I went cycling from Grogol to Senayan and back to Grogol again which takes up like 20 km or 12 miles in total and spent almost three hours on the road. At frist I wanted to see how much I could go through with cycling, then as I continued cycling I took the chance to observe how people react towards a woman cycling around. I knew I did not want to catch up so many attentions but it did. And doing the observation with a little bit of research was kind of fun.

I noticed so many things while I was cycling;

1. Both men and women did not believe there was a woman cycling so they turned their heads around and convinced themself it is really a woman cycling!
2. Most men harassed me, called me names, tried to have my attention, and so on.
3. Bike riders and car drivers have no empathy at all (including me, I am also a bad driver).
4. So many rough roads that are not cycle friendly.
5. So many places that is so hard to get a U turn because there were so many cars at speed and it was not easy to get into one places fast but thank God there is the bridge which I could cross over.
6. Pollution, polluting and polluted!
7. Jakarta has many to offer and to see.
8. Seeing cars assembled and lining up is such an art.
9. The view from the bridges are somewhat you would never expect to see.

As a woman it is really hard to survive in Jakarta. Women had been given privileges such as ladies’ parking, ladies’ train, ladies’ side of the mosque, ladies’ side of Transjakarta and many more privileges but it is still not enough. No matter how much we’ve had our special treatment provided by the society, women are still considered as a sexual object.

Overall I enjoyed cycling because I did not have to bother about parking or paying for parking, I pretty much worked out a lot and burned so many calories, I enjoyed every view I passed through and I never thought of seeing especially while I cross the high way.