It was the perfect temperature with a slight breeze and a starry sky.  I was sitting in the taxi en route to our New Year’s Eve destination along with every other resident of Jakarta.

The traffic was especially impressive due to some major road closings, so what should have taken about an hour took more than two.  But I didn’t mind.  We were in a climate-controlled fish bowl, enveloped by celebratory souls who made up the gorgeous chaos that spread in every direction.

Fireworks were clearly in good supply as every clear patch of night sky had shooting stars with fabulous bursts of gold, green, and red ending their journey before fading away.  I could have stayed in that taxi most of the night, enjoying the colors, watching people, making wishes.  There was a peace inside my little bubble that floated among the energy that coursed outside.

With traffic stopped and nowhere to go, we hopped out and walked the last 10 minutes or so to a bar called Memories.  How appropriate.  A place and time when friends can come together and remember days gone by before the year’s end while simultaneously making new connections for a new year.

It was fun to see a new area of the city and see everyone out and about and having a good time as 2013 came to a close.  But as we checked our watches and phones as midnight drew near, there was no group chanting, no massive explosion of cheers and/or smooching.  There was just craziness the entire time with no countdown to interrupt the stream of partying.  That seemed unusual and it felt like something was missing from the experience, but maybe that was an appropriate message for me on this particular New Year’s Eve.  Perhaps the lesson is not to get stuck focusing on a single moment in time, but to focus on blurred lines and bigger pictures.