Moving to Jakarta Part 1: The Why

I moved to Jakarta, Indonesia exactly four months ago.

This is a view of a particularly dramatic sunset from my apartment window. My phone doesn’t do it justice, but there’s something about the temperamental Jakarta skies that paint some of the most vividly magenta and gold sunsets that I’ve ever seen.

Here’s another sunset, this time from a cliff in Uluwatu, Bali, Indonesia (and with a better phone!).

As a tropical country sitting right on the equator, Indonesia doesn’t have the typical four seasons but rather just two — dry and rainy. February is the penultimate month of the rainy season, and as a result, the frequency of these crazy vivid sunsets have slowly dried up.

Jakarta is close to the furthest place that you could go from my hometown of Los Angeles. It is currently 15 hours ahead of PST and a one-way trip takes 24 hours to complete.

The stifling traffic of the fourteen lane I-405 in LA has been replaced by the chaotic macet of tiny alleyways bursting at the seams trying to fit far too many taxis and motorbikes, overtaking each other shoulder by shoulder. Many Jakarta natives have been shocked to hear that I drive here, a feat often considered too stressful and time-consuming. But luckily I’ve always loved driving, even in traffic.

The packed streets of Jakarta are lined with bustling warungs selling cigarettes and chicken satay and coffee sachets. Employees wear batiks instead of corporate logo hoodies. The food is cheap, sometimes merely a fraction of the $15+ salads that are all too common in California. Malls are a huge aspect of any social activity, whether you’re on a dinner date or watching a movie or exercising or conducting business meetings. Business is largely communicated over WhatsApp.

Culturally, Jakarta is nothing like what I’ve experienced before. Indonesians embrace the virtues of gotong royong and sopan santun — roughly translating to ‘community helping each other’ and ‘respect and decorum towards one another’ — which is in contrast with American individualism and directness.

As for the native language, originally invented for merchants, bahasa Indonesia is fairly quick to pick up and highly efficient but lacks grammar, forcing the listener to be especially sensitive to context and tacit social dynamics. And there are a lot of tacit social dynamics.

Suffice it to say, Indonesia is pretty different. So how the heck did I end up here?

September 2019 — two years and five months ago — I stepped into my first class at business school. Coming off of a “prestigious” yet “traditional” six year career thus far, and surrounded by classmates who had been rewarded for taking personal and professional risks, my heart was so full of hope, ready to embrace a profound change from my prior steady grind.

All the goals I had set for myself to achieve during school centered around a singular mega-goal: introducing more purpose and adventure into my life.

Well, the universe works in unexpected ways. It tends to deliver but almost never in the ways you’d suspect. I know we’ve all had those moments when we look back and think, “Ohh, so that’s how that makes sense in the grand scheme of my life!”

Even before my two years at Stanford, the universe had been steadily guiding me towards the big move. There were ultimately 4 reasons for the move: love, growth, pride, and opportunity.

On my first day at the GSB, I met a wonderful Indonesian girl. She has a huge heart for her country and, to this day, regularly encourages me to be “more global”. We started dating pretty early on, and having lived through the turbulences of business school, COVID, and personal circumstances together, we feel inseparable. I am deeply blessed to have her in my life; we are similar and yet different in all the right ways.

So when we discussed where to live after graduation, we felt that we had come to a character-defining moment in our lives. How important was it for us to be in the same place? And what would we do to make that happen?

I think it’s a mistake when people, especially younger folk, refuse to meaningfully and intentionally invest in their relationships because they presume it should all be effortless. We believe it’s how a couple comes together and works as a unit during times of turbulence that proves how committed they truly are.

So we decided that being together was a non-negotiable.

But if you’re thinking to yourself, “well, it sounds like you just moved to Jakarta for your partner,” that would be missing the full picture.

I’ve always had one key regret about college: I never took a semester abroad. Many of my friends who did take their semesters abroad credit the experience as one of their absolute best experiences of their lives, not just for the fun but also for the perspective-broadening and character-building. I wanted to undergo that personal growth too!

In my first job out of college at Bain & Company, I had to make a hard choice between doing an externship at a tech company or working in an international office during my third year. As much as I wanted to live in Amsterdam or Hong Kong for 6 months, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to explore the startup world.

At Bain Capital, I spent three weeks around Thanksgiving working on a mega-deal out of the London office. I was super excited about being abroad finally, but the 120 hour weeks didn’t leave me any time to explore the city beyond the two-minute walk from my hotel to the office.

And of course, COVID deprived us business school students of the opportunities to romp around the globe, usually a fabric of b-school life.

The benefits of living abroad are well understood, from expanding your comfort zone to gaining confidence in managing change to becoming a more cultured global citizen. Coming out of business school, seeking purpose and adventure, I wanted all that. I wanted to give myself the challenge of immersing in a totally new culture and feel myself metamorphose into a more well-rounded, resilient version of myself.

And particularly, in Asia.

Growing up, I was ashamed of my Asian-ness. In high school, words like “fob” (standing for fresh off (the) boat) or “fobby” were used derogatorily to describe peers who just felt more Asian, because of their hairstyle or small physical stature or meek personality, despite their actual background. It wasn’t cool to be Asian.

Over time, I ended up in places that increasingly pushed me to be more “white”. Especially so during my three years in Boston, a city that has historically struggled with racism, working in an environment where 100% of my bosses were white males.

In fact, during my first month in Boston out with some friends on a Saturday night, I was confronted by four individuals at a bar; they were taller and bigger than me, and they got in my face and told me (with more colorful language) that I was not qualified to hang out with my friends because I was Asian and they weren’t.

Before this incident, I was proud of being able to assimilate well with “American” culture. And this wasn’t the first time I was subject to a direct act of racism. But for some reason, this time lit a fire within me.

“I refuse to lie down and be told that Asians are inferior!” was my inner chant. “My Asian-ness is a source of honor, not shame!”

It was with this underdog mentality and newfound pride that I looked eagerly at the chance to live in Asia. I would finally get in touch with my ancestral roots that I had neglected for so long.

Simultaneously, as I’ve written about in the past, Southeast Asia uniquely appealed to me from an economic development standpoint. Given the inevitable rapid near-term growth in this region, I know that my years here will be a tremendous investment into my future. And I’m genuinely excited to contribute to innovation ecosystem and leave my mark. At the very least, it’ll be a hell of a story.

Believe it or not, at the end of the day it was actually me who suggested to my partner that I move to Jakarta. It’s an adventure I am excited about for so many reasons!

So what have I been doing for the past four months?

The short answer is: I’ve been learning! I’ve had to adjust in nearly every aspect of life, from language to diet to new friends to career aspirations to hobbies to a bunch of other stuff. I’ve gone through a wider range of emotions here in four months than I have in four years back in the States. And all along the way, I’ve become closer to my true self. It’s certainly not always sunshine and butterflies (literally and metaphorically!) but it has been packed with purpose and adventure so far.

For the longer answer: stay tuned! I’m excited to share my updates and insights in future musings, so I hope you’ll join me on my journey.

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