Gender Confusion

I enjoy my walks. Now that the dry season is sort of here, there’s a lot less humidity and it’s not the sweat-inducing trek it was previously. There’s sweat involved, but it’s not too bad.

It’s also not the only minor annoyance. I’ve become pretty familiar to most people along the walk. Some of them, I think, take a little joy in the fact that I speak and understand no Indonesian.

There’s one guy who, without fail, asks if I want a motorcycle taxi – an “oh-jet” – and I always smile and shake my head. He tends to laugh and then shout the same thing at me as I continue to walk. I’ve no idea what he says, but it brings a hearty laugh to the other guys sitting with him.

It’s all harmless, but sometimes it can be annoying. I met some children the other day and after the routine “My name is” and “How are you?” they started chanting “money, money!”

Again, though, it’s harmless. I never break stride, and there’s always more people in sight.

On my errand walks – when people don’t know me – I’m starting to he hassled for money, but it’s not like in Morocco where kids chase you and chant “un dirham! Un dirham!” Or “Une stillo!”

No, I don’t remember if it’s “un” or “une.” Darn gender-oriented nouns.

That’s not my only gender-oriented issue these days, either. Seriously, on any given walk, I am “Meester,” “Meessus” and “Meece."

It does get confusing. I mean, granted, I am taller than about 90 percent of the population, but I am clearly not a “Meester.” Except, I guess, to people who are as knowledgeable about their English pronouns as I am with the darn French ones.

Today’s a day off, and I had to go to immigration this morning. I thought this would totally complete the process but I still don’t have my passport back so I guess it’s not done.

The visit was, shall we say, overwhelming. My God, there were people everywhere in this building. Nothing in English whatsoever, which I thought was a little odd because a good chunk of people in there are English speakers who haven’t a clue as to where to g or what to do.

I had a name of a guy I was supposed to me, and I was thinking it’d be like the Singapore run, where I walked into a hotel lobby with eight people and I could pick out the one I needed. (There, to be honest, Mustaza was my second choice, but I did find him.)

This time, there were just so many people it was insane. I couldn’t tell who was there working, who was getting paperwork done and who were the go-between people who were basically doing the legwork.

That’s the kind of person I was looking for. After showing a helpful employee my note, he shuffled me to the third floor, where another guy took a look at my paper and pointed me to a guy sitting in the crowd.

“Globe” meant nothing to him, so I showed him the paper and he promptly called the guy listed, told me to sit down and a few minutes later, another person appeared and asked me if I was “Jakarta Globe.”

Happily, I was, and he took me back down a floor, told me to wait in the corner, where there were fewer people and then he delved into the crowd.

A little while later – I’d brought my MP3 player and was listening to something – he appeared again and told me to stand in something between a line and throng. When some doors opened, he indicated I was to move on through with another group of people, who were very clearly either as WASPY as I was or very much sub-Saharan African.

We waited around again in the mug shot and fingerprinting room to get our info taken for whatever step is next in the whole process.

It very much reminded me of PC, when you have the staff there doing all this stuff on your behalf and you very clearly have no knowledge of what is happening. I remember in Ras Lma thinking I could very be being sold into slavery and I’d have no clue. Today, it was quite the same.

But quite entertaining, once you got over the stifling heat.

The throng is by no means limited to English-speaking (and mostly Australian) WASPS. There were tons of Indonesians there, I guess either renewing their passports or seeking visas or something, and they were also being herded into small groups to get their pictures and fingerprints taken.

It seemed each group had a designated mug shot/fingerprint taker, and the “clearly not Indonesian” photographer was right next to the unfortunate soul who drew “kiddie photographer” for the day.

This poor man spent about a full five minutes trying to take the photo of a boy who was maybe 10 or 11 and kind of husky. The kid never uttered a word – I wondered if he was a tad slow – and wasn’t crying or anything but he just didn’t get it.

He was with his dad, I think, and between the dad and the photographer, the WASP/African group was pretty much ready to crack up.

The boy had a hard time with understanding he needed to keep his head level and have has face pointed at the camera. But that was nothing compared to the “look here, not at the computer screen” command. Every time the photographer would get him in the right position, his eyeballs would dart to the computer screen so he could see himself.

He never made a sound, but he just kept doing it. Our photo guy even came over to help and try to get the kid’s attention, and his father tried to hold his head in the right spot while the other two were snapping their fingers to get his attention so kiddie photo guy could take a picture.

It didn’t work. I guess they don’t allow parental hands in official photos.

Finally, once they decided to turn the computer screen away from the child so he couldn’t peek, the photo guy figured he got it won. Not so. About the time the photographer finally caved and not only turned the computer screen but pulled back the camera physically, the kid decided to slump back against the wall.

It was just so hard not to completely bust a gut laughing.

At some point, the photographer finally got his photo, and man, did he earn his paycheck today