Our Kid and I set
out yesterday to discover a little haven of peace in this “hostile
setting” and we found it. However, it wasn’t exactly “living and
ever-changing” because it’s a cemetery, the oldest one in Jakarta in
fact.
I was alerted to Taman Prasasti Museum by Thomas Belfield on his
recent visit to Jakarta from Hawaii where he is doing his masters degree
in urban studies (of Jakarta).. Much of what he told he then he has
subsequently posted on his blog and we were looking for a “world of big trees, cool shade, singing birds, and the quiet of Batavia’s dead.”
And that was what we found, a little oasis with a fascinating glimpse into what Jakarta, then Batavia, once was.
Mahandi Syonata posted this picture from the 1860′s.
He has a keen interest in Indonesia’s ‘social’ history and on this page he
has posted photos of many of the tombs of deceased Dutch dignitaries
and their family members and translated many of the epitaphs.
Brits may be interested in the grave stones of two Merchants and a Doctor of Medicine who died nigh on two hundred years ago and whose
We were brought back to the present by the arrival of a fashion shoot
and a model was photographed draping herself over and around a plinth.
She was not as poetic as this one.
21
Jun
School Breaks
No, this isn’t yet another polemic about the faults of the
Indonesian education – by which I mean schooling – system. Mind you, I
do wonder how come not one child in grade six in Jakarta ‘failed’ the
recent national exams – a 100% success rate is nigh on impossible in any
other sphere of life.
Our Kid is at home as he awaits the jump up into senior high school.
Like many teenagers, he is somewhat adrift, so I’m planning a few trip
around town to pique his interest. Mind you, they’ve got to be low cost
because new schools are bloody expensive!
Tomorrow, for example, we’ll head for the Taman Prasasti Museum
(TPM), a cemetery opened in 1797. On his recent visit to Jakarta, Thomas
Belfield told us about this quiet sanctuary, and he’s posted his
thoughts on his blog here.
He also gives a link to a wonderful blog I hadn’t come across before –
My Odyssey, by Mahandi Syoanata, who visited TPM six years ago and put
together a really fascinating account.
For parents who enjoy varying dining experiences and are stuck in the
city, I’ve posted a couple of articles by the late David Jardine on the
archive site of his writings we’ve set up here. They’re about Eating Out in Tebet and in Menteng.
For those parents who want to get out of Jakarta, the following is an
article I put together for the most recent edition of the newly revived
free magazine, Jakarta Expat.
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terima kasih telah berkunjung semoga bermanfaat