Yesterday was Monday. I had a craving for two things: Mcdonalds and stirfry. The kitchen at my kost, (place where I live), is not so great. We have no rice maker and only a small wok for stirfying so Mcdonalds came first. I went to Ratu Plaza. I decided that I'd have a Big Mac for lunch and then go to Lotte Mart to get the fixins for the stirfry. Lotte Mart and Mcdonalds are both right beside Ratu Plaza and it's very close to my kost so in the cab I got. It was a 30 or 35000 Rp. taxi trip there. A bit of traffic but that's to be expected. Took about 15 minutes.
I ordered a Double Big Mac meal. The girl looked confused. "Double cheese?" she asked. I looked at the menu and although there ARE Mcdonalds' in Jakarta that HAVE the double Big Mac, (one at Plaza Festival and one on Fatmawati), this location didn't offer it. So I said, "Okay just a single Big Mac meal. Number one. Satu." The Big Mac meal is number one, (satu is number one in Indonesian), on the menu. Then they asked if I wanted it big sized. Here's where they get me. The Big Mac singular is not enough for the upsizing of drink and fries whereas the double Mac is usually worth it. But here in Jakarta they have two choices on the Mcdonalds menu: one is the set and I forget the way they describe it. I think it may be in Indonesian. The other is "a la carte." Now this is an accurate way to describe ordering just the burger without the fries and drink but it's so much more ambiguous than ordering just a Big Mac, McChicken, Filet of Fish or whatever. They have no Quarter Pounder here. Since they use the French phrase "a la carte" I wonder if they'd call the Quarter Pounder a "Royale" here if they had it. Maybe someday we'll find out. At any rate, when I get asked if I want the big size I usually think they are referring to the entire meal with fries and drink. So I usually end up getting extra fries and drink when I don't really want them. Oh it's not a problem to finish them, I just don't need them is all.
So my order comes in pieces. First the big drink. Next the big fries. Finally a double cheeseburger. So that's fine. I needed extra burger for the extra fries anyways. So I order a Big Mac. "A la carte?" she asked. I said, "Yes. No fries, no drink please." While I was eating the double cheeseburger she brought me my Big Mac. This is why I wanted a double Big Mac. I think the Big Mac patty has gone the way of the Wagon Wheel. Remember Wagon Wheels when they were big? I am pretty sure they're half the size now and double the price. But maybe they just seemed bigger when I was a kid because I was smaller. I dunno. Don't think so though. Anyways, the patties on the Big Mac have shrunk. I'm sure of this. And most places the amount of lettuce you get on your Mac would almost qualify it as a beef salad. The bun is like croutons, the pickles are cucumbers, onions are onions, cheese is cheese, and the special sauce is Thousand Island dressing. This Big Mac had a garden of gnarly lettuce hanging out of it everywhere! The lettuce cutter got a bit lazy. There were long hunks of lettuce in the box, outside the box everywhere. It needed a shave before eating. I could just barely taste the meat. But it was good anyway. Never go shopping hungry they say.
I got to Lotte Mart and decided that since Tuesday I would officially get another client for 6 extra hours a week, I could buy a couple things I needed for my room. I went to appliances first and put an electric kettle and an iron in my buggy. Now I can have tea without running upstairs to get a pot from the kitchen, running back downstairs to put clean water into it, then running back upstairs to the kitchen to boil it, and finally returning downstairs to my room to drink it. I've already had a couple cups of tea and I am happy with my purchase. The iron I haven't used yet. I'm waiting until it dries out.
You see, after getting all the fixins for my stirfry along with a couple cups, tea, creamer, crackers you know just in case I invite someone over for tea, I go up the escalator with my five bags of groceries and it is raining cats and cats. I have seen a few more dogs here but still not enough to warrant the "cats and dogs" idiom in this country. There were several people at the doorway staying dry while waiting for husbands, wives, friends or drivers to come pick them up. There were a couple of enterprising gents sopping wet with umbrellas. They were collecting tips from people to walk them to their cars and cover them with their umbrellas. They asked me if I wanted their assistance but I needed a taxi. I asked them, "Taxi?" and they shook their heads. Most malls have areas, usually sheltered areas for use in the rain, where you can form a taxi line-up and there are workers who flag taxis and sometimes even record where it is you are going. Not Ratu Plaza. No problem, I have the number for Bluebird Taxi. I have called it several times. I know it works. So I take out my not so trusty, yellow Nokia and call up Bluebird. I get the musical recording that says, "The number you have dialled can not be reached." Or something like that. I dialled several more times and got the same recording. Did they change their number? Was this another misleading message and really the line was just busy? Or was this just another way the taxi system grinds to a halt in the rain? Do they actually shut their phones off in the rain? I may never know but today I called Bluebird and it rang. I hung up before anyone answered but, hey it serves them right.
The main entrance to Ratu Plaza was just across from the Lotte Mart entrance to I took my 5 bags of groceries out of the buggy and carried them over to the entrance where I'd ask the two security guards how to get a taxi. The second my foot hit pavement it was under a flow of water up to my ankles. It was really coming down hard! Even though the area between Lotte Mart and the Ratu Plaza entrance was covered, there was water getting through and I got a lot of it on my head, shirt, and, of course, glasses. So I get to the security guards with wet feet and damp upper body and ask about a taxi. They refer me to the umbrella dudes who have already shaken me off. The security guards seemed like they were arguing a bit with the umbrella dudes but finally one of them agreed to show me to a taxi. We got out into the pouring rain. My head was covered by the umbrella but rain was soaking my groceries. We walked all the way down to the main road. This is the main road in Jakarta! I think it may be called Jalan Sudirman. Sudirman the main downtown area I think. We couldn't just flag down a taxi there. Nope. We walked through some construction, through some fast running, clay coloured water and to the walkover bridge. This is the overpass that you take to catch a busway bus in the middle of the road. The one place I had taken my disastrous, and only, busway trip. The overpass provided decent shelter from the rain so I stood there with about 50 other people while the umbrella dude tried to flag me down a cab.
There were people waiting out the rain, people selling food, people on motorbikes who didn't want to ride them in the downpour, ojek, motorbike taxi drivers and people going to and coming from the busway. And there was me. I was still holding all five bags of groceries because there was no good place to put them down. I think the other people had found the best spots because everywhere I seemed to stand was underneath a stream of water. I was getting wet even under the bridge. There was a fast running stream of dirty water that was about an entire lane closest to the curb where I was standing. Some ojek drivers were sitting on their bikes in the current but it was otherwise unused by traffic. So it would have been very easy for a cab to pull over and put me and my groceries into it. But, as I have experienced before on rainy days, cabs just ignored my umbrella bearing flagger. And it wasn't like traffic was flying by either. Several of the taxis slowly crawled past right in front of me so that I could see clearly that their lights were on and they were empty. Curiously all of them were Bluebird. I have been told that Bluebird is the best but almost all the trouble I have had with taxis here in Jakarta has been with Bluebird.
Finally an Express cab was seen in the distance with its light on. The umbrella boy asked me in facial/body language if it would be acceptable and I nodded my approval. The Express taxi pulled over for me! The umbrella guy opened the door for me and waited with the umbrella. Between me and the taxi was a fast flowing stream of brown water about 10 yards wide. My feet were already soaked anyway. While stepping off the curb, I began to say to my helper and the cabbie that I wanted to have the trunk opened. Never did finish that sentence. You know how it is when you think the ground is closer than it actually IS? I think there must have been a sewage drain right where I stepped. No way to see that because the water was the same level as the ankle deep water around it. But whatever I stepped into it was knee deep. I didn't get a second step and with the five bags of groceries it was all I could do to stop my fall with the knuckles of my left hand still clinging to three bags of groceries. But the knuckles didn't take much of the fall. Mostly my chest. Yup, it was an epic faceplant. Like the reverse Nestea plunge. Somehow my face didn't hit the pavement although my whole head felt like it was completely submerged. Lucky I guess.
So there I was scrambling to retrieve vegetables, cups, jars and meat packages from the fast flowing water and put them back into the now VERY heavy grocery bags half full of rainwater. One of the bystanders, a young man, helped me. I was too embarrassed to do anything more than say, "Thank you." to which he replied, "That's okay." In English. What a nice kid! I did the usual glance back at the place where I fell. You know to check whether there were inconsistencies in the walking surface or whether it was just klutziness. But I didn't have the ability to look at the crowd. I wouldn't blame them at all if they were laughing their asses off. I mean that must have looked hilarious! With some Howard Cosell comentary in the background, even funnier. "Down goes the bule! Down goes the bule!" Bule with an accente gu on the e so it's pronounced bool eh, is the slang word for foreigner here.
I think I managed to get everything and with myself and my groceries DRIPPING with muddy water I loaded up the cab and got in. They never did open the trunk. I gave umbrella boy 5 thou for his trouble. I think that was too little but he wasn't complaining and I just wanted to get out of there.
So I am in the back seat of the cab with an inch or two of water already on the back seat car mats going through my groceries to see that everything is okay and bleeding from some road rash on my knee. And we start our journey back to my place. It's a little after 4 PM. The driver was very nice. He gave me his tissues and I cleaned my knee wound with one and my glasses with another. To tell you the truth I was just laughing about it with him. And it was kind of refreshing on a hot day. Plus being wet the air conditioning is like doubly effective. But traffic, because of the rain, was MURDER!
This is not the rainy season. I'm told it rains almost every day during the rainy season. So why aren't the drivers of Jakarta a little better at driving in the rain? It's a mystery to me. It took more than two hours to make the 15 minute trip. Instead of 30 or 35000 Rp. it was 100,000! And we couldn't make it to my door. I had to grab my 5 bags of groceries and cross two local streets that are usually not busy at all but now were jam packed with stationary motorists blowing horns and inching closer to the cars in front of them. It was only raining a little now so I didn't get too wet walking back to the kost.
There wasn't as much damage to my groceries as I expected. I had 10 eggs and none were broken. The boxes the iron and kettle were in were completely soaked through so I shot them out. I saved the English instructions for the iron. While checking to see if they had included English instructions the phrase I read was, "Do not submerge iron in water." So what would that be called, brace yourselves, IRONy? heh heh. Thank you very much.
I made the stirfry and it was DEEElicious! I ate the whole thing too. Probably shouldn't have but I needed my broccoli fix. I watched the Cloud Atlas while eating. Pretty good movie I thought.
All in all I can't even say I'm not GLAD that happened to me! What would I have blogged about otherwise? And as previously promised, I will continue to blog about other such occurences that are sure to occur during my Jakartian initiation. It's a steep learning curve and if you know me, I only learn the hard way, so this is probably going to be entertaining.
Stay tuned.
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