Theme Day: Path and Passage

This is one of a path in Jakarta that I like the most. This path is a way to get into Mekarsari Garden from the parking area. Mekarsari itself is a garden where you can see many kinds of plants and flowers as well as the way to caring them. Some of the plants and flowers in this garden are so unique that can't be easily seen at other places, such as Corpse Flower.

I believe one of the reason of why this garden built in Jakarta is to let Jakarta people feel the farm atmosphere of Indonesia that almost can't be found anymore in Jakarta. So to immediately offer the farm atmosphere to the visitors even the path way in covered by plant. The name of the plant covering this path way is Passiflora Edulis (or in Indonesian Language: Markisa Rola).

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Fall Down Tree at Ragunan, Jakarta

I feel so lucky and thankful to God today. This afternoon (Saturday, 29 Nov 08) a horrible accident happen in front of my eyes. When I wanted to have a little bit exercise at Ragunan Zoo area, a very big tree fall down just few meters from me and hit few cars there. Before the accident, the wind blows very hardly and finally had the tree fall down. But I believe the kind of trees planted has also caused the accident.

Goverment should plant a stronger tree instead of the fragile one. I'm afraid that this kind of accident not only happened in Ragunan today. As I remember accident like this happens every year in Jakarta.

This is another picture to show you how big the tree was.

The Corpse Flower Shrinking

Have you seen corpse flower (Amorphophallus Titanum) before? This flower claimed to be the biggest flower in the world. It's still under one family with the famous Rafflesia. Both flowers were originated from Bengkulu, Sumatera. The flower of this plant appears once in a year. It takes quite long time (maybe about 1 month) for the flower to really blossom and then die. The unique is that after it blossom in the next day it immediately shrink again. Few days after shrinking the whole plant will die. The plant smell very terrible when it's died. That's why Indonesian people call it corpse flower.

When I visited Mekarsari, Jakarta, to see corpse flower, I was expecting it to be on its blossom time. But I was unlucky that it just blossom 2 days earlier. That's why I can only show you the picture of corpse flower that had been shrunk. Hope I can get a better picture next year to share with you.

Indonesian Textile Exhibition

Sometimes back there was an exhibition of Indonesian product and culture conducted in Jakarta. When I visit the exhibition the most interesting thing for me was the textile exhibition. I was just realized that Indonesia has so many variety of textile and they're all has their own beauty. The picture you see above is Batik textile from Java. The motifs of Batik Java is formed by applying molten wax using a tool named canting (the tool is shaped like a pen). It could takes a week to make one of fine Batik Java.

The one below is woven cloth uniquely from Sumba, a region at the east of Indonesia. Beautiful, aren't they?

Komodo

Have you ever seen komodo? Kodomo is originally lives in an island called Komodo Island, in the east of Indonesia. However to be able to see komodo you don't need to go to Komodo Island. In Jakarta we can see komodo that lives in Ragunan Zoo, Jakarta. It's believed that komodo is still a family of dinosaurus.


I noticed komodo tend to like hiding in a hole like what you see in above picture. So, if you have a chance to visit Ragunan Zoo, be careful at every hole, as you may be surprised :)