Feel The Speed - Taking High Speed Train in China

What does it feel riding a 300km/h train?

It is common in Western Europe, by taking TGV or ICE inter-city train. London to Paris by Eurostar train top speed is 300km/h is one of the busiest lines in Europe driven by TGV, while Frankfurt to Cologne line is …

Barcelona FC Stadium Tour

One of the to-do list during my visit to Barcelona was to see Barcelona FC Stadium. Well, although I am not a big fan of Spanish football, but Barcelona FC is a very successful club that as a football lover then I should spend time to visit and tour the stadium, who knows I could meet the players in parking lot :)

Get Ready for Soekarno Hatta Airport Terminal 3

If you drive from Soekarno Hatta Jakarta Airport back to city, just after Terminal 2 - in the left side you'll see a new building ready to operate. That is the brand new Terminal 3 of Soekarno Hatta Airport (a.k.a CGK - Cengkareng Airport).

The building is ready to open this month and solely used by Indonesia AirAsia for domestic flights. Mandala Airlines will also operate from Terminal 3 in near future. This minimalistic and full of glass building is kind of smaller compared to Terminal 1, but adequate for low-cost airlines base. The design is also different from existing terminals, leaving the old and culture-rich style design to modern-look design, just like Sultan Hassanudin Airport in Makassar.

This airport is said to be able to host Airbus A380 (reaaallly?), let's see later.

A1GP Lippo Village Circuit Design

As I mentioned in previous blog about F1 GP at Singapore roads, Lippo Village (a.k.a Lippo Karawaci) will host A1 Grand Prix on 6-8 February 2009 for Indonesia.

Years ago, all racings as well as A1GPs were hosted at Sentul Circuit on Southern Jakarta. Somehow Lippo Group was interested in hosting this event and surprisingly will be held on Lippo Karawaci city roads every year at least for 5 years ahead. This brings Lippo Village as equal as Monte Carlo, Macau, and Singapore as the hosts of city-street racing.

For Jakarta residents, Lippo Village (Karawaci) at Tangerang seems a bit far, 30 km from Central Jakarta. Driving car to Karawaci will take average 25 minutes of time. Is known as a small city developed by Lippo Group, this area is complete with residences, mall, hospital, schools, and university. The best place to live in my opinion - apart from its distance. Some places are well-known for Jakarta people to come: Siloam Hospital, Universitas Pelita Harapan, Supermal Karawaci, and Benton Junction.

Circuit Design

The most interesting part of this design is that it incorporates many existing parts of the city. Even more, they are building new roads to create a more dramatic racing.

Jakarta in a fresh morning

Late post, but worth telling.

On Oct 29th, 2008, clear sky in the morning of Jakarta. A very rare happening in Jakarta that we could see mountains stood on southern part of Jakarta seen from Jakarta West. After heavy rain from night before, Jakarta air was become cleaner.

Examine 2 …

True Broadband Speed @ Kowloon

Using my guest house located in Kowloon, Hong Kong. Never I've experienced this kind of Internet broadband speed before. Wow!

KRL Ciliwung Blue Line Route

PT Kereta Api Daops 1 Jakarta,  Indonesia, has just operated a new circle line in Jakarta. The train equipped with Aircon, go in one direction only (yes, one way in a circle) in clockwise. Actually Ciliwung Blue Line is recondition train from Bekasi Express and Depok Express running on rail built by Dutch during the independence war!

Pacific Place Opening Date (22 Nov 07)

After several months delay, Pacific Place Jakarta is counting days for soft opening. Rumor said that it will have opening date as early as 22 November 2007. The name was purchased from Hong Kong Pacific Place. Opening Delay is okay when they can commit to open all stores simultaneously on the day, a good lesson from Senayan City opening. You can see that Grand Indonesia is lacking of this simultaneously opening concept.

The complex will consists of Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Office Towers, Condominium, and Pacific Place Shopping Mall.  Located at Jakarta SCBD, very near to Semanggi, next to JSX/BEJ Towers.

Ritz Carlon Hotel will be 5 stars hotel with luxury rooms and facilities. This photo was taken by someone, focused on the open air area on top of pacific place complex.

Still lack of information from officials and newspapers, but I believe KidZania and Blitz Megaplex will be the first ready to open. Flagship store will be M Pacific Place, managed by Metro, then will have Kemchick Supermarket, Electronic City (currently is adjacent to the complex) once was rumoured to move to this mal, too.

KidZania (http://www.kidzania.co.id) is a place for kids to play some roles in day life. Located at Level 6th of the mal, Consists of 3 zones: airport, city, and suburb. Airport is entrance zone before kids are taken to city to play, kids have to enter fake plane, to be told that they will fly to city, but actually just walk from nose to tail of plane. And suburb will host industries. Entrace ticket price will cost some bucks for parents, but I think it will be a reasonable price for middle-up class.