A Day at the Beach

Yesterday morning, I was greeted with an annoyance, a rain shower. No surprise though, it is the rainy season...the cost of living in the tropics. You see, karma has this particularly twisted way of making automatic withdrawals when you live in a place where the temperature rarely goes above 90 or below 80. More on karma later.

It is averaged that Jakarta (more so North Jakarta) has a good flood once every five years. It happened last year, and again this year, almost one year later to the day. The good thing about this flood is that it could be a lot worse. Thankfully, there are no raging torrents of water rushing downslope; no flash flooding to compromise the electrical grid creating an extremely dangerous aqua environment; no eroding embankments of land holding villages waiting for doom. None of this. The only concern here is the more subtle spread of disease. Jakarta, lacking a significant underground utility infrastructure, manages human waste with the use of open sewers and canals...yay!

Flood relief is also facilitated by these canals with the general concept that all things nasty simply wash out to sea where a more conveniently unseen issue is created. However, these canals have a tendency to get blocked as they tend to facilitate a means of garbage disposal as well as makeshift vegetable gardening...lots of nitrates. So, when the rains come heavy and prolonged, these canals fill up very quickly and join with the more shallow tributary sewage ditches lining the roads, flooding everything in between to make one big brown river...Mmm! I'm lucky. I live in a high rise with a mini grocery and cable TV (at least until the power goes out). I have a healthy cache of rice, pasta, and meat, so I should be all right in case this lasts a few days...did I mention it's the rainy season?


So, while the lesser valued real estate turns into a post apocalyptic water world with small children floating around on stacks of used nasi goreng styrofoam plates, those of us more fortunate get to wait it out in our high and dry environs. This is where the karma issue should kick in. How secure are the pipes bringing us our tap water? Ought we shower? I'm looking forward to growing an additional limb. Or, perhaps, a new cancer that brings me special morphine-induced powers for about six to eight months. In actuality, I'm waiting for the zombies to gurgle up from the chunky depths and begin to wet their appetites with the well-to-do. I think I could last through about five or six of them, maybe, with my new campung machete that was ground from a suspension ribbon. Yeah, that'll stop the zombies. Them fuckers ain't gettin' my brains!


Oh, wait, there's the alarm...it's a quarter after cocktail! Enjoy!