The Daily Grind

Freedom

2011-12-14T14:27:00.004+07:00

One of the perks of living in a predominately Islamic country is that there is often plenty of alcohol to go around. Although the price of alcohol may be high, there are far less people who like to indulge than in your average western country. Nowhere is this more evident than when bars or pubs have anniversary nights. These usually consist of copious amounts of free beer for the masses. Yes, you heard me right, free beer.

To me, the concept of free beer is completely foreign. If they gave away free beer where I'm from, it would be absolute chaos. I cannot even predict how many people would show up, but the numbers would no doubt be staggering.

The other thing about this is that it is not 2 free beers or a free pitcher. It is as much beer as you can drink for an average span of 2 to 4 hours. Trust me from experience, you can drink a lot of beer in that time, even more than you think since there is this constant underlying fear of the beer running out.

At the most recent free beer soiree, there was an insurance company doing a lucky draw at the door. Really, this was just a marketing tool designed to get phone numbers so that they could try to get you to buy their products. I entered anyways. After going inside and running into many familiar faces who I often only see at free beer events, I thought twice about whether I should have given this insurance salesman my phone number.

Sure enough, the calls started a week or so later, then text messages. As I was busy, I ignored them for the most part. Then, one text message indicated that I should get in touch with them as they had some "good news" for me. I was still convinced that this was some kind of pitch and that the "good news" was going to be how much money I could save if I purchase their life insurance package. Finally, tired of the pestering, I picked up when they called me.

To my pleasant surprise, they informed me that the "good news" was that I was indeed the winner of a free iPad and that I could pick it up any time I wanted to. I excitedly agreed to stop by their office for a photo op a couple of days later. The agent also slyly persuaded me into looking into health insurance since I was coming in. I found it hard to say no since they were giving me a no strings attached piece of expensive electronics.

After hearing his health insurance song and dance, I told him I would think about it, as it did seem like a good package. I then got my new iPad and have not stopped playing with it since. To add icing to the cake, my office is considering changing our health insurance policy to the one presented to me, which means I won't have to pay for it.

So as it turns out, it pays to drink free beer. Keep that in mind the next time you say there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Eat A Bowl of Shit

2011-07-15T10:00:00.003+07:00

Yesterday, after doing some vigorous cleaning around the house, I decided that I would go for a well deserved massage. A friend had recently recommended a new place that is pretty close to my house. I got on my motorbike and made my way to the massage place, which is less than 5 minutes away from my house, or so I thought. My ride turned into an absolute nightmare that resulted in me having to eat the biggest bowl of shit ever. Here is how it unfolded....

I was driving through a complex that is a pretty slow and casual place to be driving. I go through this area regularly, almost on a daily basis. As I was coming up to a left turn (bear in mind that you drive on the LEFT in Indonesia) a bike coming in the opposite direction came flying around the corner driving not on the left but the right side of the road. To put this in perspective, this driver was making a RIGHT turn while driving on the RIGHT side of the road. Try to visualize this if you can, it is pretty much the most reckless and ridiculous thing one can do. In a panic, as the bike was about to hit me, I honked my horn. As he swerved around me, I kind of threw my hands in the air as to say (without actually speaking, this is important) "what in the world are you thinking?"

That was the end of that, or so I thought. I continued down the road and the driver of the other bike turned around and pulled up next to me and started asking what my problem was. I replied that I had no problem only that he should consider driving on the LEFT side of the road. He demanded I pull over, this seemed ridiculous to me so I kept on going. As we hit the end of the street, he veered left and I continued right. He started screaming, turned around again, pulled up beside me and started demanding that we go to the police office. I kind of laughed and just kept driving. He then jackknifed his bike in front of mine, forcing me to stop. This road is relatively slow one that is filled with houses on both sides. I expected a crowd to form immediately, it didn`t.

The man was somewhat older and extremely enraged. The whole conversation took place in Bahasa Indonesia but I will write in English only to save time.

Him: "You verbally insulted me, why did you do that"

Me: "I honked my horn so you wouldn't hit me when you were coming around the corner, there was no verbal insult."

Him: "I didn't hit you so what is your problem, why did you insult me? What country are you from?"

Me: "What does it matter what country I'm from? The only reason you didn't hit me was because I honked my horn, how is that an insult?"

Him: "I'm 50 years old, you can't speak to me like that!!"

Me: "Does that give you the right to drive on the WRONG side of the road????"

Him: "I demand we go to the police station, come with me to the police station now!!!"

Me: "You want to go to the police station, seriously? What are you going to tell them, that you were recklessly driving on the WRONG side of the road and almost caused an accident?"

Him: "POLICE STATION NOW!!!! YOU INSULTED ME!!!"

Me: "No, I'm not going to the police station, I didn't insult you but I will apologize if that's what you want."

Him: "Do you know who I am? police station now!!!"

He then proceeded to reach over and grab my keys out of my ignition. I grabbed his wrist and twisted and pulled his hand as hard as I could until he dropped my keys. I pulled him so hard that he kind of fell over onto my bike and knocked it over. Usually when there is any kind of incident like this in Indonesia, a crowd forms instantly. I wanted this to happen so that I could get out of this situation as this man seemed to be absolutely insane. As he fell over onto my bike, I grabbed my keys and told him to back off. At this point, no crowd had formed yet. I started thinking that he was going to come at me again and that I was going to have to fight my way out of this situation. I haven't been in a fight or even so much as thrown a punch at anybody in the last 25 years but, if he was going to come at me again, I felt I would have no choice but to hit him.

A minute later, a group of men came over to see what all the fuss was about. I was extremely relieved as I did not want to have a physical altercation. Alright, I thought, they'll sort this situation out and tell this guy to get lost and leave me alone. One of the guys was the head security guy for the housing complex. These guys are usually the local complex "police" and nobody dares to mess with them. I started telling the security guy how he chased me and tried to take my keys. They asked that we go over to their booth 100 meters away. I agreed and went over there. I continued to tell my story to the security guy while the guy from the other bike kept shouting "Police station NOW, you are insulting!" I started to notice the body language of the security guy and his friends. They were a little afraid of this man from the bike and wouldn't tell him to stop shouting or to leave me alone.

Eventually, the security guy convinced me to come speak with him in a little food stall behind his booth.

Security: "I believe everything you say and that you did not insult him but only honked your horn but you need to understand that this man belongs to an important organization and has very powerful friends. We have no choice but to do what he says or I will have big problems."

Me: "Sir, I don't want to go to the police station, they will just make me pay money or try to take my bike away. I did NOT insult this man, this whole situation is ridiculous to me, I just want to go home."

Security: "The only way to make him happy is to give him money, I don't like this man very much but I have no choice but to do what he says or I will be in big trouble, sorry sir."

Me: "So he drives like a maniac and then chases me and tries to take my keys and I have to give him money? This does not seem very fair to me, especially since I didn't do anything wrong."

Security: "I agree with you, sir but your choices are to either give him some money or call the police and have them come here." (I knew right then and there that I would probably be forced to give the police even more money, not to mention that they were probably friends of this other guy)

Me: "OK fine, how much should I give him? is 100 thousand ($9) enough?" (By the way the driver was dressed, I could tell that he had money, he did not care about the amount of money but merely wanted to show me how important he was and rub my face in it)

Security "Sir, that should be OK, people only give me 25 thousand ($2.75) when I ask for money, let me go talk to him, wait here`

Security `Sorry sir but he says that you must give another 50 thousand ($4.50) or we have to call the police`

Me: `That`s not fair, sir but I will pay it` (paying the police off would have cost me a LOT more)

Security: `Sir, he has agreed not to call the police, you can go now. I`m sorry, sir, please don`t think we are bad people who hate westerners `

Me: `OK, thank you sir, I don`t think that way, I only think that other man is crazy`

Security: `Me too, sir`

I then went outside and the other driver who was previously in a rage had completely calmed down. I said nothing to him as I walked back to my bike. He mentioned something about learning some manners. Knowing when I am defeated, I gave him an evil scowl, got on my bike and went to the massage place.

After having time to reflect on this situation, the bad taste in my mouth still lingers. I don`t feel that I did anything wrong and, even had I insulted this man, did not deserve to be treated this way. This was a reminder for me of how corrupt and ridiculous a country this is and how some `elite`people can do whatever they want whenever they want. It was absolutely shocking to see the security guy cower in front of this so called important man. They are usually pretty much at the top of the food chain and are feared by most.

I would like to point out that this is one of the worst incidences I have ever been involved with and that the vast majority of Indonesian people here, even rich corrupt ones, usually treat others with respect and deal with things in a civilized manner.

I have been daydreaming and hoping that by some strange twist of fate this man one day needs something from me. I would make him publicly kiss my hand and admit that he is evil and corrupt. Doubt that will ever happen but one can always dream.

Karma Beer

2011-07-13T11:35:00.004+07:00

When it comes to getting around Jakarta, public transport is the only option for many. For those of us who are lucky enough to be able to afford taxis or who actually own a vehicle, the idea of using public transport is foreign. Admittedly, I rarely use it as it tends to be hot and slow. I sometimes take a mini bus that takes me directly to a plaza near my home. Otherwise, the logistics and headache make me not want to bother.

Yesterday, I decided to visit the northern regions of Jakarta. I planned on taking the transjakarta busway there (and even planned my route online) but changed my mind due to the rain. After the rain did not cease for hours, I gave in and called a taxi. The ride did not take that long and only cost (toll road fees included) Rp. 70 000 (around $8). Bear in mind that that is a somewhat expensive taxi ride by Jakarta standards. After spending some time at Emporium Mall in Pluit (went all the way to North Jakarta to hang out in yet another mall http://jakarta-grind.blogspot.com/2011/05/mall-evolence.html), I made my way to Mangga Dua Square to the tune of Rp. 35 000 ($4) in a taxi.

Once finished in there, I decided it was time to make the inevitable journey home. I started doing the math in my head and realized that, with toll fees and a tip, it was going to cost me Rp 120 000 ($13) to get home. This is an obscene amount to pay for a taxi. A fare of this magnitude is usually reserved for trips to the airport or an out of town excursion. That amount of money is a nice dinner and a couple of beers at a pub in Jakarta.

Since I was in no rush and it was past 8 p.m. (traffic subsides at night), I decided to give public transit a try. Step 1 was figuring out where/how I would get home. The first mini bus I saw outside was destined for Kota station, the first stop on the transjakarta busway 1st corridor. Sorted! I hopped on and had an interesting 15 minute ride to Kota station. This leg cost me a grand total of Rp. 2 000 (25 cents). From there, it was a short walk to the busway entrance where I bought a ticket for Rp. 3 500 (40 cents) and almost immediately got on an empty bus.

The great thing about corridor 1 of the busway is that it has it's own exclusive lane that cuts right through one of the busiest areas of the city. It also covers a great amount of road as it only took me 25 minutes to get from beginning to end of the route. The last stop is Blok M terminal, which is the transit hub (among other things) of South Jakarta.

Once finished in there, I had to decide what to do next. Blok M terminal is filled with buses that go to every place you can imagine. There are buses that go near my house but not directly to it. The other problem is that some buses sit in the terminal for up to 30 minutes while you sit and wait. Feeling that I did not want to deal with this headache, I opted for an ojek (motorbike taxi). Before boarding an ojek, one must negotiate the price. After some haggling, I agreed on Rp. 25 000 ($2.75). Had I been more persistent, I could have gotten down to Rp. 20 000 ($2.25) but the driver had an entertaining quality and I didn't feel like persisting.

10 minutes later and Rp. 25 000 in the driver's hand, I was home. The whole trip took me around 1 hour and 15 minutes and cost me a mere Rp. 30 500 ($3.40) which meant that I had saved around Rp. 90 000 ( $10). Admittedly, the trip did take me an extra 30 minutes or so but it was well worth it. I don't know if I would want to repeat this trip in the daytime as the heat and traffic factors would come into play. This whole ordeal has made me somewhat change my opinion of public transit. As for the $10 I saved, that money is going directly towards what I like to call "karma beer" which will go directly into my new bar fridge.

The Times, They Are A Changin'

2011-06-22T10:11:00.006+07:00

There's a new outdoor cafe culture sweeping across Jakarta. It consists of a wide array of food, snacks and drinks mixed with the choice of sitting on an outdoor patio or in air conditioned comfort. They are open 24 hours a day and seem to be exponentially appearing across the Jakarta landscape. Maybe you've heard of it before, it's a little store known as 7/11.

When I first moved to Jakarta, there were no 7/11's. I recall transiting in Taipei on my way to Jakarta and being blown away by the amount of 7/11's they had there. They were practically on every street corner and were the everything in one store. Ditto when I visited Thailand years later. Eventually, they found their way to Jakarta and managed to improve on the original model.

The first 7/11's appeared a little over a year ago an weren't met with much fanfare. I simply noticed and thought "oh, 7/11, maybe I can get a slurpee one day" Then, I actually visited one. They had a widely expanded variety of food and beverages, including my favorite; beer. Hanging out at 7/11 gradually became the hip thing for Indonesian people to do on a Saturday night as it was not uncommon to see 50 motorbikes parked in front of some of them.

The whole idea sprouted from the Circle K chain of convenience stores. Many young people in South Jakarta who couldn't afford (or didn't like) to drink in bars or pubs would simply meet their friends at Circle K, buy a large bottle of beer and drink it on the curb outside. This became increasingly popular, especially in the Kemang area. 7/11 had the brilliant idea to take this one step further by adding patio tables with umbrellas,air conditioned upstairs lounges with free wi-fi and public toilets.

Nowadays, certain 7/11's seem to always have people in them from morning coffee patrons to the lunch crowd to the after work drink crowd to the late night one more for the road crowd. I have increasingly started to meet friends at 7/11 for an early evening beverage or 2 before hitting the town. There is also a pretty good chance that I will see someone I know having an after work drink if I stop in to buy something. This has totally changed the game as there aren't many outdoor places to sit in Jakarta that are affordable and have a nice atmosphere.

The newest installment of 7/11 is very close to my house and has left me with mixed feelings. The lot that it is located on previously had what is known as night warungs. This is basically a large area of long tables and chairs that are surrounded by different food stalls. Kind of like an outdoor food court with more authentic food. It was one of my favorite places to eat dinner thanks to the variety and atmosphere. This place was also very popular with the locals as it always seemed to be busy. One day, I drove down there to get some fried noodles and, to my shock and dismay, the stalls had been demolished. I could not wrap my head around why such a successful group of businesses would shut down.

A month later, I got my answer: a brand new shiny 7/11 with more patio tables than I've ever seen. The good thing is that I have a new local hangout to enjoy a beverage or 2 with my friends. The bad thing is that all of that tasty authentic Indonesian food I loved has been traded in for big bite hot dogs, slurpees and pre-packaged sandwiches. I really don't know how to feel about this. As Bob Dylan once said so long ago "The times, they are a changin"

I can either learn to adapt or be left behind. There is so much to ponder with a cold beer on a patio on a Wednesday afternoon.

The Best Game You Can Name

2011-05-28T10:04:00.005+07:00

As I've mentioned before, the thing I miss the most from back home is hockey. After numerous attempts (in vein) to get the cable company that carries hockey installed http://jakarta-grind.blogspot.com/2010/08/first-media-we-dont-need-it-do-we.html I finally gave up. Then, one day, out of nowhere, a glimmer of hope appeared. A new cable operator called Skynindo that had the channel I was desperately searching for (In HD as well!). I called them up and they informed me that they could indeed have it installed in my home by the end of the week. This filled me with excitement as I was FINALLY going to be able to watch the NHL playoffs in the comfort of my own home. After some back and forth discussion with the sales rep, we agreed that the technician(s) would come on Saturday.

I made it a point to be home on that day and not preoccupied as technicians often show up without hammers or ladders and require assistance. As promised, the technician(s) showed up at 2 P.M. after asking for directions a couple of times. To my surprise, they were ready to go, complete with their own tools. They chose a spot to install the satellite and went to work. I was impressed by the spot they chose since I've had lots of trouble with the location of my other cable satellite.

As they went to work, I informed them that I would be inside if they needed anything. That was at 2:15 P.M. Over the next couple of hours, I looked outside every 20 minutes or so to make sure that they were OK. They seemed to be taking a very long time as previous satellite installations had taken as little as 15 minutes. I decided to leave them be as they seemed to know what they were doing.

They eventually re-appeared at 4:45 P.M. asking if I had a television that they could use. Confused, I asked for clarification. They said that they wanted to take a television up to the roof to test if the satellite was working properly. The only television I have is my 32 inch flat screen and I told them that there was no way that they were taking it up to the roof and that they would just have to run the cable down (as they would eventually have to anyways) to the television. They begrudgingly agreed. I didn't bother asking them how they planned on plugging the television in up on the roof.

After I showed them where the cable had to come into the house, they ran t

he cable and plugged it into the converter box. Step 1

complete, success! The next step was to connect the converter box to the television; easy, right? Not so much. After the 2 of them spent 20 minutes fumbling around, I decided to step in and help. The converter to television connection was a component cable, like the one used to connect a dvd player. When I stepped in to help, they were basically guessing where to plug the wires in. I tried to explain to them (without being patronizing) that the blue wire goes in the blue holes and that the green wire goes in the green holes etc. Each time it wouldn't work, they would disconnect a wire and try it in a different hole. (for example: blue wire in red hole? No! How about blue wire in white hole?) They were convinced that they would eventually get it right. I shooed them out of the way and connected it properly. After it was all colour coded and ready to rock, it still wasn't working. I informed them that it had to be the converter box or the satellite. They didn't listen, they started randomly trying the wires in different slots again.

By this point, I was losing my patience. I asked a friend (there were 5 friends sitting on my couch being entertained this whole debacle, especially since one of my friends pointed out that the one technician looked just like Chris Rock) how to say 'guess' in Bahasa. Again, I explained to the technician that he couldn't just guess where the wire went, that the colours HAD to match and that he could NOT just randomly try different holes. They only work in the hole that has the matching colour. This time, I seemed to get through to him. He replied with "Ooooooh gitu" (oh, like THAT) and went back out to the satellite and managed to get a signal. He got a semi decent signal and, in order to make it better, he decided to switch the blue and green wires. This resulted in a black & white picture with a green-ish tinge. "Udah, Mister!" (done) he cried triumphantly. I had to disappoint him by pointing out that the picture is supposed to be in colour (not to mention HD) and not black & white with a green tinge. Again, I switched the wires back to where they were supposed to be, making him watch and sent them back to the satellite. After a good 30 minutes of playing around, they managed to get a clear picture.

Just as they did, a hockey game appeared on my television which was met by a boisterous applause by the peanut gallery on the couch. That's the end of this ordeal, or so I thought. Not so much, I still had to sort out the bill. They had attempted to charge me for transport and vastly over charged me for the length of cable used (you pay by the meter). Luckily, I had my tape measure sitting on the table and went about measuring the cable. After 2 minutes of this, they gave up and agreed that it was probably 10 meters less than the 25 meters they had written down. It was even less than that but I couldn't be bothered. They were refusing to budge on the transport fee as their office was "Jauh" (far away). After threatening to call the sales manager, they begrudgingly removed the transport fee. Nobody else who had ever installed anything in my house had ever tried to charge me for transport and I'd be dammed if they were going to be the first. Finally, everything was settled. Not so much.

They told me that the balance of the bill (including that satellite that I had to buy) had to be paid in cash to them. These guys were sketchy looking on their best day and there was no way I was handing them a big wad of cash. After 3 or 4 phone calls, I got their boss to agree to let me deposit the money into his account the next day on the condition that I provided them with a photocopy of my passport. I told him that I didn't have a photocopy of my passport on me and that it was not the easiest thing to obtain on 6:30 P.M. on a Saturday night. He said to give my passport to the technicians and have them go find a place. NOT GONNA HAPPEN! Finally, I "remembered" that I did have a photocopy of my passport laying around in my room. I quickly changed the passport number on the contract I had filled out and gave them a photocopy of my old passport that expired in June 2009. They didn't notice and were happily on their way after spending a mere 5 hours at my house.

Tired and sweaty, I went inside and cracked a well deserved beer and watched the good ol' hockey game. Since that day, I have been fortunate enough to watch playoff hockey on a nightly basis and have managed to even get some of my British friends interested in it. Life is good despite the Detroit Red Wings losing a 7th game heartbreaker. As Stopmin Tom Connors says, it is "The best game you can name, that good ol' hockey game" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SXNCnf15EA

GO CANUCKS! Bring the Cup back to Canada!

Mall-evolence

2011-05-17T15:58:00.004+07:00

Last week, a few expat friends and I were sitting around discussing which malls in Jakarta we prefer. The irony of this conversation was not lost on us as we all agreed that the concept of "liking" a certain mall back in our respective countries is ridiculous or even laughable. There is a very specific breed of adult human who frequents malls in western countries. The rest (majority) of the population view the mall as a place that is only visited when deemed absolutely necessary. These necessary visits are either for Christmas shopping OR to buy something that is only available at a certain store in a certain mall. In these situations, the mall visit is a commando style get-in-get-out-as-fast-as-possible mission. There is no window shopping, strolling or visits to the food court, just the task at hand.

In Jakarta, this is just not the case. The mall is the place to be for people of all ages. It is not simply the cool choice but the ONLY choice. You see, Jakarta has a severe shortage of sidewalks, parks and basically places that make it possible to walk. This makes a mall very appealing to people here as they can walk without being hit by a motorbike or getting black smoke in their face. The mall is an oasis of sorts, an escape from the filthy, hot, smoky, humid stench ball of a city that this place can be at times. Malls are air conditioned, clean and spacious. Perfect for a casual stroll. This is the main reason that most Indonesians go to malls. Most don't actually go to purchase goods or services but simply to move around and take in the sights.

This may leave you asking why a young expatriate man who does not enjoy shopping or walking in malls visit a mall so often. The answer is simple, it is an all in one place where you can eat, see and do things that are not otherwise possible. I am ashamed to admit that I have spent up to 8 hours in a mall in a single day. The mall is where I go to eat, work out, watch movies, buy groceries, buy household items (http://jakarta-grind.blogspot.com/2010/08/ace-in-hole.html), meet friends for a coffee and even clubbing. Yes, all of these things and so much more in one convenient location.

Convenient is a word that would never be used to describe anything in Jakarta. Most simple chores involve fighting horrendous traffic, searching in vein and lack of parking. A mall, on the other hand, has almost everything you need under one roof. The convenience of having a nice meal followed by grabbing a few things at a supermarket is just so much easier than trying to do those things separately. Factor that in with the relative closeness to home and the avoidance of the outside world hassles and you have the perfect place.

What is my favorite mall you ask? Easy, it is Pondok Indah Mall (better known as PIM). To be more specific, it is PIM 2. You see, there is a PIM 1 and a PIM 2 that are on

opposite sides of the street and connected by sky bridges. This is my favorite mall for a multitude of reasons. First and foremost, it is a mere 5 minute casual drive from my house. This is an extremely short time/distance to go somewhere in Jakarta, it might as well be right next door! Secondly, the fitness club I belong to is located there. Third, they have an excellent selection of food that is varied in price and style. Other amenities there that I partake in include the supermarket, ace hardware, book store, reflexology massage shop and newly opened beer garden.

An average weekday visit to the mall would consist of me arriving, going to a yoga class, getting some food to make for dinner that night (or get some food from a restaurant to go), having a casual stroll trying to remember what the other that I wanted to not forget to buy was, peek inside the book store and then head home. I go through this routine at a minimum of 3 times a week. Other times, I may simply pop in to grab some food or to get whatever other item it is that I may need. Ironically, it is much easier to drive my motorbike there, park and get the thing I need as opposed to going elsewhere.

It is pointless to name names of other malls that I like or dislike. What is important to know is that the supply of malls in Jakarta far outweigh the demand. Malls vary in size and quality but there are quite a few boutique malls that cater to the filthy rich. I don't make it to these malls very often and when I do, it is usually strictly for eating or entertainment as many of these malls have great clubs that are open until the wee hours of the morning. Oddly enough, fewer than 5% of Jakartans can actually afford to shop in these monstrosities yet there are a good dozen of these malls.

Love it or hate it, the mall culture is alive and kicking in Jakarta. What amazes me is that they just keep building more and more of them and people keep packing them. A large number of visitors to the mall don't buy much besides an ice cream cone or refreshment which leaves me to wonder how some of these high end places manage to pay their rent. From what the locals tell me, this mall culture is a relatively new phenomenon as most of them are less than 10 years old.

So tell me, what is your favorite mall in Jakarta? By my personal bias, I think that Pondok Indah Mall is hard to beat with Grand Indonesia coming in at a close second. Anyone who leaves negatives comments towards PIM will see my mall-icious side.

Bonus Fact: I spent my last new year's eve at a restaurant/club inside a mall

When the Lights Go Down in the City

2011-05-14T11:52:00.003+07:00

Recently, my landlord informed me that they had to do some "repairs" to the house's electrical metering device thingy. To my astonishment, it turned out to be a new pay as you go type of meter. It's a simple device really, you basically buy credit and enter the numbers into the device. When you are nearly out of credit, the device starts beeping (like an alarm clock) every 20 minutes. When your credit runs out, the lights go out.

When this was first installed, the guy who installed it informed me that there was enough credit on there to last for the next couple of hours or so. This meant that I had to immediately go out and find an ATM machine and buy credit. This happened at a very inopportune time when it also happened to be raining. In the end, I managed to get credit and avoided a Saturday evening blackout.

This prevented me from having the pleasure of hearing the soothing sounds of "the lights are about to go out" alarm. This did eventually happen. Luckily, the meter is right outside my bedroom window. This worked out quite well as I was woken up at 3 A.M. by the alarm going off. It continued to go off in 20 minute intervals all night long. The only way to stop this is to buy more credit, which is not really an option in the middle of the night. I woke up to a hot stuffy room with no electricity. I managed to shower in the dark and immediately went searching for an ATM machine so I could top up my credit.

You would think that I would learn my lesson and not allow this to happen again. NO! A couple of days ago, I noticed that the level was getting low and that I should buy some credit soon. I forgot to do it that day. The next evening, I came home at 11 P.M. and heard the alarm going off. I realized that I had completely forgotten to buy credit. I decided to immediately go to the closest ATM and buy some credit as I didn't want to be kept up all night by the alarm, not to mention waking up to no electricity.

I went to the ATM, followed the steps of buying credit and was astonished to not have a receipt come out of the machine. The receipt is of the utmost importance as it contains the numbers you have to punch into the meter in order to top up your credit. Basically, this meant that I had just lost Rp. 500 000 ($50). I insisted that the guys at the convenience store (where the ATM was located) call the bank. They said not to worry but I insisted as I was not giving up my money without a fight. After answering a barrage of skill testing questions, the bank agreed to delete the purchase and put the money back in my account.

Relieved, I left the store only to soon realize that I hadn't managed to buy any credit. At this time of night, there was no other ATM machine within a reasonable driving distance. Dejected and tired from the 30 minutes I spent in the convenience store, I went home and prayed that the electricity would not go out. After a relatively sleepless night (guess why), I woke to a cool room that still had lights. I gave myself a high five and got into the shower. Halfway through my shower, lights out. I finished yet another shower in the dark and went searching for an ATM machine that had not run out of receipt paper. I found one and managed to get credit with relative ease, or so I thought.

Upon triumphantly returning with my receipt, I realized that the printing on the receipt was very blurry an spotty. The ink was about to run out on that ATM machine printer. This made it very difficult to decipher the 16 digit code. After 4 or 5 botched attempts (due to mistaking 8's for 3's etc) I managed to successfully enter the code and light and comfort once again returned to my humble home.

Hopefully I have learned my lesson and will manage to buy credit before it runs out next time. I would like to thank the PLN (Indonesian Electric company) as well as my landlord for putting me in this lovely predicament. I guess this is my reward for paying my bill on time for years on end.

Airing of Grievances

2010-12-24T11:01:00.006+07:00

In the spirit of Festivus, I have decided to cleanse myself by airing my grievances for the year. In no particular order, here are my grievances for the year 2010

"I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna to hear about it."

Frank Costanza

1) Rizieq Shihab and the FPI (Islamic Defender's Front) - You are a constant thorn in the side of Indonesia and the tens of millions of Muslim Indonesians who are happy with the way things are. For some reason, you justify your silly acts as a necessity of security and lifestyle. Stabbing female priests and burning things down is not OK, even if it is in the name of God. I do applaud your effort to ensure that nothing bad will happen during Christmas but I am sure that it will be business as usual for you come New Year's Day. Stop trying to be every one's daddy and let people have free will to make their own decisions.

2) The Jakarta Post - For years now, I have had to put up with your overly sensationalized news. Your newspaper reads like a tabloid and is filled with spellink and grammatical mistake. Thankfully, there is The Jakarta Globe which enables me to avoid having to digest your literal diarrhea.

3) Mother Nature - You must be getting old and senile because you can't seem to decipher when the rainy and dry seasons begin and end. It rained throughout the dry season this year. The last couple of weeks have been the driest of the whole year yet it still rains pretty much every day. Ironically, this is the rainy season. I am sick and tired of you causing floods, traffic jams and a general malaise. What gets me the most is that you screwed with mango season, the thing I look forward to most at this time of year.

4) First Media - In the modernity of 2010, I STILL cannot get you to provide me with cable and internet service, despite living within spitting distance of one of the wealthiest areas of Jakarta. All I want to do is be able to come home at night and watch a hockey game on television. A colleague of mine recently told me that you told her that your services were not available in her complex despite the box on her front lawn that said FIRST MEDIA on it. After she called you 3 times, you finally agreed that it was indeed available in her area. Please get your head out of your ass and provide cable to the entire city.

5) BB's Blues Bar - The only grievance I have with you is that you have closed your doors. Despite having not been to your bar in a while, I always looked forward to your reggae nights. You will be sorely missed and don't deserve to be on this list.

6) Zebra Mosquitoes - I really hate that you choose to bite people in the morning hours and give them dengue fever. When you did this to me, my life was really screwed up for a couple of months. Can`t you just be like other mosquitoes and be nighttime ankle biters? I would appreciate if you would refrain from giving me dengue fever again in the upcoming year as it really really sucks.

7) The Old Security Man on My Street - You really are a nice and friendly old fellow but is it really necessary to bang your stick on the iron bars of my gate at 2 and 3 and 4 A.M. every night? I understand that your purpose is to inform people that you are indeed keeping watch and not sleeping but there really is no need for that. This is similar to calling someone on the phone every hour to inform them that everything is fine. This reminds me of Homer Simpson's everything's OK alarm invention. It keeps making noise as long as everything is OK.

Well, that's about it, glad I got that off my chest. If any of you have any grievances that you wish to air, feel free to comment. I can take it. This is my strong suit as I don't stand much of a chance in the Feats of Strength. Here's to hoping that your Festivus miracle comes true.

Nickel & Dime

2010-12-18T12:22:00.004+07:00

With the Indonesian Rupiah having such a low exchange rate, it is sometimes very easy to get hung up on a small amount of money without realizing it. The usual exchange rate is around 9000 Rupiah for 1 American dollar. This can get quite confusing as you are always thinking in tens and hundreds of thousands or even millions. I like to tell the people back home that I am a millionaire. The irony of this is that 1 million is only $110 US.

Cash transactions can be very confusing as you have

to constantly think on your toes. Buying a few

items at the supermarket will set you back (for example) two hundred and thirty four thousand eight hundred and twelve Rupiah. Once you get used to it, it's not that difficult but I still regularly ask people to repeat the price of things. When this gets really weird is when you are bargaining.

It is common to haggle over the price of things in Jakarta. Any time

there is no price tag, the cost is negotiable. In many instances, I have found myself hard bargaining over a kilo of mangoes or a motorbike taxi ride. It will get down to a difference of 1000 Rupiah and I will stand my ground in order to get the price I want. Afterwards, I will reflect and realize that I managed to save 11 cents. In the heat of negotiation, it seems like a big deal but really it's nothing. When you hear the words one thousand or 500, your mind instinctively thinks that it is a decent amount of money.

Sometimes, these situations are more about respect than the actual m

onetary value. A pack of cigarettes used to cost nine thousand or nine thousand five hundred rupiah. Whenever I would buy a pack, I would give a ten thousand Rupiah bill and wait for my change. Quite often, the vendor would blankly stare at me and ask what else I wanted. I would insist that I wanted my change. They would then give me either five hundred or one thousand Rupiah. Literally nickel and diming.

Another fine example of this is a motorbike parking lot. The standard price is around five hundred Rupiah for the first hour and then one thousand extra for each additional hour. It is dirt cheap really as it rarely costs more than two thousand Rupiah.

Just a couple of days ago, I was exiting the parking lot at Gandaria City (lovely, by the way) and my parking fee was a whopping five hundred rupiah. I have a one thousand Rupiah bill (smallest bill, five hundred is a coin) and the attendant asked if I had uang pas (exact change). I replied that I didn't and she took the one thousand bill and said I'd have to pay that much. I objected and she replied with "Hanya lima ratus" (only five hundred). I argued that if this was the case, I wouldn't pay as it would be "only five hundred". I snatched my bill back and said I wasn't going to pay as I had a suspicion that she was lying. She then opened a drawer filled with five hundred Rupiah coins and gave me my change. Did I care about the 6 cents? Not really. It was more the point that she was probably doing this to eve

ryone and going home with a nice chunk of change that didn't belong to her. Did I feel a little like Larry David? Yes, I did but I just want to be treated with respect and not be scammed, even if it is "only" 6 cents.

So what do I do with all of these coins? It's simple, I

put

them in a jar as most westerners would in their home country. One day I actually decided to count

my change. There are five hundred, two hundered, one hundred, and fifty Rupiah coins. They are made of an inferior metal that makes tin seem strong. I've heard that this is because a decent metal would be worth more than the value of the coin itself. As I set out to count my coins, I realized that I had a large amount of one hundred and two hundred coins but barely any five hundred coins. After some serious thought, it occurred to me that my maid had likely been swiping the five hundred coins thinking that I wouldn't notice. All of my nickel and diming had manged to put an extra 3 dollars or so in my maid's pocket. At least I have my pride and my collection of 200 Rupiah coins, they make

great gifts.

Can You Repeat the Part Where You Said The Stuff About the Things?

2010-11-27T16:39:00.005+07:00

One of the biggest obstacles facing expats in Jakarta is coping with the local language. It isn't the most difficult language to learn and I will shamelessly admit that my Bahasa Indonesia is decent. Over the years, my pronunciation, as well as local people's ability to understand me, has improved dramatically. When I was a newbie, I'd repeat words over and over and get upset when people didn't understand me. Over time, I've learned how to intonate properly in order to be understood. Nowadays, I get compliments from Indonesians that my Bahasa is quite good. I don't think it's that good but maybe that's because I want to improve.

Once one learns the language, one has to deal with some people's inability to listen. I have learned the hard way that some people, once they see that you are not Indonesian, automatically assume that they will not be able to understand a word you say since they don't speak English. When this happens, their ears fill up with wax, their brains go into hibernation mode and their comprehension skills go out the window. It is quite frustrating when this happens.

Some days, I will converse in Bahasa with a dozen people who will have no problem understanding me. Then comes number 13, they just look at me like I am speaking gibberish. They can't understand a thing that I say. Correction, they DON'T EVEN LISTEN to word I say and therefore get confused. If this happened with the majority of people that I speak with, I would consider it to be a fault of my own. Since it doesn't happen most of the time, I feel vindicated.

Here are a few examples:

1) Sometimes, I will be in a taxi with my lady. We will be coming up to a street where we need to turn. I will say "Pak, belok kiri" (elder man/sir, turn left) "Pak, belok kiri" "Pak Pak......Belok kiri" "BELOK KIRI PAK!!!!!". The driver does not even acknowledge that he hears me or that I am speaking. My lady will then say (in the EXACT same intonation as me) "Pak, belok kiri" and the driver will immediately say "Oke" and then turn left. Every time this happens to me, I am absolutely dumbfounded.

2) I am filling my motorbike up with gas. The attendant will ask how much I want. I say "lima belas" (fifteen) He will respond with "Berapa?" (how much). I will repeat myself "lima belas" He will then reply with "sepuluh?" (ten, which sounds NOTHING like fifteen). I slowly repeat myself "liiiima bellaaaaaas". He then replies with "sembilan belas?" (nineteen). I then retort with (whilst counting with my fingers) "satu, dua, tiga, empat, lima belas" (one, two, three, four, five....teen). Blank stare, no response. I regroup and try again whilst pointing at my hand showing 5 digits. "Mendengarkan aku......lima......belas" (listen to me....fifteen). Finally, a response and a shy grin "oooh lima belas, mister"

This is a clear cut case of the attendant seeing my face and losing all composure to the point where he resorted to guessing. If he would have confused tiga (three) with lima (five), I could understand since they sound very similar but the numbers he was guessing did not even sound remotely close to what I was saying.

3) (on the phone, my personal favorite) I call Domino's pizza. "selemat sore, Domino's pizza" (good afternoon, Domino's pizza) "Hello, aku mau pesan pizza" (hello, I want order pizza) "oh, ya, sebentar ya, mister" (wait, ya mister). I get put on hold and eventually another voice comes on the line "Yes, hello mister, you like eating pizza?" (translated into English, this means: Yes, hello, mister, may I take your order). I humor them and switch to English "Hi, I'd like to order pizza" They respond with "Yes, mister........uuuh you eat order pizza? What......you...like? Can Please I have........ number phone" I reply very slowly with "zero......eight.....one". By this point, I switch back to Bahasa as I can tell the guy is totally lost "kosong.......delepan......satu.....tiga" (zero eight one three). After 3 or 4 times of going through the numbers of my phone number and them not being able to find me in their database, the guy puts me on hold again. It is much easier to give them the correct number as opposed to trying to spend 20 minutes explaining my address and exactly where I live. Been there, done that, not easy. Eventually, another voice comes on the line "yes mister, nomor telephonenya?" (yes mister, number telephone you?). I repeat my phone number quickly in Bahasa and the guy gets it correct the first time, no problem. I then place my order and within 30 seconds, everything is accomplished and I hang up. This after being on the line for nearly 10 minutes.

I've played out this situation on numerous occasions. There have been many instances where I "Press one for English" only to have an operator eventually hang up on me because they can't understand me.

A while back, I felt that if I honed my Bahasa Indonesia skills that these instances would cease. It is now abundantly obvious to me that they will never stop, only happen less frequently. The next time I call Domino's, I'm going to ask for the guy who listens well to get on the line.

Right Outside Your Door

2010-11-17T15:55:00.002+07:00

As today is a national holiday in Indonesia, I plan on spending my day doing absolutely nothing. This desire was reinforced by enjoying myself a little too much last night and waking up in a somewhat rough condition. This state had me longing for some Panadol Merah (a cheap local aspirin that costs 80 cents for a pack of 10). Luckily, there is a warung (general store?) less than 50 meters from my door that sells pretty much everything imaginable. I peeled myself off the couch, grabbed my keys & wallet, put on my sandals and set off on my short journey.

When I arrived, there was a young boy (maybe 8 years old) buying cigarettes. In Indonesia, you can buy packs or single cigarettes. This young boy was buying 3 cigarettes while his 2 friends waited outside. I smiled and wondered if they had sent him in because he looked the oldest. The store owner was even gracious enough to throw in a pack of matches for free. The boy tucked the cigarettes away in his pocket, joined his friends and left. I purchased my panadol and also left.

I set out for the journey back home and had to deal with a truck parked on the side of the road. I had to carefully walk around it and watch for oncoming motorbikes and cars. As I was walking beside the truck, a horrendous aroma entered my nostrils. I looked inside the back of the truck and realized that it was FILLED with cow guts and skins. A couple of oncoming motorbikes forced me to pause at the side of the truck. The bikes passed by and I walked away briskly, narrowly avoiding vomiting on the side of the road.

By now you are probably wondering why there was a truck full of cow guts parked outside. Simple explanation: today is Idul Adha (read more here: http://jakarta-grind.blogspot.com/2009/11/goat-for-sale.html ) which is the day where people kill goats and cows. Hence the day off work.

I got back inside my house, took a couple of panadol aspirins and resumed doing nothing. I reflected for a moment about all of the oddness I had just experienced right outside my own door. This is why it is impossible to get used to this place.

Groundhog Day

2010-10-13T17:47:00.003+07:00

Every day, at the exact same time, the exact same event occurs outside my house. It is what I wake up to on a daily basis. At precisely 5 A.M., a mobile bread vendor drives by outside my house. For some reason, the dog that lives across the street takes exception to this and starts barking insanely. Unlike all of the other dogs in my area, this dog's bark is a high shrill that sounds as if he/she is being stabbed repeatedly. The same dog does not bark at the odd car, motorbike or other street vendor going by before or after. This has been baffling me for some time to the point that I'm almost obsessed with it.

The passing bread vendor is known as Sari Roti. As I've mentioned before, each vendor has their own unique noise or song. Sari Roti has a song that goes something like...

DO DO DO DO DO DO DO SARI ROTI ROTI SOMETHING SOMETHING

This little tune repeats itself endlessly throughout the day. There are numerous other vendors going by around the same time but their melodies don't seem to bother the dog in question.

What's even more astounding than the dog's reaction is that the Sari Roti vendor passes my house at EXACTLY 5 A.M. every morning, not a minute sooner or later. Jakarta is not what you would call a punctual place, you are hard pressed to find 2 clocks in the same building that are synchronized. Generally, most scheduled times are an -ish time, never precise.

Some mornings, I am tempted to get up to see if it is actually the same Sari Roti vendor driving by at 5 A.M every day but I am too lazy. From that time until the late morning, there are dozens of other Sari Roti vendors that drive by but the dog doesn't bark at them, only at the 1st one. By listening, I have deduced that the bread vendor is not stopping at or near the house the dog lives at. This would explain why the dog barks. It has gotten to the point where I sometimes inadvertently wake up at 4:58 A.M in anticipation of the event to come. A few minutes after 5, I realize that I have another hour or so to sleep and am grateful for that.

My first memory of each and every day has been the EXACT same for weeks now; the Sari Roti song followed by the adjacent dog's painful howl. I'm starting to feel like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day where he wakes up to the exact same song and speech on the radio every morning.

If for some unexplained reason, this event does not occur one morning, I am going to take it as an omen that I should stay in bed because the world has tilted off it's axis. How can precision clockwork occur right outside my door in a city that nobody would ever in their wildest dreams dare to describe as precise?

Does anybody actually buy bread at 5 A.M anyways?

Does Java Land Really Rock?

2010-10-09T16:45:00.004+07:00

Last night, I went to the first night of the 3 day long Java Rockin Land music festival. I was super excited, especially since the headliners were none other than The Smashing Pumpkins. It is a rare treat in Jakarta to get to see a band of that caliber and there was no way I was going to miss out.

The festival was at a place called Ancol which is on the waterfront of the Java Sea. It is not as pretty as you may think but nonetheless made for a great music venue. The ground was super muddy and luckily the skies were clear after a downpour earlier that afternoon. I felt great anticipation once I got there after having to endure a very long taxi ride and an even longer walk to the venue.

The next thing I knew, my friend and I were in the front row and Billy Corgan was serenading us with nostalgic tunes from my forgotten adolescence that still managed to rock after all these years.

We were ecstatic and couldn't stop jumping and singing along.

A few songs into the set, I started to look around. Everyone else was just standing there with relatively blank stares. Quite a few people were trying to take photos with their phones. The only people "rockin out" were my friend and I and a couple of other white guys. I started to notice that I was somewhat annoying people in my vicinity as I was bouncing around. They were giving me looks that said "stand still and be quiet, don't you know how to behave at a rock concert?". I was admittedly a little buzzed having visited the Carlsberg refreshment tent before the set began but I could not for the life of me understand why these people were just standing there looking forlorn. Double cross the vacant and the bored. They're not sure just what we have in store. They were obviously Smashing Pumpkins fans but were acting like they were at a piano recital. As the show went on it became more obvious to me that the people around us thought that we were insane maniacs. The truth is that we were just in the moment and really enjoying ourselves.

Then, the guitar gave a little teaser of bullet with butterfly wings. I was ecstatic and must've jumped 3 feet in the air. Then, as quickly as he started, Billy stopped playing and said "Are you alive out there, Jakarta?" There was a polite applause. We were jumping and screaming as to say "Billy Billy Billy, look at us!" They then proceeded to play bullet with butterfly wings (for those of you who don't know: a really heavy guitar song that makes you want to go nuts) and we proceeded to go nuts like rats in a cage. We started jumping and singing along even more than we were before. Once again, people were eyeballing us as if we were a disgrace.

I'm used to going to concerts where the whole crowd would be acting like we were. In my mind, we weren't acting out of the ordinary. The only explanation I can offer for the deplorable behavior of the crowd is the general lack of outward emotion that Asian people express. I know this is somewhat of a stereotype but I can't for the life of me think why else people were quietly standing there while the band was putting on such a great performance.

The show ended and it appeared that there would not be an encore. As soon as the band left the stage, everyone around me started to walk away. Not me, I was clapping and shouting Bill-ly Bill-ly. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. The lights came on as a sad sign that there would be no encore tonight ladies and gentlemen. The crowd didn't earn one I guess. I was really really hoping they were going to come back out and play 1979 but it wasn't meant to be.

Today is the greatest day I've ever known. Well maybe not but I do have that warm feeling in my bones from rockin out last night. It's been too long and I hope the next time comes sooner. The lack of accessibility to top notch live music is probably the thing I miss most living here. That's just how it goes.

Did The Smashing Pumpkins Rock?

HELL YA!

Did I rock out as hard as I could?

HELLS YA!

Does Java Island Rock?

undecided

Smoke on the Water

2010-09-26T13:19:00.004+07:00

After recently being hospitalized with a bout of dengue fever, I decided that it would be a good idea to spray my house for mosquitoes. After some thought, it occurred to me that spraying wouldn't do much good unless everybody in my neighborhood sprayed.

I asked the owner of my house to talk to the Pak RT (head of the neighborhood) about spraying. He deemed it not necessary despite the 3 cases of dengue that we knew about. There could be even more cases but that didn't seem to concern him.

Normally, September is the tail end of the dry season in Indonesia which means most areas are bone dry and mosquitoes are not able to breed. Thus, spraying is not usually necessary at this time of year. This year, the dry season just didn't happen. It has rained pretty much every day over the last several months. This is unprecedented and a great time to be a mosquito.

For those of you who don't know, mosquitoes breed in standing or stagnant water. Dengue fever

is passed from a certain type of mosquito that usually bites people in the morning. The normal

way to get rid of mosquitoes is to have people go around with these big chainsaw looking contraptions that spray some kind of poisonous smoke. These guys go up and down the street spraying and will even spray inside your house if you throw them a little cash.

The owner of my house graciously offered to spray my house and her own house, which is 2 doors down from me. I patiently explained to her that this wouldn't do any good since the mosquitoes that were not located in our houses wouldn't get killed and that mosquitoes can easily fly from one property to another. After a lot of explaining, she got my point (or pretended to) and decided not to spray our houses.

A week or so later, the Pak RT had a sudden change of heart (perhaps someone in HIS family got dengue fever) and decided to spray the whole neighborhood. Having been through this drill before, I prepared to leave as soon as they finished spraying inside my house. I put my motorbike outside my gate, put on my jacket, grabbed my backpack and was ready to leave the moment they had finished spraying.

Eventually, they arrived at my house and went in to spray. The smoke, when sprayed indoors, is so thick that you can't even see. As the guy was inside spraying, I was standing by my door, key in hand ready to lock the door and leave. His co-worker advised me not to go inside and to stand on the street because the smoke would make me sick. I tried explaining to him that I was going to lock the door and leave. He told me that it was not necessary and all I had to do was stand on the street.

As I looked out onto the street, most people who were home were standing on the street where they had JUST sprayed. The road was foggy, mothers were standing holding their babies with rags over their faces. I tried to convince my maid to take her young son and leave for an hour or so. She told me that it was OK as long as you stood outside.

As the guy finished spraying and I was in the process of locking my door so that I could leave, even more people became concerned for my safety and tried encouraging me to go stand in the smoky street with them. I once again explained that I was locking the door so that I could leave and that they should do the same. They looked at me like I was crazy so I gave up. My better half and I hopped on the motorbike and went to the mall for a few hours (as we had planned when we heard they were going to spray). It was painful to see so many mothers and children standing on the street choking on the poisonous fog. Sometimes you can't help people help themselves and it's hard to swallow.

Part of me wanted to slowly explain to them that bug poison is ALSO PEOPLE POISON!!! but there was no point as they wouldn't listen. People here sometimes have the attitude that since somebody here is a foreigner that they simply don't understand. They were under the impression that I didn't know what was going on.

So I did the only thing I could, drive away and leave them to choke on the smoke.

Kepada Kepala Kelapa

2010-08-21T17:49:00.007+07:00

In Jakarta, the best way to repair something is the cheapest way possible. This is not up for debate. Nowhere is this more evident than on the roads. It is not uncommon to see a newly filled in pothole revert back to its original pothole state within a week. This is caused by the repair men using the cheapest cement or tar/stone mixture that they can find in order to save money. A week later, they will repair the same pothole using the same material (in order to save money) yet again. This trend will sometimes repeat itself for weeks on end. Eventually, it will be filled in with a slightly more expensive material after the first 6 tries to save money (huh?) failed miserably.

Messed up roads are something that you just learn to live with in Jakarta. I never pay much attention to them except when it's raining and they turn into invisible land mines. Anyways, just a few days ago, I encountered a new groundbreaking, innovative and Eco-friendly solution to the pothole dilemma: fill them with COCONUT SHELLS.

To give you a little background, coconut shells in the tropics are always green on the outside, not brown like the ones you see in the supermarket as a child. There are stalls that sell a drink called es kelapa muda which literally translates to ice coconut young. They cut the top of the coconut off and put a straw and a spoon inside. You then drink the sweet young syrup and eat the white meat from the inside of your coconut glass. It is a refreshing drink, not to mention it looks like something they would drink on Gilligan's Island.

The es kelapa muda place around the corner from my place came up with a great way to kill 2 birds with one stone. They put their empty (young) coconut shells in the pothole directly in front of their establishment. Well, let me tell ya, that pothole has been filled and stayed filled for the last 2 weeks. The shells have defied the odds and have managed to outlast the average cement pothole repair. These people could be onto something huge. There are a LOT of empty coconut shells around town. Instead of tossing them in the ever growing garbage heaps, why not toss them in a nearby pothole? It is definitely better than having axle breaking holes in the road.

If you've never had an es kelapa muda, I highly recommend it. But make sure to have it in the coconut, not out of a plastic bag. After finishing your refreshing drink, have a look around for the closest pothole. If you are inclined to do so, throw it in and jump on it a a couple of times. You will be helping the environment and providing a civil service.

Use your kepala and reuse a kelapa...

Pimpin' Ain't Easy

2010-08-14T12:18:00.009+07:00

For the last couple of years, there has been some controversy surrounding who has the rights to broadcast English Premier League football in Indonesia. This story is a bit long and complicated but I will try my best to explain it. If anything I say is incorrect, please clarify by leaving a comment. To the best of my knowledge, this is how the story goes...

Football is broadcast on the Singapore based ESPN/Star Sports and also occasionally on local Indonesian television stations. Many years ago when I first moved here, it seemed that virtually every EPL game was televised live on both cable and antenna TV. The beauty of this was that the large majority of Indonesians who couldn't afford the luxury of cable television could watch their favorite teams in their own homes or at the local food stall.

Starting in 2007, football rights were sold to the highest bidding cable company. The first cable company to win was ASTRO TV which is a Malaysian company. What this meant was that you could only watch EPL football if you had an ASTRO subscription. Anybody who had INDOVISION or FIRST MEDIA (called Kablevision back then) found out the hard way that football games were not televised and alternate programming was shown on ESPN and Star Sports during those times. The shows showcasing goals and highlights of the week were also blocked.

With their backs against the wall, many people subscribed to ASTRO just so they could watch football. My roommate at the time was British and insisted that we get ASTRO so I went along. Every weekend, we had the luxury of having live football on TV. At one point close to the end of the season, the Indonesian government stated that ASTRO had committed some kind of violation and had their cable license revoked pending the payment of a fine. Coincidentally, this happened 3 days before arguably the biggest match of the year between Chelsea and Manchester United. Everyone who had ASTRO was shocked to turn on their televisions to find black screens on every channel. A couple of bars around town had foreign satellite channels and were able to broadcast the game live. Apparently, they had lineups to get inside. By the next weekend, everything was back to normal. I assume that ASTRO paid their fine.

The next August, as the new EPL season was about to start, nobody had the rights to broadcast EPL football. If I recall correctly, only pubs with foreign satellite had games televised for the first couple of weeks. After that, an Indonesian minister was gracious enough to start his own cable company called AORA. They now became the new "it" cable subscription as they had landed the big prize. They also landed full coverage of the Beijing Olympic games. Needless to say, I didn't watch a single second of the Olympic games that year. The only thing wrong with AORA was that they only offered a total of 8 channels. This is a far cry from the 50 plus channels that most subscribers offer even for basic cable. What this meant was that if you wanted real cable TV and EPL football, you had to subscribe to 2 cable providers. A few hardcore fans did that, the rest did like I did and caught the odd game at a bar and neglected to watch most games that season.

To the Indonesian branch of ASTRO, this was a kill shot. Once EPL football was no longer available, many people simply stopped paying their bills despite having 1 year contracts. A sign of how desperate they were was that it took nearly 4 months of our household not paying the monthly bills before they shut our cable off for good. Nowadays, you still see the odd ASTRO satellite dish here and there. Mostly, they are forgotten relics of past supremacy.

Fast forward to the beginning of last season. I considered subscribing to AORA when I heard that they had expanded their channel line up. When I looked into it, I found out that they had expanded from 8 to 12 channels and decided not to subscribe.

I was expecting another year of living in relative football oblivion when a surprise email appeared on my screen one Friday night in August. The email stated that INDOVISION (hands down the most popular cable company in Indonesia and the one I subscribed to since no others were available in my area) had won the rights to broadcast EPL football for the upcoming season. It turned out to be a wonderful year of football watching for yours truly as they not only had every game broadcast live but all of the football highlight shows and match replays shown midweek on EPSN/Star Sports. A local television station called TV ONE also had some games televised live. The only downside to this was that Champions League games and highlights were not shown on ESPN/Star Sports version of Indovision. I didn't watch a single Champions League game that season since they are mostly broadcast live at 2 A.M. local time and were not replayed.

Lo and behold, here we are on the verge of the kickoff of yet another season of EPL football. The first game between Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur is tonight at 6:45 P.M. local time. As of yesterday, the Jakarta Globe reported that a deal had not yet been reached as to who would have the rights to broadcast EPL football on ESPN/Star Sports. Apparently, the price tag has doubled from last season and negotiations are still in progress. There is no better negotiating tool than a ticking clock. TV ONE has stated that they will not show EPL football as they cannot afford it. You can read more here

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/just-hours-from-kickoff-english-premier-league-fans-still-in-the-dark/391133

By now, you may be asking yourself why I keep unnecessarily adding ESPN/Star Sports to sentences or why I refer to 'Pimpin' in the title of this blog. Well, as I see it, here's the major problem with all of this.....

When one subscribes to a cable company (INDOVISION in my case), one is paying for the right to view certain channels. If a subscriber opts to get a movie package or a sports package, they are paying for the right to watch HBO or Cinemax or ESPN/Star Sports, not to be sold selective programming of those channels. They are NOT paying for the right to watch specific programs only available to specific cable providers (this is called PAY-PER-VIEW everywhere else in the world). What I mean by this is that if you subscribe to HBO, you are paying the cable company for the right to watch their programming, which they in turn have paid HBO for. In this case, people are paying for the right to have unlimited access to any program shown on ESPN/Star Sports, which is NOT based on the cable provider. The programming schedule and content for CNN (for example) is the exact same on any cable provider in Indonesia 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

I know that this is a little confusing as it took me time to wrap my head around all of this. Let me give you an example that may help to clarify what it is they are doing with EPL football:

If you subscribe to HBO, you are paying to view the content of that channel. To make an analogy, this would be similar to if somebody sold the rights to a single cable company to have the exclusive right to broadcast "The Wire" or "The Sorpanos" or "Band of Brothers" which are all HBO shows. So if you had INDOVISION, you would be able to watch these shows on HBO but any other cable provider would have these shows blocked out on HBO.

Or, this would be like if you could only watch "Spongebob Squarepants" on the INDOVISION version of Nickelodeon.

To me, this is like a middle man jumping in to re-sell (or pimp out) a service that you are already paying for in the first place. There are certain channels such as FX and FOX Channel which are only available on INDOVISION or ASN which is only available on FIRST MEDIA. In those cases, you are paying for exclusive access to those stations.

In this case, ESPN/Star Sports (which every cable provider in Indonesia has access to) is paying the EPL for the rights to broadcast their football matches. This means that you should be able to watch this content regardless of what cable provider you have as long as you subscribe to those channels.

I don't know if it is ESPN/Star Sports out of Singapore or some branch of the Indonesian government who is doing the middle manning but I know who I'd put my money on if I had to make a bet.

So as of now, I am keeping my fingers crossed and patiently waiting to see if I will get to watch football from the comfort of my own home later on this evening....

We Don't Care

2010-08-12T16:58:00.003+07:00

Recently, Carefour (the big box everything in 1 store store) inexplicably moved their hand held shopping baskets. This confused yours truly to no end. They used to be at the entrance right next to the shopping carts. I almost never get a cart because it makes it that much harder to navigate through the crowds and I can't fit a cart's worth of groceries on my motorbike. Anyways, there I was staring at hundreds of carts and not one single little red basket.

My first instinct was that they had run out so I wandered all the way around to the checkout counters (it's farther than you think) figuring that I could swipe one from there. When I got to the checkouts, there weren't any. I looked around for another couple of minutes before finally asking someone.

The friendly checkout girl told me that they should be at the entrance. Thinking that I maybe had had a few too many drinks the night before, I sauntered back towards the entrance (completing the loop). Once again, no baskets. I asked the employee closest to the entrance. He pointed towards the inside of the store. I walked until I reached the electronics section and still no red baskets.

Against my better judgement, I asked one of the guys standing by the televisions. I got the answer I expected "di depan" (at the front/entrance). Convinced that this could not be true, I asked the next guy I saw in the housewares section. He pointed towards the back of the store and uttered some word that I could not understand. The next guy I asked pointed and said the same word.

This trend continued with the next 3 employees pointing in the same direction and uttering the same word. Verification is good in a place such as Jakarta as misinformed answers occur way more often (I've been told that this is because it is more polite than saying "I don't know") than you might think. By the time I got to the last employee, I reasoned out that they were saying: fabric (same as English) as in the fabric section.

Finally, I spotted them! A big fat stack of red shopping baskets in the very back of the store in the very back of the fabric section. Maybe if I had been functioning on a higher level that day, I might have thought of looking in the fabric section without assistance.

A few days later, I visited a different Carefour with similar results. Luckily, I knew what to do when I saw that there were no baskets at the entrance. This particular branch seemed to be much more organized as they had placed the baskets halfway to the back of the store and only 50 meters from the entrance.

First Media, we don't need it do we?

2010-08-08T12:40:00.003+07:00

After a recent move, I decided that I would like to switch from Indovison cable television to First Media cable. The main difference is the channels that are available. Indovison has the rights to EPL football (which is a topic for another day) but First Media has a new channel that plays ice hockey.

Being a big hockey fan, I drooled at the chance to get to watch NHL hockey in the tropics. I called First Media and asked them when they could come to my house and install cable/internet. They asked for my name, address, postal code and where exactly I lived on my street. After a brief pause, they informed me that First Media is not yet available in my area. This was shocking to me since I live in a somewhat posh area (but not in a posh house).

They informed me that if someone else on my street got First Media, then I would be able to get First Media at my house. I asked how it would be possible for that person to get it since they would be told that it is not available on their street unless someone else on the street gets First Media first. Confused? So am I.

So now it looks like there will be no hockey at home for me this October. I don't quite know how a cable company can stay in business with a limited coverage area in the small hamlet of Jakarta. But what the hell do I know?

Ace in the Hole

2010-08-01T16:37:00.003+07:00

If you've never been to an Ace Hardware store and happen to live in Southeast Asia, I highly recommend visiting one. It is quite the spectacle. The name, however, is misleading. Captain Obvious would say that "a hardware store sells hardware" but in this case, it just isn't so. They do have a small selection of hardware and a decent selection of tools. If you're looking for something like drywall plugs and screws or a piece of wood or an extension cord, you are in the wrong place.

I went there wanting to buy a pack of drywall plugs with matching size screws. After 30 minutes of searching (it is pointless to ask an employee, it will take them twice as long as you to find it), I finally found them next to the plumbing accessories (there's no point in asking why they were where they were). They did have a couple of packs, one was 3 mm and the other was 15 mm. Those are extremely small and large sizes in case you were wondering. They also had a couple of packs of screws but no plugs or packs of screws that come with matching size plugs. This got me thinking; maybe they should change their name.

I propose that Ace change their name to Ace Lifestyle store. During my screw search, I saw an ultrasonic cleaner (high frequency liquid cleaners that are of no use for 97% of the world's population), a popcorn cart, velvet ropes with poles, buffet trays and aquariums but not much in the way of hardware.

After a brief conversation with myself, I decided that I couldn't justify spending $500 on a popcorn cart and left the store. I wondered if they sold drywall plugs at the popcorn store but figured they didn't. I stopped at the supermarket to buy food (captain obvious!) and while wandering down a random aisle, I stumbled upon packs of screws WITH matching size drywall plugs in the same box.

So if you are ever in Jakarta and are in a situation where you need some kind of hardware, do the prudent thing and go to the supermarket. If you happen to be looking for a DJ mixing board, a hamburger shaped flash disk or a full sized popcorn cart, do what Captain Obvious would do and go to the hardware store.

The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking

2010-07-16T10:09:00.005+07:00

After a lengthy visit back home to see family and friends, I've finally made my way back to Jakarta. Being away from here gave me some perspective and time to think about the pros and cons of living in a place such as this. This inspired me to make a list. The list can't be all inclusive since it would be endless and maybe a bit racy. Feel free to leave comments if you agree/disagree or have your own ideas.

Pros of living in Jakarta:

1) 24/7. You can buy pretty much everything whenever and wherever you are. This includes food and beer. There is ample selection of food at any time of day/night and some bars stay open all night or long enough that you don't care that it's time to go home.

2) Cheap cigarettes. I was paying upwards of $8 for a pack of cigarettes back home. In Jakarta, a pack is around $1. You can also smoke pretty much anywhere in Jakarta (don't know if this is a pro or not)

3) Great Food. I enjoyed having really good, properly made pizza back home. There were a few other delicacies that I was happy to have but the novelty of that wore off quickly. Jakarta has excellent food from all over Asia and it is possible to eat fresh food pretty much every day. A lo

t of food back home is processed. The portions back home are massive! I'm glad to be back here eating rice and less than 2000 calories in one sitting.

4) Endless Summer. It's always hot in Jakarta. It rains a lot but the temperature is pretty static. There aren't 10 degree fluctuations from day to day which makes it a little easier to handle. You also know what to expect. It's either going to rain or it isn't.

Side note: Fahrenheit is stupid and you sound stupid when you use it...

5) Transit. There are countless ways to get to where you need to go in Jakarta. These include multiple types of buses, taxis, motorbike taxis, and bajajs. The best part is that all you need to do is go stand by the road and they will come to you. Back home, if someone wasn't driving, I was pretty much stranded or forced to take a very expensive taxi.

6) Cheap & Easy. Everyday items are dirt cheap in Jakarta. Street food is abundant and inexpensive. Everyday items don't break the bank. Gas is around 45 cents a liter and never cha

nges. Lighters don't cost $1.79. Beer may be the only exception to this.

7) Bidets. If you've never used a bidet before, you don't know what you are missing. Nobody uses toilet paper in Jakarta. Every toilet has a spray nozzle sitting next to it for you to spray you know what. It is 1000 times cleaner. Toilet paper is horrible. This is hands down the number one thing that I missed about Jakarta when I was back home. It's a kind of difficult thing to explain so I didn't bring it up much when I was there.

Cons of Living in Jakarta:

1) Traffic. Saying that there is traffic in Jakarta is kind of stating the obvious. I kept making the mistake of overestimating how long it would take to get to places back home. 10 km drives only take 5-10 minutes, not 2 hours. It was funny to hear friends and family back home complain about the traffic when there were more than 5 cars at a street light.

2) Endless Summer. Yes, this is a pro and con. I don't miss cold weather but things never change here. The sunset is at the same-ish time throughout the year. Christmas doesn't seem so festive and nobody really appreciates a beautiful day in Jakarta. The late sunsets back home were awesome. I often forget people's birthdays or important days since it's hard to make a distinction between May or November in Jakarta.

3) Music. Most bars/restaurants in Jakarta all play the same music. I know the lyrics to more pop songs than I would like to. When a band is playing at a place in Jakarta, I often leave since the sound mix is horrible. Often, the high notes from a guitar make your ears twitch a bit. I saw quite a few excellent local musicians playing on a random night at random places back home. I also saw a great concert and could have seen a couple more if I had the money. The radio back home has countless stations that play countless genres of music.

4) The Internet. On a good day in Jakarta, the Internet sucks. It took a trip back home to make me fully realize this. I felt like an old man who was fascinated by being able to watch youtube videos without waiting for them to load. You can watch pretty much anything instantly and can download at shockingly fast speeds. I get pretty excited when I can download at 50 kb/s in Jakarta.

5) Lack of Green Space. There aren't really any parks in Jakarta and not many people have back yards. People back home were starting to think that I was weird because I often wanted to walk to places nearby or hang out in their backyards all day long. This makes me feel bad for my dog more than anything (kasian-jing).

6) Stranger in a Strange Land. No matter how long I live here or how well I learn the language, I'll always be a 'bule'. This will never change. It took me years to realize this. Back home, I'm just another face in the crowd.

7) No Family. I've made some lifelong friends here but friends come and go. Family is forever. Seeing my family, especially my sister's baby made me realize that. Wish there was some way that the other side of the world wasn't so far away. I guess Skype helps.

No matter what way I slice it, I'd never be content being here nor there. So I'll just have to look on the bright side of things. The durian may be spiky and smell bad but there's some good stuff in there.

Bylaws Will be Bylaws

2010-04-24T12:29:00.003+07:00

In Jakarta, abiding by the law basically means that you can break the rules if there isn't a policeman in sight. Nowhere is this lawlessness more obvious than on the roads. You can observe a traffic violation every couple of seconds by simply standing on a street corner. Oddly, the police appear to spend more time directing traffic than they do actually fighting crime. They even have kiosks set up at major intersections. During peak rush hour (which is more like a crawl), police direct traffic at said major intersections. Their main purpose is to ensure that vehicles of all shape and size actually STOP when the light turns red and don't GO until the light turns green. Hard to believe but true. The cops have finally had enough. They are planing on leaving the comfort of their kiosks to do something about it.

For 20-ish days, the police are clamping down on traffic violations, especially those committed by motorbikes and buses. Some of these violations include not wearing an approved Indonesian safety standard helmet, driving the wrong way down the street, motorbikes not having headlights on in the daytime and buses stopping in places where they shouldn't. They plan on issuing fines for these violations. If they do actually fine every one of these infractions, they will be rich as dozens of these infractions occur every minute.

What I find odd isn't that they are fining people for blatantly obvious violations but that they are actually letting people know that they are doing this. So much for the element of surprise. I'd like to personally thank the Jakarta Police for notifying all media outlets of their intentions. In all fairness, it is good that the poor and underprivileged have fair warning so that they can avoid fines. But why would they actually make it a point of telling people that it is only going to be for 20 days? Wouldn't it be wiser to say that they are going to run this crusade indefinitely? Thanks to their warnings, I have started driving with my headlight on during the day and temporarily stopped making illegal u-turns. Dare I say that this clampdown really has no teeth and is nothing much more than a money making scheme?

I'm assuming that after the 20 day crackdown, things will gradually go back to normal and that people will carry on with their bad road etiquette. I'm all for making people wear helmets that actually provide protection but I just don't see this happening. Recently, there are a lot more child size helmets for sale. I won't bother going off on a rant about the irony of dad wearing a helmet and the kids not. I commend the police on making an effort to protect people from themselves but maybe 20 days just isn't enough.

One more thing, without getting into details, I was once detained for not having my passport on me. At one point of my detention, the police put my friends and I in the National Drug Headquarters "war room". There on the bulletin board in plain sight was a map of Jakarta with push pins and strings leading to cards that detailed where and when they planned on doing drug and/or immigration raids. Not one of (ahem) Jakarta's finest sitting in the room with us seemed to mind that we were essentially reading their secrets. Had any of us known any drug dealers etc, we could have been able to tell them exactly when and where they were coming. I can't help but repeat myself: so much for the element of surprise!

You can read more about the clampdown here:

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/city/police-launch-crackdown-on-traffic-safety-violations/368916

All you motorcyclists out there remember to turn your light on in the daytime for the next week or so....

Cracktown

2010-03-26T09:23:00.004+07:00

Any expat who lives in Jakarta for long enough will inevitably ask themselves "Why am I living here?" without really having a justifiable answer. Jakarta is an extremely polluted, overcrowded, noisy, smelly, gridlocked hell hole. It is nearly impossible to walk down most streets due to non-existent sidewalks and pollution. The sky is almost constantly filled with smog. Traffic can turn a 10 minute drive into a 2 hour excursion. The concept of being outdoors is mostly a concept despite the endless summer weather. Garbage fires are a daily sight. Noise pollution makes it nearly impossible to find peace and quiet. There isn't much to do besides drink beer, walk around a mall or eat. There is constant harassment when walking "hello mister" "taxi mister?" "buy something mister". Heavy rain causes floods and obscene traffic jams. Getting out of town is so exhausting that many don't even bother. These factors lead me to wonder: Why would anybody of sound body and mind choose to live in this urban nightmare?

The answer is simple: Jakarta is extremely addictive! I've lived here for years and often have my "Jakarta days" when I can't take it any more and just want to scream. Many other days, I find myself mesmerized by the sights and sounds of the city. Even though most of the city looks the same, there are endless wonders to behold.

I often have 45 minute taxi rides that are extremely entertaining thanks to the odd sights and near traffic accidents one can observe. No matter how many times I see a bus with 50 young boys standing on the top pounding a drum in adoration of their favourite football club, I get excited. Seeing the odd way people make money such as dressing in drag or having a monkey ride a bicycle still get my attention every time.

Motorbike trips are even more exciting. Just the other day, I saw a man carrying what looked like a marmot tied to a string on the side of his bike. Often, you can go places on a motorbike that cars can't go which allow you to see what I like to call the real Jakarta. Small shacks with barefoot children playing in the streets, old men enjoying a cheap coffee and a cigarette, impromptu streetside markets selling items that range from bras to avocados. Sometimes, I take the long way to a destination just for a little excitement or to find out where that road leads to.

These factors lead me to believe that Jakarta is as addictive as a city can be. Even getting lost can be exciting. When friends visit each other, one of the first topics of conversation is often the voyage to the meeting place. Whether it be about the traffic, getting lost or a strange sight, it is always interesting to see or hear. Years ago, I thought that this weird fascination would wear off with time. It hasn't worn off yet and I doubt it ever will. The next time you find yourself asking "why the hell do I live here?", try to imagine yourself back in the town you are from and what the consistent dullness and predictability of daily life is like. It just may make you appreciate this uninhabitable hell hole a little more.

Lead by Example

2010-03-12T15:04:00.004+07:00

For the last few days, my house has reeked of smoke since somebody nearby has been burning leaves and trash. A little know fact about trash is that it disappears if you burn it, kind of like the poop spray does in that movie 'Envy' ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0326856/ ). After a day or 2, I got really annoyed with the constant stench of burnt plastic fumes filling my house. I went for a bike ride to see where the fire was coming from. It turns out that the garbage fire was being stoked by the pillars of the community: the local Mosque. I can understand when a poor man burns his garbage because he doesn't know any better or doesn't have the money to pay to get it removed but I surely would think that the pillars of the community would know better. Knowing when I'm beaten, I didn't say a word. I went home, lit some incense and pretended that burning plastic fumes were good for you. Today's blog is short and sweet but there's really nothing more to say except thank's for the nagchampa incense, Mr. PG.

Smoke 'em If You Got 'em

2010-03-08T18:35:00.005+07:00

Jakarta is probably 20 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to smoking bylaws. That makes this city a smoker's paradise. Smoking is allowed virtually everywhere. A smoker in Jakarta is a free man/woman. Suddenly, the walls have been torn down, you can smoke at a bar or club without having to go outside. Smoking in restaurants is pretty much always an option. Some have very small non-smoking areas right next to the smoking area. It is often socially acceptable to smoke inside people's houses and cars. It is not uncommon to see a father driving his car with the window cracked slightly while his 2 children sit in the back. The downside to this is that it makes one smoke much more than they normally would.

The complete social acceptance is only one side of the coin. The other is the cost of cigarettes. A pack (depending on the brand) generally goes for close to $1 USD. They are so cheap that I don't care if I lose a pack or if friends bum smokes (or fags) from me all night long. People often share the packs of cigarettes littering a table at a bar as it is often difficult to remember which one belongs to you. This is a far cry to my back home smoking days when you would guard your smokes with your life. These factors are great for a while until you realize that you've been smoking and occupying smoke filled rooms for years on end.

The whole "smoking is bad for you" phenomenon hasn't really caught on yet in Indonesia. Young children may tell you that it's bad but the adult population doesn't really buy it. They don't think that it's good for you but they may believe that it's bad for you the same way that Coca-Cola is.

Smoking is what men do in this country. Indonesian cigarettes are often a mixture of tobacco and cloves. They have a sweet smell and crackle when smoked. One company called Gudang Garam proudly advertises itself as a MAN'S cigarette. They have these over the top television commercials where people are skydiving in Patagonia or white water rafting. Whenever they complete their physically demanding activity, they sit down and light a Gudang Garam. Another brand of cigarettes called Dji Sam Soe was invented as a cure for bronchitis. They are extremely large, dense, heavy cigarettes. It takes a REAL man to finish just one.

For years, I thought that this whole smoking culture was very liberating. The only places I've seen where not smoking is actually enforced are schools and fast food restaurants (probably because they are from America). There are smoking bylaws in many places but they are not enforced. Hospitals only allow smoking in certain areas. Many other public places will have a "designated smoking area" that is out in the open. This means that the smoke can travel all around a room but you can only smoke in one corner of said room. Now, I've decided that it's time to quit. The liberty of smoking has now become very repressive. It is almost impossible to go anywhere where people aren't smoking. If you go out to a bar or club, your clothes will smell like smoke for days. I never realized how smoky it can be in some places until I wasn't smoking in them.

I haven't done that well with the quitting so far but this time I have a long term plan to stick with it. I'm sure you've heard that one before. The short term quitting is not that difficult. The long term becomes difficult when you walk into a room and half of the people in there are smoking. I have friends who have quit numerous time and usually fall back into it slowly. I predict that smoking in public places in Jakarta will not happen much before the year 2020 and that it will take another 2 years to actually get people to stop. In the meantime, I'll try to endure this one time paradise that has turned into my personal hell.

Just When You Think You've Seen Everything...

2010-02-16T17:06:00.006+07:00

Anyone who has spent as little as one day in Indonesia can see that safety is not really a priority. The best example of this is the way people drive. It is complete chaos. I've lost count of how many times I've seen people narrowly avoid death or injury. Many seem oblivious. The hazards can go way beyond the road but the road is always nearby.

It is amazing to see people walking beside (or sometimes in the middle of) a road. They barely blink when a motorbike narrowly misses them as it zooms by. It is also not uncommon to see someone (especially a child) run into the street without looking or to run into the street and then look to see if there is a vehicle approaching. News Flash: There is ALWAYS a vehicle approaching!

Years of observing and asking questions have led me to a few conclusions.....

First of all, there are so many vehicles and so few sidewalks that people are used to vehicles driving dangerously close to them as they walk down the street. I guess it's kind of like getting used to garbage smell if you live next to a dump.

Secondly, there seems to be more of a reactive than preventative approach when it comes to safety. This means that nothing is really considered unsafe until someone actually gets hurt. I've had a quite a few of these instances where I've tried to warn someone of impending danger only to be told that it isn't dangerous since they've never seen THAT happen before. My favorite instance of this was a toddler left unattended in a kitchen with a pot of boiling water directly above where he was playing. I made a fuss and the parent considered me to be a little bit strange.

Third: motorbike helmets are NOT for protecting your head. They are worn to avoid being pulled over by the police for not wearing a helmet. This leads having to pay a "fine". I've seen people turn onto a small road where there aren't any police and immediately pull over to take off their helmet. Ironically, I've seen way more accidents on small roads than on big ones. Sending an SMS while driving a motorbike also isn't dangerous.

Fourth: hard hats and shoes of any kind are not necessary at construction sites. One of my favorite memories is sitting in a taxi in front of a construction site. A guy from the 5th floor threw a bucket to the ground without even looking. Another guy, barefoot, was walking by on the ground. The bucket fell right in front of him. He stopped, looked up, smiled and waved at the guy on the 5th floor and carried on with his day.

Fast forward to this afternoon. I was sitting in a food stall enjoying an afternoon coffee. The woman who runs the food stall was in the corner cutting some vegetables. Her daughter, who was around 3 years old, was sitting next to her and had a knife of her own. It was a small but very sharp knife. At first, she was poking at a small onion in her other hand. How she avoided cutting herself is beyond me. Then, with her mother watching, she got up and started running around with the knife. Then she started swinging wildly at a cat in front of her. She was swinging so wildly that she almost cut herself a few times. Eventually, she swang too close to the cat's tail and it ran away. Then, she started throwing the knife on the ground and then picking it up by the blade.

I couldn't stand the thought of this little girl cutting herself so I left. The alternative would have been watching or having a very confusing conversation with her mother about the safety of knives. It would've been like the "Who's on first?" conversation......."That is dangerous, she could hurt herself!" "What do you mean, she plays with the knife all the time." "But she could cut herself very badly." "But she has never cut herself before?" "The knife is sharp, if she cuts herself, it could kill her." "But she didn't cut herself!"....... and on and on and on.

One more observation...

Knives, scissors, jagged metal or any other sharp metal object you can think of is NOT dangerous and no care is needed when handling them. This is especially true when walking with one of these items in your hand.

Just when I thought I've seen it all: A toddler playing stabby-stabby with a knife while mom proudly watches. As I'm writing this, it occurs to me that I have no idea what the Indonesian word for dangerous is. First thing I'm doing after finishing this blog is looking it up and memorizing it. Not that it will do me much good.

Army of One

2010-02-07T10:51:00.007+07:00

As mentioned previously, I recently added a dog to my home. Choosing the breed of dog, among other things, took a lot of thought and planning. Having a dog in Jakarta (in my mind) can be somewhat unfair to the canine. Dogs can't really run freely, it is hard to take them for a walk unless you live in a complex. Humans can barely walk down the street without risking death. Parks or open areas are more of a concept than reality in Jakarta. It is often very hot, not good for the health of certain dogs. All of these factors made me decide on a Beagle. It is a medium sized dog who is adaptable to climate and will be healthy with moderate exercise. I've seen people have dogs such as golden labs who live in a small confined area or a husky living in the tropical heat. To me, this makes about as much sense as having a pet dolphin living in your backyard swimming pool.

The biggest implication of having a dog in Indonesia is the Muslim factor. Dogs are considered to be dirty and dangerous animals who are to be avoided at all cost in the Muslim religion. If any part of a dog touches a Muslim's body, they are supposed to immediately wash themselves thoroughly. Generations of this belief (and cautionary tales) have also led to many Indonesian Muslims believing that dogs are extremely dangerous animals who will attack and bite without provocation. The term anjing galak (vicious dog) is often the first thing that many Muslims say when a dog is present. Actually, calling somebody an anjing is a very big insult in Indonesia. The only worse insult (to the best of my knowledge) is to call someone a pig.

The irony of this is that Jakarta street dogs are the most docile creatures you've ever seen. They seem to care less if you approach them. They never really bark or show any signs of aggression. Most of their lives are spent quietly foraging through garbage bins. Where I come from, a wild dog is a VERY dangerous (often rabid) animal who is not to be approached under any circumstances.

The other thing I find odd is the diligence that Muslims show when it comes to not having contact with dogs. Like any other religion, some rules are adhered to more than others. I've known people who will openly break Muslim laws such as drinking alcohol, never praying, having pre-marital relations or showing a lot of skin in public. These same people will NEVER touch a dog or eat pork. I always envision these people dying and facing Muslim judgement day (very similar to the Catholic version) at the gates of heaven. The angel would be there checking the sins of one's life. The record would show that they never prayed, lied to others, stole and cheated, often took mind altering substances, cheated on their partners but never once touched a dog or ate even a single morsel of pig. Would that get them into heaven?

The only time I never get much attention in public is when I have my dog with me. People will point and shout "eeee anjing", cross the street to avoid contact and generally panic. I went jogging earlier this week and decided to take my puppy along for the first time. I had him on a leash and kept him very close to me when we passed by people. We came across a trio of very muscular Indonesian military guys who were jogging towards us in the opposite direction. They were wearing camouflage pants and tight shirts that highlighted their physique. They looked like guys you would not want to mess with. As we got close to crossing paths, 2 of them saw the dog, jumped and did a ballerina like tippy toe dance to avoid the dog. After I stopped laughing, I wondered what was going through their minds. Anybody who has ever seen a Beagle before would never describe them as scary. Did they think that this friendly cute looking dog was going to break his leash and mercilessly rip their faces apart for no reason? I honestly have no idea. The same person would not even blink if a gigantic rat ran in front of them.

The upside of this mindset is that no uninvited guest will ever come inside your house if there is a dog present. This is good as some simple minded people think that if you are an expat that you must be a millionaire and have a house filled with riches. I sometimes have to put the dog in his cage when certain friends or family members of my girl come over. They will stand outside and wait until the dog is securely in his cage. Then they will sheepishly enter and make sure to stay clear of the cage. I sometimes lose my patience after a couple of hours and tell them that they have to accept that this is the dog's house too and that it isn't fair to lock him in a cage all day long. Some agree and sit with their legs up on the couch and scream if the dog gets too close. Others leave and never come back.

You could fortify your house with razor wire on the gate and guards holding rifles but it wouldn't come close to invoking the kind of fear that a dog would. Hopefully, nobody will catch on to how harmless my puppy really is. Be careful, he might slobber on you a little or chew your shoe. In the meantime, I feel much more secure knowing I have my army of one on my side at all times.

How Many Million Days?

2010-02-04T07:40:00.003+07:00

Being the responsible adult that I am, I forgot to pay my internet bill last month. In Indonesia, if you miss a bill, they usually cut you off. If you don't pay your electricity bill by the 20th of the month they shut your power off by the 25th. This is exactly what happened to my Indosat M2 internet connection. In all fairness, I did pay it before the end of the month but I was still too late. My lame excuse is that they didn't send me an invoice last month. They emailed me invoices every month for over a year and then they suddenly stopped. Paying the bill is the easy part, the hard part is trying to get them to turn the internet back on.

On Tuesday, I tried calling the hotline number they have on their website. After playing trial and error with the "press 1 if you are a customer" "press 3 if you are wearing shoes", I finally found a way to get directly connected with an operator. Not so much, I was put on hold while waiting for an operator and after 5 minutes of soft rock and the voice telling me to continue to wait, the voice told me that they were too busy to help me and disconnected me. I tried 4 more times with the same result. Later in the day, I tried again. Finally, I got through. The operator was very friendly, a little too pleasant and polite since all of these pleasantries were costing me money as my cell phone credit was slowly depleting. After a few minutes of confusion, she told me that she was going to put me on hold to go check my file. She repeatedly requested that I don't hang up. Why would I hang up? It took me 5 tries just to get the operator on the line. 2 minutes later, the soft rock was interrupted by the dreaded beep beep beep telling me that my phone had run out of credit. Seconds later, against my will, my phone hung up.

Later that night, I decided to try to call them again on my house phone. The alternative was a very far drive to one of their outlets followed by a 1 hour wait in line. I tried the same path I had memorized to get through to an operator. This time, when I "pressed 3 for network coverage", there was the following message "IM2 is experiencing technical difficulties in.....DKI.......Jakarta and......................Bali........This problem should be fixed in..................twenty-one......million.....six hundred.....thirty-four......thousand and.....seventy.....five.....................days.......thank you for your patience." I laughed so hard that I had to hang up and listen again to make sure I wasn't crazy. Same message. I called again and made my better half listen since I knew she wouldn't believe me. Perfect, all I had to do was wait 59 271 years and my internet connection would be restored.

After I stopped laughing, I tried again, this time successfully getting through to an operator. We went through the same scenario as last time. After putting me on hold twice for more than 5 minutes each time, he told me what I already knew; my account had been blocked since I hadn't paid my bill. I explained to him that I had indeed paid my bill on the previous Friday (4 days earlier) and that the reason I was late in paying was that they had forgotten to send me an invoice. He asked me if I had provided them with evidence that I had paid my bill. Evidence? "Yes, you must fax evidence you pay bill, mister" he replied. I told him that I didn't have a fax machine in my house (who does?) and asked if I could instead email the e-banking transaction. He told me that this was not possible and that it must be a fax. I asked him how many days it took to process payments from the bank and he said 2 days. I told him that it had been 4 days since I paid the bill. He once again asked me for evidence. I decided to turn it back on him. I explained that they didn't send me an invoice and I still managed to pay my bill (3 days late) and despite that, they needed evidence that I had paid my bill. I started thinking like Seinfeld and asked him if he could fax me evidence to prove that they had sent me an invoice. He took me seriously and said that they couldn't since I didn't have a fax machine. I kept persisting that in this day and age, it was absolutely ridiculous that I was going to have to go an internet cafe, get my bill printed and then fax it to their accounts department and then call another 5 time to get an operator to go through a pile of papers trying to find my "evidence". He told me to wait and not to hang up when he put me on hold. So I waited and waited and waited.

More than 10 minutes later, he had a solution. They were going to un-block my account for 2 hours so that I could go online and email them the evidence that would prove that I had paid my bill. I agreed and went online to email them my evidence. An hour later, another guy from Indosat called me to inform me that they had unblocked my account. He asked when I planned to send my evidence. I informed him that I had sent the evidence via email 45 minutes ago. This really confused him. He put me on hold for a couple of minutes. Finally, he came back and asked me if I was sure that I had emailed the evidence. I insisted that I had. He said that my internet should be back on by the next morning even though, at that moment, he had no evidence. He asked if there was anything else that he could do for me. I requested 2 things 1) Please send me evidence to confirm that you have received my evidence that I have paid my bill 2) Please send me an invoice every month. He asked why I hadn't received my invoice. I replied that I didn't know. He asked if I had changed my email address. I hadn't. He said that I must have done something wrong in order to not receive my invoice. At this point, I was tired of talking on the phone. I agreed that I must have done something wrong and apologized (for hacking into their billing system perhaps?) and told him that I didn't require any further assistance.

The only good thing to come out of this is that i found out that the monthly price for my internet package had dropped by almost Rp. 20 000. I'm hoping that they provide me with evidence to show that I overpaid on my last bill and that they owe me Rp. 20 000. If they don't, I'll survive I guess. After all, paying an extra Rp. 20 000 is worth not having to wait nearly 60 000 years to get my connection restored.

The Human Doctor vs The Veterinarian

2009-12-31T11:16:00.004+07:00

A few months ago, I decided to buy a dog. I don't want to get into the social implications of having a dog today, that's for another blog. What I do want to talk about is the professionalism and thoroughness dog's veterinarian displayed.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine had a baby. The father joked that they had taken their newborn son to the vet's for some injections in order to save money. This got me thinking of Homer Simpson in the freak show when his manager says: "Homer, nothing's more important to me than the health and well being of my freaks....I'm sending you to a vet." I mentioned this quote to the father and we started discussing how good vets were in this country (he has 2 dogs) and how our dogs got better treatment than we could ever dream of in Indonesia.

Anybody who has lived in Indonesia for any amount of time soon realizes that the medical system and doctors themselves here are a joke. Their main priority is to make money and to sell you as many drugs as possible. Personally, I try to avoid going to the doctor unless it is completely necessary. Otherwise, you end up with a handful of prescription medication (mostly useless), lighter in the wallet, and not cured of your ailment. In Indonesia, the best treatment available is to fly to Singapore and go to a hospital there.

The average trip to the doctor, even one in a good hospital, often results in getting a bag with 4 or 5 different kinds of pills. The doctor will spend 1 minute examining you and they don't bother to ask you any questions about how you feel or what your symptoms are. If you are not seriously ill, they will assume that you have the illness known as *INSERT NAME HERE*! They write you a prescription with 2 words on it which magically turns into 5 types of pills at the pharmacy counter. They will also advise you to come back if the medicine doesn't make you feel better so that they can sell you some more medicine.

Having such a large arsenal of pills reminds me of my grandparents having those pill containers with the days of the week helping them remember when to take which one of their numerous prescriptions. I usually look up the scientific names of the medication on the Internet and realize that most of them are useless in relation to my illness. One time, I went to a doctor because I couldn't hold food down. They prescribed me ulcer medication, a pain killer, anti-inflammatory pills, antibiotics and Mylanta tablets (which I could have bought for 5 times cheaper at the store next to my house). I ended up throwing out most of them and taking the Mylanta while waiting my illness out. I doubt the pharmacist even checked for any kind of drug interaction.

The veterinarian on the other hand asked me countless questions about my dog's eating habits, sleep patterns, bowel movements and general attitude. Without prompt, she advised what do if this or that were to happen. She then asked if I had any questions (which I did) and thoroughly answered every one of them. She also showed me how to clean my dog's ears and mentioned that my dog could have optional surgery to correct an eye problem. Note the word optional. She said that if I didn't want my dog to have the surgery, she could prescribe some eye drops (also optional).

The vet then gave the dog his scheduled round of injections, told us when we would have to return for more injections, and gave us a very reasonable bill. They gave me an emergency number to call and told me where to buy ear cleaner (if I wanted). She could have lied and said that she had given the dog 6 kinds of vaccinations and I would have been none the wiser and paid the bill.

I walked out of the office wondering why I had never received treatment even close to that good in Jakarta. This made me wonder if I should start visiting the vet when I feel unwell in order to get a sensible prognosis and accurate prescription. The next visit to the vet 3 weeks later further fueled my theory. The doctor remembered everything about my dog, inspected his ears to see how well I had been cleaning them and knew exactly much he had grown since last seeing him. Again, she gave me sound advice and answered my questions about taking my dog on a trip to the beach. I wonder if my puppy dog has any idea how good he has it. I fear that, despite my youngish age, my dog may outlive me if I ever have any serious medical problems and that he will be properly diagnosed way before I ever will.

Thinking about all of this is giving me a headache. So I am going to do what Indonesian people do when they feel ill: pakai obat (take medicine). Panadol, the Indonesian version of Advil is know to cure anything from acne to migraines to yellow fever.

The sign says you got to have a membership card to get inside

2009-12-21T11:05:00.005+07:00

The other day, I had a vision of how to make more space in my home. This inspired me to make a trip to the local Makro. I guess you could call Makro the Indonesian version of Costco. They sell everything you can imagine and have discounts for buying large quantities. On this particular day, I was after furniture; more specifically a desk and bookshelf. They have a very large and confusing selection of furniture. It takes some serious investigation and pondering to find the right thing at the right price.

After an hour or so of sorting out the prices (items often have the wrong price) and the quality, I had selected the items I wanted to buy and put the boxes on my trolley. I chose a desk for Rp 130 000 which was larger and of better quality than the desk that cost Rp 250 000, go figure. I also bought a small bookshelf for Rp 85 000, a desk chair for Rp 170 000 and a folding table for a whopping Rp 500 000 (around $50).

Confident that I had made the right decisions, I proceeded to the checkout and gave them my Makro card. Despite the 3 or 4 VISA credit card logos that I could see, I decided to be prudent and ask if I could use my VISA card. The cashier apologized and informed me that only electronic items could be paid with VISA. I asked why they had a so many VISA signs posted around the store if they didn't accept it. She replied that they did accept it, only for electronic items. I couldn't resist so I asked (hypothetically) if I were to buy a fan if I could use my VISA? Yes! What if I bought a few light bulbs? NO! What if I bought a $50 table and a bunch of other furniture that was way more expensive than many electronic items? No, only for electronics. I found this shocking since Makro is the kind of place where it is not uncommon to see people with 2 or 3 carts full of items spending hundreds of dollars.

Dejected, I gave up and agreed to pay debit. The computer screen came up with payment options. There was an American Express, VISA, and Master Card option. I asked if American Express could be used for any item in the store? Yes! Master Card? Yes! Visa? Only electronics! The irony of this is that there are probably more American Citizens than American Express cards in Jakarta. VISA is the undisputed champion of credit card popularity in Jakarta.

I was then distracted by a checkout chair fiasco. When I selected the office chair, there were signs with prices but no tags on any of the hundreds of office chairs on the floor. The cashier sent a fellow employee on a quagmire of a mission to find the price of the chair. The guy came back to the register 3 times and not once did he listen to me telling him that NONE of the chairs have tags on them. Finally, the cashier asked me how much it costs. I replied that it was Rp 170 000 and she rang that price in. By this point, I had had enough of Makro and just wanted to go home.

Since I don't have a car, we had to get the items delivered to our house. This is one of those things that can go very smoothly or go very badly. I once had a friend who had to wait 3 weeks to get a refrigerator delivered from Carrefour. The driver was out on another delivery so we had to leave our trolley with the security guard and hope and pray that it would arrive that night. Luckily, the truck showed up at our house a couple of hours later. He brought the items in, thanked us and was on his way.

He didn't check the bill to make sure that all the items were there and it's a good thing that he didn't. I knew pretty much exactly what I had bought anyways. Upon further inspection of the bill after he had left, I realized that they had forgotten to charge me for the $50 table. Guess I got a free table I thought, there was no way I was going back there. I found it odd that they forgot to scan the largest and most expensive item on the trolley, especially after the whole chair incident.

My conscience was telling me that it was not good to get a $50 table for free but there was no way I was dragging the box back to the store. As karma would have it, (or even Steven for you Seinfeld fans) my refrigerator stopped running later that night. It appears that I need a new compressor, which is expensive. So the money I saved on the table went right into fixing my fridge. Luckily, I hadn't bought large quantities of frozen food when I was shopping at Makro.

One last note: I found out that a good sized chunk of ice costs Rp 500 (around 5 cents) so keeping things cold until the fridge gets fixed is not a problem.

Hot & Humid Humbug

2009-12-10T12:25:00.013+07:00

One of the great things about living in Indonesia is that many different religions are recognized. This means that people get Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Catholic/Christian holidays off. The best of these are the non-Muslim holidays. Since close to 90% of the country is Muslim, these days are merely a day off work. Despite this, I find it almost impossible to get into the Christmas spirit. For most, Christmas is just another day off or as is the case this year: a long weekend.

Unless you are Australian, I think it is pretty much impossible to equate tropical hot weather with Christmas. For a hoser like me, it's not REALLY Christmas unless there is snow on the ground. I've given up hope that it will ever snow in Jakarta (one drunken night, I convinced myself that a volcanic eruption somewhere in Java could trigger a freak weather event causing it to snow) but every year I hold out the slim hope that this December will be more Christmas like. It never happens. With the exception of a few tacky mall displays, you'd never know that Santa Claus is coming to town.

The first year I was here, I stepped into the Kelapa Gading mall and asked a friend why they had Christmas displays up so early in the year. My friend gave me a strange look and informed me that it was December 15th. Aside from that, I didn't see a single festive Christmas decoration or festivity that year. I started asking around and realized that even the Christian/Catholic (there seems to be some kind of huge divide among them as if they are Muslims and Jews in the West Bank) people who do live in Jakarta had a Christmas dinner and went to church. There was no gift exchange, no decking the halls and worst of all.....no Santa! Sure, the kids and adults know who Santa is but he doesn't make it to Jakarta most years.

As of today, it is 2 weeks until Christmas. The calendar and my upcoming time off are the only indicator that the 'holiday season' is upon us. Somebody asked me if I would put up a tree. I thought about it and it just seemed depressing in the sense that it would remind me of what I was missing. One of my friends put up a small plastic tree and lights on the wall last year (he paid a lot of money for the tree). The lights ended up being a permanent fixture in his living room because they 'really tied the room together'. The plan for this year is to do the Christmas Eve dinner buffet with friends at a fancy hotel and then go home. Christmas day will probably resemble a Sunday more than anything as far as atmosphere and motivation. I'll go to sleep early and put out milk & martabak, but hope is fading that there will be any presents under the palm tree when I awake on Christmas morning.

Selemat Hari Natal

Goat For Sale

2009-11-28T12:37:00.009+07:00

Yesterday was the celebration Idul Adha for Muslims. It is the 2nd most important day on the Muslim calendar after the ending of Ramadan. Basically, people buy a goat (or a cow if they are rich) that is to be killed at the local mosque in the morning. The meat is then divided up and given out to people in the community who are less fortunate. This is to have empathy for those less fortunate than you. To the best of my knowledge, that is how it goes. The peculiar thing about this is the massive influx of goats.

About 2 weeks before Idul Adha, impromptu goat pens begin to appear on the streets. They are usually in empty lots or on a football field or at the mosque itself. It is quite a sight to behold, the whole city is suddenly filled with little goat farms. There's even the odd goat wandering the street. Aside from the occasional chicken, you NEVER see any farm animals in Jakarta. The only thing I've ever seen that even compares to this is when people start selling pumpkins in corners of parking lots or at gas stations back home before Halloween. This thought makes me wonder how much goat prices fluctuate. I assume they reach their peak the evening before (as would pumpkins) and then prices do a nosedive the next afternoon. This reminds me of Homer Simpson in March regretting not selling his pumpkin stocks in October.

The friends I asked said that a goat could be had for 1 million rupiah ($100) or less depending on the size and health of the goat. They advised me to let them buy the goat for me if I wanted one since I would be charged a higher price since I'm a foreigner. I started thinking that I could buy one and keep it as a pet and call it 'bing (kambing means goat in Indonesian). My lady quickly put an end to any thought of that happening. She said it would be rude. I never thought of it that way and quickly explained that I was only joking (or was I?). This got me wondering what would happen if people wanted to kill a bunch of goats back home. I'm sure that there would be legal and social problems what with all of the rights that animals have these days. I prefer no to dwell on it too much and instead look forward to having some goat kebabs or goat curry which people are giving to anybody who will take it.

For many years, I've meant to get up early in the morning to witness (and photograph) the animal sacrifices. Sadly, I always end up putting more value into sleeping in since the chanting from the mosques starts at 6 p.m the night before and doesn't stop until sunrise. I always end up missing it. By the time I stroll outside, the blood has been washed off the streets and there is a lot of cooking going on. Goat meat is always available in Jakarta but I only eat it a couple of times a year with the exception of Idul Adha when I end up eating way more than I should. I wonder how much laxative they sell the day after. This is one of the only times that people get backed up. Usually, with all of the spicy food and unsanitary conditions, the bowel problems are the opposite of needing a laxative. So have yourself a goat kebab if you can and enjoy the day off, I did.

Mangnificent

2009-11-23T17:21:00.004+07:00

When I first came to Jakarta, I felt as if I was living in some kind of Eden purely based on the abundant selection of tropical fruits. Mangoes, pineapples, bananas and papaya were readily available and cheap. Many of these fruits are my favorites but my heart truly belongs to the mango. Life couldn't get any better I thought. My diet at the time consisted of up to 4 mangoes a day. It didn't matter because they were so cheap. The price just seemed to keep dropping and dropping until it got as low as Rp. 5000 (50 cent;) for a Kilogram. It was pure bliss that was soon to be shattered.

I still recall that fateful day when I went to the local fruit stand near my house. The fruit seller was out of mangoes. No problem I thought, I will get some from the mango cart when it comes by. The mango cart never came. The next day, I returned to find the fruit seller still didn't have any mangoes. I asked how long until he would have more and he said never. A few things were lost in translation but the point was clear: mango season was finished. This was a hard pill to swallow.

Mango season? Surely this could not be so. This is a tropical country after all. They only have 2 kinds of weather: rain and no rain. I asked around only to find that my worst fears were true. I would not be able to eat mangoes to my heart's content every day. What made this news even worse was that mango season would not return until the following September. It was December at the time. My whole world came crashing down. Not only could I not eat mangoes every day but the time that they were available would be a little more than 1/3 of the year.

This had led me to have an even greater appreciation for mangoes. Throughout the years I have found out that pineapples, bananas and some other fruits are always available and don't have a season. Unfortunately, mangoes do have a season and it is short lived. Currently, we are in the Indian summer of mango season. All I can do is just keep enjoying them and hope the mango cart is still there the next time I run out.

Bag it

2009-11-08T12:48:00.003+07:00

I get a good laugh every time I go shopping at any big box retail/grocery store such as Carrefour, Hero, Macro or Hypermart. They have a severely flawed bag check policy which I constantly dispute. Any outside bags are supposed to be checked at the entrance. If I have my laptop in my backpack, I refuse since I don't trust someone making $50 a month not to steal my $1000 laptop. Whenever they stop me and request that I check my backpack, I say that I don't want to. They reply that I HAVE to and I (without fail) point to one of the numerous women entering the store with a gigantic designer purse dangling off her shoulder. They explain to me that they are allowed to bring those bags in. I reply that if they aren't going to make them check their bags then I'm not going to check mine. They usually give up at that point and let me and my backpack in the store.

Usually, I play the oblivious expat card when entering the store. Earphones in, I walk in listening to music pretending not to hear the person at the entrance politely uttering "Mr, excuse, mister, hello...". Sometimes they follow me, sometimes they don't. On one recent trip to Macro (similar to Costco), one store employee in the light bulb section (light bulbs are often locked up in this country) insisted that I check my bag. I pointed to a couple of women with large purses and a maid carrying a very large diaper bag. She told me that those were allowed but backpacks must be checked. I couldn't resist so I proceeded to demonstrate to her that if I wanted to steal something, I would have to remove my backpack, kneel on the ground, unzip said backpack, insert the item to be stolen, re-zip the backpack, stand back up and put the backpack on again, all of which would be VERY obvious to one and all. I then (mime) demonstrated that if someone with a large purse wanted to steal something, all they had to do was slightly move the arm that was holding the purse and shove something inside. This would take but a second and would be very easy to get away with. This whole demonstration was lost on her but she gave up and agreed to open the light bulb safe and sell me a precious bulb.

The way that the bag check system works is pretty straightforward, you give them your bag, they give you a ticket with a number and a corresponding number is put in a cubby hole with your bag. One time, I went to claim my bag and they had lost their corresponding number. I kept insisting that the green bag on the bottom was mine but they wouldn't give it to me. I told them to look inside and that I could identify the contents. This was insufficient. They got the head bag department person and eventually the store manager to come speak to me. After refusing to fill out a 2 page form and pointing out that it was the store's incompetence and not mine that led to this problem, they gave me my bag. They never did ask me about the contents and I realized that I probably could have gotten any bag on the shelf I wanted with enough persistence. Sometimes, you have to put your trust in people but when it comes to the precious contents of my backpack, I will never trust the severely flawed Jakarta bag check system.

Half Assed

2009-10-13T18:07:00.006+07:00

After spending a long time with very slow and sometimes nonexistent Internet from Indosat M2, I decided to make the big plunge and get Speedy home Internet. Upon arriving home from work, I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that the Internet was very fast by Indonesian standards. For once, things worked out just perfectly. A few friends told me that they had Speedy and that it was very slow. How well your Internet works seems to be geographic and there is no rhyme or reason to it. Lo and behold, things were not as perfect as they seemed.

The "technician" ran a wire from where the phone jack in the living room to the room that has the computer. He did a great job of neatly attaching a phone jack to the wire and plugging it into the modem. What he didn't do such a good job with was the placement of the wire. It is common practice here that wiring gets neatly attached to the wall/ceiling from it's source to where it is needed. This applies to telephone wires, cable or air conditioning wires. He decided that it was too much work and simply left it on the floor. It went from the phone jack, behind the fridge (source of heat and fire hazard), across the entrance to the kitchen, around the back of the television, under a couch, across the back door entrance, into the office (couldn't close the door without crushing the wire), and into the modem. In the initial excitement of trying out my new Internet connection, I failed to notice that I had almost tripped over the wire when entering the office. This really blew my mind, it set a new precedent for incompetence that would be hard to ever beat. I knew it was too good to be true.

When I asked the maid why the technician hadn't attached the wire properly to the wall. She said she asked him the same thing and that he said that it was "susah" (too difficult) and left. There isn't even an analogy that I can conjure up to put in perspective how ridiculous this is. Western standards of doing things are hardly ever met in this country but this was just plain stupid even by local standards.

I got on the phone with Speedy who told me I had to call Telekom (phone company). I called Telekom and they told me that I had to call Speedy. I refused and started throwing a fit on the phone (it was all an act to get something done). The operator then agreed to help me and said that all she could do was file a complaint with my local Telekom office. She said there was no promise of when (or if) they would come to fix it. I asked for the local Telekom office number so that I could call them directly and she told me that she didn't have it. I then went off on a tirade about how incompetent the whole Telekom company was and said that I was going to cancel all of my services with them. Once again she said there was no promise of what would happen. This country has taught me great patience but there are rare times when the only way to get something done is to yell. This, in my opinion, was one of those times.

After I got off the phone, my lady started giving me grief about how I had to be nice to people if I wanted them to help me . One hour later, 2 technicians appeared at my door. My lady didn't say a word but definitely saw the sinister grin on my face and knew I was right for once. These 2 guys were top notch, they couldn't believe that the other technician had left the wire as it was. They promptly fixed the problem by using a table with a chair on top as a makeshift ladder. It is not uncommon for somebody to show up at your house to let's say fix your roof and not have a ladder. Note to self: buy a ladder. Anyways, they flawlessly finished the whole job in 15 minutes and one of the guys even helped me with a computer problem that I thought was an Internet problem. To their pleasant surprise, I gave them both some "uang rokok" (cigarette money) and thanked them for doing such a great job.

Despite the incompetence, I must say that speedy Internet is great and that I highly recommend taking advantage of their current promotion if you happen to live in Jakarta. If a technician named Rizky shows up, tell him that I said that he is the laziest bastard on the planet. If you live on the other side of the world, screw you and your lightning fast Internet! I tested my connection today and it can download at 0.86 Mbps and I am absolutely thrilled with this speed.

P.S. Upon doing spell check, I learned that "Internet" is spelled with a capital I. I have no idea why, it's not a person's name or a country. Maybe it's just really important.

Rat-a-tat

2009-10-12T17:42:00.005+07:00

Rats have completely taken over my house. A few weeks ago, I noticed that there was a hole in the dirt section of one of the cinder blocks on the ground in the front of my house. I figured a rat had done it and put some metal screen material over it. Problem solved I thought. I didn't really pay attention much after that since I thought the rat had found a new place to lay it's head. Well, a few days ago I had a look and realized that there are now 10 or so holes and that rats have even chewed through the screen material!

I went to have a look because I started to notice rats coming in the back courtyard of my house and even saw 1 or 2 inside the house. Jakarta rats are humongous an

d not to be taken lightly. It is pretty terrifying to see one inside your home. I prefer to make lots of noise and try to scare them back outside. Having rats outside your gate eating garbage is a normal sight around here but I have to draw the line somewhere.

So I went outside one night

and watched the holes. I saw 2 baby

rats and 1 large rat enter the holes in less than 10 minutes. Time to take matters into my own hands I thought. Despite having a very large and healthy rat population, rat traps are pretty much impossible to find in Jakarta. There is poison and these sticky papers that the rats get stuck on. Poisoning them isn't such a great idea as you will have the stench of death in and around your home for a long time. The sticky paper works

to an extent if you manage to put it in a place where a rat happens to step on it. Once it does get stuck, you can either let it sit there dying for days on end or kill it yourself. I wouldn't have a problem with killing a rat or 2 if it came down to it but I'd rather not if given the choice.

A friend of mine recommended using a special kind of poison that dries out the bodies and eliminates the stink. I put out one packet in the back and one in the front of the house. They were both devoured within 30 minutes, must be some tasty poison. So I kept an eye out the next day for dead rats. I didn't see any but I didn't expect to since they go to hide when dying. Come that evening, there were even more rats entering the hole (I tried filling the hole with water but it just wouldn't fill up as the water was exiting somewhere else). I made a loud noise to try and scare them out and 3 other large rats hiding in the corner of the yard scurried away and scared me half to death. Later that night, rats were literally clawing at the front door of my house trying to get inside.

I'm now at the point where I don't know what to do. There are potentially countless rats living directly below where I lay my head to sleep and they will just keep multiplying. I'm mulling around with doing one massive Jim Jones style poisoning but I'm afraid that even "dry" poison will not mask that stench. Any ideas?

Got it Maid

2009-10-07T14:38:00.004+07:00

So like many people in Jakarta, my maid left to "pulang kampung" for the Idul Fitri holiday. She left on the 15th of September and didn't return until yesterday. I feared that she would not return and that I would have to once again jump through flaming hoops in order to find a new maid. This coupled with a story I read that proclaimed that 25% of all domestic workers (maids, nannies, drivers) don't return after the end of Ramadan made me start to worry. They are often unable to come back because of family issues or lack of funds. Could you imagine me, a grown man, doing my own dishes and laundry? I did do many of these domestic chores while my maid was away without thinking about it. Laundry (especially ironing) is high on my list of things I don't like to do so there was quite a lot of ironing to do when she did return. She didn't reply to any of our text messages or calls and then suddenly appeared at our house 2 days ago profusely apologizing and hoping that her job was still available. I didn't let on how happy I was to see her and told her that she could indeed continue to work for us.

Even with my upbringing and years of doing chores for myself, I actually took my maid for granted for a little while. It is not uncommon to hear people complaining about their maids or drivers in this town. It sounds extremely arrogant but really it isn't much different than complaining about a bus driver or a bad waitress. I would love for one of my friends from back home to eavesdrop on one of these conversations and be appalled by the complaints of improperly cooked food, missing socks, poorly mopped floors or how she never cleans the toilet without being asked. I'm sure that they would have great empathy while walking around with baby puke stains on their shirts because they haven't had time to do the laundry and need to get dinner cooked first.

Despite having somebody do your dirty work for you, there are still moments of frustration. My most memorable was years ago when I bought an electronic coffee grinder only to have my maid diligently wash the whole thing after I had used it once. This pretty much destroyed the grinder and ended up being the first and last time I used it. Luckily, she unplugged it before washing it. I tried very hard to hide my disappointment and told her it was OK. She begged me not to fire her and I explained that I would not fire her for something like that. She was shocked and confused I think. Over the years, many people have told me that maids like working for expats because they do outlandish things such as give them national holidays off, increase their salaries and let them do whatever they want at night. I used to get very confused when I first moved here and my maid would ask me if she could go outside and hang out with her friends in front of the house. When I told her she didn't have to ask, she told me I was a very nice man.

The events of the last couple of weeks have been a real wake up call for me. I'm going to give my maid a big hug when I get home tonight and tell her I appreciate her. On second thought, maybe I won't do that because it could come across the wrong way. Going against the advice given to me, I gave her a Ramadan bonus (which is customary) and paid her whole month's salary despite her being gone for almost 3 weeks. People have warned me that if I am too nice that she will stop doing a good job with cleaning because she'll think I'm a pushover. I'm willing to take that risk if it means that I don't ever have to do ironing as long as I live.

Sorry it took me so long to write on here but I've been busy doing chores. I promise to write more often in the future.

Running on Fumes

2009-08-25T07:17:00.007+07:00

Yes, Ramadan is here and it inevitably takes over daily life in Jakarta among other places. Yesterday was the first work day of Ramadan. Many people adjust their working hours or daily habits accordingly in order to make their lives easier. In case you don't know, Muslim people fast during daylight hours in Ramadan. They get up at 4 a.m. to eat breakfast before the sun rises and then don't eat or drink again until after sunset. I have great respect and empathy for the people who do this (ironically, Ramadan is all about feeling empathy of those who are less fortunate) and must accept it. The thing that I have been wondering over the last couple of days is how Ramadan effects the overall health and safety of Jakartans. I don't mean health as in starving themselves (there are special rules for pregnant women and the elderly etc) but more as in mishaps.

I couldn't help but notice that many of my co-workers who were fasting weren't really on the ball by the time the afternoon rolled around. Who can blame them? I wouldn't be on the ball if I didn't have a coffee or 2 within my first couple of hours at work. This got me wondering about people who have jobs that could be hazardous or require great attention. It is like the waiver for so many prescription drugs: DO NOT OPERATE HEAVY MACHINERY. Well, if one were fasting for an entire day, is it safe for that person to be driving a gigantic truck or a bus in the afternoon hours? As I was driving home in the afternoon, I had to swerve and pay attention more than normal (normal traffic in Jakarta is anything but) due to an increase in careless driving. After I got home, I wanted to immediately go run some errands since everything goes crazy in the late afternoon. I saw a woman driving a van on the wrong side of a street soon after leaving my house. She almost hit an oncoming motorbike until her passenger tapped on her shoulder. I don't think the motorbike even noticed. I saw many similar scenarios during the rest of my drive.

This got me wondering if there ends up being more workplace and/or vehicle accidents during Ramadan. Does anybody know of any such statistics? Obviously, a construction worker or a bus driver can't use fasting as an excuse not to do his job. This, in my mind, would create a dangerous situation. Taxi drivers already work 20 hour shifts. How safely can they drive without nourishment? Some jobs cater to this and allow their employees to adjust their working hours so that they can start and finish work earlier than normal. In most cases, these are office jobs which aren't very dangerous to begin with and probably do little more than avert the odd paper cut.

After I had finished my errands and was on my way home, traffic had reached the point of near insanity. It was close to 5 p.m. and everybody was frantically trying to get to where they wanted to be in order to break their fast at approximately 6 p.m. Nobody wants to be stuck in a traffic jam alone in their car when it is time to eat for the first time. This is usually a celebratory event where people get together and have a feast of sorts. Needless to say, my knuckles were pretty white when I did get home due to the increased urgency of exhausted drivers. I saw many opportunistic folks who had set up little table selling snacks for the fast break. The funniest opportunistic thing I saw had to be the Mc Donald's employees taking orders on the street. They were standing at an intersection (in Mc Donald's reflective vests for safety) and taking orders from cars. I assume that these people would get home and soon be greeted by the Mc Donald's delivery man with a combo of their choice ready to eat at sunset. Ronald Mc Donald and his pals are proud to be part of your religious culture.

I would like to close by saying MOHON MA'AF LAHIR BATIN to all of my Muslim friends and wish them a happy and peaceful Ramadan. That being said, I BEG you not to break your fast by eating Mc Donald's or KFC!

Merdeka

2009-08-18T12:07:00.003+07:00

This past weekend was unprecedented as there were so many reasons to celebrate......

1) It was a long weekend

2) It was a non-religious holiday on Monday

3) Monday was Indonesian Independence Day

4) It was the last weekend before the fasting month of Ramadan begins (on Friday)

Needless to say, there were many neighbourhood parties and lots of friends meeting up for barbecues or to have a drink in a pub or club before they close or become very quiet during Ramadan.

I had an interesting time going to a friend's house for a barbecue on Sunday. In the chaos of collecting all of the things I had brought with me in the taxi, I managed to leave my small camera in the taxi. It became apparent to me that I had lost my camera when Blue Bird Taxi called me to ask me if I had lost a camera. I told them that I did and the driver drove back to my friend's house and delivered the camera to me. It was EXACTLY like the Blue Bird commercial. I thanked the driver and insisted that he take some money even though he refused many times before taking it. The irony of this is that I had not given the driver a tip earlier because he didn't have change. He could have kept the camera and I would have just mourned it as being gone forever. I guess Blue Bird Taxis do have the upstanding reputation they claim to have. The only reason I use them is that they are the only semi-reliable taxi that actually shows up at your house in less than 45 minutes when you call them. Lately, they have been arriving at my house less than 5 minutes after I call them. The average is around 20 minutes I'd say.

The rest of the weekend was good. I had a little too much fun on Sunday and didn't really manage to make it outside on Independence Day. The whole reason I had my small camera with me in the first place was to catch some festive photos for my blog. By the obvious lack of photos in today's blog, you can figure out how many photos I managed to take.

In an update to my cat math blog (See July), 3 new kittens joined the flock last night. Their mother seemed to had left them sitting amongst the plants after giving birth. They whimpered literally all night. I was secretly hoping the rats would eat them just so I could get some sleep but I wasn't so lucky. I'm very tired today but that's the way it should be after such an epic weekend, isn't it?

Grave Diggers

2009-08-12T15:28:00.003+07:00

The month of fasting known as Ramadan is fast (pardon the pun) approaching. One tradition here is for families to visit the cemetery and pay their respects to dead family members. They pour rose water and rose petals on the plot, say a little prayer and are on their way. This same process is repeated at the end of Ramadan. Any cemetery at this time of year is an odd site for anybody from a western nation. There are many advantageous people selling rose water and rose petals, too many food carts to count, not to mention people selling books and glow sticks right in the foot path of the cemetery. This is not the worst of it by any means.

I was shocked to find out that most Jakartan families do not actually own their burial plot, they rent them forever, literally. It is not uncommon for numerous family members to be buried in the same plot. This I believe is for cost and lack of space. Some cemeteries in Jakarta are the biggest chunk of green space around for days. Here is the screwed up part: Family members must pay $50 or more every year to the cemetery or they will lose their plot. I'm not sure if they dig up the old bodies or just throw a new one on top but that is the deal; pay or lose your "eternal" resting place. It is also customary to give the workers at the cemetery a little tip to make sure that they cut the grass around it and brush the leaves off every so often.

Sadly enough, this is the worst time of year to be forking out cash for constantly cash-strapped Jakartans. The end of Ramadan is not unlike Christmas (er um excuse me I mean the "Holiday Season"). People exchange gifts and whoever can afford to do so goes back home to their village. Obviously, this time of year is not cheap what with all of the festivities and train tickets etc.

This has nothing to do with me or living in Jakarta really but I just thought it was so weird that I needed to write about it. I do like the idea of being buried without a casket, I've always found that a bit over the top but I'd hate to be dug up and left on the side of the road just because my family didn't have a few extra bucks.

So much for "Rest in Peace"

Dancin' in the Streets

2009-08-08T14:00:00.005+07:00

Quite often, weddings or funerals are held in front of a person's home. People completely overtake the street by putting up a makeshift roof and filling the road with chairs or a stage. The front of any home can be transformed into a banquet hall virtually overnight. What is odd about this is that people block the road and set up these structures without any kind of permission. I guess the logic is that everyone will need to use the road for a party at some point so nobody really complains. Today, I woke up to see the house down the road from me setting up for one of these such events. In this instance, it means that I can only leave my house on foot. Anybody wishing to use their motorbike or car will simply have to wait. Today being Saturday, it is not much of an inconvenience. If it were a workday and I was forced to pay for transit to work, I'd probably say well....nothing. in true Javanese fashion, I'd probably just suck it up and pay for a taxi. Luckily, my street does not have much traffic. I have seen streets that have a lot of through traffic get blocked. This can be extremely chaotic and frustrating. Everybody seems to just go with the flow so I do the same.

There was one exception when I couldn't really go with the flow. A couple of years ago, I lived in a different area of town and a different house. The street this house was on had a pretty steady flow of traffic throughout the day. As I was getting ready to go to work, I realized that the house across from mine was setting up for one of these events. I managed to snake my bike through the maze of chairs and made my way to work. Upon returning from work, there was a blockade set up around the corner. An old man standing there told me that I was not allowed to enter. I told him that I lived there and HAD to enter. This man was enjoying playing the cop a little too much and started shouting insults and threatening me. He grabbed my jacket just as I hit the accelerator and he even held on for a few seconds before giving up. There was no way that I was going to leave my bike on the street all night long out in the open almost a kilometer from my house. That night , I managed to get my bike into my gate as there weren't too many chairs set up in the street.

The next day, I inadvertently caused a scene. I opened my gate to take my bike out but didn't realize that somebody had rested a giant floral sign on my gate. Since my gate opened outwards, it knocked over the sign and a few chairs as well. One of the people outside started giving me a hard time. When I pointed out that somebody had rested the sign on my gate and there was literally no exit from my house, somebody else apologized and promised me that it would not happen again. That night, there was no roadblock set up near my house. This saddened me a little as I had envisioned plowing straight through it (and maybe even the makeshift cop) during my drive home. As I got closer to my house a horrendous traffic jam started to reveal itself. There had never been a traffic jam in this spot the whole time I had lived there. Cars were rounding the corner only to hit a dead end of chairs and people on the street. Some of them were trying to turn around, others were trying to park. It was utter chaos. There were dozens of chairs and countless people in between where I was and the entrance to my house. I managed to get my bike parked at a friend's house who lived down the road. Even parking there meant moving some chairs and obnoxiously honking my horn. I know it sounds harsh but the alternative was basically leaving my bike on the street and never seeing it again as it would most likely get stolen. I had to nudge my way through the crowd and hit people with my gate door just to get into my house. As I entered, my roommate was sitting on the couch looking paler than usual. He asked me how I managed to get in and then proceeded to tell me his horrific story of getting home.

Later that night, we found out that it was a funeral for the old man who lived across the street. As it turns out, he was involved with the Indonesian Air Force in some capacity and was a relatively important man. The next day, I didn't even bother trying to get my bike. I simply walked to the road and took a taxi. That night, I once again had to claw and shove in order to get into my own house. 2 days later, the same scenario was still playing out. On returning home from work that night, I had pretty much had enough. The thought of saying something to the people about how "I'm sorry that some old man died but anything more than 5 days of blocking the street, (not to mention the traffic jams being caused on other streets) was pushing their luck" crossed my mind. Fortunately, the street was back to normal when I arrived. The next day, I got my bike from my friend's house and everything went back to normal. The thing that struck me as being the most odd about this whole scenario is that nobody bothered to knock on my door and say "excuse me but we are going to blockade the entrance to your house for the next 5 days or so". Turns out, nobody ever does.

The good thing about that particular funeral is that it makes tents like the one set up on my street today seem to be nothing more than a novelty. The other time when there was a stage in front of my house and people playing very bad and loud music from 10 a.m. until 11 p.m. helped brighten my mindset towards today as well. I can get out of my house and won't have to deal with any old men living out their cop fantasies. I may even go pretend I'm a guest and get a free dinner.

Can I Help You?

2009-08-06T07:21:00.004+07:00

Upon entering any large retail chain store in Jakarta, one of the first things you will notice is that there are so many people working. Sometimes there are more employees than customers. One of my oldest and most vivid memories of this is from Gramedia (a large book store that also sells sporting goods, musical instruments, computers, and stationary). Having made my decision on which book I wanted to buy, I proceeded to the checkout counter. One girl scanned the book and (in an amazing display of multitasking) took my money. Another girl put my book into a plastic bag. A different girl took my receipt from the cash register and handed it to yet another new girl who stapled it to the bag and then handed it to me along with my change. I thanked all 4 (or was it 5?) of them and was on my way. This struck me as being strange, there was no lineup and the store was pretty much empty. As the years went by, this phenomenon has begun to seem normal to me.

Fast forward to last weekend. Against my better judgement, I decided to make a Sunday visit to that big box mega store that sells everything you can imagine known as Carrefour. It was not yet noon so I hoped that it wouldn't be too crowded. Luckily, it wasn't very busy with shoppers. The aisles were, however, very congested with sales reps and Carrefour staff stocking shelves. The times that people choose to do things around here always amazes me. When I was a younger man and worked in a supermarket, we used to stock shelves on Tuesday nights 30 minutes before closing when there was 1 shopper in the store, not on the weekend. All of these people and very large pallets can make some aisles very difficult to navigate. Throw over sized shopping carts and deal-drunk drivers and some aisles begin to resemble the traffic jams outside the store. What does amaze me is the sheer look of surprise on some shelf stockers' faces when they realize that they are blocking access to an entire aisle.

My favourite workers are the product reps. They market a certain product or line of products while stocking said product. I don't really know if they are employed by the store or if they are independent and go from store to store. These reps (almost always female) are usually clad in a blouse/skirt combo outfit that features the logo and colours of the product they are selling. One of the first ones I noticed on Sunday was a Pampers diapers rep. Her outfit made a 24 pack of pampers look like the perfect accessory as it was an exact match. As I turned the corner (don't ask why I was on the diaper aisle), she was busy giving her pitch to a very interested customer. This whole exchange is hilarious to me, no matter how many times I hear it. These reps seem to have no real insight into the products they are hawking, they just state the facts. The (translated) pitch on this particular day went something like this "here we have the 12 pack of ultra absorbent for Rp. 30 000. Next to that, we have the 24 pack of ultra absorbent for Rp. 55 000. On the shelf below this, we have the pull-ups 16 pack for Rp. 42 000....." The woman listening to her sales pitch was hanging on her every word. This absolutely blows my mind as they are reading exactly what it says on the package and pointing to the label with the price below the package. If you were to ask them which diaper would best suit a 2.5 year old male who is potty training, they'd most likely start reading the labels and pointing at the prices again. How could anybody possibly make an informed decision without the sales rep present?

A couple of aisles later, I noticed that 6 packs of You-C 1000 were on sale for Rp. 20 000. There were 3 gigantic signs written in marker that said "MAXIMUM 3 PER VISIT". As I was planning on buying some anyways, I proceeded to grab my 3 packs (savings of 1 dollar, yess!). Right after the first pack entered my cart, the You-C 1000 sales rep literally ran over to me and proceeded to explain to me that they were on sale for Rp. 20 000. I told her that I was sold and that I was going to buy 3 packs. She then pointed out that they come in lemon and orange flavour. This solved the mystery in my mind of why half of the packs are yellow and half of them are orange. I told her that I liked lemon and that was why I was filling my cart with 3 packs of lemon. Diligent in her work, she tried to persuade me to get 1 more pack of orange just to try it. I then pointed at one of the gigantic signs that said "MAXIMUM 3 PER VISIT" and told her that I already had 3 packs. When I did this, she looked genuinely stunned as if she had no idea that you weren't allowed to buy more than 3. After a few seconds of looking like a deer in headlights, she asked me if I wanted to buy some You-C lemon water. I politely declined at which point she pointed out that the water also came in orange flavour. Again I politely declined and made my way to the checkout.

Now let's say for example you wanted to buy something expensive like an air conditioning unit at Carrefour. You would most likely have to search for somebody to help you. If you are lucky enough to find somebody, they will have no knowledge of the appliance in question. If one asks a question about a specific model, they will tell you that that one is bagus (good). If you ask about a different one, you'll probably get the same answer. If you tell them that you would like to purchase a certain model, they may tell you that that model is out of stock without even going into the back to check because they don't feel like doing that. This has happened to me a few times. If you are lucky, you can ask another clerk who will promptly go to the stock room and get you what you have asked for. On one occasion, I wanted to buy a water dispenser. They had around a dozen demo models set up. Turned out that 7 of them were completely sold out and that they had not bothered to take down the floor model or put up any 'sold out' signs. When I asked which ones they did have in stock (after the guy had gone to the back 3 times), he told me that he wasn't sure. If any of the Carrefour brass read this blog, I have a suggestion: Switch the product reps with the clueless people who sell expensive appliances. I don't need assistance when choosing the right bug spray but I may need some from time to time when attempting to buy a washing machine or a refrigerator. The only problem is that I don't think that the guys from electronics and home appliances would look very good in those product rep skirts.

Meatstick Observations

2009-07-30T08:04:00.007+07:00

I got sucked into watching The Wire last night. Be careful with that show, it will take over your life. After spending way too many consecutive hours on the couch, I realized that it was dinner time. Sate (bbq chicken skewers with peanut sauce) seemed pretty appealing to my lazy state and the sate man rolls by my door pretty much every night. After watching yet another episode of The Wire, I conceded that the sate guy was not coming. I could no longer avoid the grumble in my tummy, so I hopped on my bike and drove to the closest non-mobile sate spot. The best part about the sate cart coming to your house is that you don't have to sit and wait for it to finish being cooked. You can just go sit back on your couch and wait for the guy to yell that he has finished barbecuing your dinner in front of your house (love this country!).

So there I was patiently waiting on a plastic stool for my meat sticks. I lit a cigarette and had nothing better to do than look around. My boredom soon turned to amazement. This spot was complete sensory overload. I didn't care how long it was going to take to cook my meats, there was too much to see. In no particular order, here are some of my stool observations.

1) No less than 3 lady boys (transvestites, men who dress like women or whatever you call them) came into the sate tent. You can easily spot lady boys as they wear very revealing clothes. No self respecting Indonesian woman would ever dress that way in public. As usual, they were done up and wearing their shortest skirts. Each one had a speaker fixed on their chest (maybe to hide the absence of cleavage) playing very loud Indonesian dance music. They approached the tables one by one and had the very conservative looking family sitting there give them money. What a great concept. Somebody pays you money to go away.

2) At some point, I lost count of the number of motorbikes I saw with 4 or more people on them. The norm was dad driving with a kid in front of him resting his head on the handlebars. Mom is on the very back with her legs dangling and the younger child sandwiched between mom and dad. It also seems that the more people on a bike, the less likely they are to be wearing helmets. The main reason for wearing helmets in this country is to avoid trouble with the police, not to protect your skull from fracturing. As if that could happen driving a motorbike on the streets of Jakarta.

3) At different times, 5 people walked out of a warung next to the sate shop with a piece of watermelon in a plastic bag (this is dessert). As soon as they got outside, they pulled the plastic bag off and threw it on the ground. This upset me a little until I noticed that there were dozens of plastic bags and lots of other random garbage right in front of me. The logic is that the street is already dirty so what difference is more garbage going to make. A much better alternative is to throw all of those unnecessary plastic bags into the garbage and burn them.

4) A very important looking man came to the sate stand and made an order to be delivered. When ordering, he grabbed the man running the stand by the arm in a domineering kind of way and whispered instructions into his ear. The sate guy looked kind of nervous and agreed to whatever it was that the man said. At this point, paranoia set in and I thought they were on to me for sure. A few seconds later, I realized that I hadn't done anything and that watching The Wire was making me paranoid. I wonder if that man actually paid for his sate in the end.

5) I saw 7 or so people crossing the road to the busway entrance. None of them looked before crossing the street. I guess that they were absent the day they taught that in school. There is hope for the future generation though. I saw a mother (bag of sate in hand) making her young daughter look both ways a couple of times before crossing the street.

Finally, my sate was finished and I set off on my way home. Upon arriving, I decided that I had had enough excitement for one day and was going to lay off The Wire for the rest of the night. One hour after finishing the sate (which was excellent) I watched 3 episodes of The Wire and went to bed way too late.

Cat Math (1+1=6)

2009-07-28T07:50:00.009+07:00

Despite the rampant pollution and lack of green space in Jakarta, there seems to be a lot of wildlife that lives in this city. That is if you can consider cats and dogs wildlife. Other animals one may encounter on a daily basis include rats (very very big ones), cockroaches, tiny lizards (known as cicak), musang (a possum like animal), birds and toads. There is also a plethora of insects including butterflies, flies, dragonflies, ants and mosquitoes. It often amazes me how so many critters can manage not to just live but to thrive in this smog filled concrete jungle.

There seems to be an unbreakable code as far as co-existing with animals is concerned. The one I find the strangest is cats. Nobody under any circumstance will harm or kill cats. This topic came up at my home close to 1 year ago. When I first moved into my house, I was pleasantly surprised to find a street cat or two had been using the space in front of my bedroom window as a litter box for a very long time. So one day I sucked it up, got a shovel and picked up the 100 or more encrusted cat turds and tried my best to sanitize the spot in order to prevent further bowel movements. The extreme cleaning and cat-proofing of the gate in front of my house ensured that they would no longer defecate inches from where I lay my head. Then the cats started using the street in front of my house as a toilet. This didn't bother me much as it was an improvement compared to smelling cat urine while in bed. Then I noticed that one of the 5 or so cats who appeared to live in front of my house or on my roof was pregnant. Sure enough, there were 4 kittens living in my garbage box a few weeks later. This was definitely cute. The idea of adopting one crossed my mind but having an indoor cat in Jakarta is next to impossible. They will inevitably get outside, forage in garbage boxes and rancid trenches only to return to nuzzle against their soon to be diseased owner. Then I started doing cat reproductive math in my head and had the realization that, at this rate, there would soon be dozens of cats living in front of or on my house. When I asked friends about this, they told me that it was very very wrong to kill or exterminate cats and that Jakartans live in harmony with them. I started to ask if somebody would take action if the dozens turned into a hundred and so on. Unsurprisingly, the answer was no. It amazed me that cats could totally take over an entire street or neighbourhood and that nobody would do anything about it (any PETA type disagreeing with me can suck it, go live in the wild for a while and see how "ethically" animals treat you and each other) even if the situation got out of control. Worst of all, the cats stand no chance against the oversize rats on the street, so they can't even act as rodent control.

It is worth pointing out that both stray dogs and cats seem to be very docile and non-threatening. If anything, they are timid. This is the polar opposite of the stray dogs and cats around where I grew up. Dogs don't get much love in this country. They are allowed to roam free as cats are but are considered to be disgusting creatures. I'm not sure if it is purely Muslim beliefs or a mix of traditional Indo and Muslim beliefs but the majority of people here are petrified of dogs. On one of my first excursions with my better half, we went to a friend's house who had a dog. Upon entering the home, my lady nearly had a panic attack at the sight of a small and very friendly dog. She spent most of the night eyeing the dog and jumping on her chair every time the dog got too close. Later she told me that she was brought up to never touch dogs because they are dirty. She also mentioned that she felt fortunate to make it through the night without the dog biting her. This story seems to be very common. A westerner who owns a dog will get some strange or frightened reactions by simply walking the dog down the street on a leash. I've even known friends who have had maids quit because they got a puppy.

My lady has come a long way since then. I have helped her to overcome her fear of dogs but she still worries that some dogs are just waiting for her to let her guard down so they can bite and (assumingly) eat her flesh. Many months after her initial dog reaction, I was at her parents' house when I noticed quite possibly the dirtiest and most foul smelling cat I've ever seen roaming around in their house minutes after scavenging garbage in the street. When I asked if it was worse to have a clean dog or a rank alley cat in one's house, they begged me to promise never to bring a dog anywhere near their house. I agreed as long as they promised to clean any spot where the cat touched in their house.

Fast forward to last night. There are now at least 12 cats that I can easily identify on my street, not to mention numerous kittens. Since the first time I saw kittens in my garbage box, there have been 3 other litters that I've known of. The fourth came late last night. I was awoken by cat howling which lasted for an hour or so and then suddenly stopped. Later I could hear the kittens moaning but was unable to visually locate them the next morning. With my exceptionally good cat reproductive math skills, I predict that there will be approximately 30 cats living in front of or on top of my house by the end of the year. At least the new breed have the decency not to poop in front of my bedroom. Time to get a dog I think.

Technical Difficulties

2009-07-21T07:35:00.006+07:00

My cable remote control stopped working the other day. Getting up to change the channel manually wore off after about 10 minutes. After an attempt to change the batteries proved not to fix the problem, I decided to call the 24 hour call center. Dealing with people at call centers or help desks or whatever you call them can be very frustrating in this country. It was frustrating back in my home and native land but it is exponentially more difficult to get your problem fixed here. The worst part is that you cannot be upset with or fault the voice on the phone because they truly have no idea what is going on. I suspect that this is usually due to lack of training.

The first problem is the language barrier. I consider myself able to carry a conversation in Bahasa but people on phones tend to speak extremely fast. My requests they bicara pelan-pelan (speak slowly) usually either fall on deaf ears or prompt the operator to switch to English with a very limited vocabulary. This can have strange consequences as a bilingual conversation usually breaks out. I will ask a question in English and when they sputter to reply in English, I will re-phrase the question in Bahasa. Sometimes this works, other times it causes more confusion as they can't decipher whether they can't understand what I'm saying in English or if I am actually speaking Bahasa with a western accent. This is my fault as I am in Indonesia and must work to improve my bahasa. I have called help lines before which say "press 2 for English". Quite a few times, the operator has simply hung up on me when I ask if they can speak English as they most likely got stage fright or simply can't speak English.

On this particular day, the help desk was pretty helpful and told me that a technician would be sent to my house. Later that evening, the technician called to inform me that he would be coming after lunch the next day. The following day being Saturday, I was able to sit around and wait for him to show up. He called me again at 9 am to confirm that he would be around after lunch. He called again around 10:30 am to make sure he had the right address. At 4 pm, I called the technician to see if he was coming any time soon. He didn't answer his phone which made me wonder if perhaps he was in the middle of eating his lunch when I called. Once again, I called the help desk to ask whether the technician would be coming today or not. I did not want this question to be answered but rather for the help desk to remind the technician to come to my house. There is sometimes a serious lack of communication or an obliviousness as to what the left and right hand are doing in companies such as these. 10 minutes later, a different technician called and asked for directions to my house. 5 minutes later, he was at my house with another assistant technician and very quickly sorted out that the problem was the decoder box. He replaced the box and told us to make sure to unplug the decoder box every time there was a power failure. This is not really possible as power failures are a regular occurrence and often happen when nobody is home. Despite this, I agreed to do what he said.

With my remote working again, I was looking forward to some channel surfing. It went great for about 10 minutes at which time a blue screen appeared and the decoder box started to attempt to download new software. The download progress stayed at 0% until 5 minutes later, programming resumed. 15 minutes later, it again tried to download for 5 minutes and then resumed to 15 minutes of TV watching and then continued to repeat this cycle. I called the cable company and they advised me to disconnect and re-connect the wire into the converter box. After this failed, I once again called them and a different operator told me to do the same. When I explained that I had already called and tried that, she told me that I may need a new converter box. I told her that it was a new converter box delivered earlier that day. Then she told me to try disconnecting the wire. I told her again that I had already done that and then she hung up on me. Once again, I called and had a similar kind of dialogue. This time, I hung up. Finally, I called one more time and told them that my cable wasn't working and I didn't know what was wrong. They promised me that a technician would come the next day.

A few hours later, I was on my way out of my house when 2 guys on a motorbike asked me if I knew where a certain address was. I was surprised to hear them say my address and told them that this was the place. They informed me that they were from the cable company and were there to fix my problem. It must be my lucky day, they are a day early and managed to arrive before I left. I explained what had happened and they decided that I needed a new decoder box. Once installed they started putting their shoes back on and getting ready to leave. I asked them to stay for 10 minutes or so in case we had the same problem again. They assured me that this was a NEW box and that I wouldn't have the same problem again. I pleaded and even offered them coffee and snacks in a sad attempt to get them to stay (they must have thought I was lonely or something). They told me that they were very busy and had to go. They also pointed out that the cable was working just fine. There is a big problem with people using "it's OK now" as an excuse not to fix things properly. Sure enough, the technician's motorbike was just out of earshot when once again, the decoder box started to attempt to download software. I immediately called the cable company and demanded that they return since they still must have been close. The operator informed me that there were no available technicians until 2 days later and that I should attempt disconnecting the wire from the back of the box.

This morning, I had the Mrs. call the cable company and tell them that we are not going to pay our bill if they don't come to fix this problem. After asking if we had tried to unplug the cable from the converter box, they agreed that they will come later today some time after lunch. I gave specific instructions that they are not allowed to leave until 2o minutes of uninterrupted cable TV time has passed, even if that means locking them in and forcing tea and snacks down their throats. I'm hoping that this problem will sort itself out but I won't be the least bit surprised if takes another week to get this problem sorted out. I also fully expect to be forced to dispute the charges on my next cable bill that may or may not include payment for 3 converter boxes. All of this commotion is making me think that maybe I should find something better to do with my time than watch TV. Maybe I'll turn my television set into an aquarium. Hopefully, this will reduce the number of technical difficulties in my life.

2009-07-19T11:24:00.002+07:00

I am deeply saddened by the bombings in Jakarta this week and offer my condolences to anybody who was killed or injured. There's nothing much to say about this that hasn't already been said so I'll just leave you with a quote from a man named Michael Franti

"We can bomb the world to pieces but we can't bomb it into peace."

Yabba Dabba Doo

2009-07-17T07:33:00.003+07:00

I saw a fire engine on the street for the first time yesterday. Didn't know if they existed in Indonesia. I thought maybe this town was like Bedrock from the Flintstones since most stable structures are comprised mostly of cement. The sad part of this is that the structures that are made of wood are in the kampungs (slums) and a fire truck wouldn't be able to access these areas due to narrow streets. The fire engine appeared to be back to it's station, wherever that may be. I couldn't help but wonder how this massive vehicle would weave it's way through traffic with it's sirens blaring and if people would even consider yielding. I was once stuck behind an ambulance in a traffic jam. All lanes were clogged and we were moving at a snails pace while the ambulance had it's sirens blaring. After moving less than 1 kilometer in 20 minutes, the ambulance turned it's sirens off. As I'm writing this, it has occurred to me that I should write 'buy a fire extinguisher' on my list of things to do this weekend.

Are You Trying to Cool Down All of Jakarta?

2009-07-14T11:06:00.007+07:00

OK I admit that I am a little set in my ways but I am not an OCD person, that's for sure (1234 1234 1234). That being said, I have certain (let's call them) peeves. One of my biggest ones is closing doors. Keeping doors closed in Jakarta is not the norm for many. A lot of people don't even have doors or windows for that matter. Me, I like my doors closed for one of 2 reasons. The first one is that mosquitoes will enter. The second is that opening doors lets air conditioned air escape. I am definitely my Father's son as I can still hear him saying "Are you trying to heat the front yard?" when I'd leave doors open as a child. Well Dad, at least we had screen doors and windows. Screens appear to be a luxury in this country.

The correlation between having a door open (especially at night) and mosquitoes coming into one's house seems pretty straightforward to me. A hundred million or so people on this island don't seem to agree with me on that one. I've lost count of how many times I've closed the front door behind someone entering or exiting my house. When I've tried to explain that mosquitoes live outside and therefore leaving the door open entices mosquitoes to enter the house, I've met many a blank stare. Quite a few of the maids that have worked for me have been given the whole speech about not opening the doors and windows in my bedroom when they clean. They've often replied that the windows must be opened every day in order to allow "angin" (wind) into the bedroom. I've responded that I appreciate them cleaning my room but I'd prefer they not open the windows since I can't stand having mosquitoes in my bedroom when I'm trying to sleep at night. They usually nod and continue opening doors and windows every day since they figure that I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm not sure if you've ever had the pleasure of experiencing a mosquito attack in your bed but it is extremely unpleasant. It usually involves them flying so close to your ears that the buzzzzzzz pulls you out of a dead sleep. If it isn't that, it is sometimes as little as 1 mosquito jumping on your arm or leg biting your repeatedly. For me, this is about as enjoyable as eating glass. I'm sure that Indonesians hate it as much as me but many just don't seem to make the connection between open doors and mosquitoes. The last maid I had insisted on having the doors open all day long, especially while she cooked. Despite my pleading, she insisted that the doors must be open because the house needed to be aired out to prevent it from being "bau" (smelly) inside. She didn't seem to be worried about the extreme heat in the kitchen. Finally, I decided that I would give her good reason to close the doors. I showed her the 12 flies that I had killed the night before (with my electronic mosquito racquet, one of my favourite toys) and explained that these flies likely came from the pile of cat crap in front of the house or an unseen dead rat's carcass. Despite my pointing out how extremely unsanitary it was having flies in the house, (not to mention the annoyance of mosquitoes) she patronizingly told me that she sanitized the house every day and that my house would be dirty and smelly if she didn't open the doors. Luckily, her food was fantastic. I guess it's hard to break old habits, especially if one has lived their whole life in a dwelling with open doors and dozens of mosquitoes and flies inside at all times.

The whole air conditioning thing is a different story. Most A/C's in this country are the wall unit kinds. To the best of my knowledge, central A/C for homes doesn't exist in this corner of the world. These wall units always come with a remote control. The mastering of these remotes is a difficult task for some. I've tried in vein many times to clarify what the word "AUTO" means as far as climate control. These A/C units seem to be pretty good at maintaining a certain temperature. You simply choose a temperature (I like around 24 C) and put the fan on "AUTO". This means that when the room gets cool, the A/C reduces it's power an when it warms up, it cools a bit more. Many people (including the vast majority in my workplace) prefer to set the A/C at 16 C and the fan on full power. This inevitably creates an extremely cold room as the A/C unit will just keep pushing out more and more cold air without end. When it gets too cold, they will then turn the A/C off or start pushing random buttons without bothering to ask the eternal question:"What does this button do?". When it gets really hot 20 minutes later, they will turn the A/C back on at full power while fanning themselves with a paper and so on and so forth. I've given up any attempt to explain this further and instead prefer to laugh at people scrambling to find the A/C remote every 15 minutes.

What I persist with is trying to convince people to leave doors closed when the A/C is running. My workplace is semi-outdoor. This means that there are air conditioned rooms with open air hallways. Therefore, leaving doors open is like trying to cool down Jakarta. My dad would have a heart attack if he came here. I'm not talking about doors being left open for minutes but hours. When attempting to get people to close doors, my requests are usually understood and acknowledged. When they are not, I ask people if they open windows in cars while having the A/C running. The usual reply is "of course not!". This is when I point out that leaving a door open is the same concept only in a larger space. My main reason for keeping A/C air inside is not for the power bill (I'm not paying it at work) but instead an environmental one. It is also of note to point out that Jakarta is prone to the occasional afternoon blackout due to excessive power consumption. Does this encourage people to limit their power use? Of course not. The majority of my co-workers agree that it is a good idea to close doors of rooms with A/C running and try their best to remember to do so. Their best isn't very good. I'd say the average person remembers to close the door 40% of the time. When they see me closing the door for them, they apologize and promise to try harder to remember. Their intentions are sincere, especially as some are environmentally conscious but I do feel as if I am fighting a losing battle. I've already given up on the notions of recycling or composting in Jakarta so I don't want to be an energy waster as well. Maybe running air conditioners with doors and windows open could help reverse the effects of global warming, NOT.

The oddest part of all this in my mind is that I constantly have a fleece available at work for the instances where a room is too cold to deal with. I hope the irony of wearing a fleece in a tropical metropolis is not lost on you. What is even stranger is that the average Jakarta born Indonesian believes that Bandung is very cold at night when temperatures can fall to a bone chilling 20 C. I don't and never will understand how these same people can manage to sit in an air conditioned room who's temperature is at 14 C and dropping while wearing a short sleeved shirt and sandals, all the while looking content. Meanwhile, I'm shivering in the corner wishing that I'd brought my scarf and mittens to work.

Time for Bed

2009-06-30T16:22:00.011+07:00

Running the simplest errand can be painful and time consuming in this town. I usually expect things to go wrong or not to go as planned. The beauty of this is that when things do occasionally get accomplished promptly, I am very pleasantly surprised. Today, I decided that I was going to get my new watch fixed. The watch was a way overpriced gift from an associate at a staff function. I'm not much of a watch person but it was a Swiss Army watch and I thought hey, they make good knives so the watch may be alright. Upon trying it on, it was obvious that it was sized for a man with a much larger and hairier forearm than mine. Recently, I had seen a Swiss Army booth in Pasa Raya so I decided to go and see what would happen. Astonishingly, the guy working at the booth was able to re-size the watch by removing a few links in approximately 3 minutes. When I asked how much it would cost (before he started so I wouldn't be surprised) he said "terselah" (up to you) which meant it was free of charge but I could tip him for his services. Tip him I did as he made my day. There I was with my new (and very expensive as it turns out) re-sized watch on my arm with lots of time to spare since I had planned on this errand taking up most of my afternoon. We had some nice lunch in the basement and enjoyed some people watching. Pasa Raya is the best place in Jakarta to see what I like to call mismatches. After finishing lunch, we went to get my bike which I had cleverly parked on Jl. Paletehan. If you've ever parked in the Pasa Raya bike parking lot, you'd understand why I parked where I did. If you think that I parked there for any other reason then shame on you!

As I got to the end of the street, there was a parked van blocking my view of traffic. I slowly rolled up to the van and to my surprise (not really) a 40 something year old man walked right out in front of me without looking. I honked to inform him that I was there and he looked up and started laughing hysterically at the fact that he hadn't looked before crossing the street and almost got hit by a vehicle. I did what I usually do in this instance (yes, it happens a lot, more to come about that in a future posting) and pointed my fingers at my eyes in a sign gesture to watch where you are going. As I'm writing this now, it seems kind of funny but at the time it was more infuriating than funny. I say that because I don't think I'd be laughing if I was responsible for injuring somebody with my motorbike. I continued on down the road and decided that I would use my bonus free time to go check out a mattress sale that I had seen on the way to the watch shrinkening. I know, I'm so cool.

I have been fantasizing about buying a new mattress for a few months now. Other expenses have put it on the back burner. My old mattress was fantastic for about 3 years and then it got horribly saggy and uncomfortable almost overnight. I decided that I'd learn from my past mattress experience and spend a lot on a new mattress. After all, you spend one third of your life in bed doing 2 of the things that I enjoy doing the most; sleeping and reading. Got ya, you thought I was going to say watching TV, didn't ya?

As I pulled into the mattress shop, the parking guy asked me and the Mrs. where we were going. I found this to be hilarious since the parking lot was solely for the mattress store. He didn't get the ironic humor when I explained while laughing that I wanted to maybe buy a bed and that this was why I wanted to park in the bed store parking lot. He directed me to the tiny bike area in the back and we proceeded to enter the store. I laughed even harder when I saw a sign that there was also a fertility clinic in the upstairs of the building. We entered and saw that there were only 2 girls working there. They were both preoccupied with sucking up to a "rich" lady at the front counter so we got to go and have a look around. This is the opposite of most retail stores in Indonesia, there are usually more people working in a store than people shopping. We looked around, sat on a few mattresses and looked at a few catalogues which didn't have bed statistics as I expected but instead was full of fabric samples for your mattress. I found this to be odd since the only time I've ever looked at the fabric on my mattress is when I was changing the sheets. One of the sales girls stuck her head around the corner and informed us that she'd be be with us in a moment. I didn't care since a mattress shop is probably the best place in the world to have "sit" and wait for service.

Eventually, she came over to talk to us and was very friendly. She first asked if we wanted a firm or medium mattress. Then she asked which brands interested us and offered to show us some fabric catalogues. It's a bed, not a couch! The fabric on the mattress could have My Little Pony on it for all I care as long as it is super comfortable and suitable for watching hours and hours of TV. I then politely told her that I would like to know the prices of mattresses. She asked if it was mattress only or mattress plus 12 accessories. I said mattress aja since I didn't feel like getting into a discussion about what material I'd like my pillows to be stuffed with before I'd actually picked out a mattress. I picked one random mattress and she went to get her price listing book. All I really wanted was to see that book for myself but I knew that wasn't going to happen. She said that the mattress I'd chosen was around 18 million (ouch). I then asked about another one and I was given another astonishing quote. I asked to make sure that it was the price for just the mattress and not the whole shebang and it was indeed just the mattress. I then had the Mrs. ask about which beds were on sale as the sign outside that had originally intrigued me stated. She told us that all Serta (I think) brands were 40% off, King Koils were 50% off and some Italian brand were 50% off. OK, I thought, now we are talking. I asked how much this Italian mattress was. She told me 22 million. I asked if that was after the 50% discount and she informed me that it was. I then asked how much a certain Serta mattress was after the 40% discount and she pulled out her calculator and pricing list. I tried to get a look at the pricing list in her hand as I was getting annoyed at this point. She did her best to hide the list and informed me that this Serta mattress (no box spring or frame or duvet or pillow or stuffed sheep or guling) was reduced to 27 million after the 40% discount. I laughed at her and told her that it would be cheaper to buy one of these mattresses in the US or Italy and have them shipped here since her prices were so high. She gave me her best fake smile and informed me that their beds cost the same as a store in a Western country. Just to be sure, I confirmed that the Serta mattress in front of me would be roughly 40 million were there not a 40% discount. She assured me that this was true while I once again tried in vain to get a peek at her pricing list. Then, she informed me that they did have some beds that were cheaper and they offered free delivery for all mattresses. I looked at her and said this is garbage (I said a bad word in Indonesian but I'm trying not to curse while writing, OK) and informed her that there was no chance that I'd ever be buying a bed from this store. She assured me that their prices are very competitive and I assured her that I didn't want to listen to her for one more second and was leaving. A friend of mine has a real nice mattress comparable to the one that I was looking at and I'm pretty sure he paid around 5 million for his.

We walked out and I sarcastically informed the parking guy that I wanted to go home. As we were walking to the bike compound, the Mrs. informed me that my behaviour was unacceptable and that she didn't want to shop with me if I was going to act like that. I informed her that there was no way that I was going to let someone disrespect me like that and then smile and thank them for treating me like a fool. I know how I should act in that situation and I often do act accordingly but there was no chance that was going to happen today. Then, I proceeded to tell the Mrs. that the girl inside was lucky that I didn't say what I was really thinking and that I told her off in the most polite way possible. The disapproving look on her face told me that it is not possible to politely tell someone off.

So now here I am again on my lumpy old mattress playing on the computer since the TV has been temporarily disconnected. It has occurred to me that these blogs are a bit arrogant since there are millions of people in this country who can barely afford to buy a foam mat to sleep on and some who don't even have a roof over their heads. I recently explained this to a friend by using the analogy that this blog is a bit like complaining that my gold watch hurts my arm or that my diamond shoes are giving me blisters. That being said, my new re-sized Swiss Army watch is hurting my arm because it's so heavy but I'm not complaining.

Sleep well y'all

The Early Bird Gets The Ice Cream

2009-06-30T11:47:00.009+07:00

Living with constant noise is something one must accept if they wish to live in a large Asian city. The sounds that penetrate and irritate the eardrum are wide and varied. They range from loud motorbikes with the exhaust removed to make them sound cool to street vendors promoting their different products. I like to live by the "When in Rome" model so I try my hardest to accept the noise as others do. That being said, I always have a pair of earplugs within reach.

The hardest thing to accept about the noises in Jakarta is when they start. There is actually a period of dead silence in Jakarta which lasts from around 2-4 a.m. There have been numerous occasions when I've been staggering home in this time frame and have been somewhat frightened by how eerily quiet the streets can be. It feels a little like being in the 'calm before the storm' part of a horror movie. This silence comes to an abrupt halt with the morning prayer call at approximately 4 am. At this moment, the chants begin to blare out of your local mosque's loudspeakers. It is literally a wake up call and the larger the mosque, the louder the call. If you are fortunate enough not to live near a mosque, this will not wake you up. If you do live near a mosque like I do, you just have to simply wait it out. I must admit that I find the chanting somewhat soothing and it is a rather friendly wake up call compared to an alarm clock or a rooster. Most mornings, I manage to sleep through it or to fall back asleep seconds after it finishes. For many, this is the start of their day, there is no going back to sleep as there is breakfast to prepare and work to be done. It is much easier to get work done in the early morning hours before it gets too hot. When I first came to Jakarta, I thought that nobody ever did any work and just sat around all day. I later realized that they often had finished their day's work before I had woken up.

After pre-dawn showering and praying, all hell breaks loose. For some reason, this seems to be the ideal time for street cats to fight or fornicate (they seem to make the same noises for both) on my roof. At around 5:00 - 5:30 a.m. the maid from the house across the road begins to sweep their portion of street. To do this, she uses what is known as a lidi which is basically a little broom made of straw like strands that are tied together. They make a strange whispy woosh sound which I personally find very irritating. This without a doubt wakes me up every morning and not in a good way. The sensation is similar to that of fingernails on a chalkboard. The most annoying part of this is that I usually get up at 5:45 a.m., so it ruins that beautiful sleep period just before waking up (this is when you usually have those epic dreams which seem to last for days but are only 10 minutes long in reality). Aside from her cleaning the road, there is complete silence on my street (my street is rare for Jakarta, most are loud by now). After weeks of waking up angrily, I finally decided to confront this situation and politely asked the maid if she could possibly clean the street later (as in 7:30 a.m.) since I was still sleeping. She seemed very confused by this request, stopped sweeping and went inside. The next day, I was again awoken by the woosh and again I asked her to stop. This time, she smugly replied "Tapi udah pagi, mister" (but it's already morning, mister). I tried my best to explain to her that it was still dark outside therefore it wasn't really morning yet. I also pointed out that all the other maids on the street sweep the road in front of their houses later in the morning. She didn't get my point at all but now she starts wooshing at around 6:15 every day. I didn't bother trying to explain to her that I don't get up at 4 a.m. nor did I try to make her understand that I wake up at a time which some westerners would consider shockingly early. The part that I don't understand is why it is so necessary to clean the patch of road in front of a house before sunrise. This same maid thinks I am a bule gila (crazy foreigner) since I've also asked her to stop talking so damn loud on her phone in front of my house/bedroom window at 6 a.m. on a Saturday. I've been told since by Indo friends that the way I dealt with this situation was very bold and rude. The polite thing would be to just deal with it. Luckily, I am not THAT polite and this makes life much easier on my co-workers and friends as a grumpy awakening takes me a few hours to shake and is detrimental to all

Around 7a.m., many of the street vendors start making their rounds. Some are on foot pulling a portable cart with a wheel and 2 legs known as a gerobak while others are on motor or push bikes. Every vendor has a distinct song or noise to indicate what they are selling. They basically sell anything you can think of. The bread guys are usually the first on the scene and you hear their familiar ROTI ROTI jingle more times than you care to that early in the morning. After that, it's usually the ice cream man. Every person who has spent any significant time in Indonesia knows the ice cream song (do do do....do do do....) and can hum the song note for note. I have great empathy for the ice cream vendor since he has to listen to that song every day for countless hours on end. I get a little restless after hearing it 3 or 4 times in a couple of hours. The thing that I can never fully comprehend about the ice cream man is that he starts making his rounds as early as 7:30a.m. I guess when you get up at 4 a.m., ice cream that early in the morning doesn't seem odd. The ice cream man is NEVER around in the late afternoon when I might actually be tempted to eat ice cream. After that, it's time for the vegetable carts who yell SAYUUUR. For the rest of the day, the vendors are pretty random.

Some of the funniest vendors I have seen and heard include the remote control man (who yells REMOTE REMOTE), the umbrella man who I mistakenly thought was selling umbrellas (turns out he was repairing them), the wicker furniture man, the tukang monyet (a man you pay in exchange for watching his monkey perform), the hamburger man, the man with a speaker on his chest playing really loud music (you pay him to go away), the broom man, the cotton candy man (who's bicycle transforms into a cotton candy spinner), and my favourite; the mobile tailor. My better half once had the tailor sewing in front of our house for what seemed like hours. Ended up setting me back Rp 20 000 to get 10 garments stitched or re-sized. Once, I made the mistake of giving the junk man some cardboard boxes for free. My neighbour later pointed out that those boxes were worth good money and he should have compensated me. I was just happy that someone came and took them away.

As the day wears on, more food vendors start appearing. My all time favourite is the Sate (BBQ chicken skewers with peanut sauce) guy who belts out a mighty SAAAAATAAAAY. Sate seems to be a strictly after dark food. Apparently, people like eating donuts at night too because the donut man seems to be one of the last guys to go home. His trademark call is the kind of horn you'd expect to hear a clown honking. As the evening wears on, the streets gradually get quieter as people who get up at 4 a.m. go to bed very early I suppose. That being said, it seems perfectly OK to honk your car horn repeatedly when you want your maid to open your gate at 1 a.m. or to stand in front of somebody' gate knocking and shouting their name for 20 minutes even if they are obviously not home.

It doesn't seem to be OK to play music at night or at least not for western people to do so. I was once at a friend's house party and there was music playing at a reasonable volume. The local security guards came by the house at around 8:30 p.m. and informed the owner that the music was disturbing an "old sick lady" next door and wanted to know if we would turn it off in order to help her get well faster. My friend (the owner) informed the security that he was not going to turn the music off. The security thanked him and left. One other evening, I had a few people at my house and the security showed up at around 10 p.m. to inform me that they were going to call the police if we didn't turn the music off. All of the Indonesians at the party got scared and left within 10 minutes. Oddly enough, the neighbours I suspect of notifying security have children who constantly cry or shriek in a painfully loud manner in front of their house almost all day every day. This is OK as they are not disturbing old sick people by making excessive noise at dawn. On that note, I once had a neighbour who listened to the same song literally 20 times in a row. Nobody complained in that instance.

There was one early morning wake up call which I don't think will ever be topped. It was the day before the end of Ramadan (Idul Fitri) and I was awoken by children shouting outside my gate. They kept banging on the gate and shouting for somebody to answer the door. Ignoring them as I had no interest in what they were selling at 6:30 a.m., I went back to sleep. I thought that they would give up soon enough but the banging and shouting persisted. After almost 20 minutes of the kids shouting, I decided it was time to go and tell these boys to get lost. As I opened the door, I managed to startle a chicken standing in my front yard. The chicken reacted by flapping it's wings and knocked down a ladder which in turn startled me. The kids saw me and (after they stopped laughing) begged me to let them in so they could retrieve their chicken. I unlocked the gate and one of the boys came in and swooped up the chicken in one quick motion. After assuring them that I had no interest in buying their chicken, the 3 young boys graciously thanked me and were on their way (presumably to sell their chicken). My nerves rattled by the falling ladder, I returned to the bedroom and attempted to go back to sleep. As my head hit the pillow, the Mrs. asked what all the commotion was. I calmly told her that a chicken had knocked over the ladder. I then closed my eyes and went back to sleep leaving the rest of the story to her imagination.

Despite the fact that these noises sometimes test my patience, it is good to know that if I am ever in need of a replacement remote control or have an early morning ice cream craving that I only need to step outside. Too bad there isn't a beer vendor.

Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

2009-06-26T12:24:00.000+07:00

Music has and always will be a prominent part of my life. This morning, I was rudely awoken earlier than I wanted to be by my hand phone. The received message was from a good friend informing me that Michael Jackson was dead. I instantly got up and turned on CNN to see how he died and what people were saying about it. This prompted me to later ask some Indonesian friends if Michael Jackson was popular here. They looked at me as if I was crazy and informed me that he was indeed larger than life in the big Durian. These people have the same childhood memories as me such as Thriller and the J5 (that's Jackson, NOT Jurassic!). Of course Michael Jackson is huge in Indo, he's (was) bigger than Monas, what a stupid question.

The odd thing about this is that it is not such a stupid question. Somebody somewhere has their finger on the musical pulse of Indonesia and Asia. This faction is in control of what people here get to hear. I've had many a conversation about music with Indonesian friends. It is amazing to find out which bands/artists they know and which ones they have never heard of. My lady companion, for example, knows the words to every Lionel Ritchie song but has never heard of Kiss, Rod Stewart or Neil Young. When I try playing some of their timeless hits, she will ask me if this is a new release and politely pretend to like it. Even friends of mine who are really into music that isn't popular have no idea who Public Enemy, The Supremes, Soundgarden, The Kinks or The Talking Heads are. I may be slightly mistaken in some of these examples but the point I'm making is that there are a lot of musicians who are household names in western countries who have never sold a single album or enjoyed a minute of air play in Indonesia. Some Indo friends of mine are conversely surprised to hear that Iwan Fall or Dewa don't sell any albums or tour abroad.

I often wonder who these musical censors are and why they decided that Bon Jovi and not Def Lepprard got to flood the Asian scene. Who had the brilliant idea that Michael Buble could become a household name in Java? Who decided that Tom Petty wasn't worthy? Above and beyond this are the iconic musicians who sell millions of t-shirts in this country. I've met many people who will wear a Beatles or Nirvana shirt who don't really know any of their songs. One time I met a girl who had a shirt on that read Mick & Keith & Charlie & Ron & Bill. When I asked her if she was a Rolling Stones fan, she had no idea what I was talking about. She told me that she saw the shirt in Blok M and thought it was cool and thanked me for informing her what the names meant on her trendy T. Some of the poorer people in Jakarta are given free clothing from a charity and will unknowingly strut around their kamupng professing their love of The Grateful Dead, N.W.A. or Panterra. There's nothing quite as amusing as a woman wearing a jilab and a Slayer t-shirt.

Luckily, I manage to listen to iTunes at home and my iPod when I'm out so I basically have control over what I listen to. This is pretty easy to do when you have a music collection rapidly approaching 20 000 songs. That being said, I know the words to way too way more Akon and Pussycat Dolls songs than I'm comfortable to admit. When a pop song becomes popular in Jakarta, it gets played constantly. I don't mean 5 times a day constantly, I mean non-stop. I was in a bar a few weeks ago with some friends and we begged the waitress to stop playing "Right Now" by Akon. By this point, she had played it 6 times in 1.5 hours. I don't even think that I could listen to "I Want You Back" more than 3 times in a row and that song could bring a potential jumper dancing off the ledge.

The rest of my day is going to be spent listening to some of my favourite Michael Jackson songs and the artists he influenced. I hope those of you who were lucky enough to be exposed to the whole scope of music during your upbringing are as thankful as I am. Try and do your best to open the ears and minds of the people who weren't so fortunate. Make a change for once in your life.

P.S. Most of my Indonesian friends didn't know who Farrah Fawcett was.

Plane & Simple

2009-06-23T19:08:00.001+07:00

For my first blog, I'm going to go against my plan to write about daily life in Jakarta. Instead, this entry is going to be about air travel in Indonesia. The inspiration for this is (you guessed it) that I just returned from holiday in Bali & Lombok. It is a given that the worst part of any trip is the transit itself. Air travel in Indonesia always fascinates me. I often feel like I'm watching an episode of The Simpsons that I've seen so many times that I know the dialogue by heart. I say this because every time I'm in an airport/plane, the same things seem to happen without fail. Here are some examples

There is a good chance that I will choose the shorter check in line only to be stuck behind the person who doesn't understand why they are not allowed to check 4 suitcases, 11 twine tied cardboard boxes stuffed with various of oleh-oleh (gifts) and 2 taped up plastic bags full of clothes on a domestic flight. These items will inevitably weigh 40-50 kg and the lone traveller will be shocked when the clerk informs them that they must pay an excess weight fee. Their shock will turn to dismay when they learn that the fee is rp 500 000 (50 bucks) as was the case in the airport yesterday. Said person will then ask if they can leave their parcels at the airport and will be informed this is not allowed. This man or woman will then decide to call a friend or relative to either come give them the money (which they don't have because ironically, they've spent it all on gifts) or to take the excess baggage away. I sometimes manage to swiftly check in while this person is on the phone calling for help.

More likely than not, there will be an important looking man (probably wearing a leather jacket) who will try to cut in the check in line until I tell him to get into the back of the line. He will then reach over my shoulder whilst I'm checking in and yell at the clerk to take his ticket. Once that ordeal is finished, the same important man will force his way into the airport tax line and shove his ever so important hand full of cash inside the window and demand that the cashier take his money immediately instead of giving me my change first. This same man (batik shirt optional) will then proceed to shove my travelling companion out of the way in order to get through the security check faster. Once through the metal detector, he will move my bags out of the way so that he can promptly get his bags and enter the terminal. Once in the terminal, he will casually sit and wait one hour or more for his plane to board. I hope I grow up to be important one day. The idea of explaining this pointless rush to the important gentleman crossed my mind but I was afraid that he might have tried to put me put in prison.

On the best day ever, the plane will board at the time it is meant to take off. On an average day, the plane will be an hour or 2 late. On a bad day, it will be 3 or more hours late. Yesterday's plane was 2 hours late which meant that all passengers got a complimentary McDonald's hamburger. I wonder if they upgrade to cheeseburgers after a 3 hour wait.

When they call boarding for the plane, everybody will run to the gate and try to be the first one to jam their way through the door. I will casually wait until the line slows down but will absolutely definitely without question be pushed and elbowed by the person behind me in a vein attempt to board the plane faster. I'm not sure if people think that the plane is going to leave without them or if they think that they will reach their destination faster by shoving. The worst instance of this was when a man in Medan was using his baby to jab me in the back. His persistence guaranteed that the plane took off 1.5 seconds faster than it would have otherwise. Shamefully, I have given the backwards elbow to a few shovers who wouldn't stop. I managed to resist elbowing the baby in Medan though.

There is an 64.6% chance that there will be somebody sitting in my seat. When I politely show them my ticket and explain that they are sitting in my seat, they will sometimes persist that I am wrong. I will then show them my boarding pass and the little sticker with the aisle numbers and letters on top of every row of seats. Then one of 2 things will happen. 1) they will bashfully get up and go to their assigned seat or 2) they will tell me that it is ok lah and that I can sit somewhere else (I'm convinced that these are people who have never been on a plane before) I will insist that I must sit in my seat because I don't feel like being kicked out of another seat when that assigned seat holder appears. They will then begrudgingly move. Yesterday, there was a young girl and a child in our seats. Their father insisted that they were their seats until I respectfully showed him our boarding passes and the sticker with the aisle and seat number above the seats. He then called the flight attendant over and explained to her that he needed 2 more seats since these girls had nowhere to sit. The attendent looked at their boarding passes and informed the kepala keluarga (family boss) that all 7 or 8 people in his family were in the wrong seats and had to move. After some banter, he picked up his half-bottle of vegetable oil (with a plastic bag and elastic under the lid for safe keeping) and directed his family towards their assigned seats.

There will occasionally be someone within my vicinity who will pray with a prayer book for the entire flight. There seems to be no religious preference. I am curious to know if they pray on the motorbike ride home since riding on a bike is exponentially more dangerous than flying. Thankfully, their prayers worked and we landed safely.

Upon landing, 9 out of 10 people will turn on their cell phones at the first possible opportunity to inofrm somebody that they landed 5 seconds ago and that their plan is to leave the plane, get their luggage and then leave the airport. Around the same time, the praying stops.

Not one single person at the luggage claim with the exception of yours truly will seem to be the slightest bit concerned for the safety of the child playing (most likely running) on the conveyor belt.

I will intentionally choose a section of the luggage carousel that is not crowded. At this point, there is a 1 in 3 chance that somebody will come and stand directly in front of me and put their luggage cart directly behind me.

My taxi ride home will without a doubt be long and traffic filled. I've had rides home that were longer than the flght itself.

I have to look on the bright side. At least I don't have to take my shoes, belt and jacket off. It is not necessary to answer questions about what I plan to do with the 2 lighters in my backpack. There will be no lecture about not being allowed to have more than 150 ml of fluid in my posession. The security check people are not going to yell at me for not knowing airport security check procedures & regulations. It is not necessary to arrive at the airport 2 hours before, 45 minutes will usually do. After some reflection, flying in Indonesia isn't that bad. After all, you almost always get to see volcanoes peeking up through the clouds.