Eci Handayani

April 19 probably the saddest day for us, 42% Jakarta citizen. The governor that we respect and vote for has lost the election. I woke up the next day with the feeling of heartbroken and hopeless.

Well, i guess i’m not the only one, several days after that on April 25 2017 a group of people start sending flower boards to the Balai kota, expressing their appreciation, gratitude along with sadness and hopelessness using funny words.

Approaching the Jakarta City Hall  more flower boards lined up, from the standard size up to the double size. Covering the sidewalk in front, accross and the middle part of the street. It was awesome sight to see that people actually sent those. Entering the balai kota more flower boards and i found the one that id-gmail sent right under a big tree already stacked and waiting to be moved some place else.

Inside the City Hall

Since there’s a “Wisata Balai Kota” (City Hall Tour) every Saturdays and Sundays, the City Hall is filled with people, most of them take selfies (of course) freely. No guards noticable around us. When we entered the third room there’re a que of people, queueing to take picture with the governor & vice governor … standing figure! The room were full with laughter and it was quite a rare sight that jakarta people are able to que neatly. :p

Unfortunately there’s an event from kemenkes in balai agung that day so we can’t see inside the balai agung, too bad.
While we roaming around the area we saw many trucks delivering new flower boards and place it (mostly) at the plaza. You can also take the “Mpok Siti”. It’s a double decker bus for sightseeing around Jakarta for free. They have couple of route the longer one is from City Hall to Kalijodo. The one we hopped on is called Jakarta Skyscrapper tour, with route from the city hall-bunderan senayan-juanda-city hall.