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

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

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

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?

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