Saturday, December 5, 2015

I just hung up the phone after a 51-minute Skype chat with my brother back in Canada. Those calls are always interesting because I’m intensely aware of the vast difference between Canada and here. I wish I could convey what it was like standing on the balcony here in Sumatra while on the phone and describe everything that was going on around me, but it would be difficult. Once or twice, I interjected with a comment about the motorcycle with 200 chickens on board that just went past or the motorcycle taxi with a built-in stereo system blasting pop music at five in the morning or the incredible noise of the traffic going past or the thousands of white birds sitting on the electric and telephone lines around me. But it never quite seems to capture the mood. I wish I could communicate the whole scene.

Technology talk must be boring, but it is a big part of what is happening over here all the time, so I’ll mention that I first tried to call using Viber. Lots of people have told me that I needed to put Viber on my phone. So I did. And I even bought $5 in credit. If another person has Viber on their phone, you are supposed to be able to call them for free. But to call a landline, I have to use “Viber Out” and I must buy credit. But this morning, the call wouldn’t go through. There was something wrong with the number I dialed. I was saying to my brother that I find it odd that I still have to figure out the correct exit codes and country codes to make an International call. It seems that the phone would be smart enough to know that by itself. The phone knows exactly where I am right down to the meter. It knows I’m in Indonesia, so why can’t it just call Canada by itself? Why do I have to look up the exit codes and country codes?

In the last few days, I came under pressure to also install a program called Blackberry Messenger, or BBM for short. BBM is the most common messaging and calling application (or “app”) in use in Indonesia. So when people in Indonesia want to stay in touch, they ask if you have BBM. For a long time, I had no idea what they were talking about. Then I realized it was Blackberry Messenger. I hadn’t even heard of it until then, but I guess it is one of the major players in the smartphone messaging world. And since Blackberry is a Canadian company, I felt I should at least give it a try. As far as I know, it doesn’t hurt to install a new app. You can always delete it later if you don’t use it or don’t like it. So I now also have BBM. I don’t have any BBM contacts, and I don’t know why I need BBM when I already have Facebook and Skype and Viber and WhatsApp, but I’ve learned that with smartphones you really shouldn’t try to understand everything beforehand. I’ve never been a big fan of learning by doing (I like to learn by reading), but it’s the only way with smartphones and computers these days. You just have to dive in and learn through experience. So BBM might make sense someday.

I was telling my brother how much I love the smartphone and everything it can do. It has become a huge part of my daily life in a very short time. It astonishes me constantly. I’ve recently enjoyed great success in accessing podcasts on my smartphone. For many years now, podcasts have made up a very large part of my life. I listen to podcasts all the time – for hours every day. When I was in Taiwan, I had a regular routine of downloading all my podcasts for the week on Sunday. And then I would copy them all to my various iPods and listen to them all week long as I commuted to and from work, ran errands, and went on weekend trips. I had them running pretty much all day long and I had a large number of podcasts I subscribed to and listened to on a regular basis.

Then things got weird. I used iTunes to download my podcasts. Then I used iTunes to make playlists, and I would copy (“sync”) my podcasts over to my iPods. It worked great. But then iTunes changed. It became (as many Internet companies have) more cloud based, and my subscriptions and playlists wouldn’t work anymore. I invested many long hours in trying to figure it out, but to this day I’ve been unsuccessful. So I gave up on iPods and I switched to a simple MP3 player. I then downloaded my podcasts manually directly from the websites and then manually organized them, named them, and then copied them over to my MP3 player. It was more work, but it was effective.

Now, however, I’ve been experimenting with using my smartphone for podcasts. I purchased an app called Pocket Casts, and I’ve been very pleased with it. I can subscribe to podcasts easily. It downloads new episodes and organizes them automatically. The listening experience is great, and it works flawlessly so far. So another smartphone success. The only catch is that the smartphone is a much larger and more delicate device than an MP3 player. So it’s harder to carry it around and use it as a podcast player. It’s easier to have a tiny MP3 player in your shirt pocket than a heavy smartphone.

I could go on and on and on about all the things I do with my smartphone and all the things I’ve learned. But I won’t…

I had another meeting with some students yesterday. This meeting went very smoothly. It could be because the guy who organized it, Fadlie, was more detail-oriented. Or it could be because the arrangements were made through computer messages rather than in person. In any event, Fadlie and two fellow students plus one friend showed up at the hotel at around 1:50 p.m. on their scooters. He was supposed to be there at 1:30, and I was waiting in the lobby for 20 minutes, but that’s within the margin of error. I was pleased that we’d just gotten the day right.

Fadlie and his fellow students had also prearranged where we were going to do the video interview. They had settled on a little outdoor pavillion near the river. It was quiet and private there. We could sit around a round table and even order food and drinks to be delivered to our pavilion. It was a good choice – much better than the expensive cafe I went to with the other group. Fadlie was Facebook friends with Rama, one of the students from the other group. So I assumed that Rama had told him about me. But he insisted that wasn’t the case. He just happened to see my Facebook profile online, and he figured out that I was actually in Tanjungbalai, and he contacted me all on his own to help him with his video project. That was quite brave of him considering that he had never talked to a foreigner before and that English was his second language.

Fadlie had even brought a handheld Sony video camera, and he brought his friend along to act as the cameraman. So he was much better organized than Rismah and her group. The only wrinkle in the whole affair was the almost pathological desire that Asians have to be good to their guests. Being a Westerner, I was goal-oriented. I was there to get a job done. So I wanted to focus on the video interview. Let’s figure out what we’re going to do and then let’s get it done. But Fadlie and his fellow students first had to order drinks. And then they insisted that they order some food for me and that I eat this food. And all this was going on before we did the interview. This kind of drove me crazy. It’s fine to have drinks and a meal, but in my mind (and in the mind of most Canadians, I think) you do that AFTER you finish your work. Let’s get the work done. And then we can have a relaxing meal. All of this ordering of food was done to make me happy, but, as always, it had the opposite effect. It made me unhappy and anxious. I sat there eating food while they had nothing. (For some reason, their order never came.) And I couldn’t enjoy the food because I was mentally focused on the video project. Even worse, we had to make small talk while I was eating. So they were asking me all the basic questions that I KNEW were the same questions they were going to ask me during the official video. Having this food and doing all this talking before we did the video made no sense at all. But I couldn’t fight it. If they didn’t buy me food, THEY wouldn’t have been happy.

The video itself went well, I think. The three students crowded around me on one side of the round table, and the cameraman filmed us from the other side. I turned on the voice recorder on my phone (surreptitiously) just in case their camera didn’t record the audio properly or clearly. Fadlie asked some questions. Then he would turn it over to the other students. They were both young women, and they then asked me questions from their prearranged list. The questions were standard questions about me and what I thought of Indonesia, Indonesian people, Indonesian food, etc. I tried to expand on my answers as much as I could and be honest and entertaining. If I gave one-word answers to each question, we would have been done in five minutes. I don’t know how much of my answers made any sense to them. Their questions were simple and they expected simplistic answers. But me being me, I always added a twist to my answers and came at things from a point of view that they probably weren’t expecting. They might not even have grasped what I was talking about, but maybe they did. I think their life experiences wouldn’t let them really see things from my point of view. For example, they wanted to know why I chose to come to Tanjungbalai and why I was staying in the Hotel Asahan instead of the fancy hotel (which they named and which I had never heard of or seen). In their mind, I was here on a prepared trip. I had a hotel reservation and all that stuff. I tried to explain that I just came here without any plans. I showed up at the ferry dock on my bike and then I rode my bike into town and then rode up and down the streets looking for a place to stay. This is something that would make no sense to them at all. It’s so crazy that I don’t think they could process it even when I told them about it.

When the interview was over, there was this same rushed atmosphere as with the other group. Fadlie was concerned to the point of total panic that he was offending me or inconveniencing me or bothering me or insulting me in some way. He explained that they were poor students and so they couldn’t pay me for my time. He worried that with his poor English he might inadvertently insult me. As is always the case, he went so far in trying to make me comfortable that he made me intensely UNcomfortable. I reassured him as much as I could and with every bit of body language and actual language, I tried to convey that I was totally relaxed and happy and enjoying myself. I had lots of free time, and talking to him and his fellow students was a pleasure. But he was still panicking. And so when the interview was over, instead of relaxing, he wanted to jump up and either rush me to the next bit of entertainment or get me back to my hotel. I opted for the hotel, because I wanted to catch a particular market street with my camera while the light was still good. I got on the back of Fadlie’s scooter and we all raced through the streets back to my hotel. It was a scary, scary ride. We nearly had a half dozen accidents. The most dangerous things I’ve done here have all involved riding on the backs of scooters with Rea, with Fitra (the guy from Rismah’s group), and now with Fadlie. Fadlie was the worst driver of the bunch, and I was worried for my life and limbs.

A funny side note is that in preparing for this little excursion, I used the man purse that the other group had given me as a present. Truth be told, I don’t have much use for the bag, but it was a present and I should be seen to use it. So I loaded up my umbrella and my bottle of water and my phone and my MP3 player. I slipped my phone into one of the zippered pockets on the outside. But after the interview, I wanted to get out my phone to take a picture, and the zipper was jammed. Nothing I did would budge it. Later on, over a meal, I attacked this zipper again, determined to open it up, and the zipper pull tab ripped right out. The man purse hadn’t even lasted one use before starting to fall apart.

The man purse is a good idea to the extent that it offers a place to put my phone. I’ve been putting the phone in my pocket most of the time, and I KNOW that is a bad idea. I know that it is just a matter of time before it slips out and smashes to the ground or it slips out and I don’t notice it and I lose it or someone steals it. So I’ve been trying to find an alternative. I want to get a pouch or case that clips onto my belt. Apparently this is a very geeky and uncool thing to do, but I have always kept my cell phone in a pouch on my belt. It’s convenient. The problem I encountered is that my phone is just a little bit too large. I found three or four different pouches that clip onto a belt, but they are all just a little bit too small. I went to every shop in the city, but I had no luck. That’s usually how things go for me. Everyone’s phone will fit perfectly into these cases. But, for some reason, the model of phone that I bought won’t fit. It’s just what happens.

I kept hoping that I’d find the miracle case, and I’m sure one exists in Kuala Lumpur. But they can’t be found in Tanjungbalai. My only option (and what I always end up having to do) is buy one of the small cases and then modify it. There was one case in particular that seemed like it might work. I’d have to cut open one side of the pouch and then extend it by sewing on some extra material. It wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done. When I first saw this case, the woman said it cost 50,000 rupiah. I was surprised at that because similar cases at other stores were quoted as costing 100,000. Then when I decided to go back and buy one, the original woman was in the store but there was also a man. I dealt with the man, and I just handed him 100,000 rupiah. I was curious what kind of change I was going to get back. I saw the woman’s eyes go wide and shift a little bit. She wanted to say something to the man, but she missed her chance. Then man gave me 60,000 rupiah in change, and he seemed somewhat apologetic about that, as if he was overcharging me. So the woman had inflated the price by 10,000 rupiah, but she didn’t have the chance to tell the man that. And even the 40,000-rupiah price seemed to be too high. So I can only imagine what the real price was. But it makes little difference. $4 or $3 for a smartphone pouch is hardly expensive.

I brought the case back to my room, and I’ve been carefully considering the best way to modify it. I don’t want to make a mistake. Last night, I had the courage to get out a pair of scissors and cut one end open. Now I’ve been thinking about how best to extend it. It might seem like a waste of time, but just having this case will mean the difference between having a smartphone and losing or breaking the smartphone. If I continue to keep this phone in my pocket, it is guaranteed that I will lose it or break it.

Tags: Sumatra Part 01