I stepped out of the airport listening for the horns. The horns that once never stopped have never started here.
I looked for the men peeing on walls and piles of burning trash. They aren't here either.
This search without end was the product of my mind being consumed with comparative analysis. Unbeknownst to me I was looking for India in Indonesia....it was not to be, and most notably, shouldn't be.
There are parallels that exist everywhere I go, and that stands to reason, as we cater medical attention to specific demographic, but the lesson here has been let one country keep it's awesome identity while I figure out the unique one currently being offered. Don't try to fit an Indonesian peg into an Indian hole.
Jakarta is tropical! allow me to repeat that....Jakarta is tropical. Worth repeating in the sense that there are attributes that come with a tropical environment, no matter where you are, that are to be found in every specific nuance of the geographic local.
Everything is green and growing. Even the airport had "living walls" of live plants inside. This concept brings the benefits of "Gods Lungs" inside and notably make a difference.
Walls of humidity do wonders for the skin and the locals (no matter which class) have skin as if they were all just recently hatched.
There is a general haze over the city, but not a direct product of burning garbage or lack of smog laws. The haze seems to be a gentle reminder that at any moment the sky's could open up and wash the streets. And the sky's they do! Sometimes this afternoon street washing gets carried away and creates feet of water running through traffic in a moments time with no warning. With "chubby rain" (no rain likes to be called fat) comes the other tropical accoutrement of lightning and thunder. Sometimes too far away to receive the thunder at all, other times so directly overhead that the ice (which is safe to consume and abundant) will rattle in your glass.
But the number one attribute that comes with being tropical seems to be happiness. Everybody here is happy, and not that "yeah, yeah I'm fine type of happy, but that "see that guys smile...no the guy across the street...no him too, but I mean the other guy" type of happy.
It seems to me that anytime I am in a tropical place there is a vacation switch flipped in my physchi. Time is a little slower, food tastes a little better, there seems to be the need to having a bathing suit on the ready, and people are way more laid back. Perhaps this is a philosophy that lives even in the locals.
Everybody here wants to help you, but not in a pushy way. They don't mind if you take their picture and even though there is a larger language barrier here than anywhere I have ever been, I have communicated with more people through universal creative gestures. Present at all exchanges is that "smile" I was talking about. Ear-to-ear and contagious. Nobody on the street seems to be in a hurry to get anywhere as the line between work and play are blurred. Just ask the guy today sitting on his tractor in a hard hat and bare feet smoking a cigarette.
I get small pieces of my soul gifted to me everywhere I go. Pieces that make up the collage that is me and will become me. If I am to imagine that these pieces represent physical places on my body, then I have no doubt that Jakarta is gifting me my smile.
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