It seems like only yesterday I was fretting over my first day of teaching but it's four days later now and my feet hurt. It takes a while to adjust to anything new I suppose but I'm alive and so, hopefully, are most of my students so it can't have gone too badly.
In between my teaching schedule I found time to take a trip to the mall with my room mate and go shopping. Despite my protests he managed to persuade me to take a motorbike taxi. Driving a car through Jakarta is terrifying enough so I didn't want to petrify myself any more than necessary by leaping on the back of someone's bike. The journey was still horrible but not what I imagined.
'Pavement' and 'road' seem to be synonymous in Jakarta. Man and machine weave together in death defying ways. We only spent about seven seconds on what could possibly be described as a road though before speeding off down a network of alleyways. These were concrete strips about the width of a pencil with an open drain on either side. These alleyways also seem to be a popular hang out spot for half of Jakarta who wander along getting nudged around by motorcycles. At one point some poor bloke actually got shunted into one of the open drains by the bike and splashed up something that smelled like ammonia. The driver stoically looked onwards and I glanced around just long enough to see the man in the drain trying to wrestle an eel off his trouser leg. Before too long we were belched out somewhere near the mall and giving the driver the equivalent of about 40p. That was no where near the worst thing that happened to me that night however.
         Before I left the UK I called Lloyds TSB to notify them that I was going abroad. After the usual hour of security questions they assured me that it would be no problem and that I could use my card worry free, they also said in the 'unlikely' event of a problem I could call them on the reverse charge number. So, with my first week nearly down, I thought I'd take out a bit of cash to tide me over. After scouring every ATM in the mall I discovered that the first thing they had told me was a huge lie. Thanks Lloyds, great service, as ever. That's OK though, mistakes happen.
The next day a quick phone call determined that the reverse charges are a lie as well! Even better. So I called the bastards up and asked them to call me back which was obviously 'impossible.' Then I reluctantly answered an hour of security questions before running out of credit. Hopefully that money will go towards lining a poor investment banker's pockets at least. Wouldn't want the poor bankers going hungry.