SALENA Jones sang to Jakarta in the 2006 Jakarta Jazz Festival. And excitingly, suddenly we felt as though our city was full of music, strident, at times husky, melancholy. This city became a space of soaring unattainable heights, but also of forgotten holes in the streets, open drains where cigars, rubbish and maybe pestilence lurk. Half of this is city is a place of expression, and the other half is a test of stamina.

A city like this one makes