Incidentally, I remember when Maria started at Chonnam University. I didn't realize this but, man, that was 19 years ago! Holy MOLY! I said to some of my friends at the time, "No way she's gonna last here." She is still in Korea. Boy was I wrong about her! Way to go Maria! Hope your door lock gets fixed and your landlord springs for partial hotel payment. PPPFFFFAAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA! I'm sorry. It's just impossible for me to envision any of MY Korean landlords doing something like that. Collectively they were to me one of the annoyances about Korea. Hope yours is better, Korea Maria. Like she's ever gonna read this...
Let's see here now, Maria's the one in the blue jacket looking strawberry blonde and bubbly. I'm the balding, bearded beefcake third from the left. What a great crew this was! I still keep in touch with some of them! Scott, right next to Maria looking dapper in pleated pants and polished pate, was the guy who helped me move and remains one of my best friends to this day.
But skip ahead 19 years... I've gotten used to small annoyances here in Indonesia. The internet being one of them is, as I type, it's cutting in an out bringing up the pink, "An error occurred while tying to save or publish your post. Please try again." message on Blogger. It's like a soothingly pink, flashing, Christmas light. Ahhhh, intermittent internet... so soothing! While Korea had a lot of annoyingly stupid things, like electronic doorlocks, that people mistakenly believed were superior technology, the internet there was above reproach! The providers were crooks, but the internet was BLAZING fast! I miss it a lot! I think my days on Earth will have all been worth it when I can look back at even these annoyances with fondness. I think I'll find enlightenment and be instantly vapourized and spirited up to Nirvana when I can deal with the kind of frustration chain that Fate hit me with today!
It all started on Thursday afternoon. I was over at Rica's place teaching her 5-year-old, Gabriel and she volunteered to help me buy a plane ticket for my latest visa run to Singapore. My 4th. Every two months since coming to Indonesia. Dang! That means I've been here 10 months already! Time sure flies! No, I'm not supposed to be teaching OR doing these visa runs every 2 months but I am sure nobody will read this who can bust me for it now. At any rate, she asked me when I wanted to go and I said as soon as possible so we looked at Friday, the next day. Then we looked at the calendar and I realized that Friday was Friday the 13th. Just to be safe I said I'd better not fly on Friday the 13th. Looking back now THAT was a silly thing to say. You'll see how silly...
Saturday was Valentine's Day and for some reason there were no good tickets for that day. Romantic travellers? Sunday I had to teach at my friend, Mr. Yoo's place and I didn't want to miss that. That's 2 hours and with the recent rash of cancellations from my various private students, I was in a tight spot financially. Sunday was the last day of paid classes for Mr. Yoo so I thought maybe he'd pay in advance for some more on Sunday. Then I'd have some spending money for Singapore, maybe buy a bottle of booze because it's cheaper than here in Indonesia, you know. Or just in case I had some trouble or extra expenses, it's always good to have a bit of extra dough.
So I chose Monday. Today. Well, since it's after midnight and this hellish day has come to an end, YESTERDAY. Rica got her employees to book me a ticket and she bought it with her credit card. This was surprising to me. I offered to pay for it but she said I could get her a bottle of perfume from the Singapore airport. It's the best place to buy it. So that instead of paying for the ticket. See, it hasn't been all bad. I have met some very nice people over here! Rica is awesome!
She knows that I can't easily buy tickets here for the same reason MANY of my annoyances are annoyances, because I don't have a KITAS, proper work visa. This is why it's illegal for me to be teaching, this is why I can't get a bank account, this is why I have been living for almost a year on the stuff I brought in two bags. Because I can't have my other belongings shipped without a KITAS. Oh they can be shipped, and I've paid for the shipment already, but when it gets to customs here they will not release it without my KITAS. Even WITH my KITAS I've been told to expect some shady shenanigans. They'll likely try to get a bit of a bribe. That's another of the annoyances of Indonesia. It's totally corrupt. But I've resigned myself to that as most people here have. In fact I was brought over by my original employer on a "business" visa, not a KITAS work visa. That was the genesis of all the misdealings and struggles I've had. And I didn't find out about it until just before flying here when it was too late to refuse on moral or legal grounds. I was assured that everybody does it and before too long I'd have the proper visa. Well it's been too long and I still don't have the proper visa. And 10 months of living illegally, being taken advantage of, working my ass off for below subsistance wages, being promised jobs and having them snatched away at the last minute, dealing with cancelling clients and the one stressor that has been the worst of them all: spending an eternity in Jakarta traffic in Jakarta taxis has taken its toll on me. I'm tired of this shit! I just want a steady job with regular hours and NO fucking taxi rides!
Well it's almost here. I've signed contracts with the people who brought me over here in the first place. See I had to leave my job there because the govenment busted them for bringing people over on "business" visas. I only worked there for two months. But now they have cleared things up with the government and they are re-hiring me AND negotiating me a proper KITAS. But it's taking a while. I signed contracts almost two months ago, had a physical examination, turned in all my paperwork and still no KITAS. I've been teaching my private classes and waiting patiently. Apparently the place where I got my physical exam is not reputable enough so the government may require a new one. That's where we stand now. So I had to renew my business visa once again.
So, Rica gets me a ticket for Monday the 16th. My last stamp was Dec. 16, two months ago. So I figure I'm good cuz the visa needs to be renewed every two months. I've GOT to stop saying that! It's actually NOT every two months, it's every 60 days. So, yeah, you know what's coming. At least you think you do, but you don't know the half of it. I go to the airport. It's usually a 130,000 rupiah taxi ride from my place. The price of gas has gone up so I was expecting a bit more. It cost me 170,000. That's about 17 Canadian bucks. Still pretty cheap for about an hour in a taxi. I check in and go to immigration and am promptly told that I have overstayed my visa. 60 days, not 2 months. So it's about 1:30 and my plane takes off at 2:30. I ask the guy what I have to do. He says it costs 300,000 per day and I've overstayed 3 days. I have about 500,000 in my wallet. Shit.
But, I had a friend of mine, Fitri, deposit some cash into my Canadian account for me last Wednesday. Again, no KITAS, no Indonesian account, so I have to get someone with an account to send money home for me, which is no mean task here. It takes a long time and is, for some unknown reason, a huge deal to Indonesian banks! Another frustration I deal with due to the lack of KITAS. Not to mention the people I rope into sending the money home for me. Fitri is a good friend and she's done it twice for me. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that! I need that to pay for my stuff in a storage locker in Victoria. My worldly belongings that I pay just over 100 bucks a month for. Nothing of great value but some stuff that is priceless to me.
So I go out of the airport and phone Fitri. No answer. Of course. Indonesian phones are as dependable as its internet. I don't know if her phone's working or if I can't reach her because the connection was dropped or what. So I try Devon, her hubby. He answers. So I ask if the money was deposited. He says yes. So I haven't got much choice. I need to pay the fine. I can always put in more later to pay my storage fees. Maybe hit Fitri up to do that one more time. Ugh. Nobody likes doing that and I hate to ask people to do it! But anyway, I go to the cash machine and am unable to get anything. Some machines here work and some don't. Another annoyance. So I try three or four of them but can't get anything from my account. It's half an hour till take-off and I can't get through customs. I call a couple people and gripe to them about my situation and receive an offer from my student Mr. Yoo to help out. Incidentally, Mr. Yoo was golfing on Sunday so he didn't pay me in advance like I was hoping. Otherwise I could have been out of this mess I was in. So Mr. Yoo offers to help me out if he can the next morning. By this time I had given up on flying Monday anyway.
So I decided I'd have to take Mr. Yoo's offer. So now I have to see what I can do, if anything, with my tickets. I have one from Jakarta to Singapore that was only about 40 bucks and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to do much with that since it's now almost in the air, but I might be able to get rid of the ticket from Singapore to Jakarta, which is Monday night and cost almost 100 bucks. I know, it's weird that one way would be such a different price than the other. Just part of the charm of Indonesia. Not the last time I'd deal with this odd phenomenon on this day either.
I go to the appropriate counter and ask if I can give back my tickets. The guy says no. I ask if there's anyone on standby who might want them. He says no. The flight is not full. I have yet to be on a flight to or from Singapore, especially a 40-dollar flight, that is not full. Like every other airline in the world, Air Asia sold MY ticket again, no doubt. But then I asked about my return flight, which was also Air Asia. He said the same thing. Here's the amazing part: he had no computer in front of him, he was not speaking from any position of up-to-date knowledge about the flights, he was just standing there being a dick. I wonder if I gave HIM a cut of the refund whether or not he would have gone for it. Indonesia!
So there's about $140.00 down the drain. Doesn't sound like much but in this little hiatus between jobs it IS a lot to me! So I now have to get home from the airport. It's about 3 PM so I should be able to just miss the evening rush hour. I get an Express taxi from a guy wearing an Express taxi uniform driven by a guy wearing and Express Taxi uniform with an Express Taxi licence prominently displayed on the dash of the car. I had taken an Express taxi to the airport. We hit a little traffic but nothing too major at around noon. The same went for the trip home. Nothing major in the way of traffic. Oddly, the bill was 285,000 rupiah. It took the same length of time, same route, same taxi, same time but was WAY more expensive! Now it's the difference between 17 and 29 dollars. Not a big deal but, again, in these lean times for me every buck counts. So I argued with the driver and told him his meter was broken. I have had an endless string of taxi scams since I've been here and they are really old. The guy who misses turns faking like he can't understand when you tell him to turn; the guy who has no change; the guy who, (and I'm not making this up), doesn't know how to get to the airport... but I usually don't bother arguing because they're cheap. A gozillion times cheaper than Canada. One of Canada's major annoyances. But this time I was in just the mood to challenge this bastard. I called my former student, who is a police officer, and told him what was up. I explained the whole situation to him and let him talk to the driver. He told me he thought the driver was legit. I guess he was, to be fair, he was running a legitimate Indonesian con. And I don't think for a minute that my police officer friend got his big house and riches by fighting corruption either. Just one more of the annoyances of this country. You can't get away from it.
So I get home with almost nothing left in my wallet, walk up the stairs and into the door and see a sign on it. It says rent is going up March 1st. Then I get into my room and figure I'll surf the internet. No internet. So I go out to the store to get some bread and milk. Meanwhile I call Fitri to fill her in on the wonderful day of mine. Just as I get back from the store our call is cut short. I'm out of pulsa. That's what they call phone minutes here. I buy pulsa at the store I had just come from. Ahh screw it, I'm going to eat some spaghetti, watch some TV, (offline), and relax in my cool apartment. I get the remote to turn on the air conditioner and press the power button. Nothing happens. Just like Korea Maria's electronic door lock, the air conditioner in my room has no manual controls. If you can't start it with the remote, you're screwed. It happened once before because the batteries in the remote were dead. This time the batteries were fine. The air conditioner is just not working. And on just the day I needed to cool off a little bit!
The cherry on top of the shit sundae this Monday was? The reason I'm up right now at, by golly it's 3 AM! I think I feel a tickle in my throat. Lean times. Fruit is expensive. Haven't been getting my vitimin C.
Well I had better try to get some sweaty shut-eye. Tomorrow, well today, is another day. I sure hope it's a better one! Flying with a cold. It has been a while since my last travel snafu. How I missed my travel trials and tribulations! Ha ha ha. Nope. Not vapourized. I can't get away with faking enlightenment. I actually didn't miss this kind of thing and really wouldn't mind at all if it never happened again.
It's now Thursday. I am back in Indonesia and got my business visa stamped for another SIXTY DAYS. But it was no picnic, lemme tell you. The immigration guy gave me a grilling! Made sure everybody heard him say that I wasn't supposed to be working on the visa I have. I assured him I was doing nothing of the sort! I have been looking for work, signing contracts, getting medical exams and such. Anyway, now I'm gonna HAVE to get my KITAS in the next 2 months or just move on.
I woke up early in the morning Tuesday. (I went to bed after writing the above and got a few hours of sleep). I met Mr. Yoo at his office and he gave me some money. Of course it was pouring rain so I stood waiting for a taxi for about 40 minutes then the trip, which is normally 20 minutes, took an hour because of rainstorm traffic. But I got there and whined about all my bad luck. He knows the kind of bad luck I've been having and says that in Korea they believe that means you are due for some good luck. Well, if they had lottery here I'd buy a ticket. Actually it was very good luck I had a friend like Mr. Yoo who showed some concern for me in my plight. More than I can say about others...
We checked out some flights and prices and one of his staff called and the airline told her I needed to purchase my ticket at the airport. So I got into a taxi and asked the guy how much it would be to the airport. He said about 170,000 so I agreed. It was actually a bit cheaper. I went to Air Asia and their ticket was going to be 1.2 million. I went to Lion and in the time it had taken me to get to the airport the price of the Lion Air ticket had gone DOWN! I was shocked! I got it for a little less than a million. Well THIS day was starting off a whole lot better!
I checked in and went to immigration. Sure enough the guy made me pay 1.2 million even though I had TRIED to leave the day before when my overstay was only 3 days and 900,000. I showed him my tickets, even explained myself in, (broken), Indonesian. I had him laughing a little bit too but he was immovable. So the ticket in actuality cost me about 3.5 mil. $350.00 Not terrible but it should have been half that.
So anyway, the rain stopped just as we took off. It wasn't raining in Singapore either. The flights were great. I found everything I wanted in the wonderful Singapore airport including a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. In fact I had TWO Quarter Pounders with Cheese. That's one Half Pounder with Cheese. While eating I thought to myself how so often the few impose their will upon the many. Why don't they have a Quarter Pounder and a Quarter Pounder withOUT Cheese? Who eats them without cheese? Dieters? Lactose intolerant? Well okay that's fine but because that's only one in every 100 Quarter Pounders, why not make THOSE folks do the extra work during ordering? Why do the 99 people have to go to the trouble of ordering a Quarter Pounder WITH CHEESE? It's a whacky world! In MY world a Quarter Pounder HAS cheese, baby!
Anyway, I was starting to feel that cold kicking in. The nose was running a bit and a cough was developing. So I bought some aspirin and some vitamin C chewables. Shoulda bought some cough medicine but wasn't thinking. The plane ride back was a bit painful. Ever try to pop your ears when you're developing a headcold? I could hardly hear a thing by the end of the flight and was actually plugging my nose and blowing air into my head to unplug my ears. It works but I've heard it's not a good thing to do.
I took the bus from the airport to Block M, which is close to my house. Then a short taxi ride home. 70,000! Saved 100 grand! Only problem was the flight was delayed and the bus was delayed. I didn't get home till 3:00. And by then I was in full on cold mode. I hardly slept at all because I was up every 5 minutes to cough and blow my nose. The whole next two days were like that. (Wednesday and Thursday)
It's 11 PM Thursday night as I type this. Today I found out the reason for the hike in rent. Everybody got a bigger TV. Yay. I have yet to use the TV in my room, small or big, but, yay. I have eaten one bowl of noodles and one box of macaroni and cheese since my Half Pounder. That's starvation for me!!! I have no idea how but every muscle in my torso is aching from coughing so much. I sneeze every now and then and hurt myself so bad it scares away the second sneeze. I get sleep maybe 10 minutes at a time. I've postponed meetings and classes. I think the worst is over though and I'll be able to get back to business tomorrow.
So the way I see all this is it happened because of Friday the 13th. Not ON Friday the 13th but because I didn't fly on Friday the 13th it got me. So now I don't know what to do. Avoid doing things on Friday the 13th or NOT avoid doing things on Friday the 13th. Or maybe there's just nothing we can do! Chook chook chook chook aaah aaah aaah aaah. Creepy music.
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