powerless losers who has given up on the world. A hero to the world.

Frankly it’s still something I find hard to understand, as much as the “American Dream” kind of thing.

JaSH 7

Two weeks ago, the large photography forum in Indonesia had it’s 9th birthday and the members held a group hunting event. Street hunting, which for Jakarta is held around the Manggarai area (it has a major train station, so must be an important place in Jakarta before capitalist car companies hold their fang and claws).

It’s a refreshing change compared to the usual model photography event.

Anyway, some pictures from the events. The film pictures had that white banding because I accidentally opened the camera before finished rolling. Even though I quickly closed it, the pictures are partially burned.

Sunday Market

Last weekend is quite fun, although I think the event is too long for me to enjoy, plus it’s on Sunday which I’m not keen of spending late night away from home.

The event is called Kemang Sunday Market, it’s an event geared to the expatriate community in the Kemang area. I kind of accept this event better than that previous self-proclaimed flea market (also held in walking distance) for two reasons. First, this one named itself a market, thus it felt less pretentious for me. Secondly… there’s also another activities and a form of community in the place, so it doesn’t totally felt like a hunt for profit only.

At first, actually I felt rather nervous to take picture. The main reason is that I don’t know if there will be a restriction (after all, there’s many foreigners who might not like their privacy being intruded by hobbyist looking for unusual events). So although there are some photographers in the area, I thought they might be either official photographers or acquaintance of the peoples who held this event.

The next one will be coming in November 6th (hopefully). I’m planning on going there again.

Kemang area, in southern Jakarta, is a residential area that turns into a nightlife hub with various culinary treats difficult to find in other part of Jakarta (except maybe establishment in international hotels).

This probably owes to the relatively large community of expatriates, which means high income and more variety in taste. For example, I can’t imagine my neighbourhood had any restaurant that would serve anything other than “Asian taste” because the majority composition of the population are Indonesian and Chinese descent.

Fake(?) flea market

Reading about a flea market event in one of the local event news site I frequented, this One Sun Day event quickly grabbed my attention. Sounds like an interesting event to go to, and I could probably find some items to my liking too.

A flea market or swap meet is a type of bazaar where inexpensive or secondhand goods are sold or bartered. […] The flea-market vendors may range from a family that is renting a table for the first time to sell a few unwanted household items to a commercial operation including a large variety of new or used merchandise, including scouts who rove the region buying items for sale from garage sales and other flea markets, and several staff watching the stalls.

- Flea Market @ Wikipedia

At first, I expected the place to have many stalls, maybe by expatriates (who are more familiar with flea market culture) selling their old unused items.

But then, I set my expectation straight when seeing their Twitter account which is littered by retweets of commercial messages from businesses. These are craftsmen and dealers that seems to be the same type that do aggressive online sales including the despicable Facebook tag-spam scheme.

Festival Jalan Jaksa

Last week when having a walk and getting lost in the inner corners of the capital, I arrived by chance at Jalan Jaksa. This is my first time and at first I actually thought the stage is someone having marriage and blocking the street* for private party, but actually it’s the annual festival. This year on July 23-24th 2011.

The street is a famous backpackers spot in Jakarta, offering especially budget lodging along the street. There’s also community of expatriates hanging around in pubs there.

The festival itself, at least when I came before sunset of the first day, consist of food and items stalls by the side of the street… well, you can say cynically it’s about the locals trying to get more money by riding this “special event” coach.