Chinese New Year

Earlier today, after I had spent the morning soaking up some sun by the pool, I decided that we should adopt Chinese New Year (Imlek in bahasa Indonesia) in the U.S.  I would get to wear fun Chinese dresses and receive money from my relatives – that is, until I have children of my own, anyway.  The malls are adorned with red decorations and pink cherry blossoms.  There are signs all over saying Gong Xi Fa Cai – the appropriate Chinese greeting.  People are a little bit more generous (the Chinese people anyway).  People visit their relatives.  What a wonderful holiday!

It is now 7:32 pm and I have officially decided that Chinese New Year stinks!  Or maybe it just stinks in Indonesia.  Or maybe I’m just having one of those days where you need to step back and say – TII (This is Indo!)

After my typical Saturday morning of reading by the pool (in 99 degree heat) and doing laundry, I got ready for TGP (Saturday night church) – festively dressed in red for the occasion.  I found a taxi right away, but traffic was worse than usual and I spent way too long getting to the mall that is only about a mile down the road.  I thought I would finally get the chance to mail some cards I’ve been carrying around with me for weeks. 

Side note: I have only found one reliable post office here.  The only other one I know of (at the office) has failed me time and time again.  But I don’t get to the reliable PO very often. 

I arrived with 30 minutes to spare, or so I thought.  Come to find out, in the last 2 weeks, they have changed the hours of this particular post office.  It now closes at 1pm on Saturdays instead of 2pm.  Guess I’ll be carrying those cards around awhile longer. 

Well, I thought maybe I could take advantage of the holiday sales and get a new purse!  Purses don’t last long around here.  No luck – either too expensive or not the style I wanted.  No luck in the shoe department – too small, heels too high.  No luck in the clothing department – even XL is too small for this bule (white) girl.

Since I couldn’t perk myself up with some new barang (stuff), I resorted to option #2 – food.  Almost every time I visit Pondok Indah Mall, I eat at Fatburger.  It’s pretty much the undisputed best burger in Jakarta.  I couldn’t resist.  I got my usual – Fat Junior, no pickle, no relish with Skinny Fries and a Coke.  I had brought my computer along in order to do a little work.  Fatburger is also the best location in Jakarta, in my experience, to get some work done.  Plenty of space, no smoking, nice view, not too cold, can usually find an outlet, and good wifi.  The problem is, I don’t break out my little travel-size computer too often, so whenever I DO break it out, it wants to run updates.  This slows down everything else, and I basically can’t get anything done.  I wrote a couple more cards (I wonder when they’ll get mailed?) and watched the movie that was playing on the TV above me.  It turns out Men In Black 4 is still pretty funny, even without sound. 

While I was eating (at least the burger was delicious!), a tropical thunderstorm blew up.  Rain came down in sheets, trees were blowing like crazy, and I could almost hear the thunder over the loud music playing in the mall!  This is bad news in Jakarta.  Rain makes everything unpredictable – taxis, traffic, flooding, etc.  Now, I could have walked from the mall to TGP in about 30 minutes, but it was still raining slightly and the sidewalks are not too trustworthy, even when the motorbikes aren’t using them.  So I headed for the taxi line instead.  It usually takes about 15 minutes to get from the mall to TGP, but since it had been raining, I allowed an hour.  You never know!  I stopped to use the restroom on the way, but of course, there was a line. 

Lines in Indonesia have no logic.  Depending on where you are, you may be elbowed or shoved out of the way, you may end up in normal *Western* line, or you may experience what I did.  I entered the tiny two person bathroom and got in “line”.  The next woman who entered didn’t stand behind me, she squeezed between me and the lady in front of me to stand in front of the other stall.  Yes, this is quite often the case.  It doesn’t so much matter who came into the bathroom first, but which stall you choose to stand in front of.  Then there’s always the issue of trying to scoot into the stall as quickly as you can, before the bathroom attendant tries to get in to “clean” between each use.  This “cleaning” involves an extra flush and mopping the floor.  At this point, I was slightly annoyed that it took 15 minutes to use the bathroom.  Now I only had 45 to make it to church.

The taxi line was medium length when I arrived, but I spotted a friend going my way and got to budge a couple of people.  It grew to super-snaking-around-the-corner length over the next hour while we slowly moved ahead inch by inch.  My patience really started wearing thin when one lady toward the end of the line simply walked out and stole one man’s taxi right out from under him!  She drove away while the rest of us stood with mouths open and giving dirty looks.  We almost got in a taxi at one point, but were turned down by the driver.  Once we found a driver who liked the looks of us enough to let us into the car, it was a straight shot to church! 

Well, almost.  It still took another 30 minutes to get to TGP in bumper to bumper traffic.  At that point I was already 45 minutes late.  So much for meeting with the youth (two sisters) and testing out my lesson on them.  But I really wanted to see a friend who got engaged a couple of days ago!  It turned out I wasn’t the only one who got held up, or held out, by the traffic.  My newly engaged friend wasn’t at TGP.  Neither were the sisters. 

So after church, there was nothing I wanted more than to take the 10 minute bus ride home and watch a good movie on the couch.  Wouldn’t you know?  The bus window was closed.  My hopes were further dashed when, after finding a taxi, we came to a dead stop.  That’s when I pulled out my computer and started writing this post!  I did finally make it home – one hour and $4 later!  Ok, so $4 doesn’t sound like so much, but it’s almost twelve times what I normally pay to get home from church!

 What did I accomplish today?  Aside from spending some quality time studying the Jakarta traffic, I perked up my tan a little bit, wrote another card, and finished this blog!  And this is only Chinese New Year’s Eve!