Well, everything hasn’t gone as smoothly as I would like, but we’re dealing. Yesterday, I managed to crash my office computer. Then my laptop went dark. Couldn’t get any power. This, of course, freaks me out, as my life is on that laptop. Doug just said don’t worry about it, an attitude much like Latin American’s “manana,” and the lifestyle here. So, as I was unable to work, Doug decided he would be the one to drive me into town to do my grocery shopping.
Smiling Hill sits above Batam. From the top of the hill, you have a panarama of water and shoreline. The first part of our trip was more orientation thn anything else. We visited a dilapidated building at the top of the hill, perhaps the best real estate in town. Doug’s firm owns the property, with long-range plans for a high-end hotel. The view was spectacular. Next to this building was a barbershop. I was told a men’s haircut was about $2. I’m about due.
My laundry, cleaned and pressed, even the underwear
We drove around town a bit and stopped at a bank, as we both needed cash. Except my Visa card would not work for some reason. We tried two other bank ATMs with the same result. I’m a little panicked at this point, but Doug just said “don’t worry.” Later, he loaned me some rupiah, the Indonesian currency. The conversion rate is about 9,000 rupiah for one U.S. dollar. I just divide the rupiah value by 9 , and drop three zeros, to get an approximate equivalent in dollars.
A Sumatran coffee pot. Makes two cups. Indonesian coffee is excellent.
The first grocery we stopped at was more as a learning experience for me. Doug said, “If you think people are watching you now, wait until you go in here. Bule’s (Westerners) don’t usually shop here.” Perfect, I thought. Immersion grocery shopping. I’ve found that the first time in a grocery store in a new country is a disorienting experience. You can’t read the packages, you have to figure out the price if it were in U.S. dollars, and you often don’t know what you are seeing. But I grabbed a cart and started walking down row one. Half an hour later, I had $28 worth of goods but still in need of some essential items – like milk, butter, meat, chicken, vegetables. There was little fresh food at the first store.
So the next stop was a more upscale store in the town’s main mall – Hypermart. This was a very nice, modern store but the disorientation continued. Luckily, Doug helped me find what I needed. I haven’t evaluated the pricing yet, but I’m sure my groceries were a lot cheaper than they were in Europe, and probably even less than in Costa Rica. Done shopping, we headed back home, where we sat at Goodies for a few hours with several other expats. All this time, I’m thinking about my dead laptop.
Friday, I woke up about 4 a.m., after going to bed after midnight. My mind was racing with ideas so fast that I couldn’t get back to sleep. And the roosters didn’t help. They are all over the neighborhood. There are cats all over the neighborhood, too, scrawny cats, but the cats and chickens seem to coexist for some reason.
Finally, unable to doze off again, and knowing I would hit the wall later if I didn’t get more sleep, I got up and did my first morning walk in Indonesia. It was 5:15. I had decided I was going to walk at least to the top of the hill, 300 yards away, and back. Maybe twice. Now, understand that the slope of the street is in the 45-degree area, so walking up the hill is hard work. I did the loop to the top of the hill down to the pool and restaurant twice. Felt great and it was much more strenuous exercise than my usual 2-mile jaunt.
After cleaning up, I took my laptop to Goodies for coffee. It was 6:15. The coffee they serve is excellent, and I’m learning to have it their way. They put some coffee in this small glass container that basically has a plunger in the middle. You pour hot water into the container and push the plunger down to mix the water with the coffee. I worked on my laptop, drinking coffee, for the next hour and a half, until the battery became very low. After breakfast, I booted up my laptop again at the office because the computer repair man wouldn’t arrive for awhile and I needed to get some work done. Except my laptop suddenly went dark. I could not reboot it. Now we had two computers down.
About 10 a.m., a young Chinese man named Lo arrived to fix the desktop computer. We also put him onto fixing my laptop. After looking at the laptop and understanding the problem, Lo said there was nothing he could do. He did proceed to fix the PC and transferred all the files and programs from my laptop to the PC. My dilemma now was that I might need to buy a new computer, which could be a problem if the store also refused my credit card, as the banks had done.
Lo did tell Doug where the local HP service agent was, so we went on a ride to a new part of town. The people drive a little crazy here, just so you know, and also drive on the wrong side of the road, the British way. I left my laptop in the hands of two young guys, with the earliest possible return being Monday, if they could fix it at all. That means no laptop until at least Monday. Tonight (it’s past 8), I’m working on my office computer.
Fridays are happy hour-free beer night at Goodies. It drew quite a crowd, probably because word of my arrival had permeated the community. Right! There was a good crowd of expats and a few local women. The waitresses were very busy. I met a number of key people and collected business cards. Also took some pictures and a video, which I’ll post later.
Before the happy hour began, the pool had been taken over by schoolkids from the neighborhood. Doug lets them in for a very small fee, and they were having a ball. About the time happy hour started, they had disappeared. During the evening, I also learned that to marry here, both parties have to be of the same religion. So if a Christian expat wants to take an Indonesian wife, one of them has to convert to the other’s religion. This usually means the man becomes a Muslim.
More about my job for those who didn’t receive my private e-mail. My compensation, besides a relatively small paycheck, includes free rent of a beautiful apartment, complimentary laundry service, complimentary maid service, and a large enough food allowance that I should be able to eat all my meals at Goodies. I was told that more than 100 people applied for the job.
Doug and I had a great discussion, or three, yesterday about the parameters of the job, what was expected of me, the priorities for me going forward, and of all his plans for expansion. This is truly the type of greenfield opportunity that you don’t find in my profession very often anymore. My first task is to get the weekly newsletter up and running again. Then I need to redesign the newsletter, redesign and update the Web site, establish contacts with the important members of the expat community, write profiles of corporate leaders, start a blog, start an English facebook page, and more. There are big plans for what we are to do, including the startup of a print publication, more newsletters, more Web sites. Being on the ground floor of this effort, particularly with what I see as excellent funding and little interference from financial backers, is awesome. I’m chomping at the bit to get started and even wrote an article today introducing myself to the expat community, which will go in next week’s newsletter.
Tomorrow (Saturday, Jan. 21), Doug plans to tour me around town, maybe meeting with some key people, but mostly to get me comfortable with my surroundings. I’m bringing my camera.
Next week, I have to get the newsletter out in its current format before coming up with something new. There are two significant holidays here next wek – Monday is the beginning of Chinese New Year’s and Thursday is Australia Day, a big deal for Goodies. Should be quite party.
Finally, Doug is already thinking about getting me a one-year work visa, a not-inexpensive decision. I do appreciate the confidence. But I still feel naked without my laptop.
Saturday
One of the many metal pre-fabrication yards on the island. There are also 67 shipbuilding yards.
At the risk of making this missive too long, and because I have Satuday’s photos in the slideshow above, let’s continue. Doug had said he wanted to drive me around to orient me about the island, and I thought a maybe two-hour excursion. Turned into 6 and a half hours, but well worth the time.
First, we went by a number of manufacturing and fabrication areas for the oil and gas industry – huge yards with lots of heavy equipment and gear. Then we drove through one of the kampungs, or small fishing villages on the island. Very poor living conditions, with most of the people living in shanties built over the water. Next time, maybe I’ll get out for better pictures and to be mobbed by the locals.
There is a lot of commercial and retail construction here. The island already has about a
million people and is growing by at least 80,000 a year. Batam is basically the overflow industrial area for Singapore, because just that short 12 miles of water separating the two still means far lower costs. As an example, I’m told that a decent, middle-class salary here is $200-300 a month, although it sounds better in rupiah – 2-3 million rupiah.
The area where the government offices are located is covered with new, modern construction. And, of course, the banks have the biggest and most-impressive buildings. Then we went to one of the massive industrial parks located here. They go on for maybe a mile, and there are many of them. Each has its own dormitories for workers, who may live 6-8 people, mostly women, in a room. Don’t be depressed, ladies. This is the first opportunity for these young people to bring themselves out of abject poverty. It’s not as bad as Westerners imagine, but it’s not great. Some of these industrial parks are so large, they even have their own power plants and water-treatment facilities.
This vendor was on the bridge in the previous photo, and more than happy to pose after we bought a couple of juices.
Then we went for a fun ride to the south of the island. All through this, my host is not telling me his plans, just driving along and giving me the tour guide spiel along the way, stopping when I wanted to take photos or just to see something up close. The southern end of the island is mostly still undeveloped, with small farms dotting the landscape. They’re started growing star fruit here.
Years ago, Doug envisioned building a resort on this point.
Finally, we arrived at a huge suspension bridge. People stop in the middle of this bridge, get out of their cars and look at the view. To heck with the fact that they stop in the left-hand driving lane. We stopped, too. Too good to pass up. You could see fish farms on the water’s edge and a site Doug had investigated 10 years ago as his first project here. It fell through primarily because of the bribery necessary. One official wanted a $1.5 million payment. The view was impressive.
We continued south. I figured we were going someplace for lunch but I was not given a clue. Finally, we pulled off onto a dirt and rock road along the water. There were several restaurants, all floating on the water. Doug had his mind set on one he has frequented before.It’s a keelong type but I didn’t get the name. It’s pretty rustic but it was crowded. The main dining area floats on a bed of empty 55-gallon drums, with a plank floor. The floor has numerous openings, each with a net basket dipping into the sea. Each basket had a different potential meal – shrimp in one, shellfish in another, grouper in another, bass in another, and some huge fish in another whose water was too dark to make out anything but an intimidating black form. You can’t get your fish any fresher than this.
I let Doug order, as it was all in Indonesian. You order basically Chinese style, selecting several dishes and sharing. We had sweet and sour grouper .(A small, whole grouper of about half a kilo, which was the most expensive selection at about $11.) A large plate of prawns, a plate of shellfish, the best calamari I’ve ever had, rice and a plate of a tasty Indonesian green completed the meal. Oh yeah, there was also the Indonesian Bintang beer, good even warm. Despite my doubts we could finish this feast, we didn’t take much back with us. (BTW, the girls at Goodies loved the leftover shellfish and prawns.)
We headed back, strategically driving so that I could get a glimpse of some of the many shipbuilding yards on the island. I’m told there are 67.
Because I think both the men, and the women reading this might be curious about the “exploitation” of young Indonesian women, let me discuss. I’m learning that there are two basic situations here. One is the men who visit for a few days and one of their primary motives is to bed a young woman. But for the expats who live here, the situation is much different. These men have a great deal of empathy for the people here, especially the women and the children. Like I’ve reported, Doug has adopted two small children. I’ve watched as these big, hulking Aussies baby-up with the kids. They help the young women in many ways. Their help is appreciated and reciprocated, sometimes in marriage. I can’t disparage them. They have a heart. Enough said!
