Getting it done

My lease is renewed for another three months! I debated moving to a place closer, but the fact is, I’m in the cheapest place I can get while still having a kitchen, and I’m OK with it.

Don’t get me wrong – I am tired of sink-washing clothes (and my clothes are so stretched out it’s insane) but it’s not worth paying another $60 US a month for something that’s only marginally closer to work.

Renewing the lease – oh, what fun.

I knew it was coming and fortunately had a day off about the time I needed to do it. Basically, I had to just tell my landlord I wanted to stay and then give him the money.

The money required a bit of trickery. My rent is Rp 4 million a month, and the lease is paid three months in advance. This equates to about $1500.

The way I’ve been working here, my paycheck goes directly to Florida (God bless Envision, only a $5 charge). I like that, because it’s much easier to transfer my IRA contribution from there, and the checks for the horse flip ER bill and also my useless Sprint bill come out of that account.

So I’m OK not having a local account. That’d make paying bills easier here, but I don’t make anything easy.

Instead of using my Envision money to live on, I’ve been using my Rp 3 million that’s allotted as “housing allowance.” (I tried really hard to find a place for that – nothing exists.)

So that means that when it came time to cough up another inches-high stack of Rp 100,00 bills, I didn’t have it.

Fortunately, I had some USD stashed. My reimbursement for my plane ticket over came in greenback, for some reason, and I managed to exchange that plus some extra rupiah I had from previous months, so I didn’t have to actually delve into Envision to get it.

Next renewal I will, but that’s a bridge I get to maneuver in October. Fun times ahead.

I’d told my landlord I wanted to renew, and he signaled me to come on by the next morning, which was AOK with me.

So I plan on waking up and getting it done. Then, naturally, variables happened. That evening after work, I *finally* got my cable/modem bill. I’d paid for the initial setup at the end of April, but until mid-July heard squat about how much it was a month or anything.

Then, night after I make plans to pay a bill, I get another one.

Bills here get paid to different places. I pay the maintenance bill (electric, water and all that) to one bank and the cable to another. The rent goes straight to the guy, so that doesn’t require a trip outside the building.

But the cable did, so I had to wake up even earlier (GRR!) and head over there to cough up the equivalent of something like $60. Seems steep, but I have no idea how long that’s for. It is the first bill I’ve received.

By the time I got back, I went directly to the dude’s office and waited on him.

I was thinking – oh, I’m such a simpleton – that I’d hand him the money, get a receipt, and walk away. Not so much.

I had to sit there while he and two assistants printed an entirely new lease, which I had to fill out. Of course it’s in Bahasa, which I don’t read, but I filled in the blanks in English like I’d done last time.

I had to show ID again – for some reason – and this means he sees I’ve gotten a new passport, which is another layer of copies and receipts.

Finally, I think I am done. By this time, despite having started out the day at the bank about 9:10, it’s close to 11:30. Any thoughts of working out are shot. I’m trying to get out of there and my landlord says something about the maintenance bill.

This freaks me out, because I’ve paid them. I tell him this – he speaks a little English, fortunately – and as it turns out, I am supposed to bring my receipts from the bank to the apartment office so they can stamp them and staple them.

He tells me to come back tomorrow to do it and I agreed, but on the way back to A08-09, I figured I did not want to blow another morning and just went back and got the three I’ve collected to far and got it done.

So glad I don’t have to go through all that for another three months!

Today, too, I did something I’m going to be avoiding – at least through Ramadan, which begins in a week or so.

This being my regular day off, I hit the grocery store, as I do practically every day off. I opted to go to the Walmartish store, which is located in a mall I didn’t know existed until a week or so ago.

I’d gone there previously and can you say “overstimulation”? I wasn’t prepared for what’s essentially five floors of flea market-y stalls ad naseum. The Walmarty thing is in the basement, which is not the same as the semi-basement. It’s lower, and you can’t just go down, you have to go down one escalator from the ground-ish floor, then walk around a path to find another escalator thing. (It’s more of a moving ramp, like an airport thing on an incline.)

This week, I thought I was prepared for it, but no. I forgot everyone is Ramadan-planning, which means there are beaucoup people around. Not to mention the whole Saturday afternoon thing.

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. It took forever, because I had to deal with the stupidity that is mall people in order to fight my way down to the basement.

Anyway, I opted to change up the regular food and got some spaghetti, which seemed like a good idea only I forgot about Parmesean cheese. I did OK with what I had, though. Overloaded the garlic.

The store, though, just about killed me. I made it to the registers – which, oddly enough, were not crowded – and realized I’d wanted to get some moon pies and just said forget it. It wasn’t worth going back into the throng.

Yes, I did find moon pies. They’re a bit small (let’s get real – so are Indonesians. I tried again at another mall with another “XL” dance top and again, it barely made it to my elbows) but they’re tasty.

I took one to work and snacked on it. When someone mentioned sweets, I’d mentioned I’d found moon pies and was glad to have done so.

Well, neither the girl from Vancouver nor the girl from New Zealand had ANY idea what the heck I was talking about.

Ever tried to describe a moon pie? I thought I was dead-on with my description but they looked at me like my third eye was winking, you know?

Finally, I realized I still had the wrapper, so I pulled it out and showed it to them. They were like, “Oh! Chocolate cakes.”

Apparently foreigners have a completely different take on Southern treats.

And no, they had NO idea of what RC Cola was. And I didn’t even try to explain. It was like, trust me, this is what you’re supposed to have with a moon pie.