Day 11 Car free Day

Every Sunday between 6am and 9am the main streets of Indonesian cities and towns become car free for 3 hours.
What good is a car free street at 6am on a Sunday you might ask but here the locals embrace it wholeheartedly and come out in big numbers for all sorts of activities.
Our project assistant and translator Candra is standing on a street that is usually teeming with mopeds. Candra graduated this year with a degree in English and International Studies and has been a huge help in our work here.





Painting classes on the streets are one of the car free day activities.











People walk, skate, cycle, eat and generally enjoy the traffic free hours before the day gets too hot.





Exercise classes on Solos main street.
After our late return from sightseeing on Saturday night I got to car free day late but next Sunday I'll be there from the start as we are helping to launch a cancer care app.








Sunday afternoon lunch at whats called an "angkringan". An angkringan is a street restuarant and there are loads of them everywhere in Indonesia. Usually they are on wheels and can be pushed home when business closes.



After lunch our coordinator Anime brought some us to visit a friend of hers who produces Batik clothing. Batik is a form of printed cotton produced locally. It is approved by the government as business wear which is a clever move as it encourages business people to buy it and thereby helps the local economy. Also it's way more comfortable to wear in the heat than a suit.







For Yemisi (Nigeria), Ibad (Pakistan) and Aban and Deb (India) it's not at all unusual to buy fabric and either make or have clothes made.




I went for a shirt. Animes friend must have been delighted with our visit as we bought a ton of batik.










This woman is getting set up to sell food on the street for the evening. There are many examples of this on the streets of Solo city. Hard to see how they can make a living but they seem to survive somehow.









Laden down with our batik purchases we rejoined the group for dinner.








As usual dividing the bill proves difficult - myself and Anette (Germany) trying to figure out where it went wrong.





















Comments

  1. Deirdre Kennedy23 October 2017 at 07:40

    Lovin' the shirt Donnacha, expect to see you wearing that when back on Campus ;-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 9 - Here comes the weekend

Image
Our final meeting for the week was with Ryou Juara a tenant in the Technopark incubation centre. He has developed a mobile app called Delivo which people can use to have parcels collected and delivered. Initially he's offering the service in the Solo City area but is hoping to form a partnership with Lion Air (the low cost carrier in SE Asia) and extend his reach. He is targetting souvenirs, fashion and food. There are four people involved including Ryou and they pay themselves half the minimum wage each month while they get the business up and running - that's EUR50 a month. He found out about Technopark from an enterprise group that he's a member of and is getting support with office space, soft skills training and assistance with developing his business plan. So an exhausting but productive and fascinating week of fact finding and research draws to a close. To summarise we covered: Four members of the Solo Technopark management team The partners of Technopark at
Read more

Day 10 - A feast of sight seeing

Image
Mr. Wasis from IBM Indonesia organised an action packed Saturday for us so up at 5.30am and away we went in a mini-bus at 6.30. Our first stop was Pramadan, a 9th century Hindu temple, near the city of Yogyakarta.  Anette from Germany plays a kind of worldwide treasure hunt called geo cash and was delighted to find a geo cash spot near to the temple. Popular for school trips - the children look to interview english speakers as a way to practice english and they love to get photos. Next stop was Borobudur  - not to be out done the Buddhists built a temple of similar magnitude to Pramadan just 56kms away. It's the largest Buddhist temple in the world. One of the bigger selfies that Ibad organised at Pramadan. Indonesia is just entering into it's rainy season so the day was a mix of sunshine and torrential downpours. This picture shows me with a snake - could Jacqueline manage this? While in this one I'm holding an Iguana
Read more

Day 7 - Out and about in Solo city

Image
Scooters Scooters everywhere  - The moped or scooter is the vehicle of choice in Indonesia. They swarm like ants along the road. It's chaotic and hard to tell who has right of way, but everyone seems to get to where they need to go. My colleague Tracy said it feels like you're in a game of Super Mario - Denis would love it! Click on the link to see a video of what I mean. Anyway a bit of a blog backlog due to our assignments becoming very busy so here's a catch up on a busy day 7. We were given a scope of work (SOW) document by Solo Technopark before we came to Indonesia so our goal for the first week is to gain an understanding of the running of their business and then propose any modifications we felt were needed to the scope. Once we get an agreed SOW in place then it's time to go and deliver on the plan. We met management of Solo Technopark on Day 6 so today we went out to meet other stakeholders. First up is ATMI  - a company that produces products commer
Read more