The ups and downs of apartment living

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.