Here in Jakarta, most residential areas has a Supervisor who takes care of the residents with security, neighbor's squabbles, garbage collection, and whatever else they do.

Each resident pays the street supervisor 50,000 Rupiahs a month which is roughly five US dollars (pretty cheap, huh?) to pay the garbologists and the security guy and whatever else that's needed. The rest obviously he pockets for his trouble.

He is in charge of about 3 or 4 streets connected within an area.

From midnight to 6am, the security guy puts steel gates down at each end of the street so that no vehicles can come down the street without his permission during these hours.

The gates are only about 3 feet high from the road so it is easy enough to jump over them...something I've done a few times when I've come home from a night out.

It's a different story though, when you call a cab to catch an early flight or when you arrive from the airport with suitcases and the taxi driver has to look for the security guy (who is usually fast asleep in a little cubby hole somewhere) so you dont have to carry your suitcases all the way down the street.

Every hour, on the hour (or close enough if he wakes up in time) the security guy comes down the street and uses a metal rod to ding the metal lamp posts to signal the hour.

One ding for 1am, 2 dings for 2am and so on. If you're a light sleeper, you tend to stay awake waiting for the next hour's dings which is something you have to get used to when you first move in.

After a while (a couple of months or so) you dont hear it anymore. What fascinated me about this when I first got here, is the way he dings the lamp posts.

One oclock is obviously only one ding, two dings is two oclock, but after that he has this rhythm (for lack of a better word) and you stay awake every night for the first week just to see if he changes it.....nope, same dings every night.

3am....ding....ding ding
4am....ding ding....ding ding
5am....ding ding.....ding ding ding

It's hilarious when you're the only one awake all night waiting for the next hour to go by. AND, if he's late....it is very annoying....lol.

(Yeah, yeah....someone needs to get a life....lol....remember this is when I first got here almost 7 years ago...I dont do it anymore).

The garbologists are the ones that are really funny.....check out the pics I took of them one morning from my balcony.

I have to tell you, these poor guys dont get paid very much but theirs is ONE dirty job.

There is nothing smellier...I dont think....and they only come by every second day...thank goodness.

People here dont buy garbage bags or rubbish bins like we do in the west. They wrap up their garbage in paper if they have it....otherwise everything just goes into a plastic shopping bag and placed in small cubby holes built into their front wall...or if they dont have a front wall, the rubbish guys have to actually go inside their gate and collect the bags from the front porch.

I couldnt do that so I bought two huge plastic bins for myself....and I separate the food scraps from the bottles and cans and clean stuff. These guys go through all the recyclable stuff which they sell somewhere for extra money.

They are really grateful that they dont have to sort through my rubbish to separate the good stuff from the crappy stuff....lol

The only thing they are not too happy about is the bags of kitty litter refuse that I have to get rid of....which they have to take...quite begrudgingly...I dont know what they do with it....I dont really want to know....lol.....I told them maybe they could sell it as fertilizer.

WELCOME TO JAKARTA.