For most ordinary human beings, on occasion, midnight is a
perfectly acceptable time to lie down for bed before entering the office the
next day. An addicting TV show, chatting
with friends, or perhaps scrambling to make up for a day of procrastination –
any of which is a perfectly reasonable excuse to push one’s waking hours to the
12:00 a.m. mark. However, habitually,
breaking this p.m./a.m. barrier makes for a dreary day-to-day existence. With a consistent 6:00 a.m. wakeup call, time
must eventually be set aside to compensate for lost sleep.
This is why still being conscious to see “1:00 a.m.” on a
clock during a normal workweek is a stark indicator that something has not gone
as planned. And furthermore, once the clock has struck 2:00 a.m., few additional
signs are needed to suggest that a total breakdown has occurred. There are very
few reasons why one should still be pacing around his or her apartment a mere
four hours before he must arise and begin preparing for the next day.
It’s 2:00 a.m. here right now. The ceiling light is on in my living room, all
my valuables are hidden, and my new purple foldout couch is quite irregularly
positioned in front of the doorway, purposefully serving to prevent any
unwanted entry into my humble abode…
...Four hours earlier...
After a Skype call home, I walked back to my room through
the underground shopping mall, which serves as a very useful and entertaining
foundation to my apartment complex. I
took an elevator up to the 11th floor, and upon arriving at my unit,
groceries and laptop in hand, I attempted to unlock my front door. However, I
experienced some difficulty in unlocking the lock. Attributing this
inconvenience to having previously had two hands full of food and electronic
equipment, I patiently placed my belongings onto the floor. I then made a
second attempt to turn the key.
This time, however, I immediately recognized an urgent
problem. Despite having released 20+
pounds from my grip, thereby significantly improving my dexterity and
coordination, I still could not open my door.
The key turned stubbornly about 45 degrees to the left and refused to
rotate any further. Any additional
tinkering with the door would be futile; the lock was undoubtedly broken. Entering my apartment would now be
transformed from a mindless, routine task into a cross-cultural fiasco of
confusion and frustration.
Refusing to give up, I carefully toyed with the lock and key
for a good 15 minutes. After only 3 days of living at this place, I truly didn’t want to resort to a 10 p.m. call to my new landlord. The guy doesn’t live anywhere
near by. And even if I had wanted to
make calling him my first attempt to resolve the problem, it would not have
done any good; of course, I did eventually make the call, but to no real
surprise, there was no answer. In fact,
after multiple attempts over the course of another 20 minutes, reaching the
owner began to seem like a lost cause.
This was a problem. See, getting most anything accomplished
in this country – when that “anything” falls outside your individual realm of
expertise – is a matter of having already formed a close and personal
relationship with another individual who does have that expertise. And the time required to cultivate that sort
of relationship with someone seemed like it might be longer than the time between that instant and when I wanted to lie down for bed.
Serving to further exacerbate the situation was the fact that in order to
rent an apartment on a monthly basis in Indonesia, you are technically supposed to have
already obtained an official visa, namely, one which doesn’t explicitly state that you
are a TOURIST, and that you must exit the country within 30 days. At the time, unfortunately, this was all I
had. And to boot, guess what, that was also locked in my room.
Begrudgingly, I took the elevator back down to the security
desk and looked into the eyes of two Indonesian guards, with whom I’d not yet had the chance to meet, after only 3 days of staying at the apartment.
For all they knew, I had just walked up from the mall downstairs to
visit a friend.
Suffice it to say that the interaction was somewhat
painful.
“Soooo…. You live here?” Okay, which apartment do you own?
…oh, you’re renting? I don’t have you on the list… so, you just moved in?
hmmmm. Why don’t you call your
landlord. Oh, he didn’t pick up? You should try him again. Still no answer? We’ll, just need to make a
copy of your visa then. Oh, no visa?
Well, at least let us make a copy of your passport. Huh, don’t have that either?”
...head of security enters...
“Okay, so you don’t have any official Indonesian I.D. You
don’t have anyone who can vouch for the fact that you live here, and you can’t
get a hold of your landlord? If we open
this door for you, I really, really…. REALY hope that you actually do live
here. And I really, really… REALLY hope
that your passport is actually inside. Understand?”
So, after a pretty obvious threat from security, I was
escorted upstairs by two guards and a very suspect looking “locksmith,” who
appeared to be about 14 years old, wielding nothing more than a rusty hammer
and a bent icepick.
Another noisy hour of banging at my door went by, and after
a sufficiently large pile of sawdust, paint chips, and metal shavings had
accumulated at my threshold, the door miraculously opened. But unfortunately, it had not occurred to the
staff to bring any replacement parts. This, of course, presented the obvious
problem of not being able to again lock, or even close, my door. But more immediately, it meant that – unless
I wanted to leave my apartment completely unattended with a door flapping in
the wind at 12:00 a.m. in an unfamiliar environment – I was going to have to
entrust the apartment staff with the most important document I have, so that they
could go make a copy, while I guarded all my possessions. And
their sense of urgency of making the copy of my passport was discomforting, so I
had to let them do it, seeing as how they would not accept a copy that I had
already made.
The copy of the passport literally took another hour, which
seemed even longer…
And that takes me back to the beginning of the story. I had to get some sleep after my passport was
finally returned to me. So, I moved my couch in front of the door. That way, if
anyone wanted to enter, at least they would wake me up with the commotion of having
to push passed the couch.
Miraculously, by 2:30 in the morning, one of the staff
members had actually managed to find a replacement lock at a nearby
market. And to my relief, he seemed to
install it with a bit more finesse and expertise than the manner in which he
had removed the previous one.
Yes, it turned out to be a dreary and exhausting next day at
work, but at least now, I’ve made friends with the guards, they do know I live
here, I have a permanent visa, and although I still can rarely ever get a hold
of my landlord, no further problems have arisen with the facilities.
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