We're out of posts, use a tree!

I wasn't fast enough to get a photo, partially because I couldn't believe what I was looking at and had to stare to make sure it was an optical illusion.

I spotted a coil of wire hanging from a tree in the median strip. Ok, maybe it got tossed up there right?

Er, no. Closer inspection revealed that there's a taught cable going to and from the tree. The tree is being used as a regular telegraph post.

So the tree's dead right?

Err, no. It's covered in green leaves ans very much alive and growing. Wow.

posted from Bloggeroid

Safety first...no second

Surprising observation the othe day....



Ok, so the lift is on the next floor so the drop isn't that huge, but...wow

posted from Bloggeroid

Service

If there's one thing the Indonesians do well, it's service.......ok, I joke.

Example: I'm staying in a hotel, a nice hotel but not 5 star. After looking through the options for room service I find the menu lacks a number...ok. the other book holds one page of hotel info and directs you to call 0 for operator to pass you through to room service, laundry etc.

The first time I ring, I get bored waiting for someone to pick up after several minutes.

The second time I place my order. The gent repeats my order and hangs up! Err, whatever happened to we'll be there in 30 mins, and is there anything else you'd like?

Example 2: Walk into a salon to ask about hair cuts. No less than four staff occupy the 'reception' all chatting away about appointments etc....ok, they might be busy. Despite looking at me several times, no one makes an acknowledgment gesture such as a smile, let alone 'I'll be with you in a sec'. Time drifts by and receptionists/stylists or whatever come and go, and still no enquiry to see why I'm standing there looking from one to the other. For the first couple of minutes it was slightly annoying. For the next few it was amusing. After about 12 mins though it got boring and I left. The place next door got the gig as they actually spoke to me after only two or three minutes.

posted from Bloggeroid

What the?

So still nudging along in peak hour traffic, my driver cranes his neck and cuts over the inner lane. In the outer lane walking towards us is scruffy haired Indonesian wearing nothing but a loin cloth - maybe he thinks he's Tarzan?
Despite the obvious disruption to traffic as it tries to avoid an accident, the police officer looks on...puzzled but clearly unwilling to get involved.

posted from Bloggeroid

Safety first

We've grown accustomed to seeing children being driven around on mopeds and bikes wearing no protection whilst mum and dad wear their helmets.

This mornings observation? Passing a car similar to our own and seeing mum in the passenger seat with a 2 or 3 year old standing in the footwell being her legs.
We're in peak hour traffic which means lots of start stop and the occasional hard stop as the next moron dashes across your bow. All I can see is the poor kid smashing his/her head into the glove box.

posted from Bloggeroid

New Stories

Finally getting around to posting some photo's.  In keeping the dates accurate, the stories will be a little out of order.
Trip to Puncak (May)
Trip to Bogor (June)
Islamic Wedding (June)
Prambanan Temple (July)
Yogyakarta Palace/Kraton (July)
Yogyakarta (July)

I also encourage you to leave comments to help us understand what is, or isn't, working - it can be done anonymously.  You need to enter the actual story to leave a comment.

thanks :)

Yogyakarta

The making of Batik is a painfully slow process.

There are two methods:  The original hand-crafted method, and a slightly faster stamping method.

Yogyakarta: Kraton

The Kraton (Sultan Palace) remains in use and is open to the public.

When we arrived, we were just in time to witness some Tari Kraton (courtly Javanese Kraton dance). 

Yogyakarta: Candi Prambanan

Candi Prambanan (Prambanan Temple) is a 9th century Hindu temple near Yogtakarta.  More than a temple, the complex is home to some 240 temples of various sizes.

Islamic Wedding

We were honoured to receive an invitation from our driver to attend his sister's wedding.

The wedding was held in what seems to be the local community hall, with a street party happening outside.

The wet hands philosophy

If there's one thing I cannot get used to, it's the wet hands philosophy.

As a child I was taught to always dry my hands after I wash them. Years of repetition means having wet hands feels abnormal and wrong, especially, for some reason, when leaving a loo.

Jakarta, however, seems to have a philosophy of letting ones hands dry naturally....on your trousers, your shirt, or maybe the person your about to meet and shake hands.

Often there is no choice as there are no drying facilities provided. The traditional electric hand blowers are about as common as free flowing traffic and the paper towel dispensers seem only to be replenished once a year when the new budget kicks in.

But even when there are paper towels available, 99% of Indonesians shun them in favour of a quick shake and maybe a quick pat across their chest.

And to think the first time I met with some visiting vendor I was surprised at how many of the team seemed to have cold sweaty palms when we shook hands.......best not to think about it too much!

posted from Bloggeroid

Bogor

I had planned to have late sleep in, but a work colleague would have none of it and insisted I be ready to rock and roll by 7am.  The stupid git was right of course, otherwise I would have missed this!

Getting caught in a shower

Out walking after a lazy afternoon, I got caught out by a shower.  Luckily, a friendly security guard was kind enough to off me shelter for the ten minutes it took for the shower to pass.

Hotel security guard who called across the street to offer me shelter

 

Snapshot of the shower - doesn't take long to get soaked!

The new '8'

This is the local replacement for our roaring lion.  Sadly the '8' refers to number of seats rather than the number of cylinders.
It does, however, transport us in relative comfort and has even done 0-60...twice!

Toyota Kijang Innova

Trip to Puncak

A day trip to Puncak, a popular spot renowned for its tea plantations.  The Jakarta traffic situation means we have to leave the house by 06.30 to have half a hope of getting there!

It was worth the effort though:

Overall landscape smothered in Tea

When it rains....it reigns

There can be no uncertainty as to the arrival of a tropical storm 'shower' in Jakarta.
A gentle tapping becomes increasingly rapid and builds in volume to a roar that beggars belief, leaving absolutely no doubt about nature's reign.

This video inevitably fails to capture the true ferocity, but hopefully provides a 'flavour' (it's night so don't expect to see anything, it's the audio that hopefully conveys the scene).

What did we sign?

Last Friday we had our date with immigration.
Under normal circumstances this can be a 2 or 3 day process. Fortunately, the company uses an agent which ultimately means someone grabs a ticket on our behalf (think nrma/vic roads) allowing us to waltz in hours later and be near the top of the queue.

We sit and wait our turn, and regardless of how you tuck away your feet and elbows you're trampled as is local custom.

Eventually we're called into another room and first up I'm directed to 'sign here, here and here'. The forms are in Bahasa Indonesian and our guy doesn't seem too forthcoming with explanations. I sign whilst Shell looks on with that "what are you thinking!" look.

We have a quick whispered conversation about signing unknown agreements, and Shell is adamant that she won't do the same.  She's called over and asked to sign.....which she does......in silence...  yeah, that's telling them! You go girl!

We're then photographed and electronically fingerprinted and sent on our way. The agent advises we'll get our passports back Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week.  This turns out to be correct, except my passport is immediately sent off to the shipping company to organise release of our shipment, so I won't get to see my passport for another 5 to 10 days. What did I sign?

posted from Bloggeroid

This house is such a crack up! #2

The big cracks in the walls that we previously reported were duly repaired on Tuesday 8th.  By the end of the same day it appeared the new and the old paint had started having a disagreement:

By Saturday (fours days after the repair) all peace talks had been abandoned, and war had been declared:

Rock Art

Literally around the corner from our home, is this place.  All of these items are made from petrified wood, and are absolutely gorgeous.

We're particularly enamoured by this table and bench-seat set.  The bench on the left is petrified mahogany, the table base is petrified teak, and the table-top and right hand bench are petrified ebony.  Apparently they're just sanded smooth with fine grade paper and then polished.  All up, there's over 400kg here!  Each bench was around 120kg if I recall correctly.

The Breakfast Anomaly

After a lazy morning at the pool, Shell offered to make us a nice cooked breakfast :-)

We've already learned that bacon is totally unlike any bacon you've ever seen before, and certainly isn't something you'd actually enjoy, so we stuck with egg, beans, toast and sausage.

Weekend Warrior

Ahh, right, so this is what expat life is all about!

Lazy afternoon by the pool? Don't mind if I do :-)



All that's missing is bar service...I guess chips and ice coffee will have to suffice..

posted from Bloggeroid

Singapore Trip #1: The Temple

Whilst we waited for the return of our passports, we decided to go for a visit to the China Town.

Singapore Trip #1: When 57 isn't so good

As beautiful as the infinity pool area is, there are some drawbacks to being 57 stories up in the air......notably when a storm moves in:

Singapore Trip #1: Gotham City

Wandering around Boat Quay Singapore at night is a lovely experience.

Singapore Trip #1: The Marina Bay Sands

So blessed are we, that we get to stay at the Marina Bay Sands hotel.  A hotel made famous by its external architecture (looks like a ship floating in the sky) and the fact it hosts the largest infinity pool in the world.

Trip to Singapore

At last!!  My visa has been granted and we need to leave the country to collect it, and the arrival stamp required for the next step in the process....which means a trip to Singapore. :)

Since company policy is to provide business class only for flights longer than 4 hours, we're back to the real world of economy...boo!  This will also be our first experience of the national airline!

The first observation is that we're not allowed to simply check-in!  No, we must first go visit the guy putting plastic ties around each suitcase - are they admitting they handle the bags so badly that they're liable to burst open without the strap? hmm.

The second attempt to check-in goes smoothly.

So what's the plane like?  Well, the seats are uncomfortable in a similar fashion to those of Virgin Australia.  However, they seem to be narrower (my shoulders seemed to overhang the seat and I'm hardly a 'big' build) and are very much closer together.  The seat in front is close enough to make reading a magazine difficult because the size of the average magazine is greater that the distance between your belly and the seat in front.  And if the person in front reclines, you're forced to lick the back of the headrest!

Then there's the food.  We both took the tuna quiche option thinking 'how wrong can you go with tuna?'.   Well......
Mine *looked* ok actually - a cubic lump of  eggy stuff with bits of tuna in it.  Shell's, however, had been steamed in its container and as a result of the condensation, kinda melted a bit - it looked like lumpy vomit!  Complete with the requisite chunks of carrot!
Perhaps 'tuna' quiche was a bit of a mis-representation.  The 'hints' of tuna could not compensate for unappetising taste of the 'quiche' - I think we each had maybe 2 or 3 forks worth before we gave up and accepted we would land hungry.

So not the best start to the trip, and certainly not a high rating recommendation for the national airline.  Maybe things will improve when we land.....

Or not.

Immigration is quick and painless and we go to collect the suitcase.  After we grabbed our case, we're interrupted by an lady offical asking to see our baggage tag.  OK, no problem - I guess this is to ensure you collected the right case....except she took the tag, said thanks, and disappeared.  She didn't seem to compare the tag to the one attached to the case at all...odd.

We next decided to stop off for a coffee.  Being Singapore, we can expect fast efficient service right?

No.

There were at least five waiting staff in the airport cafe, and maybe two other tables of customers - call it eight individual customers, MAX.
We waited for about 30 minutes!  Unbelievable!  Whilst we're waiting I took a shot of the three staff hanging around doing absolutely nothing:

To add insult to injury, when the coffee arrived, it was crap.  Especially disappointing considering their napkins:

A momentous occasion

Today represents something of a landmark occasion for Indonesia.  I laughed at a friends Facebook status of 'May the fourth be with you!' but perhaps there was something to the statement after all.

Today, the Australian government downgraded the travel warning on Indonesia!
According to todays Smart Traveller the overall rating has been reduced to 'Exercise a high degree of caution'.

In case the situation changes again, here is the post:

This Advice was last issued on Friday, 04 May 2012.   The overall level of the advice has been lowered to 'Exercise a high degree of caution'. We continue to advise Australians to 'Reconsider their need to travel' to Central Sulawesi, Maluku, Papua and West Papua provinces due to recent communal and sectarian violence. 

This is great news for travellers as it should reduce travel insurance premiums, but of course it also indicates that our living environment should no longer be considered as relatively hostile.  Of course, everyday life will inform you that the situation has been much safer than the Australian government would imply for several months now, but it is comforting to see it in writing :)

This house is such a crack up!

We're still rattling around an empty house due to the fact our furniture hasn't arrived yet, and as a result, the majority of the rooms aren't yet in use....but that doesn't seem to stop the deterioration!

Before I accepted this assignment, I had a conversation with the CEO.  This would have been back in August during my second or third visit to the country.  There were two statements that stuck in my mind - you can't drink the water, don't even try.  And, nothing is quite as it first appears.

The water statement was surprising since I had actually assumed that the water was 'bad' for foreigners, but locals would be able to consume it.  However, it turns out that piped water quality is very low and is likely to contain faecal matter or any variety of bugs...yuck!  The locals ALWAYS boil the tap water before consumption, or if they can afford it, they buy bottled water like us bule.

The second statement was a little more intriguing.  Manufacturing and building quality, in particular, seem to play second fiddle to keeping costs low.  The results in a constant stream of 'maintenance' and ill-fitting doors or windows and such like.

Despite the enlightening prophecy, I still was not prepared for this:

The above is a shot of our (empty) lounge room.  The main wall.  Need a closer look?

Yes, there's a ruddy great crack in the plaster.  It's not alone either as there's about half a dozen of the suckers making a 'crazy paving' of our wall!

Of course, it's fixable and will hopefully be repaired next week.  But how long will it be before we see a return?  Unfortunately, with the low cost materials being used I suspect we'll need several repairs a year.  Oh well....at least it povides someone with a job...

Bus life

Cost of trip...around 3.5c (AU).

Feeling like you're on a prisoner transport...free

The art of negotiation

Shell became a demon negotiator today!  There was probably only one item, aside from our coffees, that we paid full price for!

Shell was in her element at one stall that was selling fantastic faceted glass mirrors.  They were truly beautiful and Shell had wanted one for years.  Enquiring about the price for one we particularly liked, the response was 1.5 million (IDR).  1.25m Shell says.  1.4m was the reluctant response.  1.35 she says....a blank look.  The he picks up a calculater and knocks off 5%.  Tuts, and essentially says can't do less than 10%, which he types in and reads... 1.35...oh..doh!!  Chalk up another win for the bules!

At another stall, we're buying the wooden art piece and again Shell's trying to haggle.  After some to and fro without any budging, one of the guys comes back with 'it's not expensive for you!'.  "Oh, is that right?"

Turns out they knocked off 3% anyway when we went to pay - I guess the laughs we all had over the cheeky comment softened them up!

Inacraft 2012

Today we are wandering around a craft fair, the 14th Jakarta Handicrafts Trade Fair

It's huge! We've seem some beautiful pieces and compared to Australia the prices are very low...it's difficult not to go totally crazy with the spending!

There were a couple of pieces we just couldn't resist..

This should look great in the lounge once we get our furniture.  It's essentially a cross-section of teak:


And how beautiful is this sideboard, also in teak? A steal at the equivalent of AUD280!

Public Safety #1

Today's example (for I'm sure there'll be others) comes from a craft fair. We are sitting at a cafe table enjoying an ice coffee. Behind my chair, totally unguarded we see this:

I dread to imagine the effect of prying little fingers.  The leads are clearly live since they ultimately run to the coffee machine, fridge, blender, till etc. 

A moist hand and ..ZAP!

Moped and sidecar

I now wish I had taken a few photos rather than just this solitary one, but I thought this was fantastic:

I've never seen a sidecar attached to a moped before, at least not in Jakarta....and it particularly stands out because of the paint job.  It is neither left to disrepair, nor plastered in stickers or other garish paraphernalia...just a plain old spray job.  Awesome :)

Language lesson #1

So I'm having a conversation about data backups and we steer towards the subject of tape retention periods.   Having already heard that legislation requires tapes to be kept for 10 years, I made an innocent mistake...

"With your current system, do you keep the tapes for 10 years or forever?" I ask, hoping to determine whether there was a systematic process in place to identify which tapes had become obsolete and taking care of the destruction or recycling.

'Yes' came the response.

"Which? 10 years or forever?"

'Yes'

"I'm sorry, I don't understand, it is either 10 years or forever"

'Yes, we keep them forever for 10 years'

Right....now that we got that clear....

"So, after the 10 years, do you have them destroyed?"

'Oh no, we don't destroy them, we keep them...forever'

Ouch, my head hurts....maybe I'll try this again next week..

The accident

Having spent nearly six months here, on and off, over the past year, the traffic still fascinates me.

For every car, there must be 1000 motorcycles....or approximately 2 for every grain of sand on the Earth.   Chaos rules...mostly.  Sometimes even chaos gives up.  The only road 'rules' that seem to be adhered to...occassionally....are the traffic lights.

For the most part, progress is slow, or worse. The painted lines separating lanes are treated as a monorail between the lanes it demarcates, and bikes constantly swarm around filling any space larger than your hand.
Whilst 99% of the bikers are very clearly suicidal, I had never seen an accident..until this morning....

I'm not sure what precipitated the event, but it occurred in the bus lane. The bus lane is curbed to deter traffic from using it.  It's not clear whether bikes are officially allowed to use the lane, but most mornings they can be seen riding 6 or 7 abreast behind the bus.

This morning it would appear that one of these bikes via'd to the left without warning.   Nothing particularly unusual about that, but his time something went wrong.  Maybe his passenger overbalanced him or maybe the rider to his left was looking the other way at the time, who knows. But the end result was a bike hitting the deck being struck by a second bike which also toppled over.

Everyone stopped... Those in the cars watched on.  A few bikers dismounted to help the fallen to their feet and help pick up the bikes.  All were help to the side of road.  In the aftermarth, only one person seemed to be in pain - the rider who had via'd left.  He seemed winded and had evidently hurt his leg somehow.   His suit trousers weren't obviously torn so perhaps he'd just fallen awkwardly.

Whilst the injured rider catches his breath and rocks back and forth in pain, normal chaos resumes. The helpers remount and speed off into the distance, evidently relishing having a clear road for a few hundred metres.

A special kind of clientele

We went out for a walk around Kemang to try and get some kind of orientation happening.

We saw many restaurants, pubs, clubs, cafes, etc etc, but this one particularly stood out as something special because of the sign near the door...  weapons, drugs, alcohol, what the?

Okey dokey then, what the hell kind of area have we moved into?

We might have gone in, but Shell was, after all, carrying her handbag!  LOL!

Shopping #1

It's our anniversary in a few days and I'm not convinced the card I ordered on-line will make it on time....actually I'm not sure it'll make it here at all at the moment - I've never knowingly seen a postie, so whilst I assume they exist I have no actual evidence of such.

I visit Grand Indonesia's Gramedia store upon the suggestion of a colleague.  After 20 minutes I figure out that the 'wife' oriented anniversary cards are, naturally, filed under categories such as birthdays or new baby celebrations.  hmmm.

Oh the sweet relief when I finally find something half decent! Now I just need to pay...

The girl who's been crawling around the floor near me is clearly focused on her task of wrapping presents, so I figure I'd head straight to the till, as one would normally do.

I arrive at the till and I'm greeted by a lady who who speaks as much English as I do Indonesian (ie as good as none), and I'm not understanding the gesticulations.

So she gently takes the card from my hand and runs off back to card section...hmmm.

A few minutes later (by the way, Indonesians also do that funny little 'running mime whilst actually walking') she's back.....with a hand written receipt...which she proceeds to read from and enter the details off it into the cash register.  She then asks for my money and prints another receipt from the till which is handed to me.  So we're finally done and I can leave.

I couldn't help but be bemused by the convoluted process.  When I asked a colleague about it, the explanation was based around a completely different set of principles to what I'm used to.  She suggested that in Australia customers are presumed to be honest, whereas shopkeepers in Indonesia take the view that customers are inherently out to steal from them.

It would appear that the girl crawling around the floor, or someone nearby, should have taken the card from me and given me the hand written receipt.  I should then take the receipt to the till to pay, and either return for my card or the person holding the card would have come to the till with me and handed me the card upon proof of payment.

Evidently the process broke down somewhere that day.  What I still don't understand is the need to implement this process for greetings cards that sell for the equivalent $1 - $3.  Books and CD's worth ten times that, ok, but even if the wages are around $1 per hour it seems that the process introduced to prevent profit loss though stealing is, itself, eliminating the profit.

Day 0 - Arrival

Arrival -Singapore

So where are staying when we get to Jakarta?  A question that was still unanswered after eight hours in a plane.  Stress? - err yes, you could say that.
The best part, of course, is that I don't have a Blackberry anymore; per policy I had handed that back to Sydney head office a couple of days ago.  So I'm now using gmai, and have no idea whether my messages have been received or blocked by spam filters.

The Australian SIM in my phone doesn't support international roaming because we didn't want to stump up the $120 deposit.  Right about now I think we'd probably sacrifice $120 for some certainty!

The Indonesian SIM I'm carrying is an unknown quantity - does it roam? Does it have any credit left? Considering that pre-paying the equivalent of $10 onto it is considered quite generous, I'm very doubtful.

Fortunately though the answer to both questions is 'yes' - phew!

Unfortunately, however, the person 'in the know' is away today....wonderful.  So let's just recap for a second...we've just packed up our entire house, jumped on a plane for eight hours and are now homeless in a foreign country and no-one is able to answer the question of whether or not we will have a place to stay when we arrive into Jakarta?   Someone somewhere must be chuckling pretty uncontrollably!

Eventually, though, we get word that yes, a hotel has been booked for our arrival. Again, phew!

We're informed that we may stay at the hotel for two whole nights and then we must move into our unfurnished town house - evidently someone discovered we'd arranged a sofa and bed and decided that that would be sufficient for us to set up home! Yip, we couldn't believe it either.  So we will have two days to buy plates and cutlery etc to try and make a temporary home.  Nice.

Arrival - Jakarta

We step of the plane to the usual and familiar oppressive humidity.  Somehow, Jakarta exhibits a unique smell that's instantly recognisable.  It's not an offensive or particularly unpleasant smell, but there is a smell nonetheless and it slaps your nostrils with a friendly "remember me?"


Welcome to Jakarta and the start of a new adventure!

The visa agent greets us off the plane and Michelle is ushered through the 'visa assistance' process, whilst I'm left to my own devices since I already have a multi-entry visa.  No special treatment for me!

After the humourless immigration stares at me as if trying to determine the colour of my soul, he stamps my passport and I wander through to the baggage collection area.  My wife and the agent, of course, are already there waiting.  Immigration formalities for visa assistance is generally no more onerous than being waved through whilst the agent takes your passport to the immigration officer.

This is where we learn that Jakarta has been rioting and we should expect a long trip home.  The cause of the riots is a proposed increase in petrol prices.  Such is the knife-edge of existence that a small increase would see many families go hungry.  We ask whether there was any violence involved and are assured 'no', nothing beyond some raised voices, but a number of roads of have been closed as a consequence of the gathering crowds.

The trip to the hotel indeed takes around two hours which is a little under twice what it would normally be, and we must have skirted the demonstration since we happened upon the police barricade and were forced into the alternative lanes.

Oh, and the following morning the paper informs us that sections of the demonstration did indeed turn nasty since a numbe of molatov cocktails were reportedly thrown....great.


Welcome to Jakarta!

About the authors

Through fortuitous happenstance, and some hard work :), my wife and I have been lucky enough to be offered the chance of a lifetime - to live as expats in Jakarta.

The overall experience promises to be a incredible mix of adventure, hard work and, I'm sure, heart wrenching sorrow.  The goal of this blog is to capture as much of the experience as we can turn into words.  The hope, for us, is that the blog will stand apart from the Facebook posts to family and friends, by offering a different perspective to our adventures.  We hope too, that strangers stumbling across the blog may find some entertainment value from our ramblings.

Of course, we don't want to take ourselves too seriously. We know we are but short term visitors to an incredible country in the midst of an enormous acceleration of modernisation, countered by unfathomnable poverty amongst the general populace.

We hope you enjoy.  Two Aussie Bule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bule