Surreal life
One thing about living in Indonesia is that you never know what's going to happen from day to day. Expect the unexpected, I guess.
Saturday Travis and I took a trip into Jakarta with our fried computer to see what we could have done to it. Before going to the place we bought it, we went into the district of Kemang, a trendy, expensive, expat-friendly area. We wanted to see if the salon I'd used before and liked was still open so I could get a haircut. Our driver dropped us off at this little shopping complex that houses a Starbucks (of course) a few chic home decor stores and this salon. Turns out the salon was closed, but as we paused outside of Starbucks to admire a decor boutique's courtyard sale display, a white woman came rushing up to us.
"Are you from Nebraska?" she asked in a perfectly midwestern accent.
"Yes," we said, a bit taken aback. What gave us away? I wondered. Our t-shirts and jeans? My (let's face it) not-exactly-supermodel physique?
"I read that article about you in the Norfolk Daily News!" she exclaimed, and proceded to explain that she and her husband were also from the midwest and had family near Norfolk who had sent them the article. They had only received it a few days earlier, and decided they had to find us. Four days later, in a city of close to 20 million people, they see us wander past them as they were sipping coffee in a Starbucks. (For those of you who have read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and are familiar with the improbability factor, I half expected to see a pot of petunias and a whale come floating by at any second.)
This lady and her husband are about our parents' age and have a few sons who are in college in the U.S. She teaches at the Jakarta International School and he works in the oil business, and they've been here for four years. Before that, they were in Cairo and Russia. Very cool. Anyway, we exchanged phone numbers and they said they can't wait to have us over for dinner and that we're absolutely welcome to visit them or stay with them any time. They live in the Pondok Indah area of Jakarta, which is uber-swanky, and seem like genuinely wonderful people. Wow. So that was exciting.
We then made our way across the city to Ratu Plaza, where we were hoping to exchange our still under warranty computer. We had very low hopes, inasmuch as we've NEVER had good luck with faulty electronics. The place we bought our printer from (the second one in two months, mind you) wouldn't exchange it even though it NEVER worked, not even when we took it out of the box at home for the first time. Instead, they hassled us and gave us grief for wanting a working printer and expecting them to uphold their end of the warranty. This was the second printer we'd bought from them in two months, as the first one was broken by the guys who installed our living room curtains. (This, of course, was OUR fault.) Anyway, Gramedia, where we bought the printers, was really reluctant to do anything to help us, despite the fact that they sold us a faulty machine and we brought it back WITH WARRANTY the very next day. With Kale's help, we convinced them (or scared them, as Kale is a very tall white man) to fix it, and though it took a while, we got it back and in working condition.
To make a very long story short, our dealings with customer service in Indonesia has been absolute crap. We were expecting very little for two reasons: one, past experience and two, our computer was kind of struck by lightning and most warranties anywhere are probably void after that. We unloaded the computer and took it into Carrefour. Upon arriving in the Electronics department, we approached the first salesperson we saw and gestured at the computer, saying "ini rusak," or "this broken." We're so not fluent. He asked, in lovely English, which part was broken. We told him it was the tower, the CPU. He checked the date on our warranty card, asked us to please wait, and 20 minutes later showed up with a brand new one. He plugged it in to the monitor and other parts, tested it to make sure it worked, packed everything back up and said, "There you go! Sorry about that." We thanked him rather profusely and were on our merry way...looking out for whales and potted plants again.
The guy never did ask if anything happened to it, which was good-partly because explaining that it was hit by lightning would have been difficult. I managed to explain what happened to our driver through sound effects, hand gestures and veeeeeeeery broken Indonesian. I wasn't looking forward to doing it again, though my performance both amused and slightly worried my driver.
So that was our extremely weird Saturday. It was a nice weekend, all in all. We had Friday off for Mohammed's birthday, which was lovely. Our cat had an interesting weekend, too-he learned to walk the handrailings of the stairs in our house. He also fell into the toilet three times and the bathtub three times. I'd forgotten to take the drain out of the tub right away when I got out, and he ended up falling in. Three times. I'm starting to think Beans is perhaps a few beans short of a full pod, if you will. We had a very damp, very angry kitten sulking in our house yesterday, quite irritated that each time he fell into the water, he got wet. Imagine! Darn that logic. It was amusing for us, though, as cats with wet feet are very funny to watch. I'm thinking we're going to put scotch tape on his feet sometime soon and see how much fun that is. Poor Beans.
Saturday Travis and I took a trip into Jakarta with our fried computer to see what we could have done to it. Before going to the place we bought it, we went into the district of Kemang, a trendy, expensive, expat-friendly area. We wanted to see if the salon I'd used before and liked was still open so I could get a haircut. Our driver dropped us off at this little shopping complex that houses a Starbucks (of course) a few chic home decor stores and this salon. Turns out the salon was closed, but as we paused outside of Starbucks to admire a decor boutique's courtyard sale display, a white woman came rushing up to us.
"Are you from Nebraska?" she asked in a perfectly midwestern accent.
"Yes," we said, a bit taken aback. What gave us away? I wondered. Our t-shirts and jeans? My (let's face it) not-exactly-supermodel physique?
"I read that article about you in the Norfolk Daily News!" she exclaimed, and proceded to explain that she and her husband were also from the midwest and had family near Norfolk who had sent them the article. They had only received it a few days earlier, and decided they had to find us. Four days later, in a city of close to 20 million people, they see us wander past them as they were sipping coffee in a Starbucks. (For those of you who have read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and are familiar with the improbability factor, I half expected to see a pot of petunias and a whale come floating by at any second.)
This lady and her husband are about our parents' age and have a few sons who are in college in the U.S. She teaches at the Jakarta International School and he works in the oil business, and they've been here for four years. Before that, they were in Cairo and Russia. Very cool. Anyway, we exchanged phone numbers and they said they can't wait to have us over for dinner and that we're absolutely welcome to visit them or stay with them any time. They live in the Pondok Indah area of Jakarta, which is uber-swanky, and seem like genuinely wonderful people. Wow. So that was exciting.
We then made our way across the city to Ratu Plaza, where we were hoping to exchange our still under warranty computer. We had very low hopes, inasmuch as we've NEVER had good luck with faulty electronics. The place we bought our printer from (the second one in two months, mind you) wouldn't exchange it even though it NEVER worked, not even when we took it out of the box at home for the first time. Instead, they hassled us and gave us grief for wanting a working printer and expecting them to uphold their end of the warranty. This was the second printer we'd bought from them in two months, as the first one was broken by the guys who installed our living room curtains. (This, of course, was OUR fault.) Anyway, Gramedia, where we bought the printers, was really reluctant to do anything to help us, despite the fact that they sold us a faulty machine and we brought it back WITH WARRANTY the very next day. With Kale's help, we convinced them (or scared them, as Kale is a very tall white man) to fix it, and though it took a while, we got it back and in working condition.
To make a very long story short, our dealings with customer service in Indonesia has been absolute crap. We were expecting very little for two reasons: one, past experience and two, our computer was kind of struck by lightning and most warranties anywhere are probably void after that. We unloaded the computer and took it into Carrefour. Upon arriving in the Electronics department, we approached the first salesperson we saw and gestured at the computer, saying "ini rusak," or "this broken." We're so not fluent. He asked, in lovely English, which part was broken. We told him it was the tower, the CPU. He checked the date on our warranty card, asked us to please wait, and 20 minutes later showed up with a brand new one. He plugged it in to the monitor and other parts, tested it to make sure it worked, packed everything back up and said, "There you go! Sorry about that." We thanked him rather profusely and were on our merry way...looking out for whales and potted plants again.
The guy never did ask if anything happened to it, which was good-partly because explaining that it was hit by lightning would have been difficult. I managed to explain what happened to our driver through sound effects, hand gestures and veeeeeeeery broken Indonesian. I wasn't looking forward to doing it again, though my performance both amused and slightly worried my driver.
So that was our extremely weird Saturday. It was a nice weekend, all in all. We had Friday off for Mohammed's birthday, which was lovely. Our cat had an interesting weekend, too-he learned to walk the handrailings of the stairs in our house. He also fell into the toilet three times and the bathtub three times. I'd forgotten to take the drain out of the tub right away when I got out, and he ended up falling in. Three times. I'm starting to think Beans is perhaps a few beans short of a full pod, if you will. We had a very damp, very angry kitten sulking in our house yesterday, quite irritated that each time he fell into the water, he got wet. Imagine! Darn that logic. It was amusing for us, though, as cats with wet feet are very funny to watch. I'm thinking we're going to put scotch tape on his feet sometime soon and see how much fun that is. Poor Beans.
posted by Erin @ 8:58 PM
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