It was on my mind to write about our new Governor and Vice Governor and look at their campaign promises and get myself all worked up about “how would it be possible to fulfill them” and get you all worked up about how we are constantly deceived, diverted and ultimately disappointed by politicians and government

The British Fire Service uses an excellent and unique shift system to provide the British public with emergency cover 24 hours a day. Each of four watches, always code-named Red, Blue, Green and White, works two nine-hour days followed by two 15-hour nights. The day shift starts at 9 AM and finishes at 6 PM,

One of the most annoying things about life in Jakarta is the traffic. There can surely be no more mind-numbing, frustrating feeling than that feeling of total powerlessness in a line of dead stopped cars. “Oh“, you say, “what the []$#% is going on?” Well it’s simple, as was revealed last week, the contractors for

Dear Readers, The incredible development of the digital media scene has changed our whole way of getting information. Partly for the good, partly for, to be honest, really bad and dangerous reasons, since much of what we see now is either unnecessary, irrelevant or sadly completely untrue. We at NOW! JAKARTA have always striven to

My maternal grandparents were a product of the 1920s and 30s, and from as early as I can remember, I absolutely adored them. My grandfather unfortunately passed away peacefully at the age of 84 after a fascinating life, and my dear old Nan joined him when she was 97. Until two weeks before her death

Indonesia is an exceptionally large and unique country. There’s no disputing that. If you were to visit one island every day, it would take you almost 50 years to see all of them.  With our vast spread of islands, we also have quite a large population to match. With our ever-increasing headcount, the national motto,

This is such a terrible ritual, this making of promises to yourself that you may never keep! In fact, so often we make them not even knowing how or when or where to start, but I guess while having good intentions isn’t enough, it’s better than having bad intentions! Here is my list of (im)possible

Now we have settled down to what will be (again) a challenging year, we really need to look for the positive elements we have in our lives and take special care to find things we can change for the better – and do them! At the macro-city level we can see that the real estate

In my opinion, the Post-It note is one of the simplest and cleverest inventions of the 20th century, but it was invented by a couple of dumbasses. Unlike most inventions, which are usually brought into being by geniuses as solutions to problems, the Post-It note was actually an accidental solution to a problem that nobody knew

Is it just me, or is the world going crazy? Every time I turn on my TV, scroll down my Twitter timeline or leaf through a newspaper, it certainly does feel that way. Photo courtesy of Pexels/NOW!JAKARTA To be honest, the state of the world is quite frustrating, if not depressing, at the moment, but

This issue celebrates the great intentions of ASEAN, the Association of SE Asian Nations, who went from rival neighbours to close allies working together to seek peace and the opportunity to trade with the world from a stronger position as a compact group of nations. While rivalries certainly still exist and of course competition does

With the expanding services of GO-JEK, there is hardly any need to leave the house anymore – or is there? On a recent Sunday, I decided to do a little experiment: not leaving the house for a whole day and fulfilling my needs using the GO-JEK app only. Try to live a day with Go-Jek