A place where I can live, breathe, talk and see

As a middle-low class costumer in a third world country, we're used to be pushed around by capital owners, pressed with low price, so even there's a saying "Costumer is King", we're basically at the mercy of those service providers/capital owners. Lay helpless at their feet, fooled and dragged around like a garbage bag. The government has never done a real thing to protect us, they're too busy doing things that we'll never understand, so we'd just have to protect ourselves. In any way, though most of the time it only seems like a useless effort.

What I experienced most often is in transportation. I don't have a car, and I couldn't afford a chauffeur, so I take that option out. I couldn't drive a motorcycle, not to mention it's a very unstable and unsafe vehicle, so that option goes out too. That leaves us with only the public transportation. Busses, trains, airplanes. They all have one thing in common. WE CAN'T TRUST THEM. It's a bitter and embarrassing truth, but that's our public transportation. We couldn't trust them with PUNCTUALITY, we couldn't trust them with SAFETY, we couldn't trust them with COSTUMER SERVICE. And those 3 are the most important factors of public transportation services. Just have a look around, take a pick, and I'll tell you a story of why we shouldn't trust that vehicle. So in this city we couldn't predict nor plan anything by the minute. We should be used on getting late to appointments, or wasting too much time by coming way too early. But either way, you already waste a great deal of time in your life by sitting unproductively in the vehicle. You don't have any bargaining power what soever. We're supposed to sit tight, wait, and be patient. Forever. This is a very ugly picture of how a city, a megapolitan works. No wonder everything in this city is ruined.

Sample #1, traffic jam.
In Jakarta, everybody are brainwashed, that it's okay to waste 3-6 hours a day just to sit and wait. Can you imagine, it's literally 10-25% of one's life/day. So if you live until 80 years old, you should dedicates 8-20 years of your life just to sit unproductively. What a great number.. Imagine what you can do with that wasted time.


Sample #2, busway.
Busway, or TransJakarta is the most prominent type of public transportation is Jakarta. Another embarrassing fact, that in the 21th century, 60years after Proklamasi Kemerdekaan (Liberty Declaration, that is..) THAT is our best and most advanced solution for traffic jam, which haven't really solved anything. And completed with a poor system of signage and public information, these busses are also hopeless. They're supposed to be the most prominent hemoglobin that runs along the most important veins and arteris of Jakarta, the hemoglobin that supposed to run smoothly so it can keep our body alive and well all the time. But like the hemoglobin of a fat person, it stuck on lumps of fat or God knows what, and it couldn't deliver itself on-time as it supposed to. And we're dead. If you decides to use this mode of transportation with a high hope of finally defeating Jakarta's deadly traffic jam in a very affordable and comfortable fashion, then you're so blindly wrong..

Sample #3, train.
Most inter-city trains that I've ever ride on are late. From 30mins to 3 hours. I don't know how about the KRL (Kereta Rel Listrik). Even a short trip from Bandung to Jakarta is 30mins late on arrival. What if on that fateful day I was foolishly decided to ride on a train to Jakarta and catch a bus to the airport from there? I'd definitely looking stupid by missing a plane, with over an hour late from departure. So.. Again, we must plan ahead, and add another few hour to spend unproductively. And again, we are defeated, fall helplessly at the stinky feet of public transportation business owners.

Sample #4, airport busses.
I've too many experience with these lazy busses so I'd risk on going to the airport by ojek (motorcycle) rather than the lazy bus. They don't seems to have a schedule, so they can park and wait for the bus to be full the whole day if they really have too. From bus station to airport or vice versa, it's the same thing. So customers are nothing. For this lazy busses the customers are like walking ATM, that generates money and have no right to complain, and doesn't even have a time constraint or any sense or urgency. In fact I don't even think they actually know that such word does exist. So it can be delivered whenever they feel like going.

Sample #5, airplanes.
I'm tired with the list so this is going to be the last entry, though I still have a lot of things at the back of my mind. Anyway, this last mode of transportation has been under the spotlight for a while. Since several horrible plane accidents, the government are getting strict about safety requirement. But again, they're victimize the weakest party, which is, as always, the customer. Over 100 ppl are lost on their way to Manado using AdamAir. Countless of ppl are delayed using various airplanes. And the latest experience happened to my parents. After canceling the AdamAir ticket to Surabaya, they finally bought AirAsia for 15.30. But when they showed up in airport, turns out that the 15.30 flight is canceled to 21.00. Yep, 5,5 hours delay. My parents are furious, but there's nothing they can do. So they just bought a new ticket, which is Lion Air, for 17.50 flight. After waited for a while, my parents can relax and just wait for the flight. But guess what happened? The flight was AGAIN delayed to 20.30! So much for a transportation we can rely on and trust. So you see, this 3 popular airlines are unbelievably unprofessional.

And now you're thinking, "What about the others??"