Saturday, March 19, 2016

8:00 a.m. Room 7, Tamariah Losmen

Siantar, Sumatra

My life continues to be dominated by the theft of my phone. I now see thieves everywhere. I suspect everyone on the street—especially men on motorcycles. And whenever anyone looks at me, I follow them with my eyes to make sure they don’t double back and stalk me. It’s not really feasible to live like this for long, of course. Everyone looks at me all the time. They do so because I’m a tall white guy -a foreigner. And they hardly ever see one. So everyone looks at me. In the past, I just ignored it. Now I think they are checking me over to see what they can steal.

I also have fantasies. I imagine that I had followed through on my plan and I had built a strong attachment mechanism so that no matter how much strength you used, you couldn’t rip my phone off my belt. Then the thief would have been foiled. He’d have tried to pull my phone off my belt, and he’d have failed. And I would have laughed in triumph. I like to play that scenario over in my head. I also have a fantasy where I see this type of thief steal a purse or a phone from a woman walking down the street or driving her scooter. I’d instantly spring into action and run out into the street to block the thief from getting away. The thief drives his motorcycle right at me to make me get out of the way, but I stand my ground. At the last second, I jump in the air so the motorcycle misses me and I tackle the thief and bring him to the ground. I hold him there till the police come. Articles about the heroic Canadian tourist appear in the local press. It would be so satisfying.

Setting aside fantasies, I continued my efforts to protect myself from any damage the thief could do and spent some more time online safeguarding my various accounts. Then afterward, I went for a walk through downtown Siantar to look for a new smart phone. I had a pretty good idea of which phone I wanted to buy. I just wanted to find a store that I felt good about. I knew that wouldn’t be easy, and I settled on a plan to simply visit every single store. I hoped this plan would reduce the amount of stress. I wouldn’t have to judge each store and make decisions or remember anything. I would go inside every store one by one from one end of the city to the other. And I would keep going until a store felt right. I was mainly looking for a store with a clerk that spoke English and could answer my questions. Not to be sexist, but I felt certain that when I found such a store with such a clerk, the clerk would be a man. So when I went inside a store with five or six young women behind the counter, my hopes were not raised. These women are paid the minimum wage, and their job is mainly to conduct the sales transaction. They take your money and give you your phone. And that’s about it. Chances are extremely good that they don’t speak English, and chances are even better that they know nothing about the phones and care even less. I was not dissuaded from these ideas by the experience. I went into a lot of stores, and I didn’t encounter a single woman that spoke any English at all. In one store, I was pleasantly surprised when the young woman took out a smart phone and used Google Translate to communicate with me. But when I asked her a question about a phone, she had to send a message to her boss to get the answer. She didn’t know anything about them.

I lost track of the number of stores I entered. A guess would put the number at about fifteen. Maybe twenty. Then at the very end of downtown, I came across a very promising store. This one had a wider range of phones available than the other places, and there were three men behind the counter. I immediately got a good feeling. As soon as I walked in, one of the men greeted me in English and asked me how he could help me—again in English. I told him my story about my phone being stolen and that I was thinking about buying a replacement. He gave me a price list of all the phones they carried, and we began talking about various phones. His English wasn’t great and my knowledge of the phones they carried was actually much better than his just from the research I’d done online. But he was helpful, and he knew some things about the phones from personal experience, and that helped me.

At some point, an older man—I assume the owner of the store—approached me. His English was far better than that of his clerks, and he began to assist me. He said he recognized me. A story about me and my stolen phone had appeared on his Facebook feed. I had a fleeting thought that he would then offer me a huge discount or even a free phone to make up for my bad experience in his country. But as sympathetic as he was, his sympathy did not extend to losing money. I think everyone in the store was rather surprised at how seriously I was taking my decision. This isn’t a new experience. I’ve noticed that people in Asia tend to just buy something without a lot of thought and without knowing very much about the product they’re buying. These clerks would just put a phone in front of me and say I should buy it. But if I asked them why, they had nothing to say. “What made this phone better than that one?” I’d ask. And then they’d grab the other one I was pointing at it and tell me I should buy that one. They found it odd that I wanted to know about the features and specifications about different phones before I made up my mind.

It wasn’t a waste of time, though. It gave me some new ideas about the type of phone I should buy. I would just stick with Samsung except that when you are looking at the budget phones, you actually get a lot more bang for your buck with a Chinese brand. Samsung is very reliable and they make great phones (I think). But the true value lies in their expensive phones. Many people say that their flagship phone, the S7, is currently the best phone in the world. You can’t go wrong buying that. And even my old Galaxy J7 was a very good phone. But it was creeping up in price. Now I was looking at cheaper phones, and the situation was a bit murkier.

For example, the main contender is the Samsung Galaxy J2, which is selling for around $180 Canadian. It’s a good phone and a pretty good value. However, for $200 I can buy a Xiaomi phone which has far, far better specifications. In terms of specs, the Xiaomi blows the J2 away. You get a lot more for your money. But I trust Samsung more. And the numbers don’t always tell the story. Having more RAM usually means that your phone runs much faster and better. But not always. Samsung has very good software engineers, and they write code that is much more efficient. So their phone might run much better even though it has half as much RAM. Same thing for cameras. Having more megapixels doesn’t mean that the pictures will look better. In fact, I wouldn’t normally be swayed by these numbers. However, I know that the camera on the Xiaomi is extremely good. I know people with this phone, and the pictures they take are amazing.

Anyway, when I have breakfast this morning, I’m going to do some research into the Xiaomi and see what I can find out.

After my visit to the cell phone store, I continued down the street to the end where the police station is located. I knew it was pointless, but I wanted to check in with the police. I was about to buy a brand new phone, so it seemed prudent to learn if, perhaps, the police had recovered my stolen one. I didn’t want to end up with two phones. The other times I’d been to the police station, I’d ridden my bike and I was allowed to just go right in. But this time, I tried to enter on foot, and I was called over to the security building. I had to sign in and provide a photo ID and get a visitor’s pass. I did all this while a vicious and well-worn machine gun of some kind was resting on the table and pointing right at my stomach. The officers remembered me, and one of them brought me to Stephanie’s office in the back.

Stephanie was sitting at her desk and taking a statement from a woman. I’ve slowly gotten the impression that Stephanie is not actually a detective or an active investigator. I think her role in the police force is that of an interrogator. It is her job to interview people, record all the relevant information in an official report, and then pass on that report to other police officers who will do the actual investigating. I say this for a number of reasons but also because yesterday when I asked her if there had been any progress in my case, she had no idea. She had to get another man to get on the phone and call another department and talk to them. That conversation went on for a surprisingly long time, and then he reported to Stephanie, and she told me that no, there had been no progress. I wasn’t surprised about that, and I didn’t want Stephanie to think that I was dumb enough to imagine that they’d gone out and caught the thief in some heroic fashion. I told her that I didn’t really think they’d find the phone. I just wanted to make sure, and I happened to be in the neighborhood, and, to be honest, I wanted to see her again. I was hoping she would be free and we would be able to chat for a bit. I wanted to ask her if they ever did catch any of these motorcycle thieves and what happened to them. Did they go to jail? How long were their sentences? How many of them are there in the city? That sort of thing. But Stephanie was busy, and she clearly didn’t have time to talk. We exchanged pleasantries and I shook her hand and left.

It looked like I was definitely going to be buying a phone right away, so I decided to stop by the BCA bank to withdraw some money. This made me nervous, of course. When I went into the sealed room with all the ATMs, I spotted the young woman who had helped me before. I went up to her and tried to tell her the story of how my bank in Canada had temporarily frozen my account because I had tried to use the ATMs here at the BCA bank. But her English wasn’t up to the job, and she had no idea what I was talking about.

The first ATM I tried rejected my card and canceled the transaction. Not good. The second attempt also ended in failure. The keypads on the ATMs have metal covers over them, and it is extremely difficult to get your hands in there and see what you are doing. I was nervous, so I ended up making a mistake and entering the wrong withdrawal amount. I tried to change the amount, but whatever I did, it just canceled the transaction again. Now I was more nervous. I tried one more time, and this time it went through and I withdrew some money.

When I turned to leave, I found that the young manager I’d spoken to the first time had come out to talk to me. Apparently, the young woman I’d spoken with had gone to find him and told him that I was here. This young man was very friendly and helpful. We talked for a long time by the ATMs. I told him about how my account was frozen when we tried to use the ATMs here last time. He was surprised about that. I also told him about my stolen phone. I had a photograph of a newspaper article about the theft on my little Canon camera, and I showed him that. It’s a cheap shot on my part, but I do like telling people about all the problems I’ve had in Sumatra. It comes from a desire for revenge, I suppose. I want someone to feel bad about it. I can’t catch the thief, but I want to punish someone. So I punish everyone. It isn’t very nice, I suppose, but I do it anyway. I think this urge comes partially from how innocent and naive everyone appears to me. It’s like the English students who interviewed me for their school project. So many of their questions were leading questions, essentially asking me to say how wonderful and friendly everyone was in Indonesia and how delicious the food was and how beautiful Lake Toba is, etc. I generally don’t mind repeating these opinions even if I don’t believe them. What’s the harm? But sometimes I get stubborn and I want to hammer in a little bit of a reality check.

It isn’t fair at all to dump all of my negative experiences onto the head of this friendly BCA bank manager, but I certainly had a lot to dump. I told him about how the government officials in Tanjungbalai demanded bribes. I told him how the immigration officials treated me. I told him how the police visited my hotel multiple times to interrogate me. Then there was the stolen phone. And even as I was walking from the police station to the bank, I had bad experiences. A group of men called out to me, and when I walked up to them, they kind of surrounded me and then demanded that I give them money. They didn’t have weapons and it wasn’t really a robbery attempt, but it certainly wasn’t friendly. And there are lots more subtle moments. I recently met a friendly woman, and she gave me the advice that I should buy two phones. I could have one good phone that I keep safe and only use indoors and for personal things. Then I could have a cheap, cheap phone that I use only for Google Maps, and I can use it out in public without really worrying about it. To be honest, it’s a very good idea and has some merit. But then this woman said that when I go back to Canada, I can give her one of the phones. It’s like there is always an ulterior motive to get money from me in some fashion. The weird thing is that we’re not talking about poor slum dwellers and beggars. This woman was standing in front of her house and business. They had a big truck there that they used for work. Inside a type of garage, I saw several motorcycles and a nice car. With all of that, why would she be angling to get a phone from me? It appeared that she had a lot more money than I do.

And I keep running into this weird attitude about what is and isn’t considered expensive. I was talking to the man from BCA bank about Lake Toba. He said that he could recommend a good hotel there. And he insisted that it wasn’t expensive at all. But when we got down to the details, he told me that the hotel cost 500,000 rupiah a night. To put that into perspective, I’m currently paying 80,000 a night and that seems like too much. So what’s going on? How can everyone be so poor and yet drive around on fancy motorcycles and in fancy cars and talk about hotels that cost 500,000 rupiah a night being cheap? It’s all a big mystery.

Since my conversation with the woman, I’ve had this idea of using two phones rolling around in my head. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but it is an interesting one. In my few days of cycling, I was already finding that using my Galaxy J7 was awkward. I had to keep it locked up and hidden inside my pannier bag, so it took time and effort to get it out and refer to it. And I was always worried about it. The conditions are extremely difficult, and it could get damaged or wet very easily. Also it could get stolen. Even when I visited Al at his bird shop and I stayed there for lunch, I found our conversation required me to refer to my phone all the time to look at Google Maps. So instead of putting my phone away each time, I kept it out, and I had nowhere to put it. I put it on the ground and on my lap and on this little table, and it was in danger of getting stepped on or dropped into a water tank or dropped to the ground and the sun was baking it. The same thing when I was visiting with the government workers in Lima Puluh.

So the idea of having two phones is interesting. I’d have one good phone. It would be my private and personal phone, and it would be connected to my email accounts and social media accounts. Then I’d have one cheaper phone that I would use only for Google Maps and for the occasional picture. I would store nothing personal or valuable on it. I came up with this list:

1 good phone

– private phone

– indoor phone

– personal phone

– connected to Google, Gmail, Google Photos, Hotmail, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

– calender/contacts/

– podcasting

– Andro Money

– SmugMug

 

1 cheaper phone

– public phone

– outdoor phone

– navigation – Google Maps, Maps.Me

– pictures

– no risk if lost

– NO PERSONAL INFORMATION

– NOT CONNECTED TO ANYTHING

– NO CONTACTS

– NO BBM

– NO FACEBOOK

– NO WHATSAPP

The downside is not financial. A cheap phone can be pretty cheap. I could get a reasonable one for $100. The downside is just making my life more complicated. It seems like a good idea, but I was kind of overwhelmed with having just one phone. Perhaps with two phones, I would be even more stressed out. It would get confusing as I tried to remember which phone had what on it. And then I’d have to decide which phone to bring and keep track of two phones. Where are they? And I’d have to keep two phones charged up. But it is an interesting idea.

The other problem is that I do like to use my phone as a camera. And a cheap phone will have a cheap camera. It’s unavoidable. And I know I would want to take pictures with that phone. And I know it would bother me to have bad quality pictures. I like nice pictures. Anyway, I’ll think about it.

And that’s it for yesterday.

 

Tags: Sumatra Part 01