In Eastern Promise (EP) we now have a playroom for kids. During recent trips to New Zealand and Australia I noticed a lot of pubs and restaurant that have this facility, to the great relief of parents of young children. Except for the fast food chains like Mc Donalds, in Jakarta you just cannot go [...]

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We expatriates must admire the Indonesian ability of putting things in perspective and to talk things down, because it could have been so much worse. Just recently a friend told me about a worker in his garden who was building this brick wall. Suddenly a brick came smashing through the window, missing his 18 month [...]

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Darryl Patton, 1941-2011 Englishman Darryl Patton was the innovator behind many of the early expatriate bars in Jakarta, pioneering much of the nightlife scene as we know it today. Born in Leeds, he was the second child in a family of four sisters and four brothers. Their father was a Royal Air Force navigator, whose [...]

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The kids in the kampong peeked from behind broken windows. It was a poor kampong and a lot of the houses were made of just rotan and bamboo. I was lucky to have a 4×4 car, the road up the hill was steep, full of potholes and a slight rain made it slippery and even [...]

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