Yule Timing

In: The office
On: 24 December
At: 1 pm

Discussion between me and a colleague, who is Muslim.

Me: "Aren't we supposed to be allowed to leave early today?

-- "No. Only the Christians

"And you're Muslim, right?

-- "Yes.

"Am I considered a Christian in this office?

-- "Yes

"Why can't I go home?"

-- "Because you are too busy today." [giggles]

"Why is the office so empty now?"

-- "Every one goes home."

"But aren't most people Muslims?"

-- "Yes. About 80%."

"So have the Muslims gone home?"

-- "Most of them. Yes."

"So why do they get to go home now?"

-- I think they just convert to Christian for the afternoon." [giggles]

"And what about me? Isn't this my holiday?"

-- Maybe you pick the wrong afternoon to convert to Muslim."[giggles]

I hate it when that happens.

Except For Every Meal

Maria fell ill in the days leading up to her weekend birthday. It was unfortunate timing.

Friday evening must have been kind to her because during the weekend she had recovered. I know this from the multiple changes she made to her Blackbery profile (a common habit in Indonesia). Her progress was mainly charted via cupcakes, party references and shopping.

Unfortunately, Maria must have suffered a relapse on Sunday night because she was sick again on Monday. I began to worry that it was something serious.

You can imagine my relief when she returned on Tuesday. I know this from her reply to an email I sent 6 days earlier. The usual excuses about expenses and payment signalled that she had returned to fine form. I paused halfway through her email to think up some teasing questions and call her bluff about the "illness"

Then it happened.

I felt a tap on my shoulder with a pen and spun around. To this.

I mean ... what could I say?

You gotta hand it to Maria - she knows how to see a plan through to the end.

Unless it's my expenses.

The Slip

Last weekend I met someone who runs an importing business and has a lot of contact with Indonesian Customs and shipping.

I asked him about corruption, which fascinates me.

For the past year (or so) the Indonesian government has been clamping down on corruption and bribery within Customs. The new policy requires importers to issue a letter to their assigned Customs Officer (the one in charge of your shipment).

When your goods arrive in Indonesia you present a bunch of documents to the Officer, including this letter. The letter states that the Officer has not requested or received any form of bribe from you.

Apparently they put the bribe in the same envelope. When the Officer opens the envelope he finds shipping documents, an anti-corruption letter and his cash bribe.

Srsly.

I guess there's point using 2 envelopes. It would be a waste of good money.

Life And Milk

I run a regular team meeting on Monday afternoons.

Today I received the following "decline" from my colleague in India:

"One of my colleagues in Delhi expired yesterday due to heart attack. I am rushing to his cremation now. Please excuse me for today's 2pm meeting."

I wonder how - in his search for the appropriate English - did he settle on "Expired"? It's a little Orwellian.

Euphemisms are tough in a foreign language. Even still, Expired is a weird resting place .

And speaking of resting places ... what's with the rapid cremation? It's as if the guy collapsed onto a fire and they had no choice but to stoke it and ask people to hurry.

Solve A Problem

I was looking for a little clip to accompany my Maria post and found this

It is excrutiating in so many ways. The real test is if you can watch all the way to the end, continuously. (I failed on both fronts.)

Santa Baby

I was sitting at my desk this afternoon and without warning, Xmas music started playing loudly on the speakers. It was quite a surprise because I didn't even know we had speakers.

"Let it Snow" came out loudly on the speakers (the Dean Martin version) followed by an announcement.

I looked out the window. As usual, it was humid, hot and choked up outside and a northerly traffic jam was blowing across Jalan Sudirman. Throw in a bit of snow and the city would be fucked.

Secret Santa was hereby announced. Muslim empire is not protected from a bit of Secret Santa. Or excitement about snow, for that matter.

This was followed by Asian Santa. I think he was one of the guys from Receivables (why is it always the secretaries and the guys from Finance who drive this stuff?).

He didn't "ho ho ho" so much as say "I'm Santa! It's Santa" in a semi booming voice. As he got closer I realised how terrible his costume was, in both manufacture and carriage. The beard wasn't even covering his mouth. I he must have found it annoying, preferring it loosely hanging under his chin.

A couple of randoms from the secretarial pool were wheeling the mail trolley through the office, doling out German looking candy.

If there's anything that Indonesians love more than being Muslim, it's something that involves dressing up - prefereably with a holiday thrown in.

How Do You Keep A Wave Upon The Sand?

In Indonesia when it's your birthday you have to bring a cake to work. It's the same in the Philippines.

One of the other secretaries came up to me this afternoon and whispered to me "It's Maria's birthday tomorrow [Saturday]. Don't tell her I told you."

Maria sits on a different floor to me, an arrangement which suits each of us. So I decided I would send her a quick note to tease her ... ask if she could come in to work tomorrow.

After a couple of hours I hadn't heard back from her. She usually takes the bait by then. So I told her informant what I'd done.

"Oh. Yes. She's sick today. Yes. Very bad flu."

So sick just a few days before her weekend birthday? Not just a bout of flu; a bout of bad luck.

Indonesian Non Sequitur Number 17: Christbucks

Christmas has certainly hit Starbucks Indonesia in a big way.

They are selling a special Christmas Mix coffee. There are special Christmas concoctions and some other strange offer of a calendar once you achieve 24 stamps (stocks are limited). There is also a Christmas CD mix, on continuous loop since mid November.

I am writing this from a comfortable chair, nestled against a speaker at a less than comfortable volume. Today is a Muslim holiday. I think it's Lunar New Year or something similar that sounds like a hoot.

Currently playing in the cafe? A jazzed up version of RTRNR. Boom cha boom cha style.

Its antecedent? The little drummer boy, drawn out as a slow dirge.

I am sharing this Christmas CD with 2 women in the outdoor seating area. They would be my neighbours, but for the window. Both of them are wearing stylish glasses and a hijab (one yellow, one green). As is the custom here, each has ordered a tall, fluffy, stylised drink. If coffee was gay, this is what it would wear. // a drag version of food/coffee

One of the drinks seems to be a chocolate avocado creamy type thing (nicer in the mouth than on the eye). The other looks like one of the Christmas specials, with raspberry sauce drizzled over the whipped cream. It's supposed to look festive, but hers looks more like a grizzly murder in the alps.

They are both banging away furiously on their Blackberries and not paying attention to each other - another Indonesian social norm. Maybe they're even chatting with each other. Green is chain smoking, effortlessly incorporating quick drags into her Blackberry frenzy and occasionally flicking her glasses back up her nose. Call me a sentimentalist, but there's something about seeing Muslim women chain smoking that makes me feel confident about the future of our planet.

This is a strange country.

Au Revoir DK

I bought my Blackberry at the end of May. In mid June I asked Maria to connect it to my work email.

This process requires Maria to navigate some red tape.. I'm not saying it's difficult ... but it requires a few extra steps.

And Maria hates steps.

So here we are at the end of November and it is still still not done. A few weeks ago, I put some heat on Maria to close it out. By "heat", I mean emails littered with "pleases" and "thank yous" because it's Maria we're talking about.

As a result of this heat, The Blackberry has usurped The Expenses as Maria's number 1 subject of choice to interrupt me with ... the interruptions she barks out through lift doors and in passing, to stop me asking what she's doing away from her desk.

"Hi Maria how are you?"

-- "Good Mr Anthony. How are you?"

"I'm well. Actually this morning I sent you a note--"

-- "Your Blackberry!! Mr Anthony!! Your Blackberry!!"

And so on and so forth. We all know how it goes by now.

Over the months I have become so tired with the Blackberry topic that I can only chase her up on it intermittently. I've now run out of Valium so can only follow up on these matters after a good night's sleep. And after all, expenses had been dominating our relationship until recently.

This morning was one such occasion. I dug up an old email from Maria from a few weeks ago and tried to follow the instructions she had sent me.

I clicked on the link she sent me. Again.

It still didn't work so I promptly called Maria. I explained to her that my link didn't work. Again.

She chirpily replied that she would be done to see it. I tried to stop her - to tell her that it was the same blank screen she saw last time - but she had already hung up. Maria likes to see things in person: it's a trip away from her desk.

17 minutes later she arrived at my desk stinking of 2 cigarettes, smoked in quick succession. She hovered over me as I clicked on the link. My eyes watered and a blank screen appeared.

"That doesn't work Mr Anthony." Her diagnosis was instant and confident.

-- "You don't say." I mumbled to myself inaudibly ... the whispered retort of the weak.

Maria feigned shock at this outcome, said she would get right onto it and wandered away to the lift. Even though the lift is less than 15 metres from me, I noticed her stop for a chat a couple of times and wondered how many facebook friends she has.

2 hours later I contacted her for a progress report. Her response was self-explanatory:

"On Nov 10, Ipshita of India said they were going to investigate your case but nothing happened after that."

It seems that Ipshita has fucked up my Blackberry. It's not every day that you get to say that: Ipshita must have heard that Dirty Keith had returned to Singapore, spotted an opening and jumped into it.

I am now faced with 2 options - do I ask Maria to continue with her investigations, or contact this young Ipshita upstart myself?

The question seems to answer itself.

They Call Me 'Stacey'. They Call Me 'Her'. They Call Me 'Jane'.

You may remember Dirty Keith from Singapore Non Sequitur Number 4?

Well Dirty Keith is back.

For the past month I've been working with DK on a client proposal and yesterday he had to do a demo.

Apart from being the target of my childish smut, Keith is also is an expert in databases. Something like that.

There he was yesterday showing people all sorts of things, various bits of data moving around Indonesia. Something like that.

Part of the presentation included showing a typical customer scenario. In this part of the world, Joe Bloggs doesn't work as a sample customer name. Keith used Ronald Chan. I assume he is the Joe Bloggs of Singapore, where Ronald Chans are as common as skinny arms and rudeness.

Keith is a diminutive Chinese Singaporean who uses his bad haircut to camouflage a sharp brain. He parts his hair on the side, pulls his light grey pleated trousers up a little too high and swings his skinny arms out from an ugly golf shirt. The shirt itself is from a 2008 database conference in Bangkok: sponsor logos are sewn onto each sleeve.

Keith's age hints at Generation Y but his styling screams 1940's Chinese nerd convention. He doesn't wear glasses but if you had to draw him from memory you could be forgiven for including them. His presentation style is friendly and animated - compensation for the dreary content:

"It is proven to scale almost linearly. Therefore Job estimation of end time can be extrapolated based on previous run time and volume."

Srsly. You can't make this stuff up.

"The challenge with semi on-line storage is decision how the data can be aggregated for longer retention periods."

Keith flicked around more grey screens. He was big smiles and flailing arms - but it wasn't enough to compensate for this boring shit.

"I will now demonstrate the job monitoring features: please refer to the process' CPU consumption" here.

After a while my mind started wandering. That while was 53 seconds.

I noticed that Keith's trousers were the same colour as the OK buttons on his demo screens. I pondered whether it was intentional.

"Data lineage is demonstrated in how the changing formula will show analysis of the impacted report"

My eyelids were heavy and his golf shirt was blurring into the projector screen.

"De-duplication is challenging. Common names can appear many times in the database but you don't know if it's the same Ronald Chan."

I was starting to fall asleep.

Then it happened.

"I don't know if and of you remember my name?"

My eyelids sprung into life. I became alert but contained. Anticipating a kill like a cat spotting a cockroach in the corner.

"I'm Kum Yeung Kok."

And scene.

I'd never heard Kum Yeung pronounce his full name before. People usually call him "Koom" or "Koom Yoong" to avoid going all Benny Hill on his ass.

Kum Yeung, on the other hand, has no such hang-ups. His pronunciation was perfect. Every. Word. Of. His. Name. Was. Enunciated. Precisely as it is sniggered.

"There are not many Cum Young Cocks in the world", he declared again quite loudly. Indeed.

This got me wondering how I could transition my pronunciation of Koom Yoong closer to his own, more accurate yet Benny Hill version? The disobedient side of my brain was grappling with being able to use a socially acceptable norm, and was intimidated.

"Because Cum Young is quite rare," he continued. Deary me.

This was all so inappropriate. So Dirty Keith.

I wondered whether Keith was having the last laugh, with his skilled poker face.

Surely someone else must find this amusing? The eyes of my own poker face swept the room, looking for signs of recognition or wry. I maintained the stiff composure of a toddler who has stolen a shoe.

But there was only one person sniggering and it was me. I imagined him doing this in Australia and chuckled along with my imaginary friends.

"So you can find my name here very well. See? I'm not like Ronald."

No you're certainly not. You dirty bastard.

Hogswallop

This article discusses about Prince William's engagement to Kateshername.

My favourite quote is this:

The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was informed of the engagement during a cabinet meeting and said the news was met with a "great cheer" and with "a great banging of tables".

Sometimes you wonder what the fuck is going on with Britain. Just when you think it's in the 21st Century, you hear of them carrying on like Hogwarts.

Cameron - 5 points!

Indonesian Non Sequitur Number 16: Starbucks

Here are 2 pictures I took this morning in Starbucks Setiabudi, across from my apartment.

Both of them decry this country's reputation as a conservative, Muslim dominated state.

Let's start with Christmas.

That's right. This morning they launched Christmas today in Starbucks, 7 weeks and 1 day before December 25. Hats on to them for getting in there first.

Alongside this they've repackaged some regular offerings into Xmas specials, mostly by squirting a shot of raspberry into your beverage.

There's nearly always something free at Starbucks for the oddest things - like a Friday donut. Or a free muffiin if you use your (labour intensive) BCA credit card to make a purchase between the 3rd and 16th of the month, or a creme brulee with every purchase of a syrupy Xmas beverages. Or not saying thank you.

Let's finish with golf.

Golfers obviously don't just come out. They really come out.

This issue of whatIthinkisagolfingmagazine was taking pride of place on the Table For Reading Material (as it's called).

I understand that the above implicates me as a regular Starbucks customer ... and I hang my head in shame. And reach for my coffee. And sip from my Venti Quad Non Fat Latte. And take a bite of my complementary donut. Which I now spell in the American way. As I also do with "organization". Just to fit in.

Baby

This morning I received the following email:

Hello Dearest,

I came across your contact at www.englishbaby.com and I decided to contact you.

Really I am here to look for that lovely, great and ideal man to love. Honey remember that distance, age and race are not barriers to a true love. However, I am a single and lovely young lady who wants to be dated with love and passion. And I will appreciate if you can reply me. I am 24 years of age, 5.37 in

height, 64 kg, and never married. I will appreciate if you can reply my mail.

To enable me send you my pictures and more information about myself.

And while waiting for your lovely and positive reply,

I remain your lovely

Benita

Something tells me this could be the same Benita from yesterday. It also seems like I've been listed on a site called "englishbaby" ... which will certainly increase my odds of finding an Indonesian bride.

I suspect this is not the last we will hear from Benita. Or brides.

Send your emails and take a number, ladies.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Benita?

I received a note this morning from the lovely Benita, a lady with whom I am yet to have had the pleasure of making myself acquainted.

Benita's email arrived as a long stream of text. I have broken it up, below, into palatable bites which represent my unfolding reactions while reading it.

"Hello Dearest,

This is a strong, superlative start.

"I came across your contact at www. jakchat.com

At first I was a bit confused. Then I remembered. A few months ago I joined a web forum called "jakchat", which is a forum for English speakers to get news and information about Jakarta. It's a poorly organised site but after an hour I found an Indonesian teacher there and I haven't been back.

It's better than the (more visual, less informative) activities that could have been associated with that web address.

and I decided to contact you. Really I am here to look for that lovely, great and ideal man to love.

... so which one is it? Make up your mind, bitch.

"Honey remember that distance, age and race are not barriers to a true love.

Firstly, in my experience if you call a stranger 'Honey' it means you are waitressing in a midwest diner.

I imagined Benita pulling a pencil out from behind her ear as she greeted me, while flicking her thumb across her tongue then across the small notepad then writing "huevos rancheros and coffee - hold the grits".

On the other hand, Benita seems to be an equal opportunity girlfriend who welcomes all takers. That barries statement sure had a way of ruling out any "ruling out" on her part, as it were.

"However, I am a single and lovely baby young lady who wants to be dated

By this stage I was thinking of calling her so many things.But "lovely baby young lady" was not one of them.

Where did the fuck did the baby part come from? (No not the corner, Cheesel.)

That said, Benita's use of "dated" seemed more accurate ... as in "Benita I'll date you with this fucking email if you're not careful".

I imagined a somewhat surprised look on Benita's face. It was an obedient version of surprise and it gave me the creeps. I think it was subservience.

with love and passion.

Oh for fucksake, Benita ... you want both?

Benita seemed awfully confused about the immutable laws of life ... Passion is supposed to replace love, not co-exist.

I imagined a flowchart with "Benita" written above it. Illogical arrows were cross-crossing each other, like a modern-day Esher.

"And I will appreciate if you can reply me. I am 24 years of age, 5.37 in height, 64 kg, and never married.

In Indonesia, "never married" normally implies fresh and innocent, of which I suspected Benita of neither.

"I will appreciate if you can reply my mail.

How could I not?

And yet. Not.

To enable me send you my pictures and more information about myself.

It's interesting that she doesn't ask for pictures or information in return. I imagined the calbire of eligible bachelors (and husbands) that typically respond to such an introductory emails, and figures that photos can wait.

And while waiting for your lovely and positive reply,

I imagined Benita dressed in a pretty party frock (green) and a wide-brimmed straw hat. She's staring at the clock, waiting for my positive reply. It's the desert. The clock is sitting on a rock. Benita's smile is slowly fading. Tick tock. Tick. Tock. There is a pencil tucked neatly behind her ear.

"I remain your lovely

My lovely?

My lovely?

My lovely?

It didn't feel right. I haven't earned Benita's enduring devotion and monogamy. At least not yet. This tasted a bit one-sided. Like sugar.

Or honey.

"Benita"

By now I was sure her name was not Benita. Call me a cynic.

indonesian Non Sequitur 15

Indonesian Non Sequitur Number 14: Macet Gila

Last night it took me 8 minutes to travel from Kemang, a nearby suburb, to Setiabudi where I live.

Tonight at 7pm the trip was around 3 hours.

However, if you left the office at 10pm it was down to about 2 hours.

------

Update: a colleague today described how he took 4.5 hours to get home last night. Another spent 5 in a cab from the airport.

Indonesian Non Sequitur Number 13

Today when I was in Starbucks (yes Starbucks) having a morning coffee, a general announcement came on the PA of the mall.

It was in helpfully in English:

"Ladies and gentleman,

"Your sentence please. We are pronouncing that our here test. Please remind where you are standing now."

An Indonesian version followed - its instructions were probably a little clearer.

Then the English version followed again, only this time we had to remind where we were sitting.

It's all so confusing, if a more inclusive.

Then again, I'll always remember where I was sitting at that moment. This probably means that I followed their instructions to the letter. Obedient me.

My Drawers

Yesterday I received a very terse email from the American Express Corporate Card Collections Department in Mexico, to say that bills remain unpaid and the card is now suspended.

Mexico. Go figure.

Not long after that, Maria walked past my desk so I asked her what it was all about:

Maria: "Oh - well yes I don't know. Maybe I put down on the expenses claim for you to be paid in cash and so they didn't pay the credit card company because it went to you. Next time I will put pay by credit card but now too late. So Mr Anthony have you been paid this money?"

-- "I don't know."

"Why don't you know Mr Anthony? You should know already from your bank account if the payment has gone through."

In one swift turn, she had sliced a piece of blame off the bone and handed it to me. I braced as chewed on it, waiting for another piece.

Me -- "I don't know. I just haven't checked it lately. But anyway where are the Amex bills? Why haven't you received them? You're supposed to manage them aren't you?"

"Yes I should get them. But I didn't" [pause] Oh. Wait! No! I checked last week and they told me that these are now put in your pigeon hole instead."

-- "I have a pigeon hole?"

"Yes you do."

-- "Where is it?"

"I don't know."

-- "Why do I have a pigeon hole?"

"I don't know. But you do."

"Well don't worry anyway because right now you have this one so you're responsible for this one only."

She pointed to the empty drawers under my desk which she had, for some reason, recently arranged.

-- "But I still have a pigeon hole?"

"Yes."

-- "So aren't I also responsible for that ... as well?"

"Yes."

-- "And aren't my Amex bills in there?"

"Yes."

-- "So now that I have these drawers [point] I have to check 2 things for mail and carry 2 keys?"

"Yes."

She used that "once more for the dumbies" tone to her voice, making the Her "yes" rise, then fall slowly. This was to imply that she had arrived at this conclusion some time ago, and I was slowly catching up.

-- "How can I find out where it is?"

"Where what is?"

-- "My pigeon hole."

"Oh. Wait. Yes! I someone told me on Friday. Come with me."

Maria never admits to forgeting anything. She is quick on her feet and

repackages any oversights as recent, late-breaking news. It's "yesterday" or "just this morning" that she discovered some new piece of information that I had been waiting on for weeks. She

was just waiting for me to be out of meetings so she could tell me. She would have told me already if I didn't rudely interrupt her with all these questions.

I followed Maria around the office, looking for the pigeon hole. I was trailing behind with my head bowed like an insolent child. Hers was held high and there was no doubt who was the boss and who was in the wrong.

We reached an oasis of white lockable things.

My pigeon hole turned out to be a large locker with my name on it. The surname was slightly misspelt so that my name doesn't just sound the same as "fuckwit" in Indonesian ... they've adopted the Indonesian spelling as well.

The locker itself is located at the end of the row, hugging a thoroughfare. This ensures that most people who work in or visit this area get to chuckle at my surname and therefore my expense.

No wonder everyone knows who I am. Here's me thinking it was because I was white, and eligible.

It could be worse. I have a colleague whose first name is Asfaq. This makes it difficult for him to run workshops in English speaking countries (and almost impossible for me to introduce him to people without smirking). Sometimes I like to imagine Asfaq working in Canberra, at one of those large porno supermarkets - supervising and restocking aisles 7 and 8.

"Why am I always put on aisles 7 and 8?"

-- "Because on your first day when you introduced yourself, the boss misunderstood your accent and thought you were asking to work in this section."

"Oh no. Not again."

Back to Anthony Fuckwit.

We needed to find a key to my locker, which pretty much tied Maria up for the rest of the day.

Maria has an Endora-like quality of just turning up.

This morning I sensed that someone was at my desk and looked around to find Maria staring at me, stoically holding up a key between her right thumb and index finger. The look on her face indicated that it is possible to be both smug and bored at the same time.

Me: "Good morning Maria. What's this?"

Maria: "Your key Mr Anthony. The pigeon hole."

This comment was delivered in monotone, with a machine like quality. Maria often adopts this machine speech pattern, usually when she has the smug/bored expression appears. It's as if she's using it as a type of speech make-up - slapped on at the time, to match her face.

Off we went again to my "pigeon hole", again with my head bowed. As I went to use the key, we realised that it was already opened.

Inside it we found 8 American Express envelopes and a warning note from our Workplace Security which said that I had failed an audit at 19:00 on 14 July 2010.

My surname was misspelt. Clearly the Workplace Security department had decided to adopt the Fuckwit Spelling convention. They also referred to me not as a person, but as a violator.

Anthony Fuckwit, the Violator.

I showed this to Maria, who rolled her eyes and said "We call this a love letter".

Then she picked up my Amex envelopes, assured me she would take care of everything and took off.

She did not head in the direction of her desk. I expect she took my envelopes for a smoke.

Nazi Goreng

There are no sacred cows in Indonesia.

In July I showed a picture I'd taken in a restaurant near my gym. This restaurant inexplicably uses the Ku Klux Klan to promote its noodles.

I heard from a colleague that the image had finally been taken down.

He turned out to be accurate.

This painting is now hanging in its place:

As far as genocide-aligned food marketing goes, it's quite the upgrade.

Indonesian Non Sequitur Number 12

Many foreigners work in our Indonesian office.

The 2 of us who are white received this email back on September 9th, from my boss:

You may be aware that an obscure church in Florida plans to burn a copy of the Koran on the 11/9.

Should this occur, I caution everyone to take extra care when travelling around Jakarta as there is the possibility of random acts of violent behaviour against Caucasians.

This is a matter of concern for some embassies and security firms.

Any issues please let me know, contact our security department or the local police.

Hopefully sanity will prevail in Florida....

I remember thinking "... and in Jakarta, for that matter." before shrugging my shoulders and forgetting all about it.

I blame the publishers. Korans and bibles should be made out of non-flammable materials. Otherwise it's just too tempting, like a religious version of ice cream in the fridge.

Made In Heaven

This article has romance novel written all over it.

So many individual stories in one short article.

I Heart Facebook

I heart facebook

And I heart typos.

A Waka Waka Way

There are no recent updates to the blog so I must apologise to my 3 regular and 7 occasional readers. My excuse is that I haven’t had real access to the internet for 2 ½ weeks.

Real access is defined as having an internet connection at the same time as being sober. These two events have not co-existed for me until now, on account of my travelling with tinkers and drunkards.

I’ve also started reading David Copperfield, so expect the blog to take a somewhat Victorian turn for the next 2 to 135 weeks, depending on how long I take to finish it.

During this time I intend to be even more miserable and hard done by than usual.

Stampede

Jakarta Airport, today

Public Announcement

[Ding Dong]

"Dear passengers. A dark blue bag has been found outside the gate D2.

"Could everyone who own it, please come to the information counter beside immigration."

I was almost tempted to go there myself and lay claim to said dark blue bag.

Stingy

I leave for Africa tomorrow and have no time to prepare.

Things I haven't done:

• packed clothes - I don't own any warm clothes any more and haven't bought any
• arranged visas - I think I'll be fine
• looked into currency - I do hope they accept Indonesian Rupiah over there
• worried about health - vaccinations
• organised decent good insurance - this morning bought the first one that a Google search returned but I need to check if it's real or not I think it's Danish
• packed my bags - in any way shape or form
• printed out my flights and/or itinerary and/or
• done my washing
• left instructions for my maid

Things I have done:

• bought fake tan (blacking up for Africa, as it were ...)
• bought 3 pith helmets to blend in with the other pseudo colonialists
• bought Malaria pills. "Surely they have malaria in Indonesia," I thought to myself, followed by "and surely they won't ask me for a prescription".

Today while I was waiting for my take-away lunch I popped in to the chemist to buy malaria tablets. They didn't really understand what I needed but malaria is a common word. Before long, she (she with the green cross on her lapel) returned with a package that had a diagram of a mosquito on it. Good enough for me.

The instructions are in Indonesian but with Green's help we figured out that I must take 1 tablet today, then 1 every week "on this day".

The price for this medication came to 40 cents. That didn't exactly fill me with a sense of confidence in the drugs, or in Green's advice.

The mosquito image is compelling though.

I took my first pill whilst still in the chemist and they seemed alarmed that I didn't use water. It's now a few hours later I can feel a wave of something which has overcome me. I don't think it's a sense of protection. Or relief. Maybe it's just some old fashioned poisoning.