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couple of months back, I recalled that my neighbor advised me to avoid the area around the Constitutional Court on the day it was to announce its decision on the validity of July'€™s presidential election result.

For sure, there would be traffic jams, he said, and scuffles between the supporters of losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto and the police in front of the court'€™s building could turn ugly.

But that morning, I simply had to go. I had a meeting in the Thamrin area. To my surprise, the traffic was light and the next meeting was canceled. '€œIt'€™s better to prepare for the worst rather than being caught off guard if trouble breaks out,'€ said the meeting'€™s organizer.

Suddenly, I had free time, and was able to attend China'€™s Fujian Provincial tourism promotion event at a hotel a few blocks away from the court where protesters clashed with the police.

Inside the hotel, it was business as usual. A direct flight with Xiamen Air from Jakarta to Fuzhou, Fujian'€™s capital city, and vice versa, was announced.

The room was filled to capacity, mostly by representatives of Jakarta-based travel agents. The atmosphere was formal but relaxed thanks to soothing fragrant Fujianese tea and traditional Chinese music, singing and dancing.

The nearby political brouhaha was just a tempest in a teacup that no one here really cared about, vaguely reminiscent of the day the May 1998 riots broke out, when I was at a five-star hotel in the Sudirman-Thamrin area, tasting an assortment of French cheeses. No one in the tasting room was really aware of the worsening situation that had started to paralyze the city.

When security deteriorated rapidly, my only option was to stay in the hotel. A nonchalant attitude to danger is bliss but only when coupled with preparedness for every eventuality and of course, luck.

That day, at the Fujian tourism event, I unexpectedly met a friend I hadn'€™t seen for a long time. While exchanging pleasantries with him, I asked whether Fujian rang a bell. Yes, was the immediate reply.

And to my surprise, he proceeded to tell me how his grandfather, a Fujianese government official, ran off with gold from the government'€™s treasury and fled the country. In order not to be identified, he severed all ties with his homeland, actively forgot his origin and passed down this attitude of denial to his progeny.

So it comes as no surprise that my friend wanted to dissociate himself from Fujian. '€œI am here just to make money, not to reconnect with the land of my grandfather,'€ he said, explaining his presence at the event.

My thought was that after three generations, who would care?

Then he volunteered a piece of information he had heard during a closed-door meeting prior to the event'€™s opening: '€œThe Fujian tourism bureau has only 100 personnel while its Jakarta counterpart is staffed with 1,200'€.

Given that Fujian, at 121,400 square kilometers, is 164 times larger than Jakarta (740.3 sq km), this piece of information really intrigued me.

One could jokingly remark, however, that such a huge number of tourism employees were needed to promote each island in Kepulauan Seribu (the Thousand Islands), a group of some 105 islands scattered in the Java Sea north of Jakarta.

This has somehow prompted me to rethink my opinion of Jakarta. I never consider it as a tourist destination, let alone a holiday getaway.

Except for its indigenous Betawi culture and Dutch colonial buildings, Jakarta feels like a eclectic, rather disorganized assemblage of a motley miscellany, mostly artificial, dictated by what money can buy.

So whenever I want an island or seaside holiday, Bali and Lombok instantly come to mind; for a holiday in the mountains, it is West Java'€™s Mount Gede Pangrango and Puncak; and for an urban lifestyle holiday, it is Singapore.

Jakarta never makes it onto the list of places I want to visit simply because I live and work there. Yes, familiarity breeds contempt. And now I want to visit Fujian to learn about its heritage tea culture, something that, alas, my beloved city of Jakarta cannot offer.

'€” Arif Suryobuwono