Feeling right at home on the 35th floor

Sun, 05/18/2008 10:49 AM | Home & Family

(JP/Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo)

Every room tells a story about the owner. The Jakarta Post's Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo talks to Theo Ocks about his inspiration and ideas for his apartment at the Residences at The Ritz-Carlton Jakarta at Pacific Place.

Please briefly describe yourself to readers?

My name is Theo Ocks. I've been the director of marketing for The Ritz-Carlton and Marriott properties in Jakarta for the last two years. I'm 34 years old and I'm a Dutch national.

I've been living in Asia now for almost five years, and away from home for about 11 years.

My wife and I like living here in Jakarta. Many of our friends live here. We can travel easily to many places in the country, such as Bali or Bandung.

(JP/Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo)

Apartment vs. house?

If you have an apartment, you don't need to have your own security guard, or full staff, because everything is all there, so it's easier. Of course the disadvantage is you don't have a garden.

But despite the fact that we don't have a garden, if you take a look outside, then you can see a big garden (The Ritz-Carlton grounds) with a swimming pool. So it's quite nice.

We also have tennis and basketball courts, which are accessible to the hotel's guests as well.

Can you give a brief description of the apartment layout? Basically for The Residences at the Pacific Place, we have one, two and three bedroom apartments. The one bedroom starts at 80 square meters, the two bedroom is 125-135 square meters, the three bedroom is around 170 square meters. So it's quite a large layout.

The floor is marble. There are beautifully designed bathrooms and a fully-equipped kitchen. It's all very modern.

The other thing that is quite nice about the apartment here is the floor-to-ceiling windows, which let in a lot of natural daylight. They also give a sense of more space.

What changes did you make from the original layout, and why?

(JP/Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo)

Because we have our own furniture we asked them to take out everything but the beds.

Did you have a theme in mind for the apartment?

You can could call it a mix of European and Asian design. My wife and I came up with the idea for the arrangement of furniture. The style I guess is "Expats who have been living too long in Asia".

Are there any aspects of your design that you are particularly proud of?

We live in Indonesia so we've made an effort to use Indonesian furniture. On various trips, we collected items here and there. We bought this dragon (carving) at an antique store in Malang.

And you can see the nice old kerobok (chest-like furniture) with the puppets there. We like natural materials and natural colors.

On the wall near the kitchen, we put artistic posters advertising the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague.

(JP/Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo)

I worked for the North Sea Jazz Festival for five years during my studies so I was able to collect some of the posters, which have become collector's items. These posters are a little hard to get because if you don't get one while you are at the festival, then you will never get it. We laminated them to protect them.

I'm not sure what they are worth, but they mean a lot to me personally because I used to work at the festival. And if you like jazz, there is a sort of appreciation for it.

What changes did you make to the kitchen?

Not really anything. All I had to do was to plug in my coffee machine. I'd like to say that I'm the one who cooks in the kitchen, but to be honest it's my wife.

(JP/Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo)

What changes would you like to make to the apartment?

I guess it would have to be the balcony. It would be nice to sit outside sometimes and organize a little barbecue there.

We are still waiting for something to put on the wall of our living room. We haven't decided yet.

We may get a nice art piece from Ubud. But last time we were in Seminyak, we passed the photographer Rio Helmi's store. Some of his photographs are fantastic. So maybe we will put a Rio Helmi photograph on the wall.

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