I woke up a little earlier than usual today.. The sound of the TV in the adjacent room had been seeping through into the bedroom where I laid curled up with my son, who refuses to sleep with a duvet, even though the constant running of the air-con he demands, bring the room down to a chilly 17•C during the night.. Hearing the TV in the morning isn't strange in our house, but it not being 'Johnny and the Sprites' or 'Handy Manny' at that time was a little perplexing.. I stumbled out of bed and walked into the joining room to find my wife watching the latter part of the movie I started watching last night.. Quite a grim movie about a retired officer's son, who is found murdered.. "The valley of..[I forget]".. Not the type of movie my wife would ordinarily watch, but I guess she found it captivating the night before..

Soon after it finished, my wife said we needed to go out to Jalan HR Mohammed to pick up our car which had been serviced.. Our driver took it out there very early in the morning, so we needed to go out to pay the bill and collect it.. As we left the thiefs (or should I say dealership / service center) I was relatively pissed for being shanked 3.18juta for an oil change and a 'major' service.. Anyway, as we drived down HR Mohammed, a beige car in front of me slowed quite quickly, and I followed suit.. It was only then that I saw a young girl virtually flying accross the lane (from right to left) - every few meters she'd hit the ground, but her velocity would ensure she was picked right back up again and thrown another few meters until finally she hit the 12" high curb and came to a rest.. My son was in the middle of telling me that he wanted a treasure map.. That's what he calls Rp1000 notes - but we hesitate giving 90% of them to him because they're usually pretty dirty.. Occassionally we find newer ones and let him play with them.. I was already going quite slow by time I saw the yound girl and immediately stopped.. The beighe car in front of me stopped to, but by time I had jumped out of our car, it had gone.. It was my instant assumption that the beige car had knocked her off her bike, but I have no idea if that's what happened or not.. Anyhow, I ran over to her as did 2 other young men who had come to her aid after they saw her fall.. Her leg was peeled as as though it had been done with sadistic, yet surgical precision.. You could see the fat that sits a few milimeters below ones layer of skin all the way up her leg, and the blood was ever so slowly starting to 'bubble' through.. She was in shock and was shaking quite a bit.. One of the young men said there was a hospital just down the road so I asked them to help get her into my car, as they only had bikes.. They had already pulled her bike up onto the curb.. She wasn't able to walk, so she needed to be lifted.. The two guys grabbed her by her upper body and I grabbed her legs, as gently as I could and put her in the back seat of the car.. I know it sounds terrible, but as we were lifting her, I was thinking that I need to be careful how I held her - I didn't want her to think I was some foreigner groping her in a moment of vulnerability.. A silly though, but nevertheless, it was there.. Anyhow, we put her in the back seat.. My 18 month old daughter had just fallen asleep in her car seat, but quickly awake amidst the comotion.. I jumped back in the car and started driving towards the hospital.. Her leg was clearly broken and my wife fanned her bruises with, of all things, the invoice for the car service - the only large piece of paper in the car.. The young girl was crying in a controlled manner, but had settled down somewhat - as we got closer to the hospital, she started saying, "terus aja, ke rumah saya" - she didn't want us to take her to the hospital.. She pointed us back to her house, where we drove her.. When we got there, and carried her out, her shocked father and younger brother ran out and helped carry her inside.. I kept asking, if they wanted me to take them to the hospital, but they said no.. They laid her on a bed and that's when I said goodbye.. She and her family were very nice and very appreciative - and she was a very pretty young girl, seemingly in her mid-20's, with a thick Jakarta accent.. I'm convinced, she'd be dead if she wasn't wearing a helmet..

My wife said it's very common for people here not to stop if they're in a car, when they hit a bike for fear of being mobbed.. Eshe then used a term, I've never heard her usher.. She said in a reflective voice, "yeah, what a f*cked up country".. She was referring to people not stopping at an accident scene.. It was almost as surreal to hear my wife use the 'f' word as it was to witness that accident..

Ct