In what is becoming a depressingly regular event with the onset of the rainy season each year, torrential rains over the weekend triggered widespread flooding and traffic gridlock throughout much of Jakarta, including the central business district with its iconic Welcome Monument, which is not among the city’s 78 flood-prone areas.

In addition to the myriad of social and economic problems that plague the capital, newly elected Jakarta governor and deputy governor Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo (right) and Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama (left) also face what some observers have called the ‘triad of dark forces’ – business interests that have enjoyed decades of rampant unregulated deve

Man: High tides? Ahh, it’ll be safe enough until [the] 2014 [elections]

Man: I wander what that pepesan tastes like?

Sign: Apartment of Lies (empty pepesan) – referring to food, mostly fish, cooked in banana leafs, pepesan kosong – “looks tasty but nothing inside”, a lie or bluff.

Rampant unregulated urban development, which environmentalists blame on widespread collusion between city officials and the business elite, has resulted in Jakarta loosing 28% of its green space over the last 25 years – much of it replaced by shopping malls, luxury apartments and government offices.

Man: Raft-Way, why not...

Home to almost 10 million people, 8 million motorcycles and 3 million cars, Jakarta is the only mega-city in the world without a mass rapid transport system, and it is now commonplace for people to spend four or more hours commuting to and from work each day.

Exhaust reads: Performance

Driver: Before ‘time was money’, now time is always traffic Mr...

Busker: Have a long and glorious life... a long and glorious life...