EVERY DAY, the Jakarta Globe newspaper publishes a column with a deceptively simple premise - we interview someone living in Jakarta and ask: what's your life here like?

As we show in this selection of columns, the answers are far from simple. But then, so are the lives of the people you will meet in these pages. Inside you will find the street robber and gangster just trying to feed his family, the star student who happens to be a beauty queen and lawyer in her spare time, the 105-year-old masseur who has outlasted eight wives, the grammar teacher who is a punk rock god by night...

The name of the column, My Jakarta, conveys the intimacy with which we all carry our hopes, experiences and dreams. Here you will get a glimpse of how others high and low relate to our steamy, unpredictable, dirty, vibrant, addictive city.