Tag: flood of lessons

Floods come with big rain,
Worsened by the blocked drainage.
Leaving mud story

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A big flood happened in Jakarta in Feb 2007. It trapped many people in the buildings for almost the whole day (even longer in some area) or inside cars for at least 6 hours (even more in some location). Those in the office just stayed in the office. We on the road moved inch by inch as only narrow part of the road was “safe” from water — no, no, not dry at all; it was standing water almost like ripply shallow ocean.

The cause of flood in Jakarta is the extremely heavy rain plus bad drainage system in Greater Jakarta.

I was on the road back in 2007 flood day for 8 hours feeling stuck: no food or drink, no toilet (the worst of all the experiences), with random collection of songs played in a music player low bat before even I reached half of a normal journey home.

It was only one day or two of misery; the next year we all laughed at each other’s story. A friend who peed in to a bottle in the car. A friend who decided to leave his car on the road and went home on foot finding the car moving far away from where it was left the next day. Some friends who cried afraid of losing chance to meet the family but the family especially children thought that flood was fun time. Many friends whose floors and walls were messily coated with mud mixed with rubbish and creepy crawly after the flood and they found stuff that were lost for years through cleaning the mud.

We’ve learnt the lessons yet it takes time to fix such a systemic issue. Jakarta, you can!

I’ve learnt my lesson too that tragedy + time = comedy. A simple equation without unknown factor except how much time is stretched. God speed!

Salaam.