After some tears in the immigration which could be until now doubtful over their approval of me leaving the country, I arrived in Jakarta December 19 12:15 AM with no flesh lost.
Indonesia (the country that capitalizes? Jakarta) is full of Indonesians. Indonesians look like us, diverse. But they only speak one language in contrast to our capability to speak numerous languages, depending on the waves of international tourism.
I’m having major problems with communication because almost all of them can’t speak English. They are limited to verbs which ironically, are rarely used. But who really cares? I’m the one who entered their nation so I have the responsibility to mold myself to be comfortable to the newer environment I have submitted myself into. And to those people who say learning English is key to national prosperity, visit Jakarta and let their gazillionaire investors kick your smart ass.
For the interest of a longer blog post in repayment for the several days of rest, let me share one encounter with my limited Indonesian vocabulary:
My sister always takes us to the mall. And they have approximately 12 malls here that when exaggerated, can cover up the whole Panay. All of their malls here make me wonder why the Mall of Asia even came close to being the biggest mall in the region which includes Indonesia. So I get to visit shops that contains sales ladies.
It happens that part of the job description of sales ladies here is approaching and speaking with the potential costumers. The sales lady or men would talk to me in fast, 25 words per second Indonesian. Of course I can’t understand them so I tell them I only speak English. Scared I might carry a disease from wherever I come from or worst, bad luck, they run away. Moral lesson? If you don’t want being ran away from, run away first.
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