Public Bus 77

Today I discovered the Jakarta version of the N train: public bus 77 (even though it doesn't run express to Brooklyn). Taking this one bus I'm able to go from the end of my street (Jalan Kemang Timur Lima) to Blok M (a major transit center and a mall) for $0.20! I needed to pick up a few things from Carrefour and in the process managed to avoid getting lost and successfully utilized my skills of reversibility! Additionally, I'm going to try and ride public bus as much as possible because in both directions I was able to practice my Bhasa with fellow passengers as well as creep on surrounding conversations :).

One of my goals for the coming year is to catch up on classic literature and other such necessities that have been lacking from my education to date. Currently, I'm reading Catch-22, and have been completely surprised with how genuinely funny it is, with classic lines such as "some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them." Ab actually commented that my laughter while reading this section of the book distracted him from his lesson planning the in room next door.

Finally, it has also come to my attention that I have yet to post any pictures of the outside area of my residence, so here we go. I didn't take a picture from outside the gate so that y'all could see what the whole building looks like because I don't feel I know the security guards well enough, the the general idea is an extended version of the third picture (it's two stories with a total of 8 apartments and Ibu Thelma lives in a detached building behind the boarding house) My room (#2) is on the first floor almost directly behind the stone column with the narrow, vertical windows.