Main thoroughfare Jl. Sudirman in South Jakarta buzzes every day with the sound of millions of commuters passing through.

SEWING HAPPINESS: Garment makers work in the Bendungan Hilir area, not far from the city's Jl. Sudirman thoroughfare in Central Jakarta. (JP/Angela Dewan)

You can hear motorbikes revving, taxi doors slamming shut, people yelling directions at their ojek drivers, feet stomping on the busway ramps and vehicles beeping their horns at every opportunity they get.

Take one turn off this chaotic conduit into Bendungan Hilir area and you're on the much quieter Jl. Karet Sawah. Two more turns takes you to a derelict alleyway with gray stone walls. There's only one food stall and one house in sight.

In the spare room of this house on street level sit 12 seamstresses sewing intricately embroidered silk and cotton nightgowns to export to Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and Australia.

The small and dingy workshop and the old sewing machines juxtapose the beauty of the royal blue, fresh green and deep pink nightgowns. Attentive to the needles that jump up and down all day, the workers, hunched over their machines, rarely look away from their work.

Sri Nining Handayani, 20, is one of these workers. She sews in the workshop 14 hours a day, six days a week. Today she looks happy. "Having a good or bad day depends on the patterns," she says. "If the patterns I have to sew are very difficult, then I have a bad day. If they're easy, I have a good day."

Sri came to Jakarta with her husband last year when she was 19. They moved from Kudus in Central Java where Sri had studied English for three semesters. She couldn't afford to keep paying for her tuition so she has stopped classes for now.

"My husband brought me to Jakarta. We came here to make money," says Sri. She now earns Rp 200,000 (US$21) a week. Although her wages are low, Sri may be considered luckier than many Indonesians.

Today the national poverty line sits at Rp 152,847 a month. The World Bank has a much higher poverty line which coincides with world standards. It measures two levels of poverty: those who live off less than $1 a day and those who live off less than U$2 a day.

Sri makes about $3 a day and she and her husband live in a residence above the workshop as part of their payment. They are lucky to have their own room. Others share one room between five people.

Although Sri doesn't have to work when she is sick, she doesn't get paid for sick days off. If a day's wage is taken out due to illness, she is left with Rp 167,000 for the week.

She gets three one-hour breaks for prayer time and eating. She usually eats rice for lunch, which costs her Rp 3,000. Within this young woman's busy schedule, she finds little time for herself.

"During my day off I sleep and rest," says Sri. "Sometimes I go to the mall and walk around the city."

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