Telkomflict!

There’s something that I’ve been meaning to mention in my past few journal entries, and that’s how my concept of time is completely off balance, living on the equator. It’s not enough that I’m out of the country; the sun sets here at 5:45pm everyday, and there is no season change. It’s been getting cooler for you guys, but it’s been getting hotter and dryer for me. A couple weeks ago, Joe mentioned something to me about fall break, and I couldn’t believe it. I was thinking, “Shit, it’s already October?? I’ve got to apply for grad school!” That's why I’ve been on a frantic search for practical internet access lately.

So yeah, for real this time. It looks like I've been able to get the situation under control. I've currently got a temporary solution going here, but soon I will have a permanent internet connection. The other night when I thought I had it all worked out... yeah, that was certainly not the case. I was actually getting charged double, and what I mean by double is X10. I was getting charged by two different providers at the same time, and it just so happens that one of them was unreasonably more expensive than the other (the one who, at the time, I didn't know what charging me). I have to say that I was getting extremely frustrated because of this situation and have never had to conceal my emotions for the benefit of others (and myself) quite like this before.

During the orientation in Bandung, I was briefed on multiple occasions about Indonesian conflict resolution, but since I had never really dealt with fixing a problem before, I hadn't yet had any real experience with it. So, the culture in indonesia is such that it is extremely important for everyone to leave a deal/argument/conflict extremely happily, so there are two major differences (obstacles?) that a westerner has to consider when negotiating with an indonesian. 1) It's going to take much longer than what you are used to, and 2) people are going to tell you what you want to hear, no matter if it's the truth, or if they haven't the slightest clue.

This presents a major problem when consulting with tech support over the phone, with a language barrier, and no real knowledge of the product you have just purchased.

I'm not going to lie, after an uncountable number of busy signals, three or four 30 minutes conversations with no progress, and a $250 hole in my bank account, I had developed some pretty bitter thoughts about the qualifications of the people working in the telecommunications industry here. I was not going through all of this alone either. I had one of the students, Nafe, who can speak almost fluent english help me on the phone for the last couple tries at tech support. Not even he was able to break through the impenetrable wall that is the Telkomsel Support Line. I was at the end of my patience, and I'm really glad that Nafe was around, so that I had a reason to not let my emotions overwhelm me. I was able to just sit down and chat with him after our attempts to fix my problem, and once he left, I felt much better. I had an idea about what I might do the next day (today), and I decided that I would just not think about internet for the rest of the evening.

I had bought a bicycle 3 or 4 days before and hadn’t really gotten the chance to ride it, so I decided that I would just go exploring. This proved to be a very uplifting experience. It doesn’t take a whole lot to brighten the day of the average Guyangan villager, and the sight of children running after me on a bike entertained many of the locals. Not to mention, I happened to ride past (or should I say, “immediately stopped at”) a semi-competitive volleyball match, where I was beckoned to join in. That was great because I got to hang out with some people my age, which doesn’t happen very often. And of course, when have I ever passed up an opportunity to play… well… any sport?

Ok, so I will finish the story about the internet situation later and maybe add in some more interesting tidbits about Indonesian culture!