Getting your drivers license in Jakarta the easy way!

I know we shouldnt support KKN (Korruption, Kullusi, dan Neoptism) but I've heard stories of even Indo friends being given the run around when doing to get their license. (one chinese indo friend took 3 days to get her drivers license).

Using agents may cost more, but it gets the job done.

This year, I used a local friendly sergeant in the area.

For 600,000 rupiah, I had a private police escort, we took the tollways and busways, drove through every red light.

At the office he jumped every queue and it literally took me 29 minutes from start to finish!

Grumbling about the lack of service one recieves outside of Asia

In Australia, first of all you have to fill the gas in your car yourself.tonight i get out put the bowser pump into the car and wait for it to be turned on, after a minute or so an attendent comes out and says i'll have to wait a minute becuase he's changing the price, up 10 cents, hang on I was already here, nope sorry you have to pay new price.OK, i left and refused. next station, attendent waves me to come inside, how much gas do you want? I dunno, its not my car, but you have to prepay, can i leave my credit card, nope, tell me an amount, but if i'm wrong do i get a refund? nope.needless to say I drove off away from that dickhead too! gimmi thai and indo gas stations anyday!

Internet frustrations

get a call from the internet mob today.

caller:"blah blah blah, you have bill for 417,000 rupiah ?"

me"yes, i know, it's a promotional price for unlimited usage, so it's always that price."

caller"for december bill?"

me"yes i know, it's an automatic debit from my bank account"

caller"yes, but its 417,000rupiah"

me"yes i know but the bill is not due until the 20th, and its a set amount, same every other month, and its automatic debit."


Hmmm, so what was that all about? A sudden out-of-the-blue reminder to make sure I pay my bill? Which I've been doing every month for the last year and a half on the same set price? And actually they collect my bill each and every month anyway....

MRT - Mass Rapid Transportation system, Jakarta Style! :(

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Most Asian countries these days have some sort of Mass Rapid Transportation system, Hong Kong the very efficient subway, Shanghai - the excellent monorail, Bangkok - the MRT subway and the BTS overhead railway...

Jakarta has long had a traffic problem, so the Indonesian solution.......

Busway!

What is a busway i hear you ask?? Well subways and monorails etc are too expensive for Indonesia so we get the busway.

Yes, yes, yes, but what is it?

Well, you cut a major arterial road in half, place some bluestone blocks in the way to keep cars out of it, and then run ordinary 'special' buses along this 'dedicated busway lane'. Mind you at crossroads and the start and end of each busway the said busses still have to fight with the traffic, oh yes and funding to actually provided buses to travel these routes is somewhat limited. But never mind, Sutiyuso, previous major/governer of jakarta allegedly made US$ 8,000,000 in bribes and kickbacks per busway line he signed off on, hence the possible reason he signed off on as many as possible before his term of office expired.

And what do you think the result of cutting roads in half is.....? Yep, worse traffic. :(

Here's some pics of the magnificent busway being built......

I didnt mean to capture a pic of the worker sleeping, but its perhaps rather appropriate of the Indonesian work ethic....

and almost complete busway in Pondok Indah area.... nice innit?

oh sorry didnt realise, the raised concrete thingy next to my (stationary car) is the busway lane!

actually, those pics were taken in Pondok Indah, which is an area of a lot of new money, palatial OTT mansions etc, locals call them Rumah Pembantu, which translates as the maids house, cos most of these people are never there anyway, just the house staff.

Anyway - these people protested the most out of everyone against the busway being built in their area, so last week some important person sat down and negotiated with them, end result, cars can use the busway line in Pondok Indah during peak hours......

Leaving the rest of us confused as to the point in spending all of that money to put in this lane in the first place....

Fun Indo Bureaucracy when running a school

Our school ordered some text books from overseas for the start of the new year (as we always do!). This year we had 220kgs of books sent from Australia from a supplier. After the books had been sent the Indonesian customs made a new regulation, any parcels arriving that weighed more than 100kgs would be liable for a special tax. The official price was 20 million rupiah (about $2000) plus it would take 2 or 3 months to organise.

The school realised it would be cheaper and quicker (8 days) to send the entire parcel back to Australia, repack the books into 3 separate parcels and return them to Indonesia.... crazy.

A few days later customs said 'NO!' we have already stamped the arrival of the package, it cannot leave Indonesia now......

Fortunately for us, the supplier has resent the entire shipment at their cost (properly packed) and I guess we'll leave the original shipment in the customs yard......

Keystone Cops Situation

In quite a number of countries around the world, particularly Asia, the process of schools and teachers getting all the right approvals and permits can be a lengthy one. Quite often a teacher has to start working before they are strictly 'legal'.

Yesterday a rather comedic situation developed at my school. We have about half dozen new teachers whose work/residence permits, called KITAS in Indonesia, have not been fully processed as yet.

Some officials from one of governement agencies arrived (I don't know which one). A message was sent to the few teachers without the KITAS and they had to go and hide in the staff housing behind the school.

Then the officials found a phone list of various teachers and their internal extension numbers, so wanted to know who the missing teachers were and where they were......

so the office staff have also been running around hiding so they don't have to answer questions!

**someone told me I should video this, speed it up 3x and then play benny hill music in the background! :) **

The officials remained in the reception area for a number of hours, turns out that they wanted to speak to our head principal (for a hand out, no doubt) .

Last year some guys arrived and demanded an amount of money (special tax for foreigners workign at our school) - according to them we had 40 odd foreigners working, we said no, how did you get that number? They had merely counted all the white faces in the department photos on the wall not realising that a number of staff were counted twice because they teach in more than one department......

I guess our white faces all look the same! haha

Indonesian Bureaucracy

You may recall the fun I had with my wireless internet bill in thailand..... " Thai Bureaucracy .... "

Well I've been having a similar problem with my satellite TV company now.

I've been suscribing for a year now, get a few sports channels, BBC, movies, action and Australian channel. It's about $30 per month, not too bad and Indo TV is totally woeful.

However, last months bill they decided, without any warning, to change the billing method. Previously the maid would take all the months bills and go and pay at the post office (I think..... to be truthful, I gave her the bills and the money and they all got paid each month, I don't really need to know much more about the process)

Anyway, I digress, in last months bill was a letter,

"we have now decided that the methods of payment are via ATM with the following banks, an exhaustive list followed but did not include any of the banks I use ( I have 3, one for aussie $, one for US$ and one for Indo rupiah) or via direct debit, another list and it did include my bank this time."

by now I have been cut off because I was 2 days late on the bill!

So trundle off to the bank to sign up for direct debit, this takes approx 2 hours, costs my a little extra money but, never mind, that's life. However, it will not start until next month.

OK - give the maid some money and ask her to go pay this months bill.....

she returns, sorry mister, cannot!

Hmmm, I had invited some friends around for a BBQ and to watch the State of Origin rugby match on TV - but no satelite, so I get on the phone and begin trying to explain, not having much luck but the guy says he'll send a technician around tomorrow, I try explaining the tomorrow is too late, so he then asks me do I speak bahasa indonesian, I reply in the negative ( i do a little, but i am getting annoyed and didn't want any mis-translations, this is the english helpline after all!)

I finally agree that a technician will come tomorrow and sort everything out. I then ask can I have a discount since I have had no TV for 2 weeks - he replies rapidly, and, I assume crossly, in Indonesian. I hang up.

Technician turns up the next day, 3 hours late. fiddles with the satelitte for an hour or so, and then tells me I need to pay the bill!

Yes, thanks for that, can I pay you? Nope.

A week later, I get a call, blah blah blah, you need to pay your bill, yes i am trying etc. direct debit starts next month etc. OK you can pay you bill at the BCA bank direct into our savigns account there.

OK - I'll do it later today...

And we'll reconnect your satelittle once you do!

OK, sounds ok. So today I head done to BCA bank, wait in que with money and bill in hand......

no prizes for guessing what I was told.....

yep you are correct,

"Sorry sir, have to use the ATM outside for this"

"but, i dont have an ATM card with your bank, can I just deposit money into this account number? "

"Maaf Pak, tidak bisa" (=Sorry sir, cannot!)

So I am still without TV and still have not been able to pay this flaming BILL!

NB - story continued in the comments section....

Thai Bureaucracy ....

Originally a letter i wrote...
1 March 2006-03-02

Dear K.No Idea,

I refer to your letter dated in Thai but not English. (6th of something 2549) addressed to myself, Mr Liam. Firstly, I assume that this was a computer generated email, because it contains several errors of fact.

Let me enlighten you –
1. You stated “we had tried to remind you by phones of the said outstanding balance several times, but to no avail.
1.1. This completely incorrect – your company has contacted me ONCE only!

2. The company reserves the right to suspend the e-mail service without prior notice
2.1. Your company has already suspended my internet service well over 1 month before this ‘warning’.

3. KSC had requested you to make payment in the amount of Baht 4.459.48
3.1. Previous to this notice your company had never asked for this amount – each month you ask for a different amount – in fact this latest notice has an amount of 367.74 baht added to it.

3.2. I also object to the fact that you have suspended the service since 26th Dec 2005 but continue to bill me for services ‘not’ provided.

I would like to draw your attention to the following items of dissatisfaction;

4. When I originally signed up with your company ( about October of last year for a service I signed a form allowing you to automatically deduct my credit card, which you managed for a few months.
4.1. Within a month I had continuing problems with the router that you sold me – I made several calls to resolve to no avail, in fact one time when I spoke to your tech. department I was promised a technician would be sent out – this never did occur.

4.2. When sent the first bill in December I rang your company to say that I wanted it taken out of my credit card – the details of which I had already given to your salesman – and which your company originally was able to use. This was not done.

4.3. The end of December my internet was cut off by your company – I then proceeded to make a number of calls, emails and faxes to your company to resolve this – on different occasions I was told the credit card would be fixed, that my internet would be turned on and I could pay online and a new form would be sent to me to enable automatic payments. None of these promises were ever met.

4.4. In January I sent a short email to the president/CEO/Boss of your company via your website – in it I complained about all these problems and finished with the comment “I am trying to pay you money, does your company NOT want it!” This remains unanswered.

4.5. Your company has continued to bill me for this termination of service, I notice this latest letter (well, first and only, actually) was sent via registered mail – I find this extraordinarily rude and cheeky of your company.

Given all the above I now have no intention of paying you any money nor do I want my service reinstated with your company – I will recommend all my colleagues DO NOT deal with your company.

Rgds

Mr. liam


they have since continued to randomly ring my mobile phone asking for payment - each time I tell them I want a reply to the above letter....

still has not happened,

i continue to get bills though ....

last 2 times they rang me I was told we need to check your address...

"ok fine - what is it?"

extended silence

"we need to check your address...."

"yeah fine - tell me what address details you have?"

"no you need to tell us"

"answer the letter first"

"oh ok - I'll email"

no email eva arrived.....then 5 days later I had almost exactly the same converstation - (it must be the same thick bird) about my passport number.... as if I am going to give them my passport number....