Saturday, December 12, 2015

I had a few more experiences yesterday that fit in with my theme of cross-cultural differences and how hard it is to really, truly understand how things work in other places. It began when I realized that I’d used up all the data credit I had on my Telkomsel SIM card. I’d purchased the card along with a data plan that included 4 gigabytes. That meant I could transfer 4 gigabytes of files and pictures between my phone and the Internet. Most people tightly control how much data their phone uses up because it can be really expensive in Canada and the United States and such places. Here in Indonesia, it’s pretty cheap, so I wasn’t worried about it. Plus, I’m still a newbie with my phone and I was curious how much data all my various “apps” use up. So I just let it run normally, and I used up my 4 gigabytes pretty quickly. (That was mainly because I installed a podcast app and let it download podcasts automatically.)

So when I dropped in on Rea at the Samsung store, I asked her for advice about buying more data credit. This was still a confusing area despite the dozens of times we’ve talked about it. She helped me buy my SIM cards to begin with, and despite being the manager of a modern, fancy cell phone store, her help was often more hindrance than help. I was still confused about how long my SIM card lasted. It came with a December 26 expiry date, but no matter how many questions I asked I could not find out if that meant the card itself expired or if the data expired. I thought it might be like in Canada where you have to use up your credit by a certain date or you lose it. But, of course, you can still keep the SIM card and phone number. You just lose the credit unless you buy more. No one could explain how it worked here.

So now that my data credit had been used up, I wondered if I could just buy more data and add it to my current SIM card or if I had to buy a brand new SIM card and start over from the beginning. Not surprisingly, neither Rea nor her staff were able to answer this simple question. In the end, Rea offered to go with me to a place to attempt this transaction. She was in the amusing situation of not having a scooter. She just returned from a family trip, and her father in Medan had asked to borrow her scooter. So he kept it there, and Rea had returned without it. So she was on foot. Even so, she drove me to this cell phone place on a scooter she borrowed from one of her staff. She said that she preferred to do it that way because walking down the street with me would raise too many questions and too many eyebrows. On the scooter, she was not as recognizable, so it was safer.

When we got to the cell phone place, I was surprised to see that it was an official Telkomsel center. Rea had not mentioned that that was where we were going. I thought that since we were at Telkomsel headquarters, it would be smooth sailing. But I was wrong. For some reason, Rea took a back seat this time. All the other times, she did all the talking. But she stayed away and let me go to the counter and talk to the guy. I don’t know why she did this. It was weird. But the guy spoke English, and I told him what I wanted. I thought it would be a simple affair. How hard could it be? I tell him I want to “top up” my phone and buy more credit. He would ask “How much credit do you want to buy?” I would say that it depends on the price. He would produce a brochure listing how much it costs to buy 1 gigabyte, 2 gigabytes, 3 gigabytes, 4 gigabytes, 5 gigabytes, 6 gigabytes, etc. Perhaps they have a special deal on this or that package. I would choose a package or an amount and pay the man. In Malaysia, you can do this at every 7-11, every other convenience store, and every shop. You can buy any amount you want, and you are given a card or a receipt with a PIN number and a telephone number. You call this automated number, enter the PIN, and the credit is added to your account. That’s also how it works in Taiwan the Philppines and everywhere else. Apparently, that is not how it works here. In fact, I still don’t know how it works here. And this man whose job it was to sell customers phone credit also didn’t know how it worked. Not only did we not have the simple conversation I outlined above, we hardly had a conversation at all.

It really wasn’t that unusual a situation. It happens all the time here. I’ll go into a shop of some kind where they clearly do a particular thing. But it always feels like they’ve never done it before in their lives. It’s like for everyone in the country it’s the first day on the job. It would be like going into Tim Horton’s in Canada and having the clerk look at you in wide-eyed wonder when you order a large cup of coffee to go, as if you’re asking for something really outrageous. Then the clerk calls over four other people and they stand around and have long conversations and point at things and discuss things and call up screens on a computer and then make phone calls. All the time, you’re thinking what all this could be about. I just ordered a coffee in a coffee shop. It should be simple.

Here, I’d asked to buy cell phone credit in the place where you go to buy cell phone credit, and the guy looked at me like I’d asked to purchase eight elephants and have them delivered to my hotel along with fourteen tons of hay. He looked around the room with wild eyes and talked to some other people. They turned to his computer and started looking at things and clicking on things. There was a long discussion. Finally, he reached into a glass case and produced a familiar red cardboard package containing a Telkomsel SIM card. I had told him that I already had a SIM card, so I assumed this meant that my suspicion was right and that my current SIM card had expired and I had to buy a new one. I tried to confirm this, but that just led to lots more confusion and discussion.

I eventually tried to ground the conversation once more. I got the guy’s attention and focused him on my smartphone and I showed him the Telkomsel SIM card in my phone’s settings menu. I clearly already had a Telkomsel SIM, I was saying. And I just wanted to add credit. This triggered some kind of primordial response in him, and he put the new SIM card away. Then he asked for my phone number and entered that into a computer. Then he asked for my name. I gave him a card that had my name on it. He entered that into his computer. And then he spent a LOOOOOOOONG time on that computer. He clicked on things and clicked on things and typed and typed and typed and clicked on things. I honestly thought I was on Candid Camera. Good grief. Every man, woman, and child in Indonesia has a smartphone and they are buying credit for their phones millions of times a month. So why does this guy seem totally at a loss?

He finally turned from his computer and started writing on a tiny scrap of paper. Then he slid it across the counter like he had written down a salary offer in a movie. I could barely read his handwriting, and I had to ask him to confirm what it said. After more discussion, I concluded that he had written down that for 100,000 rupiah I could buy 3 gigabytes, and that 2 gigabytes cost 87,500 rupiah. These numbers made no sense to me at all. It was far too expensive for one thing. When I bought the SIM card, I paid 85,000 rupiah. That included the physical SIM card itself, the packaging, the adapter, the effort of opening the account and setting it up and activating the phone number, AND 4 gigabytes of data. Now all I wanted to do was add more credit and it cost 100,000 for only 3 gigabytes of data.

I didn’t have a huge problem with the money itself. One hundred thousand rupiah is ten dollars Canadian. But I wanted to understand it. This guy was asking me to pay 100,000 rupiah for 3 gigabytes of data when I could go out on the street and buy a brand new SIM card with 4 gigabytes of data for 85,000 rupiah. This made no sense, and I wanted to figure this out. I wanted him or Rea to explain to me why I should buy this data when it was cheaper to throw away my entire SIM card and buy a new one. At the very least, I wanted one or both of them to acknowledge that it wasn’t logical. I wanted to see some recognition in their faces that they understood how ridiculous this was. But I got nothing.

My other problem was with the amount itself. I didn’t want to buy 2 gigabytes or 3 gigabytes of data. I wanted to buy 6 gigabytes of data. If I just bought 2 gigabytes, I’d be right back in this shop in a week or so having to buy more. I wanted to buy a large amount that would last me a long time. But for reasons that no one could explain to me, they had run out of the 4 gigabytes or the 6 gigabytes. Three gigabytes was all they had. Again, this made no sense to me. I’m a customer sitting there with money in my pocket. I want to buy 6 gigabytes of data. And I was at the Telkomsel headquarters. Just sell it to me. What’s the big deal? When I bought the SIM card, I ran into this same problem. And it made sense then because I was buying an official package of a SIM card combined with a data plan. They had all these SIM cards in official Telkomsel wrappers on display and they were labelled as 2GB or 3GB or 4GB. A particular store might have run out of the 4GB or the 6GB SIM card packages. What they had on display was all they had left. But I was at Telkomsel headquarters talking to the clerk sitting at a computer. All he had to do was punch in the numbers and be done with it. Why can’t I just buy the amount I want? Explain it to me. If, for some technical reason, they could only sell data in 3GB chunks (which made no sense), then I wanted to buy two of them. Why not? But no one could answer any of my questions about this.

I was a little bit annoyed by this point. I wasn’t annoyed at the slowness and inefficiency and confusion. That’s normal here. I wasn’t annoyed at not being able to buy what I wanted. I wasn’t even annoyed at not understanding what was going on. (I never understand anything here.) I was annoyed that no one could see what I was talking about. It’s simple logic. A brand new SIM card plus 4GB for 85,000 versus just 3GB of data for 100,000. IT MADE NO SENSE. It was like being told that a large coffee cost $5 and a medium coffee cost $50. Why would a medium coffee be more expensive than a large coffee? But no one was able to grasp that. I felt, as I always do, like Alice in Wonderland, lost in a world running without logic of any kind.

By that point, I’d have felt like an idiot if I handed over my money and bought the 3GB of data. So I pocketed the little scrap of paper, put away my phone, and got up to leave. My plan was to go to some regular cell phone shops (by myself) and ask some questions and see what they say and try to make sense of all this.

I think Rea could sense my frustration this time. She seemed kind of quiet and cowed. I felt bad about that, but there was nothing I could do by that point. In most of these kinds of transactions, you reach a point where this no possibility of going back and explaining. This is something I’ve learned over the years. Once you feel the need to use conditionals in your English, you’ve lost. Just give up and don’t even bother. You can’t say things like, “But I thought you said that he would…” As soon as words like “thought” and “would” creep into your conversation, you’re finished. Just give up. I let Rea leave on the scooter by herself. We had only driven a couple hundred meters, and I felt kind of silly climbing back on the scooter to be driven such a short distance.

Once Rea had left, I took a deep breath and went in search of a cell phone shop. I went to the biggest one in Tanjungbalai, and I was dismayed to see that it was packed with customers. But I had a head of steam of frustration going, and I used that energy to propel me into the shop and approach the clerks. In shops like this, there is generally one person who is considered to be the best at English, and when a foreigner walks in, they trot out that person. In this store, there seemed to be no one, and I dealt with an ordinary clerk. Sadly, things did not improve over my experience at Telkomsel. This was a big cell phone store, and they sold SIM cards and data packages all day long. Yet, it felt like they’d never, ever done it before. It felt like this was the first time anyone had ever entered their shop with the outrageous request to buy more data for their smartphone. The clerk called over a bunch of other clerks and they got into this big debate with lots of discussion and pointing. I sighed.

I can’t even begin to cover the ground of how confusing this new process was. Nothing they said to me made any sense at all. They kept changing their statements. They’d say one thing. Then a second later, they’d say the opposite. Something was available. Then it wasn’t available. It cost X. Then a moment later, it cost Y. Through it all, I was determined to learn just one thing. I wanted to understand why it was impossible to buy 4 or 6 gigabytes of data. What was the reason behind this? These clerks originally told me that I could only buy 2 gigabytes of data. Period. No debate. This state of affairs continued for a while, but when I pressed them as clearly as I could about the possibility of buying 3 gigabytes or 4 gigabytes or 5 gigabytes (as examples) suddenly they were talking about 3 gigabytes. I don’t know why one second I was in a universe where they ONLY possibility was 2 gigabytes and then the next second I was in a universe where they could sell me 3 gigabytes. I don’t know what changed. After that victory, I went for broke and tried to confirm that I could buy 6 gigabytes. If, perhaps, data only came in 3-gigabyte chunks, could I then buy 2 chunks? I could buy 3 gigabytes and have it added to my account. Then what would stop me from buying another 3 gigabytes and adding THAT to my account? But I never did get any answers.

I did learn, however, that the 3 gigabytes they were offering to sell me cost 100,000 rupiah, the same price as at Telkomsel headquarters. By this point, I’d invested a lot of my time and their time in this transaction, so I didn’t want to just walk away. I’d have felt bad. So I agreed to the purchase. Then began the real circus. If things seemed confusing before, it was nothing compared to what occurred now. I won’t go over the details. It would take far too long and be exhausting. I don’t want to live through that process again even in my mind. The interesting point for me was that my purchase did not involve them giving me a card or a receipt with a PIN number or anything like that. No, they produced an old-fashioned candy-bar cell phone – the kind of phone that only the poorest of the poor still used. And they appeared to purchase 3 gigabytes of data from Telkomsel through that phone and then transfer it to my phone. Again, words can’t express how complicated this was and how many transactions it involved. My smartphone just about went supernova with all the messages it received from Telkomsel and their phone. It beeped and booped and vibrated and practically shook itself off the counter. At every stage, the clerks crowded around and read the messages on my phone and then went back to their phones and kept entering numbers and text and pushing send. They kept showing me the results on my phone, but since it was all in Indonesian, I really didn’t understand it. But the numbers didn’t add up. I had purchased 3 gigabytes of data, but the messages all said 2.5 gigabytes. I pointed this out to them again and again and again trying to get them to acknowledge the difference between 2.5 and 3, but nothing got through. I paid for 3 but I received only 2.5. What’s the deal? No one knew what I was talking about despite me pointing out the numbers and writing them down and showing them on my fingers.

However, something eventually happened because of my persistence I guess, and another round of messages and button pushing ensued. Then my smartphone was pushed in front of my face and there was some kind of message there. It said this: “Anda memiliki: 1058 MB LocalData. 2560 MB Flash. Rp 20000 Tsel.”

This was supposed to reassure me because they added up the numbers: 1058 plus 2560 equals roughly 3.5 gigabytes of data. I didn’t even try to ask about the difference between LocalData and Flash. That would have been impossible to talk about. I did make a feeble attempt to point out that even 3.5 GB is not the same as 3 GB. Sure, it’s great to get more than I paid for, but I wanted to understand the process. Why was I suddenly getting 3.5 when I paid for 3? Why did they try to get me to settle for 2.5 when I’d paid for 3 originally? Were they trying to rip me off? Was this normal? Was it a misunderstanding? I didn’t know and I’ll never know.

Even more confusing was the bit about “Rp 20000 Tsel”. After more discussion, I got the impression that this was some kind of bonus and involved making phone calls. I got about 3.5 gigabytes of data. But I also got 20,000 rupiah of actual phone call credit. Or something like that.

I still had no actual proof that I understood that I’d received anything. Sure, they’d shown me a message on my phone, but I got messages like that constantly as Telkomsel sent me advertisements. Was this message confirming that 3.5 gigabytes had been added to my account? Or was it just an advertisement? I had no idea. But the clerks were clearly looking at me like I now owed them money. So taking it on faith, I produced 100,000 rupiah and handed it over. Exhausted, overwhelmed, bewildered, I left the store. A few minutes later, I found a shady spot and entered the code that should show me the state of my account. It appeared to confirm that I now had 3.5 gigabytes of data available. Unfortunately, it also told me that it expired in a month on January 9. This particular detail had slipped past me.

This is another question that no one has been able to anwer for me: Why do Telkomsel data plans last such a short amount of time? Everyone says that Telkomsel is the best in the country. When I ask people which SIM card I should buy, everyone says Telkomsel. Yet, my “3” SIM card plan is valid for one full year. My Telkomsel data is good for 30 days. Why is that? Is this normal? But again, no one has been able to answer that question. Worse, as far as I’m concerned, is that no one even acknowledges that I have point. I keep saying that it’s weird that Telkomsel is so popular when their data plans have such a short expiration date. But no one knows what I’m talking about. I point it out as simply as I can: “3” offers twelve months. Telkomsel only offers one month. But people give me a blank look. Again, it seems to be a lack of logic. It’s the most frustrating thing.

I think it’s the sense of not being understood that is the most stressful thing about being overseas. That leads directly to writing such long emails as this. At least when writing down this story, I have the sensation of communicating and being understood. It relieves a lot of stress. I can go outside into Tanjungbalai all day today and at no point will I ever have that sense of easy communication and being understood. It is all barriers and confusion and blank stares.

A couple of other moments with Rea connect with this theme. When I saw her in the Samsung shop in the afternoon, she kind of reproached me for not coming to the shop on the previous day. She said she had waited for me and I never came. I could only shake my head and say that I never said I was coming. We had sent a couple of messages back and forth during the day. I still have the messages on my phone, and at no point did I say anything even remotely like I was coming to the store to visit. Nothing. Yet, she was convinced that I had said I was coming and that I had stood her up. Again there was nothing I could do but apologize. The alternative was to drown in a sea of conditionals: “But I thought you said that you would…”

Anyway, we agreed that I would come to the shop at 8 p.m. last night, and we would have something to eat. The Samsung store closes at 8 p.m. and Rea would be heading home. So I was at Samsung at 8 p.m. and we set off along with one of her staff to some kind of chicken restaurant. On the way, we passed a small children’s ride. I’ve mentioned this type of thing before. It is almost exactly like the little cars or airplanes that we have in Canada in grocery stores for children. The child can sit in a little car and you put in a few quarters and the car moves back and forth and lights blink and that sort of thing. The difference is that this ride in Indonesia is built into a bicycle. A man rides around the city on his bicycle with this ride on the front. Then he parks it and a child climbs in. The man switches to a different set of pedals that power the ride. It is not driven by a motor. He has to pedal in order to make it move. He pedals for a certain amount of time and you pay him based on that.

When I see these rides, I always have the same reaction, and I tried to convey this reaction to Rea. My reaction is one of amusement. It’s funny that these children would enjoy these carnival rides. Their entire lives are one big carnival ride. All day long they hop on and off motorcycles and scooters with their parents and friends. No one wears a helmet or anything like that. They’ll have up to six people on one scooter. A tiny toddler will be propped up on the handlebars and they’ll zoom around at high speed going in and out of traffic with lights flashing and music blaring and craziness all around. It’s insane. By comparison, sitting in that little carnival ride with the tiny car just gently going up and down must feel like nothing. The kid had probably driven to this spot on their parents’ scooter like Evil Knievel, risking their lives at every crazy intersection. So what is the appeal of sitting in this tiny carnival ride? For a Canadian toddler, it makes sense. Canadian toddlers are wrapped in bubble wrap and strapped into a car seat and turned backwards and driven gently and safely in a mini-van. So it’s kind of a treat to sit in a tiny car and go bump, bump, bump and back and forth. But for these Indonesian kids, it’s nothing at all. So it strikes me as funny or at least interesting that these rides still have enough appeal that these men can make a living with them.

I tried to get this idea across to Rea, but it was impossible. It seemed like a simple idea. I pointed out all the children around us racing past on the scooters like they were in the Indianapolis 500. Then I compared that to this little ride. Aren’t the kids just driving on the scooters going much faster and having much more fun that the kid in the ride? So what’s the appeal of the ride? Isn’t the contrast funny or at least interesting? Apparently not, because I got nothing from Rea. She had no idea what I was talking about.

Dinner continued in this same sort of vein. We went to a very simple outdoor chicken place. It was right beside the main street and the roar of traffic was really loud. There was also construction going on right beside us, so it was really hard to talk. I don’t know why we went there and not somewhere a bit quieter. I was even more curious when Rea announced that she didn’t like chicken. We all get chicken, but then Rea picked at hers and made the odd comment that she didn’t like chicken at all. My mind is spinning wondering, “Why then did we come here?” The last time we had dinner together, they were very eager to have martabak mesir. Then we get there and the staff member practically passes out because he’s so allergic to the ingredients in the dish. He can’t touch the stuff. So why did he order it? And Rea didn’t like it either. Mysteries upon mysteries.

I tried to have a casual and friendly and honest conversation, but it was hard. The cultural barriers are so strong that it is really, really hard to be honest. Communication is very difficult. For example, I knew that Rea had just gone on a week-long holiday to visit her family and go to Lake Toba. So in a moment of silence, I asked her to tell me about her trip. She looked at me like I’d asked her to discuss the theory of relativity and the space-time continuum. She was astonished at my question and wondered what she could possibly tell me. She was at a loss. So I started her off with some easy questions. Who did she go with? How did they travel from Medan to Lake Toba? Where did they stay? What did they do? But at every question she appeared to be astonished that I would ask such a thing. It was really weird.

Then I was astonished in my turn about the trip itself. For example, they stayed at Lake Toba for just one night. It took them about 5.5 hours to drive there from Medan. Then they stayed for one night and drove back the next day. I can’t even imagine doing that . What’s the point? I would think two nights would be the minimum to make the drive worth it and the trip more interesting.

It’s common in Indonesian to eat with your hands, by the way. And at this roadside eatery, there was no cutlery available at all. We all ate with our hands. I mention that because early in our meal, a pair of young men showed up at our table and began singing and playing the guitar and drums. They were buskers, asking for money in exchange for their singing. I guess I’m a bit of a curmudgeon, because I hate stuff like that. Hate it. We’re there to have a nice meal and talk. I don’t want some stranger to show up at my table and start singing. There was enough noise around us to begin with. We could barely hear each other above the traffic and construction noise. I would be willing to pay these guys to go away. I don’t want to pay them to sing. I don’t want to encourage them to come back and do it again. Well, they finished their song, and Rea put a coin of some kind in the cup that they held out. Then they held out the cup to me, fully expecting me to fill it with gold and diamonds. I looked at the guy and indicated my hands and shook my hand. My hands were covered in chicken grease. The chicken was fresh off the grill and drowning in grease and a spicy red sauce. My hands were a sticky, gooey mess, and the last thing I wanted to do was reach into my pocket and pull out my wallet and try to remove some money – getting grease all over my pants and my wallet. I just gave them a “Come on guys, give me a break” sort of look and gave them nothing.

Rea didn’t say anything about that, but she did ask me why I didn’t take a picture of them. It was local color, after all. She seemed almost hurt that I didn’t. As I said, I try to be honest in these situations, and I tried to explain my point of view. For one thing, I don’t like buskers that come into restaurants. They know that the customers are prisoners. We can’t get up and leave because we are in the middle of our meals. I think it’s rude to bother us with their singing. And I find it embarrassing. I just don’t like singing in general anyway. And when it comes to photography, I’m not interested in things like that. Rea keeps going on and on about how I should go to Lake Toba because they have hotels where the local tribe will put on a dancing performance in traditional costumes, and I can take picture of them. That is the LAST thing I would be interested in doing and the absolute LAST thing I want to take pictures of. That’s where the cultural differences come in again, and no matter how much I tried to get that across to Rea, she didn’t understand it.

This train of thought actually began earlier in the day when I was at the Samsung shop. Rea said something about the pictures I was taking in Tanjungbalai. She knew that I liked to take pictures, but she apparently doesn’t see anything I post on Facebook. She wanted to see some pictures, so I opened up my smartphone to a gallery of the photos I’d taken in the last couple of days. And she had zero interest in them. She just couldn’t understand why I would take pictures of old men in the market or food in the market or old motorcycle wheels being repaired by a man at the side of the street. She flipped through the pictures really fast, dismissing them all as pointless and boring. The cultural divide between us is really apparent here. I tried to explain to her what was interesting to me about these images and these faces, but she didn’t get it at all. She was clearly looking for pictures of me posing in front of a bunch of flowers or something – something pretty and nice that you would photograph while on a holiday. I had no pictures like that, so she dismissed it all.

By this point, I probably come across as obsessed with this topic. And I guess that I am. It gets at the very nature of what it means to be human. Rea went to Lake Toba and had a wonderful time. She sent me a picture of her and her family in this line dancing with the local tribal people. And she really wants me to go there and have this same wonderful experience and take sunset pictures over this beautiful lake. But for me, that experience would be the very definition of horror. I can’t imagine anything more boring or horrifying. And there is no way on earth that I could possibly convey that to Rea. We are like members of two different species.

I suppose I could just leave it there. People are different and that’s normal. But I’m constantly seeing things online where people go on and on about how they travel around the world and they learned that we are all the same. THAT is what I’m reacting against. We are not the same at all. I barely understand most people in Canada. How can I posssibly hope to understand people in Indonesia? And the proof of that is around me all the time here as I try to do even the simplest things.

Tags: Sumatra Part 01