Touch over 35mins on clear, open freeways in Jakarta on a Saturday; as soon as we cleared Thamrin City it was a breeze. As a consequence there would be a 4 hour wait at the airport. Newspaper nowhere to be found for love or money, what was worse; so said the first assistant enquired. However, it would turn up once Immig. had been passed. A number of lookalikes through the morning: at a flicker of passing admiration a woman showing her eyelids after a brief smile was a dead-ringer for Semarang Sugi in Sing; then just now a lad standing in for the delivery chap at J. C. Complex opposite Geylang Serai Market. The maid at the cafe was initially difficult to pick in the scrum. Likely the Chinese preferred their own kind, first thought; or else this girl may have been a younger sister/relative. Terribly complacent airs of the usual sort at the table. The gal was a maid alright, identifiable by the way she promptly hopped it in that particular manner when her little charge began wandering too far. Her youth and mixed features; when you looked more closely the attire of course. The definable Chinese in the group carried salon cuts and all were decked in the same white tees: HANG OUT AND DO NOTHING. Easy for them to say. Well, roundabout slow, slow process of deduction. Clear skin on the youngster too; the four girls at the table had caked on for the shots. One started off another with her eye-liner and now the lass continued using her red & white polka dot compact. Youngster must have taken the little boy to the bathroom. Early-mid twenties too close for sisters that grouping, but not out of the question. CHILL it was in fact; not HANG. A mother had an altogether different aspect to a maid—a full and entire maternal patience displayed by a passing lass with her mite in hand. They must have told the girl to get lost, give them some quiet time. Perhaps there was a jumping castle here now somewhere in a corner. The transformation of Soek-Hat over a mere four years was it? remarkable. Four years ago the airport had a country town aspect, dusty outback Oz pretty close. Adapted to this new traveller class now; in the old airport the locals had predominated. A demonstration of the argument, “Build it and they will come.” En route a freeway board for the incumbent in the election scheduled for next month — JO-KER; ie. Joko Wiwodo gets things moving. (Kerja, work.) Correction: five of these CHILL Chinese. Did their grandparents duck low and survive the riots in the late 90s?... Well over a half hour: didn’t look as if the girl had been capable of drowning the toddler in the toilet bowl. If she was treated right there was no need fear. Blimey! Further correction: six of them. Mushrooming they were. A beauticians’ conference, delivering a weekend workshop to the locals, range of all natural products that couldn’t be beat. Cackles and titters as if they were reading thought bubbles from the guy at the end of the row. At this rate the quart hours’ spin one needed to be careful. How many seasoned travellers had missed FOUR flights—international flights; the last in KL actually sitting immediately adjacent the gate, happily dreaming? Aduh! Still not revealed to a soul and never to be…. Nobody gets a glass or cup at Tours les Jours, no need feel guilty. The plate for the croissant had been a special mercy; the girl had been getting the plastic out from the drawer. Plastic for the hand taught by international best hygiene protocol—they were coming on in leaps and bounds in Indonesia. (Early 2019, well before the pandemic.) Pain in the bum having to log in each time, assumption being once you were on that’s where you’d stay in the lounge, forever and a day. A good hour the tot gone; panic as yet not in evidence. Some castle it must be. Best not tarry further.
Unavoidable visa runs across the Malay world in SE Asia had Pavle Radonic trapped in airports & aloft far more than he would have liked.
