Maybe Jakarta is the only state capital endowed with various fruit trees. Indonesian people know well about an old song entitled Banana Cha-cha-cha indicating that the city is a fertile area where a lot of fruit-trees can be easily cultivated especially papaya, mango, bananas, guavas, and rambutan.
If you have a house with sufficient large garden, you can try to cultivate one of them but mostly rambutan tree. Jakarta seems to have suitable good weather with enough rain and good soil for any kind of rambutan tree which is capable to produce a lot of fruits.
A good thing is that its leaves can make Jakarta become greenery. When we are in rambutan season, the green leaves are almost covered by the beautiful red color of mature rambutan fruits. And at that time, you can buy rambutan with cheaper price sold by the sidewalk traders.
Rambutan scientifically is named as Nephelium lappaceum Linn. In general, rambutan trees are planted in places where the land contains water, the air slightly moist until at an altitude of 600 m above sea level. Rambutan trees have many ramifications, with the height up to 20m or more. The leaves are oval, light green color, fruit-stranded, skin color green, yellow, or red if it is mature. The fruit contains protein, fat, phosphorus, iron, calcium, and vitamin C. His skin may be used as remedy dysentery.
In Jakarta, the rambutan tree widely planted in the area of Ciracas and Cilangkap, the southern part of Jakarta. Trees are planted either from seed or from slips and they don’t require special attention. After four to five years, the trees will bear fruit once every year for more than 15 years.
There are 22 kinds of rambutan cultivated in Jakarta, but only five kinds which are highly economical to cultivate. Rambutan is a hairy fruit having red, yellow or green with sweet flesh and a bit dry, chewy, and sometimes easily removed from its kernel. The fruit can endure up to 6 days after picking up.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) when campaigning for his presidency last year, he held the press conference under rambutan trees in the polling booth near his residence in Puri Cikeas, Bogor.
Barack Obama, now the president of United States of America, when he spent his childhood in Jakarta, in 1967 to 1971, he liked to eat rambutan along with his other food favorites namely bakso (meatball) and nasi goreng (fried rice).
As he postponed his trip to Indonesia twice because of his duty to push through health care reform and later the Gulf of Mexico oil spill problems, maybe in the next visit in November, he would like to eat his nostalgic fruit, hoping that next November will be the rambutan season.
If you go to Jatinegara, in the district of East Jakarta, you will discover Pasar Rawa Bening, a market selling products which reflect the historical background of Indonesia. There are about 1000 stalls. Visitors usually come mostly on Saturday and Sunday.You will find keris, which has a strong influence among the Javanese, various gemstones, black bracelets made from tree roots and the Arab oil for the purpose of superstition. The overall market is a place to accommodate the purchasers who believe in something that can bring fame and fortune to them.
In Javanese culture, a kris is not just a martial weapon but more as a status symbol of the owner. The better the quality of the kris, the higher the status of the owner is. But owning a kris means having an obligation to follow the special ritual to maintain it such as to clean it annually and dry it under the sun.
Anybody who wants to buy it has to make sure that he will fit for a certain kris, and that the kris “likes to stay with him”. In such a case the purchasing power is not the most important thing. Rumors said that if a kris “doesn’t like to stay with him” bad thing might occur and will trouble the owner.
Museum Pusaka
If you have an interest and are more serious about a kris, you can visit Museum Pusaka, literally meaning sacred heritance museum, containing various kinds of krisses from all over regions in Indonesia. Located at Mini Indonesia Park Jakarta (TMII) on a site of 3,800 square meters, the museum is getting important today because the Indonesian kris has been recognized by UNESCO as the heritage of humanity.
You can easily recognize the museum as it has a specific characteristic of a kris-like-model attached to the roof with its tip pointing out to the sky. The museum has special rooms for exhibition and sales, special information, management, conservations, and library.
The museum, whose construction was initiated by the then First Lady, Ibu Tien Soeharto, in the 1980s, now collects some of the legendary krisses from the olden times, among others, Nagasasra Sabuk Inten from the Mataram Kingdom, Kujang from Pajajaran era or Singa Barong from Central Java ornamented with gold in-lay at its blade.
The collections coming into the museum are from the donations of the haves and the purchase from locals in any provinces where the kris is well known and available. To make the kris become more popular, the officials working here regularly hold exhibitions, sometimes under the cooperation with foreign partners.
Heritage of Humanity
Through the constant exhibition and reports in details as done by Kris experts like Haryono Guritno and Sungkowwo Harumbrodjo to UN officials, UNESCO finally in 2005 recognized it as the heritage of humanity.
UNESCO pays attention to this Indonesian traditional dagger because of its various features. The unique form of the kris, the metallurgical process during the forging, the metaphysical feature as found in certain krisses have even attracted the interest of foreign people to know more about it. The process of carving, ornaments on the kris sheath the spiritual meditation prior to the forging all full of philosophy and mystical belief making this artistic weapon become an obscure mystery.
There are differences of opinion about the origin of the word "Kris". In the Encyclopedia of Kris sold in the museum, the first-word “keris” was written on a brass plate found around the year 825, in Karang Tengah village.
Kris is an Indonesian traditional hand-held weapon with a length of about 30 to 40 cm (excluding handles) which has become popular and widely developed in Java and Southeast Asia since the 10th century. This weapon forged in such a way that both the blade sharp and asymmetric shape.
The curved shapes (“luk”) of kris generally were odd in number namely 3, 5, 7, 11, or 13. But there is also kris which is straight without “luk”. In the process of forging, the steel materials are mixed with titanium element or any material from the meteorite. A kris with such mixtures increases its prestige and obviously its price. When it is still hot the sheets of iron and meteorite mixture are forged and folded into 2, 4, 8, 16, and so on until they reach 4.000 for a very good quality kris.
To make a good kris one requires material of 20 kg iron, half kg of steel, and around a one-eighth kg of meteorite. In the end, we get only around a half kg of dagger blade, the remaining materials have been reduced into gas, ash and metal fragments. Such a kris ornamented with a plate of gold could be worth up to Rp 100 million (US$ 10,000).
But if you buy kris in a market like Jatinegara, you may get only a dagger blade made of ordinary iron tempered and formed in shape of kris. And you can bring home such a kris for around Rp 2 million (US$ 200) and even less if you are a good bargainer.
According to the tradition, especially Javanese one, to bear a kris is not simple and sometimes very complicated depending on what purpose one wears it. Some people believe that some rituals must be done in order to avoid disharmony between the kris and the owner, otherwise, disasters and tribulations could happen.
Jakarta with its population of 9.5 million and around 3.5 million commuters who come from the surrounding areas certainly cause headache traffic problems. Road and highways are packed with cars, buses, and motorcycles.
This situation becomes worse as the passengers are not quite disciplined. We can see the consequences of this attitude when a traffic light malfunctioned which caused serious traffic jam with the very long queue of vehicles. Each passenger tries to pass over the others making cars-interlocking which blocks the vehicles to move.
At some crossroads, the regulations of traffic lights are imbalanced. We can be surprised to see the length of red light time before we are given the green light to pass. We can find that the countdown of the red to green lights is very long at one side, while at the other side it is very short allowing only two or three vehicles to pass through causing a very long queue at that direction.
One of the solutions that the city government has implemented was the ‘three-in-one’ regulation. This applies for protocol roads which permit only cars with three passengers to enter these roads during the peak hours. However, in these protocol roads, the police often block the vehicles from slow track entering the main track even though it is almost empty causing a heavy traffic jam in the slow track. It seems that the police are indifferent toward the situation.
Another solution that the city government likes to apply is the idea to restrict the motorcycles entering some major lanes. It seems that they are panic of not deeply considering the vital importance of motorcycles as a mode of the people’s transportation for economics. The mobility of those people using motorcycles is equal or even faster to those who are using cars. We can imagine how many cars they are replacing to have the same mobility in contributing to the progress of the economy.
Generally speaking, the problem of traffic lights is attributed to the lack of a centralized traffic control system. The Jakarta Transportation Agency lacks a centralized traffic control system to automatically detect malfunctioning or any broken traffic lights, which often exacerbate Jakarta’s chronic traffic jams. It is because the traffic lights at every junction have their own controllers, which are programmed manually to time the lights according to the flow of traffic during different times of the day.
Without a comprehensive system to monitor traffic lights, it is impossible to automatically detect malfunctioning or blacked-out traffic-lights, which are usually caused by power failure. The problem is reverberated by the poor condition of some traffic lights because they have been too old and are now worn out.
Seventeen Ways to Overcome Traffic Jam in Jakarta
Because of these acute traffic problems some people are proposing an idea to remove the state capital out of Jakarta to somewhere else outside Java. The traffic problems that Jakarta, as the state capital, encounters draw the attention of the central government. The central government is willing to assist the city government to cope with the problem by providing comprehensive planning and budgeting that it requires.
The central government, c.q. the Vice President has appointed Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, Chairman of the Presidential Unit Monitoring and Control Development, to be responsible to overcome the whole problems comprehensively. Currently, the government prepares 17 initial steps to solve the problem of the loss of time, fuel oil and cars’ engine working power.
One of the steps is to apply the electronic road pricing (ERP), the road user-pay system, which will take effect immediately. Other steps are the sterilization of the bus-way route (which is now already underway); increase bus-way lanes; restructure the small fleet public transportation; add the shuttle trains and double tracks in Jabodetabek; integrate the Jakarta inner railway project with mass transportation; construct six elevated lanes and highways in Jakarta; start to build Mass Rapid Transit (MRT); review the parking policy and build the parking area in the railway station to reduce long-range vehicle usage; improve the utilization of natural gas for transportation.
We are looking forward to the successful realization of those planning.
Every time prior to Eid Fitr, celebrated in the first date of Syawal month according to the lunar calendar (this year it will be on September 11th), Jakarta becomes deserted for around one week before and after the holiday. More than 7 million people from Jakarta and the surroundings (Jabotabek) almost simultaneously go out to their native homes and villages in East and Central Java. They travel by means of public transportations, cars, and motorcycles. Some who are going out of Java use liners and airplanes as modes of transportations.
Such huge movement of people going out from one place almost at the same time causes great consternation for government, mainly Ministry of Transportation and the police related to the availability for sufficient transportation modes, the transport safety along the roads, and management of the traffic jam during the peak days before the Eid Fitr.
The police will make sure that those who want to go home riding motorcycles strictly follow the regulation restricting to carry two persons maximum, not the family with children. Any violation of this regulation will be fined Rp250,000 (around $30) or put for one month in jail.
The number of police personnel handling the security and road safety are around 80,000 spread out in various regional districts. Based on annual data the road accidents that happened during the outflow were more than one thousand motorcycle accidents, one-third of which were fatal casualties.
Most of the travelers stay in their destinations around one week as permission to leave from their employer or office allows. During their stay at home, they celebrate Eid Fitr and going door to door to meet their neighboring relatives and friends.
About half a million domestic servants, who are among the travelers, are staying in their villages for around one month to take the rest after working hard for the whole year through. After that, they come back to their jobs living with the families who give them the jobs. Families in Jakarta prefer to seasonal housemaids who are willing to work a relatively long time to do almost all the household works starting from around 04.00 in the morning up to dinner time with relatively modest wages.
