Looking to the skies for the home above it all OR The ups and downs of apartment living

Bruce Emond The Jakarta Post Jakarta

-------------------------------------------- Many of us are putting aside our misty dreams of the three- bedroom with the white picket fence, and instead taking a long, hard look at the reality of what apartments have to offer.

In a streamlined, downsized world, apartments are at center stage. No need to worry about the hassle of cleaning all those cavernous rooms, mowing an endless expanse of green or fretting about the alkaline content of the pool. And nosy neighbors peering over the backyard fence can be a thing of the past. --------------------------------------

I wrote that five years ago, for an advertorial for this section, when I myself was itching to leave the confines of my boardinghouse in Central Jakarta.

After four years in the admittedly pleasant surroundings (hot water, cleaning service, AC, all the Aqua I could drink, laundry service, etc.), I nevertheless felt that I needed to get out, fast. I found myself sandwiched between a rather sad expatriate man down on his luck and hurtling toward a nervous breakdown, and some party-hardy teens keeping 30-something me up until all hours.

Even without the need to keep on the lookout for the neighbors as I made a mad dash to a waiting taxi, the boardinghouse had become nothing more than a crash pad. It was a place to lay my head at the end of the day but not one I wanted to spend any "quality" time at.

So I made the decision to look to the skies and find a new, more comfortable place to live. While the ivory towers of apartment living in the capital were way out of my price range, I finally settled on the everyman environs of a sprawling complex of apartments in Kuningan, South Jakarta.

While definitely not measuring up to the facilities offered by those plush apartments hugging Jakarta's main streets, it had enough -- tennis courts, a swimming pool, a minimart -- to keep me happy.

More important on my list of priorities was its convenience to all spots within the city. I could take a short stroll down to the cavernous foreign franchised grocery store for whatever I needed, be at work in half an hour in moderate traffic or head on over to a centrally located mall on the weekends.

Or, alternately, I could choose to stay holed up in my apartment, without feeling that the walls were going to close in on me.

The concern for security was also a major point when I moved in three years ago (more on its vicissitudes later). There was also the pleasant hope that I would not have to deal with the usual must-do courtesy calls (neighborhood chiefs, attending Mrs. So and So's son's circumcision party, etc.) or pay through the nose for assorted "fees" that come with renting a house in the suburbs. In short, I wanted privacy.

In fact, I have to confess that I came to miss the latter just a tad, living on my lonesome with only one other neighbor on the floor. A native of China, his English was about as good as my Mandarin, and our interactions were limited to those awkward silences as we waited for the elevator during chance meetings in the morning.

"S*** apartment," he blurted out once, surveying the deep crack in the paintwork next to the elevator.

I had hit the ground running in the first few blissful days in the apartment, free to do as I pleased, whether stumbling out of bed at all hours or simply enjoying the feeling of space offered by more than one room.

I relished the opportunity to cook whatever I wanted when I chose, instead of having to take Hobson's choice of a warmed-over plate of fried rice back at the boardinghouse before the kitchen closed at 10 p.m.

I also had the pure luxury of a bathtub, something I had not enjoyed since my teenage years, or the occasional night spent in a hotel.

Like all things, the honeymoon eventually ends. The gas cooker has not got much usage as I have gone back to my old ways of eating out; the second, guest bedroom has basically turned into a storage and laundry room, full of assorted tennis rackets, old books and other clutter; and that bathtub is only used on rare occasions after the plug became wedged inside and led to a minor flooding crisis.

And I had not given much thought to the fact that, yes, I would have to clean my great space one fine day. The apartment gradually and inexorably became a showcase of the amazing amount of dust and soot that can accumulate on the 20th floor of a downtown Jakarta building.

One day, as I lay back on my sofa and spotted a fine crust of dust that would have made Miss Haversham proud, I decided it was high time to get my lazy butt in gear and start cleaning. Finally.

I admit that I have had my fair share of ups and downs over the past three years. There have been uncomfortably close encounters with hand-rubbing security guards on the take; "Mr. doesn't smoke, right? I do, but no money," one said to me while I waited for the elevator one night, as I murmured, just low enough so he couldn't hear me, "Well, stop smoking then".

And while I don't know if it was Jerry or Joko who built my apartment, I certainly know that the workmanship was not quite up to par. Apart from the aforesaid deep rivets in the walls, there has been a frequent flooding problem from upper floors, which led to one bathroom roof caving in over me.

"You were lucky, one time one of the tenants fell through the bathtub," the marketing woman said, which gave me even more reason to give the bath a miss.

Last week, the water heater tank leaked, causing an electrical shortage and a day spent waiting for the workmen to install a new one. At the end of the day, the water was hot once again but closer inspection revealed a rainbow of exposed wires next to the heater.

Yes, I know that apartment living is not for everybody, and many of us would prefer to keep our feet on the terra firma. But I also note that there are many more Indonesian residents, most of them young and with the same priorities as me, than when I moved in all those years ago.

My disgruntled Chinese neighbor is now gone, replaced by an Indonesian family with a small child and a maid who scurries away whenever she sees my considerable personage. Not to worry: Faulty wiring, leaking roofs and all, it's still home.