Hong Kong has always fascinated me since my first trip to the city back in January 2012, and since then I have returned five more times, with the most recent visit being in December 2019. I always tell people how Hong Kong’s hiking trails, white […]
All posts tagged: cityscape
Embracing the Southern Lifestyle
If you think this post is about the American South or Southern Europe, it is not since I have never been to those parts of the world. Rather, this is a story about the southern part of Jakarta, a city I have called home for […]
Ancol: Dreaming of Blue Skies
Rainy season has officially arrived in Jakarta, after a prolonged dry season which rendered a lot of parks and gardens in the city brown and barren. Those which received a regular watering schedule, either from the city government or from local community associations, fared slightly […]
Hong Kong at a Slower Pace
Hong Kong is a fast-paced city – no doubt about it. Those who have been there must have come across and seen firsthand how fast the people walk, how efficient and punctual the MTR trains are, and how quick the service at restaurants is, to name […]
Melbourne’s Alluring Warmth
“What if we prefer Sydney?” James raised a question out of his slight worry that both of us would actually like Australia’s biggest city better than Melbourne, its perennial rival. A lot of people have remarked on how wonderful the latter is, and numerous indices […]
Semarang: My Cherished Hometown
“Semarang is squeezed in the middle,” a pun my father once told me about the Central Javanese provincial capital which is also my hometown. We were discussing about how slowly Semarang developed compared to other major cities in Java – Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung and even Yogyakarta. […]
A Tale of Three Cities: Jakarta
What is there to love about Jakarta? That was a question I asked myself when I first moved to the city back in 2008. The city’s traffic has been consistently ranked among the worst in the world for many years. In my first few years […]
A Tale of Three Cities: Hong Kong
This is a story of three Asian metropolises whose modern hustle and bustle dates back to many generations ago. Money and trade had helped propel these cities into prominence, and they will continue to do so in the years and decades to come. One is […]
The Burgeoning Pearl of the Musi
September 2004. First time in almost five decades that the Indonesian National Games (PON) were hosted by a city outside the island of Java. A 40,000-seater stadium was built in Palembang, the capital of South Sumatra province, quite possibly the second biggest in the country […]
