Kendari's Trivial Things

Traffic:

1. Kendari's drivers and bikers are generally as assholes as Jakarta's, as noisy as Jakarta's, but at the same time are much more moronic than Jakarta's, and thus more annoying. but nevertheless, driving and biking in Kendari is still much enjoyable due to its very low traffic compare to Jakarta's - full hell unleashed - traffic especially around busy hours.

2. You'll find some community service billboard telling you to wear your seat belt, yet in Kendari wearing seat belt drivers is a very rare sight if not none at all. it doesn't matter if there is a police riding a bike right at your side or patrolling sideways. They won't do no shit about it.

3. I drove a pickup car yesterday with only one seat to spare at the front seat, yet I manage to stacked 3 other PTT doctors by my side (means there are four of us) and drove exactly side by side with a police motor bike. The police just stared once and didn't give a shit, literally at all.

4. So I concludes that the only punishable trespasses are:
- Crossing the red light
- Driving against the verboeden (only in main large streets)
- Not wearing helmet (for bikers), and
- Crash directly to a group of police I guess.

Food:

1. Generally there is nothing very delicious or unique in Kendari's culinary.

2. Food are generally expensive, fish are expensive, chickens are even worse. Pork?dream on, you won't find any, not even in restaurants. Well you'll find some if you have your dinner at some local Chinese families.

3. They have this strange love to "cassava" (singkong) and strangely named it "sweet potato" (ubi). For example, they have this menu called "sweet potato soup" (sop ubi) which is actually a chicken noodles with fried "cassava" (singkong), chopped and mixed altogether. Heck, they even got a "sweet potato rib soup" (sop konro ubi) - originally a Makassar's cuisine which use no ubi and should've called soop konro, but they add a cassava in it and hence the name "sweet potato rib soup" (sop konro ubi). Confused?me too.

4. They also have a love for peanut. They add it to their "grilled fish" chilly mixture - which is unusual because back in java, we mix peanut sauce only with satay or dumpling - and even to their "pisang ijo" - which is also unusual because originally pisang ijo is Makassar food, and use no peanut - but the later actually is quite tasty.

Large City Delicacy:

1. Kendari has one KFC. (THANK GOD!!)

2. One Gramedia. ( DOUBLE THANK YOU GOD!!)

3. One Matahari Department Store. (Humm...not bad)

4. One Paparon's Pizza. (Don't care, don't like it)

Internet Access:

1. You can find internet quite easily here. 4k an hour, cheaper if you prepaid the rent for two or three hours.

2. If you had a laptop with wireless modem on it, than internet is as cheap a 5k rupiahs cup of - not so delicious - coffee, or 8k rupiahs glass of juice, depends on your taste, for an unlimited time. a very good value for money compare to 150k rupiahs a month of painstakingly slow and 1 or 2 (I forgot) GB limited Telkomsel flash. But I heard that laptop is a trend here, and if you got one and hang around the cheap coffee shop to get that cheap but satisfyingly fast internet, then you are considered cool. Heck I don't care, just let me finish typing and publishing my post or uploading my pictures in peace.