Ever since Indonesia's 1980s economic boom, bumper-to-bumper traffic has made the nation's capital a much cozier place. Jakarta's so-called town planners left little room for a solution, building property first and roads later. A subway system is thought to be almost impossible given the city's near-sea-level setting (though for some reason grand plans are drawn up each year for an underground train anyway, only to be scrapped). A 3-in-1 regulation for rush hour commuter vehicles spawned a clever new source of employment for young Jakartans but did little to alleviate the gridlock thing.

Jakarta's notorious macet has a profound impact on day-to-day routine in the city, at the root of which lies the Indonesian concept of jam karet (rubber time). The utter unpredictability of gridlock makes showing up late or even not showing up at all completely forgivable, letting off the hook everyone from inept cabinet ministers to lazy pizza delivery boys. Macet hell-aptly termed macet total, is trying to leave the city on a long weekend during heavy monsoon rain. The flow of city traffic eases slightly toward the end of each calendar month, when salaries start drying up and payday is a while off, car owners can't always afford gasoline.

Macet is a self-sustained economy that offers outstanding job opportunities to unemployed Jakartans, young men help agitated drivers perform U-turns, buskers shake bottle-cap instruments and scream horrific 'tunes', and vendors sell everything from cigarettes to crystal horse statues to a customer base that's quite literally captive. Macet also constitutes a rare outlet for rudeness and confrontation in largely Javanese Jakarta, whereas social convention doesn't allow you to snap at a useless clerk at the bank, stolen road rage moments let you aggressively overtake his wimpy motorbike at high speed with your big metal machine.

Macet is beautiful because Jakartans from vastly different walks of life feed off it in alarmingly similar ways. Just as our punk traffic light musician lines his pockets with small change, so too does the corrupt traffic cop, and ditto former president Soeharto's toll-road-owning kids. The rest of the population looks at Bangkok's swanky Skytrain system in utter envy.

By : Daniel Ziv