Wannabe

That is the word that describes this place the best. They want to reach the sky, but the stairs broke when you are 2m away from the ceiling. They want to impress you with a luxury car, except that it is a car made in the Soviet Union! They want to show you a brand new, 5-months old hotel, except that the floor is not polished and the roofs are dirty.... It's almost like that song Ironic by Alaniss Morisette. Even the jewelry here is the same, they have all the designs and the diamonds, except that the finish is not shiny... Either that or they just dont have a very high standard and think that their own standard is good enough for the world, except that it's not :P (the "katak dalam tempurung" syndrome).... The Indonesian term will be "Gak Nyucuk"

On my way back to the exhibition center and the hotel, there are many contrasts along the way. Houses made of thin wood (triplek) a'la Indonesia, people living below freeway overpasses, colonial style milk farms, very very old fire fighting cars (which is actually a tractor, which I think will pull water wagons), roads with holes in them, modern office building, dirty housing complexes with people having sex on the roof and also beggars offering you to grope their boobs for US$ 0.20, all good stuff!

In the exhibition itself the customers get going after lunch time (which is after 2pm) and not much was happening before then, Indians are very relaxed people. The food halls themselves are unique in that they use COUPONS!!! There are no cash transaction going on (except McDonalds) and you have to exchange cash with coupons then exchange the coupons for your food, like your high school bazaar (if you dont know what I mean, then maybe your high school's not so good). Basically what happens is that they will have a big hall set up with rows of long tables and it will have different stalls serving different kinds of vegetarian food (they are ALL vegetarians). You just pick what you want, check the price, and pay them with the coupons. The coupons themselves come in different denomination, 5 rupees, 10 rupees, 20 rupees, 50 rupees and have the different catering house name stamped on them. One of them serves this very nice salted pineapple juice, which is exactly what it is (for 80 rupees, 1 rupee = Rp 220). They also have a very nice Mocha Coffee for 90 rupees that I buy every morning to start the day, go go Costa Coffee!

There are plans to go visit some of the factories on Monday and then maybe I can take photo for Imoet with the people pooping on the street. I did take picture of the people having sex on the roof but I want to keep this blog for all ages :P

Cheers,

Lord S

ps. No lip chewing! unless by hot, thin, hard bodied girls with big ( . ) ( . ), yeh!